Andy McNab - Zero hour

I moved up the hallway and repeated the process a couple of times on Bitch Tits. I was tempted to finish him then and there, but I had something else in mind.

My face was covered with sweat by the time I dropped the extinguisher and headed outside. The Lexus was ticking over smoothly. I turned off the ignition and lights and pocketed the keys. Back in the hallway, I slammed the door behind me and bolted up before hitting the light switch.

Flynn and Bitch Tits lay prone on the concrete. They'd taken a battering but their chests still pulsated.

I gave them both another slam into the back to keep them immobilized before checking for weapons. They were clean.

Legging it as best I could, I went through the door into the silo to retrieve the Bergen. I lifted it on one shoulder. My feet were heavy. I was fucked. I gulped huge mouthfuls of air. Adrenalin was going to keep me going here. Adrenalin and blind fucking rage. I had to get back to them before they had time to recover. I needed to control them.

Dutch voices had taken over the TV above me now. I dropped to my knees beside the bodies and took off the Bergen. I unpacked the gaffer tape. The one eye that Flynn could still open was fixed on me.

They gave no resistance as I grabbed their hands. I taped them behind their backs, and then I did their ankles. I wrapped a strip over their mouths. I kept it as tight as possible. I wanted them to have to fight for every molecule of oxygen.

I taped open two out of the four eyes that weren't broken or swollen. I didn't want them to miss a thing.

I slid down the wall and sat there, totally fucked, fighting for breath. The two of them were starting to recover a little. They tried to beg and reason with me via muffled, gaffer-taped moans.

I didn't want to get up. But I had to.

I staggered to my feet and opened the windows and doors of the two ground-floor offices that faced the silo, then did the same in the three upstairs. The news was still on. A female anchor with sculpted blonde hair was getting highly excited about the football results. Robot hadn't moved an inch.

I stumbled downstairs. Grabbing Flynn's bound feet under my arm, I dragged him into the silo. He kicked out as best he could, but his weight was more of a problem. I dropped his feet just past the door and kicked into both of them. It wasn't about control: every time I looked at these guys I kept thinking about the green house.

Picking up his feet once more, I finished dragging him into the centre of the main building. I left him with his back against a heavy desk, then went back and fetched Bitch Tits.

I put my ear to the girls' door. They'd heard the fight. Their voices were high and agitated. Some of them cried. I heard one of them speaking only centimetres from my head. She was probably doing the same as me, ear to the door, trying to work things out.

I hit the light switch by the main entrance and checked the Facebook picture, then unlocked the door and pushed it open.

'Lilian Edinet?'

The girls were all wearing jeans and sweatshirts. They had nothing on their feet or above their eyes. They cowered by their mattresses, some holding hands, expecting the worst.

'Lilian?'

I looked at each face, the blonde ones first.

'Yes, I am Lilian.'

The girl who stepped forward had been standing in the far left-hand corner, by the slop bucket and piles of grease-stained pizza boxes and plastic sandwich wrappers. Her hair was longer than in the picture, and matted. Her expression was defiant.

I moved towards her, my hand outstretched.

'Come on. Move!' I knew I should be treating her to the full Mother Teresa number, but I didn't have the time. None of us did.

I had to grab her arm and pull her all the way out of the room. I slammed the door shut and threw the bolt.

Under the lights in the hallway, her resolve crumbled. Tears cascaded down her cheeks. She was trembling. She tried to hide it, but wasn't having much success.

'Please, please…'

I took her face in my hands and moved it up towards the light.

It was her all right. The Goth vampire look had faded, but you couldn't mistake the fire in her eyes. Whatever they'd done to her, they hadn't yet broken her spirit.

I let go of her and pressed the picture into her hand. 'Who is that? What is his name?'

The paper shook in her hands. Teardrops hit the page. 'Viku.'

I grabbed her by the arm once more. 'I'm taking you home.'

I dragged her to the office opposite and pushed her inside.

'Turn the light on. Stay here. I'll come back soon. Do not leave this room, OK?'

She nodded.

I closed the door. This one also had a key in it. They probably all did if this place was being rented out. I gave it a turn. It would put the frighteners on her again, but I didn't want her to see what I was getting up to next.

Everything I needed was squared away. All the girls, and the two fucks next door, were contained, and I had Lilian. Now I could sort out the device.

I hoisted the Bergen onto one shoulder and headed back into the silo. Flynn and Bitch Tits thrashed their legs about, their heads jerking in unison as they tried to shout out at me through the gaffer tape. The pleading had stopped. They were just pissed off big-time.

Three thick, cast-iron heating pipes ran from beneath the concrete, through evenly spaced brackets up the wall, all the way to the floor above us. I gave them an exploratory tug. They didn't give an inch.

My body ached, my feet were getting heavier and I was gagging for water, but nothing could detract from the glow of knowing these two were going to watch my every move and then work out exactly what was going to happen to them. And to make sure that happened unimpeded, I dragged each of them across the floor and ran the gaffer tape around their heads and the pipes, and then did the same with their chests and waists. Their legs stretched out in front of them. They were going nowhere. The show was about to begin, and I wanted them to have ringside seats.

The offices above me spilt enough light for me to see what I needed to see and do what I needed to do. Whatever was on the TV, it was now in Dutch.

I removed the freezer bags: two with the yellow picric acid crystals, and two with the shotgun propellant. The fuel container came out next. I laid them all in a line. I had to do this methodically or I might fuck up and forget something.

The pair of them had stopped moving about. They had one good eye each and they were fixed on me like laser beams. They were trying to work out what the fuck was happening. They'd know soon enough.

First I had to assemble the two explosive charges. I unsealed a bag of picric, inserted an open pack of dark grey propellant into the middle of the yellow crystals, and put them to one side. I exposed one end of my home-made fuse with my teeth and shoved it into the second pack of propellant, then gaffer-taped the two securely together before repeating the process. I taped the second picric bag too.

I moved across to where the remnants of the flour had drifted like snow against the wall that joined the silo to the admin building. Dropping onto my hands and knees, I scooped as much as I could of it to one side so the twenty-litre fuel container could sit directly on the concrete. My nose and mouth were soon full of fine white powder, and so were my eyes.

I placed the container in the space I'd cleared, and taped the second IED on top of it. The fuse snaked off to my right.

The flour began to mix with the sweat running down my cheeks and gathering at the back of my neck. I must have looked like a cross between the world's most enthusiastic coke head and the Pillsbury Doughboy.

I grabbed the components of the first IED, which was to be the kicker charge. I dug deep into the flour that I'd just helped bank against the wall. I had to make sure of two things: first, that I placed the kicker charge higher than the firebomb; and second, that it went as deep into the flour as I could manage. These bags still weren't sealed. It wasn't their time yet.