Traitor's Kiss

…Chapter Seventeen

The first rung on the ladder had broken when they had gone down into the water, a second fell away as they came back up out of the canal.

By Wickso's wristwatch, it had taken them seven minutes to swim the width of the canal, and for the last two they had been held in the pool of light. There had been no escape from it, nor was there now. Billy was up the ladder, lay on his stomach and reached back down for the first of the two inflated bags; Lofty was on a rung just below the waterline, and it gave. He fell back and the bag slipped down into the water and seemed, tantalizing, to float away from his arm's range. Lofty had to give up his hold on the ladder's stanchion to retrieve it. It was not difficult to see, because the searchlight was on them, but more time was lost. They no longer had Surprise. They had Speed on their side and they still needed a Shitbucket full of luck. Speed, but three of them, and the man they knew as Ferret, floundered in the water, with two inflatable bags.

Lofty grasped it and again launched himself at the ladder. He went up and heaved the bag past Billy's shoulder. Lofty was ripping the zipper on the bag, and then Ferret was up beside him and gasping. Lofty saw, in the searchlight's cone, the pallor of Ferret's face; the white shirt clung to him, his trousers were half down to his knees. One of his socks had come off in the swim and the sole of his foot was a lacerated skein of lines. Then Ham was up with the second bag, and Wickso. Lofty, on his knees, dragged the remaining weapons out of the bags — what they hadn't needed for the snatch — felt that each of them had stayed dry, and threw at them all the reserve ammunition magazines.

He snatched up the grenade-launcher. They left the bags behind, and ran — each with their own scuttling stride — towards the shelter of the wooden hut. Finally, they had lost the searchlight.

The beam, almost angrily, seemed to Lofty as he looked back to thrash around for them, first it roved beyond them and it scuttled among the sheds and huts and buildings, then it swept back and lit the canal's quay. It retreated, searched the width of the waterway, and then it snapped up a rowing-boat. Lofty saw four men in the rowing-boat, and two bent their backs on oars. But finding the boat was an aberration for the searchlight and it swerved erratically back to the wooden hut.

None of them had spoken since the far side of the canal's quay, when they had been close to the half-sunken ship and the moored landing-craft. Then it had been Ham. Now it was Ham. 'He's got no shoes.'

'His problem,' Wickso grated. 'He'll have to manage.'

'We've got eleven klicks to do.'

'His feet are the last thing I'm worrying about,' Billy said.

A burst of shots hit the upper woodwork of the hut, and some might have sprayed into its roof of corrugated metal. They had escaped the searchlight's cone but not the ever-present and penetrating wail of the siren, and they could hear distant shouting and the roar of jeep engines. They ran.

There was glass and old iron scrap, sharp stone and rubble crunching under their four pairs of boots. Lofty was back marker, the last of the diamond's points. He heard each of Ferret's stifled cries, and he could see the man's weight flop on Wickso's shoulders and Ham's. Himself, he felt Ferret's pain. He remembered when he had turned in his seat behind the driving-wheel of the old Mercedes, and he had looked up past Ham and out through the opened door and he had seen the same face and the backs of the men who had blocked him. The man, Ferret, had protected them. And then he remembered Alice North beside the Braniewo road, in the farm gateway. It was owed to both of them.

Billy called back, 'Where we cut through, would a vehicle crash the fence?'

From Wickso, 'Probably would.'

Billy called again, 'How long does it take to hot-wire?'

From Ham, 'Less than a minute, but it's a diversion.'

They ran in the darkness. There were no more shots, but the shouting was louder, and headlights speared between buildings. They were among scrub bushes and nettle banks. They had to keep moving. Every dozen strides, Lofty would spin, face behind him and hold the launcher poised. If there was close pursuit, and if he fired, he confirmed their position — to shoot was the last resort.

The vehicle park was in front of them. It was wide and open, but there was a line of six lorries and a second line of three jeeps. Billy led them. None of them would contradict an order from Billy. He ran towards the furthest jeep, the one closest to the wire fence. He made the signs — Lofty would drive, Ham would hot-wire, Wickso would hold the torch. The noises behind them were louder, as if a wasps' nest were disturbed and the creatures with their stings ranged after them.

The package, Ferret, was dumped into the open back of the jeep and the breath subsided from him in a wheeze. Billy was beside him. Wickso held the torch close to Ham's frantic moving fingers, and a metal sheet clattered on to the jeep's floor. The wires jumped in Ham's hands. Lofty pumped the pedals. The engine shook, coughed, shuddered, and caught. They were aboard. He stamped on the accelerator. Bloody good thinking from Billy. No lights, but a cloud of fumes behind them, and he gunned the jeep into the mist curtain towards the fence.

Lofty clung to the wheel. Couldn't use the lights to guide him. Over potholes, bumps, heaps of stones, pitching and rising, crashing through the scrub. There had been a ditch, to take away rainwater, and he squirmed across it, lost traction before regaining it, and there, framed in the mist, was the fence. A light blazed, red, on the dash by his legs, but it was half hidden by the launcher across his lap…it would be Lofty's decision. He would go down on to the beach, and he could hear the sea, he would hit the beach and go along the tide line where the sand was hardest, no lights, and that would give them speed. The fence loomed in front of him. He took it head on, maximum power, and the jeep's bonnet bucked, and the tyres spun, then took again, and the fence's mesh screamed as it scraped over the engine covering. Its weight flattened the windshield, lashing into Lofty's face. He heard Billy's oath, and Ferret's howl, and the tearing of clothing — and they were through.

He spun the wheel towards the sounds of the sea.

The engine spluttered. The power died.

They skidded to a halt and the light, red, was bright against his legs. Lofty said, 'There's no fuel — the jeep's got no bloody fuel. We picked a jeep with an empty fucking tank, we…'

Billy was already out, and Wickso, Ham and Ferret followed. He heard Ham's voice, sending the signal that would go as a burst transmission. Lofty slumped, then swung his legs out of the jeep and ran to catch them. Their first target was to reach Rybacij, then there was the open ground until the eight-kilometre marker from the ruined village. They couldn't use the ferry because none of them knew how to start its engine.

'What will happen to him? What will happen to Captain Archenko?' he had asked, and in the confusion he had not been answered.

They had taken a rowing-boat from beside the entrance to the inner harbour, near to the north-west causeway, and the big boys from the farmlands had put their backs into the oars.

'Will Captain Archenko be killed?' he had asked, and was not answered.

They had landed. Soldiers, NCOs and officers, had milled around them, and then he had seen the way that the colonel took control. At first he had not spoken, had allowed the babble to float around him, but when the voices had died he had spoken with soft calmness, and he had given his instructions. He wanted a combat support vehicle. As soon as troops were armed and in formation, they were to be trucked up the far length of the peninsula, and should be deployed as a blocking force on the frontier. No other forces were to get ahead of him without his express permission. With a senior NCO, a full ranking petty officer, to drive the vehicle — a UAZ-469—they had gone north up the quay and there the colonel had inspected two abandoned black bags, sets of flippers and gas masks.

'He saved my life,' Vasiliev had said. 'He was the only friend I had.'

An arm had gone round his back, had squeezed him lightly, and they had again mounted up. They had driven to the vehicle park, and the colonel had been shown the single space where a jeep had been parked; he had seen the colonel's shoulders hunch as if tension caught them. They had followed the tyre marks, their headlights showing the treads, and had gone through a broken hole in the fence, and then the headlights had spied out the jeep, and the shoulders had lifted as though a weight were shed. They went back towards the road up the peninsula and the first lorry of infantry thundered past them, towards the border.

They reached the destroyed skeleton buildings of Rybacij and drove to its far limit.

Vasiliev persisted, 'I cannot kill my friend. I cannot…'

The colonel's hand motioned for the driver to stop on the track, and ahead of them was only the mist and the darkness. The colonel dropped from the vehicle, then his hand was out and it took Vasiliev's and helped him down. Then the colonel lifted, with Mikhail and Dmitri, the weapons and boxes from the vehicle. Behind them was a growing, widening line of infantry.

The colonel said, 'I don't ask you to kill your friend…I don't say that Captain Archenko, your friend, will be killed. He faces investigation that will be legal and fair, but rigorous. Igor, I want him captured, and I want the four terrorists who took him killed. Trust me, Igor. Will you trust me, do as I ask?'

He hung his head. He murmured that he would.

'Why do you have the machine-gun?'

'I train with it — Captain Archenko says I am the best.'

'For me, will you fire the machine-gun at the four terrorists? Will you, Igor?' The eyes, lit by the vehicle's lights, were mesmeric to him and the gentleness of the voice soothed him. He was too young, too ignorant, to know how a cobra trapped a victim with its eyes before stabbing venom into it. It was as if they were alone and a gathering army was not behind them. He stammered, 'I will.'

'You are good with the machine-gun?'

'With that weapon I am the champion for the Naval Infantry of the Baltic Fleet.'

'You will show me a champion, the best — and you will trust me.'

Ahead of them was the airfield. Past the airfield was the missile site. Beyond the missile site was the shooting range. One of them had spared his life. He had seen the knife that the tall one had held and his throat had been bared, but his life had been spared.

'I will.'

'Site the weapon.'

Beside the track was a small promontory of sand and he heaved the machine-gun up it and began to prepare to shoot. He heard the colonel instruct Mikhail and Dmitri at what angle and at what range they should fire the first flares. He was a simple boy, and he felt a small spreading pride that he was asked and they were told. He thought the mist was lifting. He slapped the first belt, fifty rounds, into the breech and snapped the flap catch down. In the night was the clatter as he armed the machine-gun and he settled behind it. He trusted the colonel, as if the colonel were his newest friend. The colonel crouched close to him.

'I'll feed for you.'

'It's not necessary, sir, but…'

'You are Igor, and I am Yuri. We are together. It is better if I feed for you, Igor, and spot for you.'

He was a conscript, a creature of no importance. The colonel of counterintelligence was a man of stature. Vasiliev did not know why so important a man lay beside him and held the belt of tracer and ball and armour-piercing ammunition. To the side of them, down on the track, was the crack as the first flare was fired from the mortar.

He had not seen it climb, but he saw it break out. The flare, to Locke, seemed suspended in the skies, merged in the thinning mist, until it began to fall slowly and he lost it. Alice heard the burst message come in as the console bleeped and the light blinked at her. She played it back. Ham's voice was detached, curious and metallic, distant.

'Ferret picked up. Reached west side of Morskoy canal. Moving out. All hell broken loose behind. Out.'

She sat on the chair with her coat hooked behind her, and shared the kitchen with the darkness. Her mouth gaped. She could make out the walls and the units, the pictures and the line of hanging saucepans. Her mother would have liked the steel saucepans, the wood units and the pictures on the walls. She tried not to think of him. She should not have had to receive the message, or to pass it on: Locke should have done it. But, Locke — the coward — had run away, would be sitting against a tree or on the beach or… She cursed him. Turning to the radio, she hit the code buttons that would scramble the relayed message.

Her voice was clear, sharp. 'This is what I've just received. Stand by for verbatim. "Ferret picked up. Reached west side of Morskoy canal. Moving out. All hell broken loose behind." That's all I've got…God, I feel so useless.'

She cut the transmission.

On the bridge, the master could feel the motion of the engine as it turned over. He heard the muted cry of the siren carried over the water, then there was the laboured noise of feet on the inner ladder and the bridge door burst open.

He stared ahead, out through the window, but the mist masked the few scattered lights of the shore where it was closest to them. Where the wind lifted up the siren call, at the base, he saw nothing. He thought Mowbray had run from the cabin, then thrown himself at the ladder.

The voice bellowed behind him, 'They've lifted him. They're on their way.'

'But they've raised the dead,' he said grimly. 'How far have they come?'

'This side of the canal…they're legging it. I always said it could be done. Damn the doubters — make ready.'

'They have only raised the dead, and they have too far to come.'

'The doubters — fuck them — said it was not possible. It will be a triumph for—'

'Is it close pursuit?'

The master turned. He saw Mowbray blink, then bluster, 'Nothing that they can't handle. They're trained men.'

'Don't listen to me, listen to the night. What do you hear? You hear nothing? I hear the sirens. I hear the alarm. Can I tell you what is at Kaliningrad?'

'I know what is at Kaliningrad.'

Mowbray's bark betrayed his fear, the master thought. What he knew from his life at sea — the barking men, the men with certainty, were always those who harboured fear.

'At Kaliningrad naval base is a brigade of Naval Infantry, and in coastal defence are two artillery regiments and a missile regiment. Behind them are interceptor aircraft, bombers and attack helicopters, and in the base are frigates, destroyers, patrol-boats and… Do you want more?'

Mowbray snarled, 'When did you enlist with the doubters?'

'A few minutes ago, Mr Mowbray, when I heard the sirens.'

'They're incompetent, they're Russians — they'll be chasing their own backsides, won't know where to look, where to run. I know Russians — fools.'

'It will only take one good man,' the master said. He saw the anger in Mowbray and thought, from his experience of men, that anger ran with fear.

'And we have the night, and we have the fog.'

'We have the night for two more hours, and fog is not a friend to be trusted — it lifts.'

'You took the money.'

The master swivelled away. The door slammed shut behind him. He had taken the money and looked for more. He wanted a grove of olive trees and an orchard of lemons and a little villa with a view from the patio on the hillside above Korinthos…and he was a man of his word. He would do what he could. It was many years since he had accompanied his wife to church, but he prayed then, on his bridge, that the mist on the water would stay down. For the first time he saw flares in the sky, one high and one in dying descent over the land. He checked the dial to confirm the power was there, then wrenched back the lever and heard the first grating roll of the anchor chain as it lifted.

The sheet of paper trembled in Ponsford's hand. 'I don't quite believe it to be possible. My God…'

He passed the paper to Giles, who held it in front of his spectacles. It was only a line and a half of text… How many times did the damn man need to read it? Five times, six? The paper was returned, and Giles's head shook as though he could not credit what he saw.

He reached for the telephone. Giles frowned. They were in the annexe off the central communications unit — in vernacular, the 'War House'—on the floor below the basement library. In the annexe were two canvas camp beds, a table with a plate of sandwiches under clingfilm, a hot-drinks vending-machine, and a wall screen on which a large scale map of the Kaliningrad oblast and Polish territory east of the Vistula river was displayed. The message had come through a glass door at the annexe's far end, where technicians worked at a bank of machines. It was years since Ponsford had been in the room but Giles — Special Operations — would have been there more often, when the map showed Kabul or bloody Herat or fucking Kandahar. He lifted the telephone and his hand still trembled.

'Who are you ringing?'

'The DG — who else?' He dialled.

'I doubt you'll find him.' Giles pursed his mouth.

He listened and the phone rang out. 'Ridiculous—'course I will. On a night like tonight, course he'll be in place. A damn great bed he has up there, wardrobe, fresh clothes, shower. He'll be there. Why shouldn't he?'

'Please yourself, Bertie.' Giles shrugged.

A voice answered. Messages for the Director General were being diverted to the night duty executive. Would the caller please wait for the connection. Ponsford dropped the phone. 'I'd never have thought it.'

Giles grimaced. 'You're good on a cliché or two, Bertie. A hot summer, a tinder-dry forest and the potential for disaster — what do they do, Bertie?' He said savagely, 'They cut a bloody firebreak.'

Giles went shambling towards the door. Ponsford stared at the screen.

'Sorry, Bertie, a bit over the top. Just going for a breath of air.'

Locke was the modern man.

The modern man looked after himself, because no one else would. He ate the food that would not destroy his body with cholesterol, he drank sparingly and never to excess, he kept his muscles fit, he pursued the advancement of his career by saying the correct things to principal people, he let the newest technological electronic innovations take the strain of his life, and he was sensible. He stood out in a crowd as the one marked for advancement, he would prosper and progress. After Fort Monkton and after the days in the probationer classes in the lecture rooms at Vauxhall Bridge Cross, after being made up to a fledgling officer in the Service, Locke had been told that if he kept himself clean he had a fine future beckoning, might get to assistant deputy Director General or even to the loftiness of deputy Director General. Because the latest human-resources regulations demanded it, he had seen his assessments from his last year on home posting, and from his first year on overseas posting in Zagreb — before his transfer to Warsaw. They glowed: he was 'nobody's fool', he was an officer 'not afraid of work', he was a man 'with an aptitude for decision making and taking', he was 'an independent thinker'. It had all collapsed. His career, his future, had crashed with the same finality as an outdated computer system.

He ran in a madman's delirium. He felt no tiredness in his lungs and no pain in his legs. As his career disappeared over a faraway horizon, he ran towards the distant daylight.

Three times lorries had gone past him up the track towards the fence. There was no going back. Locke, alone among all of them, knew how it would end.

Ahead of him, far away, the flares burst and dangled, then slid lower on their parachutes, until they were lost among the dense set of the trees. He understood the pattern in which they were fired. They reached up into the mist and burned through it; they would throw the clearest light on the beach, and would cover the dunes and the sea, to push the team and Ferret away from the beach, and keep them moving. Soon, Locke thought, amid the beat of his heart and the crackle of his feet on dried brushwood, he would hear gunfire.

The team struggled to keep the pace. To their left was the airfield and the track. Between the dunes, on their right side, and the track, the ground was caked sand and grit stone with clusters of knee-high scrub that had been stripped of foliage by the autumn's gales. They would have gone faster on the beach, and Ferret would not have had to be half carried, half dragged, but the flares that tracked them were brightest over the beach.

Each time a flare was fired, streaming up into the night mist like a celebration firework, Lofty turned and crouched and held the rifle butt against his shoulder. His finger lay on the trigger guard of the grenade barrel clipped to the underside of the rifle's stock. He could fire a grenade to a maximum of four hundred metres, but the flares were launched at what he estimated to be a thousand metres or more, and the mortar that spewed them was always beyond range. The lorries had taken a blocking force ahead. Behind the mortar was a line of lights, guns' beaters, always and inexorably driving them towards that block. It was as though, uncannily, the mortar's crew knew the team's pace and matched it.

The flares would kill them, but they could not stop and wait for the mortar's crew to be within range of the grenades. They pressed on and stayed a few metres outside the slow drop of the flares' light. Billy suffered.

Lofty was the oldest of them, then Billy, then Wickso, and Ham, but Billy was suffering the worst. When they moved in the diamond, their speed was set by Billy, and Lofty knew it had slackened. It was 05.05 hours. They were late on the schedule, ten minutes minimum already, and Billy was going slower. They were near to the end of the airfield, and after the airfield was the missile site, then the start of the firing range, then two thousand metres to the targets, then five hundred to the point on the beach level with the sunken dinghy. At least ten minutes late, but could have been more. They had to up the pace.

Lofty hissed, 'Keep it going, Billy. We're all with you. Has to be faster, Billy.'

In the Squadron, they would have cracked the pace, but that time had gone, had run as sand through their fingers. He could hear the pants of Billy's breathing and the stumbling steps of Ham and Wickso with Ferret. They must go faster. He thought of the stones in their geometric lines, and the ghosts in the darkness. He heard the rustling of leaves he should have cleared. Another flare went up to the right of them and he could see the emptiness of the beach and the ripple of white waves breaking. He knew the mist cleared hesitantly, and he knew that the flare tracked them. 'Go faster. You can do it, Billy. You have to.'

They spilled from the vehicle.

Vasiliev, the conscript, sagged under the weight of the machine gun, then dropped it down on to the centre of the track, between the ruts. For a moment he was alone, and the colonel was beside the farm-boys, whispering to them as they set the mortar and adjusted the base plate. Then he crawled across the ruts, lifted the loaded belt and held it ready in his hands.

'This time you shoot, Igor.'

'Yes, sir.'

'I am not "sir". I am your friend. I am Yuri. This time you shoot, Igor.'

'Yes. This time I shoot, Yuri.'

'Because you are the best — and I know nothing — tell me how you shoot.'

The voice soothed in his ear. He lay behind the machine-gun, and the butt was tight against his shoulder and his left fist clamped on the grip of the butt; his right hand's trigger finger rested against the guard. The voice massaged in his ear.

He recited: 'The rounds are 12.7mm calibre. There are fifty rounds in the belt, and each ten are made up of one that is armour-piercing, seven that are ball and two that are tracer. I have to shoot, for accuracy, in short bursts, a double tap on the trigger, because this is a suppression weapon, and after the first aimed round then it is impossible to hold the sights on the target. The muzzle velocity of the round is eight hundred and forty-five metres per second and—'

'How do you feel, Igor, when you shoot?' The voice was soft silk.

'I feel like I am dreaming,' he said quietly. 'A dream of happiness.'

The colonel whistled sharply. He heard the crack of the mortar firing. At full elevation, the 82mm mortar threw the shell a distance of 1100 metres. It exploded, the flare burst, the parachute opened at an altitude of 400 metres. With the parachute restraining its fall, the flare would be in the air for a minimum of four minutes. When it lit the skies, the mist under it seemed to shrivel and it bathed the ground in increasing white light.

This time Lofty hadn't bothered to turn. At last they were going well. It was the eighth flare that had been fired, and for the first two the team had thrown themselves on to their stomachs — Ham and Wickso had lain over Ferret's body — and they'd watched the speck of light climb, had seen it burst, realized its light would fall wide of them, and hurried on. When the third flare had been fired they had settled to a crouch, then Billy had cursed at the wasted time, and they'd started out again on their shambling run. For the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh flares, they had kept going, and Billy's judgement was vindicated because the flares lit the beach and the sea.

Lofty looked up, shouldn't have done — the light blinded him. The flare had burst directly above him, and hung over him. He blinked, ducked his head, rooted. When he looked around, they — like him — were stock still, as if caught in a photograph: he could see the wrinkles in their wetsuits, Ferret's clinging shirt, the stitching of the webbing, and the blood over Ferret's feet. Then Billy hit Wickso, a downward chop, Ham threw Ferret to the ground, then Ham and Wickso had hold of the knees of Lofty's suit and dragged him down. After the report of the burst a great silence lay over them, and the light squeezed away the mist that each of them had thought was their protector. It mocked them, seemed not to move away from them. It hovered, an eye, over them.

They were on sand, stone and grass tufts, among the low scrub bushes, and Lofty knew that the schedule ticked.

He was on his stomach and lay half across Ferret. He could feel the man's shivering. 'What we going to do, Billy?' he pleaded.

'What's its range — how far's it back?'

'A thousand at least — I can't touch it.'

Billy murmured, 'And maybe they can't touch us.'

'We got to run, Billy, we can't stay down. We—'

Billy snarled, 'Don't tell me what we can't fucking do. Right, we run…Jesus—'

They pushed back up on to their feet, and the poor bastard — Ferret — had his feet straight into stone shards. One foot was bloodily ripped and on the other the sock was shredded. Ham and Wickso held him up like he was a casualty. The three stumbled into Billy, who hadn't moved, and Lofty saw how Ham elbowed Billy aside and he half fell. Lofty caught him. He could see, from the light above them, the froth in Billy's mouth and the spittle on his lips. 'You good, Billy?'

'Course, I'm good. Don't I look it? I'm doing back marker. Move.'

Lofty had always done what Billy told him. He moved. Billy had been the sergeant, Billy was the leader. It was his role. Billy had told him to hold the man's head under the water and Billy had told him what to say to the Crime Squad detectives. He moved because Billy told him to.

'You're good, Billy.'

'Just doing back marker, be right behind you.'

Lofty went past Billy. Ahead of them was a shadowy line, like the mark of the tide. The edge of the flare's pool was their goal. They were running. Ferret's stride matched Ham's and Wickso's, and Lofty was close behind them. He fancied the flare was dying, that the pool of light shrank and the shadow seemed to come to meet them. The darkness beyond the shadow was the target. In the light, the mist was reduced to small summer's day clouds. He was close up to Ham and Wickso, and he caught Ferret's trouser waist. They pulled Ferret and he pushed him. The shadow and the darkness past it were almost within their reach. The light had gone to dusk. They were past the end of the runway, and dusk turned to daylight the moment after another flare climbed, spilt its light, hung there. The little knot of them around Ferret ran, and Lofty — in that sunlight — realized he no longer heard Billy's wheeze, his boots, the cursing.

Then, far behind him, 'Get on, you bastards. Run. Go, keep going.'

'In your own time, Igor, shoot in your own time.'

'But not Viktor, not Captain Archenko?'

He could see the white light on the white shirt, and the shirt bobbed between three men. His vision was good, above average, but the magnification of the sight ensured that he saw also the back of Viktor's head. Twice it was thrown back as if in a spasm of pain. He thought Viktor would have been unable to run, but the men around him pressured him on, and held him up. Behind them, a fourth man dropped steadily back…

Igor Vasiliev, in his twenty-second year, the son of a taxi-driver from Volgograd, had never experienced combat. His father had urged him to volunteer for his conscription into the units of Naval Infantry. Naval Infantry were not sent to Chechnya. Anything was better than being posted to Chechnya. Igor Vasiliev had never fired his chosen weapon at a human target. He steadied himself. The target in the crosshairs of the sight was dropped now from the group that supported his friend. His voice, soundlessly, recited the detail of the firing mechanism of the gun, as if that process would further calm him. 'Gas-operated, belt-fed and air-cooled, with horizontal sliding wedge breech block…unfinned barrel with conical flash suppressor…ammunition fed into the breech in non-disintegrating belts…capable of penetrating 16mm of armour at five hundred metres…' His target was at 1150 metres, without protection, and was now twenty paces adrift of the group. He had only ever fired on the range, at stationary raised targets. The back of the man, broadened by the wetsuit, filled the crossing point of the hairs. The target fell, then picked itself up, tried to run again. His finger rested on the trigger. He hesitated.

'So that I can know you are the best, Igor, and I can be proud of you — shoot.'

To kill a man, he squeezed the trigger gently.

The tracer went past them, bright flying light at waist height, with a whip's crack. Another round was at knee level and spattered on a stone. The third seemed deadened, lifeless. They ran on.

Then Billy screamed.

One cry, short, cut…Billy's scream stifled. One more double tap, then only the sound of their running and the battering of their magazine pouches on the webbing. He knew what he would see. As he ran, Lofty twisted his head and looked back into the flare's pool of light. He howled into the sunshine of the flare's daylight, 'Billy's down — hit — fucked.'

He turned. More shots hissed past him. A weight collided with Lofty, smacked him down. Wickso, bent low, cleared him and scurried towards where Billy had fallen. Lofty lifted the launcher towards the light that dropped on them and fired, reloaded and fired again. Away beyond the pool of light were explosions, twenty seconds apart, and way short of a target.

He crawled to them.

Wickso was crouched over Billy. Lofty saw the raised hand and in the fingers was a syringe. Lofty heard Billy's moan. Then he saw Billy's right leg. It was off above the knee. He knew that what had come past them were the bullets from a heavy machine-gun, but he hadn't before seen the damage they made — a raw, amputated leg, and the black of the wetsuit was hacked to shreds. He could see the blood and the flesh and splintered bone. The amber stone, wrapped in adhesive tape, heaved on Billy's chest. Two more bursts came over them, but they were high and he thought they were aimed at Ham and Ferret who would be running for the new shadow line as the flare fell lower.

'Get them off him,' Wickso shouted.

Lofty's hands were in the webbing pouches of Billy's harness. He saw Billy's eyes, open but gone someplace else. He groped for the grenades in the pouches.

'Is he all right?'

'Don't be daft, Lofty.' Wickso was savagely quiet, like he was the professional. "Is he all right?" It's taken his fucking leg off. No, he's not fucking "all right", and not likely to be.'

He had four more grenades, and Wickso plunged the syringe of morphine into Billy's stomach through the gap he had made by wrenching apart the flaps of the wetsuit.

'Don't you do a tourniquet?'

'No, just bloody grenades — get the bloody boots.'

'What for, a tourniquet?'

'They'll shoot him anyway. The boots are for Ferret.'

Wickso held Billy's hand. Billy couldn't speak. The lustre had gone from his eyes. Lofty heard the revving of a distant engine and, far away, there were headlights that fell well short of them. He pulled the boot off Billy's right foot, wanted to apologize but couldn't find the words, jerked at it till it came away. The second boot was off to the side. He reached for it, gripped the wetsuit leg, and blood dribbled on him. He closed his eyes, did it by touch, took the second boot. On its parachute the flare sank to the ground and guttered.

He saw Wickso, with the indelible pen, write the single letter on Billy's forehead, M — morphine. Lofty fired one more grenade towards the advancing vehicle, and knew it was wasted. The vehicle tracked them and would always be beyond the range of the launcher.

Wickso ran well, and Lofty could match him, but the ground was open and the vehicle pursued them. They caught Ham and Ferret.

Ham had Ferret's weight and was going slowly. Fingers fumbled with the laces of the boots. The boots went on to Ferret's feet, over the wounds and the blood. Ham asked for Billy as the laces were dragged tight. Wickso said that Billy was dead. Lofty knew time had gone — time they could not spare — and that the schedule was wrecked. Lofty reckoned it a good lie — it was against the ethic of the Squadron to leave a man, wounded, in the field. It was right to lie — and Ham seemed satisfied. As they ran, faster than before, Ferret striding with them, Ham sent the signal. As he sent it, Wickso tripped on a jutting root and pitched forward, swore and nearly brought Ferret down with him. Lofty realized it, then: Ferret had not spoken a single word since they had lifted him out of the bare room — not a syllable, a word, a phrase, a sentence — but he would have known they were being hunted to their deaths. Behind them, the vehicle's engine was clear in the night. Would there be a stone for Billy, or for any of them? If there were one for Billy, Portland stone, a mason might carve on it: 'He was deniable.' Like the rest of them.

To stretch his stride, Lofty punched Ferret's back.

Alice relayed the signal. She recognized Ham's voice, and the gasp for air. Then there was a curse, and she thought that was Wickso's because there was the West London whine in the oath — and she strained for Viktor's voice, but it was not there. She sent the signal, brutal and short, to Mowbray on the Princess Rose. Stripped of the call sign and the signature—'Delta 2 down, proceeding to RV. ETA one hour'—the signal was a pickaxe blow into her stomach. It would be dawn in an hour.