Andy McNab - Brute force

I heard a rustle as the phone was retrieved. I could hear her breathing.

'Leena?'

'They mugged him… right outside Costcutter… they killed him… He was only going to get his HobNobs.'

I wanted to commiserate with her, but there was no time. I needed information out of her before she dissolved. 'Who did it?'

'The police don't know yet. It's so awful. So many strange things today.'

'Strange things?'

There was another long silence.

'Talk to me, Leena. This is important.'

'Well… just this morning, he had some people from the old country turn up… and then this… I told him I'd go later, but he wouldn't hear of it. Said I had enough to do… and now…'

I heard her distressed breathing retreat as she replaced the receiver.

I redialled and got the engaged tone. She'd taken it off the hook.

The street lights had come on without me noticing. I walked fast to the cafe.

Lynn had waited for me to return before starting on his panini.

I took a bite and leant towards him. 'We're fucked.'

His eyes widened. 'What, more than we were ten minutes ago?'

'I'll explain later. We've got to take the passports as compromised. We've got to get to an ATM. I'll draw out as much as I can then I'll bin the card. Then it's straight to the flat.'

Within an hour we were back in the middle of a bus, this time heading north. My ripped-up card was buried in a couple of Chiavari bins.

Lynn's eyelids drooped and he kept rubbing his face. His stubble rustled under his fingers.

'It's going to get worse than this, believe me. We've tried it your way. There's only one place we can go now.'

'Where's that?'

'Libya.'

The warm breeze carried the smell of the sea and the sound of raised voices. Then I heard the rev of engines, the blast of a horn, more shouting and the squeal of tyres.

I opened my eyes. Lynn was sitting in his chair by the window that opened onto the Juliet balcony. He was staring out across the harbour. I wondered how long he'd been there.

I swung my legs off the bed, hauled myself into the kitchen and started going through the cupboards, but all I could find was some decaf. I heaped two big spoonfuls into a cup, waited for the kettle to boil and poured myself a small measure of water. I tried to kid myself that the dark black stuff was the real McCoy, but it wasn't working, so I dragged a chair from the dining table and plonked myself next to Lynn. He had his binos stuck to his face and was tracking a large yacht as it made its way out to sea.

'Spotted him yet?'

He lowered the binos. 'Who?'

'Mansour.'

It didn't raise a smile.

'I hope you're right about this.'

'And our alternative is what, exactly? Apart from you and me, Mansour is the only man on the planet who knows the significance of the name Leptis – a nickname he coined for you. He's also one of very few who knew Ben Lesser was on board the Bahiti. Lesser's dead. Duff's dead. You're supposed to be dead, and I'm assuming I am too. In the whole equation, the only man left standing is Mansour. Either he's pulling the strings here, or he must know who is.'

Lynn pulled a face. 'Bomb-making wasn't part of his repertoire.'

'I told you last night, that's nit-picking. Training and supplying PIRA, the relationship with Lesser, the Bahiti shipment… they were all handled by Mansour. I don't give a shit whether it's the Firm or the Tellytubbies who are trying to kill me. Mansour will know what all this is about, and if not, maybe he'll know a man who does. We're going to find these fuckers and get them before they get us.'

We'd debated it long enough. He knew I was right.

He shrugged and handed me the binoculars. 'Magnificent, isn't she, don't you think?'

I lifted them to my face. The yacht was now under sail. 'How do you drive one of those things anyway? Does it operate like a car?'

Lynn scowled. 'Not "it", "she". If you insist on calling her "it" you will bring us bad luck.'

Like ours could get any worse.

Lynn had gone off on one last night about the sort of vessel we'd need for the trip. Even he had to confess we'd need something with more bollocks than a sailing yacht to get to Tripoli if we wanted to get there before the end of the year.

I was scanning the harbour for the kind of thing I thought might be up to the job – not that I had a clue what we were really looking for. But you didn't have to be an expert to appreciate some of the seriously Gucci kit that was out there. In amongst the fishing boats, the speed boats and the yachts were an array of gin palaces that told me certain people were riding out the recession just fine, thank you very much.

Some of them were huge, with double funnel stacks, tenders as big as Lynn's apartment and more radars than Heathrow airport. One of them even had a helicopter on the back.

Lynn picked himself up from his seat and wandered into the apartment. I heard him clattering around in the kitchen. 'We're going to need a boat that's fast and has range. How far is it to Tripoli, anyway?'

'No idea.' I carried on scanning the harbour. It was another world out there. How did these people make so much fucking money?

Then, in amongst the kitchen noises, I heard the sound of Bill Gates' welcoming Windows ditty.

Lynn was hunched over the laptop, still surfing off his neigh-bour's signal. A few moments later his printer whirred and the first of the Google Earth maps of Tripoli landed on the table. I'd been impressed with his work this morning. With nothing to go on except seriously out-of-date information, he'd pulled up the Libyan Yellow Pages online and started burning through his Skype credit, giving it hubba-hubba to all and sundry.

Fuck knows who he was calling, but he managed to get some kind of confirmation that Mansour was still alive and living in Tripoli. I had to trust him on the Skype front. Whatever the risks, they were less than him showing his face on the way to a public phone – which the Italians would probably have been monitoring anyway.

I went back to studying the harbour. Lynn had pointed out the little dinghy he pottered about in. I tracked on down the line of boats on the far side of the marina. The bigger the boat, the closer it was to the open sea. By the time I'd panned down to the end of the sea-wall, adjusting the focus as I went, I half expected to see Roman Abramovich waving at me.

The really big numbers were crawling with crew. Hulls were being scrubbed down, decks swept and paint applied to metalwork.

My binos swept past them and headed out towards the open water.

More boats bobbed up and down just beyond the marina, a mixed bag, all of which still cost more than your average house – on second thoughts, make that ten average houses. I tried to work out whether there was any significance to them being out there, and decided that their owners were too tight to pay harbour fees.

I kept panning, then stopped. Something sleek and dangerous slipped into the field of view – not as big as anything I'd seen on Abramovich Row, but probably no less damaging to the bank account.

It had a matt black hull and a shiny grey upper deck. Antennae sprouted from the roof. A radar revolved on a beam just above and behind the main cabin. The thing looked like an ocean-going Ferrari. And to top it all, there was a really good-looking woman sunning herself on the front deck. I adjusted the focus again. She looked Chinese or Japanese; it was hard to tell at this distance. Oriental, anyway. Her eyes were closed and her face angled towards the weak, wintry sun.

A guy suddenly appeared on deck. I followed him as he edged round the cabin, crept up on her and dropped something down her sweater. Even though the boat was 500 metres away, I heard her squeal.