He moved his face to the corner of the glass and took a quick look, his eyes in the window frame long enough to make out a couple of figures standing ten or fifteen metres down the corridor.They were near the entrance to the galley, a strong indication that they were playing at being jailers.
He leaned back against the wall. He had to think. This was the pivotal juncture of his private task. The next point of no return. He hadn’t really believed he would get here and now that he had the questions were starting. It was a bit on the crazy side, he had to admit. He could still change his mind. But Jordan had been even crazier when he’d driven into that Afghan village to rescue him. The man had been selected to be executed by the hijackers, and Stratton owed him his life, and that meant he owed Jordan a future.
Stratton put all other thoughts aside and examined the next phase. He needed to disrupt the hijackers’ flow. If he could release the workers - assuming they were all in the galley - that would drastically alter the hijackers’ plan. He asked himself how many of them there were, how they would react, what price they were willing to pay to succeed, and what they were willing to sacrifice when faced with failure.There were endless gambles. Endless consequences of his actions.
‘Bollocks,’ he muttered as he stood to face the swing doors and brought his weapon’s butt into his shoulder. The gods had got him this far. He took a deep breath, exhaled, pushed open the doors and marched into the corridor. Both of the men were big. One had red hair. The other looked Slavic. They reacted slowly to him striding towards them in his black dry-bag, shoulder harness, kit hanging from hips, pistol strapped low on thigh, another weapon levelled in front just below his face, both eyes in short-range battle mode staring into theirs.
Viking and the Bulgarian began to move apart and brought their weapons up to fire. Stratton pulled the trigger. Click, click. No other sound. The first silenced bullet struck Viking in the chest, the second hit the Bulgarian in a similar spot. The initial rounds were intended to destabilise whoever they hit, the centre of the torso being a bigger and easier target than the head, which required the shooter to take a millisecond longer aiming to ensure a hit. Operatives still did this even if the targets were wearing body armour since the purpose was to disrupt the enemy’s aim and increase the time they would take to return fire.
Both men rocked back as the bullets entered their bodies. Stratton neither slowed nor speeded up his deliberate pace. He fired again, the weapon going clickety-click as two more bullets spat from the end of the silencer extension. These hit both men in the head. The life went from their limbs and they dropped as if they had been switched off, the sound of their falls the loudest noise of the firefight. But the clatter of their weapons on the solid floor had been significant relative to the quiet of the corridor.
Stratton speeded up as he approached the galley doors. He found himself in a classic hostage situation. He’d breached the first line of the kidnappers’ defence and bodies had begun to drop. He knew the surviving kidnappers’ choices: give up and surrender, lie down and toss their weapons aside, mingle with their captives; defend themselves and engage the attackers; or turn their weapons on the hostages in an attempt to kill as many as possible before dying themselves. It was his single responsibility to make sure he reached his objectives as swiftly as possible and kill every one of the enemy in the quickest possible time.
Stratton pushed through the galley doors and stopped dead, unable to move in further to dominate the room because of the bodies sprawled on the floor in front of him. He kept the weapon against his shoulder, looking along the top of it, analysing the panoramic image he was presented with.
Jock and Queen stood at either end of the long serving counter, weapons in their hands. They’d heard about the movement on the spider decks. The thumps and clatters in the corridor outside had snapped them out of any daydreaming. But the only way they could have been assured a fighting chance against the man who entered their space was if they’d had their weapons