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

As he prepared to press the send button to get the message winging its way to Daniel Brooks, he hoped to hell it wouldn’t spell the death of those he loved. He paused for a second, his thumb hovering over the button.

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

He turned to Narov. ‘As soon as the charge blows, we need to hit Kammler’s bunker. Hing is our guide.’

He grabbed Hing’s hand and clamped it onto Narov’s shoulder. ‘Show her the shelter. Understand?’

Hing nodded. ‘I show. I show.’

That decided, Jaeger pressed send.

That one word – GUNNERSIDE – winged its way across the ether, bouncing from satellite to satellite, en route to Daniel Brooks. Wherever he might be, he’d assured Jaeger that upon receipt of the code word, the tungsten device would be detonated within ninety seconds, and probably sooner.

It was time to get into some good cover.

Jaeger led his team in a dash for the eastern side of the turbine hall, and they took up position in the shadow of its massive wall. They now had that building plus the desalination plant between them and the coming blast.

They crouched and waited.

There was one other crucial piece of intel that Hing had revealed: though the entrance to Kammler’s headquarters and nerve centre was heavily defended, there was another way in. Concealed in a mass of dense scrub was a ‘window set in ground’, as Hing had described it.

In other words, a skylight, one that opened directly into Kammler’s bunker.

The plan they’d settled upon required Alonzo to advance to the front entrance. From cover he would lob in a few 40mm grenades, in the full knowledge that they would have very little effect on the bunker’s heavy steel door. He would then unleash continued bursts, using as many remaining magazines as they could muster.

That should give the impression that the team were preparing to fight their way in via a full-frontal assault. Kammler’s gunmen should gather at the entrance, waiting for the attackers to show themselves and to pick them off, one by one.

Which should leave Raff, Jaeger and Narov free to make for the skylight, with Hing acting as their guide.

Assuming they could locate it – and Jaeger hated assuming anything – they’d drop through and take Kammler by surprise. From there they would fan out and clear the rest of the complex from the inside, from where it would be as vulnerable as any regular building.

There was one other refinement that Raff had suggested. The subterranean complex had its own backup electricity supply, provided by a generator positioned in a separate building. Before going in, they’d disable that, plunging the bunker into confusion and darkness.

It was a decent enough plan under the circumstances. It had flaws, but at this stage, with such limited resources and time, it was the best they could muster.

Of course, somewhere within the scheme of things were Ruth and Peter Miles – if they were still alive. But they’d cross that bridge when they came to it.

Jaeger’s Thuraya buzzed. He glanced at the screen. One word: LURGAN.

When the Operation Gunnerside commandos had gone in to sabotage Hitler’s nuclear programme, the cipher they had adopted for the target was Lurgan. That was the agreed code word now, signalling thirty seconds to detonation.

Jaeger yelled out a warning to his team. The roaring from the ruptured pipelines high above had lessened, as the feeder lake was mostly drained of its water, but it was still loud in their ears.

He turned to Hing, showing him how to keep his mouth open to ensure the coming blast didn’t damage his eardrums.

In his head Jaeger was counting down the seconds now: ten, nine eight… He mouthed a quick prayer: Please, God, make that device still operational .

Four, three, two…

In the dark and deserted strongroom inside Kammler’s laboratory, a tiny radio receiver secreted at the heart of the tungsten pile bleeped once, almost inaudibly.

The message had been received and understood.

An instant later, a charge of detonation cord was ignited, which triggered the fifty-kilo block of RDX to blast apart at a velocity of 8,750 metres per second.

As the RDX exploded, it fragmented the one hundred tungsten bars that were packed around it into a million shards of twisted, razor-sharp shrapnel. The metal’s immense density and hardness enabled it to absorb the full force and energy of the explosion, transforming it into raw destructive power.

The blast tore outwards, the strongroom vaporising as a storm of jagged metal pulverised its bare concrete walls. The deadly tungsten vortex expanded with irresistible force, scything down all that stood in its path. Walls, doors and windows buckled and disintegrated.

The 3D printers – Kammler’s IND factory – were vaporised.

The wave of devastation thundered outwards, those of Kammler’s gunmen left to defend the laboratory dying in a hail of shredded metal. As the blast exited the building, it tore off the roof and ripped away the outer walls. Red-hot shards of tungsten sliced through the SUVs that were parked nearby. The fuel tanks were lacerated, the vehicles exploding in a sea of flame.

Set to the rear of the laboratory was a 20,000-litre oil tank, for heating the lab through the harsh winters. It was torn apart, fire blooming orange and angry from where the ruptured tank spurted oil. A massive cloud of dark smoke billowed above the shattered remains of the laboratory, as the tsunami of blasted shrapnel thundered onwards across the valley, spending the last of its awesome power on the gorge’s walls.

As the roar of the explosion died away, Jaeger emerged from cover to a scene of utter devastation. Where the laboratory had once stood, there was now a mass of torn wreckage, wreathed in oily smoke and hungry licks of flame. Finally, they’d done it: Kammler’s IND factory was no more.

He ran his eye across the wider complex. It only remained now to take the bunker. According to Hing, that lay at the far southern end of the boundary fence, beyond the shattered lab and hard against the wall of the gorge.

Jaeger led his force on what he hoped was the final assault now. But in the back of his mind was a nagging worry: what evil might Kammler have been brewing, as he hunkered in his lair?

In the strange way that time seems to slow to an agonising pace when in the midst of life-or-death combat, he felt as if he’d been here, fighting, for a lifetime. In truth, it was only forty-five minutes since Raff and Alonzo had triggered the pipeline charges, but that was more than enough time for Kammler to wreak havoc.

‘Time to split,’ Alonzo announced, as he prepared to move towards the front of the shelter.

Jaeger nodded. ‘Let’s do it. When you go noisy, we’ll give it a minute, then go in. Stay in your position and cover the entrance, in case any of the fuckers try getting out that way. If it’s anyone but us or the hostages, nail ’em.’

‘Got it,’ Alonzo confirmed.

With that, the two parties dashed their separate ways.

The Nordhavn 64 trawler yacht didn’t look at all out of place on its berth at wharf number 47, in New York’s Chelsea Piers Marina.

Just three years old, and with its bright white superstructure gleaming from a fresh steam-clean, it spoke of understated wealth, plus a very businesslike and functional ocean-going luxury.

No gin palace this.

Owners of Nordhavn 64s were serious players in the yachting world – global-traveller types. Places to go, new horizons to see: that was what the Nordhavn was all about. With its 59-foot waterline hull length and a 3,000-mile cruise range at a steady nine knots, the vessel was all about eating up the sea miles.