Burning Angels (10 page)

They were suffocating him.

He tried to lift his head to grab a gasp of air, but a series of savage kicks and punches rained down.

‘GET DOWN!’ the voice screamed. ‘Get your ugly, shitty face down into the dirt!’

Jaeger tried to break away, flailing at his attackers and screaming curses. All it earned him was a fusillade of vicious blows, this time from a rifle butt. As he went down under the beating, he felt his hands being wrenched violently backwards, as if his arms were about to be ripped out of their sockets, and then his wrists were lashed vice-tight with gaffer tape.

The next moment the forest chill was rent by gunshots.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Wild shots, echoing deafeningly amongst the shadows beneath the thick cover. Shots that made Jaeger’s heart skip a beat.

This is bad. Real bad.

He managed to force his head up enough to grab a quick peek. He saw that Peter Miles had managed to make a break for it and was weaving through the trees.

More shots were unleashed. Jaeger saw Miles falter and stumble, and then he tumbled on to his front and lay still. One of the gunmen rushed across to him. He levelled a pistol at the fallen man, pulling the trigger three times in quick succession.

Jaeger felt himself shaking. They’d executed Peter Miles – that gentle old man – in cold blood.
Who in the name of God was behind this?

An instant later, someone grabbed Jaeger’s hair and yanked his head backwards. Before he could say a word, he felt a strip of gaffer tape being slapped across his mouth, then a black cloth bag was dragged over his head and tied around his neck.

Everything went very dark.

Stumbling blindly, Jaeger was yanked to his feet and propelled forward helter-skelter through the woodland. He tripped over a fallen branch and fell hard.

Wild screams: ‘GET UP! UP! UP!’

He was dragged onwards across a patch of boggy ground, the smell of rotten leaf matter assailing his senses. The frantic forced march went on and on, until Jaeger felt totally disorientated. Finally he detected a new noise up ahead: the rhythmic throb of an engine. They were taking him to some kind of vehicle. Through the bag he could just make out two bright spots piercing the thick shadows.

Headlamps.

With two guys gripping him by the armpits, he was thrust towards the lights, his feet dragging uselessly. The next moment he was slammed face-first into the front grille of the vehicle, pain shooting through his forehead.

‘BASTARD KNEEL! ON YOUR KNEES!
KNEEL!
’

He was thrust into a kneeling position. He could feel the headlamps playing across his face, the blinding light bleeding through the bag. Without a word of warning it was torn away. He tried to turn his head from the glare, but he was held by his hair in a savage grip, eyes forced into the light.

‘NAME!’ the voice snarled. It was right beside his ear now. ‘Let’s hear your bastard name!’

The speaker was hidden from Jaeger, but the voice sounded foreign, and thick with some Eastern European accent. For a terrible moment Jaeger had visions of the gang who’d suffered the Kolokol-1 attack – Vladimir and his lot – taking him captive. But surely it couldn’t be them, for how in God’s name would they have found him?

Think, Jaeger. Fast.

‘NAME!’ the voice yelled again. ‘
NAME!
’

Jaeger’s throat was dry with shock and fear. He managed to rasp out the one word: ‘Jaeger.’

The men holding him slammed his face into the nearest headlamp, leaving his features scrunched up tight against the glass.

‘Both names.
Both bastard names!
’

‘Will. William Jaeger.’ He coughed out the words through a mouthful of blood.

‘So, this is better, William Jaeger.’ The same voice, sinister and predatory, but a fraction calmer now. ‘Now you tell me: what are names of the rest of your crew?’

Jaeger said nothing. No way would he answer. But he could sense the anger and aggression rising again.

‘One more time: what are the names of the rest of your crew?’

From somewhere Jaeger found his voice. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

He felt his head being wrenched backwards, then his face was rammed into the forest dirt, deeper than it had been before. He tried to hold his breath as the insults and curses began again, punctuated by expertly aimed kicks and blows. Whoever his captors were, they sure knew how to hurt someone.

Finally he was pulled upright and the bag was yanked over his head once more.

The voice spat out a command. ‘Lose him. He’s no use if he won’t talk. You know what to do.’

Jaeger was dragged around to what had to be the rear of the vehicle. He was lifted up and hurled aboard. Hands forced him into a sitting position – legs out straight, arms linked behind his back.

Then silence. Just the rasp of his own laboured breathing.

The minutes dragged on. Jaeger could sense – taste – the metallic tang of his own fear. Eventually he had to try to shift position, in an effort to ease his aching limbs.

Slam!
Someone booted him in the stomach. Not a word had been spoken. He was forced back into the same seated pose. He knew now that in spite of the spikes of pain, he was not permitted to move. He’d been put into a stress position, one designed to deliver a relentless and unendurable torture.

Without warning, the vehicle gave a sudden lurch and began to move. The unexpected motion threw Jaeger on to his front. Instantly he was booted around the head. He dragged himself into position again, but moments later the truck hit a ditch and he was catapulted on to his back. Again, elbows and fists rained down, driving his head into the cold metal skin of the vehicle.

Finally one of his tormentors dragged him back into the same stress position as before. The pain was intense. His head throbbed, his lungs were bursting and he was still winded from the beating. He felt as if his heart was about to explode out of his chest. Fear and panic gripped him.

Jaeger knew he’d been captured by utter professionals. The question was, who were they exactly?

And where in God’s name were they taking him?

17

The truck ride seemed to take forever, jolting along rutted tracks and rattling over rough ground. In spite of the pain he was in, at least it gave Jaeger time to think. Someone must have betrayed them. No one could have found them in the Falkenhagen Bunker otherwise, that was for certain.

Was it Narov? If not, who else had known where they were meeting? None of the team had been informed of their end destination. All they’d been told was that they would be collected from the airport.

But why? After all they’d been through, why would Narov have sold him out? And to whom?

All of a sudden the truck slowed to a stop. Jaeger heard the rear door being hinged open. He tensed. Hands grabbed him by the legs and hauled him out, letting him drop. He tried to use his arms to break the fall, but still his head cannoned into the ground.

Jesus, that hurt.

He was dragged away, pulled along by his feet like an animal carcass, his head and torso ploughing through the dirt. From the brightness filtering in through the bag, he could tell that it was daylight. Otherwise, he had lost all sense of time.

He heard a door being wrenched open and he was booted inside some kind of building. It went suddenly dark again. A terrifying sense of total blackness. Then he heard the familiar whir of a lift motor and felt the floor beneath him drop away. He was in an elevator, going deep.

Finally, the movement stopped. Jaeger was dragged out and propelled through a series of sharp right-angled turns – some kind of twisting corridor, he figured. Then a door opened, unleashing a tsunami of deafening sound. It was as if a TV had been left on tuned to nothing, blasting out electronic interference – so-called white noise – at top volume.

He was gripped beneath the armpits and dragged backwards into the white-noise room. His hands were cut free and his clothes were torn away from him with such force that the buttons flew off. He was left in nothing but his boxers; even his shoes were gone.

He was manoeuvred into a position facing the wall, his hands against the cold brickwork but balanced only on the tips of his fingers. His captors kicked his legs further and further backwards until he was suspended at what felt like a sixty-degree angle on fingertips and toes.

Footsteps stomped away. Utter silence, apart from his own pained and laboured breathing.

Was there anyone but him here any more?

Did he have company?

There was no way of telling.

Years back, Jaeger had been put through simulated resistance-to-interrogation training, as part of the selection process when joining the SAS. It was designed to test your resolve under pressure, and to train you how to cope with captivity. It had been thirty-six hours of hell, but he’d always known it was only an exercise.

This, by contrast, was very real and terrifying.

His shoulder muscles started to burn, his fingers cramping, as all the while the deafening white noise pounded into his skull. He wanted to cry out with the pain, but his mouth was still taped shut. All he could do was scream and yell inside his own head.

Eventually it was the finger cramps that got too much for him. The pain seared through his hands, the muscles tensing so hard it felt as if his fingers would be ripped from their very sockets. For an instant he relaxed, pressing his palms against the wall. It was blissful relief to allow them to take his full weight. But the next moment he doubled over as a jabbing bolt of pain shot up his spine.

Jaeger screamed, but it came out as a muffled yelp. He was far from alone in here, and someone had just applied an electrode – a cattle prod? – to the small of his back.

With brute savagery he was kicked back into his former position. Not a word had been said, but there was no misunderstanding the situation: if he tried to move or relax, they’d jab him with the electrode.

It wasn’t long before his arms and legs began to shake uncontrollably. At the very moment when he felt he couldn’t go on, his feet were booted out from under him, and he collapsed to the floor like a dead man. There was absolutely no let-up. Hands grabbed him like a lump of meat, forcing him into the sitting position he’d adopted in the truck, but this time with his arms folded in front of him.

His captors were faceless, voiceless tormentors. But their message was crystal clear: movement equals pain.

All that assailed Jaeger now was the screaming blast of white noise. Time became meaningless. When he lost consciousness and keeled over, they wrestled him into a new stress position, and on and on and on.

Eventually something seemed to change.

Without a hint of warning, Jaeger felt himself dragged to his feet. His hands were whipped behind his back, wrists taped together, and he was propelled towards the door. He was dragged along the corridors again, swinging left-right-left-right around the sharp series of turns.

He heard another door open and he was thrust into a room. A sharp edge was rammed into the back of his knees. It was a bare wooden chair, and it forced him to sit. He hunched there in silence.

Wherever he was now, there was an extra chill to the atmosphere, plus a faint smell of airlessness and damp. In one way this was the most terrifying moment yet. Jaeger had understood the white-noise room; its purpose and its rules. His captors had been trying to exhaust him, to break him down and force him to crack.

But this? This unknown. This total lack of noise or any sense of a human presence other than his own – it was utterly chilling.

Jaeger felt a spike of fear. Real, visceral fear. He had no idea where he had been brought to, but he sensed there was nothing good about this place. Plus he had little sense who might have captured him, or what they intended to do with him now.

All of a sudden, light flooded in, blinding him
.
The bag had been ripped off, and at the same instant a powerful beam switched on. It seemed to be shining directly into his face.

Gradually his eyes started to adjust and he began to figure out detail.

There was a stark metal desk before him, with a glass surface. Sitting on the desk was a bland-looking white china mug.

Nothing else: just a mug of steaming liquid.

Behind the desk was seated a portly, bearded, balding man. He looked to be in his mid-sixties. He was dressed in a threadbare tweed jacket and fraying shirt. With his dated dress and spectacles, he had the demeanour of a jaded university lecturer or an underpaid museum curator. A bachelor who did his own cleaning, overcooked his vegetables and was fond of collecting butterflies.

He looked utterly unremarkable: he’d be forgotten in an instant and would never turn heads in a crowd. The archetypal grey man. And the very last thing that Jaeger had been expecting to encounter right now.

He’d expected a gang of shaven-headed Eastern European thugs, each wielding a pickaxe handle or baseball bat. This was just so weird. It was way out left field, and it was messing with his head.

The grey man stared at Jaeger without saying a word. His expression almost gave the impression that he was . . . uninterested; bored; studying some unedifying museum specimen.

He nodded at the mug. ‘Tea, white, one sugar. A cuppa. Isn’t that what you say in England?’

He spoke quietly, with just a hint of a foreign accent, but to Jaeger it was untraceable. He didn’t sound particularly aggressive or unfriendly. In fact he gave the impression of being slightly weary – as if he had done this a thousand times before.

‘A nice cuppa. You must be thirsty. Have some tea.’

In the military, Jaeger had been taught to always take a drink or food if ever he were offered. Yes, it could be poisoned, but why would anyone bother? It was much easier to beat a captive to a pulp, or shoot him dead.

He stared at the white china mug. Faint wisps of steam curled into the chill air.

‘A cup of tea,’ the man repeated quietly. ‘White with one. Have a drink.’