Andy McNab - Agressor

The curtain of water in front of us was now so solid I had to slow the Pajero to a crawl.

The noise was horrendous. We'd had to open all the windows, to try to deal with the condensation from our soaking clothes. The heater was going full blast, but it didn't stand a chance.

Bastard was trying without success to shift some of the mud off his clothes and skin. He looked like he'd just crawled out of the black lagoon. He paused mid-scrape and had a crack at getting back into the good lads' club. 'Hey, Nick, believe me, I'm sorry about that Anthony guy. I'm sorry about the whole goddam thing. It was a really heavy time.'

'But it didn't have to be, did it?'

Bastard fidgeted some more. 'It wasn't like that. Just think what would have happened if Koresh and his buddies had gotten away with giving the finger to the ATF. Law and order would've lost all credibility. A thing like that couldn't go unpunished. Anarchy, lawlessness – gotta be nipped in the bud, or you end up like this shithole.'

Rain crashed onto the car like breaking waves. The wipers were on full power, and still I couldn't see a thing.

Charlie had arranged himself across the back seat, weapon tucked under his arse, legs draped over the carry-on. It was one of those airtight, fireproof, everything-proof aluminium things that come with a lifetime guarantee and a thousand-dollar price tag.

I got to thinking about what Bastard had said when he was plugged into the mains, and it didn't stack up. When it came to being fucked over, I was the world's leading expert, and the smart money didn't say anything like Bastard wanted us to think it did. There was something a whole lot more serious going on here than a little light spring-cleaning before the US President arrived.

I kept an eye on the pipeline scar to our left; more often than not, now, it was the only way of telling we were still on the road. The river had burst its banks an hour or two ago, and raged along the bottom of the gradient to our right.

Bastard glanced over his shoulder and leaned towards me, as if he had a secret to share with his best mate. 'Nick, listen. What about you and me making a deal? Let me go with the papers and tapes when we get to Borjomi; I'll call my guys, see to it you're off the wanted list, and make everything cool once you two get into Turkey. We've had enough of this shit, don't you think?'

He nodded at Charlie, whose head was wobbling from side to side as I bounced the wagon along the track.

'Just tell him I got out for a dump and made a run for it. Hey, how's he to know…'

Things weren't looking good out there. Brown slurry cascaded off the high ground to our left, carrying rocks and broken branches across our path.

Bastard wasn't giving up. 'You and me, Nick, we're both really in deep shit. We're singing off the same hymn sheet here.'

'Why don't we start with Swan Lake, lad?' Charlie sparked up from the back. 'We'll hum it, you go jump in it.'

I glanced in the rear-view. He'd turned onto his side, knees bunched up, and was chuckling quietly to himself. 'You've got two problems with your plan, Fat Boy. One' – he tapped the top pocket of his jacket – 'it's all in here. Two, running isn't exactly your strong suit. You couldn't even bend over to run a bath, for fuck's sake.'

There wasn't time to laugh.

Ariver of mud ten metres wide sluiced off the hill and hit the wagon broadside, pushing us to where the road fell away to the river below.

I swung the wheel to steer us into the skid, but nothing happened.

'Charlie, out the wagon!'

The mudslide gathered weight and momentum, and started to spill in through the open windows.

I grabbed the edge of the roof and hauled myself out of the gap.

Bastard was sliding his fat arse towards the passenger door. He could look after himself.

The Pajero was beginning to tip. I wrestled the rear door open and dragged Charlie clear by the shoulders.

He tumbled out on top of me as the vehicle slewed another couple of metres, then finally succumbed to the sheer weight of mud and cart-wheeled down towards the river.

A dozen or so metres away, Bastard struggled to get himself upright.

Charlie blinked as the rain lashed his mud-caked face.

'Papers and tape?'

Charlie tapped his pocket and nodded.

We both heard a sound like an approaching train.

I looked up, but before I could shout a warning the knee-high surge of mud and debris had gathered Bastard up and swept him over the edge.

The Pajero had landed upside down at the river's edge, five or six metres below us, doors open, windscreen smashed. It bucked and wallowed as water the colour of chocolate pounded against the wreckage. Any second now it would be snatched away and hurled downstream.

Bastard hadn't been any luckier. The river at this point was around thirty metres wide, and I watched as he floundered, went under, and bobbed up again about halfway across, almost indistinguishable from all the other lumps of debris swirling downstream.

I started ripping off my jacket.

Charlie rolled his eyes. 'Nothing we can do, lad. Fuck him. Anyway, we got Crazy Dave.'

I shook my head. Later, Bastard could die a slow and painful death, as far as I was concerned, but right now he was here, and Crazy Dave was a million miles away. 'He's our route out of this shit! He's got the contacts; he can get us over the border.'

There was nothing Charlie could do to help. His ankle was fucked, and the rest of him was falling apart. This one was down to me. I pulled my shirt out of my trousers and half jumped, half tumbled down the slope towards the maelstrom.

The water surged past at a fearsome pace, carrying all before it. Huge branches crashed over the rocks ahead of me.

There was a screech of tearing metal as the Pajero finally lost its grip and thundered downstream. I watched it for about a hundred metres, until the river bent sharply to the left and it disappeared.

And that was where I spotted him. The force of the current had carved out the subsoil for a ten-metre stretch along the far bank, exposing a latticework of tree-roots that gleamed white against the mud, like the ribs of a putrefying corpse. Bastard had his arm hooked through one of them.

He didn't stand the slightest chance of hauling himself up and out of the mud, let alone over the edge of the bank. There was no way I'd be able to either, and I hadn't spent a lifetime on the Big Mac diet.

I could see he was yelling at me big-time, but I couldn't hear a thing above the roar of the water.

I scanned the stretch of river between us. He must have fetched up where he was after being catapulted into it midstream. I'd need to enter the water much further up if I was going to have a chance of hitting the bank before I was swept in the wake of the Pajero, and on around the bend.

I scrambled over the mud thirty or forty metres upstream, past the jagged skeleton of a small wooden footbridge that had been unable to withstand the force of the flood.

I plunged in up to my calves and pushed on, fighting the freezing current until I was up to my waist and the sheer weight of the deluge whipped my legs from under me. I kicked and thrashed, but might as well not have bothered. Nothing I could do would stop me going under.

I went with the flow until my lungs threatened to burst and I started taking on water through my nose and mouth, then somehow managed to kick myself back to the surface.

My head spun and my eyes were streaming, but I caught sight of him again as I fought for breath. Like me, he was struggling to keep his head up, clinging to the tree root for dear life.

The water took me under again and I was suddenly more concerned about sucking in air than getting to the other side.