Redeemer
Authors: Chris Ryan
Mission One: Redeemer
Also by Chris Ryan
Mission One: Redeemer
Mission Two: The Rock
Mission Three: Die Trying
Mission Four: Fallout
The One That Got Away
Chris Ryan’s SAS Fitness Book
Chris Ryan’s Ultimate Survival Guide
Fight to Win
Stand By, Stand By
Zero Option
The Kremlin Device
Tenth Man Down
Hit List
The Watchman
Land of Fire
Greed
The Increment
Blackout
Ultimate Weapon
Strike Back
Firefight
Who Dares Wins
The Kill Zone
Mission One: Redeemer
Chris Ryan
First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Coronet
An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
1
Copyright © Chris Ryan 2010
The right of Chris Ryan to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781444708530
Hodder & Stoughton policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
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‘There was never a good war, or a bad peace.’
Benjamin Franklin
Stevenage, UK. 17.00 hours.
His phone rang.
Joe Gardner’s phone never rang. When you lived off the grid, people soon forgot you even existed.
Not many people knew Gardner’s name any more. Few enough that he was curious to know who was reaching out to him. He looked at the screen.
+00551171674519.
It was a number he didn’t recognize.
And a voice he did.
‘Mate, you’ve gotta help me,’ someone shouted above a clatter of gunfire. The signal was weak. ‘They’re on my fucking case. Came out of nowhere. Millions of the fuckers. It’s like vintage Baghdad.’
‘John? Is that you, mate? You’re breaking up.’
‘We’ve called for backup but no one’s arrived yet. Thumbs up bloody arses. You remember the Afghan, don’t you? Now I’m in deep shit, Joe. You’ve gotta help me out.’
Gardner reached for his fake left hand with his good right.
Afghanistan
. The IED blowing up in his face. Smoke melting away, an exposed nub where his left hand was supposed to be, blood pumping out like oil from a burst pipe. John Bald it was who’d radioed in for a medevac under enemy fire. Saved Gardner’s life. He owed Bald. Big time.
‘Where the fuck are you?’
A pause for breath.
‘John?’
He remembered the kid next to him. Twenty-one years old, his legs ripped off at the thigh, femur bones jutting out like a couple of split baseball bats. And the pints of blood – as if he’d been washing in a forty-gallon drum topped up with the stuff.
‘Barbosa favela. Middle of fucking Rio de Janeiro. My location is my Troop times forty north, your Troop times twenty west from the Christ statue. Get here as soon as you can, Joe.’
‘Mate, what’s going—?’
The line died.
0722 hours.
The Cobra Hilton Plaza hotel stood tall over the rotten favelas. The room was located on the twelfth floor and looked out to the south, away from the beaches and towards a metropolis of filth and human shit laid bare.
‘I’m telling you, I don’t know shit,’ the guy chained to the radiator, Paulinho Nava, said.
‘As you already explained, my friend.’
‘Then why the fuck are you doing this?’
‘You’re beginning to piss me off.’
‘You’re fucking crazy,’ Nava snorted.
Nestor Weiss pulled back the plunger, allowing the last liquid in the vial to fill into the syringe. Removing the syringe, he expelled any trapped air and gave the needle a tap.
‘What’s that?’
Weiss did not reply.
‘When the other guys hear what you’ve done, you’ll pay in blood. Anyone who harms a BOPE officer, they’re marked for death, do you hear?
Marked
.’ Nava’s face was puffed up. He looked like he was suffering from a million bee stings.
Weiss was pleased with his earlier handiwork. He didn’t throw many punches these days, but when he did, he could still beat a man real bad.
He held out the 12.7mm hypodermic needle.
‘You’re looking at 100ccs of sulphuric acid. Sure you want to piss me off?’
‘Blind me then, you fuck.’
‘Oh, but this isn’t going in your eyes.’
The bravado was gone. Nava’s veins rippled on his neck like tense rope as he tried to inch further and further away from Weiss, pressing himself up against the wall. He kicked out as Weiss came a little nearer.
‘Stay away from me!’
‘Did they teach you how to survive this in training school, my friend?’
Nava spat on to the textured silk carpet.
‘Did they?’
Shifting to the left to sidestep Nava’s flailing legs, Weiss knelt down beside him. The man’s head was slumped forward. It was all he could do to fix his eyes on the needle.
‘No, I didn’t think so,’ Weiss continued. ‘When it comes to death, everyone’s a first-timer.’
‘If this is about money, I have… I can pay you—’
‘You know it’s not.’
‘Women, then. Or boys. Fucking whatever. Shit, just name it and I’ll get it for you, I swear.’
‘None of these things interest me, my friend. The only thing that could keep you alive, you say you do not have.’
Nava’s face dismantled. He would’ve cried, Weiss thought, if the BOPE commander hadn’t already wrung every tear from his body. Pleading for his miserable life. ‘I told you once – shit, a hundred times – I don’t know where he is.’
‘Then there’s nothing else to talk about.’
‘No, no. Please no.’
Weiss tested the syringe, squeezing a drop of acid on to the carpet. It made a sizzling noise on contact and burned its way through the fabric, all the way down to the floorboard.
Paulinho Nava, Lieutenant Colonel of the Special Operations Police Battalion, hero of the Siege of Reis favela, thrashed about wildly as he tried to yank the radiator off with his handcuffed arms.
All told, Weiss had killed more than six hundred men, women and children. Normally the victims seemed to accept death in their last moments, as if they were paralyzed, and Weiss was all-powerful, like a god. He got high off that feeling.
There’s no such thing as a guy who loves killing, but then there’s no such thing as a smoker who doesn’t want to give up. Weiss still experienced guilt after each kill, still carried in his pocket a five-inch carving of the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe which he rubbed for forgiveness. But killing, he thought, is also more addictive than heroin. Many hitmen, himself included, became aggravated if they did not kill for a while.
He shanked the needle into Nava’s chest.
Depressing the plunger, Weiss flooded the heart muscle with corrosive acid. Nava’s head shook violently from side to side. His bronze skin glowed ruby red. He foamed at the mouth. Boiling blood oozed out of every orifice. His nose, eyes, mouth and ears. Nava clenched his jaw and grunted.
He did what everyone did before they died, and shat his pants.
Nava stilled. A stream of blood trickled down his ear and on to a heavily tattooed right arm. Grim Reaper on the bicep, Frank Sinatra at the elbow, a 1930s playgirl on the forearm. He seemed to laugh, did the Reaper, as the images coloured red.
Satisfied this was dead meat, Weiss extracted the syringe, placed the cap on the needle and tucked it into his jacket pocket.
The first time he’d employed this particular method, Weiss had been curious as to the extent of the damage caused. So he bribed a coroner to prise open the ribcage and reveal the insides. He discovered that there was nothing left. Heart, lungs, kidney, pectoral muscles, collarbone. As if someone had thrown a hand grenade inside the chest cavity.
Weiss glanced at his shitty digital watch, and remembered it didn’t work. The clock on the wall, however, told him it was eight on a clear-eyed morning. Normally he worked as a contractor, no questions asked, doing business with the Juárez and Los Zetas cartels. They paid well. But today he was on the trail of thirty million dollars. The kind of money that could allow him to retire to the Cocos Islands, off Costa Rica. Drinking tequila on Chatham Beach. Wearing a more expensive watch, perhaps a Cartier, and having the finest pussy in all of Latin America. Weiss was tired of killing.
You’ve a chase on your hands now, he thought, as he tore off the hygienic gloves and tucked them in the pockets of his single-breasted, mid-calf-length duster coat, black denim. Nodded at Nava’s corpse. Locked the room door and slipped the sign over the door knob.
Por favor não incomodar.
Do not disturb. Left the hotel and climbed into his rented BMW E90 sedan.
Have to find him today, Gardner figured. Otherwise it’s too late.
Well. Time to pay a visit to a man who can help.
0815 hours.
The Little Bird’s rotary blades cut up the sky. Sunrise kicking in over Rio and Joe Gardner’s hangover was along for the ride.
He had a beard that could strike a wet match and a nose that had more breaks in it than an American football game. Tied to a lanyard with his feet resting on the rail, he looked out at the favela two hundred metres below. Thousands of sprawling shanty huts built on top of each other, the huts fixed precariously on a rifle-green hillside, spitting distance from the financial district and high-rise apartments. To the west he could see the statue of Christ the Redeemer. Jesus didn’t seem to give a fuck about the slum next door.
‘Barbosa favela,’ said Leon, sitting next to him.