Andy McNab - Brute force

Lynn watched through the binos as the owner of the hands revealed himself to be a boy in a gelabaya. He busied himself with some drying up.

'I'd say that the house-boy is Pakistani – Indian or Sri Lankan maybe. No Libyan I met here ever employed another Libyan, for fear they'd kiss and tell.'

I had other concerns. 'Will he have weapons?'

'Expect handguns – one in the bedroom and at least one elsewhere. They love cash. Mansour will have a bag of dollars hidden away, in case he has to make himself scarce.'

There was no street lighting so the garden remained largely in shadow. The light from the sitting room fell across a welltended lawn, maintained by a sprinkler, which was switched off but visible in the middle of the garden. There was plenty of barking from around the neighbourhood, but none from down below, and I didn't see any turds on the grass. Things were looking up.

The only other sounds were distant traffic, the odd car on the street and an occasional aircraft taking off from Tripoli International a few Ks away.

A shadow moved behind the blinds at the front of the house. The kid was still in and out of the kitchen – worked off his feet. It was close to midnight by the time the light was switched off.

I waited. The boy didn't exit via the front door, as I expected. Instead, there was a creak from the back and a second later an outside light went on, spilling down a set of steps and some bins between the back of the house and the wall. There was a shriek of metal-on-metal, the tell-tale protest of a rusty hinge, as the boy paused to lift the lid on one of the bins, dropped a sack of rubbish into it, then turned and headed towards the gate.

So the kitchen quarters at the back of the house had their own separate entrance – and an outside light with a motion sensor.

I heard the click of the lock and saw the gate swing inwards.

If Mansour had ever rigged a light-sensor to the gate it was broken, or the bulb was, because it never triggered as the boy moved through it. The lights over the front door never picked him up either, which meant the sensors were angled inwards, specifically to cover the entrance. The ground from the side of the house to the gate was unmonitored by any kind of surveillance. Even better, the gate was fitted with a lever-lock: opened by a key from the outside, a latch on the inside.

I turned to Lynn. 'Here's the plan. You're going to help me over the wall and then come back here. I'm going to lie low in the garden for a bit and see what else I can pick up inside the house. When Mansour heads for bed, I'll open the gate and let you in. Keep watching me and I'll signal you. As soon as you see it, make your move. OK? Once I let you in, sit tight, watch what I do and do what I say. Got it?'

His eyes gleamed. His jaw tightened and jutted. The fucker really was enjoying this. Maybe he relished being back in the world of spookery. Maybe it helped keep his mind off Caroline, and the life he thought he should have given her. It must surely have beaten the hell out of mushroom farming.

The lights in the front of the house were still burning brightly. I couldn't be sure, because I'd seen no movement behind the blinds for at least forty minutes, but I was almost positive Mansour was still on the ground floor. I'd been monitoring the window on the stairs, and no one had moved past it. It was conceivable that he had guests or bodyguards, but I'd been watching the boy prepare the food and, from the quantity, I was pretty sure he was on his own.

It was coming up to 12.30. I needed to get moving. The best moment to enter the house was within an hour and a half of lights-out – the time when Mansour, like the rest of us, entered the deepest period of his night's sleep.

I picked up a plastic carrier bag and part-filled it with builder's sand. 'OK, let's roll.'

Lynn and I moved downstairs and took up position by the wall.

I checked my pockets and handed Lynn my day sack. I put my mouth to his ear. 'Brace yourself against the wall. I need to stand on your shoulders.'

I climbed up, wobbling as Lynn found his balance. I edged my head slowly over the top.

The sounds of the city filled the night air. Everything was as I'd last seen it from the building site – the lights blazing from the front rooms, the rest of it quiet.

I pulled the knife from the side pocket of my cargoes and got to work, chipping away carefully at the cement on top of the wall. As I'd hoped, it was old, dry and loose. As each piece of glass came free, I placed it in the sand-filled carrier bag to deaden the sound.

It took me no more than ten minutes to clear enough space for my knees and feet. I hauled myself onto the wall, handed Lynn the bag and then lowered myself down the other side. The earth was still soft from the sprinkler.

Crouching low, I stopped and listened. A dog was barking further down the street – too far away to have heard me, but I stayed still until it stopped. Then I ran half-crouching to the cover of a palm tree and a group of immaculately sculpted bushes at the centre of the lawn.

I waited. Ten minutes later, the lights went out in the sitting room.

I checked my luminous dial. It was coming up for one o'clock. I glanced up as a shadow moved past the window on the stairs. At long last, the target was heading for bed. I waited another couple of minutes, then, keeping low, retraced the lad's route down the path along the side of the house until I was beside the kitchen window.

Two aircraft flew over in quick succession and I tracked their winking navigation lights against the stars as they headed out over the Mediterranean.

Eventually, at 1.45, Mansour must have grown tired of his bedtime reading and flicked off the light.

I gave it another forty minutes, then moved back out to a point on the lawn where Lynn could see me. I gestured for him to make his way to the gate.

Making sure that I stuck to the same line as the house-boy, I crept along the path, pressed myself into the shadows, and waited till I heard breathing on the other side of the gate. I double-checked it was Lynn then eased back the bolt of the lever-lock until it was clear of the restraining catch. Having heard the creak as the boy went out, I didn't rush the business of opening it.

Two minutes later Lynn was standing next to me, the gate firmly closed behind us.

At 2.37 by my watch, we were both standing in front of the kitchen window. I moved my mouth to his ear again. 'Hands and knees this time.'

I pulled the knife from my cargoes. Standing on Lynn's back, I started to remove the four screws holding the bug-screen in place. They took me less than a minute each. As soon as I'd finished, I hid the screen in the bushes and dragged us both into the shadows.

I put my finger to my lips and pointed to the front left-hand corner of the house, where, by now, Mansour was hopefully asleep.

I caught the sound I was hoping to hear – distant, but unmistakable and growing in intensity.

I nudged Lynn and gestured for him to get over to the window and assume the position.

While the aircraft was still some distance away, I got to work with the knife, slipping it between the gap in the sash window and jiggling it until the tip pressed against the latch. I then waited until the plane was almost overhead before I exerted any pressure.

I pushed, gradually increasing the weight behind the hilt, until the spring-loaded mechanism gave.

I hoped that the click had been muffled by the sound of the airliner's four turbofans as they powered it up towards cruise altitude.

When the sound of the plane built to a crescendo, I raised the lower window. As soon as I'd got eighteen inches of clearance I slid part-way across the sill so that my upper body was balanced on the tiled work surface the other side.