by Andy McNab
As I got further up the hill the bright red steel roof of the station began to fill my horizon to my left. Below and to my right was the town. Bodies already out and about, getting ready for another murk-filled day. What that might mean for us, I wasn’t too sure.
I stopped about twenty short of the building. The Gazes weren’t outside on the concrete, as I’d been hoping, but that wasn’t a problem, depending on how many bodies were inside.
The rest caught up, gulping in the air, feeling the wind fire icy droplets into their skin, like frozen gravel.
Rio was enjoying the other two suffering. ‘Don’t like the puff now, do you?’
‘I’ll go do a quick recce.’ I left them and moved to the station, towards the windows on the side of the building, although there were no lights shining out. Inside, I could make out the two red wagons in the larger of the two areas inside.
On the other side of the building there was a wall with a number of doors, which were clearly the offices. I moved round the front and passed the wide and closed roller-shutter, and to the right of it was the office space. There was a light trying hard to shine through the window on the other corner of the building, and there was a people door.
I moved out onto the concrete to get a better angle through the glass. A TV was working overtime at the back of what must have been a command room. I could also see a steaming kettle, a brew kit and a couple of radios on a work surface directly beneath the single overhead lamp. They’d gone for something more high-tech than the naked-bulb look in the gulag, but forty watts still seemed to be the rule.
There was one body in a swivel chair and she had her back to me. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail that swung from side to side as she followed every detail of whatever was happening on her screen.
Did that mean she was the watch? That the crew only came when she called, rather than being ready to slide down a pole at a moment’s notice? I hoped so. We were about to find out.
I ran back to wave the rest of them in. ‘It looks like there’s just the one on stag. We have to go via her office. I’ll bang on the door, we grip her, and take it from there. Can anyone drive one of these things?’
Rio stepped up. ‘Got a fucking Warrior licence, mate. But …’ The other two wouldn’t be able to either. At least, not on their own.
‘OK. Jack and me, we’re going to grip her. You two, follow us in, head straight out to the vehicles and get one moving.’
I didn’t wait for them to confirm. This wasn’t brain surgery. It was about making distance.
The woman in the command centre was still rooted to her chair. The soap must have been the same one our guards had been watching, from the high-octane music I could now hear through her door.
I gripped the handle and tried to turn it. No luck. She obviously didn’t want just anyone interrupting her viewing. I banged on it with my fist, hard, quick and desperate. It seemed to take her for ever to tear herself away from the drama, but finally I heard the scrape of a chair. She was on her way.
A bolt slid back and the door opened inwards. As soon as there was a gap wide enough for me see there was no security chain, I barged my way into the boiling hot room. The woman rocked back, lost her footing and tumbled onto the floor. Jack hobbled straight over to her, made calming noises, showing her two flat hands.
It was pointless miming if there was anyone else inside the building. She could give a yes or a no; she could be lying or telling the truth.
Rio and Gabriel pushed their way through the door on our left into the vehicle area, as I started to grip the woman. She was no older than a teenager, now that I had the chance to look at her. So I gave her a smile as I turned her onto her stomach and got my knee stuck into the small of her back, holding her down as Jack searched for something to contain her. It was a fire station: brand new yellow fire-suit tops and bottoms were hung up in a neat row, trailing wide elasticated braces. ‘Jack – on the wall …’
I left her as soon as we’d tied her wrists and ankles behind her back. She was in tears, despite trying her hardest not to be, but she didn’t shout or scream. No one would hear her anyway. And she’d be found and released when they came to investigate why the Gaz was burning up fuel.
I heard the gentle electric whine of the shutters, then the growl of an engine. We legged it to the nearest Gaz, which Rio had sparked up. It gave a belch of diesel fumes before settling into a steady rhythm.
Rio was in the left seat of what turned out to be a two-man cab. He was shouting and beckoning through his open door, but I couldn’t hear a word. It didn’t matter. I ran round the front, with Jack just behind me, and saw Gabriel trying to fold himself onto the centre console.
I climbed over the track and into the right-hand seat and Jack scrambled in too. He ended up half on me and half on Gabriel when the wagon staggered forward.
There was a fair amount of lurching and jerking as the tracks ground their way over the concrete base of the maintenance area, but who gave a fuck? We were mobile.
Jack closed his door on the third lurch and as we kangarooed the first fifty metres I could see why this wasn’t the smoothest ride at the fairground. There were two of them at the controls.
The Gaz was no different from any other tracked vehicle. The accelerator was down below, the engine was automatic, and there were a pair of tillers to slow, stop and turn. Rio gripped the left-hand one with his good arm and Gabriel, lying on the centre console, had the right. Rio was getting impatient. As far as he was concerned the jerkiness was Gabriel’s fault. ‘Gently! Just pull it gently!’
I left the two of them to it and pointed through the screen. ‘We’re heading north-east. I can’t see a compass. We’ve got no sun. So just keep the sea to the left. We OK for fuel?’
Rio was busy bollocking Gabriel, but took time off to bollock me too. ‘It’s full, isn’t it? Why have a fucking fire engine that can’t get anywhere? How far are we going?’
‘About fifty-five, sixty Ks from here, maybe more.’
I tried looking behind me but couldn’t see a thing, and there were no mirrors.
Jack wasn’t fussed. ‘Don’t worry about it. If anyone follows us, we’ll just turn and crush them.’
The other two nagged each other endlessly as the Gaz started to pick up speed on the snow, but gradually hit a steadier rhythm.
82
Rune’s grey wooden box
Latitude: 78.2119 North
Longitude: 15.6426 East
Jack was seated at the table in front of the laptop’s camera, finishing off his statement. He was trying hard not to move his hands now. We’d had to shout at him every time he got pissed off and gesticulated at the camera.
‘That is all I know. That is all I saw. That is all I heard. End of statement.’
He was the last to film his security blanket. All four of us had covered the who, the what, the where and the when, from our respective points of view. It was now his turn to copy his performance onto all six of Rune’s USB sticks. He tested each one in turn to make sure it had successfully transferred.
Rio and Gabriel were sprawled on the sofas, drinking good coffee now that Gabriel had repaired the machine. As he might have reminded us, he was a REME genius. He knew stuff.
Each of them was digging handfuls of dry Axa Go’Mix out of a carton. Rune seemed to have cornered the market in the stuff, like he’d been anticipating some kind of muesli apocalypse.
Gabriel also had a rifle on the floor alongside him, its bolt-action open and exposing the ten rounds in its mag. I had another, closed, with a round in the chamber, resting across my lap.
I regularly scanned the approach road through the slight gap in the shutters at the front of the house. It wasn’t as if we were going to make a quick getaway – half the team had removed their legs to sort out their bloody and swollen stumps – but it felt good to know that if shit came our way, we could send a bit of it back.
We’d dumped the Gaz in dead ground about three Ks out of town, and tabb
ed in. That was the final nail in the coffin for the legless. They’d taken a battering over the last few days. But we’d got to the house and sorted ourselves out. From here on in, the plan was simple.
I’d track down the Owl, and he’d get us off the island. We’d leave one of the USBs hidden here, maybe somewhere in the house. It meant we had some security between now and when we landed back in the real world, in case the Owl had second thoughts about our get-out-of-jail-free card.
Each of us would have a copy of all four statements, to secure as we wished. The last would go to Claudia Nangel in Zürich: she’d tuck it away for any of us to have access to it on a rainy day. After all, she was almost family, and always ready to help.
We still hadn’t sorted out what we were going to do about the dead members of the team, how we were going to frame that for consumption. We might need the Owl to help us. The easiest way, I guessed, was to say that they’d fallen down a lead and that was it, we’d lost them. They were somewhere at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. Not the first. And very probably not the last. Whatever and wherever, we all had to get our story straight, but that wasn’t on today’s agenda.
I still hadn’t told Jack yet about his dad. Sorting out the living was more important than sorting out the dead.
So that was it.
A simple plan.
Except that nothing in life was ever that simple.
The way we saw it, now was not the end. It wasn’t even the beginning of the end. But maybe it was a few steps past the end of the beginning. We were halfway through the last part of this fuck-up. We might get out. We might not. We all knew that. But for the moment, at least, we were on solid ground and breathing.
Jack finished checking the USBs and threw us one each. ‘So, what now?’
Gabriel caught his in an outstretched hand and tucked it into a pocket. ‘You know, I’ve been thinking about the missus and kids. If we really do get out of here, I’ll have been given a third life. However long it lasts, I’m going to try not to fuck this one up. I’m going to go back and see if the family will take me in. What do you reckon?’
Rio caught his in his lap because he couldn’t be arsed to move. ‘Same here. The girlfriend – well, the ex – she’s got a new man now, but you never know, do you? If we make it home, I’m going to get to know the kids. Kids need their dad, right? Even if he’s not all there.’
Jack had a question for him. ‘Talking of women, Biyu, Chinese TV … did you really?’
Rio gave the widest cracked-lip smile of the trip so far. ‘No, mate. She fucked me off before I even crossed the starting line – but at least I got to wind up the REME, didn’t I?’
Gabriel snorted with laughter and threw a fistful of Go’Mix at him.
Jack turned to me. ‘What about you, Nick? What’s on the cards?’
‘I’ve been thinking I might start up a little security business. Might even ask the Owl if he can throw some work my way now and again. He seems to have plenty of it. One thing I’ve discovered – you really are better off inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in. Especially if it’s forty below.’
Rio and Gabriel immediately wanted in.
I grinned. ‘We’ll see. Who knows?’
I was relieved that they liked the idea because I wouldn’t have considered setting it up without them. They might not have the correct number of limbs for that sort of work, but that didn’t matter. What they had was commitment and brains, and that counted for more than anything else. I was excited by the idea; who knew what we could get up to?
Rio even had a name for the new company. ‘We could call ourselves SNS, Special Needs Service, get it?’
It got a laugh from me and Gabriel but Jack was deep in thought. Gabriel threw what was left of his Go’Mix at him to bring him back to earth.
‘What about you, mate? Maybe the four of us? What do you reckon?’
Jack came halfway out of his trance. ‘Of course. Great idea. Count me in. Without a doubt.’
But Rio knew he wasn’t really there. We all did. ‘Mate, what’s going on in that head of yours?’
It took him a while to answer. ‘You’re right. If we are given a third life, I’m not going to waste it. I think it’s time to bury the hatchet with the old man. He doesn’t deserve it, but my mother does.’
I caught Gabriel’s eye and signalled for him to take over stag. I needed to grip this.
I stood up and Gabriel took my place. I took one last look out at the approach road before turning back to Jack. ‘Mate,’ I said gently, ‘there’s something you need to know about your dad.’
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
From the day he was found in a carrier bag on the steps of Guy’s Hospital London, Andy McNab has led an extraordinary life.
As a teenage delinquent, Andy McNab kicked against society. As a young soldier, he waged war against the IRA in the streets and fields of South Armagh. As a member of 22 SAS, he was at the centre of covert operations for nine years, on five continents. During the Gulf War he commanded Bravo Two Zero, a patrol that, in the words of his commanding officer, ‘will remain in regimental history for ever’. Awarded both the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) and Military Medal (MM) during his military career, McNab was the British Army’s most highly decorated serving soldier when he finally left the SAS.
Since then Andy McNab has become one of the world’s bestselling writers, drawing on his insider knowledge and experience. As well as several non-fiction bestsellers – including Bravo Two Zero, the biggest selling British work of military history – he is the author of the best-selling Nick Stone and Tom Buckingham thrillers. He has also written a number of books for children.
Besides his writing work, he lectures to security and intelligence agencies in both the USA and UK, and works in the film industry advising Hollywood on everything from covert procedure to training civilian actors to act like soldiers. He continues to be a spokesperson and fundraiser for both military and literacy charities.
www.andymcnab.co.uk
Also by Andy McNab
Novels featuring Nick Stone
REMOTE CONTROL
CRISIS FOUR
FIREWALL
LAST LIGHT
LIBERATION DAY
DARK WINTER
DEEP BLACK
AGGRESSOR
RECOIL
CROSSFIRE
BRUTE FORCE
EXIT WOUND
ZERO HOUR
DEAD CENTRE
SILENCER
FOR VALOUR
DETONATOR
Featuring Tom Buckingham
RED NOTICE
FORTRESS
STATE OF EMERGENCY
Andy McNab with Kym Jordan
WAR TORN
BATTLE LINES
Quick Reads
THE GREY MAN
LAST NIGHT ANOTHER SOLDIER
TODAY EVERYTHING CHANGES
ON THE ROCK
Non-fiction
BRAVO TWO ZERO
IMMEDIATE ACTION
SEVEN TROOP
SPOKEN FROM THE FRONT
THE GOOD PSYCHOPATH’S GUIDE TO SUCCESS (with Kevin Dutton)
SORTED!: THE GOOD PSYCHOPATH’S GUIDE TO BOSSING YOUR LIFE (with Kevin Dutton)
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Andy McNab 2016
Andy McNab has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissi
ons with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781473508675
ISBNs 9780593073803 (cased)
9780593073810 (tpb)
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
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Table of Contents
About the Book
Contents
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
