Andy McNab - DropZone

‘What’s that?’ asked Ethan. ‘Doesn’t look like your average torch.’

‘It’s not,’ said Luke. ‘It’s a Betalight. Military issue. It’s a harmless radioactive chemical that glows for about thirty years. Doesn’t have an on/off switch, just this rubber cap to cover it up.’

‘Right,’ said Ethan, ‘of course,’ and decided he should stop asking questions.

‘It’s perfect for this type of work,’ Luke continued. ‘Gives us just enough light to read a map without the risk of getting spotted.’ He placed a finger on the map. ‘We’re here,’ he said. ‘The drop was perfect. Which means we all owe Gabe a drink.’

Everyone looked down at the map. Ethan glanced around at his teammates and felt relieved to be on their side, rather than on the receiving end of whatever it was they were about to unleash. They no longer looked like adrenaline freaks, desperate for another rush. They seemed focused, organized, and more than a little dangerous. He already knew they were great skydivers – he’d seen that for himself – but this mission wasn’t just about jumping out of a plane. It was about explosives, and rescuing Sam, and possible contact with people who would shoot first and probably not even ask any questions later. Given Sam’s background, and Gabe’s involvement, the team would obviously have been given training and skills that Ethan had yet to see. He wondered when he’d be getting some of that training himself.

‘We’re to tab – that’s run,’ Luke explained, glancing at Ethan, ‘from here, through the woods and then up to the castle.’

‘How far is it?’ asked Natalya.

‘Only about half a click,’ Luke replied. ‘If we get a move on, we should be there in ten.’

One thing was bothering Ethan: what if they ran into anyone? They had no weapons, no way of protecting themselves. It was the only thing that made him really nervous. He felt reasonably confident that he and his teammates could handle themselves in a fight, but what if they got shot at? ‘What if we’re spotted?’ he asked.

‘It’s like Gabe said,’ Johnny explained. ‘We’re to be as close to invisible as we can be. We go in, do our thing, get out. It’s a grown-up version of hide-and-seek.’

‘But there’s still a chance, isn’t there?’ said Ethan. ‘And they’re armed. It doesn’t seem exactly fair. I’m not massively keen on getting my face shot off.’

‘The priority is the diversion,’ Luke said. ‘We’re not here for a scrap. If you’re pinged – sorry, Eth, spotted – just get out as fast as possible.’

‘But if you do run into someone,’ added Johnny, ‘you just hit them bloody hard and run away. Got it?’

‘Yeah,’ said Ethan.

Luke folded up the map and got to his feet. ‘Johnny, you take point.’

Johnny grabbed his bergen and jogged off into the dark. Ethan swung his own bergen onto his back and joined the rest of the team as they followed in quick pursuit.

Having made their way through the trees, hiding their rigs on the way, Ethan and the team now stood staring across the open ground to the castle on the clifftop. To Ethan, the ruins looked like a set of huge broken teeth scattered across the horizon. Kat pulled out some binos and handed them to him. They were the same as the ones The Dude had given him at the antenna.

‘Check out the castle, Eth. Tell us what’s up there.’

Ethan trained the binos on the ruins. ‘There’s one tower still standing,’ he said after a moment, keen to make his description as clear as possible. ‘The wall is nothing more than a pile of stones, but there’s a large section completely missing, creating a huge hole. Through the hole, inside the ruins, I can see a large tent and some lights.’

‘I’m guessing the tent is where the meeting is taking place and probably where the disk is being looked at,’ said Kat.

‘Security?’ asked Luke.

‘Nothing obvious,’ Ethan replied.

‘This is probably a makeshift rendezvous,’ said Luke. ‘They won’t have done much prep of the site because they won’t be expecting anyone to know they’re here.’

‘Gate-crashing,’ said Johnny. ‘One of my favourite pastimes.’

Ethan was about to lower the binos when he saw movement. ‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘I can see two guards. They’re standing at the large hole in the wall.’

‘Let me have a look,’ said Kat, and he handed over the binos.

‘The x-rays look more like doormen than anything to worry about,’ she said. ‘They’re carrying, though. Both have M4 carbines.’

‘Hardly surprising,’ said Johnny. ‘Even though they aren’t expecting visitors, that doesn’t mean they’re going to come out here with nothing but a toothbrush.’

‘The M4 is a variant of the better-known M16,’ Luke told Ethan. ‘It’s been used in Afghanistan and Iraq.’ He looked at the rest of the team. ‘If those two are anything to go by, we can expect anyone else we spot to be carrying as well. The one advantage we have is that, as Johnny said, they’re probably not expecting visitors. This place is miles from the mainland. If anyone was coming, they’d count on hearing them.’

‘Unless they happened to drop from the sky,’ said Johnny happily.

‘All the same, we’ll need to get rid of those two guards before we do anything else,’ said Luke. ‘If they spot us, the mission is screwed, and so are we. Kat, Natalya – you OK for that?’

Ethan saw the girls nod. Kat was still staring through the binos.

‘See anything else?’ asked Johnny.

‘No,’ said Kat. ‘Nothing. Hang on…’

Everyone heard the hesitation in her voice.

‘What is it, Kat?’ asked Luke. ‘What you got?’

‘Birds,’ she replied. ‘Helicopters. Over to the right, just in front of some more woodland.’

Luke took the binos from Kat, had a look, then passed them on.

Ethan could just make out some oddly shaped silhouettes far off to the right and away from the castle. If Kat hadn’t said anything, he’d never have known they were helicopters; in the dark, they simply looked like strange bits of the shadowy landscape.

‘Three of them,’ said Kat, taking the binos back. ‘Gabe told us Sam said there were more people here than they’d originally thought. That’s why he called for backup. That’s why we’re here. Seems they turned up in style.’

‘What’s the problem?’ asked Ethan. ‘Why would a few more people make any difference to Sam?’

‘Stealing a disk from under the noses of three or four people is one thing,’ said Luke. ‘Doing it in a crowd is something else entirely. Chances of getting pinged are pretty high.’

‘But there was no mention of the birds,’ said Natalya. ‘Gabe would have told us.’

‘I know,’ said Luke, ‘and that’s what’s worrying me.’

‘You think this is more serious than we thought?’ asked Ethan.

‘Exactly,’ said Luke. ‘I’m guessing there’s more people at this party than either Gabe or Sam realized. And that’s going to make our job even harder. We’re going to have to be damned careful just to avoid being slotted.’

Slotted, Ethan knew, meant shot. For a few seconds everyone was quiet.

Johnny broke the silence. ‘There’s no point dwelling on it,’ he said. ‘We need to get on with the job in hand, finish it and extract ourselves – and Sam. Right?’

Everyone nodded.

‘Good,’ he went on. ‘So let’s focus on what’s really important, shall we?’

‘What’s that then?’ asked Ethan.

Johnny smiled. ‘How soon we get to blow shit up…’

Ethan couldn’t help but notice that Luke was the natural leader. OK, so he had perhaps three or four years on most of the others, but there was also something else about him – a quiet confidence they all trusted utterly.