The Secret of Excalibur (35 page)

Something in the distance stood out against the horizon, a barely discernible line of white in the dark water. Waves washing against a floating object.

The clatter of an electric starter was followed by the low chug of an engine. ‘Pretty neat, huh?’ Nina said.

‘Yeah. Are there any binoculars down there?’

She searched the compartment beneath the controls, finding a medical kit as well as what Chase had asked for. ‘Let me fix those cuts,’ she said, handing him the binoculars.

‘In a minute.’ Chase scanned the horizon. ‘Well, fuck me.’

‘What is it?’

‘Jack’s got a ride home.’ Through the binoculars, he could now see the cause of the line of waves - another submarine. A faint red light lit up an open hatch from below, figures moving around it to pull an inflatable life raft out of the water. Though Chase couldn’t make out the face of the figure climbing from it, the sword he was holding was a dead giveaway.

Once Mitchell was aboard, the other men dropped the raft back into the water and climbed through the hatch. A wash of reflected light briefly passed over the sail as it closed, letting Chase pick out the number 23 painted on the black metal before it vanished in the darkness. The sub began to move; he tracked it until it disappeared under the surface, which it did with surprising speed.

‘The bastard had a sub waiting for him,’ he told Nina. ‘Soon as it’s clear of Russian waters, he’ll probably get picked up by a chopper and taken to . . . well, wherever the fuck he’s going with Excalibur.’

‘God.’ Nina sat, rubbing her hands over her arms to warm them. ‘The whole thing was a set-up, right from the start. And Jack was, what, a
quadruple
agent? The
hell
? Shit,’ she added as a thought struck her, ‘I bet he was the one who got Vaskovich to kill Bernd - that way he could be sure I’d help him find the sword.’

‘It’s not over,’ said Chase, eyes narrowing. ‘He was going to take you with him as well. He’ll want to get you back; he needs you to make his own system work. And his
is
a weapon.’

‘Jesus. So what do we do?’

Chase looked through the portholes again. ‘First thing we do is get back to shore.’

‘It’ll take a while,’ said Nina, examining the controls. ‘This thing’s not exactly a powerboat. The speedo only goes up to five!’

‘Well, it’ll give you time to patch me up.’ Chase sat heavily on one of the bench seats.

Nina turned the pod towards the sub pen, then took the medical kit and sat beside him. ‘You know, you were right about Jack. He
was
after my body. Just in a really weird way.’

‘Yeah. I can’t believe I got jealous of that arsehole. Sorry about that, by the way. Ow.’

Nina finished dabbing one of his cuts with antiseptic. ‘Apology accepted. Just don’t do it again, huh?’

‘Oh, I won’t. Next time some bloke tries to chat you up, I’m just going to lamp the bastard.’

Nina laughed, a little uncertainly. ‘Wait, no, really?’

‘Nah, I’m just—’

‘Taking the piss, gotcha. Anyway, you don’t need to worry about other men.’ She gently kissed his cheek. ‘Thank you.’

‘For what?’

‘For everything. I just realised what you were trying to tell me in London, at the embassy. About not wanting to lose me.’ She kissed him again. ‘Thank you.’

‘What made you realise?’

Nina smiled. ‘Oh, y’know, just that you’d sink a nuclear submarine to save me. Most women don’t have a fiancé who’d do that. So I’m pretty sure I’ve found the right one.’ She applied a plaster to his face.

Chase lifted an eyebrow. ‘Only
pretty
sure?’

‘Well, there
is
still that whole won’t-talk-about-his-past deal . . .’

‘You know I can’t. Official Secrets Act and all that.’

‘I don’t mean the SAS stuff,’ she said with a pointed look.

‘Right.’ Chase sat in contemplative silence as Nina continued to patch up his injuries, waiting for him to find the right words. ‘The thing . . .’ he began, and hesitated.

‘It can wait,’ she assured him. ‘We’re not exactly in the ideal surroundings here.’

‘No, I need to get this out. The reason I never talked to you about my family is . . . because it
hurts.
There, I said it.’ He let out a breath. ‘It’s nearly twenty years ago, and it still fucking hurts. My mum was dying of cancer right in front of me, and my dad . . .’ Chase’s fists clenched. ‘My dad had a fucking
affair
! He was with some other woman while my mum was dying. So after she did, I just left. I didn’t want anything to do with him.’

‘So that’s why you never talk about him.’

‘Your dad was a role model,’ Chase said, voice bitter. ‘Mine was everything I
didn’t
want to be. I never talked about him ’cause I didn’t want to be reminded of him . . . and I didn’t want to think that I might be anything like him.’

Nina had paused in her treatment to listen; now, she gave a final dab to his last cut. ‘I don’t think you are,’ she whispered, kissing him.

He returned it. ‘Thanks.’ It was only a single word, but it told Nina the depth of his gratitude.

They sat against each other as the lifepod continued its sluggish voyage home.

To their surprise, they weren’t met by armed and angry Russians as the pod finally bumped against the jetty. Instead, Chase opened the top hatch to find Maximov waiting for them. ‘It’s okay, he’s on our side,’ he assured Nina as he helped her out. ‘I think.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Nina said uncertainly.

‘What happened to submarine?’ Maximov asked. ‘Whole front end came out of water like - like
whale
!’

‘Well, it’s sleeping with the fishes now,’ Chase told him. He saw a handful of people waiting at the dock’s cavernous entrance. ‘What’s going on?’

‘They were going to fly away in the boss’s jet.’ The big Russian grinned menacingly. ‘I persuade them to stay, wait for army or navy or whoever to arrive.’

‘But we’ve got to get out of here,’ said Nina. ‘Jack’s got the sword. We need to go after him.’

‘Can you get us back to Moscow?’ asked Chase.

Maximov looked puzzled. ‘
Da
, in jet. But I said, we wait for army to arrive.’

‘No, seriously, that would be a really bad idea. You know who they’re going to blame for all this?
Whoever they find.
You’re Russian, you know the drill - bag everyone in sight and worry about who actually did anything later. And if we’re all under arrest, we can’t stop Mitchell getting away.’

‘You have point,’ said Maximov. ‘Okay, I take you to plane, get you back to Moscow.’

Nina shivered. ‘Anywhere, as long as it’s warm.’

The lights were on in Pavel Prikovsky’s warehouse, but it was far from warm. The gate was open, the door ajar.

‘Stay in the car,’ Chase warned Nina. Vaskovich’s jet had been equipped with a gun cabinet; the fact that it had a combination code presumably known only to Vaskovich and Kruglov made no difference to Maximov, who simply ripped off the door. Both men drew their weapons and cautiously advanced across the yard.

Chase peered through the door, seeing one of Prikovsky’s men lying in a pool of blood. It had coagulated; whatever had happened had taken place some time ago. It couldn’t have been Mitchell, then . . . but it could have been men acting under his orders.

The warehouse was silent. Chase held up three fingers as a signal to Maximov, mouthed a countdown, then burst through the door, the Russian covering him. He swept his gun from side to side. No movement. No life.

They made their way through the stacks of boxes to Prikovsky’s office, passing another corpse slumped against a forklift, his chest a ragged mess of bullet holes. Prikovsky was slumped over his desk, dead eyes staring at the door as they entered. ‘Oh, Jesus,’ said Chase softly. Prikovsky had hardly been a friend, but he had still come through for him, and this was his reward. The Russian had been shot in both legs, but the actual cause of death was easy to see: a metal pole protruding from his back, plunging down through his chest and the table below. Someone had held Prikovsky in that position in order to impale him, leaving a very clear message.

Chase knew he was the intended recipient. A piece of paper had been taped to the pole, three words printed on it in large bold capitals.

CALL YOUR SISTER.

‘Shit,’ Chase whispered, filled with utter dread. He hunted for a phone, and found one that had been knocked from the desk by Prikovsky’s struggle.

‘What does it say?’ Maximov asked.

‘The fucker’s going after my family!’ Snatching up the phone, Chase dialled 44, the international dialling code for Britain, then Elizabeth’s number. He waited anxiously for the connection to be made, the phone to start ringing . . .

The answer came on the second ring. ‘Lizzie!’ Chase snapped. ‘Are you okay? Is Holly all—’

‘Eddie, oh, my God!’ Elizabeth cried. ‘They took her, they took Holly!’

‘Who? Who took her?’

‘I don’t know, they wore masks! They said they were watching, that if I called the police or spoke to anyone else they’d kill her - that I had to wait to hear from you!’

Chase smashed his gun down on the desk, splintering the wood in his barely contained fury. ‘Mitchell, you fucking little shit, talk to me! I know you can hear me!’

A click, then a familiar voice on the line, an eerie electronic distortion behind it. ‘Hello, Eddie.’

‘Let Holly go, right now,’ Chase barked. ‘Or I
will
fucking kill you.’

‘Save your threats, Eddie.’ There was another noise under Mitchell’s voice, the whine of an aircraft’s engines. He was no longer aboard the submarine.

‘It wasn’t a threat. It was a
promise.
’

‘Don’t waste my time and I won’t waste yours. I want Nina. Or rather, I need Nina. I know this is kinda drastic, but I needed to show that I’m one hundred per cent serious.’

‘By kidnapping a teenage girl?’ Chase cried. ‘The British government’ll go apeshit!’

‘The British government will shut the fuck up and do as they’re told, like always. But they won’t even need to hear about this if you do what I tell you. Bring me Nina, and you get your niece back.’

‘Eddie, what is it?’

Chase whirled to see Nina standing in the doorway. ‘That fucker’s kidnapped Holly!’

‘Is that Nina?’ Mitchell asked as she reacted with shock. ‘Put her on, Eddie.’

Tight-lipped with anger, Chase put the phone on speaker. ‘She’s here.’

‘Nina, hi. I’m sure you’ve guessed what I want already, but I’ll tell you anyway so there’s no ambiguity - I want you to turn yourself over to my people. In return, I’ll let Eddie’s niece go.’

‘Your people?’ Nina said in disgust. ‘Kidnappers and killers? I’m ashamed to be an American right now. DARPA’ll be finished when this gets out.’

Mitchell almost laughed. ‘You still think I actually work for DARPA? I didn’t realise you were so naive.’

‘A black project,’ Chase growled.

‘Blackest of the black. This is way too important to be put in the hands of any official agency. Or politician.’

‘So you’ve just unilaterally declared yourself the guardian of American interests?’ Nina asked, appalled.

‘Someone has to do it. But I’m not here to debate idealism versus realpolitik - I’m here to do a job, and for that I need you. Get back to England. Once you’re there, call this number again. We’re monitoring it; I’ll hear you. And then we can make the exchange.’

‘No!’ Chase shouted. ‘You want me to trade my fiancée for my niece? Fuck you! I can’t - I can’t make a choice like that!’

‘I can,’ Nina said quietly. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘
What?
’

‘I said I’ll do it.’

‘No you fucking won’t!’

Her voice was firm. ‘I have to. And you know it. It’s the only way to get Holly back safely. She’s your niece . . . and she’s going to be mine too.’ She took his hand. ‘She’s going to be part of my family, Eddie. And you have to do whatever’s necessary to protect your family.’ She turned to face the phone. ‘Jack, we’ll do it. I’ll do it. If I have your absolute assurance that Holly will be released unharmed.’

‘You have it,’ Mitchell replied. ‘Now get to England. And make it soon.’ The line went dead.

Chase swept the phone off the table. ‘
Fuck!
I don’t fucking believe him, he’ll kill her anyway. He can’t risk anyone finding out what he’s done.’

Maximov grunted. ‘The man is a shit. I should have crushed his head! But at least you know he is not all-powerful, or he could have left men here to wait for you.’

‘Powerful enough,’ Nina said, worried. She shared a look with Chase, a look that betrayed their fears for Holly . . . and each other.

32

England

T
he New Forest covered over two hundred and twenty square miles, a national park beginning ten miles east of Bournemouth that contained some of England’s oldest heaths and pastures. But it was in one of the swathes of forest that gave the region its name that Nina and Chase now waited, Elizabeth’s car parked in a clearing. Chase had checked the area in satellite photos; the nearest house was over a mile away, the spot Mitchell had selected for the exchange as isolated as it was possible to get on the densely populated south coast.

Night had fallen. The only illumination came from the car’s headlights, casting stark shadows across the ground. Chase surveyed the trees, but couldn’t see anyone.

He knew they were not alone, though.

‘I hear something,’ said Nina, looking northwards. It took a few more seconds before Chase was able to pick it out, his hearing still not fully recovered from the pounding it took in Russia. But the whine and chatter of an approaching helicopter was unmistakable.

It came in low, a flickering light through the trees before it swept into the open, turning side-on to the car as it descended. A man leaned out of a door, directing a circular antenna at them.

‘Get rid of the gun, Eddie.’ Mitchell’s voice boomed from a speaker as the chopper hovered just above tree level. The antenna was part of a millimetre-wave radar system, showing the helicopter’s occupants exactly what Chase and Nina were carrying under their clothes. ‘And Nina, that thing in your left pocket, I assume it’s a tracker. Ditch it. Then both of you step away from the car.’

Chase tossed his pistol beside a fallen log as Nina reluctantly took out the piece of electronic gear and placed it on the car’s roof. They walked further into the clearing. Another few seconds as the man concluded his radar scan, then the helicopter touched down in a miniature hurricane of dust and leaves, the rotors still whirling at takeoff speed.

Holly stepped out fearfully, Mitchell lurking behind her. ‘Uncle Eddie!’

‘Holly, are you okay?’ Chase shouted.

‘She’s fine,’ Mitchell said. ‘Nina, walk toward me. I’ll send the girl. Careful, now.’

Nina took a step, then paused and looked back at Chase. ‘Eddie . . .’

‘I’ll find you,’ he said softly. Then, with a not entirely convincing attempt at a casual smile: ‘By the way, you doing anything next May? Maybe around the fourteenth?’

Her answering smile was entirely genuine. Loving. ‘I am now.’

‘Don’t miss it.’

‘Don’t let me.’

‘Enough with the schmaltz,’ Mitchell’s amplified voice snapped. ‘Nina, get over here, now.’

With a last glance at Chase, Nina walked towards the helicopter. Holly came the other way, desperate to break into a run. As they passed each other Nina whispered, ‘Do whatever Eddie tells you.’

She reached the helicopter and looked back. Holly had just met Chase. ‘Get in,’ Mitchell shouted from the cabin. Trying not to show her fear, Nina climbed inside. The radar operator grabbed her wrists and handcuffed them, then shoved her down beside Mitchell.

The engine noise immediately rose, the helicopter ascending. Nina stared out of the window at the two figures on the fringe of the headlight beams as they fell away. ‘Get us to the jet,’ Mitchell ordered the pilot. ‘I want the other helo fuelled and ready by the time we reach Scotland. We’ve got a lot of work to do - I want a full test of the system by tomorrow night.’

‘What about Eddie and Holly?’ Nina demanded.

‘I said I’d release Holly unharmed,’ said Mitchell with a hard expression. ‘After that . . .’

Nina’s eyes narrowed hatefully. ‘You son of a bitch.’

‘I do what I have to do.’ He sat back as the helicopter picked up speed over the dark forest.

The sniper was less than two hundred feet from Chase, but at thirty feet away he would still have been invisible, even in daylight. Draped in multi-textured layers of mottled camouflage, he blended perfectly with the scrub and bushes of the forest floor. Even his rifle looked more organic than manufactured, the brown-painted barrel and its fat suppressor wrapped in twigs to break up its shape, the telltale reflective lens of the scope concealed beneath drooping leaves.

He flicked them away, taking in the full view through the sights. The crosshairs were almost perfectly centred on Chase’s head. He raised himself higher on his elbows as he adjusted his aim and prepared to fire. Chase was moving slightly, talking to the girl, but not enough to throw off the shot.

With the helicopter gone there was hardly any wind, and at such a close range the effects of the suppressor and ballistic drop on the bullet would be negligible. He took them into account anyway, lifting the crosshairs fractionally to just above Chase’s eyeline. The bullet would hit the dead centre of his skull, and blow it apart.

After Chase, he would move on to the girl, who would be so shocked that she would be paralysed, easy prey. Two targets, two shots, two seconds.

Two deaths.

He braced himself, holding his breath to minimise the movement of his body, making the final delicate adjustments to his aim, finger caressing the trigger . . .

Firing—

As Chase ducked.

The silenced shot hissed over Chase’s head and thumped against a tree. The faint click of the sniper rifle’s action told him the direction from which the shot had come, but he already knew.

‘Jesus!’ said Peter Alderley’s tinny voice in his right ear as he threw Holly to the ground beneath him. ‘Could you leave that any later?’

Chase didn’t reply, rolling into the partial cover of the log and dragging Holly with him. ‘Stay here!’ he hissed as he grabbed his gun and crawled on his belly through the leaves and mud to the other end of the fallen trunk. If the sniper were any good - and Chase didn’t doubt it - then he would already have reloaded and be seeking to reacquire his target, surprised by his apparent precognition or not.

‘He’s still in place,’ Mac said over the earpiece. ‘Tracking left, looking for you.’

‘Wait, he’s doing something with his gun,’ Alderley added. ‘He just switched something on, maybe night vision or thermographics.’

Chase didn’t need to see the radar image the two men were viewing somewhere inside MI6’s London headquarters; he could picture it perfectly in his mind’s eye. The sniper would be lying behind cover, a log or a tree stump, somewhere with direct line of sight through the trees to the original position of his targets. He wouldn’t move unless he absolutely had to.

Which meant Chase had to
make
him move. The synthetic aperture radar satellite orbiting some three hundred miles above could see through tree cover and even the ground, but it could only keep its unnatural gaze on one particular spot for a limited amount of time before its trajectory carried it out of sight. If he hadn’t located his enemy by the time the satellite passed out of range, he would be left blind.

And then dead.

‘One minute to range limit,’ said Alderley. ‘Come on, Chase, nail the silly bastard, he’s just lying there!’

‘Never faced a sniper, have you?’ Chase growled as he reached the end of the log. The next available cover was behind a tree maybe ten feet away - ten feet in which he would be completely exposed. ‘Talk to me, what’s he doing?’

‘Switching aim between each end of the log,’ Mac told him. ‘Waiting for one of you to move.’

‘Which end’s he aiming at now?’

‘Yours.’

Chase hated himself for what he was about to do, but knew it was the only chance of saving himself and his niece. ‘Holly,’ he said in a loud whisper. ‘When I say now, very quickly stick your hand out from the end of the log and then pull it back again. Okay?’ Although confused and scared, she nodded. ‘Okay! Ready, set,
now
!’

Holly thrust her hand out into the open.

Chase was already moving even as she pulled it back into cover, bursting out from behind the log towards the tree. The
thwack!
of the bullet striking wood and the soft clack of the rifle reached him simultaneously. Holly screamed as smashed bark rained over her.

‘Stay down!’ Chase yelled. Even the best snipers in the world needed a moment to reacquire a target after the jolt of firing, and the flash of his movement between the trees would force the other man to change his aim, slowing him further.

But not by much.

Chase slammed against the next tree a split second before a bullet did, broken wood spitting at his face.

‘Forty seconds,’ Alderley announced, voice tense.

‘Where is he?’

‘Five o’clock from you, about forty metres,’ Mac told him. ‘Aiming at your cover.’

‘Left or right side?’

‘Left.’

Gun raised, Chase jerked to the right, exposing his arm and shoulder and drawing the sniper’s aim, then immediately lunged back to fire two shots round the left side of the tree. Another rifle bullet smacked into the trunk, his adversary thrown off by the return fire, just as Chase had hoped.

He sprang from cover once more, this time not stopping. The undergrowth crunched beneath his feet as he ran between the trees, curving round towards the sniper’s position—‘Thirty seconds!’

‘He’s moving, you’ve spooked him!’ Mac cried at the same moment. ‘Going right from his original position, crawling - no, he’s up, he’s on his feet.’

Chase reached another tree, throwing himself against it. ‘Position!’

‘Four o’clock from you, still moving right, still moving - shit! Eddie, he’s going for your niece!’

‘Twenty!’ Alderley said. ‘Chase, move it!’

Chase risked a look. He could see nothing moving in the unreal half-light from the car’s headlamps. ‘No visual! Where is he?’

‘Coming up to your three o’clock, still moving - no, he’s dropping, taking aim—’

‘Shit!’ He ran directly for the still unseen sniper, gun held out ahead. ‘Guide me in!’

On the radar image, his outstretched arm would act as a pointer, letting Mac direct him towards his target - if he was fast enough. ‘Left!’ snapped Mac. Chase turned slightly, trees flicking past. ‘Left, left - straight, straight!’

‘Ten seconds!’

Chase fired, and kept firing into the undergrowth ahead.

No hits, and he was running out of bullets and time—

‘He’s moving!’ Mac said. ‘Changing aim, changing aim!’

No need to ask who the new target was. Chase was down to three bullets, two, one—

‘He’s hit!’ shouted Mac. No triumph, just an immediate warning. ‘Gun, gun, gun!’

At close range a sniper rifle was a liability, but it wasn’t the man’s only weapon. Chase saw a flicker of movement ahead, a bush that wasn’t a bush shifting, a glint of light catching dark metal—

He fired his last shot.

‘Contact lost!’ Alderley almost gasped. ‘Chase! Did you get him, did you get him?’

‘Yeah, I got him,’ Chase announced, kicking the pistol out of the sniper’s hand. But there was no threat: his last bullet had hit the man in the neck, tearing out a ragged chunk of muscle and tendons that now hung gelatinously by a flap of skin, blood gushing blackly over the camouflage. He was still moving weakly, but he would be dead within a minute or two even if Chase had been inclined to do anything to save him.

There was an audible exhalation of relief through the earpiece. ‘In that case,’ Alderley said after a moment, ‘you can expect a bill from Her Majesty’s Government for the satellite time. Should only be about, oh, a million pounds or so.’

‘They can knock it off the reward for recovering Excalibur,’ Mac said. ‘Eddie, are you all right?’

‘Fine,’ Chase replied, turning his back on the dying sniper and hurrying back to the clearing. ‘Holly, are you okay? Holly?’

He found her still lying by the log, trembling. ‘Holly,’ he said, crouching to take her hand, ‘it’s okay. Are you all right?’

She slowly looked up at him, tears running from her wide eyes. ‘Uncle Eddie?’

‘Hi.’ He managed a smile. ‘Come on, love. Let’s get you back home to your mum.’

He lifted her carefully to her feet. She hugged him and pressed her face into his chest, sobbing.

‘It’s all right,’ he assured her. ‘It’s over.’

But he knew it wasn’t.

‘I take it the sniper’s not talking,’ Mac said in his ear, following the same line of thought. ‘Peter and I can deal with the local police for you, but how are you going to find Nina now?’

Chase guided Holly to the car, face set. ‘There’s still someone else. I’m going to have words.’

Hector Amoros jolted awake, sitting upright and reaching across to switch on a lamp.

‘Ay up, Hector,’ said Chase coldly from the chair he had pulled up beside the bed. He had a gun in his hand, not aiming it directly at the director of the IHA, but needing only the smallest movement of his wrist to do so.

‘Eddie!’ Amoros exclaimed. ‘What are you - how did you get in here?’

‘Ways and means. I wanted a chat while you were still in London. About your mate Jack Mitchell.’

Amoros’s expression tightened a little at the name. He looked more closely at Chase as his eyes adjusted to the light of the hotel room. ‘My God! What happened to you?’

Chase indicated the cuts and bruises on his face. ‘Like I said, Jack Mitchell. Turns out he wasn’t what he said he was.’ Now the gun pointed at Amoros. ‘But you knew that, didn’t you? Right from the start.’

‘I don’t know what you—’

‘Don’t! Don’t even fucking
try
to deny it. Jack set this whole thing up, getting the IHA involved so that he could find Excalibur before the Russians did. And with him being a navy man, and you being a navy man, you were great mates right off the bat. You’d do anything to help each other out, right?’

‘That’s not what happened,’ Amoros said firmly. ‘I might be retired from the navy, but if the Pentagon asks for something it’s still my duty to give it to them. Most of the IHA’s funding comes from the United States. You know that.’

‘He who pays the piper, right?’ said Chase with a sneer. ‘Well, you know what tune he’s playing now? It’s called “I’ve kidnapped Nina and stolen Excalibur so I can build a big fuck-off WMD”.’