Andy McNab - Agressor

He was right; the ward lock, at least, was going to be easy. It was basically a spring-loaded bolt into which a notch had been cut. These things had been around since Ancient Roman times. The key fitted into the notch and slid the bolt backwards and forwards. It takes its name from the fixed projections, or wards, inside the mechanism and around the keyhole, which prevent the wrong key from doing the business.

Charlie tucked the fibre optic away and unwrapped a set of what looked like button-hooks, fashioned from strong, thin steel. All being well, one of them would bypass the wards and shift the bolt into the unlock position.

In next to no time I heard the deadlock clunk open, and Charlie's head swayed from side to side in triumph as he packed the hooks away.

The combination cylinder was next. This time, the lock would be released once an arrow on the left-hand side of the dial had triggered the correct sequence of numbers. Our problem was that there was no way of telling when the tumblers had reached their correct position; the only noise we'd hear was when the lever finally descended into the slot, once the right combination had been dialled.

Charlie started rotating the cylinder left and right. He may have been trying Baz's number plate first, or running through the Russian factory default settings.

Once he'd exhausted the obvious ones, he would have to go through every possible permutation. In theory there'd be about a million of the little bastards, but the good thing about old and low-quality cylinders like this one was that the numbers didn't have to be located precisely; up to two digits either side of true and the lock would still open, which cut the possible combinations down to a mere 8,000 or so. It wasn't what Charlie might call a piece of piss, but even with his hands wasting away he should be able to rattle through them in a few hours. He told me once that he really never thought about what he was doing; he just switched onto autopilot.

He leaned over to me. 'DOB?'

He hadn't asked me for it since my trip to the bookshop because there was no need. If I hadn't found Baz's date of birth, I'd have told him.

'Twenty-two ten fifty-nine.'

His hands started to turn the cylinder: 22 anticlockwise… 10 clockwise… 59 anti-clockwise…

For some reason, that was the most commonly used sequence of movements.

I realized I was holding my breath.

Nothing. No sound. No falling lever; no question of simply turning the handle and hearing the bolts slide back into the door.

Charlie played with the three number sets in sequence, but varying the direction of rotation.

After a dozen or so other attempts, he tried 22 anticlockwise, 59 clockwise, 22 anticlockwise.

There was a gentle clunk from inside the door.

Charlie picked up his torch and shone it round the floor to make triply sure that he'd left nothing lying around.

I could have opened the safe while he did so, but there was a protocol to be observed at times like this. That honour belonged to Charlie.

He turned back when he was satisfied everything had been packed away. He pulled down the handle. The bolts retracted from both the hinged and the opening side, and it swung open with a small metallic creak.

Charlie still had the key-ring torch in his mouth, and his head was inside the safe. I leaned over him. There was a shelf in the middle, and it held just two items: an open box of antique jewellery, maybe his mother's, and a blue plastic folder.

Charlie didn't need the camcorder to remind him how the folder lay; he lifted it straight out and handed it over. A quick sweep of the Maglite revealed about twenty pages of handwritten Paperclip.

It didn't look much, but it was obviously worth two hundred thousand US to someone.

He hardly had time to shrug before the door burst open and the lights came on.

There were two of them, hollering at us in Russian or Paperclip. They were both carrying suppressed pistols with big, bulky barrels; we raised our hands very slowly, so they couldn't fail to notice that, unfortunately, we weren't. I kept my left elbow slightly bent, to try and hold the CO 2 canister in place.

They were in their early thirties; short black hair, jeans and leather jackets, lots of gold rings and bracelets, and both looking confused about the situation.

Their faces weren't masked, and that was bad news. They didn't care about being identified. One was dark with stubble; the other had bloodshot eyes. I wondered if he'd stopped by the Primorski on the way over.

Their yells increased in volume, and reverberated around the room. Just having our hands up obviously wasn't enough.

It looked like the one with the bloodshot eyes was in charge. He glared at me and opened his leather jacket repeatedly with his spare hand. I got the message. Keeping my right hand up, I unzipped my bomber very slowly with my left. My boots dropped onto the carpet. Charlie followed suit.

They now knew that neither of us was carrying, but that didn't stop the shouting. I didn't know what else they wanted, and I wasn't going to ask. I didn't want them to know we were Brits. I shrugged my shoulders and twisted my hands.

They gobbed off at each other, very quickly and aggressively, then Red Eyes moved towards Charlie, pistol steady, while Stubbly covered him. He waved his free hand again, shouted, gesticulated at the floor.

Charlie got it: the boy was after the folder.

He reached down and picked it up with his left hand, keeping his right in the air. Red Eyes took a step forward, grabbed it, and jammed his weapon into Charlie's neck. I could see Chinese characters engraved along the barrel. It was old and really well worn, but that didn't matter. It would still fuck Charlie up if he pulled that trigger.

Keeping the muzzle right where it was, Red Eyes bent down and reached into the safe. The jewellery found its way into his jacket pocket with the speed and precision of a conjuring trick. For a finale, he yanked off Charlie's mask, then gave me the same treatment.

He took a couple of steps back to survey his handiwork. They both stood there for several seconds, one each side of the doorway. Red Eyes muttered something to his unshaven friend, placed the folder on the desk and started to flick through its contents. Stubbly kept moving the muzzle of his weapon from my head to Charlie's and back, just in case we hadn't got the message.

They barked stuff at each other as Red Eyes turned the pages. I didn't know what to do next. I had been in the situation enough times myself to recognize the look and sound of uncertainty. Finally he looked up, glowered at the two of us, and pulled out a cell phone.

I glanced over at Charlie, who was studying the floor so closely he appeared to be trying to memorize every fibre of the carpet. I knew that look. He was wondering how the fuck to get us out of here. I hoped the silly old fucker would come up with something before these boys got permission to top us.

There was a series of rapid beeps as Red Eyes punched in the number. Whoever was at the other end answered immediately. Red Eyes studied each of us in turn, giving what sounded like a description, then picked up the document and quoted a couple of chunks from it. Then he looked at us again. I didn't understand what he was saying, but I got the drift. Whatever problems they'd expected to have to deal with in the house, they now had two extra ones, and they were less than happy workers. As if I was.

There was nothing we could do to help ourselves immediately, so I studied Stubbly's weapon instead so I'd know what to do with it when I got my hands around the pistol grip. The power of positive thinking.

His finger was on the trigger and the safety was off; the lever on the left-hand side of the grip was down. These kinds of suppressed weapons normally had both a single-shot and semi-automatic capability. With the one, you loaded manually, pulling back the top slide and letting it go forward to pick up a new round from the magazine each time you fired. With the other, the top slide wasn't locked in position, so you just kept firing until the magazine was empty.