Andy McNab - Zero hour

I didn't get a smile back. There was nothing I could do for her apart from get things sorted and try to make her as physically comfortable as possible.

She loitered by the shower door.

'It's OK, Angeles. I'm not going anywhere except downstairs. I have to sort everything out. You've got to help me and I've got to help you. Everything is OK. Go, go.'

She nodded slowly and stepped into the steam.

The bags lay ripped and trampled on by the front door. I shoved whatever I could into the ones that were still intact, and scooped the rest of the gear into my arms. I headed back up and dumped the lot on the brown carpet. The electric shower hummed away on the other side of the stud wall as Angeles went through the horror of watching someone else's blood drain away by her feet.

I almost fell down the stairs in the rush to get back to the loading bay and start the clean-up. First into the rear footwell went the jeans with the stab punctures. I bundled up my vomit clothes and shoved them on top.

Next was my neo. I hauled him by his feet and pushed and heaved him on top of his would-be competitor. I'd never been a great one for poetic justice, but this came close.

Both neos were fucking idiots as far as I was concerned, but I needed to give myself a good kicking as well. They'd probably pinged us at the market, when I was paying more attention to cheering Angeles up than thinking about who might be looking over our shoulders.

They should have reported back to Flynn once they'd IDed the safe-house instead of taking things into their own heavily tattooed hands. Whatever, the fact was that in the next couple of hours whoever was back at the silo was going to be flapping and making some calls. But I had no control over that; all I could do was crack on with the plan.

I had to wedge Angeles's neo as far down the rear passenger footwell as I could. The boot was already full. I'd cover him with her sleeping bag before leaving.

The effort left me wet with sweat and gagging for breath. I leant against the vehicle and felt the top of my head. The wound was crescent-shaped where his top set had been able to rip into the skin. It would scab up soon enough. The sweat down my back started to cool and I felt myself shiver. My arse was hurting again, and so was my hand.

I had to grip the situation and make sure Angeles and I got out of here in one piece, simple as that. She'd only just started her life and I wanted mine to end with Anna. That was pretty simple as well.

I forced myself off the vehicle and carried on collecting together all the device-making paraphernalia and tucking it around the bodies. There was no easy way to erase my prints from the wagon, let alone the DNA. I could burn it, but even thirty years after an event, blood can still be identified. The only way I could to deal with this was to get all the evidence together and make sure it was never found. Not while I was alive, anyway.

I didn't touch the neos' wallets or ID. If I did my job correctly, the wagon would never be found, and all my problems, and some of Angeles's, would be packed away inside.

I lugged the battery back into the Passat and connected it up. Thank fuck it still worked. I didn't have jump leads.

I turned my attention to the devices. First into the Bergen was the water container with about four litres of fuel. Then I carefully curled the gaffer-tape fuse into a couple of loops and laid it on top. I took the roll of gaffer tape over to the alarm clock, gave the bulb a generous protective coating, made sure the batteries were still in the wrong way round, then it went in as well.

Next was the picric acid. The yellow mush had crystallized on the plastic, and was ready for bagging. I placed it carefully in two new freezer bags, which I tucked into the left-hand pouch of the Bergen. The two bags of cartridge propellant went in the other side.

I put the Bergen into the front passenger's footwell of the Passat and climbed behind the wheel. I sat there, working through exactly what I was going to have to do tonight. I visualized my actions as if I were a camera lens, watching my hands assembling the devices, going through everything step by step. I didn't want to forget any detail that would stop the device detonating once I'd left.

The fire door opened. Angeles appeared in her new jeans. She had the brush in one hand but hadn't even tried to get through the knots in her hair. She looked about her. All that remained of the drama was a pool of dark red, almost brown, blood that had been smeared along the concrete as I'd dragged the body of her neo towards the Passat.

I climbed out. 'I need to clean that up before we leave.'

She wasn't listening. 'We will tell the police?'

'No, we won't tell the police anything. We just leave, and we never say anything to anyone at any time about anything. Is that OK with you?'

Her head juddered, maybe out of fear. 'I wanted to kill him.' She pointed at the blood on the ground. 'I wanted to make him pay. Make them all pay.'

I was expecting her to start crying again as I walked over to her, but she didn't. The tears had gone. She was pleased with what she had done. Fair one, I would have felt the same.

'Angeles?'

She kept her eyes on the blood.

'Angeles, look at me.' I went over to her and bent down so I could get eye-to-eye again. 'I've got to leave for a while tonight, but I'll be back.'

Her eyes widened.

'Just for a while. I have to get rid of the car. When I come back, we will leave here and go to my friend who is going to help you – help both of us.'

She gave a brisk nod. It was as if what had been left of the child in her had gone, which I supposed it did pretty quickly once you'd stabbed a man to death.

'Nick, why are you here? What are you doing for – what do you call it? – your job?'

'Remember what we said before? You ask no questions, because I'm not going to answer, OK?'

She looked at me for a couple of seconds, and nodded.

I stopped the Passat, jumped out and went back to hit the shutter button. A few moments later I was heading down the road towards the roundabout and then on to Distelweg, shoving the contents of Bradley's briefing folder into the glove compartment as I drove.

I was going to the silo sterile. My passport was still in the mailroom. The heating felt good around my body as the Passat glided towards the canal. It stank of bodies and vomit, but that didn't matter. I crossed into the world of darkness the other side of the water and was soon approaching the tile warehouse. I pulled into the car bays and killed the lights and engine. I sat, watched and listened. The sky was clear tonight; at least there would be no rain.

There were no lights, no voices, no traffic.

I waited another five minutes, then fired up the wagon and carried on down Distelweg. Not too fast; not too slow. I didn't want to be noticed for doing either. I couldn't see much, but I checked for anything that might have changed since I was last here.

The target was in darkness.

As I passed the two-level warehouse or factory immediately before the wasteground, an external door opened and there was a burst of light. It was closed again quickly. No drama. It was three hundred metres from the target. If somebody was working late, and staying inside, they wouldn't get hurt. There was nothing happening on the outside, for sure. There were no lights. What was about to happen would be something to tell the kids, but not much more.

I drove down to the sharp left-hand turn by the ferry point, and the city lights glowed at me from across the water. I followed the road, looking down the steep drop from the reclaimed land of the dock into the bay, for about two hundred metres. On my left, the land side, there was a clutch of small industrial units. A small brick path and a thin strip of grass ran away to the right, stopping at the water about three metres below. I found a gap between the wire-mesh fences of two units and reversed into it. I closed down once more but left the ignition on. This time I sank into the seat, nice and low, letting my arse slide down the leather. I kept my weight on the left cheek. As long as I didn't move, nobody walking past would see me.