Gray Salvation (19 page)

‘Interesting, perhaps,’ Ellis conceded, ‘but in the meantime, Gray and his men are heading towards your troops – in a Russian vehicle. I think we both know how your countrymen will react if we don’t forewarn them.’

‘I still think—’

‘No,’ she said, standing and cutting him short, ‘let me tell you what
I
think. I think the PM is going to find it very difficult to sign any trade agreement with Milenko when the public learns about this. I could explain to the media how a few brave civilians did what our governments refused to do, and how you were willing to sit back and let them die at the hands of your own troops. The story will hit the headlines within five minutes, Mikhail, and they’ll want a quote from you. You can either confirm that you won’t help, or make a humiliating U-turn and place the call to your ground commanders.’

‘Miss Ellis, you have much to learn about diplomacy.’

‘Fuck diplomacy! There are people’s lives at stake!’

Greminov sighed and looked at his watch. ‘This simply isn’t my decision to make,’ he said. ‘President Milenko will be landing at Heathrow in about twenty minutes. I’ll speak to him when he gets off the plane.’

‘Do that,’ she said. ‘In the meantime, I’ll prepare a press release. And if I don’t hear from you within thirty minutes, I’ll send it out.’

Before Greminov could protest, Ellis picked up her handbag and walked out of the room, leaving the doors open behind her.

Chapter 26

26 January 2016

‘How much farther?’ Sonny asked for the umpteenth time.

‘At this rate, another ten minutes,’ Gray said, as anxious as anyone to get to the relative safety of the Tagrilistani front line. Their conveyance was crawling along on two good wheels and two bare rims, having lost the last shreds of rubber miles back. It made for a lopsided and uncomfortable journey but, most frustratingly, it was slow-going.

‘The Russians can travel about five times faster than this,’ McGregor pointed out, though Gray needed no reminding. He’d been doing the maths for the last hour, and knew the pack would be closing in.

What’s more, his men and he were heading into the unknown. The satellite phone had died thirty minutes earlier with no follow-up from Ellis. Worrying about whether she’d succeeded wouldn’t do any good, though. All they could do was stick to the plan and pray the gods of war were in a pleasant mood.

He soon learned otherwise.

A shell flew past the truck and exploded at the side of the road a few yards ahead of them, causing Smart to veer sharply to the left. As he did so, the bare metal of the wheel rims dug into the tarmac and the vehicle flipped over onto its side.

Gray found himself pinned to the door with Smart on top of him.

‘Everyone out!’ Gray shouted, as he pushed Smart upright and began kicking at the windscreen. It gave on the fourth blow, and Gray scrambled out and took a defensive position near the front of the truck, using the engine block as protection.

He looked back down the road and saw the outline of the BMP-3 half a mile behind; flanking it were four open-topped pick-ups, two of which had .50-calibre machine guns mounted in their beds.

Sonny and McGregor appeared around the back of the overturned truck, carrying Doc between them. Harvey and Howard were the last to show, the MI5 operative hobbling over to Gray with an AK-47 in his hand.

‘You know how to use one of those?’ Gray asked.

Harvey removed the magazine, checked how many rounds it contained, rammed it back into the housing and checked to ensure there was a round in the chamber. ‘Set for three-round bursts.’

Gray smiled. ‘You missed your calling, mate.’

As multiple rounds hit the underside of the truck, Gray leaned to the side and sent a few bursts towards the advancing Russians. All he managed to do was get the big guns to open fire, the .50-calibre rounds punching holes through the top of the chassis.

‘Shouldn’t we get away from here?’ Harvey asked. ‘If that tank hits the truck, it’ll be game over.’

Gray understood his concern, though he suspected the Russians had other plans. ‘They’ve been in position for a couple of minutes now. If they were going to take the shot, they would have done it by now. I think they want us alive.’

‘Then why are they shooting?’

‘To make us shoot back and exhaust our ammo.’ Gray crouched for cover as another salvo came from the Russian ranks, the rounds hitting the truck well above their heads with others peppering the ground to their left and right.

‘So what’s the plan?’

‘Good question,’ Gray said. In normal circumstances he would make a managed retreat, half the team firing while the others leapfrogged them away from the confrontation. With Doc so badly injured, though, he knew that would be impossible. ‘All we can do is try to coax one of those vehicles in closer and take the occupants out. That would at least give us some wheels.’

He stuck his head around the side of the truck and let off another quick burst, and saw that the Russians were holding their position. To make matters worse, three more tracked vehicles had joined the fray. The enemy were refusing to be drawn in, and it was only a matter of time before they’d be completely surrounded.

‘We need to get out of here,’ Sonny urged. ‘They’ll be all over us in a couple of minutes.’

Gray didn’t need reminding.

To their rear was a small wood, around three hundred yards away. If they could get that far, they would have a chance of making it all the way to the Tagrilistani lines.

As he considered the long odds, his thoughts turned to his daughter. He so wanted to watch her grow up, to have as normal an upbringing as possible, to see her go to her own prom and graduate college. There were so many fatherly things he’d been denied when his son Daniel had been snatched from him years earlier, and it broke his heart to think he wouldn’t be able to share those precious moments with Melissa, either. But with all other options exhausted, he made his decision.

‘Len, you and Sonny take Andrew and get as far away from here as you can. We’ll keep you covered.’

‘No way,’ Sonny countered. ‘We all go or we all stay.’

‘There isn’t time to argue. Andrew is the mission. You need to get him home.’

As if to force his point home, the ground around them erupted in dirt and flame as a round from the Russian BMP-3 exploded a few yards to the left of their cover.

Gray shook his head to clear his ears and brushed dirt from his hair and forehead. ‘Go!’

He stood, leaned out and raked the enemy vehicles with his rifle, then turned to see what progress Len and Sonny were making. Both men were crouching in their original positions, looking up at him.

‘What don’t you understand?’ Gray shouted as he knelt back down.

‘We all go together,’ Sonny repeated. ‘End of discussion.’

Smart looked Gray in the eye and nodded solemnly.

Another light artillery round exploded, but this one was farther away – closer to the Russians, in fact. It was swiftly followed by several more, and Gray looked to his rear to see four T-72 tanks emerging from the tree line and bearing down on them.

More
whooshes
from the tanks and Gray felt the air shake as the massive rounds coursed past them and into the Russian ranks. He spun in time to see a BMP-3 explode, its small turret ejected into the sky atop a column of flame. The smaller vehicles next to it were tossed into the air like toys, the occupants’ arms and legs flailing as they were thrown in all directions.

Gray realised the T-72s belonged to the Tagrilistani army, but whether his men and he were in danger or not remained to be seen. To be on the safe side, he ordered his men to throw down their arms and kneel with their hands in the air.

The battle subsided as the heavily outgunned Russians beat a hasty retreat, and an open-topped Jeep raced towards Gray and his team.

‘Stay alert,’ Gray warned the others, ‘we still don’t know if Ellis got the message through in time.’

Three men jumped out of the Jeep as it slewed to a halt in the mud a few yards from them, their weapons to their shoulders. One man took a few steps towards them and aimed his rifle at Gray.

‘Name?’ the man barked.

‘Tom Gray.’

The man lowered his rifle and said something in his native language, which made his comrades stand at ease.

‘We are told to take you to Kazakh border.’

Gray lowered his arms. ‘Thank God! We have injured men,’ he said, reaching for his rifle.

‘Leave it,’ the soldier warned. ‘You don’t need again.’

Unhappy as he was at being in a war zone unarmed, Gray did as he was told. These people were here to help. It wouldn’t do to piss them off.

‘Quickly,’ the soldier said. ‘They come back soon.’

Gray didn’t need telling twice. As he ordered his men to carry the wounded to the Jeep, an armoured personnel carrier pulled up alongside it. Gray got the others to load Doc into the APC, where a medic looked over his wounds. He and Harvey took their places in the back of the Jeep.

‘We at hospital forty minutes,’ the driver said as the small convoy set off.

Gray looked back and saw the tanks maintaining their position, glad to know that a mighty buffer now lay between his team and the Russians.

‘I really need to speak to Ellis as soon as possible,’ Harvey told Gray. ‘There’s going to be an assassination attempt on President Milenko, and I know how they plan to do it.’

Gray tapped the Tagrilistani soldier on the back. ‘We need to make a phone call,’ he said, using the international sign to make his point.

The soldier shrugged. ‘At hospital.’

Gray looked to Harvey, who nodded wearily. It had been a long shot, hoping to contact England while still in the field.

‘Tell me everything,’ he said to Harvey. ‘When we get to the hospital, I’ll call her while they patch you up.’

Veronica Ellis was still fuming at Greminov’s attitude as she hurried back to the office. It amazed her that people in his position could use the lives of others as a way of scoring points in a game of political one-upmanship. The man would have been happy to let Harvey and Gray’s team perish simply because saving them wouldn’t provide any tangible benefit.

She could only hope that her threat would be taken seriously, otherwise . . .

Her phone vibrated on her hip – caller ID told her it was Solomon.

‘What is it, Elaine?’

‘Where are you? I’ve got possible news about Sarah.’

‘I’m five minutes away. What have you heard?’

‘Someone reported a woman who claimed to be MI5 and who matched her description being attacked and dragged into Bessonov’s restaurant,’ Solomon said.

Damn it!
She should have guessed Sarah would go after Bessonov. He was, after all, at the heart of all this.

‘Check local CCTV for confirmation and get SO15 on the phone. I’ll be there in two minutes.’

Ellis ended the call and quickened her pace, hitting the Speed-dial button for her superior’s mobile.

‘It’s about Alexi Bessonov,’ she began without preamble.

‘We’ve been over this,’ the home secretary said. ‘You’re—’

‘Just listen, please.’ Ellis summed up the new information in ten seconds. ‘I want to send SO15 in to get her.’

‘Do you have absolute proof that Bessonov is involved?’

‘Nothing beyond what the witness reported. I’ve got my people going over the CCTV to confirm it.’

‘Fine,’ the home secretary said, ‘but unless you see him taking part in any crime, you don’t touch him. You don’t even speak to him. Am I clear?’

‘Crystal.’

Ellis snapped the phone shut and prayed the Russian had been careless enough to let himself be captured on film.

She walked into the lobby of Thames House and jogged up the stairs, then swiped her card to gain access to the main office.

Elaine stood as she entered and handed her a couple of sheets of paper. ‘This is the report we got from the traffic warden who saw the woman being abducted.’

Traffic warden.
That must have been what the receptionist had been trying to tell her. If only she’d taken a few seconds to listen, they could have been working this for the last half hour.

She scanned the notes. ‘It says he saw it happen just before one this afternoon. Why did he wait until four to inform us?’

‘I asked him the very same thing. It seems Sarah – if it is Sarah – threatened and belittled him before she went into the restaurant. He said his first thoughts were that it served her right, but his conscience got the better of him.’

So a traffic warden’s hurt feelings could be the difference between finding Thompson alive and in one piece, or . . .

The alternative wasn’t worth considering.

‘Who’s working the CCTV?’ she asked.

A hand went up and she walked over to Gareth Bailey’s desk, where a black-and-white image was being refreshed every second. Bessonov’s restaurant, the Petrushkin, could be seen at the top of the screen, and a large figure was standing outside the front door, but the footage was grainy and it was difficult to distinguish facial features.

‘Ask Gerald to run it through a filter and enhance it,’ Ellis said.

‘He already did,’ Bailey told her. ‘This is the result.’

‘That’s all we have available?’

Bailey nodded. ‘There’s no other coverage in the immediate area. This one is from a traffic camera two streets away. It’s as if he chose the location for the privacy.’

‘Or used his influence to get any existing cameras removed.’

Ellis watched the screen as a dark saloon pulled up outside the restaurant and the occupant got out. If the coverage had been a continuous feed it wouldn’t have been so bad, but all they had was a still shot taken every second, making it difficult to get a real feel of the events unfolding on the screen.

The occupant of the car appeared to have light hair, much like Thompson’s, and was soon joined by someone who looked to be wearing a high-visibility jacket.

‘Is that the traffic warden?’ Ellis asked.

‘We think so,’ Bailey said. ‘The time frame matches.’

The pair stood together on screen for the next dozen frames, then split up as one went inside the restaurant and the other disappeared out of shot. Three minutes passed before the door opened once more and two figures emerged, one in front of the other. As the screen flicked to the next image, the figure at the front was on the ground and the one at the rear appeared to be falling, apparently from a blow delivered by the large doorman. In the next frame the blonde lay prone on the ground; three frames later she had been dragged back inside.