by Andy McNab
I caught sight of myself in the rear-view when I got back into the wagon. The bruise from the rope around my neck was developing nicely.
I stopped off at a hardware shop to pick up a roll of gaffer tape. My next target was a biker store. I needed a pair of thin silk gloves and one of those black balaclavas you could fit under a crash hat.
2
Skiddaw ridge dominated the skyline to my right as I drove up the A591, its flanks highlighted by the setting sun. The surface of the lake glistened to my left whenever there was a break in the treeline.
I pulled into the parking area at the back of the Half Moon Inn, two or three miles beyond the end of the wall that enclosed the Ravenhill estate. Knocking on the Chastains’ front door was not an option this time around: I wasn’t going to be treated to tea and flapjacks. The colonel’s foot soldiers would be on high alert, and just pulling up in a neighbouring layby was out of the question.
There weren’t a whole lot of other vehicles to hide behind, but enough for the Skoda not to draw too much attention to itself, and the place wasn’t awash with Stalag Luft III-style arc lamps. I slotted it between a white van and a mud-spattered Volvo with a couple of sit-on-top kayaks strapped to its roof bars. One was a very scary combo of Day-Glo green and yellow and its mate was deep purple and black.
I transferred the Browning from underneath my right thigh to my waistband and zipped up my bomber jacket. The gaffer tape went into my right pocket. The spare thirteen-round mag was in my left.
I exited the Skoda and headed along a lane that Google Maps had told me led to the water. A grass verge lined each side of it, dropping away to a drainage ditch.
Two sets of headlamps bounced up the hill towards me. I slid into the ditch on my left when they were still a hundred and fifty metres away and stayed there until they’d passed – two more estate cars with kayaks on their lids. One turned into the pub car park and the other carried straight on to the main.
I climbed back onto the pitted tarmac and kept on walking. There was a chill breeze from the shore, but the temperature wasn’t freezing. I’d be fine as long as I kept moving.
This side of the lake was pretty much all private land, and even the gates into the fields were padlocked. I vaulted the second I came to and slipped on my balaclava and gloves, partly for warmth but mostly so I didn’t stand out like a Belisha beacon. I tabbed south along the perimeter of a densely planted evergreen wood for about a mile, then ducked into the cover of the trees.
I moved as quickly as I could through the undergrowth, while there was still enough ambient light to avoid snapping twigs and tripping over fallen branches. The closer I got to the Ravenhill boundary, the more I kept eyes on the shadows gathering ahead and to my right, and the open ground thirty feet to my left.
I stopped a hundred feet short of Chastain’s wall, watched and listened. The light was fading fast now and the fir needles rustled in the wind. I stayed stock still, my antennae fully tuned up. A muted cry carried from somewhere across the lake. I hadn’t heard that sound in a while. It was an osprey calling to its mate.
I moved closer to the wall, placing each step with absolute care, toe then heel. When I reached it I stopped again, mouth open, ears on stalks.
There was nothing at first, then movement on the far side. Low voices. Footsteps. Two hostiles. Maybe three. The flash of a torch beam. Why would they bother to try to become part of the night? They were guarding the place, not invading it. And I didn’t need to clamber up seven feet of strongly mortared stone to put them to the test.
Plan A had hit a rock. But Plan B had already started to take shape in my head.
I melted back into the trees and retraced my route.
3
The car park at the Half Moon had become a lot more crowded by the time I got back to it. Light blazed from the pub windows, and snatches of conversation and the steady beat of the jukebox leaked out into the darkness. It wasn’t exactly Saturday-night fever, but if I’d been the landlord I wouldn’t have complained.
The white van had gone home for dinner but the Volvo was staying on. The door from the bar opened and closed, and there was a blast of Rihanna’s ‘You Da One’. I ducked into the shadows while two surfies climbed into a Volkswagen camper van and made for the exit.
The Volvo team had very thoughtfully strapped their paddles onto the roof bars as well as the kayaks. I felt like leaving them a thank-you note. I unfastened the nearest paddle, then liberated the darker of the two craft and swung it down by its grab handle. It was about two and a half metres long, eighty centimetres wide and pretty unwieldy, especially when it caught the breeze, but it wasn’t much heavier than one of Anna’s suitcases. Someone had spent a lot of quality time painting its name across one side: Smoke on the Water. I hoped it wasn’t luminous.
I hoicked it to the end of the stretch of gravel that was furthest from the building, then manhandled it over a chain-link fence. Fuck knows what I would have done if the owners had chosen that moment to come out and check their kit, but I made it along the edge of a spiky stubble field and into cover before Rihanna came back for an encore.
A hedgerow skirted the parking area, then paralleled the lane. I kept behind it most of the way to the lake. It took me a good half-hour. No more cars came past, and there were no signs of life in the sailing-club hut or on the hard standing that ran for about fifteen metres along the bank.
I lugged Smoke to the slipway, past a line of dinghies on light aluminium launching trolleys. I took several deep breaths then flipped it, hull down, onto the water, soaking my right Timberland in the process.
These craft were built for stability as well as speed through some pretty big waves, so it wasn’t too difficult to get my feet and arse into position on its moulded deck without taking another dip.
I made sure the Browning was still tucked securely into the front of my jeans, then gripped the paddle shaft like a punt pole. There was a grinding noise as I levered myself away from the concrete, then I was clear. I flattened the shaft, dug in with one blade then the other, and started to make headway.
The lake ran north/south, and a series of spits and small tree-lined bays fringed this side of it, so I aimed to stay fairly close to the shore for the first part of the journey rather than venture straight into open water. The moon was in its final quarter and the sky was overcast, but there were no islands out there I could use as cover, and I didn’t want to announce my presence until I was good and ready.
The osprey gave another cry. Then all I could hear was the water lapping against the hull, and the occasional splash when I misjudged the timing or the angle of a blade as it broke the surface.
I’d done all sorts of insertions and extractions via the ocean over the years, usually in a RIB with a pair of monster outboards on the back, but I’d never spent much of my leisure time with oars or sails. White-water rafting was different: I’d always thought that was more like a combo of freefalling and hand-to-hand combat than messing around in boats. Whatever, I began to get the hang of this, and the kayak glided south, more or less in the direction I wanted.
The cold began eating into my hands. I was only going to use the Browning if everything went to rat shit, but thicker gloves would have made it impossible. My right foot squelched inside its sock every time I pulled the face of my left blade towards me, and that was no fun either. But there was no point in worrying about what I couldn’t change.
At least the wind was at my back. It kept my core temperature from dropping too fast and helped push me through the water. The gusts strengthened as I propelled the lump of moulded plastic further away from the shelter of the firs.
After I’d gone a mile or so I began to visualize how I would infiltrate Ravenhill. Cutting away took on a different meaning during this phase of a task. I had to ditch all the irrelevant shit and focus on my priorities. I needed to cruise into Guy Chastain’s boathouse without being seen or heard, locate where the Astra muscle was holding Ella, and take it from there.<
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The only light came from my right, from the headlamps of the wagons cruising along the main on the opposite side of the pond. There was a chance I’d be silhouetted against it before I reached the cover of the jetty, but I hoped anyone watching out for a threat from the water would be dazzled by the glare instead.
4
The closer I got to Ravenhill, the more I had to risk scudding further towards the middle of the lake. I was a long way from Olympic gold, but I didn’t want the sound of my paddles to carry too easily to the shore.
When I was still a couple of hundred away I brought the kayak to a standstill. Steadying it from time to time in the water, I scanned the shore. A guard made his way to the end of the jetty and back at roughly fifteen-minute intervals.
There were lights on in the main house and the upper floor of the converted stable block behind and to its left, and shadows fell across their windows. The odd torch beam bounced around in the trees. When I could no longer spot movement in the vicinity of the darkened boathouse, I brought the nose of the kayak round and paddled slowly towards the mandarin temple.
The jetty was mounted on two rows of wooden pillars driven into the lake bed. The crosspieces were horizontal rather than diagonal and about a metre above the surface of the water, so I was going to be able to slide in beneath it.
The wind was now coming in from my left, so I’d have to do my best to stop it blowing me into the superstructure. A big solid clunk would carry through the night air and catapult a reception committee in my direction at warp speed.
I reached out to fend off the second pillar with my right palm and came away with a smear of algae. The lapping of the water against the woodwork echoed across the space below the platform. I passed a slimy metal ladder with a pair of curved handrails and saw another ahead of me, leading up to the sundeck.
A coil of shock cord was secured by a Velcro strap at each end of the kayak. When I was within reach of my target, I looped the bow line around the pillar closest to the wind and let the current rotate the stern towards the one parallel to it.
The kayak would be visible to anyone who got down on his belt buckle and busy with a torch, but I figured that a mooring beneath the jetty, parallel to the shore, was as good as I was going to get.
I turned in the seat, got to my knees and manoeuvred myself as quietly as I could across the rear luggage recess. As I was fastening the second cord I heard footsteps, followed by a dull thud about eighteen inches above my head.
5
I didn’t move a muscle for five beats.
Then I loosened my jaw, opened my mouth and, as slowly as possible, lifted the ribbed hem of my bomber jacket with my left hand far enough to allow me to grip the butt of Sam’s pistol with my right.
I looked up.
A dark figure began to materialize through the half-centimetre gaps between the ribbed planks. So did the silhouette of a weapon. I eased the Browning out of my waistband and slid my index finger through the trigger guard. I raised the muzzle and applied first pressure.
I had no intention of going the whole way unless whoever was up there decided to draw down on me, but it made me feel like I wasn’t completely hopeless.
The wood creaked and the footsteps moved on. An LED torch sparked up at the far end of the jetty and swept the water beyond the temple. I stayed where I was; I needed to remain covert as long as possible.
Eventually the light flicked off and the footsteps made their way back towards me. I listened as they mounted the steps and disappeared up the pathway that ran along the side of the boathouse.
I waited for the silence to return, then thumbed on the Browning’s safety catch. I didn’t want to blow my bollocks apart as I swung out onto the steps and kitten-crawled across the sundeck.
I slithered up towards the entrance to the boathouse before rising to my feet. I opened my mouth and tuned in to my surroundings. I sensed rather than heard a low moan from somewhere nearby, but maybe it was the woodwork settling down for the night.
I worked my way softly past the windows overlooking the lake. I stopped for a moment when I reached the corner of the building and was about to move on when I became aware of a shadowy presence on the other side of the glass.
Marcia Chastain was standing there in the darkness, no more than two feet away from me. Her face was racked with pain. I couldn’t see what filled the frame that she was clutching to her chest, but I knew it had to be Guy’s citation and VC.
I waited for the alarm bells to start ringing; there was nothing else I could do.
She looked right through me.
There was no room for anyone else in her world of misery.
I hesitated for a nanosecond, then decided to go and have a little chat with her. I might have to give her a bit of a slap, but I reckoned she could provide my best – and quickest – route to some of the answers I needed.
I only managed to take one step back towards the door before everything changed.
Marcia Chastain’s mouth opened. I froze. Any second now she’d be filling her lungs.
But she didn’t yell for help. She just gave another low moan.
Then I felt a pair of electrodes cold against my neck.
The weapon I’d seen through the planking on the jetty had been a Taser. The lad holding the other end of it murmured in my ear, ‘I think she deserves a little bit of peace right now, don’t you?’
6
The colonel’s foot soldier steered me away from the boathouse entrance. I didn’t resist. The last thing I needed right now was fifty thousand volts jumping up and down on my nerve endings. And I was pretty sure he wouldn’t want to risk staying this close to me all the way up to the house. Any second now he’d have to push me far enough in front to give himself the space to clip a cartridge onto the business end of the Taser, so he’d be able to control me from a distance. That would be my best time to fuck him up.
Triggered by a compressed gas cartridge, the twin metal barbs could be fired nearly twenty feet. They were designed to leave their housing at an eight-degree angle, each trailing a thin wire and targeting two separate muscle groups. One would make a beeline for my thigh, to stop me doing a runner.
Once embedded in my skin or clothing, the probes could be fed enough current to fuck my motor skills with every squeeze of the trigger. I’d turn into a puppet on a chain. I had to make sure that didn’t happen.
Sure enough, as soon as we cleared the corner of the building I felt his left hand press against the middle of my back and the electrodes leave my neck. I swivelled 180 degrees and grabbed his wrist before he’d lifted the hand away and pulled him with me, using his forward momentum to propel us both in the direction we’d been heading.
My arse hit the grass, then my back. I bent my knees, planted both feet in his gut, and straightened them again as I kept on going. He flew straight over my head.
I wanted to mess him up enough to be able to give him the good news with his own cattle prod, but as soon as I’d rolled to one side and sprung back to my feet, I saw that I’d rammed the top of his skull straight into the trunk of the nearest pine. He lay in a heap beneath it.
I hadn’t broken his neck, but he’d have a severely sore brain when he woke up. I gaffer-taped his wrists and ankles and stuck another strip over his mouth, then dragged him five metres into the undergrowth. Once in cover, I relieved him of his UHF radio, clipped it to my belt, lifted the right side of my balaclava and shoved in the earpiece.
I straightened the Browning in my waistband and picked up the Taser and spare cartridge. The X26 had a pistol grip and a bulbous nose, a bit like an underwater flash lamp. The Met Police used them to neutralize offenders. Theirs were Day-Glo yellow. I preferred this black version. It wasn’t designed to draw attention to itself.
As I took a step back towards the boathouse, a torch beam bounced down onto the sundeck. I stayed where I was, inside the treeline. It stopped halfway along the jetty and traced a slow arc across the water, taking in the mandarin te
mple and the stretch of bank to my half-right before clicking off.
A match flared and the tip of a cigarette glowed briefly before being cupped in a gloved palm. Elbows rested on the wooden rail and a plume of smoke coiled into the night air. This lad was there to stay.
I turned slowly back towards the big house. Three other beams swept through the darkness up there. One kept close to the stable block and two others patrolled the woods separating it from the road.
If Ella was at Ravenhill, the colonel wouldn’t have stuck her in a hole in the ground, but he wouldn’t have wanted her down the corridor from Mrs Chastain’s bedroom either.
I decided to check the stables first. Apart from anything else, I was familiar with the layout of the place. Unless they’d done a whole lot more than renew the wallpaper since the Sweden briefing, I reckoned I had a better than evens chance of not bumping into any brick walls, and of knowing where the Astra crew might be focusing their energies.
I heeled and toed through the dropped pine needles and bracken, keeping noise to an absolute minimum. When I was still far enough away from my target to be out of earshot, I sparked up the radio and listened in to the traffic between the other members of Chastain’s unit. Alpha was on the net, telling Bravo and Charlie to keep eyes on the roadside boundary, and wondering where Delta had disappeared to.
‘Alpha, Delta? Alpha, Delta, check …’
I was pretty sure that Delta wasn’t sending because some dickhead had banged him on the head, taped his lips together and nicked his UHF radio. I waited long enough to be certain before thumbing the pressel.
