Die Trying (13 page)

‘Joe, can you hear me?’ Land said.

‘Loud and clear.’

‘This is a three-way line with Lieutenant Steve White. Steve’s an engineer on the Trident submarine the HSM
Vigilant
. He’s going to talk you through the disarming process.’

‘Don’t worry about a thing, mate,’ White said in an accent so Welsh you could bottle it and sell it as Taff Valley water. ‘This is a bloody tough gig, but Leo here tells me you’ve got demolitions experience, so you’ve got the basic skill set in place. It’s just a matter of guiding you through the interesting bit.’

‘I’ll be fine, mate. Let’s get this over with and then we can share a pint in Hereford. First round’s on me.’

The doors of the van were open. Gardner placed the toolbox just inside on its floor. He prised it open and removed a torch. The van lit up like a cave. Placing his right hand on the floor, he slid up into the van.

Inside, the heat rose again. Gardner felt his clothes clinging to his legs and torso. He was soaked through.

Once again an image of the radio station flashed across the surface of his mind. The way the building toppled, the smoke plume billowing into the bright blue sky, a dozen small fires breaking out among the mountain of concrete and steel, slab and cable. All that death, all of it unseen in the fury of the explosion. He thought about how the nuke would be like that – except a million times bigger.

‘Can you see the top of the device?’ White asked him.

‘Looking at it now.’

‘What’s the timer say?’

Gardner angled his head. The LCD display was a blur through the steam and sweat. ‘Zero-zero-three.’
Three fucking minutes.

‘OKaaay,’ said White. He sounded like he was talking more to himself than Gardner. ‘This type of nuke should be battery-operated. You should see a red or black cable connecting the timer to the battery attached to the side of the actual nuke.’

‘I see it,’ Gardner said. ‘It’s a red wire.’ The glossy wire was a quarter of an inch thick and ran from the timer to the canvas box strapped to the back of the nuke.

‘I’m going to need you to cut that wire.’

Gardner fumbled inside the toolbox for the wire cutters. He secured the wire between its teeth.

‘But…’ – White’s voice was rushed, unsteady – ‘before you cut it. These types of nuke aren’t highly evolved, but the Soviets liked to booby-trap their devices.’

Fuck! Gardner thought. He held the cutters in place, his hand a second away from plunging Istanbul into a nuclear holocaust.

‘I want you to look down the back of the device,’ White said.

‘What am I looking for?’

‘Something beneath the battery. It will have been concealed from view.’

Gardner ran his eyes up and down the battery. He was feeling dizzy. The heat, the exhaustion, the dehydration – a perfect physiological storm. Spittle collected at the corners of his mouth. He thought about that cold pint in Hereford.

He found a small black box taped to the underside of the battery. Gardner described it to White, who said, ‘Here’s what you’ve got to do – what’s the timer read, Joe?’

‘One minute.’

‘Plenty, plenty of time.’ White’s voice sounded artificially calm. ‘You need to cut the booby-trap.’

Gardner paused with the wire cutters. He didn’t want any more nasty surprises from White. ‘And then?’

‘Once the trap is cut, it will automatically short-circuit the timer. There’s nothing you can do to prevent that. Soon as you cut the booby-trap, you’ll have about three seconds to cut the red wire.’

’What do you mean, “about three seconds”?’

‘Well, it depends how efficiently the lads have wired the trap.’

Thirty seconds.

Gardner reached down with the wire cutters to the booby-trap. A single grey wire snaked up from the grey box and fed into the timer. The awkward angle and the dim lighting made it difficult for him to get at the cable.

Twenty seconds.

Sweat dripped on to his visor. His vision was deteriorating. He felt his heart pulse, and his hand spasmed. He dropped the wire cutters on the floor.

‘Shit!’

‘What is it?’

Gardner fumbled on the dark floor for the cutters. His hand touched something bumpy. He found them. He straightened his back – and could barely see a thing. His visor misted up and the booby-trap was no more than a blur underneath a much bigger grey blur.

Ten.

He felt the wire cutters grip something hard. The cable.

A deep breath. The visor cleared.

Gardner squeezed the handles.

He heard a light click as the cutters sliced through the wire of the booby-trap.

A fraction of a second behind it came a buzzing noise, followed by an incessant beeping. The lights on the LCD panel flashed, illuminating the van. Gardner rushed up to the screen. He searched for the red wire. One second had gone, he knew that much. Got to find it, got to—

His eyes located the red wire. He brought the cutters to the wire. Squeezed again.

The red lights continued to go batshit. The LCD presented a single word: ‘ARMED’.

Fuck!

Gardner closed his eyes and waited for the world to swallow him up.

After a second, the beeping and buzzing noises stopped.

Nothing happened.

He opened his eyes.

‘What’s going on, Joe?’ White asked.

‘I cut the wire, but the timer kept going,’ Gardner said.

‘Yeah, it’ll do that. But without the battery pack to activate the neutron trigger of the bomb, the nuke can’t initiate the conventional explosion. Or the uranium isotopes. You’ve done it, mate.’

On hearing the words Gardner crawled out of the van. He wasn’t euphoric. He didn’t feel a sense of victory. He just ripped off the helmet and felt like a drowning man coming up for air. He breathed, and his whole body sighed. Dooley and Weston came running over, grinning like the fucking Chuckle Brothers. Sahin tossed him a begrudging nod.

‘Water,’ Gardner said.

Weston produced a canteen. Gardner thought about drinking it. Instead he poured it over his head. Felt the cool shower of it washing away the thick heat. He let the water rinse the salty taste out of his mouth. And dear God, it was finally over.

Dooley handed him a mobile.

‘That pen-pushing wanker at the Firm wants to talk to you,’ he said. ‘Probably got a gerbil shoved up his arse that he needs unplugging.’

Gardner laughed. It felt good to be back among Blades. He loved the sense of brotherhood, a special bond that some jumped-up posh prick like Leo Land would never understand.

‘Bloody good work, Joe,’ said Land. ‘Really, I’m speechless. I thought we were done for.’

‘
We?
’ Gardner sputtered. ‘If I’d fucked up, you’d still be sitting in your ivory tower.’

‘The consequences would have reached much further than the atom cloud,’ Land replied sternly.

‘I don’t give a shit. Where’s Aimée?’

‘Golan’s providing us with her location now. He promises that she won’t have come to any harm.’

‘He’d best not be lying.’

‘Relax. It’s under control.’

But Gardner wasn’t listening. He looked around for Dooley and Weston, hoping to shoot the shit with them for a while. Nowhere to be seen.

They’d already bugged out.

2111 hours.

Maxim Ledinsky watched the news and sipped his mineral water. His office was frugal and lacked the furnishings of his peers. Not because of any firmly held Communist dogma, but simply because he hadn’t yet shared the affluence of the others at the FSB. He was relatively young, thirty-eight, and had come to the game late. By the time he’d entered the organization his peers had already rubbed shoulders with the plutocrats and the oligarchs. They’d acquired shares in oil and gas companies, forged links with the
mafya
.

All that was about to change.

On the TV, the journalist excitedly pointed to the van. The camera zoomed in on it. The van was bathed in spotlights, a security cordon establishing a ten-metre perimeter around it. Ledinsky spoke good English and preferred the BBC to the Russian channels. You learned more and, ridiculously, they even told the truth. The man on his screen, fat and wavy-haired, seemed pleased with himself.

‘Nuclear engineers on their way… to dispose—’

‘Fools,’ Ledinsky muttered under his breath. He glanced at his watch. His soon-to-be-replaced watch. He’d get a Rolex, studded with diamonds.

Any second now.

Each nuke came with a killswitch code. A timer override.

Ledinsky walked over to his window. His mind was lost for a moment. Then he snapped out of it and returned to his desk. He propped himself on the corner of it and sipped more water. He liked the dink of ice against the glass.

The killswitch was in place. The orders were simple.

His phone rang. Ledinsky blanked it. He watched the screen whiten as the nuke detonated, then faded to black. Finally the TV returned to the BBC news desk and two presenters with quizzical expressions on their faces, wondering why their colleagues’ reports had cut out.

Why indeed? Ledinsky thought, and afforded himself a smile. It was so good when things went according to plan.

Faster, Grittier, Darker, Deadlier… Chris Ryan Extreme

When an old friend makes a desperate call for help, former SAS Warrant Officer Joe Gardner is thrust back into the line of fire. His journey leads him into the deadliest favela in Brazil, where violent gangs, crazed hitmen and trigger-happy paramilitaries lurk. Gardner’s only hope of staying alive is through his supreme survival skills and warrior’s instinct.

A chance encounter with an agent from MI6 leads Joe Gardner into a perilous mission in Gibraltar. His objective: bust a major cocaine-smuggling ring involving former a Regiment operator and the Royal Navy. But Gardner isn’t alone. A mysterious killer with expert martial arts skills is shadowing his every move. And it’s about to get noisy.

Dispatched to a postwar Belgrade crawling with criminals and bad memories, Joe Gardner is on a collision course with his one-time Regiment friend John Bald. Gardner plans to put a stop to Bald once and for all. But with the Russian mafya and Italian mob closing in, is Gardner too late? If he fails, tens of thousands will die.

In the aftermath of a devastating nuclear attack, Joe Gardner discovers a terrifying secret. In order to protect the truth, he must escort special agent Aimee Milana to safety, all the while hunted by government agents and a former Navy SEAL operator equipped with a lethal weapon. The race is on to reach Parliament Square before the clock runs out – and the world descends into all-out war.

All available in exclusive ebook edition.
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