Two minutes to midnight.., p.1
Two Minutes to Midnight (Matt Drake 33), page 1
Two Minutes to Midnight
(Matt Drake #33)
By
David Leadbeater
Other Books by David Leadbeater:
The Matt Drake Series
A constantly evolving, action-packed romp based in the escapist action-adventure genre:
The Bones of Odin (Matt Drake #1)
The Blood King Conspiracy (Matt Drake #2)
The Gates of Hell (Matt Drake 3)
The Tomb of the Gods (Matt Drake #4)
Brothers in Arms (Matt Drake #5)
The Swords of Babylon (Matt Drake #6)
Blood Vengeance (Matt Drake #7)
Last Man Standing (Matt Drake #8)
The Plagues of Pandora (Matt Drake #9)
The Lost Kingdom (Matt Drake #10)
The Ghost Ships of Arizona (Matt Drake #11)
The Last Bazaar (Matt Drake #12)
The Edge of Armageddon (Matt Drake #13)
The Treasures of Saint Germain (Matt Drake #14)
Inca Kings (Matt Drake #15)
The Four Corners of the Earth (Matt Drake #16)
The Seven Seals of Egypt (Matt Drake #17)
Weapons of the Gods (Matt Drake #18)
The Blood King Legacy (Matt Drake #19)
Devil’s Island (Matt Drake #20)
The Fabergé Heist (Matt Drake #21)
Four Sacred Treasures (Matt Drake #22)
The Sea Rats (Matt Drake #23)
Blood King Takedown (Matt Drake #24)
Devil’s Junction (Matt Drake #25)
Voodoo soldiers (Matt Drake #26)
The Carnival of Curiosities (Matt Drake #27)
Theatre of War (Matt Drake #28)
Shattered Spear (Matt Drake #29)
Ghost Squadron (Matt Drake #30)
A Cold Day in Hell (Matt Drake #31)
The Winged Dagger (Matt Drake #32)
The Alicia Myles Series
Aztec Gold (Alicia Myles #1)
Crusader’s Gold (Alicia Myles #2)
Caribbean Gold (Alicia Myles #3)
Chasing Gold (Alicia Myles #4)
Galleon’s Gold (Alicia Myles #5)
The Torsten Dahl Thriller Series
Stand Your Ground (Dahl Thriller #1)
The Relic Hunters Series
The Relic Hunters (Relic Hunters #1)
The Atlantis Cipher (Relic Hunters #2)
The Amber Secret (Relic Hunters #3)
The Hostage Diamond (Relic Hunters #4)
The Rocks of Albion (Relic Hunters #5)
The Illuminati Sanctum (Relic Hunters #6)
The Illuminati Endgame (Relic Hunters #7)
The Atlantis Heist (Relic Hunters #8)
The City of a Thousand Ghosts (Relic Hunters #9)
The Joe Mason Series
The Vatican Secret (Joe Mason #1)
The Demon Code (Joe Mason #2)
The Midnight Conspiracy (Joe Mason #3)
The Rogue Series
Rogue (Book One)
The Disavowed Series:
The Razor’s Edge (Disavowed #1)
In Harm’s Way (Disavowed #2)
Threat Level: Red (Disavowed #3)
The Chosen Few Series
Chosen (The Chosen Trilogy #1)
Guardians (The Chosen Trilogy #2)
Heroes (The Chosen Trilogy #3)
Short Stories
Walking with Ghosts (A short story)
A Whispering of Ghosts (A short story)
All genuine comments are very welcome at:
davidleadbeater2011@hotmail.co.uk
Twitter: @dleadbeater2011
Visit David’s website for the latest news and information:
davidleadbeater.com
Contents
Other Books by David Leadbeater
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
CHAPTER FORTY TWO
CHAPTER FORTY THREE
CHAPTER FORTY FOUR
Other Books by David Leadbeater
CHAPTER ONE
The General was not really a General. His name was Ivanov. He was an asshole. He made a point of telling everyone he was a General but, really, everyone knew he was an asshole.
He was a heavyset man, tall and broad, with a thick beard. His eyes were like tiny piss holes in the snow amid the ample fleshiness of his face. His double chins threatened to become triple any minute now. But his arms were brawny, his stomach flat, his voice a stentorian bellow that galvanised every last man under his command.
Ivanov hated his current situation. Kazakhstan was dreary and grim and cold, a barren, freezing landscape that would turn any man’s dreams to mush. At the moment they faced frozen hail and wind and a vast, impenetrable darkness. They were bouncing along in three trucks, three large trucks, and Ivanov was sitting in the passenger seat of the leader. He had a seatbelt on, but even he was being jostled and thrown from side to side by the road’s almost subterranean ruts. God only knew how the men in the rear were getting on. He half expected that, when they stopped, they’d find a pile of arms and legs and guns just resting and groaning in the middle of the back of the truck.
Ivanov tried to stay focused. The mission was as imperative as it was secret, as essential as it was deadly. Ivanov considered himself lucky to be on the payroll, even as he hung on to the grab handles and sped through darkness on this unfathomable Kazakhstan night. The driver didn’t speak to him. There was no noise from the men in the back. The other two trucks were radio silent.
No talk until they arrived at the warehouse.
Ivanov was pleased with the progress so far. The job might be an uncomfortable one, but it was only a brief span of uncomfortableness amid the whole. Once the job was done, he could practically retire. Imagine that, he thought. Imagine being able to retire to some sunny beach, to lie back on a comfy deck chair with one of those umbrella-filled drinks, watching the world – and the women – go by without a care in the world, his days of murder and death and bloodshed behind him, only days filled with sunshine, sand and glittering seas stretching ahead.
Ivanov realised his mind was wandering. It was becoming more of a problem. Ivanov had an iron will; he could always focus as dead straight as a sniper shot on the job at hand. Until recently, that was. Recently, he found his mind straying, his thoughts flicking over a million different subjects, most of them involving him in a better place, a more amenable situation. Was he getting old? Soft? Past his prime?
Ivanov wouldn’t believe it and doubled down on every moment. He doubled down on everything now, including how hard he pushed the men. It wouldn’t endear him to them, but then he wasn’t trying to be their class teacher. He was their leader in war.
War?
Yes, it is war. The thing they were doing – the thing they were here in Kazakhstan to do – was one of the worst acts of war. It could lead to obliteration.
Ivanov didn’t care so long as he reached that sandy beach.
He concentrated now, tried to bring the mission parameters online in his mind. They were jouncing through the darkness, GPS sending out a good, clear signal, three trucks on a midnight road somewhere around the ass-end of the earth. There was nobody else around, the place being a wilderness. Of course, it hadn’t always been that way, and that was the reason they were here.
Back in the 90’s Kazakhstan had been a part of the Soviet Union. That was before a lot of states gained their independence. The Soviet Union had been a sprawling empire that stretched from the Baltic and Black seas to the Pacific Ocean. It had built and owned more property than it could ever remember, than it knew what to do with. There were abandoned factories, facilities, warehouses, tunnels, cold war shelters, sub pens, mountain retreats, workshops, manufacturing plants and industrial units stretching from one side of the old U.S.S.R to the other, many standing idle and collecting dust.
And many of these old facilities were far from empty.
Like the one Ivanov was headed towards, for example.
He checked his watch. 00.23. Bang on time. They’d planned the raid down to the last minute. They were approaching the facility now. Ivanov readied himself.
In old Kazakhstan, the boss had identified over one hun
Take the place they were at now, for example. Old codename: Kurgan. It was anything but pretty. A solid block rectangle, all angular shapes and concrete walls. Ivanov knew that because he’d seen the satellite photos when they were planning the mission. He knew that a deep forest and single track lanes surrounded the ugly block, and that a thick canopy of overgrowth mostly hid it. He was aware there’d been no human activity in years, that anything lurking there would not do so on two legs or necessarily draw breath. Ivanov watched now as the three trucks pulled up at their prearranged stopping points.
The sudden lack of motion made his head spin. Ivanov blinked, grabbed his weapon, and cracked open the door of the truck. The hot metal ticked in the dark, steamed slightly where droplets of rain hit it. All around was a deep pitch black.
Ivanov heard a loud commotion coming from the rear of the trucks, mercenaries climbing down onto the soggy, dark path. He slipped on his night vision goggles. Instantly, the surrounding scene lit up in luminous green. He took a moment to get used to it. Ivanov grinned as he noticed the time. They were bang on, still. The boss would be happy.
Which boss, Ivanov wasn’t entirely sure. No way would their immediate superior be capable of utilising the thing they were about to obtain. That left an option Ivanov didn’t really want to contemplate – that there were layers of command above him, several in fact. He didn’t particularly like being the pawn at the bottom of the pile.
But his nose followed the money. And there was a pile of it on offer. He’d accept any humiliation if it resulted in a tonne of cash. His mind snapped back to the moment as the men ran from the side of the trucks to the ugly block building in front of them.
Ivanov fell in with them. Overhanging trees stood to both sides, their branches dripping water. The track was muddy. Ivanov’s boots constantly slipped. He closed in on the front of the facility. It stood about forty feet high and had a corrugated metal roof. Foliage clung to those bits Ivanov could make out through the green glow. The men slowed as they approached the front door.
Ivanov pushed his way through them. They all carried AK-47M’s, a light, reliable gun popular with the Russian military. It had low recoil, was compact, and had the standard issue folding buttstock. They also carried another staple of the Russian special forces. Glock 17’s were holstered at their sides. The men stood around now, most of them holding their weapons at ease, whilst others formed a perimeter around the trucks. Everyone assumed they’d arrived under the radar, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
Ivanov nodded at the man standing right next to the door. He carried a pair of bolt cutters which he used now to slice through the thick rusty chain that, at some point in time, had been looped through the door handles to make them more secure. It might have been easier to wrench the door handles off. Ivanov didn’t worry about that, though. The mercenary struggled with the cutter for a long minute before biting through and then letting the long chain rattle to the ground. It struck the paved floor with a thud. Ivanov watched the man attack the lock.
It didn’t take long because of the lock’s age and state of repair. The man grabbed hold of the black iron handles and pulled the door open. A heavy grinding sound split the night. Ivanov stood back as another man helpfully joined the first, struggling with the heavy, wedged door.
Ivanov waited. He surveyed the state of the men. Most were standing around, weapons now ready, just like him. They had communications systems in their ears, but hadn’t heard a whisper from the perimeter guard, which was a good sign.
Finally, the door stood wide open.
Ivanov waved some men inside. No way would he be going in first. The interior was currently a chunk of utter darkness. First, two men entered the warehouse and then two more. The darkness swallowed them up. Ivanov listened for a moment, heard nothing untoward, and followed them inside.
It was a vast space, stretching from front to back with no walls, no partitions. The mercs were shining their torches around. This was the unknown part of the mission, the one factor they couldn’t plan down to the last detail.
Ivanov raised his gun, slightly nervous, slightly annoyed. They needed to get on with it. More men filed in behind him. That should help. The more workforce they got involved in this, the better it would be, the faster it would be. For all their planning, there remained several things that could still go wrong and sink them quickly.
The mercs fanned out through the warehouse. They knew what they were seeking.
And then Ivanov heard his name being spoken through the comms system.
‘General Ivanov,’ a voice said. ‘Is this what we’re looking for?’
Ivanov strode forward, passing through quite a crowd as he walked the length of the warehouse past old crates packed with grenades and rifles. Of course, it was typical that the item they sought was at the far end.
But once there, his feet stopped moving, and his jaw dropped in awe.
‘That’s it,’ he said.
His heart pounded. He’d barely believed the intel, barely believed this was possible. The reality of it hit him even harder now, drove into his brain like a twelve inch spike.
Several large stacks of crates in front of him comprised fourteen long-forgotten nuclear weapons.
‘We only need one,’ he said.
CHAPTER TWO
‘General’ Ivanov supervised the loading of the nuclear weapon onto a specially constructed heavy-duty dolly that they made up right there in front of the cache of weapons. The nuke itself wasn’t huge. It stood about four feet high and was quite bulky. After the collapse of the U.S.S.R the former soviet republics were supposed to have returned all the soviet nuclear arms that were stationed in their countries.
But clearly not, Ivanov now thought.
Around the world, in every regime, many things happened that went under the radar. The collapse of the Soviet Union was a very volatile time. Could the government and its commanders have forgotten about fourteen nuclear bombs housed in Kazakhstan?
Very likely. In fact, it might well be the tip of the iceberg.
Ivanov knew there would probably be more, even single bombs out there, but the big boss, the end user, wanted just one from this cache of fourteen. So, one they would get. He watched half of the men lift and load the bomb onto the dolly as the other half planted the explosives.
The boss wanted no evidence left behind.
Ivanov hurried his men with curt comments and gestures. They went about their business competently. They started rolling the nuclear weapon towards the door, several men to each side of the dolly. Once outside, they would find it hard to load onto the truck, but the winch system should help. Elsewhere, men were planting explosives into the ground.
They had assured Ivanov that the explosives they were using wouldn’t trigger a nuclear explosion. It didn’t work that way. All they were trying to do was bury the warehouse under tonnes of rubble, leave it inaccessible for a long time.
They were ready now.
Ivanov moved out of the building. He didn’t hurry, that wasn’t his style. His men rushed around him, returning to their trucks. Ivanov walked back out into the drizzle and the stiff wind and watched them load the nuclear device onto the second truck. It went up with a hiss of machinery and then swung inside, where men would secure it to the deck with bolts. After that, they would fashion a crate around it.
Was it heavy? Ivanov had already seen four men lift it. The nuke was as mobile as it could get, considering its age. Ivanov swung his bulk back up into the passenger seat and waited for the driver to return. There was a buzz of conversation in his ears, men making ready for the exfil. Those in charge of the explosives reported they were ready.
