Agent 21: Reloaded: Book 2 (27 page)

Everybody likes a little bit of praise, after all.

A dog barked in the distance. Calaca smiled and strode towards the water, his fingertips twitching and his mouth dry with anticipation.

The Sea King was a hundred metres away, and it was struggling. Zak could tell just by looking at it. It was being buffeted by the wind, and seemed to wobble in the air as it approached. Zak had seen enough helicopters in his time. They’d never looked so precarious in the air as this.

Lightning cracked in the air. Seconds later, a bellow of thunder. The sinking ship juddered as a wave crashed over the stern deck. ‘Hold on!’ screamed Frank. Zak just grabbed Bea’s body and hunkered down until the wave had passed. He looked up again. The Sea King was closer. Maybe fifty metres. It seemed strange not to be able to hear the rotors, but the howling of the wind drowned them out. ‘It’s got to be Force Ten,’ Frank shouted. ‘We’d better hope the chopper makes it here – it’s too rough for those VSVs to approach again now …’

Bea’s lips had gone blue. Zak boxed away his panic and tried to check her pulse, but it was impossible because the ship was vibrating as it sank. The greasy smell of smoke wafted around him. ‘Burning fuel!’
Frank shouted. ‘We’ve got to get the hell out of here fast. The whole thing could blow at any minute …’

Thirty seconds passed. The Sea King had reached them. It was hovering twenty metres above the vessel and appeared to be swinging like the end of a pendulum. Zak supposed there was some downdraught, but he couldn’t sense it because the wind was so strong anyway. He could see a black-clad figure at one of the open side doors. The figure threw out a rope, at the end of which was a harness. It swung all over the place as the Sea King’s crew member lowered it down towards the three of them.

Frank turned to Zak. ‘She needs to go up first,’ he shouted. ‘Will you be OK if I take her? We can’t risk a three-man winch in these conditions. It could bring the chopper down.’

‘Do what you need to do,’ Zak replied. ‘I’ll be fine.’ He said it with more confidence than he felt.

‘Help me get her into the harness.’

The harness was hanging at their level now, but swinging violently because of the wind and the movement of the chopper. It took Frank twenty seconds to catch it, while Zak stayed crouched down by Bea. ‘I don’t know if you can hear me,’ he said, his mouth close to her ear, ‘but we’re going to get you off this ship. You’re going to be OK.’

Please
, he thought to himself.
Let her be OK
…

Suddenly Frank was there again. He was holding the harness in one strong hand, and five or six metres of slack rope were coiled on the deck around him. ‘Get her legs in,’ he shouted. ‘Like a pair of pants.’

Zak nodded and lifted Bea’s legs. She shouted out in pain again, but gave no other sign of consciousness. Frank hurriedly pulled the harness up to her waist, then clipped the rope to the webbing around his drysuit. He pulled his patrol comms radio out and handed it to Zak. ‘This will keep you in touch with the chopper,’ he shouted. ‘We’ll send the harness back down as soon as she’s safely inside.’

Zak nodded. ‘Go!’ he shouted, before looking up towards the Sea King and giving a thumbs-up.

The slack rope started moving like a lazy snake. Then it suddenly became taut. Seconds later, Bea’s body jolted and, like a corpse rising from a coffin, she started to stand upright. Frank grabbed her round the waist and slowly the two of them started to rise.

Zak found that he was holding his breath. Frank and Bea moved upwards so slowly, and yet they rocked to and fro like a feather in the wind. They were five metres up when he saw blood dripping from Bea’s wound. It disappeared into the rain and the spray. And though every cell in his body wanted to see Bea safely up in the body of the chopper, he couldn’t help feeling more and more alone the higher they rose. He
grabbed the railings again, and another waft of greasy black smoke drifted in front of his nose. Half the vessel was underwater now. He didn’t know how much longer he had before it submerged completely. Half an hour? Forty-five minutes? Certainly no more. He looked over at the
Mercantile
. Only a few metres of its tip was now visible. The gruesome image of the sailors’ grave on the wreck of HMS
Vanguard
entered his mind, and with it the thought of Gabs and Raf.

What would he give to have his Guardian Angels with him now? Not that they could have done much to help, but as he was fast finding out, there are few places more lonely than a sinking ship in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by nothing but the body of the dead, and no guarantee that you aren’t about to become one of their number.

19.53 hrs GMT

Calaca’s position was in the shadow of an old oak tree trunk. There was a stump to its side, about twenty centimetres high. The perfect firing position. He could remain unobserved, but the stump was an ideal platform on which to rest his gun arm when he took the shots.

He removed his glasses. They made no difference, of course, to his aim, but he felt more comfortable with them off. Taking his PP-93 from the inside of
his jacket, he lay down on the ground in the firing position and, with his good eye, looked through the scope. It had NV capability, and the edge of the lake was lit up in a green haze.

He saw a family of ducks congregating at the water’s edge.

He saw an urban fox scamper down to take a drink. It quenched its thirst, then looked up and seemed to stare almost directly at Calaca before hurrying away again. Something had disturbed it. Seconds later, he saw what it was.

His targets. Two people, hand in hand, one male, one female. He recognized Ellie Lewis’s colourful woollen hat, and he noticed that the male was wearing one too.

How sweet, he thought. His and hers.

They were looking around rather furtively, as if they weren’t supposed to be there. They stopped at the water’s edge. The male figure stood with his back to Calaca, camouflaging the female. All he could see was her hands wrapped round his back as they started to kiss.

Calaca smiled. ‘
Buenas noches, señor
,’ he breathed. He aimed the crosshairs of his scope at the centre of the man’s back.

And then he fired his first shot.

* * *

Zak’s radio crackled. ‘
OK, son. Do you copy? Send
.’

‘I got you,’ Zak shouted. Frank and Bea had disappeared into the Sea King. ‘How’s she doing?’

The guy on the other end of the radio ignored the question. ‘
We’re sending the harness down again. Make sure you clip yourself in safely. It’s pretty choppy up here
.’

Zak watched the rope descending. It came down much more quickly than it went up, but it swung violently again as it came. He stretched out his left arm – holding onto the railings with his right – and the harness just brushed his fingertips before swinging out of his grasp again. The wind blew it up at an angle of thirty degrees from the vertical. When it swung back again, it missed Zak’s position by at least six metres.

But it hit the railings.

Zak watched in horror as the rope curled round the top railing, then back onto itself, creating a messy, tangled knot. He hadn’t been able to hear the chopper up till now, but suddenly he could – there was a high-pitched, whining sound above the noise of the wind. The rope strained and went taut; the chopper itself jolted into an alarming angle, firmly anchored to the sinking ship.

‘
The rope!
’ he screamed into the radio. ‘
It’s
—’

He didn’t finish. As quickly as it had become tangled, the rope suddenly fell from above, and the
Sea King juddered upwards, like a stone shot from a sling. Zak watched the cut end of the rope fall down over the side of the sinking ship.

Dead in the water. Just like his hopes of escaping.

Calaca’s first shot was easy. Sometimes, he thought to himself, it was almost as if these people
wanted
to be assassinated. The round from his suppressed weapon made almost no noise as it left the barrel. Just a quiet knocking. It hit Ellie Lewis’s secret boyfriend squarely between the shoulder blades.

He didn’t fall to the ground immediately. There was a couple of seconds, during which his knees buckled. But when he did collapse, it was heavily. Calaca imagined his victim coughing up blood from his lungs as the life escaped from him, but he couldn’t see his features to verify this. In any case, all his attention was focused on his main target.

Ellie had turned, ready to run. She hadn’t screamed yet, but Calaca had done this enough to realize it was just a matter of time until she did.

He positioned the crosshairs of his PP-93 directly at the back of her head.

And then he fired his second shot.

It was not the rain or the wind that had turned Zak’s blood to ice. It was hard, cold panic. The Sea
King was gaining height. He was marooned.

He shouted into the radio. ‘The harness!
We’ve lost the harness!
You need to send down another—’

He didn’t hear the reply, because the sinking ship suddenly pitched dramatically and a wave crashed over him. When it subsided, Zak looked over the side. At their lowest point, the waves were only four metres down. Three quarters of the ship was underwater.

‘Say again!’

‘
Negative
,’ came the reply. ‘
The winch is damaged. We have to get the bird back to base
.’

‘Send out another chopper …’

‘
Negative. No more heli assets
.’

Zak felt nauseous. He didn’t know what to say.

There was a horrible silence over the radio. The Sea King hovered in the air above Zak – immense and impressive, but useless for Zak.

‘
This is Frank, do you copy? Send
.’

‘How’s Bea doing?’ Zak shouted into the radio.

‘
Not good. We have to get her back to the frigate now. The seas are too rough now for the VSVs to return. I can’t risk more men
.’

A pause. Zak understood what he was saying.

‘
You need to listen carefully. We’re going to lower the chopper as close to your position as possible. I’m going to try and throw out a STARS extraction kit. Do you know what that is
?’

Zak swallowed hard. He remembered Raf’s slightly scary description of the process …
We stick a harness on you that has a special inflatable balloon on a cord. The balloon rises up into the air and a Hercules flies along with a clamp at the front, grabs the cord and takes you with it
…

‘Yeah. I think so.’

‘
We’re scrambling a Hercules from the RAF base on Ascension Island
,’ Frank shouted. ‘
ETA, thirty-five minutes
.’

Zak looked over the side. He was sinking fast. Thirty-five minutes was pushing it.

‘
I’m going to be honest with you
.’ Frank’s voice was grim. ‘
It’s difficult and dangerous and we’ll only get one shot at it. But it’s our only option if we’re going to get you off there safely. Do you think you’re up to it
?’

‘Do I have a choice?’

‘
Not really, no. Hold onto your radio. You’ll be able to use it to speak to the Hercules flight crew. They’ll tell you what to do
.’

Zak gritted his teeth. ‘OK,’ he shouted. ‘Send it down.’

Almost immediately the Sea King started to lose height. He saw Frank appear at the open doorway; seconds later, the SBS man started manually lowering a package on a rope. Zak wasn’t going to let this one get away. He grabbed it the second it came within
reach, then pulled the package towards him and held it tight as Frank dropped the rope.

The Sea King ascended again, then turned 180 degrees and sped off towards the horizon.

Zak didn’t watch it go. He couldn’t. All his attention was focused on the package in his arms and the pitching of the ship.

He prepared himself for what he knew would be the longest thirty-five minutes of his life.

Calaca fired his second shot.

He had aimed it not at Ellie Lewis’s back, but at her head, the back of which was covered by her colourful woollen hat. The bullet found its target with deadly precision.

The impact of the shot flung her forwards. She landed on her front. Through the green haze of the scope, Calaca saw her left foot twitching. He was sure she was dead, but he was nothing if not thorough. He stood up from the firing position, secreted his weapon again and quickly, quietly, made his way towards the corpses.

There was nobody here to see him. The heath was quiet. As quiet as a grave. Funny that. With any luck, it would be morning by the time these bodies were discovered. By then, Calaca would be thousands of miles away.

The corpses were ten metres away. Five.

Strange, he thought to himself, how little blood there was. You never could tell how a body would react to the impact of a bullet. Sometimes the flesh collapsed in on itself; sometimes it exploded in a shower of blood and gore; other times there was just the smallest of entry wounds. It looked like this was one of those times.

Now, though, it was time to deliver the final safety shots.

He turned to the male figure first. Now that he was up close, Calaca could see his clothes in better detail. Black jeans. Black boots. Black leather jacket. Black woollen hat.

He blinked. There was something else under the hat. It looked like …

Head protection
.

Calaca’s eyes suddenly blazed as he plunged his hand into his jacket to remove the weapon.

But too late.

The figure moved quickly, turning onto its back. To the astonishment of the one-eyed man, the face wasn’t male, but female. And very much alive.

‘Hello, sweetie,’ she said, but her voice didn’t sound sweet. Before he could do anything else, she raised her right arm – which he now saw was carrying a weapon of some sort – and fired at him.

Adan ‘Calaca’ Ramirez took in so many things at once.

The tranquillizer dart that stuck into his leg just above the knee.

The numb feeling that spread around his body.