Chris Ryan Extreme: Hard Target
Mission Two: The Rock

Also by Chris Ryan

Chris Ryan Extreme: Hard Target

Mission One: Redeemer

Mission Two: The Rock

Mission Three: Die Trying

Mission Four: Fallout

Non-fiction

The One That Got Away

Chris Ryan’s SAS Fitness Book

Chris Ryan’s Ultimate Survival Guide

Fight to Win

Fiction

Stand By, Stand By

Zero Option

The Kremlin Device

Tenth Man Down

Hit List

The Watchman

Land of Fire

Greed

The Increment

Blackout

Ultimate Weapon

Strike Back

Firefight

Who Dares Wins

The Kill Zone

Chris Ryan Extreme: Hard Target
Mission Two: The Rock

Chris Ryan

Copyright

First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Coronet

An imprint of Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

1

Copyright © Chris Ryan 2010

The right of Chris Ryan to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781444708547

Hodder & Stoughton policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

338 Euston Road

London NW1 3BH

www.hodder.co.uk

Contents

Also by Chris Ryan

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

‘If you wish for peace, prepare for war.’

Vegetius

1

Marriott Hotel, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 1920 hours.

The shadow wore a suit, and the suit had a name.

‘Leo Land,’ the shadow said in an accent so posh it deserved a night at the opera. ‘And you must be Joe Gardner. Don’t forget my name, there’s a good chap. I might be the last friend you ever have.’

Gardner squinted, shaken that the guy in the all-white linen suit knew his name. Land offered his hand. He looked younger than his accent. Land was classical posh: blond hair pushed back in a wave, right-angled jaw. He had a way about him, as if he owned the world and everyone in it, and his face stared out at Gardner from a thousand colonial photos.

Land helped Gardner to his feet and evidently caught a whiff of eau de sewer.

‘I’ve told you my name,’ he said. ‘But perhaps you can guess my paymasters.’

‘Foreign Office?’

‘Not quite,’ Land replied, shaking his head.

‘You’re definitely government.’

‘Secret Intelligence Service. MI6 to the layman. Counter-Proliferation Section… Good God, that smell is rather strong.’

‘Took the scenic route.’

‘Well, it’s been quite a day for you, hasn’t it? Walk with me.’

‘Buy a fucking dog.’

Land’s face tightened. ‘You’re in hot water, Mr Gardner, and I’m the only person who can help you. So why don’t you park that great big chip of yours by the door and come with me.’ He smiled at Gardner. ‘I hear the promenade’s very pleasant at dusk.’

‘Do I have a choice?’

‘Of course,’ Land said. But Gardner knew that if he blanked Land now, they’d find another way of cornering him. That was the Firm’s style. Pretend to give you a choice, when you didn’t really have any fucking choice at all.

They strolled up to the promenade. Wave patterns were carved into the black-and-white limestone. A dozen girls breezed past, scent of factor fifty and sex in their wake. Lamps lit up the Atlantic Ocean like a floodlit football pitch.

‘Do you believe in second chances, Mr Gardner?’

‘I believe in first chances. After that, it’s in the lap of the gods.’

‘Interesting… Personally, I think we all deserve a second bite at the cherry. But I’m getting ahead of myself.’

Land plucked a cigarette from a pack of red Pall Malls. Gardner clocked the Cartier watch on his wrist. The Firm must’ve given their boys a pay rise, he thought.

‘Your little adventure in the favela is all over the news. Twenty-six killed, a further forty wounded. Bloodiest day in recent history, they’re saying. No thanks to you.’

‘In my defence, the other guys started it.’

‘We need to talk in private,’ Land said. He sucked greedily on his tab and the fumes wafted across Gardner’s face.

‘I’d love to, mate, but I got a plane to catch.’

Gardner paced away from the promenade.

‘I’m afraid you won’t get very far,’ Land called after him. ‘Dead men aren’t usually allowed on planes.’

Gardner froze. His eyes rested on the bustling pavement in front of him. Cars drew tracer rounds in the gloom. People went about their evenings, giggling and holding hands while he reeked of seawater and shit, and an MI6 agent played mind games.

‘You’ll be curious to know,’ Land went on, ‘that one of the bodies BOPE recovered from Barbosa matches the photo on your passport. According to the paperwork, his name is Joe Gardner. In fact a surgeon is operating on the body even as we speak. He’s attaching a prosthetic hand to the corpse, identical to the one you have.’

Land crushed the Pall Mall stub under his suede Oxford.

‘You’re officially dead.’

Gardner flipped like a burger. Felt a rush of steam in his veins. Suddenly he was in Land’s face, so close he could taste the nicotine on his skin. Land tilted his head back.

‘If you weren’t in the Firm,’ Gardner said, ‘I wouldn’t be the only dead guy on this promenade.’

‘I’m staying at the Marriott. Come and have a drink and we’ll talk some more.’

‘Why the fuck should I trust you?’

‘Because if you don’t, my dear man, you won’t make it to the end of the street.’

Gardner scanned the hotels and inns lined up along the Avenida Atlántica. The yellows, pinks and whites were bathed in a platinum glow from the streetlights and the traffic. The Marriott towered above the other buildings in a fuck-you gesture. Somewhere further down the road, Land’s friends were waiting to kick Gardner’s arse.

‘Here,’ said Land, tossing him a key card. ‘Room 307. There’s a fresh shirt and pair of jeans in the wardrobe. And for God’s sake have a shower while you’re at it. See you in the bar in twenty minutes.’

He showered and changed. Gardner swapped his Timberlands for black leather slip-ons and nabbed a pair of Ralph Lauren shades. He checked himself in the mirror. Looked as if he belonged in a reality show searching for his dream home.

The Terráneo lounge bar filled up with the pre-dinner crowd. Everyone was moneyed up. It didn’t take Gardner long to find Land. The Firm’s man in Brazil occupied a window table, admiring the view while swirling a glass of red in his hand. His jacket was draped tastefully over the back of the chair. The sleeves on his creased white shirt were rolled up to the elbow.

‘Caipirinha?’ Land asked as a waiter loitered.

‘I’ll take a beer,’ Gardner said.

‘Now that you’ve rejoined civilization,’ said the MI6 man, ‘I’m guessing you have lots of questions. Please, permit me to shed some light.’ The waiter returned with a bottle of something called Antarctica.

Land folded his hands in his lap. ‘It’s very simple. From the moment you landed in Rio, the Firm has been watching you closely.’

Gardner gave his screw-face. Took a hit of Antarctica. The beer juiced his bloodstream.

‘We intercepted Bald’s phone call to you. No doubt he realized that BOPE monitor all calls and chatter coming in and out of the favela, which is why he spoke in code. But he neglected to consider who might be listening in at the other end of the line. It wasn’t a very hard code for us to crack, of course, and we were delighted he reached out to you. John’s been very quiet of late, you see.’

A smell of lemon and chilli greeted Gardner as a second waiter rocked up and carefully arranged plates of boiled mandioc, potato fritters, sautéed chicken livers and smoked red sausages seasoned with mixed herbs.

‘I do hope you’re hungry. Everything’s delicious, but I strongly recommend the stewed cow’s tongue.’

‘Lost my appetite,’ Gardner said, pushing the plates to one side. ‘You knew about John from the start?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Land, popping a fried cod ball into his mouth. ‘His cocaine plot’s been on the Firm’s watchlist for the past six months, give or take. Seriously, you’ve no idea how much hassle you spared us by agreeing to help your friend.’

‘Not any more he ain’t. To me he’s a stranger. Was,’ said Gardner, correcting himself.

‘That’s where you’re wrong, old chap. The fact is, Bald escaped from that hellish favela and is currently winging his way down the Atlantic on a rented Hacker-Craft piloted by an undercover agent. If we had a pair of binoculars we might even spot him passing by.’

Gardner steamed, as if he’d swallowed hot coals. ‘John’s alive, and you just let him waltz right out of there?’

‘We had to. If we’re to penetrate his drug-trafficking ring.’

He took another swig of beer. Three gulps and the bottle was half empty.

‘John told me the plan was to transport the bricks to Santos by boat, and then a friend of Dave Hands was going to rendezvous with them and move it on. That’s the ring you’re talking about?’

Land nodded quickly. ‘They’re employing a rather unusual shipment route. The cocaine is due to be smuggled out on a Royal Navy frigate. The HMS Lizard. Our sources indicate that Bald has befriended a Wren by the name of Petty Officer Stephanie Wright. We suspect Hands may have acted as the go-between. The Lizard’s next port of call is Gibraltar, from where Bald will unload the cocaine and, presumably, sell it on—’

‘To the next link in the chain.’

‘Exactly. You see, Mr Gardner, why we don’t want to pull the plug on Bald’s grand plan just yet?’

Gardner stared out of the window. The bar’s speakers gurgled Latin jazz. Hundreds of other voices in the background seemed to rise in volume, until they swelled inside his ear, as if he was standing next to a turbine engine.

‘Where do I come into all of this?’

‘Now we’re getting to the nitty-gritty.’ Land licked his fingers. ‘We want you to follow Bald to Gibraltar. Once the exchange has been made with Wright, your orders are to take Bald by force. We need him alive. He knows the various links in the chain, and we’ll have to break him to stand any chance of destroying the ring.’

Gardner thought about what Land said.

‘You faked my death because otherwise John would think his deal had been compromised?’

‘Just so. As for his accomplices, the BOPE captain is dead and Mr Hands is currently lying in a coma at the Copa d’Or hospital around the corner. At taxpayers’ expense. I’m led to believe he has a nice view of the sea – if he ever wakes up.’

The waiter reappeared and cleared away the plates of half-eaten tapas. He gestured to the drained bottle of Antarctica. Another? Gardner shook his head and asked for a glass of water.

‘I understand what you get out of busting the ring, but what’s in it for me?’

Land wiped his lips with his napkin, and Gardner could have sworn he was hiding a smile beneath it. ‘Spoken like a true opportunist. God, we train you chaps well, don’t we? Name your price, Mr Gardner. I have mine, you no doubt have yours, and I’m sure we can meet somewhere in the middle.’

‘I’m not interested in money.’

Land frowned. ‘What, then?’

‘I want a way back in.’

‘To the Regiment?’

Gardner nodded.

‘I’m afraid that’s quite impossible. We carry a lot of clout around Whitehall, as you know, but breaking the rules on entry to the world’s most elite unit is not in our gift. Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a problem, but that hand of yours, well—’ He shrugged the rest of the excuse.

‘Sorry, mate. It’s the Regiment or nothing.’

Land was quiet for a moment, eyes drifting over his wine glass.

‘Possibly we could arrange something else. Not on the frontline. I mean as a grey man. Working in the shadows. Eliminating national security threats in countries under the radar. Strictly deniable, of course. You’d officially be in Regiment colours and rank, but answerable to the Firm. If I could wangle that, do we have a deal?’

A year on the sidelines had hardened Gardner, made him more cynical about the world and its workings. But fuck, the offer was tempting. A voice scratching at the base of his skull told him that he’d trusted the Firm before – and had got his fingers burned. Land’s proposal sounded too good to be true.

‘I’ve skimmed your file,’ Land went on. ‘Being a Blade, it’s all you’ve ever known. I’m offering you a way back into the magic circle.’

‘And if I say no?’

‘Then you’ll leave me with no option but to green-light your immediate termination. I speak of no idle threat. At this very moment dozens of agents are in Rio. Indeed, eight of them are based in this very hotel. As I said to you before, Bald cannot afford to think his plan has been put in jeopardy. Letting you walk away scot-free is not an option.’

Gardner hated to admit it, but Land had him by the bollocks. Even if he did evade the Firm in Rio, where would he go? They’d put the squeeze on him. With their vast resources and without a passport or access to funds, they’d slot him sooner or later.

Besides, he missed life in the Regiment. The camaraderie and sense of purpose. Adjusting to the outside world had proved difficult, which is why he’d become a drifter. Look what’s on the table, he told himself. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go back to doing what you do best.

‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘I’m in.’

‘A wise choice. Welcome aboard.’

Land gestured over Gardner’s shoulder for the bill.

‘Now, I cannot overstate how crucial it is that Bald is captured alive – and after he’s exchanged the cocaine. Nab him too early and we run the risk of granting him wriggle room in a court of law. He has to be caught red-handed.’

‘No problem,’ Gardner said. ‘Just tell me where and when.’

‘Go down to the Copinha bar on Rua Bolívar. Ask the owner for a lady called Carlotta. She’ll be expecting you. Carlotta will hand you a package. New passport, sterling to exchange at the bureau and the keys to a hotel room on the Rock. There’s also a mobile phone, secure line. You know the drill: don’t call me, I’ll call you. Understood? Good.’

Land stood up and casually dropped a black AmEx card on the table.

‘Life is all about second chances, Mr Gardner,’ he said, pulling on his jacket. ‘And you’ve just got yours.’

2

Gibraltar. Seven days later. 1122 hours.

Winston Churchill Avenue was closed for business. Traffic on the road connecting Gibraltar to the Spanish mainland honked its horns as red-and-white barricades lowered, cutting off the intersection between both ends of the road and the airport. A British Airways plane touched down and taxied along the runway, wingtips several metres from the lines of impatient cars. The plane’s tail dipped behind a line of low buildings. The barricades lifted, the lights blazed green.

Shai Golan cruised on a bus to La Linea de la Concepción and walked the final kilometre or so to the border. He flashed his passport to the border guard, announcing himself as Alain Robbe. The guard nodded, took a quick peek inside his Nike gym bag and waved him through.

Had the guard stopped to quiz him, Golan was prepared. He looked the part; spoke it too. He was fluent in French, in addition to English, Mandarin, Russian and his native Hebrew. Golan was six foot five tall. His face was ninety percent hair and his eyes black as pitted olives, as if they were permanently dilated. He could carry off the look of a dozen Mediterranean countries.

A policeman with a starch-white face monitored the expats and locals flooding in from La Concepción. Golan was glad he’d entered on foot rather than by car: the traffic was gridlocked, caused by a runway shorter than a Jap’s dick. Each time a plane landed or took off, the road was shut off in both directions.

He trekked south along Winston Churchill Avenue, past the Victoria Stadium. After four hundred metres he reached the central roundabout and paced down Smith Dorrien Avenue for ten minutes, then took the first left, to join Main Street.

Golan considered himself a man of taste and culture. He appreciated the bustling, chaotic architecture lining Gibraltar’s main arterial road. Moorish horseshoe arches sprouted over a sprinkling of shop fronts; other stores had painted shutters over the upper windows. In between stood white-stucco façades airlifted from Kensington. The effect was somewhat ruined by the shops themselves, a succession of branded fashion outlets and chain restaurants that left Golan feeling cold.

A taxi rank presented itself halfway down the granite-sett road. Golan hailed a cab and chucked his gym bag on to the back seat. He sat alongside it, resting a hand on the zip.

‘Where to, mate?’ the driver asked. He had olive skin and curly black hair, but his accent made him sound like a character in a British soap.

‘The Botanic Gardens,’ Golan said.

‘Come for the wildlife, have you? Just be careful with the monkeys. They look harmless enough but they’re vicious little bastards. I’ve seen one of them rip a young girl’s hair out.’

Golan nodded.

‘Name’s José,’ the driver continued. ‘Lived here on and off for twenty-five years. Where did you say you were from?’

‘I didn’t,’ said Golan, before adding, ‘France. Paris.’

‘Paris, eh?’ The cabbie shot him a glance. ‘Never been there personally. This is the place for me.’

He drummed his hands on the steering wheel, then pointed out of the passenger window to the west down King Street, beyond Linewall Road and Queensway, directing Golan’s gaze towards the old fortifications lining the banks of the Strait of Gibraltar. Relics of the Great Siege.

‘The thing about us, mate, is that we’ve got long memories. We remember the days of Franco and the terror. The closing of the border, yeah? We’re only a small island but we’re also the closest point between Europe and Africa. This place is special.’ He glanced at Golan in the rear-view mirror. ‘Do you see what I mean?’

Golan didn’t, but he smiled his agreement.

The cabbie dropped him at the Alameda Botanical Gardens on Europa Road. Golan paid the fare and slung the gym bag over his shoulder. Once the taxi was out of sight, he trudged north-east up the steep Green Lane, past the O’Callaghan Hotel.

Age and experience had calmed Golan. His mentor, Zohar, took him aside one day and told him that either he exercised self-discipline or his contract would be torn up. But there were days when the old impulses stirred inside Golan and he hungered to be twenty again, wandering the Gaza Strip. The small scar on his neck, like an upside-down Nike swoosh, served as a daily reminder of – what? Why, the importance of being vigilant.

Green Lane arched north and then doubled back on Old Queen’s Road. Golan made his way up a secluded trail lined with nettle and eucalyptus trees. Midway up the trail he detoured into the woodland until he hit a spot a little way down from an old artillery placement. Here the trees were dense enough for his needs, and he hunkered down beside the base of a ruptured trunk.

From the gym bag Golan removed a thermal-imaging camera equipped with a GPS unit, magnetic compass and laser rangefinder, capable of picking up and tracking human targets up to twenty kilometres away. The camera was also designed to survive extreme temperatures. He mounted the camera on the tree trunk and fixed a remote-controlled pan-and-tilt system to the set-up.

Golan aimed the camera towards the naval dockyard, next to the industrial park on the western edge of the peninsula. He spotted a Type-23 frigate, the HMS Westminster, sailing out through the breakwaters. Docked at the harbour was the HMS Lizard.

He paced north for thirty seconds and established a second camera site. No need to link the cameras with a cable of some kind; everything was connected wirelessly over a secure TCP/IP network. Golan slotted a remote network card into the back of both cameras. Then he fished a Dell laptop out of his bag and booted up to check the link had been established. Accessing the remote network prompted him to enter a password. He typed it in. The computer found both devices and opened up a pair of windows. Golan was treated to glowing thermal images of the Lizard. He pressed a key and the image on the left camera switched to a night-vision green. Another key caused the camera to zoom in. He dragged a finger over the mouse pad and the camera pitched on its mount.

Golan had killed his first man at the age of ten. Not a man, but a boy. A friend of his at the elite Château de Rosey boarding school in Rolle, Switzerland. Golan had no reason to murder Wei Chang, but he did it anyway, smashing his face in with a claw hammer behind the tennis courts. Killing Chang made Golan feel important in a way he’d never experienced. He had been a bad student, despite the hundreds of thousands of dollars his father, one of Israel’s richest men, had lavished on the best schools and tutoring. Murder was different. He was good at it. Better than good. Exceptional.

Leaves crunched at his back. Golan spun around, fists clenched. Technically, he was unarmed. That’s if you didn’t count his body as a lethal weapon. There were many who did, and quite a few of them were dead.

He expected to see a police officer or perhaps a nosy tourist.

A Barbary macaque squatted a couple of metres away, hind legs tucked in as it chewed on a slice of apple. The apple seemed to be the monkey’s whole world. The thing didn’t so much as glance at Golan.

Sliding forward, Golan palm-struck the macaque in the face, the palm of his hand colliding with its flat nose. The monkey wobbled on its hind legs, swiping at his hand. Golan swiftly followed up with furious kicks to the belly. Sensing it was being overpowered, the macaque opted for flight over fight. Golan seized its trailing leg and smacked its skull against an olive tree, the monkey squawking, blood spattering up and down the bark, until it was silent, limp.

He retraced his route down the Rock and strolled a kilometre north back towards the town centre. On Cathedral Square, just one road from the clamour of Main Street, Golan checked into the Bristol Hotel as ‘A. Robbe’, paying in advance with cash. The chubby girl behind the reception gave him the keys to a single room. Inside, he locked the door and pulled out a BlackBerry Storm from his gym bag, as well as a silver cigarette case filled with pin chips. Inserting one into the phone, he dialled the number from memory.

A man answered after the first ring.

‘I’m in,’ Golan said in Hebrew. The British government, he knew, used Gibraltar as a SIGINT listening post for communications from North Africa and the Middle East. Be careful, they’d told him. Keep things as brief as possible.

‘You’re late,’ the other man said.

‘I was held up. But everything’s ready.’

Silence.

Golan was insulted. ‘Have I ever let you down before?’

The reply was a dial tone. Fuck them, he thought, fishing the pin from the BlackBerry and flushing it down the toilet. They could tell him where to go, who to target, but they had no right to tell him how to do his job. He fired up the laptop. Accessed the imaging cameras fixed to the Upper Rock. And waited.

3

1400 hours.

Gardner kept the engine ticking over as he sat in the Grand Cherokee parked on Cumberland Road, up the street from the police club. A sleepy post-lunch hour on the Rock, and the Jeep’s air-con was working overtime.

He had an unrestricted view north-west across the harbour. Fifteen hundred metres distant and parallel to the airport runway stood the northern harbour, where cruise ships and ocean liners disgorged tourists. At the midway point was the private marina, where the locals stowed their quarter-of-a-mil yachts and speedboats. To his rear a Second World War artillery placement taunted the Spanish coastline at Algeciras.

The industrial dock was similar to those at Plymouth and Portsmouth and set two hundred metres away. HMS Lizard rested in the dock.

Peering through his Nikon Sporter EX 10x50 binoculars, Gardner watched the crew descending the walkway, mates in relaxed Dartmouth rig of polo shirt and chukka boots, psyched up for the run ashore.

He glanced at the passport-sized photo of Petty Office Stephanie Wright clipped to the front of a personnel folder. Nothing in her file indicated that the daughter of a Scottish carpenter and English teaching assistant was likely to be involved in drug smuggling. Good attendance at school, unblemished record in the Andrew since she passed out three years ago. But he kept coming back to her eyes. They were glassy and faded like denim. Impenetrable. Wright was hiding something.

Any minute now, she’d show up for her meeting with Bald.

The name tasted like hot tar on his tongue. Help me, Joe, Bald had said in the jungle. He’d help him all right. Help make that lying bastard pay.

Three days in Gibraltar, and Gardner was fighting an inner battle with himself. Part of him desperately wanted to exact revenge on Bald. And yet a ball of self-doubt lodged in his throat. John’s not like Dave Hands, a voice said. He wasn’t born dodgy. He must be caught up in something. And shit, maybe he does need your help.

Three days.

Gardner had touched down on the Rock in the dead of night, catching a redeye from Rio to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, where he had boarded a connecting flight to Heathrow and spent three hours nursing cups of tepid coffee and digesting the newspapers. The coffee barely dented his jet-lag and the news was so depressing it made him want to eat his own face. Finally the last call came for BA490 direct to Gibraltar.

He had travelled with no luggage, but Land’s parting instructions had been clear. Proceed to the carousel. Once the last remaining traveller has disappeared, a man will approach you. Do exactly as he says.

‘We have no idea how wide or deep the network goes,’ Land had said. ‘It’s not unreasonable to think they have eyes and ears all over the Rock. Assume you’re being watched at all times, wherever you are.’

‘Who knows about the mission?’ Gardner had asked.

‘No one’s been informed about your presence on the island except myself, a field agent and my bosses. If you screw up, I’m afraid you’re on your own.’

‘Music to my ears. Where are you going to be in all this?’

‘Not putting my feet up at Babylon-on-Thames, if that’s what you’re suggesting. The Firm is keen for this to be executed without any hitches. Since Mr Bald isn’t familiar with me, it’s considered both safe and, shall we say, agreeable that I stay on in Gibraltar in a supervisory capacity.’

Twenty minutes at the luggage carousel and Gardner had found himself alone with a guy in a flannel suit who looked a couple of quarter-pounders short of a heart attack. He was reading a paperback. A cartoonish action figure stood beneath a macho title. Only half the author’s name was visible. Andy somebody. The guy’s hand covered the rest.

‘Come with me,’ a voice had said to his back.

Gardner had turned and saw a guy in a buttoned-up suit and shades. In forty-degree heat. He followed him across the polished marble floor to the terminal exit. A Grand Cherokee Jeep with fifty-percent tinted windows sat in the parking lot.

‘This is your motor,’ the guy had told him. ‘And this is your place.’ He handed him an envelope along with the Jeep fob. Inside was a hotel key.

‘Land said John’s here already.’

‘Flew in directly. Staying at the King’s Hotel,’ the guy said.

That had been three days ago. Now he refocused as a steady procession of boisterous matelots fucked off out of the dockyard and headed straight for the pubs in Casemates Square.

But no one matched the description of Stephanie Wright.

The last of the parties filed out of the frigate. Gardner swigged from a bottle of mineral water and watched a macaque scratch his balls beneath a palm tree’s starburst shade.

At four-fifteen Wright finally appeared.

She came off the boat alone and decked out in a pressed white blouse with side lapels. Her top button was undone. She carried a laptop case.

A quick glance down the street, then Wright left the dockyard and hailed a taxi.

Gardner dumped the binos. He urged the Jeep forward, racing down Rosia Road. When he was eight car lengths from the taxi, he eased off the accelerator. The cabbie was taking a seemingly random route around the Rock: a right on to Boyd Street, a quick left on to the narrow, winding Prince Edward’s Road, left at the Castle Road intersection. A third left on Fraser’s Ramp heading into Range Town, so that the taxi had, in short order, doubled back on itself.

Gibraltar’s changed a lot, Gardner thought. On his first visit, as a wet-behind-the-ears Para, before he’d tried his hand at Selection, the place had been a chaotic mix of swarthy faces and red buses, olive sunshine and messy drinking establishments buried down sidestreets: the Hole in the Wall, the Angry Friar… Everything felt corporate now.

The taxi bypassed St Andrew’s Church and continued down Prince Edward’s Road, leading into Europa Road. Its rear brake lights blazed opposite the Alameda Botanic Gardens. Now Wright jumped out of the taxi and walked on towards the King’s Hotel. Gardner pulled smartly into the side of the road.

Wright glanced furtively up and down the street. She climbed a set of steps flanked by bright green and pink flowers and disappeared inside the hotel, leaving Gardner staring at its Art Deco exterior. He knew from Land that Bald was staying in room 39.

Twenty minutes later Wright emerged and took a cab towards town.

Gardner followed her just for the hell of it, although he already knew the score. He’d been watching her for the past two days, and the routine was always the same, with a few minor differences. A ride around town, to throw anyone on her tail. Quick visit to the King’s Hotel, then an hour or two wandering the main streets and sipping coffee, before a return to the frigate. On each occasion she lugged the laptop case.

He figured Wright was unloading small packages of the coke, secreted inside the carry case. Rather than risk one big shipment, she was taking the safer option and drip-feeding the snow to Bald.

She debussed at Convent Place, where the road collided with Main Street, bordered at the end by the Governor’s residence. Bunting in pastel colours swayed in the sea breeze. He had to admit, she was pretty hot. Brunette hair, pin-straight with a kink at the ends. The way she walked, swinging her hips like she’d sprung from a jeans ad.

Gardner’s secure iPhone sparked into life, shocking him out of his daydream. He answered, eyes trained on Wright as she window-shopped and lit a cigarette.

‘Still tracking the Wren, are we?’ Land’s voice carried down the line like a door opening on to a blizzard.

‘Another exchange just went down. Same place. I make that twelve in total.’

‘She’s certainly taking her time,’ Land said. ‘Listen up. The situation on the ground has changed dramatically. It appears that Bald is in serious trouble.’

Gardner looked at his watch. Five o’clock. Wright left a couple of hours between trips to Bald’s hotel, so he doubted he’d see her again until seven or eight.

‘I said, Bald’s in—’

‘Heard you the first time. But I’ve been back and forth from his hotel for the past forty-eight hours, and in all that time he hasn’t shown his face once. The only thing he’s in danger of is racking up a massive bill on the bar tab.’

‘I’m afraid you’re wrong on that score. Our intelligence friends received an anonymous tip-off. Three men arrived on the Rock this morning. They’re planning to rob our friend of his product before he gets a chance to sell it on. If that happens, our hopes of uncovering the full smuggling ring are dead in the water.’ Land coughed. ‘How many more trips does our Wren have to make?’

‘One or two max,’ Gardner said. He guessed the laptop bag could hold a maximum of four kilos of Colombian snow, divided up into 500-gram tubes.

‘Sounds about right,’ Land replied. ‘The Lizard is refuelled and due to set sail again tomorrow, so Wright’s time is almost up. The word we have is that these men plan to attack Bald this evening.’

‘Just after she’s made her final trip.’

‘We can’t let them wreck the plan.’

Wright disappeared down a sidestreet. Gardner felt a bead of sweat slither all the way down his back to his arse. Something doesn’t add up, he thought.

‘Joe?’

Shit. He knew what was coming next.

‘I need you to kill them.’

4

1921 hours.

The Newman’s Pub on Casemates Square was, according to a tourist pamphlet, an old favourite of the British Armed Forces personnel. Today it was brimming with married couples and screeching hen parties. Golan wasn’t thrilled to be there. Given the choice, he’d rather be in an old-fashioned bar with some Thelonious Monk playing and a glass of Château Rollan in his hand.

He found her easily enough. The rock-side cameras had filmed her disembarking and wandering towards town, and for him it was simply a case of scouting the bars around Main Street and Casemates. She brooded at a corner table, soaked in boozy shadows, nursing a glass of rosé. The moment was right. He moved in.

‘Quite a party outside,’ he said, stopping by her table.

‘If you say so.’ She necked the rest of her rosé, motioned to the bartender.

‘Something the matter?’ His voice was a master class in control. Soothing, concerned.

‘No. Why would it be? I’m fine—’ She shook her head. Angled it. ‘Don’t I recognize you from somewhere?’

‘No.’

She laughed. ‘No?’

‘No. You don’t.’

The waiter brought over the bottle. ‘But how can you be so sure?’ she said. ‘Maybe I did see you somewhere, but you happened to be looking the other way. People are always spotting me out and about and telling me later.’ She kept her eyes on him as she sipped from the fresh glass.

‘What you say is impossible. I’ve only been in town a few hours.’

‘So where were you before that?’

‘France.’

‘Your whole life?’

‘If a man has to make a city his prison, Paris is as good as any.’

‘And what did you say your name was?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘There’s that sure voice again. Never wrong, are you? Well, I’m Steph.’

‘Alain.’

Golan had some more small talk lined up, when the doors swung open to his six and a gang of beefy women yelled at the waiter for more Jägerbombs. He frowned at them, pretending to ignore her reaching for the laptop case braced between her legs.

‘We don’t get women like that in Paris,’ he said. Then he edged his hand closer to hers and smiled his best smile, the one where his chin, cheeks, lips melted into one another like beeswax. ‘But I’m sure they have their own charm.’

‘Not bloody likely. I have to share living quarters with about twenty of them.’

‘You’re Royal Navy?’

‘Royal bitches, more likely.’ She attacked her rosé. ‘The other Wrens are at each other’s throats night and flipping day. Who can drink the most. Who can lick a matelot in a fair scrap. I thought the boys were bad, but they’ve got nothing on the Wrens.’

‘You sound like you want to leave?’

‘And I will, soon enough,’ she said. Her eyes slid from the wine glass to a spot between her legs. ‘Just a few little things to take care of first.’

His hand almost touched her trembling fingers. Suddenly he flinched, spilling the glass of rosé over her top.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.

‘It’s fine,’ she replied, standing up and brushing her shirt. A waitress rushed over and wiped down the table. ‘Shit. I need to wash it off.’ Nodding at the case, she added, ‘Do you mind watching this for me?’

‘No problem. And again, my apologies.’

Two minutes later she returned, the rosé stain now a fleshy pink. She straightened her top and smiled awkwardly at Golan.

‘I have to leave,’ he said. ‘Good luck with whatever you have to do.’

That smile lingered on her face. A tinge of regret maybe?

No matter. He’d got what he came for.

5

2048 hours.

‘The villa’s on Sir Herbert Road,’ Land had said. ‘Other side of the Rock.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Cowboys. Mercenaries with time on their hands and no work. A growing problem for us.’

‘American?’

‘These particular cowboys are British.’

‘I’m going to need a weapon.’

‘I understand.’

‘Because I’m guessing the targets are armed—’

‘We think so.’

‘—and they know how to use a gun.’

Rule number one in any contact situation, Gardner reflected: Never underestimate your enemy.

‘Go to your apartment. Our field agent’s left a little present for you,’ Land told him.

At the Charlatan Hotel, a two-star joint off Main Street, the room smelled as if a dog had died and nobody bothered to clean up after. He’d slept in ditches more comfortable than the single bed, and the shower veered between cold and freezing. Meanwhile Bald was living the high life at the King’s. Another reminder of MoD cutbacks perhaps. On the plus side they’d supplied him with fresh pairs of combat trousers and a few polo-neck T-shirts.

Fuck it. He wasn’t here for the sightseeing.

He found the present under his pillow, and it was little. A double-action Sig Sauer P228, mag already loaded, with three spare clips of 9x19 mm Luger to keep him in business. He pressed the mag-release button, pulled the slide back and gazed down the chamber. Empty. Clean. He slapped the clip back into the feed, chambered a round and tucked the pistol into the band of his jeans. Unlike its more bulky cousin the P226, this model was easy to conceal.

Gardner trekked on foot to the eastern side of the Rock to Sir Herbert Road, and the villa where the cowboys were holed up. He didn’t want to run the risk of a taxi or bus driver remembering his face. Land had spelled it out loud and clear that the Firm wouldn’t help him out if he was caught knee-deep in dead people.

Devil’s Tower Road eased into Catalan Bay Road and, after two miles, Sir Herbert Road. The east of the island was a parade of idyllic beach and rows of modern duplexes with balconies surveying the Mediterranean. A nice retirement spot.

The villa stood by itself, towards the southern end of Sir Herbert Road. As he passed a four-storey apartment complex, his senses heightened. He noted that most of the lights were off, holidaymakers enjoying a night out in town. A cruise ship glowed on the horizon. The beach was unlit, the road empty.

No one around to clock your face, he reassured himself.

Wet sand squelched underfoot as he neared the villa. Thirty metres. He spotted a grey BMW 3 Series parked on a gravel track out front. He raked his eyes across the porch. Lights went off in the reception.

They have to be out back.

Gardner found the perimeter wall, a four-foot-high block of whitewashed brickwork. He placed his weapon on the top of the wall and used both hands to lift himself up and over. At the rear of the villa, waves lapped against a deck fronting the beach. He stopped to recce the deck. Light poured out from a sliding door, colouring the ink-blot landscape. Chairs stood around a metal table littered with three plates of mauled chicken wings and opened Coke cans. To his right a glass sliding door, presently closed, linked the villa and the deck. Satisfied the deck was empty, he crept up to the side of the door.

Peering through the glass, he counted two targets in what seemed to be a master bedroom. Big guys, backs to him, hulking shadows. A black bag on the bed. Shapes that looked like handguns and a long, snake-like object he figured was a Benelli shotgun.

He removed the Sig Sauer from his jeans. He had plenty of experience using the P228, a Regiment favourite. He settled on a plan. Keep it stupid-simple: hit them hard and hit them fast.

The pistol had no safety lever. Gardner manually cocked the hammer to switch from double-action mode on the opening shot to single-fire. Firing the P228 was a joy: the first pressure on the trigger was ten pounds, and each subsequent pressure around half that. Once you got into the flow of discharging rounds, it felt as natural as breathing.

Gardner picked up a pebble and lobbed it at the table. The Coke cans rattled.

The muffled voices inside ceased. He had their attention.

A click as the latch on the sliding door unlocked.

Gardner balanced on the balls of his feet.

The door began to slide back. Sounds sharpened.

‘Probably those fucking kids again,’ a voice scratched.

The guy the voice belonged to emerged on to the deck. First he was a boot, Gore-Tex Caterpillar, all black, followed by a stocky leg. Then came the torso, chest like a forty-gallon drum and pecs fixed like spotlights on top.

Now.

Gardner lunged at his upper body, bending his left arm at the elbow, his fist tucked close to his chest, so the ‘V’ of his elbow pointed directly at the guy’s neck. He shifted a step sideways and aimed his elbow at the nape. Now he swept his left foot along the ground in front of him, tripping the guy up. He reeled, losing his balance. At the same time Gardner straightened his left arm. His forearm smashed into the guy’s neck, adding downward force and momentum to his fall. He heard the thud of skull meeting hardwood. As the guy hit the floor, Gardner moved his pulled his left leg back, up, then down, like a hydraulic press, on to the groove of his spine. The guy grunted. He didn’t know what the fuck had hit him.

Gardner turned his attention to the master bedroom. He raised the Sig Sauer level with his shoulder. Shit, where’s the other guy? An arched entrance led to another room. Too dark to see much inside. A white door to the right. En-suite bathroom, he figured.

‘Fucking come out!’

Nothing.

He aimed at the wall beside the door and fired. The shot punched a hole big enough to sink a fist into.

‘Last chance!’

The door opened. A man stepped out of the bathroom, hands raised in the air. The big guy, writhing on the ground, made a play for Gardner’s leg. He was built like a tighthead prop, and about as slow. Gardner swung his left foot into his balls, crushing them like a pair of ripe plums. The guy screamed like a baby.

Gardner kept his eyes on the other one. I recognize him, he thought.

Fuck, you’d clock that face anywhere. The grin that ate shit for breakfast, the crew-cut hair and peck-holes that passed themselves off as eyes.

‘Joe? That you, mate?’ said the man, lowering his hands.

‘John Killen,’ Gardner replied, not lowering his gun.

‘Fuck me, what are you doing here?’

‘I could ask you the same question.’

‘We’re on holiday, mate,’ the guy replied in oozy Scouse. ‘Come here for the fishing, like.’ Seeing Gardner frown, he pointed to the bed. What Gardner had taken for firearms were a distance reel and a bite alarm, and a gym bag stuffed with a bait box. The shotgun was a hefty sea rod. ‘Real good fishing here: bass, conger eel, mackerel… Do you mind not depriving Eddie of his manhood?’

Gardner glanced down at the guy with the squashed bollocks. He had a shaven head with a bulging vein running like a pipeline down his temple. His eyes were so close they almost met at the bridge of his nose.

‘You remember Eddie Stone, Joe.’ It was a statement of fact rather than a question. Sounded about right. No one was quite like Stone.

‘How could I forget?’ Gardner replied.

‘Bastard,’ Stone gasped as Gardner released his foot, his voice like trapped air gushing out of a puncture. ‘I’ll tear you a new arsehole!’ he growled.

‘Calm down, you big poof,’ said Killen. ‘Joe could’ve slotted you by now if he’d wanted to. Isn’t that right, Joe? But exactly what are you playing at? Six months since we last shared a beer, and now you pop round here with a bit more than a friendly hello.’ Killen was nodding at the Sig Sauer.

Killen. Stone. Once of the Maroon Machine, 3rd Battalion. They had worked alongside Gardner during his brief stint on the Circuit. A life of bounced cheques, shady contracts and broken promises. A life he’d been only too glad to leave behind.

‘Someone told me you weren’t just here to catch fish.’ He kept it vague, not wanting to give away Land’s name, or Bald’s.

‘Is that so?’

‘Someone told me you came here to kill a man.’

Killen gave it the eyebrows.

‘Seriously, mate? We’re ex-Paras on our hols, not on some bloody top-secret Operation Flavius. Or perhaps we’re going to go to the petrol station and slot a couple of Irish?’

‘I don’t know who to believe any more.’

‘Put the gun down, mate. Whatever you’ve been told, it’s not true. Look around the villa if you want. We’ve got nothing to hide.’

The certainty drained from Gardner’s complexion. The gun wavered in his hand.

‘All right, lad,’ said Killen, helping Stone to his feet. The big guy with the small brain eyefucked Gardner. ‘Easy now. Joe got his wires all crossed, is all. Isn’t that right, mate?’

‘Seems so,’ Gardner replied. He scanned the master bedroom. Everything tied in with Killen’s story. Fishing gear. Couple of bottles of Wells Bombardier bitter on the table next to a map of Gibraltar, a couple of red areas circled around the Strait. Sky News played on a TV. The news item featured a press conference held by the Iranian President, Fereydoon Karimi: ‘We will not resist, we will not move, not one tiny step, on our sovereign right to nuclear technology . . .’

Gardner looked beyond the TV. Killen dusted plaster off his shoulders. Stone slumped in an armchair, rubbing his sore testicles. The scene picked at Gardner like a scab. He glanced over his shoulder at the deck. At the table. The Coke cans and the plates.

‘. . . peace is important to us. Injustice is our enemy. And I want to assure the world, even on this momentous day in our nation’s rich history, when we joined the ranks of nuclear powers: we do not seek to build a bomb.’

‘Where’s the other lad?’

Killen blinked.

‘Who?’

Three Coke cans on the table. Three plates.

Three men arrived on the Rock this morning, Land had said.

‘Don’t mess me about, Johnny. Wherever you go, Eddie Stone goes. And wherever Fuck Face is, there’s Terry Gill.’

‘Terry’s not here,’ Stone said.

‘Eddie’s right. It’s just the two of us. Now stop being a fucking tool and put the gun down.’ Killen’s Scouse sharpened. ‘You’re a mate, Joe, but you’re beginning to piss me off.’

He’s lying, Gardner decided. Both of them had become tetchy the moment he mentioned Terry Gill’s name. Why would they lie about Terry’s presence if they had nothing to hide?

‘No,’ Gardner said. ‘You’re playing me. Terry’s here.’

Stone snorted and edged towards Gardner like a boulder.

‘And what makes you think that?’

‘Because that mug of yours is looking even uglier than normal.’

Stone lost it. He’d never really had it, but now he lost it big time. Stampeded at Gardner, head low, big hands reaching out to grab him. Brave tactics. Brave but stupid. Gardner slugged the barrel of the Sig against Stone’s skull. Felt as if he was pistol-whipping solid lead. His wrist shuddered. Stone dropped on the spot, a divot next to his bulging vein.

‘Once chance,’ Gardner said to Killen. ‘That’s all you’ve got. I suggest you come clean, unless you’d rather be six feet under.’

‘Eat a dick, I don’t know—’

Forcing Killen to his knees, Gardner placed the pistol alongside his ear and squeezed the trigger. Killen closed his eyes and clamped a hand to his ear.

‘Fuck you, you cunt.’

‘One more try,’ Gardner said. ‘Open wide.’

He shoved the Sig into Killen’s mouth. Made him suck on it. The barrel was coated in stringy gunk fresh from Stone’s head.

‘This is it. I hear any more shit out of your piehole and you get to meet Ken Bigley.’

Killen was silent. Gardner cocked the hammer with his right thumb. Killen’s eyes bulged out of their sockets, round and white as golf balls. His face was red. He mumbled something through the gun-gag.

Gardner pulled out the barrel, saliva clinging to it. Killen leaned forward and coughed.

‘Jesus Christ, OK. Shit,’ he spat. ‘Terry’s here. It was his idea anyway. He knows Dave Hands, worked with him on a blood-diamond gig in Sierra Leone.’

‘Hands told Terry about the coke?’

‘That prick has the loosest gob in England. Buy Hands a couple of pints and he’ll tell you his fucking dick size.’

‘Would have done,’ Gardner corrected. ‘Hands is dead.’

‘Good fucking riddance. Terry’s the one who planned to rob Bald. We were just tagging along as support, I swear to fuck. The plan was, he’d call us soon as he’d lifted the product.’

‘Where is he now?’

Killen shot Gardner a defiant look.

‘The King’s Hotel. Where the fuck do you think?’

Gill was already on his way. No time to lose.

‘Cunt,’ Killen muttered under his breath.

‘Say what, mate?’

‘Do me a favour and get a new fucking hand, Joe.’

Gardner lamped him round the face with the Sig. Two solid thwacks and he was conked. He yanked a length of fancy rope from the curtains and bound up Killen and Stone. Then he locked the sliding doors, chucked the key into the sea and ran fast as his legs could propel him. Kill them, Land had said. But they weren’t a threat any more, and Gardner wasn’t hot on slaying his own kind. They could stew here awhile until he figured out what to do with them. Who knows? he thought. They might even come in useful.

He rushed to the King’s Hotel, praying he wasn’t too late.

6

2145 hours.

Petty Officer Stephanie Wright stood in front of the door to room 39 and steeled herself. Four large glasses of Zinfandel rosé sloshed around her head like a rough sea, and she found it difficult to focus. Wow, she thought, suppressing a hiccup. Gibraltar’s bartenders didn’t mess about with the measurements.

She went to knock. Hesitated. Her knuckles cast a ridged shadow over the spyhole.

At first the offer had seemed so simple. Take a package onboard the frigate, stash it in her locker – not that easy, considering how stingy the Senior Service was when it came to locker space and the endless dress codes required of the average Wren – unload the package the other side and collect payment.

There’s always an at first, she told herself. At first it was a good idea to marry Danny, the guy she’d met two weeks before her sixteenth birthday. Danny, the boy in a man’s skin who did lines of coke on their wedding night, and flirted with the hotel staff on their honeymoon in Corfu.

At first it seemed like a smart call to join the Navy.

Well. No more regrets. She’d already made up her mind that she wouldn’t go back to Danny. And as for paying off his twenty-grand debt with the money from this job, forget it. No, this was her life now and no one else’s.

She knocked on the door four times. Paused. Knocked twice again.

The stress of each trip back aboard the Lizard left her exhausted. Having to return to her locker, waiting for the coast to clear.

The crevice of light between the door and the carpet blackened.

He’s standing the other side, she said to herself, taking a deep breath. John Bald scared her. Which was weird, when she thought about it. John was calm, softly spoken. Perhaps he reminded her of her father, the gentlest man in the world one minute and boxing her mother about the head the next.

The door opened and she stood there.

‘Aren’t you coming in?’

John was munching on a red apple, his frame filling the doorway.

Wright froze, glancing up and down the corridor. Vacant.

‘This is the last package.’

‘Tell the whole world, why don’t you?’

Her eyes fell on the carpet.

‘I’m joking, lass. You’re just in time. I ordered room service for two.’ He popped the core into his mouth, pips, stem and all. ‘Hope you like fish, but I figured you spend most of your life on a boat.’

She smelled onion and tuna. Her tummy growled. God, I’m hungry, she realized. What with the hurry to unload the cocaine, she hadn’t touched a morsel of food in the past twenty-four hours.

The room had a Twenties-style wooden desk and chair, a salmon-coloured carpet and an Oriental ceiling fan that threw out waves of cool air. She propped herself on the edge of the bed and picked at food on a tray: white onion risotto, roasted sea scallops, seared bluefin tuna, all of it smelling delicious. John slid the laptop out of the case and laid it on the desk. He fetched a screwdriver from the drawer and removed the screws at the base of the unit. Off came the cover. Inside, where a tangle of cables and circuit boards ought to have been, was a neat row of white tubes.

‘That’s everything?’

‘Uh, let me see. No, I decided to keep some so I could go into dealing.’ Wright rolled her eyes, picked at a scallop. ‘Of course it’s the lot. Unless you want to count and weigh ’em.’

‘No, I believe you. Honestly, you did good.’

The voice was accompanied by a hand sliding across the middle of her back. She flinched a little. Flinched because his hands were colder than those of any man she’d known. A little, because she knew that resisting John was a bad idea. This wasn’t part of the original deal, but the first night they rendezvoused in Rio, she’d been drunk and off guard and curious about the imposing Scotsman with the dark past and the darker features. She knew better now. But now was too late.

He let her unbutton her shirt and take off her shoes. A small mercy. She spent a couple of minutes undressing down to her panties and bra. It took far longer than she’d otherwise have done.

‘When you get into something,’ her mother had once told her, her face all puffed up, ‘it’s hard to pull yourself out of it.’

There were men who liked it rough, and there was John. He ripped off her bra at the seams. He was playful at first, because that’s how he liked to start things. Then he slapped her. Then he smacked her. When they were both fully naked, he pushed close to her and gripped her neck with a gnarled hand. As she struggled to breathe he whispered in her ear the unspeakable things he’d do to her if she ever dared betray him.

She could hardly breathe as John fucked her. But she knew if she resisted, he’d only tighten his grip. She let him do his worst. He fucked her hard and his grip only loosened when he finally came inside her. Three minutes that felt more like thirty. She got through it by picturing herself disappearing out that hotel door and into the night, fifty grand in her back pocket. A new life.

The bed sighed as he rolled off her. Then she heard the jangle of his belt buckle as he slipped on his jeans.

‘I need to go,’ she said, her voice cracking like thin ice. ‘We’re off again tomorrow morning and all hands have to be on board by 0300.’

No response.

‘You’ve got my money, right?’

‘Right here,’ John said, patting a travel bag resting on the armchair. He smiled at her. ‘Relax. No one’s suspected you of anything, have they?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘No, they haven’t. Or else you’d have been detained by the police. Look at it this way: you’re about to be £50,000 richer than you were this morning. All in all, that’s not a bad deal.’

‘I guess.’

‘The Navy plays such an important role in the war on drugs. Ironic when you think about it.’

‘Yeah,’ she said distantly.

‘All the time the Lizard’s seizing shipments, they’ve got the jackpot right on board.’

She stood up. The white bedsheet stroked her figure.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘Shower,’ she said.

Hot water stabbed her skin. She blinked soapy water out of her eyes and saw a shape through the frosted-glass frame, half pink and half blue. John. What the fuck did that arsehole want now? Wright tugged on the cubicle slider. The glass revealed John grinning at her. Yes, grinning. Like she was the butt of some terrible joke.

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing,’ he said.

The first punch knocked her backwards, water cascading on top of her. She tried to get up, but another fist to the face flattened her. Teeth loosened. Blood swam across her line of sight. Each blow vibrated around her skull. He punched and punched. Her world darkened to a bloody twilight.

She blacked out.

Woke up with no sense of time, or place. But she remembered John’s face. He planned to kill her. Too badly injured to move, she moaned as John drew a razor blade across one of her wrists, then the other.

That man will be the death of me, her mother had said of her father.

The following week she died in a car crash.

That man will—

7

2222 hours.

At its most south-easterly point Sir Herbert Road abruptly ended and the Rock became a sheer cliff, offering no passage along the south coast. Gardner knew he had no choice but to loop back north along the Devil’s Tower Road. With Terry Gill already en route to the King’s Hotel, Gardner needed to be there fucking yesterday. On foot wouldn’t cut it.

A Ford Focus drifted towards him. The only car in sight. He hid the Sig behind his back and ambled into the middle of the road. The Focus came to a halt eight metres from Gardner, the headlights blinding him. Shielding his eyes with his left hand, he scoped the driver. Male, balding, forties. Beer gut threatening to burst out of his buttoned-up Hawaiian shirt. No threat.

‘Help you?’ the guy said as he stepped on to the road and approached Gardner.

‘Give me your car.’

‘Oh shit.’

The man was determined to leg it. By the time he’d returned to the car and flung open the door, Gardner had whipped out the Sig. The gun snatched the guy’s attention. He paused, one foot inside the car, his body shivering with fear.

‘Don’t… don’t kill me. I have a wife and two daughters.’

‘Make yourself scarce then.’

The man ran towards the beach faster than his fat body had ever run. Gardner hopped into the car and raced back up Devil’s Tower Road and down Winston Churchill Avenue. He dumped the wheels outside the King’s Hotel and scrambled up the steps.

The automatic doors couldn’t open quickly enough. A woman at reception asked if she could help him.

‘Maintenance,’ he shouted back to her as he broke through the emergency doors to the right of reception, then bolted up the stairs. Screw this one up and you can wave goodbye to a future in the Regiment, he told himself.

I won’t.

Three flights up. His calves and quads had healed since the gruelling slog through the favela, muscle fibres enlarging as they repaired themselves. He scaled the treads effortlessly. His palms depressed the crash bar. The door obliged.

He faced a wide corridor, musty and air-conned and flanked by a series of rooms. A sign on the beige wall indicated left for rooms 30–34 and straight ahead for 35–39. So, the fifth door. Forty metres, end of the corridor, next to the lift.

Gill was standing outside room 39. His left hand rested on the door knob. In his right was a Glock 9mm pistol, a Gemtech Tundra suppressor fixed to the end of the barrel and a GTL-22 tactical light attached to the underside, shining a white-hot spotlight on the carpet. The bang of the crash bar had alerted him. His head shot up. His face did a flip book of emotions as Gardner unhooked the P228 from his jeans.

Thirty-five metres and closing. Gill raised the Glock. Gardner knew he had to peel off a shot before the Glock was fully level: the tactical light acted as a powerful flashlight to disorientate targets, and would blind him when he fired.

Twenty-five metres. Gardner went for the shot.

Ca-rack!

Clink!

Gill hissed as the bullet pinged his Glock, knocking it from his hand. He gripped his wrist with his left hand.

‘What the fuck?’

‘Step away, Terry.’

‘Fuck it. Get it over with then.’

Gardner would have happily pulled the trigger. But first he wanted to find out the link between Gill and Hands. Killen’s waffle about the blood-diamond gig didn’t ring true, because Hands had been blacklisted on the Circuit for a good few years. He was more likely to be down the bookies’ in Dagenham than in some African hell-hole.

‘How the fuck did you find me?’

‘I met Johnny and Eddie. On a fishing trip.’

Gill grunted. Time hadn’t been kind to the ex-Para. His muscles were flabby, his pecs drooping halfway to man-boobs. Love handles sloped out at his sides. His ginger hair was thinning, the whites of his eyes grey and dull.

‘Who hooked you up with Dave Hands?’ Gardner asked. ‘Killen and Stone reckoned you met on some diamond job, but them boys talk such shit.’

‘Fucking do one.’

Gill glimpsed the Glock lying two metres behind him. He has any bright ideas, the walls get a fresh lick of paint.

A click to Gardner’s six o’clock. The noise distracted him and he half-turned, spotting a woman in his peripheral vision as she ran out of her room. ‘He’s got a gun!’ she screamed.

Gill shoulder-barged the walnut door of room 39. Busted it and lunged through the gap.

Gardner hesitated. John can’t know you’re alive, he told himself. But if I don’t stop Gill, he’s a dead man.

He had no choice, and dived inside with the Sig close to his chest, the elbow of his shooting arm tucked in at his side.

He expected to find Gill. But the room was pitch-black. A strip of light from the bathroom outlined the bed, desk, wardrobe. Then he saw movement ahead. He steadied himself, depressed the trigger a little, and as his eyes adjusted he made out net curtains flapping like a dress above an air vent. The doors leading on to the balcony were open.

Gardner stilled his breath. Heard blood rushing in his ears. Stepped deeper into the hotel room. It looked for all the world like Bald had jumped.

He felt a pressure in his right ear. The horizon slid like a boat on its beam ends and next thing he knew, his head was crashing into the wardrobe. Gill.

The fucker stood in the bathroom doorway. He swung a boot at Gardner’s torso. Something cracked. He felt a rush of air shoot up his windpipe, and, shit, everything hurt.

Gill gave it everything he had and then some. He stomped on Gardner’s right hand, grinding the knuckles under his heel.

He then started to aim a kick at Gardner’s gut. But the slow backlift gave Gardner enough time to expel the air in his body. He pushed out his abs, honed by years of crunches, creating a rock-solid wall between his stomach and Gill’s Caterpillar. The blow was painful, steel toecaps meeting hard flesh, but it didn’t knock him for six.

Gardner took a hold of the leg pressing down on his gut, flung it high into the air, shoulder and forearm muscles working overtime. Gill unbalanced. Fell flat on his arsehole.

In for the kill.

Gill had his fingers on the brass threshold in the bathroom doorway when Gardner gave him the good news, grabbing hold of a clump of his thinning hair and yanking his head up. Then he brought it down to the floor. Hard. Again. Three, four, five times. Six, seven. Until the carpet was a Sangria stain.

Gill launched a hand at Gardner’s face, fingers crawling over his neck and mouth like angry spiders. Then Gardner saw he had something in his other hand – a four-inch Sebenza blade. He crunched Gill’s wrist with his Timberland, forcing him to release the knife.

‘Stupid cunt,’ he breathed into the guy’s face.

But he’s not going to give up, a voice warned him. It’s him or you.

He kicked Gill in the face to daze him, then hauled his body into the bathroom, the fucker clawing at his legs. A year of being forced to rely on his right arm for heavy lifting had strengthened Gardner’s biceps, triceps and flexors on that side, but he still found Gill a heavy load. Steroid-pumped muscles surrounded by several inches of boozy fat made it feel like dragging a two-ton truck. Gardner was breathless by the time he dumped Gill by the toilet. As he sucked in air he felt the entire valley of his ribcage sting.

Gill wasn’t stupid: the old Para could see what was coming as Gardner stunned him with an elbow to the jaw. Lifting the toilet seat, Gardner thrust him head-first into the can. Forced him down far enough that his face was submerged in piss water. Pressed a boot to the nape of his neck and nailed his head in place. Gill thrashed about. But Gardner’s control was total. He held his stance and listened to the life gurgle out of the man’s mouth.

Gill’s hands flapped wildly in mid-air. His legs kicked back and forth. Gardner stayed firm. The bowl water reddened.

After a minute, Gill shit his pants.

Gardner was getting impatient.

‘Fucking die,’ he shouted.

Gill gargled furiously.

Two minutes and his arms flopped by his side. His legs slowed.

At the three-minute mark, Gill was dead.

Gardner hoisted his leg clear from the toilet. Hit the flush button. His foot was drenched with piss and bloodied water, and the air stank of shit and citrus. For a moment he stood numb in the bathroom, staring at the corpse as a torrent of water splashed over the back of his head. By now the stinging pain in Gardner’s ribcage was sounding a high-pitched note that drilled holes in the sides of his skull.

No time to waste. You’ve got to follow John. He’s got – what? – four minutes’ head start on you? Maybe more. Got to find him.

Then something caught his eye. Across his right shoulder he noticed the shower cubicle for the first time. The frosted-glass door was closed, but a pink blotch lingered behind, like a cut of stained glass.

Gardner opened the door. Fought the urge to vomit.

He’d seen his fair share of dead bodies in his time. The Wren in the cubicle, however, was worse than anything the Taliban or insurgents did to their women. A cavity existed where her face was supposed to be. A gorge of bones, torn lips and eyeballs sunk in the middle. Her neck, chest and arms were branded with purple bruises. Dried blood on her wrists like wax seals. The woman squatted in an inch of her own blood; the plughole blocked with clumps of hair ripped from her scalp.

Fucking hell, John. What have you done?

He had no time to be shocked. Police sirens carried through the open balcony. You need to bug out, and fast.

Bald must have jumped, he figured. That meant he was out in the streets. Exposed. And what, another voice said, if Bald hadn’t survived? They were on the third floor, a good sixty metres off the ground on a steep slope.

Get downstairs now. If you’re quick, you might be able to trace him.

He scooped up the Sig, nabbed Gill’s Glock for good measure and tucked it into his jeans, then made a beeline for the emergency exit.

No time to lose.

The door opened before he got to it.

A figure thrust out from the stairwell.

8

2300 hours.

Gardner reckoned the guy was the hotel manager. Well over six foot tall, blue-suited and with carefully managed stubble and rimless glasses, he looked every inch the officious thirtysomething with a corporate pension plan shoved up his arse.

Then Gardner’s eyes scrolled down from the single-breasted black jacket and clocked the crowbar in his right hand.

The bar was on a one-way trip to his face.

His fighting instincts took control as he jerked his left arm up to protect his face. The crowbar connected with prosthetic tissue and, though he had no sensation in the myoelectric limb, Gardner felt a sort of shudder in his elbow on impact.

Shudder – but no pain. Mr Crowbar’s face lit up like a distress flare at the sight of Gardner remaining upright. No agonized cry. No recoil.

No second chance. With his fake hand Gardner swept the crowbar aside. He shaped to give the guy a Glasgow Kiss, arched his head back, tensing his neck muscles, tucking his chin into his neck – and flicked his head forward and up. The forehead nearest his hairline presented the thickest bone on his skull and made for a fearsome weapon. He directed it up towards the tip of the guy’s nose, a prime spot to land a knockout blow.

He heard the snap of a branch being wrenched from a tree. The guy’s nose looked as if he’d snorted a spark plug. He stumbled sideways, backwards.

But Mr Crowbar returned with a vengeance, nailing Gardner with a flat-handed strike to his face. It felt like someone had clipped a couple of jump leads to his cheeks as he stumbled backwards with the force of the punch and crashed into room 36. The door shrieked as it swung back on its hinges, and in the belly of the room a naked woman jumped out of the bed. Both men had dropped their weapons in the struggle. The Sig and Glock were now five metres away, well out of reach of the combatants. The woman reeled away from the guns in horror, as if they were pythons.

A bloated, hairy-backed boyfriend took in Gardner, Mr Crowbar, the two guns – and locked himself in the bathroom, leaving his screaming girlfriend raging at the door.

Mr Crowbar shoved Gardner back, sending him on a collision course with a dinner tray. Glasses, knives and forks clattered.

For someone so tall, Mr Crowbar had agility to spare. He rushed forward in a stretched blur. Gardner had no time to protect himself.

Above the woman’s scream, Mr Crowbar’s counterattack was deadly swift. He delivered a groin kick to Gardner’s balls. Fists hard as kettlebells unleashed in an unbroken stream – a chisel punch to the trench of Gardner’s throat, a low blow to his knees. It seemed as if he were fighting an endless riptide.

But the guy seemed anxious about moving in too close. He encircled Gardner, kicking his knees. Lowered a straightened leg down on to his chest like the blade of an axe. Mr Crowbar’s heel collided with his ribcage.

Another kick. This time Gardner was ready. He chopped his right hand across the floor, cutting down his opponent’s standing foot. The guy slipped, tripped, fell. Gardner picked himself up and Mr Crowbar was back on his feet too.

Jesus, he’s not even broken out in a sweat, Gardner realized.

The guy adopted a defensive stance, protecting his head. That still left the rest of his body exposed, and Gardner wanted to make him pay. He readied himself for a front kick to the guy’s stomach, lifting his knee straight forward. Mr Crowbar blocked the move by forming an ‘X’ across his torso.

But then he lowered his hands, and played into Gardner’s.

Gardner went for the jaw. One punch. That’s all the opportunity you’re going to get, he told himself.

An inch from his face, Mr Crowbar somehow blocked the punch with the inside of his left palm. Gardner was left KO’ing air.

As the guy fired off a torrent of blows, Gardner felt his body weakening. If you go down again, you won’t be getting up. He’s too strong. You need a weapon.

The room service tray. Yes, he remembered now. The knives and forks. The tray was a metre behind him. He dropped with the next punch. As Mr Crowbar wound up for a kick, he reached behind him. Grabbed the handle of something, couldn’t see what, and brought the tool forward – and plunged a serrated steak knife into the guy’s knee.

Don’t let up. Finish the job.

As pain jarred through the guy’s body, Gardner forced his head down and wrapped his left arm around the neck. He locked tight, crushing his opponent’s head in his armpit. Placing his right hand on his shoulder, Gardner grabbed the guy’s wrist with his left hand. Keeping his legs spaced apart, he leaned forward and forced the guy to topple over, with himself on top. Now he flattened his body out, distributing the weight as evenly as possible to create a suffocating press.

Mr Crowbar squirmed, pushing on Gardner’s shoulders, but the contortion of his body meant that struggling increased the pressure on his airway. Gardner had him pinned down in a classic figure-four chokehold. A woman’s arse fled the room, her wails carrying down the corridor.

‘Tell me your name,’ Gardner said.

‘Go fuck yourself.’

‘Who are you working for?’

‘Your mother’s a whore.’

‘Maybe she is, but I wasn’t asking you that.’ Gardner contracted his elbows. The guy gritted his teeth. His air passage dwindled to the thickness of a straw. ‘Talk.’

‘Suck your brother’s dick.’

‘I don’t have one.’

‘This conversation… is over.’

On the final word, Gardner suddenly felt himself rising. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Despite being fucked up and choked halfway to death, Mr Crowbar somehow had the strength to heave him off.

As Gardner flew through the air and hit the door, he saw the guy snatch the Glock. I’m fucked, he thought.

But Mr Crowbar glanced back down the corridor. Gardner could see along the corridor for about twenty metres. A security guard had come to check on the commotion and was shouting at Mr Crowbar to put his hands in the air. He might as well have told gravity to take the day off. Mr Crowbar pulled a five-inch combat knife out from his jacket and sank the blade into the guard’s groin. He stared dumbly down at his balls.

The lift rang its arrival just as Mr Crowbar fled down the stairwell. Gardner only had time to get up on one knee when the light of the doorway was blocked out by a scrum of men in uniform.

In an instant hands clamped his arms behind his back and slapped handcuffs on his wrists. Whoever did the cuffing fastened them extra tight. A pair of boots stood in front of him. Gardner was so weak he struggled to lift his head. He found himself eyeballing a portly guy with grey hair and a tan straight out of a home fitness catalogue. A badge on the breast of his immaculately ironed white shirt announced him as Lieutenant Colonel E. López. Doughy fingers rested on his utility belt. A forest of hair fluttered in his nostrils.

‘All right, easy on him,’ he said to the officer doing the cuffing. ‘This boy’s done giving grief. Look at the state of him.’

‘You should see the other guy,’ Gardner rasped.

‘I’m sure you’ve both got a story to tell. Been through the wars, my friend?’

‘A few of ’em.’

Two officers hoisted him to his feet, into the stationary police wagon.

9

0041 hours.

Time passed like kidney stones in Interrogation Room 3. López grilled Gardner in a voice that sounded as if he had loose gravel in his lungs. One thing was clear from the moment his deputy, Carlos Guerrero, cuffed Gardner to the metal table: they believed he was responsible for both corpses in room 39. López read out the accusations against him like a shopping list. Guerrero pulled faces and made not-so-subtle threats. Made Gardner almost miss the days when capture meant a hot date with crocodile clips and a piece of 2x4.

‘What were you doing at the King’s Hotel?’

‘I was there to protect a man called John Bald. He was the guy in the hotel room.’

‘Pull the other one. We’ve checked the hotel’s books. They’ve no record of anyone by that name staying in the hotel.’

‘He was there.’

‘We found her body, friend. You know who we’re talking about, don’t you?’

‘No comment.’

‘You headed to the apartment, where you found her sleeping with another man. You raped her, choked her, beat her to death and then slashed her wrists to make it look like a suicide. Then you killed her lover. That’s an evil thing to do, friend. Any jury in the world is going to send you to the prison up Windmill Road and tell us to throw away the key. You’ll be living on rats and maggoty rice for the rest of your days.’

‘No comment.’

Gardner had been batting away their questions for an hour or more when an officer barged in and breathlessly announced an urgent call. López and Guerrero left. The deputy flashed Gardner a smile, his small eyes disappearing into the fleshy folds of his face.

Thirty minutes passed. Neither man returned. Gardner could do nothing about his own predicament until he got a lawyer, so he tried to figure one or two things out.

Aside from the murders, the police had him on an assault charge and possession of a firearm. López sounded bullish about pressing charges. Gardner had his doubts. For starters, he hadn’t laid a finger on the Wren’s body. If she had been raped, DNA testing would also prove it wasn’t his semen. Gill’s death was harder to explain. His handiwork was all over that body.

He doubted the Firm would come riding to the rescue. Shit, he thought, they’re probably covering up their tracks at this very moment.

Gardner turned his attention to Mr Crowbar. He had seen that fighting style elsewhere. In the Regiment he’d received instructions in the way of the fist and the sweet science. Won medals in both taekwondo and boxing and studied other techniques to become a master of close combat. He loved its focus on individual skill in an age when the Yanks preferred to conquer entire countries from thousands of feet above.

So Gardner knew a fellow expert fighter when he saw one. And the guy at the King’s Hotel was one of the best he’d ever traded blows with.

The door was unlocked. Gardner looked at the table like it was the most interesting thing in the fucking world.

He heard the scrape of a chair opposite him, then:

‘Cheer up, old chap. It’s not every day a man kills someone in a busy hotel and gets to walk away scot-free.’

Gardner looked up.

He should have been relieved to see Land, taken it as a sign that the Firm were coming to his rescue. Instead, he was pissed off. A rage took hold of his body.

‘You lied to me.’

Land smiled at the floor. ‘I see. No “thank you” for pulling strings that didn’t need to be pulled. Just wild accusations. You can be quite an ungrateful little shit when you put your mind to it.’

‘You told me there were three men looking to rob John. I don’t remember you saying anything about a fourth guy.’

‘That’s because I didn’t know,’ said Land, brushing dirt off the shoulders of his cream jacket. ‘You don’t believe me? Too bad. A lot of time and money have been pumped into this mission and it’s no secret that they’re two things in short supply in Whitehall. Present climate being what it is. Do you honestly think I’d undo all our hard work by selling you a pack of lies? Not to mention endangering both your life and John Bald’s. I’m sorry, but that’s not the way things work around here, my good man.’

Gardner looked Land in the eye.

‘Maybe that’s true. But don’t tell me you were in the dark about Killen and his mates doing jobs on the Circuit,’ he said. ‘I know how the Firm operates. You would have access to our files and have joined up the dots.’

‘I had to withhold certain information from you. Who knows how you might have reacted if you’d been aware of their identities? That was a risk I couldn’t afford to take.’ Land frowned at his shoes. ‘Besides, I thought it might be to your advantage that you chaps had a bit of previous. Better the devil you know, and all that.’

‘The next time you decide to withhold something from me, your face goes through the wall.’

‘God, you’re infuriating. I had to make a call. Whether you think it was right or wrong is frankly beside the point. Don’t get all hung up about it.’

‘Your bad call almost got me killed,’ Gardner said calmly. ‘Matter of fact, considering I’m sitting here on murder raps and with a set of broken ribs, I think I’m handling it pretty well.’

Land stood up, massaged his back.

‘Bloody uncomfortable chairs.’

‘They think I killed girl. I wasted that bag of shit Gill, but the Wren was dead by the time I got there. Reckon John filled her in to cover his tracks.’

‘Yes, well. We didn’t see that coming. But the good news is this. I spoke to my boss, he spoke to his boss, and someone very high up had a quiet word in the Governor’s ear. He’s ordered the police to drop all charges. Much to Lieutenant Colonel López’s dismay, I hasten to add. Probably a good idea not to bump into him on the way out.’

‘And the Wren?’

‘Recorded as suicide,’ Land said, nodding sagely.

‘I left Stone and Killen at the villa.’

Land stared through the small, wire-mesh-covered window in the door. ‘We already had our man down there. No luck. We think your two friends fled across the border to La Concepción sometime in the last hour.’ He rapped his knuckles on the window.

‘The guy at the hotel,’ Gardner said, closing his eyes, searching his memory for something. ‘He knew Krav Maga.’

‘Say what?’ Land asked, distracted.

‘It means “close-combat”. Krav Maga was a fighting technique developed by the Israelis for their Special Forces. Nowadays they teach it to the Regiment. I’m saying he must have a background in the military.’

‘We can’t locate him,’ Land said. ‘But we did pull his image from the security tapes and cross-reference with our database. I’m afraid we drew a virtual blank. His name is Shai Golan. He was born in Haifa. It appears his father was an entrepreneur who made his fortune in the construction business. Worked closely with the IDF, I’m told. Apart from that, our intel on this chap is thinner than Chinese tea.’

‘So he could still be out there?’

‘Don’t worry. Every police officer on the Rock is tracking him down. We’ll soon know all about him.’ The door opened. Guerrero entered and unlocked the braces, scowling like he had a mouthful of cow shit. Gardner winked a ‘fuck you’ at him as he followed Land out of the station.

‘What about John?’ he asked as they walked down the road. Victorian street lights were scattered along the coastline like landing beacons for the coming dawn.

‘Let’s just say you owe him. If Bald wasn’t pressing ahead with his mission, it would’ve been rather hard for me to spring you.’

‘John’s a big boy. He once defended an OP against a hundred Taliban for eight hours. You’ve got to have brass balls to survive those kinds of odds.’

Land lit a cancer stick. ‘Or maybe he’s just keen on the money?’

‘The John I knew, money never came into it.’

‘“Knew” being the operative word, I suppose. You’ve seen what he did to that girl?’

Land checked a message on his phone. ‘The frigate’s due to sail in a couple of hours. Minus one Wren. I’ve put a tail on Bald while he plots his next move. You’d better hurry.’

Gardner shook his head. ‘Forget it, mate.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Land said, the cigarette limp on his lips.

‘I trusted you and nearly paid with my life. I’m not playing your game any longer. If the Firm want to sort this one out, they can take all the risks themselves. Far as I’m concerned, you can take your mission and shove it up your arse.’

‘How very kind. But if you walk away now, I’m warning you. This is British territory, Joseph James Gardner. I’m an agent acting for Her Majesty’s best interests. Things can happen. People can go missing.’

‘Fucking try it.’

He gave Land his back and paced off towards the Charlatan.

‘No one quits on the Firm.’

Gardner walked on. In a few hours the sun would be up.

New day, new life, he told himself.

10

0132 hours.

I should have killed him when I had the chance. Golan berated himself as he hobbled over a patch of ground on the Upper Rock. A rusting artillery unit was fixed to a concrete platform a hundred metres away, covered by a chicken-wire fence to make it hard for vandals. He was nearly there.

He stopped to catch his breath. His temple pounded. He lifted a hand to his head. A sticky mixture, red and black, spread over his palm.

Sirens screamed in the distance. Gibraltar Defence Police, turning the Rock upside down in the hunt for him. Going back to the Bristol Hotel was out of the question. They’d find the laptop, of course. Golan could do nothing about that. But he could stop them from discovering the cameras.

The leg wound caused him the greater difficulty. He’d not had time to stop and properly examine it, but ever since that British shit plunged the steak knife into his knee, mobility in his leg had been severely constricted. Maybe you’ve ruptured your quadriceps tendon? he thought. He tried to flex it. The patella popped.

You really ought to have killed him in the corridor.

He stumbled ten metres further, and came to the spot. There he found the thermal-imaging camera exactly as he’d left it, fixed atop the cleft tree trunk. Its reflective eye gazed past him towards the dockyard. He yanked the camera off the mount and pulled the remote network card out of the back. Did the same to the second camera. Flies buzzed around the dead macaque. He smashed the camera lenses and chucked the remains into the woodland. The network cards he buried, careful to cover over the coffee-coloured undersoil.

Job done. No one would ever make the link between the cameras and his presence here.

Golan was running on empty. He had to rest, if only for a minute. He closed his eyes settled his breathing into a slow, hypnotic pattern. Felt his blood surge with fresh oxygen. Remembered his training. The past is past. Concern yourself with the present.

OK. Tend to your injury. Then figure out what to do about John Bald.

He perched himself on the tree stump and rolled up his left trouser leg to the knee. Tricky: the blood was like warm glue, thick and sticky. The knife wound was three inches long and an inch wide. White pus seeped out of the hole, smelling of rotten fish.

Lacking water to clean the wound, Golan did the next best thing: he pissed on it. He didn’t bother to suture the wound, despite its rank smell. Better to let the pus drain away naturally.

He tore off the lower parts of his shirt sleeves and used the cotton material as a dressing. He wrapped it loosely around his knee, giving the wound plenty of air. Despite the basic first aid, Golan felt his temperature rising. Knew that if he didn’t get to a doctor soon, the injury might turn gangrenous.

But I still have the gun, he reminded himself, reaching for the Glock inside his jacket. A gift from God – and a message. Don’t make the same mistake twice.

As a teenager and young man, his ways of killing had become ever more adventurous. He thrived on the diversity of death.

Once he’d read about how bamboo grew at a rapid rate and reached heights of several metres. So he nurtured a patch of young bamboo plants in a secluded forest. There he tied a man flat to the ground using stakes, having first sliced off the tops of the bamboo shoots, leaving the sharp ends piercing his flesh. When he returned several days later, the tips had speared his victim right through the chest, neck and arms.

Later Golan’s father discovered his secret. He sought the advice of powerful friends, the kind who could keep a secret. He told them his son had a special skill – one that few people had – and wondered whether such a rare talent was in demand. The word came back: we always need such men.

Golan plugged a fresh chip into his BlackBerry. Dialled the number.

‘You messed up,’ the man said.

‘I had things under control, and then—’ He was too angry with himself to go on.

‘Forget it.’

His forehead throbbed a little less. ‘Is the target—?’

‘Alive? Yes. We’ve a satellite fix on him now.’

‘Then the mission is not a failure.’ Golan’s heart jumped ahead of him. He had never failed before.

‘Not yet,’ the man said, letting two words do the work of ten.

‘Just tell me what I have to do.’

‘You don’t have long. He’s making a break for it.’ The man paused. ‘Hurry.’

11

0158 hours.

Gardner walked back to the Charlatan and showered. He thought about his next move. His mind was made up: Land and MI6 could go fuck themselves. There were thousands of drug smugglers higher up the food chain than Bald. Gardner had spent fifteen years doing the dirty work for suits, and he had nothing to show for it except a lump of carbon-fibre where his hand was supposed to be. If the Firm wanted to nail John Bald, fine. They were welcome to him. But they’d have to do it without using Gardner as cannon fodder.

He slipped on a fresh pair of Gap combats and a dark-green, short-sleeved shirt. The combats felt a little loose around the waist. Seven days of working for the Firm had its bonuses.

Gardner sipped on a Diet Coke from the mini-bar and carb-loaded with four slices of yesterday’s pizza. It tasted like salted leather, but his stomach didn’t seem to mind and rumbled its contentment. He switched on the fourteen-inch TV resting on the tattered desk. Flicked over to BBC News 24. Generally Gardner had little time for the media. Back in the line of duty he’d witnessed first-hand how much of the real action went unreported. Journalists instead were spoon-fed bullshit by the head shed and repeated every word to Joe Public.

Between the stories of teenage rape and cancer scares, one item caught his attention.

A dilapidated Arab street at dusk. Onlookers stared at a smoking black object in the road. Ambulance lights illuminated a twisted metal wreckage. Stretcher-bearers rushed across the scene. Men and women hollered at the sky.

A blonde journalist in a shawl gave the lowdown.

‘This is the scene tonight in Herat, Afghanistan, near the border with Iran. Eye-witnesses described a loud bang jolting the street at around 9pm local time. The target, it appears, was former Iranian general Mahmoud Reza.’

Gardner tossed the pizza to one side. Reza. The name clawed at his guts. He remembered Iraq at the height of the insurgency. He remembered two mates of his, good Blades by the names of Luke Williamson and Loke Snuka, a Fijian who ate bullets with his oatmeal.

He remembered the pictures of Williamson and Snuka, their torsos charred and dismembered, swinging from Baghdad lampposts.

‘Authorities claim Reza, a former cadet in the Iranian military who rose through the ranks, is responsible for a series of cross-border attacks against coalition forces in Iraq. Tehran strongly denies these claims.’

The blonde was replaced by a parade shot of Reza, thick-bearded and flour-faced. He looked like he needed to relax, a night out on the tiles.

‘It is thought that Reza, who received drill training in the US, was planning to launch a series of raids on NATO targets in northern Afghanistan. Unconfirmed reports suggest US special forces carried out a long-range air strike on Reza.’

Gardner hoped to fuck the Yanks had slotted Reza.

He killed the TV and fetched his belongings from the safe. Fake passport, credit card and three hundred euros. Gardner figured Land would have already cancelled the AmEx, but the passport and cash ought to be good to ferry him back to Blighty. And then? Gardner wasn’t quite sure. He’d be going home with nothing – to nothing. In a weird way, that’s how he liked it. He lived an honest life. Maybe it wasn’t glamorous. It was certainly hard. But as long as it kept him away from two-faced pricks like Land, it was a life that suited him down to the ground.

He zipped up his backpack and cast a final look around the room.

Felt a circle of cool air on his back.

Gardner didn’t turn around. He already knew who was standing in the doorway.

‘Packing your bags already? Looks like we got here just in time.’

Killen.

‘What the fuck do you want?’

‘To say goodbye, mate.’

12

0229 hours.

‘Give us a smile then, lad,’ Killen said. ‘Thought you’d be pleased to see me.’

Killen had a Glock in his hands. Stainless steel, 17 edition. The Glock eyefucked Gardner.

‘Shut the door, Eddie.’

Stone obeyed, a task that required him to move several tons of muscle bulk. He slipped the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign over the knob and clicked the lock on the opposite side. Stone’s head leached sweat. He gasped for breath. Gardner figured walking took it out of a guy when he had basketballs for biceps.

‘We heard what you did to Terry,’ Killen said.

‘He had it coming.’

‘Just like you. I’m a big believer in an eye for an eye. You do something to a mate of mine, you can fucking expect the same shit done to you.’ Killen gave Gardner a screw-face served with a side order of sneers. ‘Think you’re so smart, don’t you? Well, guess what: I never liked you. Told Terry as much, but he rated anyone who’d done their time in the Regiment. Me, I reckon you’re a bunch of wankers. Us Para boys were always first into the action, clearing up the shit so you Blades had it nice and easy and took all the glory.’

‘Just keep telling yourself that, mate.’

‘Nah,’ Killen said, peering down the Glock’s ramped front sights. ‘I’ll just kill you instead. Let’s see how your fucking SAS skills pull you out of this one. Mate.’

‘Slot me and you’ll regret it.’

‘What, your ghost’s gonna come back and haunt me?’

Gardner had to go for broke. He was a dead man, unless he gave Killen a reason not to blow his brains out.

‘You’re after John, right? But here’s the thing. There are people involved way above my pay grade, and they watch my every move.’

Killen hesitated, but it was impossible to read the black dots passing themselves off as eyes.

‘Nice try, kiddo,’ he said, shaking his head, a smirk on his sunburned mug. ‘I’m not a fucking idiot. Not like Terry. You couldn’t lie your way out of a Frenchman’s pocket.’

‘I’m telling the truth.’

‘There you fucking go again,’ he went on, ignoring Gardner’s protest. ‘Always thinking you’re smarter than the pack. Not this time you ain’t.’

Gardner braced himself for the bullet. Pictured the hollow-point Parabellum round penetrating his skull and bouncing around his head like a supersonic squash ball. Shockwaves from it tearing chunks out of his face, neck and shoulders. Dying in a seedy hotel at the hands of a two-bob ex-soldier. Shitty way to go. Five minutes ago he’d been contemplating the next five years of his life. Now I don’t have five fucking seconds, he thought.

‘Boom,’ Killen said, gesturing as if he’d popped a round. ‘You don’t get off that easy. You made Terry suffer. It wouldn’t be fair unless me and Eddie here repaid the compliment.’

Training the pistol at Gardner, he nodded at Stone.

‘All right, I’ll give you a choice. Balls or face.’

‘I don’t need to hear the story of how your mum and dad met.’

‘Funny fucking man,’ Stone said. Either he’d stepped towards Gardner, or a solar eclipse was happening right there in the hotel room.

He socked Gardner in the bollocks.

Gardner keeled over, his balls registering a million different types of pain. As Stone laughed the upper half of his body jogged on the spot.

Killen lifted Gardner’s head up by the chin.

‘Eye for an eye, Joe.’

Stone shoved him towards the bathroom. It was a cramped space, hardly big enough for two people to stand, let alone a third guy the size of a small planet. Killen sat on the toilet, Glock on his lap. Stone squeezed past and ran the bath taps. Water splashed against the porcelain tub.

‘They found Terry face down in a toilet. Drowned, they say.’

‘Maybe he slipped.’

He watched the water slowly rise. An inch, then two.

‘In about thirty seconds you’re going to know exactly how Terry felt.’

His mind raced through escape plans. Strike Stone on his solar plexus and throw him into the bath.

Yeah, and meanwhile Killen puts one through your head.

Or grab Killen’s gun, slot him and worry about Stone later.

But soon as you make a move on Killen, Stone’ll crush you.

Whichever way he looked at it, he was fucked.

The bathwater hit seven inches.

Stone forced Gardner’s head over the side of the tub. ‘This is where it ends, motherfucker.’

Eight inches.

Nine.

Gardner flung himself backwards at Killen, using his muscle mass to slam him against the wall. His elbow dug into Killen’s chest, then jabbed him in the gut. Killen released the Glock, which zipped along the cracked tiles. This was it! His big chance to bug out. Both guys were stunned. If he could just reach the door…

A force tugged at him like a bungee rope. Two bloated hands clamped on his shoulders. Stone wiped phlegm from his face and kicked Gardner in the ribcage. He tried to get up but that fat fuck lashed out at him. The pain in his ribs peaked. Breathing was like swallowing razor blades. He had nothing left in the tank.

‘My fucking nose!’ Killen shrieked. ‘Shit. Get this over with.’

Stone grabbed Gardner by his shirt and plunged his head into the bathwater. He fought back. Thrust his right hand out of the water and searched in vain for the guy’s face.

He felt his lungs compress. A pressure formed behind his eyeballs. He thought they might explode any second. His muscles were dead weight, as if parts of his body had already surrendered. He shook his head from side to side to try to loosen Stone’s grip. No good. The prick had him on lockdown. Struggling only wasted more precious oxygen.

His world darkened. Killen’s voice, distant and distorted:

‘Game over, Joe.’

Game over.

The water shaded dark red, and Gardner was sure he was going to die.

13

0304 hours.

A second later Gardner realized he wasn’t being held underwater any more. The blood in the water didn’t belong to him. He jerked his head up, and out. Precious air burned his lungs.

Stone was face down in the tub, the back of his head like an island.

An island with a bullet hole.

Gardner hocked up bathwater. He turned around, clocked Killen on his feet. Glock hanging by his side, looking daggers to his left. Gardner followed his gaze. Land stood in the doorway holding the smallest handgun he’d ever seen, a Ruger LCP .380. Lightweight and less than three inches from stock to barrel, it was the kind of firearm a female spy might conceal in her purse.

‘Don’t move,’ Land shouted at Killen, his voice wavering.

‘Or what? You’ll shoot me with that fucking peashooter of yours?’ Killen’s eyes drifted to the corpse in the bathtub. ‘Then again, Eddie always did have shit for brains.’

Gardner felt his energy returning. He focused on Killen. Disarm the fucker. Put that son of a bitch down once and for all.

‘This is your last warning,’ Land said.

Killen chuckled. He glanced at Gardner. ‘You’re a fucking disgrace, Joe. Betraying your own kind with these back-stabbing nonces.’

Then Killen drew his pistol faster than Wyatt Earp on speed and fired a single shot. The bullet struck the light fitting, plunging the room into darkness. Gardner made a leap for Killen and found thin air. Then he felt himself collide with Land, knocking him aside. The front door slammed. Gardner skipped past the MI6 man’s prone body – and backtracked as the Glock punched holes in the door.

Killen’s stifled voice carried through the door. ‘Come after me and I’ll fill you in like a fucking survey.’

Gardner counted to ten. Risked approaching the door, coming at it from the side. Sliding up next to the frame, he rested his hand on the knob, then flung the door open.

The corridor was empty.

Killen had fucked off.

He retreated inside the room. Found Land on the bathroom floor.

‘Damn monster butted me with his pistol,’ Land said. Gardner peeled Land’s hand away from his head, revealing a four-inch cut from his temple to the bridge of his nose.

‘Needs a few stitches but otherwise you’ll be fine.’ Gardner pressed a wet towel to the wound and ordered Land to hold it in place.

‘What did I tell you back in Rio, old chap?’ asked Land.

‘My memory’s kind of fuzzy.’

‘I said I might be the last friend you’d ever have.’ Land frowned at Stone’s corpse, as if he’d trodden in dog shit, and nodded.

‘Give me a hand,’ Gardner said, pulling out the bath plug. The hole slurped the slick red water. Gardner heaved one of Stone’s legs over the side, Land tentatively working the other. The legs felt as if they were weighed down with sandbags. Once they’d laid Stone flat in the tub, they pulled the shower curtain across.

‘Gonna need more than a bottle of Cilit Bang to clean this up,’ said Gardner.

‘The Firm will take care of it.’

‘You boys must be experts at cleaning up your own shit.’

‘Admit it. You had me down as the type of chap who didn’t like to get his hands dirty. Leo’s too posh to muck in, you thought. Am I right?’

‘I didn’t think you’d be riding to the rescue.’

‘Yet here I am. So what does that tell you?’

‘That you’re more bent than a boy band.’

Land scraped brain matter off the sole of his shoe. ‘You and I aren’t so different, you know. We might come from different camps, but we’re fighting a common enemy. And we’re both taught that killing is only acceptable when it achieves a goal. Call it necessary murder.’

Gardner shook his head. ‘I’ve seen my fair share of dead people. Mates coming home in body bags. Wives and kids breaking down in tears. Killing’s never a good thing.’

‘War is different.’

‘So they say.’

Land rested the peashooter on the bathroom counter. ‘John Bald’s the enemy. He must be stopped.’

Gardner’s mind drifted over the shower curtain. Six months ago he’d been on the piss with Stone, swapping old war stories and jokes about the Kabul nightlife. Allegiances used to count for something. Now he was lying dead in a bathtub, and it seemed like the whole world didn’t give a fuck about loyalty or honour.

So where does that leave John? he wondered. Bottom line, John betrayed me. He’s no more honourable than Killen. Than a fucking snake.

‘I just saved your life,’ Land said. ‘The least you can do is see through the mission to tail Bald. If you want to walk away from the Firm afterwards, that’s up to you. You don’t have to take up the job offer; dammit, I’ll even sort an alternative position. Perhaps something not as glamorous. A desk job. Or guard duty for a lesser-known royal maybe.’

Gardner quit the bathroom. The smell was making him nauseous. Land hovered in the doorway.

‘What’s it to be?’

Gardner’s rucksack sat on the bed. He wanted to pick it up, flip Land the bird and bug out of the Rock. Out of this nightmare.

‘We don’t have much time,’ Land continued. ‘Killen’s out there. That bastard’s going to try to intercept Bald by hook or by crook, and we can’t let that happen.’

‘Bald’s in hiding. How will Killen know where to look for him?’

Land snooped out of the hotel window. Main Street was quiet.

‘That plunge in the water has dulled your senses a tad, mmm? Think about it: Gibraltar is crawling with police. The border with Spain is on high alert for a crazed gunman on the loose, namely Shai Golan – the man whose acquaintance you made at the King’s Hotel. Given that kind of police presence, Bald isn’t going to risk smuggling the cocaine across the border. And he’d never get the stuff past airport security. So that leaves only one way off.’

‘By boat.’

Land clicked his fingers. ‘He has to leave via the marina. Our sources indicate that a man matching Bald’s description reserved a cruiser yacht called the Defiant two days ago. All Killen has to do is show at the marina and wait for his chance.’

Gardner recalled something from Rio.

‘John can’t pilot a boat. That’s why he called me to Brazil.’

‘Either he was telling fibs, or he’s got help. Whichever it is, Bald simply has no choice but to go old-school and ship out his drugs. And MI6 needs him to succeed. Once he’s on the boat we’ve got him red-handed and your mission will be over. This is it, Joe. One more step.’

Gardner searched his eyelids. Just this last job. ‘If I do this,’ he said, ‘I want be back in the Regiment one hundred per cent.’

‘Impossible. I told you so a week ago.’

‘I’ll do whatever undercover work needs doing, but I’m fucked if I have to report back up to some rich prick in a suit with a semi-detached in Fulham. No offence.’

‘Plenty taken. But no one can do what you’re asking.’

‘Talk to Major Josh Oliver.’

‘I hardly think the new Commander of 22 SAS is going to be a sympathetic ear.’

‘Just talk to him.’

Major Oliver. Just plain old Josh back when he and Gardner fought alongside each other. Worked his way up the old-fashioned way, with grit and determination. Promoted to Staff Sergeant, 2iC and then D Squadron’s OC before taking the top job. An old friend and, in Gardner’s eyes, the only decent rupert in the business.

‘All right. A quiet word, once this is over. But I’m making no promises.’

‘Deal.’

‘Then it’s settled. I suggest you head down to the marina immediately if you’re to stop Killen from taking down Bald.’

‘The Defiant, you say?’

Land nodded.

‘Topped up and ready to sail, according to the owner.’ Land handed Gardner a photo.

‘I’m going to need firepower. And no offence, mate, but that thing you’re packing is about as useful as a one-legged man at an arse-kicking contest.’

Then Gardner had an idea. He went to the bath, dragged back the curtain and patted the pockets on Stone’s 44-waist jeans. Found a polymer pistol grip jutting out of his back pocket. The grip was attached to a Kel-Tec PMR-30 semi-automatic. It was a newcomer to the weapons block but Gardner had heard a lot of buzz about its capabilities. He snatched the pistol out of Stone’s pocket and held it as if shaking hands with an old friend.

‘You won’t be needing this,’ he said to the back of Stone’s head.

‘Now, you have my permission to do whatever it takes to protect Bald’s safe passage. But for God’s sake try to keep it covert. I can cover your tracks to a certain extent, but if you go shooting up half the town my job becomes a lot more difficult.’

‘Where’s John at the moment?’

‘We’ve had eyes on the marina for the past few hours. He hasn’t yet shown there. Leaving it until the very last minute, I presume.’

Gardner made for the door. Pistol in his jeans, Bald on his mind.

‘You’d better be telling me everything you know,’ he said, then slammed the bullet-riddled door before Land could reply.

14

0355 hours.

Gardner hit Queensway and circled south around the marina’s edge. Nearly four o’clock and night was surrendering to dawn. The sky was a cobalt dome. Whitewashed apartment blocks shaded violet. He banged a right into Queensway Quay, passing a row of five villas and a giant lead anchor slanted over a manicured lawn.

The moon spotlighted the quay. West of his position the quay abruptly ended, giving way to the Strait. Three hundred metres to the south, across his left shoulder, stood the dockyard where HMS Lizard would be going through her final checks and repairs before setting sail. He thought about the Wren, about her mashed-up face.

He paced for two hundred metres to the western edge of the quay, where the road arrowed north and nine apartment buildings stood on a rectangle of reclaimed land, bordered by a rocky shoreline.

Gardner paused and scoped out the marina.

There’s got to be a hundred boats in dock, he thought. He counted two-seater cruisettes, fifty-foot luxury cruisers and commercial fishing ships, tied up at three concrete piers. He looked at the shot of the Defiant. She was a sizeable beast, thirty-eight feet, with a distinctive blue-and-white striped hull and a stern sleek as an arrowhead. Suddenly he spotted the cruiser yacht at the far end of the middle pier. But he didn’t move in just yet. He was waiting for Bald or Killen to show. So far, no sign of either.

Four in the morning and Gibraltar was a ghost town. Two until four was Gardner’s favoured time of attack. Soldiers called that period the dead hours – when most people were in a deep sleep.

He scanned the apartment blocks. Every window and balcony bay was encased in darkness. He imagined people tucked up in their nice beds, while he knuckled down to the business of killing men.

A thought gnawed at him. While Stone and Gill were dumb as shit sandwiches minus the bread, Killen was different. Cunning. No doubt he’d be figuring out the best approach to the Defiant. So Gardner had to be alert.

He backtracked east along the quay, resolving to patrol the larger marina a hundred metres to the north.

A silhouette shifted along the middle pier, thirty metres from the Defiant.

Gardner froze. The dark could play havoc with an operator’s vision, conjuring up shapes and movement where there was none. He ran his eyes around the silhouette, putting a distance equivalent to the size of his fist between the object and his line of sight. He looked away from it for several seconds, and let his eyes return to the shape. It had moved. His brain wasn’t tricking him.

He retreated up the quayside towards Queensway. Between each block of flats he risked a brief glance down to the waterfront, where he spied the figure shuffling along the pier. He was slow and deliberate, wanting only to keep an eye on Bald and assessing the surrounding area for threats. Any sudden noise might alert Bald to his presence.

Past the anchor again, Gardner hurried north. Two hundred metres further along the deserted Queensway, he turned left past a large Genoese-style development, all turquoise shutters and terracotta roofs. The pavement coughed him up at the northern pier. Palm trees and cannons lined the walkway. The middle pier was eighty metres south, and the silhouette was nearing the Defiant. Closer up, it took on definition. A man, tall, solid build. It had to be Bald. He held a torch in his right hand. His left gripped a black object. A pistol, Gardner guessed.

But where was Killen? If he planned to jump Bald at the marina this was his prime opportunity. And yet there was no sign of him.

Instinct – not even instinct, more like a clotting fear that fired from the base of his spine to the back of his skull – told him to glance back inland. He scanned the blanket of darkness swirling over the foliage. Shit! That’s it. He’d assumed Killen would be going for the up-close and personal approach. In doing so he’d ignored the widest vantage point of all. That’s fucking it.

The Upper Rock. The steep, jagged rock dominated the Gibraltar skyline.

Gardner surged towards the middle pier. John Bald was walking into the ideal spot for a sniper on the Upper Rock.

I’ve got to get John out of the line of fire, Gardner thought. But your cover will be blown.

If I don’t, he’ll be killed.

The hollow sound of Gardner’s feet pounding hard on the planks alerted Bald, who had stopped at the Defiant.

Twenty metres, and Bald was spinning around, torchlight searching the pier. Gardner fixed on the black object in his right hand. Bulky-looking thing, some kind of a gun. He had time enough to think how shit it would be to die at the hands of the corrupt ex-Blade he was trying to protect.

Ten. Gardner ducked like a sprinter at the finish line. The Upper Rock was eight hundred metres away. Clear night, full moon. No wind to distort the shot. If Killen got his shot off, it was all over.

Five, and Gardner caught the faint crack of a rifle. He lunged at Bald. The torch blinded him. Gardner knocked them both to the pier floor, the torch dropped into the water and the Defiant reeled with the smack of a bullet into her hull.

Gardner blindly grappled with Bald. He couldn’t see shit. He dragged Bald away from the boat. Bald struggled. Gardner brought an elbow down against his skull. Jesus fucking Christ, John, he thought. Bald’s grip was stronger than he remembered.

Scarcely able to see ahead of him, Gardner moved as quickly as his legs and Bald’s weight allowed. Another crack and the plank in front of him exploded. Splinters speared his forehead.

He ducked behind the remnants of an old fort. Weathered stonework now shielded them from the Upper Rock. Gardner gathered his breath and peered around the corner of the fort. The Upper Rock was jagged and dark as a lump of charcoal. Fuck, he told himself. Without a viewing aid, he had no way of getting a fix on Killen’s location.

Bald tried standing. He was unsteady on his feet. He reached into his jacket pocket.

‘Not this time you don’t, mate,’ Gardner said, smacking him in the middle of his back with the butt of the PMR-30. Bald grunted, dropped and rolled on to his back.

Then Gardner noticed a dull, sticky stain on his knee.

Moonlight splashed across his face. He stared at Gardner from behind a pair of black Ray-Bans. Blood gleamed out of a fresh gash on his jaw, where Gardner had struck him on the pier. The man’s features were coated in the grainy film of night, but they were clear enough.

‘You’re not John,’ he said

Mr fucking Crowbar.

15

0423 hours.

‘Where the fuck is John Bald?’ Gardner said, aiming the PMR-30 at the big man’s chest.

‘I would think carefully about your next move, if I were you,’ Golan, aka Mr Crowbar, said. His accent was foreign, the bastard offspring of French and German.

‘Only you’re not me. You’re the fucker with the gun in his face.’

Gardner noticed the elbows of the guy’s jacket were smeared with blood and dirt. Wherever he been in the five hours since Gardner had introduced him to a steak knife, it wasn’t the local A&E.

‘You’ve got about six seconds to tell me who you are and what you know.’

‘Kill me and you’ll upset a lot of very important people.’

‘Fucking talk,’ Gardner said as he pushed the PMR-30 hard to Golan’s temple. The polymer housing dug into his flesh. One click, he was thinking, and a .22 Magnum cartridge, powered by two hundred joules of muzzle energy, would carve open his skull. Like a boot through soft snow.

Golan must have sensed that Gardner was ready to back up his threat because he gritted his teeth and glowered, as if steeling himself for the bullet. Gardner couldn’t see his eyes through the shades, but he got the impression that Golan was an unflappable son of a bitch.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

‘My mission is simple,’ Golan said, talking to the barrel of the PMR-30. ‘My people instructed me that no harm must come to the mark.’

‘The mark? What are you on about?’

‘The man I was sent here to protect.’

Gardner burned up like diesel. ‘Terry Gill?’

‘That is not the name I was given.’

The realization struck Gardner like a boomerang.

‘John.’

‘John Bald,’ Golan said. ‘Yes. He is the one.’

Gardner inched closer to his face. He wanted to tear off his shades and go eyeball to eyeball with this arsehole. He had the sense he was only dimly aware of the full story surrounding his old Regiment mucker.

‘Who sent you?’

‘That I cannot say.’

‘Mossad?’ His finger tensed on the trigger. ‘You’re Israeli, I know that much.’

Golan grinned at the barrel, like he was fucking flirting with it. ‘If I told you who sent me – well, I’d have to kill you.’ He laughed, then went on:

‘Oh yes, your superiors gave you weak information. They told you Bald would be departing from the marina. On the Defiant, yes? They are badly mistaken.’

‘Tell me where John is.’

‘Why? So you can kill him?’

Gardner shook his head. ‘I’m here to protect John.’

Golan frowned.

‘The shots fired just now were intended for John. It’s an ambush,’ Gardner said. ‘Looks like it’s not just my intelligence that’s full of holes.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘Nah, mate. Hate to break it to you but the only reason I saved your arse back there is because I thought you were John.’

Golan looked sceptically at Gardner.

‘You remember the King’s Hotel? Gardner said. ‘The guy who turned up there to slot Bald—’

‘An MI6 agent,’ Golan cut in.

‘No, he was a bloody cowboy. Out to slot John and rob him. The sniper on the Upper Rock is a cowboy mate of his. Name of Killen. And if we fuck about much longer, John’s going to end up very dead.’

Golan weighed up the words.

‘It seems to me we’re on different ends of the same boat,’ Gardner said. ‘Either we work together to find John and get him out of the line of fire – or we’re both going to end up on the losing team.’

Gardner glanced over the fort wall. Queensway was deserted. Not a fucking soul about.

Golan took off his shades, unveiling a swollen right eye socket, a battle scar of their earlier fight. ‘OK,’ he finally said. ‘We help each other.’ He reached for something inside his jacket. Gardner’s right hand shot up, PMR-30 level with Golan’s mug. His finger tensed on the trigger mechanism.

‘Keep your hands where I can see them.’

‘I have a handheld tracker. It will lead us to the mark.’

Gardner recalled the black object Golan had been holding on the pier. He’d assumed it was a gun, but perhaps it really was a tracking device. Gardner had no choice but to trust the Israeli. Since Land had sold him dud intelligence, Golan was his only hope of getting a lock on Bald.

‘Do it.’

Golan quickly dipped a hand into his jacket.

‘Slowly.’

The Israeli produced a sleek black device the size and thickness of an iPhone, except this one featured five buttons at the bottom and an extended aerial on top.

Gardner lowered the PMR-30. He leaned in as Golan entered a pin code on the touch screen and was presented with a thermal satellite map of Queensway, with one centimetre representing a hundred metres. A red icon blinked in the middle of the map.

‘The Navy woman who was supplying cocaine to Bald,’ Golan explained. ‘I put a transponder into one of the packages before she completed the delivery. It emits a signal to a satellite in near-orbit and relays the position directly to me. Simple – but effective.’

Gardner nodded. ‘So… where is he?’

Golan brushed his index finger over the screen. He tilted the device and looked over his shoulders, trying to establish his bearings.

‘We don’t have much time.’

‘He’s very close,’ Golan said. ‘And still on dry land, it seems. Rosia Road.’

‘That’s to the south.’ Gardner scanned the screen. ‘Fifty metres beyond the Botanic Gardens. That means he’s just over three hundred metres away. Maybe he’s winging his way up here. To the boat.’

‘Then we can intercept him.’ Golan was scrambling to his feet.

Gardner blocked his route with an outstretched arm. ‘The sniper’s still out there.’

‘But Rosia Road is highly exposed,’ Golan said. ‘If the sniper spots Bald, he has an easy shot.’

‘Let’s keep low. We can move behind cover to John’s position.’

‘Agreed.’

‘You lead the way.’

If he tries anything, I’ll get the first shot off, Gardner thought.

Golan paced south, hugging the hotels’ walls and pausing at the gap after each hotel. Gardner looked ahead for any sign of Bald, but his eyes had not yet fully adjusted to the dark. It took an hour for the average person’s eyes to adapt to seeing in the dark as the brain switched from retinal day cells to night. He’d left Land at 0350, less than forty-five minutes ago.

Golan moved with surprising ease, Gardner thought, considering the state of his left knee. Gardner kept up the pace to the rear, hoping to fuck that they reached Bald before Killen could zero in.

‘This sniper—’

‘Killen.’

‘Is he a good shot?’

Gardner considered the question as they passed the plush villas with the giant anchor staked out front. ‘He qualified top of the class in the sniper cadre of 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment.’

‘I’m not familiar with that school.’

‘Put it this way. To pass out of the cadre, the sniper’s got to achieve a first-round kill on a man-sized target at nine hundred metres. Killen could do that blindfolded.’

Golan was silent as they approached the Ragged Staff Gates, an eight-metre-tall wall of eroded concrete originally built by the Moors and later used as a defensive perimeter during the Siege. The gates provided them with cover as the marina ended and Queensway became Rosia Road. They were now just one hundred and twenty metres from Bald’s position.

‘What made you think I was MI6?’ Gardner asked.

‘I have my sources.’

‘Well, you’re fucking wrong. I don’t work for anyone but myself.’

‘Spoken like a true government man.’

Golan passed the Botanic Gardens. Then he slowed his step. Gardner halted in his shadow. They crouched down behind a cargo container parked beside the road and adjacent to the industrial park. A hundred metres due south Rosia Road curved to the right, rolling around the fringe of the industrial park and the dockyard. Gardner cocked his eyes. His vision had improved in the last few minutes, but he was troubled by what he saw. Or rather what he didn’t see.

‘Where’s John?’

Golan consulted his tracker. ‘According to the transponder, he should be here.’

‘This is a built-up area,’ Gardner said. ‘There’s any number of locations he might be. Inside a building, hiding in a hotel room, maybe parked up in a car somewhere… We need a pinpoint fix.’

‘When I said “here” I meant right on this very spot.’

Gardner darted his head left and right. Not a sniff of Bald in any direction.

‘So where the fuck is he?’

16

0458 hours.

Craning his neck around the edge of the container, Gardner scoped out the scene. Street lamps poured orange light over a vacant road. The pavements were deserted, save for a macaque rummaging through a rubbish bin.

‘I don’t see him,’ said Gardner, running his eyes over the Upper Rock. ‘Something’s wrong. Maybe your transponder signal’s fucked.’

‘Impossible.’

‘It’s either that, or John’s turned into the invisible man—’

Golan had tuned out. He was scrolling down on the tracker, shifting his position and glancing down at the industrial park. He looked confused.

‘What is it?’ Gardner asked.

‘The signal’s moving.’

‘Bullshit. He’s not here. There must be some kind of problem with the hardware on that thing.’

‘There is not, I can assure you.’

For fuck’s sake! Gardner thought. Two spies tracking the same man on a slab of land of less than three square miles, and neither of us can find him. Anger lodged in his throat. He was mad at Golan’s tracker, mad at Land’s dodgy int.

The transponder blinked Bald’s location: the industrial park. Gardner scanned the docks and the berthed Lizard. The sun was rising in the east, mottling the blackness. Seagulls flapped. No trace of Bald.

‘What the fuck’s going on?’

The dot shifted further south.

Gardner dug out his mobile to call Land.

He got nothing. Not even a dial tone. The signal displayed no bars.

‘My phone’s down… something’s wrong.’

‘Your phone isn’t the problem.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Communication countermeasures.’

Golan looked up at the sky and the paling stars. ‘We wanted to make sure MI6 was not in a position to compromise the mark’s safety. Until 0530 all foreign satellite and radio comms in a mile radius are disabled.’

Gardner’s skin burned like hot rubber. He sensed everything was going pear-shaped fast. His shot at redemption – at being a soldier – was disappearing quicker than a Scouser into the nearest William Hill.

Fuck it! All this way. The shit I survived in Rio, the fucking cowboys, and now—

A throbbing, purring noise drilled his mind.

The two men exchanged a look.

‘Sounds like—’ said Golan.

‘A boat engine!’

In a flurry they darted into the industrial yard.

‘There’s no boats coming in or out. I don’t understand,’ Golan said.

‘The noise – it’s coming from further down the way,’ said Gardner. Then he remembered something he’d spotted earlier when spying on the Wren. He raced down Rosia Road, legs pumping so hard he could feel the burning in his calves, as if someone was holding matchsticks to them. His breathing was short, fitful.

After fifty metres he rested by the side of the artillery placement. It stood on the edge of a cliff face, the surrounding banks dotted with unfinished apartment blocks. He kneeled beside the reinforced armour plating fixed to the metre-long cannon. Below lay an isolated inlet.

‘Earlier I remembered spotting a cove,’ Gardner said. ‘There was a small opening at the bottom. A tunnel.’ His eyes searched the inky sea. ‘It stuck in my mind because I’d read somewhere that smugglers used it back in the day, to hide contraband.’

Surf white as soap suds bobbed on the surface leading out from the tunnel, like a jet stream that had fallen from the sky. Gardner’s eyes ran along the surf trail. And there! Barely a hundred metres beyond the cove, a cruiser yacht rose and dipped as it skimmed across the waves at a high speed. Had to be doing eighteen, twenty knots an hour, he figured.

‘No,’ Golan said, a trace of disgust in his tone. ‘I do not believe it. All this time the signal was true.’

‘John was under us. Under the fucking Rock.’

That’s John all right, Gardner thought: hanging over the rails and puffing on a fucking victory cigar. Bald faced away from Gibraltar, looking out across the vista of Algeciras on the Spanish coastline.

‘He is not alone,’ said Golan.

‘Figured as much,’ said Gardner. Bald couldn’t pilot a boat for all the money in the world. Someone else had to be manning the controls. As if on cue, a second face presented itself. This one was rounder and redder than Bald’s, and his fleece and tracksuit bottoms hung loose from his portly frame. But he moved with the speed and balance of a man who’d spent many years honing his sea legs. He exited the wheelhouse and scaled the ladder down to the deck, gathering up the ropes.

‘Pete Maston,’ Gardner said.

‘You know this man?’

‘He taught me everything I know.’ Gardner suddenly recalled how he’d respected Maston as the Major of his squadron in the Regiment. How Maston had taught him how to pilot a ship one day and survive sub-zero temperatures the next. Maston had moulded him into an expert in the art of warfare. A graduate in death and destruction.

Gardner watched the boat shrink down the Strait.

‘What about the sniper?’ Golan asked.

‘Once he realizes that the target has escaped, he’ll be worrying about getting the fuck off Gibraltar. Matter of fact, he’s probably already quit the Upper Rock.’

‘That is good.’

A cold spot formed at the back of Gardner’s neck.

‘Son of a bitch,’ he hissed, and felt Golan press the barrel of his pistol harder against his flesh. Should’ve disarmed him back at the pier, when I had the fucking chance.

‘For a man who claims his job is to protect the mark, you seem to know a lot of John Bald’s enemies,’ said Golan.

‘What can I say?’ The sun was lightening the sky to gunmetal grey. Waves crashed against the coast, spraying salt water into his face. ‘It’s a small world.’

‘How about I make it one man smaller?’

‘You sure that’s a wise move – killing an MI6 operator?’

‘But you said you weren’t with the government.’

‘And you believed me?’ Gardner replied, trying to mask his fear by giving it some lip.

He waited for a reply that never came. The circle on his neck warmed. Then above him he heard a pulsating din, fast and furious and devastating. A carriage of cold air hit him like a fist, almost knocking him over the edge of the cliff. He clung on to the cannon to stabilize himself. Felt as if the world’s biggest fan was blasting in his direction.

Gardner managed to swivel around on the battery mount. Sixty metres out from the coast a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter hovered over a patch of water. Its four main blades whirled frantically, whipping up the waves into an electric swell. One of the crew lowered a rope ladder, bridging the forty-metre drop between the chopper and the sea.

Out of the waves, a long, sturdy hand grabbed a hold of the final rung. Golan steadily climbed the rope ladder. He paused near the top. The Black Hawk banked south. Wrapping his left hand fully around the width of the ladder, Golan turned and grinned at Gardner, waving his right hand like a President at his inauguration.

Gardner watched as the chopper powered into the breaking dawn.

Who the fuck is that guy? he wondered. To be able to call upon an emergency evac with a Black Hawk told Gardner that Golan had to be a top-level operator. More than that, it also meant protecting Bald was high on someone else’s agenda.

He stumbled back up Rosia Road. His mobile squawked. The comms systems were back up and running. Then he heard the nasal voice on the other end of the line.

‘Where are you? Where the devil is Bald?’

‘He escaped.’

Land breathed his relief, heavily. ‘Meet me at Europa Point. I’m at Harding’s Observation Post, next to the rather charming lighthouse. Do hurry along. It’s important.’

17

0645 hours.

Europa Point lay at the southernmost tip of Gibraltar. Morocco’s Atlas mountains were a faint wash in the distance. Gardner passed the Ibrahim al-Ibrahim mosque to his left, cricket field to his right, the crease a strip of grass surrounded by sand.

At the very edge of the cliffs stood the lighthouse. Below it, three chimneys protruded like blocks of salt. And east of the lighthouse stood Harding’s Observation Post.

Land stared down at a shiny metal plaque fixed to the ground that indicated the direction of North Africa across the Strait. He didn’t turn to greet Gardner as he strode up the concrete path fixed between the cricket ground and the mosque.

‘So,’ Land said to the sea. ‘You made it.’

‘No thanks to you,’ Gardner replied, hanging back a few feet from the agent.

‘Oh? How so?’

‘That intelligence you had about Bald escaping on the Defiant down at the marina? Bullshit. He’d hidden a boat in the smugglers’ tunnel. If it wasn’t for the Israeli and his transponder, I’d never have found him.’

Land tapped a cigarette from his pack. He rolled it in his hands mournfully.

‘We gave you the best information we had available to us at the time, old boy.’

‘Well, your so-called best stank the place out.’

Land spun round and walked towards Gardner. For the first time, Gardner saw aggression in his face. ‘Look, I’ve already apologized to you. What more do you want from me? Christ, even when we did eventually work out Bald’s escape plan, we had no way of reaching you. All of our radio and mobile systems were down.’

‘Golan mentioned that. Speaking of which, any more news on this guy?’

Land shrugged as he put the cigarette between his lips. The breeze rolling up from the cliffs conspired to extinguish his lighter.

‘We’re getting nowhere. All of our enquiries have hit a dead end. Our best guess is he’s a criminal freelancer.’

‘Could be Mossad.’

‘Not a chance,’ Land said, striking a match and cupping the flame around his cigarette. ‘I spoke to their chief earlier. He assures me that Golan is not one of their people. I’m inclined to believe him. We have a good relationship with the Israelis, you know.’

‘Golan – he got away too. A Black Hawk lifted him out. That’s no criminal.’

‘Well, you might be right,’ he shrugged.

‘They haven’t caught Killen yet?’

‘Matter of time.’

Land stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette on the plaque.

‘There’s another thing—’ Gardner began.

‘You saw a familiar face on the boat.’

Gardner angled his head at Land.

‘How did you know?’

‘One of our SIGINT listening posts intercepted an exchange two days ago between Bald and Major Pete Maston. Or ex-Major, I should say. Old mentor of yours, I believe?’

‘And you didn’t think to let me know?’

‘The identity of the driver of the boat doesn’t affect your mission directly.’ Land inspected his shoes. ‘And anyway, Maston suffered a bad fall from grace. The head shed had to let him go. Afghanistan did, shall we say, odd things to his mind. He drowned his dog in the bath. Then he tried to do the same to his pregnant girlfriend.’

Gardner said nothing. All Special Forces soldiers were trained in first aid, and every patrol had its specialist medic. Gardner knew of more than one guy who could take out a dozen armed men but struggled to come to terms with his own mind. Some topped themselves. Others destroyed their own lives, or the lives of their loved ones.

‘After he got the old heave-ho, Maston went looking for answers in the bottom of a whisky bottle. He was declared bankrupt late last year and a few months ago the bailiffs seized his house. Been sleeping on friends’ floors since, apparently.’

‘So you’re saying Maston’s doing this for the money?’

‘I’m saying, Joe, the man’s broke. I imagine Bald offered him a cut in exchange for his help.’

Out of the corner of his eye, Gardner noticed a figure sitting on a bench sixty metres to his right, by the cricket clubhouse. The man was tearing chunks off a white loaf. He threw the chunks to the seagulls. Paused, glanced across his shoulder and carried on feeding the birds. He had hair the colour of volcano ash and a hangdog expression. His face, dappled with liver spots, was more creased than an old shirt. Gardner guessed he could be anything from sixty to ninety.

Gardner looked back at Land.

‘So it’s all over? I can go home now?’

Land smiled.

No more Bald, no more fucking Firm. You’ll be back in the line of duty, Gardner thought. Away from the politics and the lies and the mind games.

‘Certainly. But first I would like you to meet someone.’

Land gestured to the old man feeding the birds. He nodded at Land. His large hands gently placed the remainder of the loaf by his side on the bench. The seagulls flocked to the bread as he walked over to the two men, his crisp suit rustling in the breeze, his blank eyes staring right through Gardner.

‘This is Massimo,’ Land said. ‘And he’s here to make you an offer you can’t refuse.’

Faster, Grittier, Darker, Deadlier…Chris Ryan Extreme

Mission 1: REDEEMER

When an old friend makes a desperate call for help, former SAS Warrant Officer Joe Gardner is thrust back into the line of fire. His journey leads him into the deadliest favela in Brazil, where violent gangs, crazed hitmen and trigger-happy paramilitaries lurk. Gardner’s only hope of staying alive is through his supreme survival skills and warrior’s instinct.

Mission 2: THE ROCK

A chance encounter with an agent from MI6 leads Joe Gardner into a perilous mission in Gibraltar. His objective: bust a major cocaine-smuggling ring involving former a Regiment operator and the Royal Navy. But Gardner isn’t alone. A mysterious killer with expert martial arts skills is shadowing his every move. And it’s about to get noisy.

Mission 3: DIE TRYING

Dispatched to a postwar Belgrade crawling with criminals and bad memories, Joe Gardner is on a collision course with his one-time Regiment friend John Bald. Gardner plans to put a stop to Bald once and for all. But with the Russian mafya and Italian mob closing in, is Gardner too late? If he fails, tens of thousands will die.

Mission 4: FALLOUT

In the aftermath of a devastating nuclear attack, Joe Gardner discovers a terrifying secret. In order to protect the truth, he must escort special agent Aimee Milana to safety, all the while hunted by government agents and a former Navy SEAL operator equipped with a lethal weapon. The race is on to reach Parliament Square before the clock runs out – and the world descends into all-out war.

All available in exclusive ebook edition.
For more information go to www.hodder.co.uk

Table of Contents

Also by Chris Ryan

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17