Andy McNab - Zero hour

The ground dipped into a hollow the size of a bomb crater. I slid down into it and skirted more lumps of rubble. A circle of rocks surrounded a pile of ash that had once been a campfire. So many discarded syringes were scattered beside it that it looked like the entire junkie community had been playing their own version of pick-up-sticks. I was glad it was raining. They weren't going to be coming back for a rematch tonight: they'd all be competing with the working girls for space under the shop canopies instead.

Anybody out here would have to be totally off their heads. If I got challenged I'd pretend to be a drugged-up dickhead. It was pretty much how I felt right now.

That thought triggered a memory of my old mate Charlie. He'd been on his last legs about five years ago, and he'd done one final job to earn his family a wad before he keeled over. But I already had the money. I had what Charlie had been after. Why the fuck was I still doing it?

Fuck it – it must be the rain making me miserable. I knew why I was here, and it wasn't just to have one last crack. It was also about Lilian and those poor fuckers in the green house in Copenhagen, and the rest of them who'd been fucked up and fucked over by those shaven-headed bastards. I couldn't clear my mind of the sounds and images of what had happened above our heads while Anna was posing as the world's most uncompromising trafficker. The guys in that house were animals, and someone had to stop that shit happening. I wasn't going to be saving the world single-handed: I was small fry and hadn't got much time left to go on a crusade. But I could get one girl out, and maybe free the others, even if it was just a pinprick in the shit-pile.

There was less than a hundred metres to go now. I still couldn't see any cameras or motion sensors. That didn't mean there weren't any. If the intention was to detect people rather than deter them, they might have gone for concealment.

I pulled up about twenty metres short, looked and listened. The silhouette of the silo tower rose into the night sky; it dwarfed the remaining two-thirds of the building. I could make out two windows on the ground floor to the right of it, and two more one storey up. The arrangement made sense of Anna's description of the interior: two doors each side of the front entrance and a staircase on the left. There were no lights that I could see, and no movement.

A concrete strip ran from the front of the silo to the chained gates on Distelweg. The dock was less than thirty metres away from other side of the tower.

The silo was the only old building in the area. Maybe it was some kind of historical monument. Or maybe it just hadn't figured in anyone's regeneration plans yet. Everything else I'd seen had been thrown up with new brick or metal sheeting.

I found a slab of old concrete to sit down on and cocked an ear towards the target. I stayed like that for five minutes. Only then did I look around me, giving my unconscious the chance to take in as much as it could.

My jeans clung to my legs. My boots weighed a tonne. I didn't have to fake it too much when I swayed towards the silo, hands in pockets. If someone was watching me, I'd look as though I was doped up to the eyeballs.

I mooched along to the left, to the silo tower. The closer I got, the more obvious it was that there were no cameras. It looked as though they'd decided not to draw attention to themselves by throwing up surveillance equipment.

I liked doing this part of the job, just as I enjoyed going through Passport Control on fake documents and all that shit. Beating the system always had given me a buzz, ever since I was being a total arsehole on the Bermondsey estates.

The silo was square and about sixty metres tall. The bricks were rotting and most of the pointing had fallen out. The only things that seemed to hold it together were the old steel reinforcing plates that ran up the sides, and a thick layer of graffiti.

There was no entry point on the gable end. I moved to the corner on the side nearest the water, and sank slowly to my knees. I craned my neck gently round at muddy ground level.

There was no light whatsoever here. The concrete stretched all the way down to the dock, interrupted only by weeds pushing up stubbornly through the cracks. A big section of hard standing lined the water's edge, where a crane had probably once stood. A conveyor-belt ran down to it from the top of the silo at a forty-five-degree angle, supported by a steel framework made from the world's biggest and rustiest set of Meccano.

Noord 5 was five hundred metres away on the other side of the water. Its street-lighting and the intermittent sweep of car headlamps did nothing to help me. I put my ear to the brickwork to listen for a generator, but heard nothing.

I moved along the front of the building, covertly now, until I reached two large steel doors big enough to drive a truck through. Yet more weeds grew right up against them, looking like they were intent on forcing entry. None of them had been trodden on or driven over. Two padlocks were covered by security cups so you couldn't cut through them, and the huge rusty crossbars looked like they hadn't been shifted any time this century.

I carried on towards the far gable end. More windows: two up, two down, all boarded up with metal anti-vandal sheeting. I put an ear to the one I hoped the girls were still behind. There wasn't a sound.

I found the door Anna had gone in through. It had two locks. Going by the shine on the brass inserts, they were almost brand new. I sat against it, switching back into dosser mode, and had a look around. The next nearest building was a two-level warehouse or factory about three hundred metres away on the perimeter of the wasteground. Again: no light, no noise, no movement. This silo was a good place to hide people.

I put my ear to the lower keyhole. Nothing. I stuck my nose against it and inhaled deeply. I might be able to smell cooking or a cigarette, anything at all that would give me an indication of life. But all I got, as Anna had said I would, was the aroma of cake shop.

I got to my feet and gave the top and bottom of the double doors a push. They didn't give an inch. They were bolted from the inside. Somebody had to be in there.

There was no other entrance apart from this one and the large steel doors, as far as I could tell. But that didn't mean it was the only means of access.

I walked back to the conveyor-belt and started to climb. I only had to scale four or five metres of Meccano, but the junctions I used as hand- and footholds were awkwardly spaced and the steel was rusty and wet. By the time I heaved myself over the top, I felt like I'd completed an assault course.

The conveyor-belt itself was just over a metre wide. Its rubberized fabric was rotten and frayed and a lot of the steel banding was exposed. I raised myself slowly onto my hands and knees and started to crawl. Almost immediately, the rubber between the rollers gave way with a loud, tearing sound. I dropped flat, listened and watched. Then I decided not to fuck around. If they'd seen me, they'd seen me. It wasn't as if I could do anything about it. I might as well carry on until I heard the shouts.

The belt led up to a pair of rusty metal doors each about a metre square. A gentle push and they opened.

The brickwork was four courses thick. If there was still any flour in there, it would be bone dry. I edged forward on my elbows until my chest was on the lip of the hatchway and peered down. Right at the bottom, the faintest flicker of light showed through what looked like a tunnel connecting the silo with the rest of the building.

A vertical access ladder was fixed to the wall. I curled my body until I was able to reach my boots, unlace them and tug them off. I scraped off the worst of the mud on the top edge of the Meccano, tied the laces together and slung them round my neck. I eased myself back through the hatch, feet first, until I made contact with the top rung. I took a breath and started down.