Andy McNab: Zero hour

Everything fell silent. Cody, me, Ehud Olmert – we were all holding our breath. Even the noise outside was blocked as I kept my eyes glued to the screen and the bars fluctuated between 73 and 75.

I checked the timer. Fourteen minutes fifteen seconds to go. I turned back to the screen. My laptop was linked by satellite to America's Suter airborne-attack system. This package could feed enemy radar emitters with false targets, and even directly manipulate the Tor-M1 and Pechora-A2 sensors so they closed down completely. And that was what was happening now – or, at least, I hoped it was. I was directly attacking the microprocessors within the Syrian missile systems. It was easy enough. The chips had had kill switches programmed into them. When I hit the go button, I'd be sending a pre-programmed code to those chips, enabling Suter to override and tell the system what to do.

Syria's missile systems might have been built in Russia, but the chips inside them hadn't. Russia had been in shit state for years after the collapse of the Iron Curtain. Bizarre as it seemed, they plugged the gap by buying microchips off-the-shelf from Taiwan and the West. Washington and London weren't slow to catch on. As soon as they found out what was happening, they mobilized their Tefalheads. Microchips bound for Moscow and other unfriendly states were either reprogrammed or built from scratch with back doors or kill switches installed. Until they twigged, the West would be at liberty to disable whole weapons systems at will.

It wasn't the first time the Russians and their various mates had been at the sharp end of this particular conjuring trick. In 2004, the CIA inserted a software Trojan horse into computing equipment bought from Canadian suppliers to control a trans-Siberian gas pipeline. A three-kiloton explosion tore the pipeline apart; the detonation was so large it was visible from outer space.

The radar systems on the border were old Soviet-era kit and didn't have the kill switches, so they had to be hammered the old-fashioned way. The Syrians also had the newer, state-of-the-art Russian Pantsyr-S1E missile systems, but luckily for us they wouldn't be operational for a month. I guessed that was a reason we were pushing ahead with the attack.

There was a distant rumble in the sky. It could only mean one thing. The F-15s' engines were on full thrust to push them up from the sand. At 8,000 feet they'd acquire the target and scream down towards it at forty-five degrees. That was when they were at their most vulnerable. If I fucked up, they could be illuminated.

I didn't even bother looking out of the window. They were miles away in the darkness.

I looked at the timer. Fifty-eight seconds until the first attack.

There was a loud thump.

Then another.

I glanced at my watch as the door took another pounding. There was nowhere to run. I had to stay and make sure this shit worked.

'Nick…?'

I gave a low groan. 'I'm sleeping.'

Cody sparked up in my earpieces. 'First attack – ordnance deployed.'

'Shorry… Nick…' Her voice was slurred. It sounded like she had her face pressed against the door. 'I was wondering… if you fancied a drink. Maybe I could bring a bottle up?'

'Contact, contact, contact.'

There was a distant flash of sheet lighting, then another, from the strip of darkness between the city and the stars. A few seconds later, the pressure waves from the first series of explosions rumbled over the rooftops.

Cody continued his commentary as the next Ra'am rolled down into the target.

'Nick? Did you hear that? What was that?'

'Thunder… There's a storm out there.'

The screen still showed 73-75 per cent. There were more flashes and rumbles as the seven F-15s kicked away at the target.

Cody gobbed off in my ear and the thunder continued to roll. I muted the BlackBerry. 'Tell you what, Di, give me ten minutes and I'll see you down at the bar.'

She rattled on the door with both hands to mimic the explosions. 'Better bring that umbrella of yours.'

Another lightning bolt flashed on the horizon, then faded with her laughter as she headed back along the corridor.

Tuesday, 9 March 2010 12.50 hrs It wasn't supposed to be this way.

I leant against the triple-glazed floor-to-ceiling windows of my penthouse apartment and tried to look out over Docklands, but the stabbing pain in my head played havoc with my vision. It felt like I was swimming through a pool full of razorblades.

The glass-and-steel monolith had had its final lick of paint the day Lehman Brothers had gone belly-up and the owner was no longer flashing the cash. 'Their crunch is your lunch,' the overly pushy estate agent told me, with a megawatt grin and flash of racing-car cufflinks. 'If you've got cash on the hip, you can really clean up at times like this.'

I'd been penniless through every other recession in living memory, so it seemed like a nice idea. And I'd loved everything about this place, from the dual-aspect reception room opening on to the roof terrace to the secure underground parking space; from the granite worktops to the limestone bath with integrated TV; from the private balcony and walk-in wardrobe that hadn't yet been filled, to the guest bedroom with the cantilevered glass pod sticking out over the dock.

It was like something out of a Bond film. The photochromic glass frontage darkened when the sun got too bright during the day, and the night-time views across to the Canary Wharf towers and the glistening river beneath were so fantastic I never closed the blinds.

Before the headaches had begun I'd just sit there with a brew, mesmerized by the aircraft warning lights. If I needed a change of scenery I'd wander over to the other side of the apartment and gaze past Tower Bridge towards the mishmash of South London estates that used to be my manor. As a kid I'd looked back across the water and thought the disused ware-houses and crumbling tenements along this stretch were even worse than the shithole I called home, but Docklands was a very different story now. And so was what had been happening inside my head for over a week.

'You OK, Nick?'

Julian was sitting on one of my fancy leather armchairs, working his way through my supply of coffee capsules.

I didn't look round. 'Yes, mate.'

I wasn't about to tell him the truth. I didn't like people worrying about me. It made me uncomfortable. No one had given a fuck about me when I was a kid, and I'd got to prefer it that way.

The forest of tower cranes standing over Millwall Dock was a blur, but the one with Christmas lights still draped across its boom was starting to come back into focus.

'This isn't good for you, stuck away up here, keeping your-self to yourself. You're turning into a recluse. You've got to get back out into the real world, do the things you do best.' He hesitated. 'I'm worried about you.'

I knew he wasn't just concerned about my social life: he had a job for me. I'd tried to blank the pain instead of dealing with it these last few days; trying to stand there and take it until it gave up for a moment and went away. Maybe it was working. I'd always gone that route during my time as a deniable operator, and before that when I was in the Regiment. I'd done it as far back as I could remember.

I'd taken whatever my stepdad had dished out and not given him the satisfaction of knowing I was about to cry. I'd just stepped up to the plate, taken the punishment and dared him to have another crack. Which he always did. Me not reacting the way he wanted had pissed him off big-time: the slaps had got harder, and so had I.

So, no way was this shit going to get to me.

I turned back to Jules. He was dressed immaculately as usual, in a crisp white shirt and black suit, shiny shoes, perfectly knotted fancy red tie. He looked more like a Calvin Klein model than the first black section head of the Security Service, MI5.