Chris Ryan - Who Dares Wins

‘What the fuck are Spetsnaz doing here ?’ he murmured to himself.

‘Say again.’ Mac’s voice over the comms.

Sam quickly refocused himself.

‘We’ve got more company,’ he said. ‘I’ve nailed the shooter, but he’s got a comms system. I’ve listened in. Estimate three others in the vicinity. How’s Craven looking?’

A silence. And then, his voice strained, Tyler spoke.

‘Gone,’ he said.

A moment of silence in the comms.

‘Shit,’ Sam hissed as a surge of anger burned through him. How the hell had this happened? They’d only been on the ground five minutes. How the hell had it happened?

He didn’t get long to think about it. As he looked back across the clearing he saw more movement. ‘Tyler, Cullen – you still down?’ he demanded.

‘Roger that,’ they both breathed in unison.

‘Stay where you are. I’ve got a visual on another shooter.’

He raised his Diemaco once more. Looking through the sights he tried not to concentrate on the crumpled mound ahead of him that he knew to be Craven’s body. As he fired, the round exploded in the green light of his NV, like some kind of ghostly firework. His target fell immediately to the earth.

‘Did I say three others?’ he growled. ‘Make that two.’

‘We’re coming up from the south.’ Mac’s voice sounded as though he was running. ‘It sounds like they know where you are. You sure you only heard three others, Sam?’

‘Makes sense,’ Sam replied tersely. ‘Four-man unit. Tyler and Cullen are in open ground. I’m by the tree line. Guys, stay down. I’ll keep you covered from here.’

‘Wilco,’ came the grim reply.

Sam pressed his back against a tree, his weapon raised and ready to fire. His mind was in turmoil. He couldn’t make sense of it. These Spetsnaz guys – if indeed that’s what they were – seemed to be expecting them. But how? Nobody knew they were coming, did they?

Did they?

He stayed close to the ground. Occasionally over the comms he heard Mac hissing an instruction to Andrews, Davenport and Webb; other than that he could do nothing but scan the surrounding woodland, keeping his NV-enhanced eyes peeled for unexpected movement. Briefly he thought he saw something again; but whatever it was settled into stillness. Sam kept alert, watching over the prostrate forms of Tyler and Cullen, his finger twitching on the trigger, ready to fire at a moment’s notice.

All around him, the silence of the night was broken by sudden, unexpected noises: the falling of a twig, the scurrying of an animal. His senses were heightened; everything seemed louder than it actually was. He could feel his own heart beat, hear his own breathing. He estimated that the others could be no more than two hundred metres behind them. How were they approaching? Had they spotted their enemy?

It must have been about two minutes before the kills came, and they came in quick succession. Sam heard the muted thud – surprisingly close-by – of one of his unit’s suppressed weapons; moments later, he heard another.

‘Two men down,’ Mac reported. ‘Let’s hope no one shows up to do a changing of the fucking guard.’

Sam edged back to the Russian’s body and listened in again on the bloodied comms earpiece. Nothing. Silence.

‘We’re clear,’ he stated flatly. ‘Damn it, what the hell happened there?’

In the clearing, Tyler and Cullen rose slowly from their lying-down position, looking for all the world in the eerie green hue of the night vision like corpses rising from the dead. ‘Came out of fucking nowhere,’ Tyler replied. From a distance, Sam watched as he went over to where Craven’s body was lying. And then, echoing the suspicion that had been buzzing around in Sam’s head: ‘Almost like they knew we were coming. Jack just caught one. Could have been me.’

As Tyler spoke, the others came into sight, running into the clearing with their weapons raised. Mac spoke, his voice terse. ‘Leave Craven there,’ he instructed, almost purposefully lacking in emotion. They were still in country; the mission might be going tits up, but it still had to be completed. ‘We’ll scoop him up when we extract.’

Tyler hesitated. ‘They were fucking waiting for us. We need to get out of here. What if the contact’s been reported?’

‘We’re carrying on,’ Mac overruled him. ‘Get to the edge of the tree line. Matt, Steve, Hill – retrace steps back to original attacking positions. We’ll reassess the situation when we’ve got a view on the camp. Quick, before anybody else decides to join the party.’

Sam looked at his watch. 03.27. They still had time before sunrise, but Tyler was right: they needed to watch their backs. It was never easy leaving the fallen behind; Sam had to break through a barrier of reluctance to make himself do it. But they had to keep moving. And he had to concentrate on the important stuff.

On Jacob.

As he ran towards the tree line, he found himself wondering what would happen if he found one of the guys about to put a bullet in his brother. It was an uncomfortable question and one which he quickly put from his mind.

The tree line, twenty metres ahead. And then, for the first time Sam laid eyes properly on the camp. It would take Mac and his team a couple more minutes to get back into their original positions, so in the meantime he could get his breath and gather his thoughts. Tyler and Cullen joined him, spaced out at ten-metre intervals, while Sam examined the training camp itself.

Just as the aerial map had suggested, there were three buildings. They started about twenty metres away from where Sam was standing. What they had originally been built for, he couldn’t tell. They were very simple concrete blocks, long and low, with corrugated iron roofs and rusting metal doors. It was the kind of place you wouldn’t look at twice; you’d probably think it was derelict. The buildings surrounded a courtyard, in which there was an old pick-up truck, as well as some oil drums and diesel canisters. Sam observed that one of the buildings was connected to an electricity pylon – this place might have been the arse end of nowhere, but there was power, which meant they could expect to be illuminated.

There was one other thing that caught his attention. In the gap between two of the buildings he saw the smaller, shedlike structure that he had observed on the map back at the briefing. And outside the shed, he noticed with a sharp intake of breath, a dog on a leash lay sleeping.

A vision hit his mind. Jacob, with a black Labrador at his side. He liked dogs more than he liked people, they used to say.

Was he alone, away from the others, in that little shed? Sam didn’t know, but it seemed likely.

Mac’s voice crackled over the comms. ‘You in position?’

‘Roger that,’ Sam replied.

‘Do you have a visual on the truck?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How far?’

‘About twenty-five metres.’ He felt his eyes narrowing. In an ideal world, the vehicle needed to be put out of action: in the frenzy that was about to occur, the last thing they wanted to do was have one of their targets making it to the pick-up and getting away. Exploding the tyres from this distance, however, was risky. Their weapons might be suppressed and next to noiseless, but a round going into one of those tyres was going to make a bang…

And then, slowly, Sam smiled, despite the events of the last few minutes. It wasn’t exactly standard operating procedures, but when the unit was debriefed he could concoct a perfectly reasonable operational excuse for taking out the truck; and the noise could just give Jacob the few seconds warning that he needed.

He raised his weapon, quickly before anyone could instruct him to do otherwise. The moment the tyre burst the unit would move in. Silently. Deadly.