by Andy McNab
Eventually I came up with a workable plan – well, I thought I had. I’d soon find out. I checked my watch – just gone 5.32 p.m. That gave me just over eleven hours to get into the house and get her away. But that was merely the physical timing; the factors that mattered even more were light and dark. I couldn’t move in daylight; all my movements had to be under cover of darkness.
London wanted her lifted by 5 a.m. I knew that first light was at about five thirty, but it would take a little longer to arrive in the forest. I needed to get hold of her and be away from here by 3 a.m.; that would give me about two hours of darkness to get clear of the area. Last light was at just after seven o’clock, but I wouldn’t get full cover of darkness until about an hour later. On the face of it, that effectively gave me seven hours of working time. But I couldn’t go in there while they were still awake, so what would I do if they were still up and about at two o’clock in the morning?
By now, I’d dehumanized the people I was up against. To me they were targets, the same as the house. From now on I wouldn’t refer to them, or even think of them, as people. I couldn’t, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to do the job. Ironically, Sarah had once asked me about that. I told her I didn’t like to analyze myself too much because I wasn’t sure I’d like what I found. I knew I’d done some really terrible things, but I didn’t think I was too bad a person. The question that always bugged me more was, Why was I doing this shit in the first place? My whole life had been spent sitting in wet holes. Even when I was in the Army I would ask myself the same thing: Why? I couldn’t answer fully then, and I couldn’t now. Queen and country? Nah. I didn’t know anyone who’d even considered that. Pride? I was proud, not necessarily of what I did, but certainly of the way I did it. Being a soldier, and later a K, was the only thing I was good at. Even as a kid I was just odd socks and scabs, my mother was always telling me I’d never amount to anything. Maybe she was right, but I liked to think that, in my own little world, I was among the best. It made me feel good about myself, and I got paid for it. The only downside was that I’d have a little bit of explaining to do when I was standing at the Pearly Gates. But who doesn’t?
The wind had died down, and the rain wasn’t falling quite so hard. Lights came on in the house, which was natural enough; it was nearly seven o’clock, it would be dark inside. The lights were showing on the first floor, the same as last night. I strained to listen, but couldn’t hear anything, not even a radio or TV. What I wouldn’t have given to know what was going on in there. I hoped they were packing their bags and fucking off.
You can always improve on a plan, so I kept on visualizing. What if I got to the door just as they were coming out with their bags? What would I do? Where would I go? Would I just barge in there and kill her, or would I try and get her out? Arnie and Bruce go in and take on a dozen bad guys at a time, but it doesn’t work like that for the rest of us: against a dozen people, you die. A job like this was going to call for speed, aggression and surprise. I’d have to get in there, and get out quickly, but all with minimum risk to me. It wasn’t going to be a good day out at all.
Eyes and ears glued to the house, I went through the whole lot again. And again, wondering if there was anything I’d missed. For sure there would be, but that was what I got paid for: to improvise.
Nothing else mattered now but the task. To achieve the aim is to have a chance of staying alive. This was not the time to think about skipping through meadows or getting in touch with my feminine side. Sarah was now a target. To think any other way could put me in danger, and that wasn’t the way I wanted it. Kelly and I still had a Bloody Tower to visit.
14
The lights on the first floor went off. It was just before eleven thirty, and another forty gallons of rain had fallen on the OP since I’d last looked at Baby-G thirty minutes before. I packed the camera.
I pushed the bung with my foot and eased myself out of the hide backwards on my arms and knees, dragging the bergen and bow with me. The rain hadn’t stopped, but at least the wind that brought it had died. I stayed on my knees and retrieved the two flash cards from my jeans, and with the plier part of my Leatherman I cracked and bent them into unusable shapes. I put them in two separate pockets of the bergen, along with the 3C.
I slowly got to my feet and stretched, stiff as an old man, a wet old man at that, and then listened carefully. Nothing from the house, just the noise of the rain hitting Gore-Tex and leaf. Unfortunately, the next part of the plan entailed me taking my jacket off.
Shivering as the cold air got at my skin, I spread the jacket on the ground, then pulled off my Gore-Tex trousers and put them to one side. Finally, everything else I was wearing came off, apart from my skiddies, and was quickly placed on top of the jacket.
There was one last thing I remembered to do before carrying on. I retrieved my shirt and, with the knife of the Leatherman, cut off both sleeves at the shoulder. I tucked them into a pocket of my jeans, then started to wrap up the bundle of clothes in the jacket, shivering big time after being cocooned in so many layers.
Next I cut four or five lengths of string and used a couple of them to secure the bottoms of the trouser legs by twisting. I shoved the jacket and bundle of clothes down one of the trouser legs, then tied up the waist. Finally I twisted and folded over the trousers and tied the complete bundle. Once done, it went into my bergen.
I wasn’t concerned about any of the kit that I’d left in the OP as none of it was traceable to me, apart from my clingfilmed shit. If the extraction of Sarah did turn into a gang-fuck and the hide was discovered by the police or whoever, then by the time anyone got a DNA analysis done I should be well out of the country. Besides, unless I got caught and the UK denied me, the Firm would ensure that any DNA records or follow-up became history.
My passport, phone and credit cards had been in my jacket, clingfilmed, since the beginning. I made the decision to take them with me instead of going into the house sterile. If I got caught now, chances were I’d be dead anyway. And besides, Sarah knew who I was. It wouldn’t exactly take a Mastermind contestant to work out what I was there for.
The bow was wedged into the frame of the bergen with the six arrows inserted in the quiver. I took the fifth length of string and tied one end to the bergen, attaching myself to the other by looping it round my wrist a couple of times. At the first hint of trouble, I could let go and part company with it.
Once done, I checked that the bergen straps were done up as tightly as possible, then looked at the house yet again. Still no lights.
I replaced the bung and smoothed away any sign. Maybe archaeologists in the next millennium would unearth my little time capsule and scratch their heads at the cache of Four Seasons pizza, a gas can full of piss and a couple of handfuls of shit in clingfilm.
I moved down to the water’s edge, watched, listened, then slowly waded in. The bottom sloped gently to start with, but by the time I’d done four or five paces I was in up to my knees, and freezing. It was just a matter of fighting it and persuading myself that I’d be warm again soon.
I lowered the bergen into the water in front of me, and it floated with the bow just above the water. Even when fully laden, there’s always enough air trapped in a bergen to make it buoyant. It had been years since I’d done anything like this. In the jungle, it always used to rain heavily. It would often take us an entire day to cross a main river, and the Regiment had lost more people doing this sort of thing during training than by any other drill.
I kept wading further in, until the water came up to my waist, then my neck. The rain was jumping off the lake’s surface and hitting my face; being so close, the splashes sounded louder than they really were. The shock of the cold took my breath away, but I knew I’d get used to it in a minute or two.
I took one of the mangled flash cards from a bergen pocket, dropped it in the lake and checked it sank. Then, pushing the bergen in front of me and keeping parallel to the shore line, I walked towards the house, taking my time so
I didn’t create a visible bow wave or make any noise. At night, and at that distance, even if they were looking at the lake, the bergen would pass as a floating log. In any event, it was the only way I could get on target without triggering the alarms.
After a dozen or so steps I stopped, checked the house again, and dumped the remaining flash card as the rain pelted the taut nylon of the bergen.
I kept moving slowly towards the target, at the same time wanting to get there as quickly as possible. My balls were so cold I thought they might make a dash for my armpits. Underfoot it was rocky and a couple of times I hit an obstruction and got entangled in weed.
It was time to discard the 3C. I wouldn’t be needing it any more, because if everything worked to plan, the next time I contacted Elizabeth I’d be back in the UK – and if it didn’t and I was in the shit, Sarah would know how to extract information from it and the flash cards.
I got level with the house and turned to face it. The curtains were closed and there were still no lights on. Placing my wrist behind the bergen to shield it from the target, I pressed the backlit display on Baby-G. It was just after midnight. I started to shiver even more now that I’d stopped. I needed to get out of the water and back into some clothes.
I moved forward in a direct line towards the slipway, pushing the bergen in front of me. The boat was now dead ahead, and all I could see of it was the bow tilted down towards me.
I inched my way, eyes glued on the target; the only sound was the rain as it hit my bergen and the water. As I got closer and the floor started to rise, I forced my body lower by bending my knees and hunching down. A few metres from the end of the slipway I had to get right down on my stomach to keep as much of me in the water as possible to make a smaller profile. I had to use my hands and knees to work myself forward.
A metre from the edge the bergen hit bottom. I stopped, looked and listened. The echoey sound of the rain hitting the fibreglass of the boat took over from the splash of it hitting the water.
Now came the wriggly bit. I had to cross open ground to get to the boat and shelter under the hull. Ideally I would have taken maybe as long as an hour to cover the five metres, but I didn’t have that time to spare.
I unravelled the string attached to my wrist and, lifting myself up on my elbows and toes, I kitten-crawled forward, four inches at a time, trying to hold and control my breath and stop my teeth from chattering. I could feel stones and water moss pushing against my legs and stomach, moving with me as my trunk touched the bottom. The fact that it was cold no longer mattered; I knew I was doing it correctly from the pain in my elbows as they took my weight on the gravel. I was more interested in trying to make sure my trunk didn’t scrape along the ground and make a noise. I was now at the slipway.
Lifting the bergen a fraction, I edged it forward another few inches, lowered it onto the concrete and eased myself up behind it. Then I stopped, listened and repeated the move. Inch by inch I neared the boat, in a direct line with the point where the tow bar touched the concrete slip. As long as I moved slowly enough and kept flat, the motion detector shouldn’t pick me up, and once I was in the lee of the boat I’d be completely safe. Fifteen minutes later, I was there, where I wanted to be, under the boat. The rain hammered the fibreglass. It was like being in a greenhouse in a thunderstorm.
The garage doors were still only semi-closed. I could see the back of the Explorer and the pitch-dark beyond.
I was staring into the darkness and contemplating my next move when a light came on to my right, spilling through the gap in the doors. It came from the rear of the garage. My heart skipped a beat, then started to pump at warp speed. If I’d been discovered, there wasn’t much I could do.
I gripped myself: Stop, calm down, watch.
Almost immediately another light came on, this time on the other side of the garage. Through the gap, I could see what was happening. Someone had opened the lid of a chest freezer; the glow from the interior light showed the face of a man, as if he was shining a torch under his chin, like we used to at Hallowe’en. I wasn’t sure which of the targets it belonged to, just that it wasn’t Sarah. He rooted around for a moment, then pulled out three or four small boxes of food, stood up and seemed about to close the lid again, but instead, he looked back inside and picked out some more stuff. With his arms full, he walked away. I could make out the lower part of his body, he was wearing trainers and check, knee-length shorts.
I tried to count how many cartons he had. There seemed to be five. Did that mean that five people were still awake and about to have a meal, or was it just a big snack for one very hungry man?
I heard a door close, and the light went out.
I waited a few minutes for everything, including me, to calm down, then crawled the length of the boat until I reached the stern. I looked up. As I’d hoped, I was well hidden from the sensor and directly under the first-floor landing. The sensor might not even be linked to an alarm, it might just have been a helpful detector to switch on lights as people neared the garage. Whatever, I was this side of it and that was what mattered.
The garage doors were less than a foot away from me. I moved to the right of them, still under the landing and out of the way of the sensor and the rain. The priority was to get some clothes on and get warm, but if you’re moving, you’re making noise. The more slowly and deliberately I did it, the less noise I was going to generate. At least the downpour gave me some cover.
Gently unclipping the bergen, I lifted the flap, got hold of the toggle which held the drawstrings together, pressed the button in and opened it up, all the time looking and listening, and checking to see if anything was happening in the house next door.
I lifted the Gore-Tex bundle from inside the bergen. It was soaking wet on the outside, but my knots had worked. Wet clothes would make noise and leave sign, so I took off my underpants and slowly put on my dry stuff. It had been worth getting so cold just to feel the sensation of dry socks.
I checked that the Tazer was still in the right-hand pocket of the jacket, and that everything else was where it should be. Then I dug out the gardening gloves and put them on. I might get lifted when I tried to get out of the country, and I didn’t want the police to be able to make a connection with something as stupid and basic as fingerprints at a crime scene. I couldn’t guard against every shred of forensic evidence, but I could do my best to minimize the damage. Last of all, I ruffled my hair with my fingers, trying to get off as much water as possible so that a stray drop didn’t blur my vision at a vital moment. I was ready to go.
I picked up the bergen and weapon, and edged my way round to the doors. I had a quick look at the gap in case they’d rigged a trip.
It was totally dark inside.
15
The space between the rear of the Explorer and the garage door was going to be a bit of a tight squeeze. I pushed the bergen and bow through and placed them on the floor to the right, then got myself side on, breathed out and squirmed through.
The sound of the rain was immediately muffled, as if a switch had been thrown. I became aware of a different ambient noise, coming from above me. I stopped by the 4x4, opened my mouth, looked up and listened; there was a vague mumbling, which at first I took to be talking, then I heard a shout, gunfire and a burst of music. They were watching TV.
I stayed where I was, just past the tailgate of the Explorer, and continued to tune in. The mumbling went on, then there was a metallic rattling within the garage as the freezer motor kicked in, followed by a low buzz. A floorboard creaked above me, over to the right. Maybe someone getting up from their chair. The noise didn’t move anywhere; he must have sat down again.
Baby-G told me it was one thirty-one. This wasn’t good; I had just one and a half hours left in which to do what I needed to. I got the mini-Maglite out of my jacket, held it in my left hand and twisted the head to turn it on. The beam shone through my fingers. I could now see that the Explorer was the only vehicle in the garage; it was only jutting out becau
se there wasn’t enough room to drive it all the way in.
I stepped over the bergen and checked along the wagon. All its windows were closed and there wasn’t a key in the ignition. I slowly tried the driver’s door; it was locked. No chance of using the vehicle for a quick exit. In a drama, the boat would have to get me to my car.
As well as a washing machine and the freezer, the garage was packed with gardening tools, canoes standing on end, bikes on racks, and rusty old bits and pieces that had accumulated over the years, and it had a smell to match. At least it was dry and quite warm.
Moving further along the side of the 4x4, I shone the torch over its bonnet. In the far-left corner I saw the side door I’d been watching from the OP. At right angles to it was another door; the staircase behind it was boxed in, and the shape of it went up to the next floor. There were more piles of clutter underneath.
I could still hear the vague mumble of the TV above me and the creaking of floorboards as people upstairs shifted in their chairs. That was fine by me; the only thing I didn’t want to hear was excited shouts or rapid movement to signal they knew I was there.
I picked up the bergen with both hands to control the noise, and with the torch in my mouth I made my way over to the staircase doors. The beam shone on plastic bags under the staircase, containing the world’s largest collection of empty Kraft ready-made dinner containers. They weren’t putting the rubbish out; they were hiding it. They were taking no chances. Nor was I; I took the bow from the bergen and laid it down so that as I picked it up with my left hand the cable would be facing me, and the arrows were ready to access.
