Gray Vengeance (32 page)

Chapter 42

21 December 2014

‘We’ve got one vehicle, and it’s empty,’ the southernmost team reported.

‘Roger, Alpha One. Target is two-five-zero yards north. Move in one-five-zero yards and hold your position.’

Click-click.

‘No surprises yet?’ Farrar asked. He’d left West three hours earlier and sought to reassure Joel, who’d become increasingly anxious at the thought of being caught in a shootout, but as the action began to unfold, he couldn’t help but oversee it.

‘Going like clockwork,’ West said. ‘My men are moving in now. They’ll be on top of them in twenty minutes.’

‘Why so long? Can’t you hurry this up?’

‘If they move any faster,’ West said, as if explaining to a small child why they shouldn’t eat from the cat tray, ‘they’ll give their location away. That would be bad.’

‘There’s no need to take the piss,’ Farrar said. ‘I just want this over and done with.’

‘It will be. Just leave it to the professionals, okay?’

Farrar bit his lip and concentrated on the screen, though there was little to see. The red dot hadn’t moved in hours, and West’s men weren’t highlighted on the map.

‘How do you know where your men are?’ Farrar asked.

‘Practice,’ West said. ‘Besides which, I have the GPS location of the target, and my men have the same GPS app on their phones. They’ll know when they’re within range.’

It sounded like West had everything in hand, so Farrar told him he was going downstairs to get coffee.

‘Black with two sugars,’ West said over his shoulder.

‘Movement your way,’ Gray heard in his earpiece. ‘Three hundred yards east, two-fifty west and two hundred south. Closing slowly.’

He gave two clicks in response, and felt his pulse quicken as
the mom
ent neared. After what seemed like an hour, Farsi updated
the team to let them know the closest targets were at one hundred yards.

‘Coming in pairs. Should be with you in ten minutes.’

Click-click.

Once the targets were inside the kill zone, Gray and his team would spring up from their hiding places and cut them down.
It w
ould then be a sprint down the main road to the house.
Harvey
and Thompson would lay down covering fire against the front
windows
, while Gray and the others went round the back and made their way inside. With Farsi calling out the enemy locations, it should be easy enough to eliminate the remaining threats.

‘Len, you set?’

‘Set.’

‘Sonny?’

Gray waited, but got no reply.

‘Sonny, you there?’

‘Sorry, boss, I fell asleep.’

Much as he loved Sonny Baines, Gray found his sense of humour exasperating at times.

‘Cut the crap,’ Len broke in. ‘It’s grown-up time.’

‘Roger that.’

‘When they’re inside the perimeter,’ Gray whispered, ‘we go on my mark.’

Farrar returned to the spare bedroom and put the cup down next to West.

‘Almost there,’ the soldier told him. ‘Another five minutes and you can head to bed.’

Farrar took a sip of his own brew. ‘Don’t forget to hide the bodies afterwards. We don’t want a dog walker to trip over them in the morning.’

West turned to say something, but Farrar’s phone cut him off. It was Juliet Harper on the line.

‘What is it now?’ he asked.

‘I was looking for confirmation that Sarah is there, so I had her phone downloaded. I can confirm that she’s in Havana, but it seems she got a message from Paul Mackenzie to say that Tom Gray is with Harvey. You might have more company than you expected.’

‘Gray’s here?’ Farrar glanced over to West, who glared at him with narrowed eyes.

‘We’re not certain,’ Harper said, ‘but he was with Harvey two days ago, in Kano. They know Mackenzie was working for us.’

Farrar covered the handset and turned to West. ‘Tell your men to stop. There may be more than we thought.’

‘How many more?’

‘My guess is at least three. Tom Gray, Len Smart and S
imon Baines.’

West got onto the comms. ‘Wait one. I repeat, wait one.’ He ignored the clicks coming through the headset and turned back to Farrar. ‘I know Gray. At least, I know of him. He was decent enough back in the day, but he’s been out for a long time now.’

‘So have the other two, but they’re like cockroaches: they refuse to die.’ He told Harper he’d ring her back, then ended the call. ‘So what’s the plan now?’ he asked West. ‘Your men could be walking into a trap.’

‘I’ll send two in while the rest hang back. If it is a trap, we’ll know shortly.’

‘Something’s wrong, Tom. The teams to your east and west are
moving
north towards the house.’

‘What about the others?’

‘Still approaching your position.’

Shit!
Something had them spooked, and if the remaining four made it back to the house, it would be almost impossible to get
to Farrar.

‘Tell Andrew and Sarah to get between them and the house, and if necessary, stall them long enough for us to catch up.’

He hated the thought of pitting the pair against four seasoned soldiers, but he had no other option. Hopefully he and Sonny could take their targets out and reach the remaining threats before that became necessary.

‘Roger. Your two targets are within thirty yards.’

‘Tell me when they get inside the triangle.’

Sweat began to trickle down Gray’s face as Farsi counted down the distance.

‘Twenty yards . . . inside the kill zone, ten yards from the phone. Five yards.’

‘On three,’ Gray whispered into his mic. ‘One, two, three.’

He threw back the turf covering him and sat upright, his silenced weapon coming up as he identified the first of the targets. The night-vision goggles outlined the figure in front of him
beautifully
; two silenced shots to the chest took him down. The second fell at the same time to a popping double-tap from Sonny’s gun.

With the immediate threat eliminated, Gray rose to his feet and stretched his legs to get some movement back into them. As he walked over to the bodies, he called Hamad. ‘Where are they now?’

‘Seventy yards north, still moving slowly.’

Gray gave each of the corpses a head shot to be certain that they were out of the game. ‘Let’s go.’

He led the way at walking pace, doing all he could to keep the sound of boots on undergrowth to a minimum. It wasn’t long before he spotted the next target, a man with his hand to his ear as he listened to an incoming message. Whatever it was, he never got to hear it. Gray brought him down with two rounds to the head, and his weapon was seeking its next mark before the corpse hit the ground.

Sonny’s rifle spoke twice, and a fourth player was taken out of the game. Now muzzle flashes lit the trees like lightning as the enemy finally realised what was happening.

‘Alpha One, report!’

‘I hear gunfire,’ Farrar said, standing to the side of the window that overlooked the woods.

‘Someone, tell me what the fuck is happening out there!’

West was becoming increasingly anxious at the lack of response, and the fact that his men were shooting meant he’d underestimated his opponent. He went over to the window just as the first member of Tango team emerged from the trees and ran across the road. He made it to the other side before collapsing as if he’d been kicked in the back.

‘Tango Two, what the hell’s going on? Where’s Echo team?’

The silence in his headset matched that from the forest, as the gunfire suddenly stopped.

Six men down
.

There wasn’t time to reflect on the losses. West knew the house would be their next objective, and he had to make sure no-one got close enough. It wouldn’t be easy, as the enemy had the numerical advantage, but he could even that up a little.

‘Charlie, get down to the basement and bring me two M4s and all the ammo you can carry.’

A minute later, the last remaining member of West’s team entered the room with two rifles, two boxes of ammunition and a half-dozen magazines. He started filling them as West handed
Farrar
one of the weapons.

‘You know how to use one of these?’

Farrar looked for the safety and switched it to three-round burst, then took one of the clips from Charlie and rammed it home. He racked the slide, putting a round in the chamber, and looked at West. ‘Yeah.’

‘Good. Give that to your boyfriend, show him how to use it and then come back for yours.’

Farrar ran to the master bedroom and handed the rifle to Joel. ‘Ever fired one of these?’

Joel shook his head, so Farrar gave him a fifteen-second crash course before leading him back to West, who handed him another assault rifle.

‘Where do you want us?’

‘One of you cover the left side of the building, the other the right. Charlie and I’ll take the front.’

Farrar grabbed four spare magazines and gave two to Joel before heading off to the window on the first floor landing. He opened it fully and stood to the side, only an inch of his profile
visible
from the outside. Looking down the hallway, he saw Joel copying him at the opposite window, and he gave his lover a reassuring smile before turning back to scan the night for Gray and his team.