Беар Гриллс - The Hunt [=The Devil's Sanctuary]

Narov’s P228 was as good a weapon as any for clearing the accommodation block, and she certainly wouldn’t be using her sniper rifle. It was far too long and unwieldy for the rapid-fire close-quarter-battle environment they were about to step into.

Jaeger had a sneaking suspicion that Kammler had pulled most of his gunmen back to defend the laboratory. He’d counted two dozen earlier, during Kammler’s piece of theatre with the kneeling hostages. That number, added to the dozen skiers that Jaeger and his team had eliminated earlier, made thirty-six in all.

He doubted whether Kammler’s original guard force would have numbered a great deal more. But presumption was the mother of all fuck-ups; they needed to clear every building to be absolutely certain, and quickly. Even now, desperate and under attack, Kammler could be about to trigger those bombs that had been delivered to target.

He eyed Narov. ‘On my signal, join me at the doorway. We go in as one.’

Narov nodded her silent assent. She stuffed the P228 barrel-first down the front of her combats and slid the Dragunov into her shoulder again. Then she leant out from behind the wall, sweeping the terrain around the laboratory for targets.

As she unleashed her first round, Jaeger broke cover.

‘Moving now!’ he yelled into his SELEX.

He sensed rather than heard the bursts of grenade fire, as Alonzo and Raff unleashed 40mm rounds from the cover of the desalination plant. He sprinted for all he was worth, knowing he was exposed to every gunman positioned at the laboratory. Sure enough, and despite the suppressing fire, rounds slammed into the masonry either side of him.

Change of plan, Jaeger told himself as a caved-in window opened on his right shoulder. He dived through it, landing on his front in a pool of filthy water and rolling once to break his fall. Moments later, he was on his feet in a crouch, soaking wet, his Diemaco levelled and doing a rapid sweep of the room.

It was empty.

He had intended to wait for Narov at the building’s shattered doorway. It was standard operating procedure to clear a building in pairs, so you could watch each other’s back. But the fire had been too intense, and he needed to warn her.

‘Gone through first window on right,’ he radioed.

‘Seen.’

As he crouched at the window to give covering fire for Narov, Jaeger noted that his assault rifle was spattered with grime from where he’d landed in the water and dirt. He’d need to clean it, for sand and grit could seize up a weapon’s working parts. But no time for that now.

Seconds later, Narov dived through the shattered window. Jaeger turned away, and they both flicked on the flashlights attached to their weapons. It would only get darker the further into the building they went.

Wordlessly they moved across to the doorway leading out of the room, gravel and debris crunching underfoot, water sloshing around their ankles. Everywhere there was sodden furniture turned on its side, or rammed against the walls by the sheer force of the flood.

Jaeger clambered over a soaking mattress jammed up against the doorway. The door itself had been forced open and was lying drunkenly, half ripped from its hinges. He stepped around it into the corridor, pivoting left, his P228 swinging into the aim. At the same instant Narov took up a mirror position behind him, so they were back to back, covering either direction.

They began to move down the eerie, echoing space, checking the rooms on either side. Doors had been ripped open by the floodwater, leaving the place littered with wreckage and seemingly deserted.

They reached the far end of the corridor, where a flight of metal steps led up to a second floor. Jaeger paused, moving to one side of the final door before the stairs. This one was covered with steel sheeting, and despite the floodwaters, it remained intact. Narov flattened herself against the doorway’s other side.

Reaching around, Jaeger tried the handle. Once. Twice. It didn’t budge. Firmly locked. There was no point trying to kick it in. This wasn’t the movies. He was more likely to break a leg or injure himself than bust through a steel door.

‘Blowing the lock,’ he mouthed at Narov.

Standing to one side, in case whoever was behind the door tried to open fire, Jaeger shrugged off his pack and readied a charge of PE4. Contrary to popular myth, trying to shoot open a lock was not a smart idea, especially when using a handgun or an assault rifle.

As soon as you opened fire, those on the other side of the doorway would know you were coming. Nothing like advertising your intentions. And even if you did manage to shoot up the lock, more often than not you’d jam the working parts, fragments of shattered bullet lodging in the lock’s innards. Plus rounds hitting a steel lock at close quarters would spit out chunks of shrapnel, threatening to injure the shooter.

Jaeger had learnt that much on day one of SAS room-clearance drills. A metal-reinforced door such as this would require a special ‘thread-cutter’ shotgun, which fired a solid twelve-bore slug. And right now, they didn’t have any such weapon to hand.

It was just as easy to blow it using a shaped charge of PE4.

Jaeger moulded the explosives to where the door’s hinges met the frame. The detonation would cut them in two, as well as blast the wood apart. The combined effect should tear the door outwards, its very weight ripping it free.

Charges set, he triggered the thirty-second fuse, and he and Narov took cover in an adjacent room. There was a sharp explosion, followed by a thick cloud of smoke and debris billowing along the corridor. They emerged from cover to find the door hanging at a crazy angle, the lock struggling in vain to keep it in position.

Even as they approached, weapons in the aim, the lock gave way and the door tumbled outwards with an almighty crash. Jaeger was the first through, Diemaco levelled and flashlight piercing the smoke-filled interior.

The first thing that struck him was the faces: row upon row, eyes wide with terror. Desperate voices were crying out frantically in what Jaeger figured had to be Chinese. His flashlight flitted over the crouched figures, hands raised and panic etched across their features.

It was instantly clear that this sad mass of humanity were workers, not soldiers.

They were dressed in ragged, stained boiler suits, and looked underfed and in terrible condition. Jaeger was suddenly aware of the stench in the room. It reeked of unwashed bodies. Sickness. Fear. There were dirty mattresses lying against one wall, plus a battered toilet bucket.

What the hell had Kammler been running here? Some kind of slave camp?

‘Any of you speak English?’ he barked. ‘English?’

‘Me,’ a nervous figure volunteered from the darkness.

Jaeger’s eyes came to rest upon the man who had spoken. ‘Why are you here?’

‘Chinese workers. Locked up. To stop escape.’ The speaker gestured at the others. ‘We all try escape. Boss catch us and lock us here. He make us work or we die. Underground. Many people die.’

‘What were you doing underground?’

‘Making chamber. Tunnel. On far side of laboratory.’

Jaeger’s mind flashed back to the St Georgen tunnel complex. Hundreds of thousands had died constructing the Nazi-era labyrinth that honeycombed the Austrian mountains. It looked as if Kammler had been doing something similar here.

The question was, why?

Jaeger sank to his haunches, getting eye to eye with the speaker. The haunted look in the man’s eyes spoke volumes.

‘Why a chamber? What sort of tunnel?’ he pressed.

‘Is shelter. This place attacked, boss stays underground; boss stays safe. Is shelter. And – how you say? Headquarter.’ The speaker pointed to himself. ‘Hing made foreman. All shot if try to escape. Boss is a madman. Hing and his team prisoners. Those the rules.’