Bear Grylls - Burning Angels

But firing accurately from a boat moving at speed was difficult, even for the best of operators. Plus Jaeger had to hope that Kammler’s men had sourced their weapons locally, in which case they were unlikely to be properly zeroed.

The Sunseeker gained on them rapidly. Jaeger could make out several figures. Two were perched in the boat’s forward compartment, to the fore of the sharply raked cockpit, their weapons braced on the Sunseeker’s rail. In the seats set high and aft were a further three gunmen.

Those in the bow opened fire, unleashing a torrent of rounds towards the speeding RIB. Dale began to throw the craft into a series of tight random turns, in an effort to confuse the shooters, but they were running out of time and options.

Jaeger and Narov held their aim but still didn’t open fire. The Sunseeker thundered closer. Rounds skipped and juddered off the surface of the ocean to either side of the speeding RIB.

Jaeger took a momentary glance behind him. Simon Bello was curled up in the footwell, shaking, his eyes rolling with fear.

Jaeger squeezed off a short burst that peppered the Sunseeker’s hull. But it seemed to have no effect on the speeding craft. He forced himself to calm his nerves and concentrated on his breathing, blocking out all other thoughts. He glanced at Narov, and together they unleashed a second burst.

Jaeger saw a round strike one of the figures in the Sunseeker’s bow compartment. The guy slumped forward over his weapon. As Jaeger watched, the other gunman lifted him up effortlessly and proceeded to throw him overboard.

It was an utterly ruthless move, and a chilling thing to have done.

The gunman had dumped the body in the sea using the strength in his massive arms and shoulders. For a moment Jaeger’s mind flipped back to a moment in his past: the gunman’s form and bulk and his movements seemed somehow chillingly familiar.

And then it hit him. The night of the attack. The night of his wife and child’s abduction. The massive, hulking form and the hateful tones behind the gas mask. That man and this were one and the same.

The figure in the bow of the Sunseeker was Steve Jones, the guy who’d very nearly managed to kill Jaeger during SAS selection.

The guy Jaeger suddenly knew with an instinctive realisation was the kidnapper of his wife and child.

Jaeger reached down to the kid – the precious kid – lying flat in the bottom of the RIB, where he was shielded from the worst of the fire. Simon Chucks Bello couldn’t see a thing down there, and Jaeger didn’t doubt how much he was suffering, both physically and mentally. He’d heard him puke once already.

‘Hang on in there, hero!’ he yelled at the boy, flashing him a bracing smile. ‘I’m not letting you die, I promise!’

Still the Sunseeker bore down fast. It was no more than 150 metres to their stern, and it was only the rough ocean swell that was keeping the RIB shielded from its fire.

But that wouldn’t last.

Any closer, and the rounds unleashed by Jones and his cohorts were bound to find their mark. Worse still, Jaeger was running dangerously low on ammo.

He and Narov had each emptied six mags, so some 240 rounds in all. It sounded like a lot, but not when trying to repulse an assault by a score of gunmen on a speeding pursuit boat, using two short-range weapons.

It was only a matter of time before the RIB took a catastrophic hit.

Jaeger was tempted to grab the Thuraya and call Miles, screaming for the Taranis strike. But he knew he couldn’t afford to drop his guard, or relax his aim. As soon as the Sunseeker hove into view again, they needed to hit it doubly hard and accurately.

Moments later, the sleek motorboat reappeared, its powerful form slicing across their wake. Jaeger and Narov traded savage fire with fire. They saw the unmistakable figure of Jones raise himself and unleash a long burst on automatic. The rounds cut a chasm through the sea, one that reached out directly for the RIB. No doubt about it, Jones was a crack shot, and this burst was going to find them.

And then, at the very last moment, Dale powered the craft over the crest of a swell and the RIB dropped out of view, the fire ripping apart the air above their heads.

The howl of the Sunseeker’s massive engines was audible now. Jaeger tensed over his weapon, scanning the horizon for where the boat would make its next move.

It was then that he heard it. A stupendous noise – an earth-shattering, thunderous roar – filled the air, as if a deep-ocean earthquake was ripping apart the sea floor. It reverberated through the skies, drowning out all other sounds.

Moments later, a dart-like form tore out of the heavens, its single Rolls-Royce Adour turbofan jet engine powering it along at a punishing 800 m.p.h. It streaked above them in a shallow dive, twisting this way and that as the drone operator corrected the Taranis’s flight path to keep it on course with its target.

Jaeger heard deafening gunfire erupt from the direction of the Sunseeker, as those in the pursuit boat tried to blast the drone out of the skies. He pinned Jones in the sights of his MP7, squeezing off short aimed bursts, as his arch-enemy unleashed savage fire in return.

Beside him Narov was likewise eking out the last of her bullets.

But it was then that Jaeger sensed it.

His ears caught the soft, sickening hollow crunch of a high-velocity round striking human flesh. Narov barely cried out. She had no time to. The impact of the shot threw her backwards, and moments later she’d tumbled from the craft into the sea.

As her bloodied form slipped beneath the swell, the dart-like form of the speeding Taranis struck the horizon. There was a blinding flash of light, and a split second later a deafening explosion rolled across the ocean, chunks of blasted debris raining down on all sides.

Flames boiled and seethed around the stricken form of the Sunseeker, as the RIB powered onwards across the ocean. The motorboat had been struck in the stern, and flames and smoke were pouring off the vessel.

Desperately Jaeger scanned the waters immediately to their rear, searching for Narov, but there was no sign of her. The RIB was flying along at top speed, and in no time they would lose her.

‘Spin the boat around!’ he screamed at Dale. ‘Narov’s overboard and hit!’

Dale had been facing forward the entire time, steering a tortuous course through the ever-shifting swell. He hadn’t seen what had happened. He slowed the RIB in preparation to make the turn, just as a call came in on the Thuraya.

Jaeger punched answer. It was Miles. ‘The Sunseeker’s down, but not out. We’ve got several figures alive, and they still have their weapons.’ He paused, as if monitoring something from his vantage point, then added: ‘And whatever you’ve slowed for, get moving and make for the RV. You have to save the boy .’

Jaeger slammed his fist into the bulwark of the RIB. If they turned back towards the smouldering wreck of the Sunseeker, in order to search for Narov, the risk of the boy getting hit was too high. He knew that.

He knew the right thing to do was to press on – for his family’s sake; for the sake of humanity. But he cursed himself for the decision that he was being forced to make here.

‘Get under way again,’ he snarled at Dale. ‘Move! Make for the RV.’

As if to reinforce the good sense of that decision, a burst of fire hammered out of the distance. Some of Kammler’s men – Jones himself possibly included – were clearly determined to go down fighting.

Jaeger moved around the craft, busying himself trying to comfort Simon Bello, while scanning the skies ahead for the squat, bulbous form of the Airlander. He didn’t know what else he could do.