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

It had sounded distinctly female. Horribly familiar. But most shockingly, it had sounded as if she was in control of this last-minute apocalyptic mission.

Jaeger felt a surge of rage burning through him now. What had Kammler and Jones done to her? Moving as silently as a striking snake, he stole forward, aiming the muzzle of the Beretta at the point where Jones’s bullneck met his shaven head, so keeping him covered.

When he figured he was close enough, he raised his hand and brought the butt of the pistol down in a savage ridge-
hand strike, driving it into Jones’s skull. Steel met bone, the power of the blow whipping Jones’s head forwards, and the big man’s lights went out. He dropped like a stone, his forehead cracking against the Nordhavn’s wheel.

Jaeger knelt over him, using the fingers of his right hand to force Jones’s jaws open. Then he jammed the muzzle of the Beretta as deep inside the fallen man’s mouth as he could, and pulled the trigger. He’d angled the barrel upwards, ensuring the round would tear up through Jones’s brain.

Blood and mangled grey matter splattered across the Nordhavn’s floor. Jones’s mouth cavity and his skull had served as a makeshift silencer, deadening the shot, just as Jaeger had intended. He bent over the body, making sure to be totally certain. There was no doubt about it: Steve Jones’s gaze was empty, blank and stone-cold dead. Finally .

Feeling a kick of elation, Jaeger straightened up, running his eyes across the Nordhavn’s prow. A shadowy figure was crouched there, hunched over some kind of device. The drone operator – it had to be.

Jaeger darted out of the wheelhouse, moving forwards stealthily. Sure enough, the operator was bent over a console that had to be controlling the airborne delivery system, one loaded with an IND and primed to blow any second now.

As he crept closer, Jaeger realised with a massive punch to the guts that that silhouette was known to him: the cascade of long hair; the poise; the lithe form. Somehow, both Ruth and Steve Jones had survived the strike on the getaway vehicle. Maybe they’d bailed out en route, sending it and its remaining occupants onwards as a decoy? Smart. But not smart enough. Jaeger and Narov had been one step ahead of them. Now to end it, once and for all.

Jaeger levelled the Beretta, letting out a strangled yell. ‘Ruth! The boys are out there. Luke and Simon. It’s over! Call back the drone! It’s over!’

At the sound of his voice, Ruth Jaeger all but dropped the console. She turned towards him disbelievingly, shock written across her features. Jaeger saw her hands hover over the terminal, as if frozen with indecision, the drone coming to a halt maybe 150 feet short of the nuclear plant.

There was a look bordering on madness in Ruth’s tortured, harrowed eyes. Her lips moved but the words were inaudible. What the hell was she trying to say? Eventually Jaeger realised what it was: Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

‘The boys!’ he screamed. ‘They’re out there! Call back the drone!’

Ruth’s eyes flashed wide now, the look in them one of utter hellish insanity. Somewhere in there was a burning hatred too, though a hatred of what, Jaeger just couldn’t fathom. The next moment she’d turned away from him again and set the drone powering towards its target.

Jaeger’s hands began to shake. A voice screamed inside his head: Kill her! Kill her! Kill her! Despite the night chill, sweat poured into his eyes. He tried to steady himself to take the shot, but his brain was unable to make his hands function any more.

The drone crossed into the airspace above the nuclear plant. Any second now and it would detonate. He had to take the shot.

Suddenly a figure darted out of the shadows. Lithe, powerful, untainted by emotion or mercy or love. Commando knife clasped in hand.

In one smooth movement, Irina Narov leapt at Ruth, driving the blade in deep. There was a chilling, bloodcurdling scream. Jaeger tore his gaze away from the sickening scene: two women – one that he had loved; the other that he had grown to love – fighting to the death.

The drone wobbled above the nuclear plant, hanging there like some impossible apparition. Jaeger swung the Beretta back to cover the two figures, but they were locked in mortal combat and he couldn’t risk a shot, even if he could bring himself to open fire.

As Narov fought, she drove the blade in further with one hand and wrestled the console out of her adversary’s grip. That done, she pirouetted, bringing her leg up in a savage karate kick, which drove Ruth Jaeger, stumbling, back into the shadows.

An instant later she collided with the ship’s rail, fell backwards and tumbled into the darkness.

‘How do I fly this fucking thing!’ Narov screamed. She gestured at the console. ‘I know how to fight, not to fly!’

Jaeger forced himself to move. He sprinted across the deck, whipping the console out of Narov’s grasp. As he did, the drone began to bank east, slipping into a crazed descent towards the nearest of the nuclear plant’s twin cooling towers.

He swept his eyes across the bank of joysticks, lights and dials. In his latter days in the SAS, they’d used drones extensively, mainly for remote area surveillance work in the Afghan badlands. For sure he should know how to fly this thing.

He flicked one thumb onto the left joystick, piling on the power, and with his right thumb levelled off the craft. As he did so, he realised with a kick of revulsion that the console was slick with blood.

His wife’s blood.

He blanked such thoughts from his mind. All that mattered now was to fly the damn thing. Pilot the drone west, away from the coast, and ditch it at sea.

That way, the experts could lift it in due course and fully disable the mechanisms. Retrieve any HEU and fully neutralise the threat.

Jaeger stabilised the drone, then banked it around, bringing it away from the coastline. When he judged it was far enough from land, he put it into a dive, and it plummeted towards the surface of the sea. There was a flash of white in the darkness, and it ploughed beneath the waves.

Moments later, the noise of the drone’s engines died as it was sucked into the sea’s hungry depths.

The Hunt was over.

Jaeger dropped the console and rushed to the ship’s rail. His eyes scanned the dark water desperately, though he knew that it was hopeless.

Irina Narov had done her work well. There wasn’t the slightest sign of Ruth Jaeger anywhere.

Her bloody form had been dragged into the icy depths, just as Kammler’s final nuclear device had been.

Ghost Flight

Burning Angels

Facing Up

Facing the Frozen Ocean

Born Survivor

Great Outdoor Adventures

Living Wild

To My Sons

Mud, Sweat and Tears

A Survival Guide for Life

True Grit

Your Life – Train For It

Extreme Food

Fuel for Life

How to Stay Alive

Gold of the Gods

Way of the Wolf

Sands of the Scorpion

Tracks of the Tiger

Claws of the Crocodile

Rage of the Rhino

Strike of the Shark

Lair of the Leopard

Special thanks to the following: literary agents at PFD Caroline Michel, Annabel Merullo and Laura Williams, for their hard work and effort to support this book; Jon Wood, Brendan Durkin, Bethan Jones and all at Orion, for their courage and faith to help bring this story to life – & Malcolm Edwards and Leanne Oliver.

Thanks also to the following: Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, Ollie Morton and Iain Thompson of Avon Protection, for their invaluable insight, advice and expertise on all things CBRN, and their input into the chemical, biological and nuclear aspects of this book, including the defence and protection measures.