Pirate - Duncan Falconer [132]
The engines of the A340 Airbus grew louder as it approached. It quickly took shape, its bulbous body outlined by its navigation lights like a constellation drawing.
The firing team could hear the craft approaching behind them and composed themselves as they maintained their aim. The Indonesian knew that in just a few more seconds he would release the rocket into the cold night air and its sophisticated electronic sensors would detect the heat pouring from the back of the airliner’s engines and redirect the missile towards one of them. The missile would probably impact on the exhaust. Then it would detonate. The explosion would rip into the fuel tanks inside the wing and tear it apart. The huge jet would twist on to its side as its wing fell away and then it would crash down on to the runway, where it would break up into thousands of flaming pieces. Fire would engulf everything. Everyone on board would die.
Dinaal Yusef could see it all before it happened. It was going to be truly glorious.
Three figures in black stepped from the bushes that led down to the marsh. Each carried a silenced sub-machine gun. Dinaal caught their movement out of the corner of his eye. He saw their semi-crouched stances, the weapons in their hands, and for the fraction of a second of life he had left he knew he had failed.
Several brass-coated rounds slapped into his head and the life went out of him before he struck the ground. As the massive aircraft screamed overhead, the operatives put a dozen rounds each into the two Saudis, the Colombian and the Indonesian, the automatic weapons spitting death, the clicking of the mechanisms inaudible. The ground-to-air missile hit the soggy ground with a muffled clatter, swallowed up by the roar of the aircraft passing overhead.
The three assassins quickly moved forward to check the jihadists were dead. One of the operatives wore a recording device strapped to his head and ensured that he got everything.
They dragged the bodies by their feet through the bushes and into the marsh, ensuring each of them was fully under the water.
They returned to pick up the rocket launcher, place it inside its box, close the lid and secure it.
‘Is that everything?’ the team leader asked in an east London accent.
‘All good,’ the recorder said in a Lancashire brogue.
‘Let’s go,’ the leader said, and they set off up the side of the field to the fence by the lane. They climbed over with the box and headed along the narrow track past Dinaal’s van and into a field, which they trudged across. Past the point where they had shot and hidden the two lookouts.
‘Wait a minute,’ the recorder said, stopping to take the device from his head to inspect it. The leader and the other operative, who were carrying the box, slowed as they looked back at their colleague.
‘What is it?’ the leader asked, coming to a stop.
‘I’m not sure I had it turned on.’
‘You what? You were supposed to make sure it worked before we went on the ground.’
‘I did.’
‘When’s the last time you checked it?’
‘I checked it in Hereford.’
‘Hereford?’ exclaimed the leader.
‘I mean, I did a diagnostics check in Hereford before I left and I checked it here in the embassy this afternoon.’ He fiddled with the device.
‘We can’t go back and do it again,’ the other operative said in a Welsh accent.
The team leader glanced at the Welshman with an irritated frown.
‘No, it’s fine,’ the recorder decided, walking on. ‘I thought it was off but it wasn’t. We’re good.’
The others set off after him.
‘You positive?’ the leader asked.
‘Yes.’
The leader