Andy McNab - Meltdown

Danny punched a speed-dial number on the mobile. He pressed record on the handycam and the minidisc gently whirred. More than seven hundred miles away, in the darkened Operation Meltdown control room deep inside GCHQ, Dudley watched over the operator's shoulder as the surveillance video images streamed from Danny's G3 phone direct to the main screen in front of him. The frame rate was not good and the images were low res but they came through clearly enough for him to see the action as it happened.

GCHQ is the electronic ears of British Intelligence; it looks a bit like a modern football stadium, ringed with massive satellite dishes. It sits on the edge of Cheltenham. Racegoers get a good view of the place from the ring road on their way to Cheltenham racecourse.

As Dudley watched, the four vans reversed up to the coaches one by one. The drivers turned off the van lights, got out, opened the rear doors and lowered the tailgates, and the transfer began immediately. A human chain was formed from the coaches to the first van. Once that had its quota of Melt, they moved on to the next van.

'It's like an EU summit down there,' said the operator as Danny's images zoomed in on the Spanish, German, Italian and French plates on the four box vans. The registrations were noted and immediately fed through to Dudley's European network so that the vans could be tracked to their final destination. No moves would be made against the shipments until Dudley gave the word.

The operator was focused on the images on the screen. 'He's done well getting that close without being pinged. And the camera-work's as steady as a rock.'

Dudley nodded. 'Well done, young Watts,' he breathed. No sound of voices drifted up into the hills. The operation was quick and efficient and Danny realized that George and the rest of the twins' crew must have started removing the drugs from their hiding places on the way up to the meet. Ignoring the trickle of sweat running down into his eyes, the thorns pricking through his jacket and the tension in his arms from the strain of holding the handy cam steady, Danny silently filmed the whole twentyminute operation, making sure that he zoomed in as close as he could on the faces of the men so that they could be identified later.

It was only when the engine of the first van fired up that Danny allowed himself to relax a little. He felt as though he'd been holding his breath throughout the whole operation. The vans departed one by one, two in one direction, two the other, and soon after the coaches followed, taking the road back down into Barcelona.

Danny lay still in the dust for a few minutes, listening hard, not wanting to move until he was sure that everyone had left the area. Then he cut the connection to the phone, slipped the minidisc into an inside pocket – just in case the phone hadn't done its job – stuffed the phone and the rest of the kit into his jacket pocket and tracked stealthily back to the Corsa.

He packed the little handycam back into its bag in the boot of the car, then paused for a moment to look up at the stars in the velvety dark of the Spanish night. He felt pretty pleased with himself. After everything that had happened over the past few days, at last something had gone exactly to plan. Danny smiled, knowing his grandfather would be pleased. As the big Bosnian paused to savour something delicious, he took a call on his mobile. Fergus summoned his waiter and paid the bill. He needed to be ready to move as soon as the twins left the restaurant. Not for the first time, he wished he still had Lee available to follow the Bosnian, but he knew he was more likely to get int from the twins if he stuck with them.

The big guy didn't stop chewing as he nodded in response to whatever was being said for the few seconds the phone was at his ear.

He smiled at the twins as he put away his mobile. His plate was empty – it seemed he had finally eaten enough. He pulled a wad of euros from a trouser pocket and paid the bill in cash, adding a huge tip for the grateful waiter.

Then he looked over his shoulder, along the road, and lifted an arm. Immediately the headlights on a vehicle parked fifty metres away lit up and the car moved out into the road and cruised up to the restaurant.

Fergus glanced over at the vehicle; it was a huge black Mercedes with tinted windows at the rear. In the front seats sat two heavy-looking characters. The backup.

The big man stood up, delved into the inside pocket of his black leather jacket and pulled out what appeared to be a couple of tickets, which he handed to the twins.

Will and Teddy stood up to shake hands with him before he left, weaving his way steadily through the packed tables towards the car.

From the back window of a VW van parked down the road from the restaurant a camera began to click furiously. It wasn't the first time it had been put to use that evening.

It continued clicking as the Bosnian got into his car and was driven away.

And then Teddy made a mistake. He was a bag of nerves. He slumped down in his chair, turned and looked directly at Fergus.

In the parked van, the camera began clicking again.

Phil was driving along a wet and busy road, desperately trying to read the road names through rain-streaked windows. The streetlights were making his task even more difficult. He pressed his gear-stick radio pressel.

'You sure he turned left into Hayward Street?'

The voice coming back in Phil's ear was slow and monotonous; it had all the enthusiasm of a bank clerk counting out someone else's money.

'Correct. Target now halfway along Hayward Street.'

'Roger that.'

Phil kept on checking left as he pushed his way through the traffic, with the vehicle's windscreen wipers battering to and fro.

The Predator operator was having no such problems with the rain. His Portacabin, erected on a vehicle trailer, was full of TV monitors, and bird's-eye views of Manchester were being picked up from two massive portable satellite dishes sitting outside on the runway.

He could see vehicle lights moving slowly along the busy streets. People were just white shapes against darker backgrounds as they walked along the pavements.

But the operator was concentrating on one vehicle in particular: the Mini with the bright white stripe that had been sprayed over it.

Phil had done his follow-up work from the Mini's number plate and had discovered that the redheaded guy he'd called Carrot-top was a young graduate chemist by the name of Freddie Lucas.

Now, Fiery Fred was being tracked by a Predator drone that the operator was guiding remotely. It was circling 40,000 feet above the city.

The Predator, a UAV, looks a bit like a glider, with a wingspan of around fifteen metres. It has been in service since 1995 and was first used during the war in the Balkans as a battlefield surveillance device. It had been used to track Bosnian soldiers like the twins' contact as they fought the Serbs, and later the gangsters when they started to run heroin into Italy.

Unlike a glider, the Predator has a propeller engine and can fly at anything up to 50,000 feet while sending back to the monitors a real-time feed of what is happening on the ground. It means that military commanders can view a battlefield as easily as turning on the TV to watch a traffic report.

And now the operator talking to Phil could easily track a single vehicle in a heavily congested city.

The Predator contained a number of different cameras, ranging from one that could pick out a newspaper being read by someone at a bus stop, to thermal imaging, which showed heat as white. The hotter the target, the whiter it appeared on the screen.

The camera the operator was using to track Fiery Fred was an FLIR coupled with the UAV's powerful infra-red torch. Just like the handycam Danny had used, but millions of times more powerful, the torch shone an infra-red beam down to flood the area around the target and illuminate the invisible IR paint for the FLIR to pick up. The surveillance devices could easily see through cloud, smoke and darkness. For a Predator, it was always a bright, sunny day.