Frederick Forsyth - Avenger

It takes a good mechanic to repair a helicopter and an even better one to sabotage it in such a manner that a good mechanic could not find the fault and mend it or even notice the tampering.

The mechanic the Serb employed to look after his helicopter was good, but Dexter was better. Up close he recognised the bird as an EC 120 Eurocopter, the single-engine version of the twin EC 135. It had a big Perspex bubble at the front end with excellent all-around, up-and-down observation for the pilot and the man beside him, plus room for three more behind them.

Dexter concentrated not on the main rotor mechanism but on the smaller tail rotor. If that malfunctioned, the "chopper" would simply not be fit to fly. By the time he had finished, it was certainly going to malfunction and be very hard to repair.

The door of the Hawker 1000 was open, so he had a chance to inspect the interior and ensure that the executive jet had had no serious internal reconfiguration.

When he locked up the main hangar, he broke into the mechanics' store, took what he wanted, but left no trace. Finally, he jogged gently to the far end of the runway, close to the backs of the residential villas, and spent his last hour there. In the morning one of the mechanics would notice with irritation that someone had borrowed his bicycle from where it leaned against the back fence.

When he had done all he came to do, Dexter found his hanging rope and climbed back to the stout stump where it was tied. Beyond that, he climbed, moving from root to root until he was back in his aerie. He was soaked toathe point where he could have wrung the sweat from his clothes. He consoled himself with the thought that body odour was one thing no one was going to notice in that part of the world. To replace the moisture, he allowed himself a full pint of water, checked the level of the remaining liquid, and slept. The tiny alarm in his watch woke him at six in the morning, just before the iron bar began to clang against the hanging rail far below.

At 7:00, Paul Devereaux raised McBride in his room at the Camino Real Hotel.

"Any news?" asked the man from Washington.

"None," said McBride. "It seems pretty sure he came back masquerading as an Englishman, Henry Nash, resort developer. Then he vaporised. His car has been identified as a rented Ford from Suriname. Moreno is starting a countrywide trawl for it about now. Should have news sometime today."

There was a long pause from the Counterterrorist chief, still sitting in a robe in his breakfast room in Alexandria, Virginia, before leaving for Langley.

"Not good enough," said Devereaux. "I'm going to have to alert our friend. It will not be an easy call. I'll wait till 10:00. If there is any news of a capture, or imminent capture before then, call me at once."

"You got it," said McBride.

There was no such news. At 10:00, Devereaux made his call. It took ten minutes for the Serb to be summoned from the swimming pool to the radio shack, a small room in his basement that, despite its traditional name, was no shack and contained some highly modern and eavesdrop-free communications equipment.

At 10:30, Dexter noticed a flurry of activity on the estate below him. Off-roads streamed from the mansion on the foreland, leaving trails of dust behind them. Below him the EC 120 was wheeled out of the hangar and its main rotors spread and locked into flying mode.

"Someone," he mused, "appears to have hit the alarm."

The helicopter crew arrived from their homes at the end of the runway on two motor scooters. Within minutes they were at the controls, and the big rotors began slowly to turn. The engine kicked into life, and the rotor rate rapidly increased to warm-up speed.

The tail rotor, vital to stop the whole machine from spinning around its own main axis, was also whirring around. Then something in its core bearings seemed to snag. There was a grinding of suffering metal, and the spinning hub destroyed itself. A mechanic waved frantically to the two men inside the Perspex bubble and drew his hand across his throat.

The pilot and observer had been told by the instrument panel that they had a major bearing failure in the tail. They closed down. The main rotors ground to a halt, and the crew climbed back out. A group formed around the tail, staring upward at the damaged prop.

Uniformed guards poured into the village of the absent peons and began to search the cabanas, stores, even the church. Others, on four-wheelers, went off across the estate to spread the word to the gang masters to keep an eye open for any signs of an intruder. There were none. Such signs as there had been eight hours earlier had been too well disguised.

Dexter put the uniformed guards at around one hundred. There was a community of about a dozen on the airfield and the twelve hundred workers. Given more security personnel, plus domestic staff out of sight in the grounds of the mansion, and twenty more technicians at the generating station and various repair shops, Dexter now had an idea how many he was up against. And he still had not seen the mansion itself and its no doubt complex defences.

Just before midday, Paul Devereaux called his man in the storm centre.

"Kevin, you have to go over and visit with our friend. I have spoken to him. He is in a high state of temper. I cannot stress enough how vital it is that this wretch plays his part in Project Peregrine. He must not duck out now. One day I'll be able to tell you how vital he is. For the moment, stand by him until the intruder is caught and neutralised. Apparently our friend's helicopter is malfunctioning. Ask the colonel for a Jeep to get you over the sierra. Call me when you get there."

At midday, Dexter watched a small coaster approach the cliffs. Holding stationary in the water just clear of the rocks, the freighter discharged crates from its deck and holds, which the derricks hoisted to the concrete apron, where flat-back pickups awaited them. Clearly they were for those luxuries the hacienda could not produce.

The last item was a thousand-gallon fuel tank, an aluminium canister the size of a fuel tanker. An empty one was lowered to the boat's deck, and it steamed away across the blue ocean.

Just after one o'clock, below him and to his right, an off-road-having been checked through the guardhouse in the defile-grunted and coughed down the track to the village. It was in San Martin police markings, with a passenger beside the driver.

Traversing the village, the blue Land Rover came to the chain-link gates and stopped. The police driver descended to offer his ID to the guards manning it. They made a phone call, presumably to the mansion for clearance.

In the pause, the man in the passenger seat also descended and gazed around with curiosity. He turned to look back at the sierra he had just descended. High above, a pair of binoculars adjusted and settled on his face.

Like the unseen man above him on the crest, Kevin McBride was impressed. He had been with Paul Devereaux on Project Peregrine for two years, from the first contact to recruitment of the Serbian. He had seen the files, knew, he thought, everything there was to know about him, yet they had never met. Devereaux had always reserved that dubious pleasure for himself.

The blue-liveried police off-road drove toward the high defending wall of the foreland compound, which towered over them as they approached the gate. A small door in the gate opened, and a burly man in slacks and a sea island cotton shirt stepped out. The shirt flapped over the waistband, and for a reason. It obscured the Glock 9mm. McBride recognised him from the file: Kulac, the only one the Serb gangster had brought from Belgrade with him, his perpetual bodyguard.

The man approached the passenger door and beckoned. After two years away from home, he still spoke nothing but Serbo-Croat.