Hunter Killer - Alex King Series 12 (2021) Read online

  Hunter Killer

  By

  A P Bateman

  Text © A P Bateman

  2021

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, printing or otherwise, without written permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction and any character resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Some locations may have been changed; others are fictitious.

  Facebook: @authorapbateman

  www.apbateman.com

  Rockhopper Publishing

  2021

  The Alex King Series

  The Contract Man

  Lies and Retribution

  Shadows of Good Friday

  The Five

  Reaper

  Stormbound

  Breakout

  From the Shadows

  Rogue

  The Asset

  Last Man Standing

  The Rob Stone Series

  The Ares Virus

  The Town

  The Island

  Standalone Novels

  Hell’s Mouth

  Unforgotten

  Novellas

  The Perfect Murder?

  Atonement

  (an Alex King short story)

  Further details of these titles can be found at

  www.apbateman.com

  To Clair

  For your understanding, as well as your laughs and love and friendship

  To Summer and Lewis

  For keeping me on my toes…

  For Dad

  For being there

  Chapter One

  The Arctic Circle

  Fifty miles southeast of Spitsbergen Island

  Svalbard Archipelago

  King looked at the pistol in the man’s hand. He’d been there before, and he’d never got used to it. The impotence of being unarmed and staring down the wrong end of a gun. The man wore thick thermal gloves against the cold and his trigger finger was still nestled against the frame. The sign of a pro. Little chance of a negligent discharge, but given the cold, the thick gloves and the immediate proximity, King would have had his finger on the trigger. But then again, King did not have the gun and the man in front of him did.

  The ship trundled onwards, its diesel engines thumping and droning lazily in the background, the steel hull striking occasional slabs of sea ice the size of a single bed. King could see the man’s breath in front of him, almost frozen by the time it reached his own face. The breath crystalising slowly and falling to the deck like a snow globe that had been given only a lacklustre shake.

  “They warned me about you in Moscow…”

  King shrugged. “Whereas I don’t even know who you are.”

  “That makes for the better operative, don’t you think?”

  King looked at the man’s gloves. They seemed thick and cumbersome and half an inch in diameter too big for the trigger guard of the Makarov pistol. But then again, the man was a Russian and they tended to be at home in the cold. Although as he felt the sharp, icy chill on his face, he seriously doubted anyone could get used to this. But King knew that if the tables had been turned, he would have taken off the gloves before he had reached for the gun. Experience counted for so much in this game, and the thought that his opponent hadn’t thought this through as thoroughly as he would have, gave him some hope at the very least.

  “What do you want?” asked King.

  “The same thing as you do.”

  “I seriously doubt that.”

  “Well, I suppose I want what’s ours, and you want to make sure the world never finds it.” He paused, his breath all around him and falling steadily to the frozen deck. “But essentially, we’re after the same thing. We both want something and are prepared to kill to stop the enemy getting their hands on it.”

  King glanced at the ice under the man’s feet. Behind him, the rail was heavy with a build-up of icicles, large stalactites hanging down several inches. Eight inches or more in the darker recesses behind the lifeboats. King had the advantage of standing on galvanised steel grating, his footing feeling both firm and secure under him. He realised he was still holding the mug of tea. He looked around for somewhere to put it, then simply dropped it on the deck between them, the tea flooding around the man’s feet, the tin mug clattering across the deck towards the lifeboats. “There’s a manifest,” he said. “If you kill me, they’ll know in no time.” He nodded at the gun in the man’s hand. “And you certainly can’t kill me with that, or they’ll be looking for a murderer.”

  The man shrugged like it was nothing. “People have accidents all the time. They slip on ice, fall overboard. It happens.”

  “Not with nine-millimetre holes in them.”

  The man waved the pistol to the port side. “Step this way…”

  King smiled and shook his head belligerently. “Not in a thousand lifetimes, sunshine,” he said. He watched the hesitation in the younger man’s eyes. “You shoot me, and there’ll be an investigation. People will recall conversations, they’ll have alibis. But where were you? As soon as we dock, you’ll be the number one suspect.”

  “I’ll be gone way before then,” he said, looking at the inflatable tender with its forty-horsepower engine.

  “There will be a reception committee at the rigs. You’re going nowhere before the ship gets there.” He paused, glancing down, and watching the spilt tea freezing around the man’s feet. “You made your move too soon, son. Inexperience, that’s all.”

  “Don’t you dare patronise me!” He stepped closer. King noticed the finger was inside the trigger guard now, the material of the glove had bunched up. He could see that the Makarov’s hammer was not cocked. The trigger could still be pulled, but the weight of the pull on the double-action Makarov was up there with gym equipment. Twice that of a Glock, at around fourteen pounds.

  “That RIB won’t do you any good out here.”

  “Let me worry about that. You should worry about yourself. The water will be cold, but it will make your death swift. Give into it, you’ll know next to nothing about it…”

  King moved quickly, grabbing the pistol, and pushing it back towards the man as he kicked him in the shin with all the force he could muster. Not to cause pain – which it invariably did – but to shove him backwards in the ice formed from the tea he had intentionally spilt. The man had pulled the trigger, but King’s grip had eased the slide of the weapon back just enough to disengage the striker and as long as he kept up the pressure, the weapon was useless. The man slipped and tried to regain his balance, but King kicked out again, and followed up with a headbutt onto the bridge of the man’s nose. The younger man recoiled, his eyes closed, the pain excruciating, but King gripped him by the windpipe, adding a further dimension for the man’s instincts to wrestle with – three different areas for the pain receptors to signal the brain and for the brain to become confused how to deal with each - and pushed him back against the railing. King had the weight and strength advantage, and the man was struggling for traction on the ship’s slippery deck. Then King changed tactics and instead of kicking the man’s shin again, he hooked his foot behind the man’s heel and pulled his leg towards him as he pushed hard on his throat, forcing him backwards against the railing. Momentum, inertia, and gravity came together like the independent notes of a symphony and the man pirouetted over the railing and fell silently twenty feet or so into the icy water. Not even a grunt, let alone a scream, as the man’s instincts were to take a deep breath in mid-air, nothing more.

  King did not hear the
splash above the monotonous thump of the engines. He had the Makarov in his hand, and he tucked it into his pocket as he walked the length of the railing and searched for him in the water. There was plenty of ice, but no yellow and red flashes of colour of the man’s ski jacket. King realised he had underestimated the ship’s speed, and he looked further out to the stern and saw the man floundering in the water. He turned around and watched the bridge. Above him he thought he saw movement on the upper deck, somebody stepping into a doorway. The light was dim and grey, and it was difficult to judge both distance and movement. But no alarm sounded and nobody else appeared. King turned and looked back at the water for his would-be killer, but the man had gone. Succumbed to the cold and the inevitability of death in such a hostile, merciless environment. Perhaps he had remembered his own hollow words and simply given up the struggle in favour of a swift end. A lungful of water and short struggle under the surface to end the searing pain of the cold. Whatever the scenario, the wake of the ship rolled on, there was no colour in the grey water and King’s mission was unimpeded.

  For now.

  Chapter Two

  Three days earlier

  Dorset, England

  “I really do wish there was another way.”

  “There is. You’re just not looking at the other options. There’s always another way.” King paused. “The easy way, and the right way. It doesn’t sound like either way is going to do us any good here.”

  “We need you to try.”

  “We?”

  “The service.” Mereweather paused. “Very well, I need you. The ramifications of this are far-reaching.”

  “You were giving me time to help with Caroline’s recuperation.”

  “To act as a mere nursemaid? Caroline is mending well. I spoke to her before I left town.” Town. King smirked. Mereweather came from a class of people who probably still thought London had a season. “The point is, and don’t think for a moment that this can reflect in your salary, but I can’t think of anyone who is more capable.”

  King smiled wryly. “Bullshit. You can’t find anybody crazy enough to take it on. That’s usually how these things work.”

  “You are the first person I’ve spoken to.”

  “But that is only because you already know the answer the others will give you.” King turned to Dave Lomu sitting at the neighbouring table, a tabloid newspaper open, his eyes flicking up every now and then to the entrance of the café. “Would you have a crack at this, Dave?”

  “Shit, no,” the big Fijian said without looking up. He took a bite out of his roll and said through a mouthful of bread, bacon, and brown sauce. “Black people don’t swim well enough. And with a cover as a marine dive engineer, I’m betting there’s a bit more than paddling involved.”

  “But you’re from Fiji,” King retorted. “Don’t give me all that white men can’t jump, black men don’t swim, shit. You used to dive for your bloody breakfast.”

  “Well, okay. But I doubt I would find a wetsuit that fits.”

  King shook his head. “Just as well. You mean a thermal dry suit. You’d most likely die of cold inside thirty minutes in a wetsuit in those temperatures…” He looked back at Simon Mereweather, acting director of MI5. “What about Rashid?”

  “Nah, he has a firm sense of his own mortality,” Big Dave interrupted. “Besides, he hates the cold as much as I do, and doesn’t like getting wet either.”

  “He’s on assignment anyway,” Mereweather replied tiresomely.

  “There’s the SBS. If this isn’t what they do, then I don’t know what is.” King had worked with the Special Boat Service before on an operation to rescue civilians, including intelligence officers in West Africa. It was a long time ago, but he had always held them in high esteem.

  “No, he wants the crazy motherfucker who jumps between aircraft without a parachute…” Big Dave jeered through another mouthful. He looked at Simon Mereweather and shrugged. “Tell it how it is, boss. This mission is so bullshit that you know that nobody, but our man here will rise to the challenge. Damned fool doesn’t know when he’s beat, or when he shouldn’t even step into the ring.” He looked at King and said, “Stay away from this one, mate. Spend some time with the missus. How is she, by the way?”

  “Recovering. Still needs the crutches for prolonged periods on her feet, but slowly getting there.” King paused. He wouldn’t mention the tragedy of the miscarriage. That was their business only. “There’s the mental scars as well,” he added, thinking of her ordeal.

  Big Dave nodded. “Understandable. That mental shit is the worst. Glad she’s getting there. Send her my love…”

  “Do you mind?” Mereweather stared at him, perplexed. “Perhaps you should wait outside?”

  King looked at the window, the rain lashing against the pane. Beyond, the sea was angry and taking its mood out on the shingle beach. Sea spray showered the cars parked outside. “That won’t be necessary. He’s got my back, that’s all.” He paused, took a mouthful of tea and said, “I don’t think I’m reading this right. Give it to me. And don’t hold back.” He looked up as Neil Ramsay returned to the table with four more cups of tea and another bacon roll for Big Dave.

  “Don’t hold back on what?” the MI5 liaison officer said as he put the tray down on the table.

  “The mission. The parameters and the objectives,” Mereweather replied tersely. “For goodness’ sake, I knew that we should have done this at Thames House.”

  “But we couldn’t,” Ramsay protested somewhat pointedly. “It’s a deniable operation. No records, no trail.”

  “A black-ops mission, then,” Big Dave added looking at Ramsay.

  “Shut up,” Ramsay replied.

  “Something we should know about?” Mereweather asked.

  “Private joke,” said Big Dave. A black Fijian, he was always poking fun at Ramsay’s middle-class sensibilities, or general ignorance thereof, on people of colour. When Ramsay used something innocent that could have connotations, Big Dave loved to twist his words or bait him into an awkward situation.

  “The point is…” said Ramsay, ignoring his colleague. “… this is deniable and worse than that, it’s practically suicidal. MI6 wouldn’t come up with something like this, and we all know the egos on that lot. The SAS or SBS wouldn’t condone a mission like it if they had the full facts, and something like this is not even within MI5’s remit.”

  “There’s a great deal we do that’s nothing near our remit,” said King.

  Ramsay shook his head despairingly. “True. And this is a vitally important operation, but I can’t in good conscience recommend you take it on, Alex.”

  Mereweather sighed. “Oh, for God’s sake!” he exclaimed in exasperation. “Okay. It’s an unfortunate situation, and a difficult mission. But let’s not forget that it was King who put the asset on the submarine, and it was King who did not check whether she was infected in the first place when he met her. In effect, losing a Royal Navy submarine and its entire crew…”

  “Don’t pull your punches, Simon,” said King coldly.

  “You asked me to give it to you straight and not to hold back. Well, here it is…” Mereweather replied testily. “You got a Russian asset out of a Russian biological weapons research facility through Lapland, Finland and Norway. In doing so, we retrieved the information that we required on a stolen USB. Not to manufacture, but to keep Russia from doing so. The formula was incomplete. No harm, no foul. A team from the SAS later destroyed the laboratory, making it look like its hydroelectric turbines had overheated during the spring thaws and rising water levels and the regenerator had failed and caught fire. The laboratory was vaporised. So, we didn’t have the genetic building blocks for the virus to procure a vaccine, and the Russians didn’t have them either, so couldn’t finish making its weapon. That wasn’t the perfect outcome, but it was about as near to bloody perfect as anyone could wish for.”

  “But Natalia Grekov became infected getting the evidence out. How was I meant to know?
”

  “You should have anticipated it.”

  “What, strip her naked and use my non-existent training in medicine and biological pathogen research to perform a relevant examination?” King scoffed. “It’s worth noting that I would have travelled with her on that submarine, but when I got her to her ride at the exfil under fire, I bailed on the escape plan and remained so that I could ensure the sub got away safely out of the fjord. It was coming under fire from an RPG.”

  “Luckily for you,” Big Dave commented flatly, then shrugged. “The submarine ride home, that is. Not the RPG, obviously.”

  Mereweather nodded. “Indeed. That submarine subsequently went missing. I’ve seen the footage, the pictures of the animals in the laboratory. I’ve been briefed by the scientists and can’t truly bring myself to imagine the full horrors of what the poor crew must have endured before they died. Or of what happened onboard for it to disappear. But it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination. The virus was cultivated and designed as a unique weapon. To be released upon unsuspecting nations and render the population inhuman. To lose all inhibitions and morality, to have them attack each other in rage…”

  “Like zombies?” Big Dave asked. He hadn’t been with the team during the time of this operation, having later come in as a military contractor before being officially signed up to MI5.

  “No,” Mereweather said sharply. “The scientists were both abundantly and adamantly clear on that. And we can’t trivialise this bioweapon by throwing the Z word out there. It’s too fantastical. There are similar drugs that affect people in such a way. PCP, for instance. That stops people feeling pain or fatigue. And spice makes people function comatose, zombie-like. The world moves around them, and they are unaware. Anabolic steroids can create anger issues.” He paused. “These attributes are all found within this virus.”