20

Carn Drum Farm

‘It’s a nice bit of land you’ve got here, Taff,’ said Dave Smethurst, giving an appreciative nod as he gazed at the magnificent Welsh landscape, its wild beauty only magnified by the dramatic shafts of morning sunlight that pierced the thick, charcoal-grey clouds like beams from a ‘Super Trouper’ spotlight.

‘I know,’ Gryffud said, looking out at the hills he loved with all his soul. ‘If I ever wonder why I’m doing all this, I just come out here and witness the glory of what nature can do in the absence of mankind… and then I know what I’m fighting for.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Smethurst, with flat indifference to Gryffud’s oration. Then he added, ‘We’re going to fuck up some of this nature good and proper, you know that, right? And not just here, neither.’

Gryffud grimaced. ‘That’s unavoidable. I wish there was any other way at all of doing this. But since there isn’t, we have to accept that it’s a necessary sacrifice for the greater good.’

‘Collateral damage, eh?’ said Smethurst. ‘I know all about that.’

Gryffud caught the snide tone in his voice. ‘Are you saying I’m no better than some fascist American general? Is that it?’

‘I’m saying I don’t give a shit. There’s no justification you could give me I haven’t heard before. It’s all bullshit, if you ask me. But it’s none of my business, is it? I’m here to do a job, collect my money, keep my mouth shut and fuck off. And that’s what I’m going to do.’

‘You don’t care about the future of the planet, then? I don’t understand how anyone can have that attitude. And if that’s how you feel, I wonder if you’re really the right man for the job.’

Gryffud glared at Smethurst. He was a good six inches taller, and several stone heavier than the former soldier. But the smaller man just grinned at him.

‘Calm down, Taff. I don’t care about the planet because it’s got fuck all to do with me. It’s been here for billions of years, and it’ll carry on for billions more when I’m gone. But I do care about my trade. I’m the dog’s bollocks at what I do, right? And I’ll do a better job for you than any other bastard you’re likely to find. That’s why I’m the right man for the job.’

Gryffud nodded grudgingly, reflecting as he did so that it had not been him who had found Smethurst. That, too, had been Uschi Kremer. She’d been given his name, she said, by a friend of a friend.

‘OK,’ Gryffud said. ‘Let’s get on with it. How do you want to proceed?’

They were standing on the hillside above a cwm — the steep, curved head of a glacial valley — that fanned out as the land fell away before them.

‘Basically, the target as a whole covers an area of about fifteen hundred metres by nine hundred, which is way too big for us. So I think we should concentrate on a smaller area, about two hundred metres by one hundred, in the south-west quadrant. That’s got two advantages, right? Number one, it’s full of juicy targets, and you should be able to set off some nice little chain reactions that’ll do far more damage than your actual strikes. And number two, it’s the area of the facility that’s closest to the launch site. The place you picked is a kilometre from the refinery. That’s at the absolute extreme limit of the range I can get from these things.’

‘There’s no alternative. All the land closer to the refinery is owned by National Petroleum, and there are regular security patrols.’

‘But the place you’ve picked is safe, right? ’Cos we’re proper fucked if anyone catches us with this little lot in the van.’

‘Don’t worry. The property’s derelict. Some developer from London bought it, thinking he could convert it into holiday cottages, but he couldn’t get planning permission. Now he can’t sell it, and he’s letting it rot. Believe me, nobody goes there.’

Smethurst seemed satisfied with what he’d heard. ‘Fair enough. Right then, I’ve set up a proving ground so we can get all our trajectories worked out as precisely as possible. The target area is just over there…’

Smethurst pointed at a small, flat patch of land at the bottom of the main slope, with hills rising all around it like an auditorium around a stage. Then he went on, ‘And the launch site is eleven hundred metres over there to the south-east.’

‘So what are you doing?’

‘Obviously, what I’ve got to do is work out the basic characteristics of the projectiles, the propellant and the launchers, yeah? I need to know how far the little bastards go at any given trajectory; how long it takes them to get there; how much fuel to use; and how long I have to set the mortar fuses. Once I know that, all I have to do is plot the angle and distance from the actual launch-point to the specific targets you’ll be aiming to take out. Then I work out the right combinations of fuse, launch-angle and propellant…’

‘Sounds complicated,’ Gryffud said.

‘Don’t you worry, pal, I’ve got programs on the laptop to do all that.’

‘And you’re confident we can do something that will really make people sit up and ask questions?’

Smethurst grinned and slapped the big man on the back. ‘Fuck, yeah, Taffy-boy. I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.’

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