Redemption (15 page)

‘It’s bad!’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘Shit!’

‘Calm down, for fuck’s sake,’ Drake commanded him. ‘It’s a flesh wound. It hasn’t broken the bone. Can you walk?’

Medical attention would have to wait for now. If they didn’t get out of here, they were as good as dead.

‘Leave him,’ Maras said, staring down at the injured man without emotion. ‘He won’t make it.’

‘Shut up!’ Drake snapped, then turned his attention back to his comrade. ‘Jonas, we need to go right now. We’ll sort you out once we’re clear of the prison, but you have to help us. Can you walk?’

He was breathing hard from a combination of pain and exertion, but he managed a nod. He looked at the door again. ‘They’ll be following us.’

Drake nodded, an idea already forming.

‘I’ll take care of it.’ He pointed at Maras again. ‘You. If you want to get through this alive, help him up the stairs. He’ll show you the way.’

‘He’ll slow us down,’ she warned. ‘They’ll catch up and kill us all.’

‘Just get it done. Leave the rest up to me.’

Standing undecided for a moment, she at last resigned herself to the inevitable, hooked one hand beneath Dietrich’s arm and pulled him to his feet. He let out a
cry
of pain as the weight rested on his injured leg, but remained defiantly on his feet.

Struggling with his considerable weight, Maras looked at Drake. ‘What about you?’

‘Don’t worry about me. Just get up there,’ he implored her. ‘Go now!’

As she pulled the injured man towards the stairs, leaving a trail of blood in their wake, Drake snatched up the keys dropped by Dietrich and made for the door leading to the western cell block.

Unlocking it, he hauled it open and turned to the controls for the cell doors. Essentially just a series of levers controlling the electric locks on each cell, there were a good forty or so laid out on a numbered control board. Starting from what he hoped was the south end of the block, he went to work, pulling each lever in turn.

It didn’t take long for the results to become apparent. He could hear loud metallic clangs echoing down the massive enclosed space, followed by frantic and confused shouts as prisoners suddenly found themselves released.

He had opened at least twenty cells by the time he heard the click of keys in the door leading from the solitary confinement block. The two surviving guards must have fought their way past the burning remains of the incendiary grenade, and were now eager to find the man who had thrown it.

He’d done enough here. Abandoning his task, he turned and rushed through the stairwell door, pulling it closed behind him.

Chapter 22

‘NINETY-NINE BOTTLES OF
beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer …’

Sitting motionless in his sniping position and oblivious to the chaos around him, Keegan was a picture of calm as he slowly moved the sniper rifle from tower to tower, his keen eyes scanning for a target while he hummed a tune under his breath. It helped to keep him relaxed, and he needed it tonight.

The shit had well and truly hit the fan now. The alert had gone out, klaxons and sirens filling the night air with their harsh wails. Moments earlier the sharp crackle of gunfire had echoed up through the cell blocks. Who was shooting who? He didn’t know. Confusion was everywhere.

The weather conditions were deteriorating by the minute. He could feel the wind getting up and the temperature dropping as a storm front came in from the north-west. The snowflakes were also heavier and more numerous.

If they delayed much longer, they might not make it out at all.

His comrades could well be fighting for their lives a couple of floors below him, but that, like the weather, was out of his hands. The best – and indeed only – way to help them was to hold his position and stick to the plan. That was what they were counting on him to do.

Operations like this broke down when people started panicking and acting on their own initiative without communicating with the rest of their team. No way was that going to happen today.

Out of the corner of his eye he caught movement in the north-east tower, and swung the rifle around, increasing the magnification on his scope to get a better look. It was a guard, eyes wide with panic, clutching an AK assault rifle as he stared down into the exercise yard. No doubt he expected prisoners to come crashing from one of the cell blocks at any moment.

Keegan wondered if he’d been ordered up there or if he had just gone there to survey the situation. How organised were their enemies? Had they planned for this? Was it part of their training, or were they running around in confusion and panic?

Whatever the reason, Keegan’s response was the same.

‘Take one down, pass it around …’ he mumbled, adjusting his aim to compensate for crosswind.

Perfect sight picture.

Allowing himself to relax, he squeezed the trigger. The rifle kicked back hard into his shoulder, and half a second later the top of the man’s head exploded in a spray of blood and brain matter.

Good kill.

‘Ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall …’

He didn’t enjoy killing, but he did feel a certain satisfaction that came from exercising the skills he had spent long years perfecting.

Above the blare of alarms, he could hear the clamour of footsteps in the stairwell behind him. ‘Alpha Team, sit rep,’ he spoke into his radio.

It was Frost who answered. ‘Alpha’s in the stairwell. Hold your fire.’

A moment later, Frost and Mason emerged into the observation area, breathless and sweating.

‘Good to see you again,’ Keegan said without taking his eyes away from the scope.

‘Good to be here,’ Mason replied, keying his radio. ‘Alpha’s at the rendezvous point. Bravo, what’s your situation?’

Dietrich’s reply was gasped out through laboured breaths. ‘Bravo Two. We’re on the … stairwell … heading up. Get ready to cover us!’

‘Copy that. You okay?’

‘I’m hit, but … still in the fight. Where’s … the chopper?’

‘It’s inbound right now. We’re—’

Mason’s sentence was cut off as a burst of automatic weapons fire sliced into the observation area, shattering the windows around him. Freezing wind and dry flakes of snow whipped through the now open platform as all three of them hit the deck.

‘Shit! We’re taking fire.’ Frost had one hand pressed against a cut above her left eye where an errant fragment of glass had gashed her.

‘Keegan, you see the shooter?’ Mason called out.

Waiting until the incoming fire slackened off, Keegan peered over the edge of the concrete parapet long enough to scan the other three towers. Another burst of fire was enough to make him duck back down, but it didn’t matter. He’d seen what he had to.

‘South-east tower,’ he said calmly, reaching up to grab something resting on the table above him.

His hand came back clutching a small metal control unit with a long wire snaking out, that Mason recognised immediately as an M57 Firing Device. Commonly referred to as a Clacker, it served as the standard remote trigger for Claymore anti-personnel mines.

‘Fire in the hole,’ he announced, flicking off the safety catch and depressing the simple flat trigger.

A bright flash followed by a concussive boom signalled the destruction of the south-east watchtower, along with anyone unfortunate enough to be inside it.

Peering over the parapet once more, Keegan nodded in satisfaction. A trio of Claymore anti-personnel mines daisy-chained together inside the observation area had done their work well, blasting the structure apart from the inside and shredding anyone within the blast radius.

The injured man was a heavy burden as she fought her way up the spiral staircase, practically dragging him along with her. He was flagging badly, weak from shock, pain and blood loss. His armour and equipment was dead weight that they couldn’t afford.

For that matter, so was he.

She was breathing hard from her exertions, and only now did she realise how weak she had become. Training and exercising daily, it had been easy to convince herself that she had maintained some semblance of her former fitness. But years of poor food, beatings and injuries, and no opportunities to move around had taken their toll.

She couldn’t help him. She’d be lucky to help herself in this condition.

Missing a step, Dietrich stumbled and fell, letting out a cry of pain as he landed on his injured leg. He lost his grip on the sub-machine gun, which clattered down the steps behind them.

‘Get up!’ she yelled, anger and frustration welling up inside. This was taking too long. He was slowing them down. They could be out of here by now if it wasn’t for this idiot.

He was done. Better that he died now before he got them all killed.

Letting go of him, she turned to reach for the fallen weapon.

The click of a hammer being drawn back stopped her, and she turned to look at the injured man again. He was covering her with a USP .45 automatic pistol.

‘Don’t fucking think about it,’ he growled in Russian. He spoke the language well, but she detected a faint accent. German or Austrian, she thought. A proud people, an arrogant people. Twice they had tried to conquer this country, and twice they had failed.

She did a threat assessment. A USP .45-calibre pistol. Twelve-round magazine. Effective range, about 50 metres in the right hands. Massively powerful. A popular choice for Special Forces operatives.

But it was a heavy weapon, and its owner was already weak from blood loss. He was struggling just to hold it steady. Broken down and diminished as she was, she could still disarm him before he managed to get a shot off.

She tensed up, muscles readying themselves for the sudden movement that she would soon require.

Weakness will not be in my heart. Fear will not be in my creed. I will show no mercy. I will never hesitate
.

Before she could act, she was interrupted by the sound of footsteps on the stairs below. She turned in time to see the other man charge round the corner.

‘Get up, Dietrich,’ he said, grabbing the injured man and hauling him to his feet once more. ‘We’re almost there, mate.’

He managed the weight easily, she noticed with a flash of anger. He was young, strong, healthy, well fed and well rested.

The sharp crack of weapons fire echoed from below,
mingled
with confused shouts and agonised screams. A furious battle of some kind was raging, and she could guess the cause.

A riot was brewing. He had unleashed something beyond anyone’s ability to control.

‘What did you do?’ Dietrich asked as they resumed the painful ascent, leaving spots of blood on the concrete steps.

‘They’ve got bigger problems than us to deal with now.’ Drake pointed upwards. ‘Maras, up the stairs. Move!’

She needed no encouragement. Freed from her heavy burden, she charged up the stairs, heart pounding, lungs drawing in gasps of freezing air. After years of being confined to a 6-foot-by-8-foot cell, the mere act of running unfettered was almost alien to her. The stairs were a strange and unusual obstacle that she hadn’t tackled in a lifetime.

Finally rounding the last turn, she rushed through the open door at the top of the stairs and out into a covered observation area overlooking the prison yard.

Then she stopped, staring around in awestruck amazement, oblivious even to the biting cold and the sting of dry snowflakes on her exposed skin.

For almost as long as she could remember, her entire world had consisted of her 6-by-8-foot cell, and the length of corridor she walked to get to the shower rooms. She hadn’t seen the outside world since the day of her arrival. She hadn’t breathed fresh air or felt the wind on her face. She hadn’t looked up at a sky that wasn’t lit by cheap electric lights and blocked by grey concrete.

This was the world she had once been part of, and it was consumed with chaos.

Alarms blared throughout the prison, the crackle of gunfire resounded from various points throughout the
facility
, mingled with shouts and panicked cries. One of the imposing watchtowers on the south side had been demolished as if by explosives, the observation deck a mass of shattered glass and smouldering debris.

More shouts from below directed her attention to the exercise yard, where a group of prisoners had broken through the main doors and were pouring out into the open space. Where they planned to go, she had no idea. She wondered if they were even thinking rationally, or if the crazed lust for freedom had overridden all common sense.

Either way, she didn’t doubt that Khatyrgan was going to fall tonight. There were too many prisoners and too few guards to hold them back, and they had suffered much in their time here. Their rage and lust for revenge would know no bounds.

She just hoped they were able to get out before the riot consumed the entire prison.

Tearing her eyes away from the chaos in the yard, she watched as her two rescuers emerged from the stairwell, breathing hard and close to exhaustion, driven by sheer determination.

‘How do we get out?’ she demanded.

Drake jerked a hand towards the remaining undamaged tower on the south block. ‘That way. Hurry.’

Chapter 23

‘I SEE THEM!’
Frost called out, pointing towards the north-west tower.

Bringing his weapon with its powerful optics to bear, Keegan caught sight of three figures darting across the rooftop towards them, the woman in front and Drake behind, supporting an injured and heavily limping Dietrich.

He watched Drake reach for the radio pressel at his throat. ‘This is Bravo. We’re almost there. Get the rappelling gear ready!’

‘It’s done,’ Keegan replied. ‘Move your ass, Bravo. This place is going down fast.’

‘Copy that!’

At the same moment, Keegan detected a noise above the shriek of the wind and the crackle of gunfire. A low, rhythmic thudding. It was their chopper.

Glancing upward, he watched in awe as a massive shape loomed out of the darkness to the east, skimming low over the prison as its twin rotor blades beat the frigid air.

His radio crackled into life again as the huge aircraft roared overhead. ‘This is Zulu. We’re about to set down outside the prison, but the weather’s deteriorating fast. We can’t stay on station long or we’ll never get airborne again. Recommend you hurry.’