Ryan, Chris - Zero 22

Danny ran through the copse to check with Bethany and the General that they hadn’t spotted anybody approaching. Negative from them both. He returned to the lorry and opened it up again. Switched on the torch. Red glow. He helped himself to an armful of detonators and plastic explosives. Closed up the lorry. Sprinted back to where he’d left the spool of wire. Slung it over his shoulder, pocketed the wire cutters and took his armful of gear to the circular clearing.

Danny’s hands were large, his fingers thick. But he worked with the deft skill of a seamstress. He moved round the loop of wire and made a cut every couple of metres. At each break in the wire, he spliced in two more lengths of several metres. Some of these he laid outside the perimeter of the circle, some inside, so now there were ten branches of wire leading in and out of the circle, each ending in a double terminal. One of the interior branches snaked to the underside of the Nissan. He connected a detonator to each of these terminals, then sunk the blasting fuse of each detonator deep into a block of C-4 plastic explosive.

He was sweating heavily now and breathing deeply. A good fifteen minutes had passed since he had started laying his trap. The fire was burning well. He laid some more fuel on the flames, then took another moment to check his surroundings through his night sight. Nothing. Just the still, silent, wide expanse of the desert. He turned his attention back to the primed explosives. He needed to hide them better. He quickly moved the C-4 nearest the Nissan to underneath the vehicle’s fuel tank. The remainder he either dug into the ground, or positioned close to the stone perimeter wall, on the inside of the circle. The wall would force the blast to focus in one direction, doubling its efficacy.

But that wasn’t enough for Danny. He was a Regiment man, and he had the Regiment’s approach. When he attacked, he wanted that attack to be sudden, brutal and instantly deadly. He didn’t want a fair fight. He wanted to dominate the field of conflict utterly. So he ran back to the lorry, opened up, shone the torch and went to work on the wooden crates containing the RPG warheads.

He loosened the blankets wrapped round the crates – he’d need those in a bit – then turned his attention to the boxes themselves. Normally they would require a tool to jemmy them open. Danny didn’t bother with that. The wooden cases were dry and brittle. Their lids came off with a vigorous tug, splintering as they came away from their bases. He carefully lifted out the warheads. They were solid and heavy, their metal casings strangely cool in the warm night. Danny carried them two at a time back to the ring main. The air smelled of smoke and the fire was burning brightly. He placed a warhead next to each block of plastic explosive. When the C-4 exploded, the warheads would detonate. Anybody in the vicinity would know about it. For a few seconds, at least.

‘We’ve got company.’

Danny looked up from where he was placing the last warhead. He hadn’t heard Bethany approach and he didn’t like that she’d managed to creep up on him like that. She pointed across the desert and Danny followed her hand. He immediately saw the lights.

They were distant, probably a couple of miles off, and they disappeared as soon as Danny saw them. He knew what they were, though. Headlamps. A single set. One vehicle, which had driven into a dip so that the headlamps were no longer visible from Danny’s position.

‘Get back in position,’ Danny said. ‘Keep watching.’

‘If I didn’t know better, I’d think you wanted me out of the way. You don’t need me keeping stag. You know they’re coming.’

‘Fine,’ Danny said. ‘You still have your pistol?’

‘Of course.’

‘Few minutes’ time, we’re going to have a lot of dead Russians on our hands. Your job is to make sure they really are dead, when the time comes. You can do that?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then get back behind the treeline.’ He pointed towards the copse, to a position about twenty metres from where he was setting himself up. ‘Make sure you’re out of sight. There might be shooting and I want you out of the line of fire.’

‘How chivalrous.’

‘That’s got nothing to do with it. You’re no use to us with a bullet in the head. Go.’

Bethany headed back into the copse. Danny checked the time: 00.29 hrs. Three and a half hours till they needed to be at the pick-up point. Danny still had items to set up. He ran to the Nissan and found the lever by the driver’s seat to open up the bonnet. The battery was at the right-hand side of the engine block. He carefully removed both terminals, then lifted the battery out of the engine and closed it up again. He ran with this back into the copse and left it by the two loose ends of the ring main. Back to the lorry. He gathered up the blankets that had been cushioning the RPG crates. There were ten in all. He only needed nine.

He carried the blankets back to the clearing and arranged them carefully around the fire. The flames had subsided now. The embers glowed and crackled. He kept a distance of a couple of metres between the fire and the material. He made three piles of three blankets. One blanket rolled lengthwise to mimic a body. One blanket bundled to mimic a head. The third blanket draped over the two to make the whole ensemble look like a sleeping person. It was a crude pretence, but Danny knew that people would tend to see what they expected to see. A campfire in a deserted location would likely be surrounded by sleeping people. Nobody would think it remotely unusual.

Yeah. Any luck, they’d see what they wanted to see.

He returned through the copse to the lorry. He took a Kalashnikov, grenade launcher, ammo and box of tubular grenades, then delivered them back to the car battery and the ring main terminals. He loaded the Kalashnikov with a full magazine of 7.62s and a grenade. Back to the lorry, where he grabbed the Dragunov sniper rifle and a box of rounds. Back at the car battery and in the shelter of the trees he took another look through the night sight. And he allowed himself another grim smile as he saw what was happening.

Now there was more than a single vehicle approaching. He counted four. No, five – one more had appeared. They had turned off their headlamps and were advancing on the Roman ruins from Danny’s ten, eleven, twelve, one and two o’clock. A formation advance, centred on the tracking device that was currently broadcasting its position from the driver’s footwell of the Nissan. Danny looked around. No sign of Bethany. She was well hidden. He ran through the copse and found the General, who was keeping stag in the opposite direction. ‘Any vehicles from your direction?’ he asked.

‘Zip,’ the General said. Danny could tell he was still pissed off, but he was taking his lookout duties seriously.

‘You know your way around a sniper rifle?’

‘You kidding? I was US Army champion three years running.’

Danny checked the terrain from this direction through his night sight. He had a good view and there was no sign of any approaching vehicle. ‘This way,’ he said.

He led the General back to where the battery, the ring main terminals and the weaponry were stashed. He pointed to the Dragunov. The General eyed it hesitantly. Danny crouched down by the battery and gripped the two terminals of the ring main. He looked out from the treeline. Even without the benefit of the night sight he could see figures approaching. Ten guys, silhouetted in the moonlight. He could see the outlines of their bodies, and of the weapons that were slung across their chests. He tried to pick out Turgenev’s distinctive height and physique. He couldn’t, and he felt a dig of disappointment. He told himself to focus on what was ahead of them. The men were advancing carefully on the clearing. Current distance from the kill zone: sixty metres.