Hard Landing

'That's the way it works in a Cat A,' said Davenport. 'In a Cat A you're escorted everywhere, in a Cat B you're watched everywhere, in a Cat C you have freedom within the walls, and by the time you get to a Cat D, you're practically on the out. You want to know the best way to get out? Keep your nose clean and play the system. Go from here to a Cat B and then a Cat C and by the time you're Cat D you'll be going home one day every fortnight.'

'I was hoping you'd be more creative, Justin.'

'This place was built to be escape-proof,' he said. 'You know I'm on the twos, right?'

Shepherd had seen him coming out of a cell on the other side of the landing from his own.

'All escape-risk prisoners are put in the twos in Shelton- so that we can't dig up or down. Now, how stupid is that? We're observed through the spyglass every hour, right? So how can anyone dig in here? And what would you dig with? We're searched everywhere we go, right? And even if I was to dig my way out, where would I be? I'd be in the secure corridor, which means I'm under CCTV surveillance. And, like I said, you can't go over the wall or under it.' He turned away and lowered his voice to a whisper. 'Hamilton's watching us. Careful, everyone I speak to gets written up.'

Davenport walked away. Shepherd touched his toes and sneaked a look between his legs at the entrance to the exercise yard. The officer watched Davenport for a few seconds, then began patting someone down.

Shepherd swung his arms round, then jogged on the spot. Bill Barnes walked over, grinning. 'You're full of beans,' he said, took out a packet of Silk Cut and lit a cigarette with a disposable lighter.

Shepherd stopped jogging. He wanted to be on his own. He wanted to think. He wanted to be able to let out all the anger that was building up inside him, but he couldn't. He had to stay in his role. He was Bob Macdonald, armed robber and hard man. He couldn't show any emotion, any weakness. 'You told me you sold stolen watches, but I heard you were a cat burglar,' he said.

'Never stole a pussy in my life,' said Barnes.

'But you climb through windows, yeah?'

'It's been known.'

'Could you climb out of here?'

Barnes looked at him. 'What the fuck are you talking about?'

'This is my first time inside. I'm just putting out a few feelers.'

Barnes thrust his head closer to Shepherd's. 'You're talking about getting out?'

'I'm just considering my options.'

Barnes grunted. 'You're wasting your time.' He gestured up at the four CCTV cameras covering the exercise yard. 'Big Brother's watching you everywhere you go,' he said. 'You're escorted every move you make. Don't bother looking for a way out. There isn't one.'

'Escape-proof?'

'This place and Belmarsh were built to hold the most dangerous criminals in the country.' Barnes grinned. 'That's you and me, Bob.'

'And no one has ever got out?'

'Not from here.' Barnes started walking round the perimeter of the yard and Shepherd followed him. 'Guy got out of Belmarsh once.'

'Yeah? How?'

'Swapped identities with a prisoner who was being released,' said Barnes. He took another drag on his cigarette. 'The guards don't know every inmate's face and most of the file photographs are out of date by the time a guy's let out. So if you can find someone who's going to be released and persuade him to change places with you, you might get out.' Barnes grinned. 'Thing is, he's going to get another ten years for helping you. You either pay him off or threaten his family. If he's under duress, maybe he won't get sent down for it.'

Shepherd cracked his knuckles. Finding someone to change places with Carpenter was out of the question. He didn't have time and, besides, he had to escape with Carpenter. If they didn't go out together he had no guarantee that Liam would be released.

'There's always transit,' said Barnes.

'Transit?'

'You've got to make regular court appearances so that they can keep you on remand. Let Securicor take you through the gate. Minimum wage in uniforms, they are. The vans are heavy-duty, but they're still only armoured cars driven by monkeys. You've got mates with shooters?' Barnes made a gun with his right hand and faked shooting Shepherd in the face.

Shepherd nodded thoughtfully. Yeah, he had mates with shooters.

Rathbone unclipped his spaniel's lead and let her run free, in ever-increasing circles, sniffing and growling, happy to be out in the open air. Rathbone's mother took care of the dog when he was working, but she had a bad hip and couldn't do more than let her out into the tiny back garden. She had been on an NHS waiting list for a new hip for the best part of four months, but there was no sign yet of her getting anywhere near a surgeon's knife. It wasn't fair, thought Rathbone. His father had paid a lifetime of tax and National Insurance contributions and had died of a heart-attack two weeks after he retired. Now his mum had to wait in line for medical treatment while asylum-seekers stayed in hotels and got money in their pockets. It wasn't fair, and life wasn't fair. But at least he was doing something to redress the balance. Five grand for delivering the photograph to Carpenter. Ten grand for the phone. With any luck Carpenter would stay behind bars for years. And if Carpenter got out, the prison was full of wealthy guys who could afford the service Rathbone offered: access to the little comforts that could make life inside a bit more comfortable.

The dog ran off, barking. Rathbone twirled the lead and walked after her. He'd have liked nothing more than to whisk his mother into a private hospital and have her pain taken away, but if he did that he risked losing everything. The money had to stay untouched until he left the prison service. Until then he had to live at home, drive a three-year-old car and watch his mother hobble upstairs to bed each night.

A man was walking along the path towards him. He was in the centre so Rathbone stepped to the side but the man moved the same way. Rathbone smiled an apology.

'Nice dog,' said the man. He had unnaturally white teeth and they seemed slightly too big for his mouth.

'Yeah,' said Rathbone, disinterestedly. He had no wish to get into a conversation with a stranger. He didn't mind talking to other dog-owners, but the man had no lead in his hand and there was no dog nearby. Rathbone called his dog, but the spaniel was having too much fun to respond.

'Cocker spaniel, isn't he?' said the man.

'She,' said Rathbone. 'She's a bitch.'

The man smiled. 'Yeah. So's life.' He pulled a hunting knife from his coat pocket and thrust it into Rathbone's chest. Rathbone fell back and the knife came sucking out, still in the man's hand.

Rathbone turned and tried to run but another man was in the way. He, too, was holding a knife, and he slashed it across Rathbone's throat. Rathbone tried to scream but his windpipe was full of blood and all that came out was a soft gurgle. He fell to his knees, clutching his throat, feeling the warm blood pump through his fingers.

'You shouldn't have opened the envelope, Craig,' said the man with white teeth. He kicked Rathbone in the chest and he fell backwards into the grass.

'Big mistake,' added his companion.

'Huge,' said the first man. Rathbone's eyes glazed over and his mouth fell open, bloody froth on his lips. 'Get his wallet and watch. Let's at least try to make it look like a mugging.'

The spaniel watched them from behind a tree, her body low to the ground.

'Do you want to kill the dog?' Rathbone heard the second man say, his voice far off in the distance.

'No, Pat, I do not want to kill the fucking dog.'

That was the last thing Rathbone heard, and he found it strangely comforting. At least his dog would be okay.

Shepherd waited until no prisoners were waiting to use the phones, then walked over and dialled Jimmy Sharpe's number. It was a mobile and when the detective answered he could hear an approaching siren in the background.

'DC Sharpe, this is Bob Macdonald.' He spoke quickly so that Sharpe would know they had to stay in character.

'How's prison food?' asked Sharpe.

'I need a favour,' said Shepherd. 'I need you to check on my boy.'

'You think there's a problem?'

'If there is, I don't want you to do anything about it,' said Shepherd. 'You've still got that number I gave you?'

'Yes.'

'If there's anything untoward at the house, call my friend and tell him what's happened. But that's all. Don't start raising red flags.'

'Okay,' said Sharpe, hesitantly.

'Mum's the word on this,' said Shepherd. 'Any comeback, any shit heading towards the fan, and you know nothing.'

'Understood.'

'Thanks,' said Shepherd.

'Are you okay?'

'Not really, but there's nothing you can do to help. Just check on my boy, and make that call. Then forget we spoke.' Shepherd replaced the receiver and walked up the stairs to the threes. He went along the landing to Gilly Gilchrist. 'I need to talk to him,' said Shepherd.

Gilchrist went into the cell, and reappeared a few moments later. He waved Shepherd inside.

Carpenter was sitting on his chair, a pair of headphones in his hand. 'Mozart,' he said. 'Nothing better than a bit of Mozart in the afternoon.'

'I think I've got a plan,' said Shepherd.

'I'm very glad to hear it,' said Carpenter. 'And I'm sure Liam will be, too.' He smiled.

Shepherd wanted to grab him and slam his head against the concrete wall until the back was a bloody mess. 'When's your next court appearance?' he asked.

'Next week,' said Carpenter. 'Tuesday morning.'

'That gives me enough time,' said Shepherd.

'Time for what?'

'I can get you out while you're in transit. In the van on the way to court.'

Carpenter scowled. 'Do you have any idea how they take me to court?' he asked.

'In a Securicor van. Same sort they brought me in, right? It's not a problem.'

'The problem isn't the van, Supercop. The problem is the car full of armed police front and back, and the helicopter overhead.'

Shepherd showed no reaction. 'Like I said, it's not a problem.'

'I'm going to need more than that, Shepherd.'

'I know people.'

'Yeah, well, I know people too.'

'You know what I did before I was a cop?'

'Army.'

'Not just army. SAS.'

'I know,' said Carpenter.

Shepherd filed the information for future reference. There weren't many ways that Carpenter could have discovered he had been in the SAS. 'So a few armed police and a helicopter aren't going to worry the people I know,' said Shepherd.

'And they'll do it?'

Shepherd nodded slowly.

'How much are you paying them?'

'Nothing. They're friends.'

'So, Tuesday it is.'

Shepherd stared at Carpenter. 'If you hurt my son, I'll kill you.'

'Sticks and stones,' Carpenter said laconically.

Shepherd rushed forward and thrust the heel of his left hand against Carpenter's chin, pushing him against the cell wall. He drew his right fist back, ready to smash it into Carpenter's face. Carpenter stared at Shepherd, his hands hanging at his side. There was no fear in his eyes. Shepherd was breathing hard, his left hand clamped round Carpenter's throat. 'I'll kill you now!' he hissed.

Carpenter's face reddened but he made no sound. He just stared at Shepherd.

'I'll do it here and now.'

Shepherd heard a noise at the door. Carpenter's eyes flicked towards it, then back to Shepherd.

'Stay where you are or I'll drive his nose into his skull,' said Shepherd, without looking round.

Carpenter looked over Shepherd's shoulder and nodded at Gilchrist. Shepherd tightened his grip on Carpenter's throat. It would be so easy to kill him. One punch. The cartilage would spear the soft brain tissue, severing blood vessels, and bringing about almost instantaneous death. But what then? Would killing him get Liam back? Carpenter glared at him. There was anger in his eyes now, but still no sign of fear.

Shepherd released him. Gilchrist took a step towards Shepherd but Carpenter held up his hand. 'It's okay,' he croaked. 'Leave it.'

Gilchrist backed away. 'Watch the door,' said Carpenter. He unscrewed the top of a bottle of Highland Spring water and drank deeply, then wiped his mouth. Gilchrist went back out on to the landing. Carpenter took another drink. Shepherd stood at the foot of his bed.

Carpenter put down the bottle. 'I understandyour anger, Dan. If I was in your place I'd be angry, too. I'd lash out. I'd do exactly what you're doing. But in my heart I'd know that getting angry wouldn't get my boy back.'

'You hurt him and you're dead.'

'The whole point of this is that Liam doesn't get hurt,' said Carpenter. 'You get me out of here and you get your boy back. Everyone gains. The only way Liam gets hurt is if I have to stay behind bars. If that happens we all lose. You lose your boy and I lose my freedom.'

'I'll do what I can, but if it goes wrong, if I fail, then you're not to hurt him.'

Carpenter said nothing.

'Did you hear me?'

'I heard you. But you've no bargaining power here, Dan. I hold all the cards. And just so there's no misunderstanding, my men on the outside will kill Liam if anything happens to me in here.' He pointed a finger at Shepherd's face. 'I'll put down what just happened to the stress you're under, but you touch me again and I'll have your boy slapped around.'

Shepherd said nothing.

'Did you hear me, Dan?'

'Yeah,' said Shepherd. 'I understand.'

'Good man. Now, tell me exactly what you've got planned.'

There were three phones on Major Allan Gannon's desk. One was a general line that went through the switchboard at the Duke of York barracks in London, another was a direct line to SAS headquarters in Hereford, and the third connected him to the Special Boat Squadron base in Lympstone. Next to his desk, on a table of its own, was the briefcase containing the secure satellite phone they called the Almighty. It never left Gannon's side. It rarely rang, but when it did, all hell usually broke loose. The only people who had access to it were the Prime Minister, the Cabinet Office, and the chiefs of MI5 and MI6. And they didn't call Gannon for a chat about the weather.

It had been several weeks since the Almighty had rung, and Gannon felt like a caged lion. Three-quarters of the SAS personnel had gone to Iraq, and half had been in country before hostilities had officially commenced. But Gannon had been told in no uncertain terms that his services were required in the UK in case of a local terrorist incident. He and his team had waited for the expected terrorist backlash but none had been forthcoming and Gannon had spent the Iraqi war watching reporters in flak jackets describe the offensive on BBC World, Sky News and CNN.

He stood up, walked to the window and stared out through the bomb-proof blinds at the parade-ground, where a lone soldier on a discipline charge stood ramrod straight, his weapon at his side, sweating under the midday sun. He'd been standing at attention for three hours, ever since he'd been marched out by a grim-looking sergeant-major. Gannon had grinned when he'd seen the sergeant-major giving the squaddie a dressing-down. Standing still for three hours wasn't what Gannon would consider a punishment. A beating by six SAS troopers, now that was a lesson the young man would never forget.

A phone rang. Not the Almighty. The Almighty's commanding call to arms could never be confused with a regular telephone's half-hearted warble. It was the creamcoloured phone. The switchboard line. He picked up, knowing that, more likely than not, it would be a wrong number.

'Gannon,' he said, into the receiver.

'Major Allan Gannon?' said a voice. Scottish. Not a voice Gannon recognised.

'Yes?'

'My name's Sharpe, Jimmy Sharpe. You don't know me but I'm calling on behalf of a mutual friend who needs your help. Spider Shepherd.'

Gannon reached for a pad attached to a metal clipboard. It was stamped 'Eyes Only - Top Secret. Not For Distribution'. Strictly speaking the pad was only for official work, but Gannon doubted that anyone would mind. 'What does he need?' asked Gannon.

Shepherd's name was on the gym list again, presumably because Lloyd-Davies had been pulling strings on his behalf. His main motivation for using the gym had been to get close to Carpenter, but that had been blown out of the water. He had stopped carrying the Walkman. There was no longer any point. He'd left a message with Uncle Richard, telling him that things were progressing slowly. He just hoped Hargrove didn't decide the investigation had stalled and to pull him out.

He waited at the bubble. Amelia Heartfield was inside, talking to Tony Stafford. She was crying, brushing away tears with the back of her hand. Bill Barnes was standing at the stairs wearing his England football strip with a towel round his neck.

'What's wrong with her?' asked Shepherd, indicating Amelia.

'Rathbone's been killed,' said Barnes.

'How?'

'Mugged. Knifed.'

'What?'

'He was walking his dog. They found him stabbed. No wallet, no watch.'

'Bloody hell.'

'I tell ya, Bob, you're safer in here sometimes, the way the world is,' Barnes went on. 'He was okay, was Rathbone. Fair. Treated us like people, not numbers. That's rare in here.'

Carpenter came down from the threes with his bottle of Highland Spring. He ignored Shepherd and went to stand by the barred door.

'They know who did it?' asked Shepherd.

Barnes shook his head. 'It's in the Evening Standard. Stabbed in the chest and had his throat cut. Police are appealing for witnesses, blah, blah, blah.'

Shepherd frowned. Stabbed in the chest and a cut throat? It sounded like two assailants, but if it had been a mugging and there were two of them there'd have been no need for that degree of violence.

Amelia came out of the bubble and unlocked the door to the secure corridor. She checked the eight names of the men on the gym list, then escorted them down the secure corridor. Shepherd walked with Barnes, who wouldn't stop talking, but that was fine. Shepherd let the words wash over him. Carpenter brought up the rear of the group. Shepherd didn't turn to look at him but he could feel the man's eyes boring into his back.

As soon as they'd been checked in, Shepherd went over to a treadmill and started running. Carpenter appeared at his side and stabbed the stop button. Shepherd slowed to a halt. Carpenter leaned close to him. 'You heard what happened to Rathbone, yeah?'

'That was you?'

'What the fuck do you think? Time's running out, Shepherd. You get me out of here or your kid gets the same.'

Shepherd glared at Carpenter. 'It's in hand.'

'It'd better be,' said Carpenter. He jabbed at the treadmill's start button and walked away as Shepherd started running again.

Moira banged on the door with the flat of her hand. 'Moira, please,' said her husband. He was sitting on the floor with his back to the wall. 'You'll just annoy them.' Liam was sitting next to him, his head against his grandfather's shoulder.

'Liam needs food,' said Moira, 'and water. And we need to be able to use a toilet.' She glanced at the red plastic bucket and toilet roll in the far corner of the basement. 'We're not using that.' She banged on the door again. 'You out there! Come here!'

'Moira, they've got guns.'

She ignored him and continued to bang on the door. She stopped when she heard footsteps on the other side of the door.

'Now what?' said a muffled voice.

'We need food,' Moira shouted. 'My grandson's hungry.'

'I'm all right, Gran,' said Liam.

'Stand away from the door,' said the voice. Moira did as she was told and they heard the sound of bolts being drawn back. The door opened. Despite his mask she knew it was the man with the gleaming white teeth. She didn't understand why they were bothering to hide their faces because she'd seen them when they'd walked up the garden path with Tom. She didn't have the best memory for faces but she'd never forget those two men after what they'd done. They'd called her a bitch in her own house and waved a gun in her face, bundled them into the back of a van and made them pull hoods over their heads, terrorised young Liam and threatened to shoot them all if they didn't do as they were told.

'What do you want?' said the man.

'I want you to let us go, but I suppose that's out of the question, so I want food and something to drink, and I want to use the loo. A real loo, not that bucket.'

'We'll bring you food later.' He was holding his pistol and pointed it at the bucket. 'Use that or keep your fucking legs crossed.'

'How dare you speak to me like that?' said Moira.

The man pushed her in the chest. She gasped and staggered backwards.

'Don't you hit my gran!' shouted Liam. He rushed across the basement and kicked the man in the shins. The man lashed out with his foot and caught Liam in the groin. He screamed and fell to the concrete floor.

Tom pushed himself to his feet and walked over to the man, his hands bunching into fists. 'There's no need for that,' he said. 'Hitting women and children, you should be ashamed of yourself.'

The man raised the gun and slashed it across Tom's head. He grunted and dropped to his knees, then fell sideways next to the wall, blood trickling down his cheek.

Moira screamed and knelt down beside him. 'You've killed him!' Liam was crying, his knees drawn up to his chest.

'He's not dead!' yelled the man. 'But carry on the way you are and you fucking well will be. This isn't a fucking game. If I get a phone call telling me to put a bullet in your heads, then that's what I'll do. You are this close to being dead.'

Tom put a hand to his head and groaned. 'Thank God,' said Moira. She leaned over and held Liam's hand. 'It's okay, Liam. It's okay.'

The man bent down and poked her in the back with the gun. 'No, it's not okay. It's as far from okay as you can get. Now, shut up or I'll give you what I gave your fucking husband.' He jabbed her with the gun again, spat at her, then stamped out and bolted the door.

Tears ran down Moira's face as she comforted Liam. She stared at the door and, for the first time in her life, she wished another person dead.

Shepherd pulled on his yellow sash and joined the queue of prisoners waiting to go into the visiting room. The Welsh officer who'd originally escorted him from reception to the remand wing was patting down prisoners. Shepherd smelt garlic on the man's breath as he carried out the search. He figured that few prisoners would be trying to smuggle anything out of the prison, the contraband would all be coming in.

His visitor was already seated. He was a big man with a strong chin, wide shoulders and a nose that looked as if it had been broken at least once. He was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses and kept his head down as Shepherd walked to the table. He waited until Shepherd had sat down before he said anything. Then he leaned across the table so that his mouth was only a few inches away from Shepherd's ear. 'Fuck me, Spider, I always knew you'd come to a bad end, but I never thought you'd end up behind bars.'

'Thanks for coming, Major,' Shepherd murmured.

'Do you want to fill me in on what the hell you're doing in here?' said Gannon.

Shepherd looked around the visitors' room. One prison officer was at the far end of the room but he seemed more interested in two married couples who were kissing as if their lives depended on it. The Welsh guard was still patting down arrivals at the door. Keeping his voice low, Shepherd told Gannon everything. The robbery. The new assignment. Gerald Carpenter. Sue's death. And Liam's kidnapping.

Gannon listened in silence, his face tightening as he learned of Sue's accident, eyes hardening as Shepherd told him what had happened to his son. When he had finished, Gannon gave a soft whistle. 'You've packed a lot into the last few weeks,' he said. 'I'm sorry about Sue. No one told the Regiment.'

'No one outside my team knows. There won't even be a funeral until after this is all over.'

'And who knows about Liam?'

'You, me and Carpenter.'

'What is it you want, Spider?' asked Gannon.

'I want to get out of here.'

The SAS major nodded slowly. 'Consider it done,' he said.

Gannon slotted the slide cartridge into the projector while Martin O'Brien poured coffee from a pewter pot into five dainty cups. O'Brien was in his late thirties, broad-shouldered, and he'd put on a few pounds since he'd last served with the major. He was now doing close-protection work with World Bank executives, and two years of lunches in expensive restaurants and overnighters in five-star hotels had taken a toll on his waistline.

O'Brien handed cups of coffee to Geordie Mitchell and Billy Armstrong. Mitchell and Armstrong had left the Regiment a decade ago, but were still trim and fit. Mitchell ran ten kilometres a day with a rucksack filled with housebricks, and Armstrong swam two miles in the sea every morning. Mitchell was doing something shady out in the Far East, and Armstrong ran survival courses down in Cornwall. Mitchell sipped his coffee. He grimaced as it hit a bad tooth. He had a mouthful of crowns, half of them gold. Armstrong ran a hand through his receding hair and stretched out his long legs.

Gannon looked at his Rolex Submariner. Only one member of the group was absent but he wasn't surprised: Jimbo Shortt was a notoriously bad timekeeper. He knew more about tele-and radio communications than anyone else Gannon had met so he would be invaluable for what he had planned. All four knew Shepherd well and had agreed to drop everything when Gannon had told them of his predicament. Shortt had the furthest to come: he was teaching close-quarter combat techniques to Ukrainian SWAT teams but had promised to get on the next flight to the UK.

Armstrong drained his cup and stood up to help himself to more. Gannon knew the men would have preferred mugs, but room service in the hotel just off Piccadilly had supplied cups and saucers more suitable for a lady's knitting circle than a group of military men brought together for a tactical briefing.

'Two sugars in mine, Billy,' said Shortt, as he strode in. He was a stocky five feet nine with a sweeping Mexican moustache. He shook hands with Gannon. 'Sorry I'm late, boss. Traffic.'

Gannon smiled, but said nothing. Shortt always had an excuse, but considering that just twenty-four hours earlier he had been in the Ukraine, Gannon reckoned he had nothing to complain about.

Armstrong handed Shortt some coffee and the two men took their seats. Gannon dimmed the lights and switched on the projector. He hadn't bothered with a screen: the wall above the television set was pristine white. A satellite shot of four cross-shaped buildings surrounded by a wall came into focus as he fiddled with the lens. 'Her Majesty's Prison Shelton,' he said. 'Same design as the better-known Belmarsh in south London. You all know why we're here, and you all know what we've got to do, so there's no need for a sit-rep. The fact that you're all here means you're up for it, so I'm going to run through the operation from start to finish.'

'Who else is in on this?' asked Armstrong.

'Just you,' said Gannon. 'After this briefing I'll have no further involvement, not because I wouldn't give my eye-teeth to be with you but we can't afford to have any official connection to whatever happens. You guys are all--'

'Expendable?' said O'Brien, with a grin. He tore open a Mars bar and took a bite.

'No longer on the Regimental payroll, is what I was going to say, Martin. But, in your case, expendable will do.'

'I don't want to sound negative,' said Mitchell, 'but even I can count, and I make it four of us. That's one brick against a maximum security prison containing how many guards?'

'A full complement of a hundred and sixty during daytime hours. About fifty at night. But none are armed.'

Mitchell frowned apologetically. 'And again, without raining on anyone's parade, aren't these places designed to withstand pretty much anything?'

Gannon smiled. 'That's the whole point, Geordie. Prisons are designed to keep people in. And they make a bloody good job of it. But there's one thing they're not designed for, and that's what we're going to take advantage of.'

The four men exchanged confused looks, wondering what the major wanted them to do.

Gannon grinned. He pressed the switch in his hand and another slide flashed on to the wall: a photograph of the main entrance of the prison taken through a long lens. 'Now, if you ladies would allow me to continue with the briefing, I'll take questions later.'

The four men settled back in their chairs and listened as Gannon outlined what he wanted them to do.

Martin O'Brien and Geordie Mitchell arrived in Belfast on the afternoon ferry but they waited until it was dark before driving their green Range Rover out of the city and to the west on the M1. O'Brien drove slowly, then left the M1 at Lisburn, checked that he wasn't being followed and headed for Armagh.

The churchyard was exactly as he remembered it, bordered by a shoulder-high stone wall festooned with ivy, the grass well tended and the gravestones weathered by centuries of Irish wind and rain. There was a noticeboard at the entrance, detailing times of services and a phone number on which the priest could be reached, twenty-four hours a day. O'Brien smiled when he saw it was a mobile number: there was something amusing about a priest using new technology to keep in touch with his flock.

There was a half-moon overhead and a relatively clear sky: enough light to see by. O'Brien nodded at Mitchell and pushed open the wooden gate. It creaked like a rheumatic joint. The church was in darkness, the nearest house a hundred yards down the road. The two men had sat in the Range Rover for thirty minutes until they were satisfied that no one was in the vicinity, no late-night lovers or insomniac dog-walkers to stumble across them as they moved aside the two-hundred-year-old gravestone and dug into the hard earth with their spades.

They worked in silence and were both breathing heavily when they uncovered the first package. It was wrapped in polythene and O'Brien slowly peeled it back to reveal an oily cloth package. Inside he found a Chinese automatic pistol, with rust on the handgrips. He showed it to Mitchell, then put it aside and picked up a bigger package, almost three feet long, handed it to Mitchell and pulled out another. Both contained Hungarian 7.62mm AKM-63 automatic rifles, copies of the Soviet AK-47, with plastic socks and handgrips. 'These'll do,' said Mitchell. The weapons were serviceable but, more importantly, they looked the part.

O'Brien used his spade to lever more polythene-wrapped parcels out of the soil. One contained ammunition for the AKM-63s. Another contained half a dozen Second World War revolvers. He wouldn't want to risk live firing those.

The arms cache had been put together by the Real IRA in the late nineties. The organisation was poorly funded in comparison with the Provisionals and they had a tendency to buy whatever weaponry was offered to them. Most of the consignment buried in the graveyard had come from a Bosnian gangster, who had travelled from Sarajevo to Belfast to arrange the shipment. Special Branch had the man under surveillance from the moment he'd landed on British soil and MI6 had followed the shipment from a warehouse outside Sarajevo to a beach on the south coast of Ireland, from where it had been driven up to Belfast. Unbelievably, MI6 had lost the truck in Belfast and the consignment had vanished.

O'Brien had been working undercover in West Belfast and had penetrated a Real IRA cell that had been authorised to withdraw a number of weapons from the cache to use in a building-society robbery. He and three terrorists had removed several handguns. O'Brien hadn't passed on details of the cache to his handler. It had been a flagrant breach of procedure, but he had seen too many cock-ups to put his life on the line by revealing what he'd seen. If his bosses had decided to go in and neutralise the arms, it wouldn't have taken the Real IRA high command long to work out where the information had come from.

O'Brien was supposed to have driven the getaway car for the three robbers, but there'd been a change of plan at the last minute and he had been told that his services wouldn't be required. The raid had ended in disaster - not through action by the security services but a road accident. The replacement driver had gone through a red light on the way to the building society and a bus had side-swiped the car. The petrol tank had exploded and all four were killed. The following day the Real IRA executive who had organised the purchase of the arms had been assassinated by a Unionist death squad, and O'Brien realised that he was the only man left who knew the location of the arms. It was a secret he'd kept even after leaving the army. The only person he'd ever told was Gannon, and the major had recommended he kept the information to himself. Until now.

O'Brien unwrapped another package: a Polish Onyx short assault rifle with a folding stock and two curved thirty-round magazines. The gun was a copy of the Russian-made AKS-74U submachine-gun, capable of firing 725 rounds a minute. An excellent bit of kit. 'I'll have this,' he said.

Mitchell picked up a small package and opened it: a Polish Radom, a heavy 9mm pistol. 'Why would they buy this crap?' he asked.

'Beggars can't be choosers,' said O'Brien. He pulled apart another small package, and whistled softly. It was a brand new SIG-Sauer P-228, a compact Swiss pistol with a thirteen-round magazine.

'I'll have that,' said Mitchell, reaching for it.

'My arse you will,' said O'Brien. 'Finders keepers. Anyway, you and Billy are using the AKMs.'

They worked through the cache. The prize was at the bottom: a wooden box the size of a small suitcase that had been wrapped in a dozen black rubbish bags. O'Brien grinned. 'Bullseye,' he said.

Jimbo Shortt paid off his black cab, then headed west along the King's Road, checking reflections in shop windows before crossing the street and heading back the way he'd come, checking for tails. When he was sure he wasn't being followed he crossed the road and headed for a black door between an antiques shop and a hairdresser's. To the right was a small brass plaque inscribed 'Alex Knight Security', a bell button and a speaker grille.

Shortt pressed the button and was buzzed in. He headed up a narrow flight of stairs. A striking brunette had the door at the top open for him. 'Jimbo, I didn't know you were in London,' she said, giving him a peck on the cheek.

'Flying visit, Sarah,' he said. 'Is he in?'

'Ready and waiting for you,' she said.

Alex Knight was sitting behind a pile of electronic equipment and a stack of manuals. The walls of his office were lined with metal shelving stacked with boxes and more manuals. There was a single chair on Shortt's side of the desk but it was piled high with unopened Federal Express packets.

'Can I interest you in a sat-phone scrambler, Jimbo?' asked Knight. 'State-of-the-art from Taiwan. I can do you a deal.'

'Not this time, Alex.'

Knight came round from behind his desk and several inches of bony wrist protruded from his dark blue blazer when he stuck out his hand to shake Shortt's. He was tall and gangly, with square-framed black spectacles perched high on his nose.

'So, what can I do you for?' he asked.

'Scanner that'll key me in to police frequencies,' said Shortt.

'Ask me something difficult,' said Knight. 'You can buy them at Argos.'

Shortt chuckled. The sort of equipment Knight sold was most definitely not available on the high street. 'This'll do the trick,' he said, pulling a box off a shelf and examining the label. It was a model he hadn't seen before. 'And I need a mobile-phone jammer. A biggie.'

'Illegal in this country, of course,' said Knight.

'Of course,' said Shortt.

'How big?'

'How big have you got?'

'I've got hand-helds that can block all signals up to a hundred feet,' said Knight.

'Bigger,' said Shortt.

'There's a model just in from Hong Kong that can shut down all signals in a building, pretty much.'

'Bigger,' said Shortt, grinning.

'Jimbo, why don't you just tell me what it is you want shutting down?'

Shortt's grin widened. 'You don't want to know, Alex, but let's say it's the size of a football stadium.'

Knight went back behind his desk and tapped away on his computer. He frowned, and tapped again.

Shortt continued to walk along the shelves, picking up the occasional box and examining its contents. Some of the equipment Knight had was so cutting-edge that even Shortt wasn't sure what it was supposed to do.

'What frequencies?' Knight asked.

'UK only,' said Shortt.

'Sale or lease?'

'I was hoping you'd lend me one, Alex.' Knight raised an eyebrow, and Shortt laughed. 'I'll need it for a couple of days.'

'I can let you have one for a week at five grand, but I'm going to need a deposit. This is expensive kit. When do you need it by?'

'Yesterday,' said Shortt.

Shepherd was in the corner of the exercise yard doing vigorous press-ups when his name was called. It was Hamilton. He got to his feet and went over to him, brushing his hands on his jeans. 'Legal visit,' said Hamilton.

Shepherd followed him off the spur and along the secure corridor to the visitors' centre. Hamilton said nothing during the long walk and Shepherd didn't want to start a conversation. He hadn't requested a visit from Hargrove. If the superintendent had discovered what had happened to Liam, it was all over. Shepherd forced himself to relax as he was shown into the glass-sided room.

Hargrove shook his hand. 'How's it going, Spider?'

Shepherd sat down. 'Slowly.'

'Hadn't heard from you for a while so I thought I'd drop by and see how you were.' Hargrove took his seat. His briefcase was on the floor.

'Soon as there's something to report, I'll be on the phone.'

'Are you okay?'

'I'm fine.'

'You look a little tense, that's all.'

'I'm in prison, for fuck's sake,' Shepherd snapped. He saw the look of concern on Hargrove's face and held up his hands. 'Sorry,' he said. 'It's just that being Bob Macdonald twenty-four seven isn't easy.'

'Anything I can do?'

Shepherd shook his head.

'Anything taped we can use?'

'I'm only wearing the recorder when there are officers around. That way he can't start searching me if he gets suspicious. Problem is, with the officers around he's not going to say much. I want to get him talking in his cell but I'm not in there often.'

'We need something, Spider. You know how important this is.'

'I can't push it any more than I'm doing or he'll back off.'

'And he hasn't said anything we can use?'

'He's not stupid,' said Shepherd. 'He's in here because he was set up by pros, and he's keen not to make the mistake again.'

'You don't think he suspects anything?'

'I'm being careful.'

'Carpenter's got a remand hearing in a couple of days. Might give you something to talk about.'

'I'll give it a go. He's not going to get bail, is he?'

Hargrove grinned. 'Not a snowball's chance in hell. He might have torn holes in our case but the judge is aware of what's going on and he's a safe pair of hands.'

'I'm doing my best,' said Shepherd.

'I know you are, Spider. Do you want me to go and see your boy?'

'Best stay away until it's all over.'

'You sure?'

'I'm sure.'

Hargrove stood up and adjusted his cuffs, picked up his briefcase, then held out his hand. Shepherd stood up and shook it. He hated lying to Hargrove, but he had no choice. There was nothing the superintendent could do to get Liam back. It was all down to Major Gannon and his team.

Jimbo Shortt brought the van to a halt about a hundred yards from the prison wall. Armstrong and Mitchell were in the back. O'Brien twisted round in the front passenger seat. 'Okay, let's get to it,' he said. 'From the moment we go in, we'll have eight minutes, maximum. If we're unlucky and someone calls it in, that's how long it'll take SO19 to get here.'

'Assuming there isn't an armed-response car driving by,' said Mitchell.

'Let's look on the bright side, shall we?' said O'Brien. 'This time of night, that's not likely.'

Armstrong slotted a magazine into his AKM and adjusted his black ski mask. Armstrong, Mitchell and O'Brien were wearing black fireproof overalls, ski masks and sneakers. They had black leather belts on their waists with spare ammunition, a handgun each and a radio transmitter nestling in the small of their backs. There was no need for the ballistic jackets or helmets - there wasn't a single gun inside the prison. The only risk of firepower was from the Metropolitan Police's SO19 armed-response teams. Shortt was the only member of the team wearing civilian clothes. He had on a leather jacket over blue overalls and a New York Yankees baseball cap.

'And again, if we do come up against armed cops, defensive fire only,' said O'Brien. 'Understood?'

Armstrong and Mitchell nodded.

'Fire over their heads and get the hell out,' said O'Brien. 'The cops aren't used to taking automatic fire. Okay, let's get to it.' He pulled on his mask, climbed out of the van and jogged round to the rear, his Polish short assault rifle strapped to his back. Armstrong and Mitchell opened the doors and pushed the wooden box towards O'Brien, then helped him lower it to the ground.

Shortt hefted the briefcase-sized phone jammer on to the passenger seat. He had already disabled the local BT sub-station that handled the landlines from Shelton. The jammer would take care of any mobiles in the vicinity.

'Check comms,' said O'Brien. 'Alpha on air.'

The men had on microphone headsetsundertheir masks, wired to the receivers on their belts.

'Beta on air,' said Mitchell.

O'Brien gave him a thumbs-up. His voice had come over loud and clear through the earpiece.

'Gamma on air,' said Armstrong. O'Brien nodded.

'Delta on air,' said Shortt.

O'Brien knelt down and opened the wooden box: a Russian-made 7V rocket-propelled grenade launcher nestled in a bed of polystyrene balls. Mitchell nodded approvingly. 'Nice bit of kit,' he said.

'Oh, yes,' said O'Brien. 'The Somalis used one of these to bring down that Blackhawk. Accurate up to three hundred metres with a moving target, five hundred if it's stationary.'

'Makes a change from friendly fire,' said Mitchell.

O'Brien took the metre-long launcher from the box and hefted it on to his shoulder. He walked a few paces towards the prison entrance.

'Sure you've got it the right way round?' asked Armstrong.

'Aye, fuck you too,' said O'Brien. He looked at his watch, then knelt down on one knee and sighted on the main gate, a hundred metres away. 'Are we all set?'

'Mobile signals are down,' Shortt said. 'All signals blocked. Rock and roll.'

O'Brien took a deep breath. His heart was pounding as adrenaline coursed through his system. He'd fired RPGs before, more than a dozen, but there was always the risk that something might go wrong and it blew up in his hands.

In the distance the occasional car drove down the motorway but all they could see were the headlights carving through the darkness. The prison had been shielded from the road by landscaped hills and trees so that the sensibilities of law-abiding citizens in north London wouldn't be offended by high walls and surveillance cameras. The hills would block any sign of the explosion, and the most that would be seen from the road was a flash of light.

The four men stared at the prison walls, which were thirty feet high, as was the metal gate, the only way for vehicles to enter the prison. No CCTV cameras covered theexterior - therewas no wayeven for theofficers inside to see outside. As Major Gannon had pointed out several times during his briefing, the prison had been purpose-built to keep six hundred unarmed men confined in specific areas. Every security measure was directed inwards. Four armed men who knew what they were doing should, in theory, be able to bring the place to its knees.

'Stand clear,' said O'Brien. Armstrong and Mitchell jogged to the far side of the van. O'Brien braced himself and pulled the trigger. The grenade whooshed from the launcher, leaving a plume of white smoke in its wake. It arced through the air and hit the door, dead centre. The explosion was a dull thud that O'Brien felt as much as heard, and then the massive metal door crashed to the side, twisting off its opening mechanism.

Shortt revved the engine. O'Brien tossed the launcher to the ground and ran to the passenger seat. Mitchell pulled the rear door shut. Shortt stamped on the accelerator and the van sped forward, towards the shattered gate.

Shepherd squinted at the luminous dial of his watch. It was three o'clock in the morning and he'd been awake all night. Lee had switched off the television just after midnight, and by half past one there had been silence on the landing. The spyglass had opened at two thirty and the next check wasn't due for another half-hour.

Lee was snoring softly, but he woke with a start as Shepherd climbed down from the top bunk.

'What's up?' he said sleepily.

'Did you hear something?'

'Like what?'

'I don't know. Outside, on the landing.'

Lee swung his feet to the floor. 'What time is it?'

'Three.'

'It'll be one of the guards doing his checks.'

'I heard an explosion.'

'Bollocks.'

'What if there was a fire somewhere in the block? Would they let us out?'

Lee sniffed. 'I can't smell anything.'

'I didn't say I smelt smoke, I said I heard a bang.'

Lee walked to the door. Shepherd moved to the side to let him pass, then grabbed him from behind. Lee could barely grunt before Shepherd had his neck in a tight lock. Shepherd squeezed as Lee tried to twist round. He held him tight, and for more than a minute they shuffled backwards and forwards. The head lock applied pressure to the carotid arteries, cutting off the blood supply to Lee's brain. All Shepherd had to do was hang on and keep applying pressure to the sides of Lee's neck.

When he felt him go limp, he dragged him over to his bunk and rolled him on to it. He pulled the laces from Lee's trainers and used them to bind his wrists and ankles. Then he ripped a strip of material off the sheet and used it as a makeshift gag. He checked that the laces were secure, then went to the door. He switched on the light and started stretching, loosening his muscles for what was to come next.

3.00 a.m.

The van screeched to a halt in front of the gatehouse. The back door flew open and Armstrong and Mitchell jumped down. They both fired short, controlled bursts. The 7.62mm bullets ripped through the door and shattered the lock. The two men stepped to the side and O'Brien jumped out of the van, ran at the door and kicked it, hard. It crashed to the side and he ran into the gatehouse, his submachine-gun in front of him.

There were two prison officers behind the glass panel, one in full uniform, the other in short sleeves. The one in uniform had a phone to his ear, his hand on the keypad. Both men were staring at the shattered door, their mouths open.

'Get down!' shouted O'Brien. They stood where they were, too shocked to move. O'Brien gestured with his Onyx short-assault rifle. 'Get down, now!' he yelled.

The officers dropped to the floor. O'Brien fired a short burst at the security glass. It wasn't designed to take the impact of an assault rifle at short range and it shattered into a million shards.

Armstrong vaulted over the counter, his gloved hand crunching on the broken glass. He put his foot on the back of one of the officers and shoved the barrel of his gun against the other's neck. 'Just stay calm and no one gets hurt,' he said. The man he was standing on had a long keychain on his belt and Armstrong ripped it off. He tossed the keys to O'Brien, who caught them.

Mitchell looked through the doorway and Shortt gave him a thumbs-up. He had turned the van so he could see through the doorway. Outside the prison, everything was in darkness.

'Come on, come on,' said O'Brien. 'Get the doors open.'

Armstrong bound the arms and legs of one officer with a plastic tie, then dragged him to his feet.

Access to the prison was through two security doors that could not be opened at the same time. The gap between them was effectively a quarantine area and the second door wasn't opened until the identity of those entering or leaving had been checked. O'Brien and Mitchell walked up to the first security door. Armstrong shoved the muzzle of his weapon under the man's chin. 'Open the outer door,' he hissed.

The officer, trembling, stabbed at a button. The gate slid open.

O'Brien and Mitchell moved into the quarantine area.

'Now close it,' said Armstrong.

He stabbed at another button.

Once the outer door had clicked shut, Armstrong jabbed the gun into the man's chin. 'Open the inner door.' The officer was already reaching across the console to press the button.

O'Brien and Mitchell rushed through the gap and sprinted away. Armstrong tied the officer's wrists behind his back with another plastic binding. He watched on the monitors as O'Brien and Mitchell ran across the second courtyard to the door that led to the secure corridor.

'Which button opens the door?' asked Armstrong.

The officer nodded at the console. 'The red one.'

Armstrong pressed it. 'Gamma, door is unlocked.'

'Roger that,' said O'Brien, in his earpiece. 'Alpha and Beta going in.'

'Delta, outside is clear.'

'Roger that,' said O'Brien.

On one of the monitors, Armstrong watched O'Brien pull open the door and Mitchell run into the secure corridor. O'Brien followed him. Then Armstrong pushed the officer to the floor and tied his feet together. When he straightened up, he scanned the monitors: O'Brien and Mitchell were running down the secure corridor, automatic rifles clutched to their chests.

3.01 a.m.

Lloyd-Davies sipped her coffee and flicked through the observations book. It had been a quiet day - a couple of minor scuffles, a racist remark that had been reported to the governor, and a new arrival on the ones - he had been crying so much he'd been taken to the medical wing. Tonight her colleague in the bubble was Paul Morrison, a former landscape gardener who had only been in the prison service for three months. He was a few inches shorter than she, and although he was only in his early twenties he was losing his hair. He was keen, and had made a special effort to learn the first names of all the men on the spur. Lloyd-Davies hoped he'd maintain his enthusiasm, but she knew that, after a year on the job, most officers became hardened. The lies, the occasional flashes of violence, the boredom changed even the most altruistic soul. She closed the observations book and took another sip of coffee.

As she put down the cup she heard rapid footsteps and turned to look down the secure corridor. Her eyes widened as she saw two figures running full tilt towards her, holding automatic rifles close to their chests. She stared at them in disbelief, then gasped and grabbed her radio. The men rushed up to the barred door. One shoved the barrel of his gun through it. 'Put that down!' he hissed. 'Now!'

Morrison whirled around. He and Lloyd-Davies were transfixed.

'Down!' the man repeated. 'Put the radio down.'

Lloyd-Davies did as she was told.

Morrison got to his feet, trembling. He looked across at Lloyd-Davies. 'It's okay, Paul, stay calm,' she said.

'Shut the fuck up,' hissed one of the masked men. 'Lie down on the floor, face down.'

The second man had a key on a long steel chain and unlocked the barred door.

'What do you want?' asked Lloyd-Davies.

'Just get down on the floor. Now!'

Morrison dropped to his knees, then put his hands on the floor.

The man with the key pulled open the door, then aimed his gun at Lloyd-Davies. 'Down!' he said.

They looked like SAS troopers, thought Lloyd-Davies. Black ski masks, automatic rifles. Black uniforms with equipment hanging from black leather belts. But why would the SAS be storming a prison? It didn't make any sense.

The man with the key stepped forward and grabbed Lloyd-Davies by her ponytail. 'We're not fucking around here!' he hissed. 'Now, get down on the floor.'

Lloyd-Davies realised that she wasn't scared. She was angry, but she wasn't frightened. If the men had intended to shoot them, they would have surely done it straight away. Whatever they were up to, they weren't there to kill anyone. She went down on her knees, her eyes never leaving the man's face. She was trying to memorise as many details as she could. The colour of his eyes. Brown. His height. Just under six feet. One of his canine teeth was crooked. He was right-handed. Slightly overweight.

'On the floor!' repeated the man.

Lloyd-Davies did as she was told. The other man was fastening a plastic tie round Morrison's wrists.

The man with the key pushed her down and she lay still as he pulled her arms behind her back and tied her wrists together. She turned to look at him but he put his gun to her forehead. 'You keep staring at me and I'll give you something to remember,' he hissed. He had an accent, but it was hard to identify. Irish. Or Scottish, maybe.

He pressed the gun into the small of her back. 'Who else is on the spur?'

'Healey,' said Lloyd-Davies.

'Where is he?'

'Should be on the ones.'

'Anyone else?'

She shook her head.

'If you're lying, you'll be putting their lives on the line.'

'Just the night staff. Three of us.'

He took the gun away from her back. 'Stay on the ground, keep your eyes closed and this'll be over before you know it,' he said.

Lloyd-Davies shut her eyes. 'You'll never get out,' she said.

The man pushed the barrel of his gun against her neck. 'You'd better hope we do or I'll be putting a bullet in your head,' he muttered. 'Now, shut the fuck up.'

3.02 a.m.

O'Brien tossed Mitchell the keyand told himto go and get the prison officer on the ground floor. Mitchell left the bubble and unlocked the barred door that led to the landings. He peered over the railing through the wire-mesh suicide net. A large West Indian was walking slowly towards the far end of the spur. Mitchell put the key into his pocket.

He crept along to the stairs, his gun at the ready, past a cell where rap music was playing. He kept his eyes on the officer below, ready to duck at the first sign that he was turning round. Rock music was coming from another cell. Mitchell imagined the prisoners lying on their bunks, listening to their stereos, with no idea of what was being played out beyond their doors.

He reached the top of the stairs and crouched, his attention fixed on the West Indian. The officer reached the end of the spur. He was swinging his keys on a chain as he stood reading a notice pinned to a board. Mitchell waited. The man was unarmed but he had a radio clipped to his belt, and Mitchell didn't want to give him the chance to call for help. He took a quick look at his watch. Almost two and a half minutes had passed since they'd driven in through the shattered gateway. If he waited for the West Indian to walk back down the spur that could take a full two minutes at the speed he moved.

Mitchell took a deep breath. He took the stairs two at a time, on his toes to minimise the noise. The West Indian continued to swing his keys and read the notice. Mitchell reached the floor and sprinted down the spur, keeping his breathing to a minimum.

The West Indian began to turn. Mitchell sprinted across the linoleum towards him, his assault rifle clutched to his chest.

Armstrong looked up at a clock on the wall above the CCTV monitors. It was several minutes slow and wasn't even showing three o'clock. He saw movement on one of the monitors. It was Mitchell, running hard and fast along the spur towards a fat West Indian officer. As Armstrong watched, the man turned and saw Mitchell running towards him. His mouth opened and his hands went up to defend himself, but before he could do anything Mitchell had slammed into him.

The West Indian must have been twice Mitchell's weight but Mitchell had the advantage of momentum. He hit the man with his left shoulder, and the officer spun then crashed into the wall, face first.

Mitchell lashed out with his foot, kicking him just above the knee. Then, as he slumped forward, he hit him across the back of the neck, open-handed, a stunning blow rather than a killing one.

Mitchell stood back as the guard fell to the ground. Then he rolled him over and dropped on to one knee to bind his wrists and ankles.

Jimbo Shortt looked at his watch. He gunned the engine, keeping up the revs. If anything went wrong they'd have to move quickly. If SO19 headed their way, running was their only option. It was one thing to break one of their own out of prison, quite another to shoot at cops. O'Brien was right: even the specialist armed police units weren't used to serious firepower, but Shortt wasn't convinced they'd duck for cover at the sound of automatic weapons. And what then? The van they were using was a workhorse and the police would have high-powered cars, motorbikes and helicopters. Shortt chuckled as he pictured himself, O'Brien, Mitchell and Armstrong standing in the dock at the Old Bailey. The Four bloody Musketeers. How would they explain themselves? They'd broken into a high-security prison because a friend needed their help. Would a judge understand that? Would a jury? Shortt understood it. He'd fought alongside Spider Shepherd, and seen him take a bullet in the shoulder. It had been Shortt who'd stemmed the bleeding and got Spider to a medic before he'd bled to death. He had saved Spider's life then, but he knew that Spider would have done exactly the same had their roles been reversed. The bonds formed in combat were like no other, but there was no way Shortt could explain that to someone who hadn't been through it themselves. He hadn't hesitated when Major Gannon had phoned him. Spider was in trouble, that was all he needed to hear.

Shortt looked over at the gatehouse. He couldn't see Armstrong, but he knew he was there. He couldn't see O'Brien and Mitchell either, but he knew exactly what they were doing. And in five minutes it would all be over, one way or another.

3.03 a.m.

Mitchell stood up. He yanked the officer's radio off his belt and tossed it down the spur. He was breathing heavily but he wasn't tired. So far it had been a walk in the park. 'Beta, ground floor is neutralised,' he said.

'Roger that, Beta,' said O'Brien in Mitchell's earpiece. 'Move back up to the first floor.'

'Beta, on my way,' replied Mitchell.

He ran back to the stairs, not caring now how much noise he made. The spur was secure, and even if any of the prisoners heard what was going on, they couldn't see out of their cells.

He raced up to the first floor, nodding at O'Brien as he passed the bubble. O'Brien was looking at his watch. He moved quickly along the landing, glancing at the pieces of card with the names and numbers of the prisoners fixed to the side of each door. Major Gannon had said that Shepherd's cell was the fourth on the left, but Mitchell checked all the doors as he passed them.

He reached the fourth. R. Macdonald, SN 6759. He pulled out the key and slotted it into the lock, turned it and pushed open the door.

Shepherd tensed as the door opened. It was only when he saw the figure in black standing there that he realised he'd been holding his breath. Even with the ski mask on, he recognised Geordie Mitchell. 'You're a sight for sore eyes,' he said.

'Your chariot awaits, m'lord,' laughed Mitchell. He took a pistol from the holster on his belt and handed it to Shepherd. 'Martin said you should have this.'

Shepherd reached for the gun but Mitchell tossed it on to the bunk. 'Said you should wear these first.' He took a pair of surgical gloves from his pocket and gave them to Shepherd, who pulled them on and flexed his fingers, then hefted the weapon in his hand. It was a Yugoslavian Model 70, a weapon he'd heard of but never fired. 'You can thank the boyos for that,' said Mitchell. 'Carpenter's on the top floor, yeah?'

Shepherd nodded.

'Let's get to it, then,' said Mitchell. 'Beta, moving to second floor,' he said into his microphone. He headed back to the stairs. Shepherd followed.

3.04 a.m.

O'Brien grinned as he saw Shepherd following Mitchell down the landing, holding the handgun they'd taken from the Real IRA arms cache in Belfast. Shepherd moved fluidly and easily, and was clearly as fit as the day he'd left the SAS. His years with the police clearly hadn't taken his edge. As Shepherd reached the stairs he saw O'Brien watching him and waved.

Mitchell stood to the side to let Shepherd run up the stairs first. He ran along the top landing and stopped outside Carpenter's cell. Mitchell put the key in the lock and turned it. Shepherd pushed open the door. Carpenter was asleep on his bunk with his back to the door.

'If it wasn't for your boy, I'd slot him now,' said Mitchell, pointing his assault rifle at Carpenter.

Shepherd put a hand on the weapon. 'Once we've got Liam back, we'll take care of him,' said Shepherd. He reached out and flicked on the light. Carpenter rolled over in his bunk, blinking and grunting.

'What is it?' he said, shading his eyes with the flat of his hand.

'Get up,' said Shepherd.

'Bob?'

'Get the fuck up,' spat Shepherd.

'What the hell's going on?'

'We're getting out of here.'

'What?'

'We haven't got time for this,' said Mitchell. 'Come on.'

'I'm not going anywhere,' said Carpenter, pulling his legs up to his chest.

'You wanted out,' said Shepherd. 'This is out.'

'You said the van was going to be ambushed,' said Carpenter. 'You said we'd break out on the way to court.'

Mitchell pushed Shepherd out of the way, grabbed Carpenter by the collar of his pyjamas and yanked him out of his bunk. He slammed him against the wall. 'You're coming with us.'

'Fuck you!' shouted Carpenter.

Mitchell smashed the stock of his Kalashnikov against Carpenter's temple. Carpenter pitched forward, his eyes rolling up in their sockets, but Shepherd caught him before he hit the ground.

'Carry him,' said Mitchell. 'We have three minutes and counting.'

Shepherd tossed Carpenter over his shoulder and followed Mitchell out on to the landing. Prisoners were banging on their cell doors and shouting obscenities. The houseblock echoed with screams and yells as the banging built to a crescendo.

3.05 a.m.

Armstrong watched on the CCTV monitors as Mitchell emerged from the cell and ran down the landing, followed by Shepherd, with Carpenter over one shoulder and a gun in his hand. They reached the stairs and headed down to the first floor.

One of the officers at his feet started to struggle so Armstrong kicked him in the ribs, not hard enough to break anything but hard enough to make him scream. He bent down and pushed the barrel of his AKM-63 into the man's neck: 'They're not paying you enough to take a beating. Now lie still.'

The man did as he was told, and Armstrong straightened. On another monitor, Mitchell had reached the bubble.

Mitchell banged on the glass wall with the flat of his gloved hand. Shepherd came up behind him, breathing heavily. O'Brien nodded at Carpenter. 'Tell me you didn't shoot him,' he said to Mitchell.

'He was being uncooperative,' said Mitchell. 'I just tapped him.'

'Let's get out of here,' said O'Brien. 'Alpha and Beta are leaving the block with objectives,' he said, into his microphone.

'Delta, roger that,' said Shortt, through their headsets. 'All clear outside.'

'Gamma, all monitors show zero activity,' said Armstrong.

O'Brien headed for the door.

'Bob, think about what you're doing,' said a voice.

Shepherd looked into the bubble. Lloyd-Davies was lying with her face towards him. 'I'm sorry,' he said.

'Come on,' said O'Brien. 'Two minutes and counting.'

'This won't solve anything,' said Lloyd-Davies. 'They'll get you eventually. Your fingerprints, your DNA, your picture, they're all on file. If you run, they'll lock you away for ever.'

Shepherd had a sudden urge to explain everything to her. That he wasn't Bob Macdonald, career bank robber, he was an undercover cop and he wasn't running away from a prison sentence; he was helping Carpenter to escape because if he didn't his only son would die. But Shepherd knew he couldn't tell her anything - and even if he did she wouldn't believe him.

'I've no choice,' he said. 'Trust me.'

'How can I trust you after this?'

Mitchell pointed his assault rifle at her. 'Shut up!' he hissed.

Shepherd reached out and pushed the barrel of Mitchell's gun to the side. 'It's okay,' he said.

'It's not okay,' said Lloyd-Davies.

'I told you, shut the fuck up and close your eyes!' shouted Mitchell.

O'Brien patted Mitchell's shoulder. 'Come on,' he said.

Mitchell nodded, and followed O'Brien out of the bubble and into the secure corridor.

Shepherd gave Lloyd-Davies one last look. 'I'm sorry,' he said.

'You're throwing your life away.'

Shepherd shifted Carpenter's weight. 'It's my life,' he said. He turned and left the bubble.

Armstrong scannedthe CCTV monitors. There were more than a dozen each divided into four views, with three showing full screen images. From where he was he could see the wall, the secure corridor, the offices, the hospital wing and interior views of all the blocks.

He watched O'Brien, Mitchell and Shepherd leave the bubble and run into the secure corridor. He could also see the white van, with Shortt at the wheel.

On one of the spurs on Block C, a female officer was walking along the top level, checking the spyhole at all the cells.

On Block D, two officers were standing on the ground floor, laughing.

O'Brien and Mitchell reached a corner of the secure corridor and waited for Shepherd to catch up.

Armstrong grinned: Shepherd was panting under the weight of the man on his shoulders. Then he saw movement on one of the monitors.

'Gamma, hold your positions,' he said, into his microphone. 'We might have a problem.'

Lloyd-Davies rolled over so that she was facing Morrison. 'Paul, are you okay?'

Morrison's eyes were tightly shut, and his whole body was trembling. 'Have they gone?' he whispered.

'Yeah. It's over.'

Morrison opened his eyes. Tears ran down his cheeks. 'Jo, I think I've wet myself.'

'It's okay, Paul. I was scared too. There'd be something wrong if you weren't.'

'What did they want?'

Lloyd-Davies realised he hadn't seen Shepherd and Carpenter leave with the men in ski masks, and that she didn't have time to explain now what had happened. They had to sound the alarm.

She rolled on to her back and sat up. Her radio was on the desk but she doubted that she could operate it with her hands tied behind her back.

'How did they get in?' asked Morrison.

It was a good question. Had they come in over the wall? Lloyd-Davies wondered. Dropped in by helicopter? Or come storming in through the front gate? Did anyone else in the prison know that armed men were on the loose? 'Help me get up,' said Lloyd-Davies. 'Sit back to back and push.'

Morrison rolled over and sat up, then shuffled around so that his back was against hers.

'On three,' she said. She counted aloud, then they pushed hard and raised themselves. Almost immediately Morrison lost his balance and fell back against a filing cabinet, cursing.

Lloyd-Davies looked at the monitors. There was no sign of the men, so they must have left the block. That meant the only prisoners they'd released had been Shepherd and Carpenter. An armed robber and a drug-dealer. Where was the logic in that? Armed men in ski masks meant terrorists, but most of the terrorists were in the Special Secure Unit on the far side of the prison. None of this made any sense.

3.06 a.m.

'Gamma, you have two prison guards heading your way.' Armstrong's voice crackled in O'Brien's earpiece.

'Shit,' said Mitchell.

Shepherd looked at the two men. 'What's wrong?' he asked. He leaned against the wall, allowing it to take some of Carpenter's weight.

O'Brien pressed a finger to his lips, then pointed down the corridor and held up two fingers.

'Alpha, how far away?' he asked.

'Gamma, one hundred metres from the corner ahead of you,' said Armstrong.

'Alpha, have they got radios?'

'Gamma, affirmative.'

O'Brien cursed under his breath. The two prison officers might be going to another block or the administration centre. Or they might be leaving, which meant they'd buzz the gatehouse to unlock the door from the secure corridor. If they went to the administration block, he and the team would be in the clear, but either of the other two options meant the officers would have to be confronted and overpowered. They wouldn't be able to summon help from outside the prison but they could use their radios to call colleagues from other blocks.

O'Brien glanced at his watch. Time was running out. 'Alpha, if they stop at the door, let me know.'

'Gamma, will do.'

O'Brien made a clenched fist, telling Mitchell and Shepherd to wait.

Lloyd-Davies groped for the radio. As her fingers closed round it she saw the alarm button on the wall and decided it was a better bet. She hopped over towards it. It was on the wall next to the monitors at shoulder height so she couldn't reach it with her bound hands. She tried to hit it with her shoulder but failed. She cursed, then pressed it with her forehead but that didn't work either. She tried again and fell forward, banging her nose against the wall. She felt blood spurt from her nostrils and blinked away tears. She pushed herself away from the wall, then hopped as close to the desk as she could get and allowed herself to fall forward. Her nose slammed into the button and she felt the cartilage crack. Tears streamed down her face and mixed with the blood, but she heard the alarms burst into life and smiled despite the pain.

O'Brien swore as the alarms went off. 'Where are they, Gamma?' Mitchell was looking back the way they'd come, cradling his rifle and shifting from foot to foot.

'Still heading your way,' said Armstrong. 'They're about fifty feet from the corner where you are.'

'We're going to have to take them,' said O'Brien. 'Are you ready, Beta?'

'Let's do it,' said Mitchell.

O'Brien put a hand on Shepherd's arm. 'Are you okay?' Shepherd nodded. 'We'll rush them but, whatever happens, you keep going, okay?'

Shepherd nodded again.

'Gamma, they're running your way.'

O'Brien jerked his head at Mitchell, then pointed down the corridor. Both men started to run. Shepherd hurried after them.

As they rounded the corner, they saw the two prison officers heading towards them. They were big men with the build of rugby players. They stopped dead when they saw O'Brien and Mitchell.

O'Brien pointed his gun at the men. 'Down on the floor!' he shouted.

The men didn't move, too shocked to react. Mitchell stepped forward, his finger on the trigger of his AKM-63. 'Do it - now!' he shouted.

The mengot downonthe floor andlay there, spreadeagled. Mitchell bound the wrists of one. O'Brien told Shepherd to go on ahead and knelt down to tie up the second.

Overhead, the alarms were ringing, but O'Brien knew they were internal with no connection to the authorities outside the prison. It was an inconvenience but they were in the end phase now: a few unarmed prison officers wouldn't stop them.

Shepherd ran along the corridor. Carpenter was moaning, but he wasn't moving. Ahead he saw the door that led out of the secure corridor to the courtyard, then heard rapid footsteps behind him and turned. O'Brien and Mitchell were running towards him. The two officers were on the floor, face down, their hands tied behind their backs.

He wondered if the alarm had been sounded back in Block B or if the problem lay ahead, at the gatehouse. His heart was pounding and his back ached from Carpenter's weight. He stopped at the door.

O'Brien skidded to a halt and jabbed at the intercom button to the left of it. 'Alpha, ready for exit!' he shouted.

Mitchell ran up behind O'Brien. The lock clicked and O'Brien shouldered open the door. Then he put his hand to his ear. 'Alpha, say again.' He frowned.

'What's wrong?' asked Shepherd.

'More officers in the corridor, from Block A.' O'Brien glanced at Mitchell and pointed down the corridor, then held open the door for Shepherd. He carried Carpenter through and hurried across the courtyard, Carpenter's feet banging into his thighs.

Armstrong scanned the monitors. O'Brien was holding open the door from the secure corridor. Mitchell was racing towards Block A. Shepherd was coming towards the gatehouse with Carpenter on his shoulders. And Shortt was gunning the van engine.

No cameras covered the outside of the prison so he had no idea what was going on beyond the walls. For all he knew armed police units were already stationed there. He said a silent prayer that Major Gannon was right and that even if they knew what was going on it would take SO19 at least eight minutes to get to the prison.

There was movement on another of the monitors - the secure corridor outside Block C: three prison officers, two male and one female, were running from the bubble.

'Gamma, three more guards in the corridor,' said Armstrong. 'Time to call it a day.'

'Alpha, roger that,' said O'Brien, but he stayed where he was, keeping the corridor door open.

Mitchell stopped running. He could hear booted footsteps round the corner ahead of him. He stood with his left leg slightly forward, ready to absorb the kick of his AKM-63. He took no pleasure in shooting at unarmed men, but he had to show them he was capable of using his firepower.

The two men reached the corner first. One was short and dumpy, the other tall and lanky. The tall one yelped when he saw Mitchell, the other ducked and tripped over his own feet.

Mitchell was amused by their confusion. 'Get down on the floor!' he yelled.

A female prison officer came round the corner. She swerved to avoid falling over the officer on the floor and slammed into the wall.

Mitchell fired a short burst into the ceiling above their heads. A light shattered and ceiling tiles showered down on them. 'I won't tell you again!' he shouted.

The overweight guard and the woman dropped on to the floor next to the other.

'Link your fingers behind your neck!' ordered Mitchell.

They did as they were told.

'Anyone follows us, I won't be firing warning shots,' he shouted. 'Tell your friends - they come after us, they're dead.' He turned and ran back to O'Brien.

'Nice speech,' said O'Brien.

'What can I say?' said Mitchell. 'Winning friends and influencing people.'

O'Brien held the door as Mitchell ran into the courtyard, then chased after him. The door clicked shut. Hopefully, with the gatehouse disabled, no one would be able to follow them out of the secure corridor.

Shepherd was breathing heavily by the time he'd reached the gatehouse. Carpenter was still groaning, but his body was limp. The interior door was already open and he ran through it. To his left Armstrong was cradling his automatic rifle. He acknowledged Shepherd, then went back to studying the CCTV monitors.

The second door, leading to the outside, was shut. Shepherd stood in the holding area and waited.

O'Brien and Mitchell ran in from the courtyard, rushed through the interior door, then turned to check that no one had come after them. The courtyard was clear.

Armstrong hit the button to close the security door. Seconds ticked by as it shut. O'Brien and Mitchell turned to the second door. 'We haven't got time for this,' said Mitchell, levelled his gun at it and let loose a short burst. The glass shattered.

Armstrong vaulted over the counter and ran out into the courtyard.Shepherd raced after him, his trainers crunching over shards of broken glass. Armstrong jumped into the back of the van and held out his hands to heave Carpenter in. O'Brien and Mitchell were running towards them. They turned and faced the gatehouse, weapons at the ready as Shepherd clambered into the van. 'We're in!' he shouted.

O'Brien and Mitchell ran together, jumped in and Shepherd pulled the door shut.

'Go, go, go!' screamed O'Brien. Shortt stamped on the accelerator and the van shot towards the gate.

The van swerved and Shepherd's head smacked against the side. He put out a hand to steady himself. O'Brien and Mitchell sat with their backs towards the seats, cradling their weapons. Shortt was keeping just below the speed limit as he pulled a series of tight turns. It was important to put as much distance between themselves and the prison as they could, but there were speed cameras in the area and they couldn't risk being photographed.

Armstrong scratched his chin under the ski mask as he stared down at Carpenter, who was lying on his back, his eyes shut, breathing heavily. 'Doesn't look like much,' he said.

'Worth twenty-eight million,' said Shepherd.

'Yeah, well, his money's not going to get him out of this,' said O'Brien.

Mitchell held out a hand. 'Hang on, now, boys. Let's at least hear what he has to say. I mean, Spider's one of the lads, but twenty-eight mill is a shedload of money.'

O'Brien thumped Mitchell's shoulder. 'Why don't you just go out and write one of those kill-and-tell books? Make some money that way.'

'Can't string two words together, me,' said Mitchell. 'Why don't we just hold him to ransom? He's got money. Let him pay for what we just did.'

O'Brien pointed a warning finger at him.

'Joke,' said Mitchell.

The van swerved again and the tyres squealed. O'Brien was monitoring police radio frequencies but so far no one had called in the raid on the prison. 'We're in the clear, Jimbo,' he said.

Shortt eased off the accelerator.

Carpenter rolled on to his side, and Armstrong placed a foot casually on his neck.

They drove to an industrial estate on the outskirts of Watford, close to the M25. O'Brien climbed out and unlocked a metal shutter, pushed it open and Shortt edged the van inside the building. It was a small warehouse, a bare space with metal rafters overhead and a small plasterboard office in one corner. There were no windows.

Armstrong and Mitchell opened the rear doors of the van and dragged Carpenter out as O'Brien pulled down the shutters at the entrance. Shortt got out, holding a bottle of Evian water. He unscrewed the cap and poured it over Carpenter. Carpenter coughed, spluttered and sat up.

O'Brien, Shortt, Mitchell and Armstrong stood in a semi-circle facing him, their submachine-gunsat the ready.

'Who the hell are you?' asked Carpenter, running his hands through his wet hair.

'We're the guys who pulled your nuts out of the fire,' said O'Brien, 'so a bit of respect is called for.'

Carpenter got to his feet. His lip was split and blood was dribbling down his chin. He grinned at Shepherd. 'I knew you'd be able to do it,' he said. 'You just needed an incentive.'

'I got you out,' said Shepherd. 'Now I want my boy back.'

'I think we should celebrate, don't you? It's not every day that you get to break out of a Category A prison, is it?' Carpenter laughed, but no one laughed with him. 'A friend of mine always made the same toast when he opened a bottle of bubbly,' said Carpenter. 'Champagne for our real friends, and real pain for our sham friends.' He moved quickly, stepping forward and grabbing the gun from Shepherd's belt. Then he flicked the safety-catch. 'That's what I want for you, Shepherd. Real fucking pain.' He pointed the gun at Shepherd and pulled the trigger.

In the confined space the explosion was deafening. Shepherd staggered back, clutching his belly. Carpenter grinned in triumph. He waved the gun at the men in ski masks, then frowned when he saw they were all laughing, guns at their sides.

Shepherd straightened. He held his hands up, palms out to Carpenter. No blood.

Carpenter stared at the gun in disbelief. He aimed at Shepherd's stomach and fired again. Shepherd stood where he was, his ears ringing.

'You stupid twat,' said O'Brien. 'You don't think we'd give Spider real bullets, do you?'

Carpenter tossed the gun away. 'Fuck the lot of you,' he said.

O'Brien aimed his gun at Carpenter's face. 'Why don't we just have done with it and slot him now?'

'Do that and he'll never see his boy again,' said Carpenter.

'Where is he?' asked Shepherd.

'I don't know.'

Shepherd's jaw dropped. 'You what?'

'I don't know and I don't want to know. My guys have taken them somewhere. Once you've let me go, they'll let your boy and his grandparents go. That's the deal.'

'We can't trust him,' said Mitchell. 'After what he just did, we can't believe a thing he says.'

'You've no choice,' said Carpenter. 'There's nothing you can do to me to make me tell you where his boy is, because I don't know. And if you kill me . . .' He left the sentence unfinished.

'It's your call, Spider,' said O'Brien, scratching at his ski mask.

Shepherd picked up the gun. He stared at Carpenter as he tapped the gun against his leg. If he let Carpenter go, there was no guarantee he'd release Liam, Moira and Tom. Mitchell was right, there was no way they could trust him.

'Yeah, Spider,' said Carpenter. 'It's your call.'

'Your guys have mobiles, yeah?' said Shepherd. 'Throwaways?'

'Sure.'

'Okay, here's what you do. You call your guys and tell them to release Moira and the boy. They're to give them a mobile and let them go. As soon as they're safe, they can call me. We release you, and then you call your men to let Tom go.'

'Nice,' said Carpenter. 'That way the most you'll lose is your father-in-law.'

'He's my boy's grandfather,' said Shepherd. 'His life means more to me than a thousand of you. You hurt him- you hurt any of them - and you're dead.'

'Sticks and stones,' said Carpenter.

Shepherd raised his gun to smash it across Carpenter's face, but held himself in check. There was nothing to be gained from hitting Carpenter. All he wanted was to get Liam back safely. He lowered the weapon. Carpenter grinned. 'Give him a phone,' said Shepherd, pushing Carpenter into the van. 'Let's get the hell out of here.'

Fletcher was picking his teeth with a playing card when the mobile rang. He answered it immediately. Carpenter was the only person who had the number. 'Yes, boss.'

'I'm out, Kim. Free and clear.'

'Great news, boss.'

'How are they?'

'They're behaving. I had to give the old man a slap but they're as right as rain now.'

Neary looked over from the sofa where he was stretched out reading the latest Harry Potter. Fletcher flashed him a thumbs-up.

'Right, here's what we do. Let the grandmother and the boy go. Give them a mobile and get them to call this number as soon as they're away from the house. Keep the old man with you until I call you again. Then, assuming everything's still okay, leave him and come and get me.'

'No sweat,' said Fletcher. The phone went dead. Fletcher smiled at Neary and shrugged. 'We let them go,' he said.

Neary sighed. 'Good,' he said. 'I never like hurting women and kids. Doesn't seem right, you know?'

Fletcher nodded.

Carpenter handed the mobile back to Shortt. 'Next time that rings, it'll be to say that the boy and his grandmother are free,' he said.

Shortt took the phone. 'Why don't we just slot him?' asked O'Brien.

'Because if I don't call back in ten minutes to say I'm okay, the old man gets shot,' said Carpenter.

O'Brien shrugged. 'We slot you then we hit the redial button and tell your guys you're dead so they might as well knock it on the head.'

'They'll still take care of him, whatever you say.'

'Leave him alone, Martin,' said Shortt.

'Who are you guys, anyway?' asked Carpenter.

'They're friends of mine, that's all you need to know,' said Shepherd.

Carpenter ignored him and continued talking to Shortt. 'I could use a crew like you.' He gestured at Shepherd. 'I don't know what he's paying you, but I can give you ten times as much.'

'He's not paying us a penny,' said O'Brien.

'Skills you've got, you could be rich men,' said Carpenter.

'This isn't about money,' said Shortt. 'Now, shut the fuck up.'

Carpenter settled back in the van. They waited in silence until the mobile rang. Shortt gave it to Shepherd. It was Moira, sobbing.

'Are you okay?' he asked.

Through her tears she told him that she and Liam were safe but that she didn't know where her husband was. Shepherd told her that Tom would soon be with her. 'What's happening, Daniel?' she asked.

'I'll explain later,' he said. 'First thing is to get you all home. Where are you?'

Moira sniffed. 'There's a road ahead of us. I saw a bus go by.'

'Go to the road and find out its name. Call me back and we'll come and get you.'

'I'll call the police,' said Moira.

'No,' said Shepherd quickly. 'Don't do that.'

'We've been kidnapped, Daniel. They had guns. They said they'd kill us.'

'Moira, please, listen to me. Whatever you do, don't call the police. I'll explain everything, I promise, but there's nothing the police can do right now. Trust me.'

'Daniel . . .'

'I mean it, Moira. Wait until Tom's back with you and I can talk it through with you. Just get to the road and call me.'

'All right . . .'

'Can I talk to Liam?' He heard the phone change hands.

'Dad?'

'Are you okay?'

'They hit Granddad. With a gun.'

'It's over now, Liam. You're safe.'

'Who are they, Dad?'

'Just bad guys. Don't worry, it's all over now. I'm coming to get you.'

'Are you out of prison?'

'Yes.'

'So you're coming home?'

'Definitely,' said Shepherd.

He cut the connection and held out the phone to Carpenter. 'Okay, now let my father-in-law go.'

Carpenter grinned. 'That's not how it works, Shepherd.' He held out his hand. 'I'll need some money for the call-box.'

O'Brien tossed him a handful of change.

'You screw me over and I'll hunt you down and kill you,' said Shepherd.

'Of course you will,' said Carpenter.

Armstrong and Mitchell opened the rear door of the van. They'd parked in a side-street a short walk from Brent Cross tube station. Carpenter climbed out. He turned to Shepherd. 'Be lucky,' he said, then jogged down the road towards the station.

Armstrong scratched his ski mask. 'Didn't even thank us,' he said.

'He's probably going to write,' said Mitchell.

'A card would be nice.' Armstrong pulled the door shut. 'Or flowers.'

Even though the road was clear behind the Rover, Stan Yates still switched on his indicator before pulling over to the side. Force of habit. Twenty-seven years as a professional driver and never an accident - not even a speeding fine - but what did he have to show for it? A clean driving licence and a one-bedroomed basement flat in east London, and somewhere up north an ex-wife and two kids who didn't know him. Didn't need to know him, either, not now his ex-wife had her fancy-man solicitor with his detached house and his yacht moored in Portsmouth.

Yates wanted a cigarette but the Rover was a smoke-free zone. His boss was a stickler for it and no amount of air-freshener would get rid of the smell. He made do with a stick of foul-tasting nicotine gum.

He ran his hands round the steering-wheel, enjoying the feel of the leather. As soft as a young woman's skin, he thought. Not that he'd touched many young women over the past few years, but all that would change soon. He'd quit his job, sell the flat, and move to the Philippines. He'd heard great things about the Philippines. How a man could live like a king, even on a government pension. How the women were soft, pretty, accommodating . . . and available. Yates's smile widened: he'd be arriving in the Philippines with more than his pension.

He stretched out his arms and arched his back. The Rover still smelt new. It was less than six months old and had done only three thousand miles. Ray Mackie didn't travel much - the car was more of a status symbol than anything else. A badge of office to show that he'd climbed the slippery pole and was now master of all he surveyed. Head of Drugs Operations. Mackie would be retiring with a real pension, thought Yates bitterly, and he earned real money. Not the pittance that HM Customs paid him.

Yates reached out and touched the gleaming wooden veneer around the car's instruments. Real craftsmanship, he thought.

A car pulled up behind the Rover. It was a BMW, a nice motor, the five series, thought Yates, but it didn't have the quality of the Rover. The BMW was a car to drive but the Rover was a car to be driven in. It was a crucial difference. Long before he'd become a professional driver, Yates had been a car salesman and had spent a year selling Rolls-Royces in a Mayfair showroom. He'd always been able to spot a serious buyer because they'd get into the back of the car, not the front.

Yates watched the BMW in his rear-view mirror. The headlights flashed. Yates frowned. Normally they came to him. He twisted in his seat. The men stayed in the BMW. He frowned. What the hell were they playing at? He switched off the engine and climbed out. The BMW's headlights flashed again.

Yates walked to the driver's side. The window wound down and Pat Neary grinned up at him. 'Stan the man,' he said.

'What's going on?' asked Yates. 'I'm not supposed to see you until next week.'

'Change of plan,' said Neary.

'There's no plan to change,' said Yates. 'I give you information on HODO's movements, you give me a brown envelope.'

'Our boss wants a word,' said Neary.

Kim Fletcher was in the passenger seat. He grinned. 'He'll make it worth your while, Stan.'

Yates looked up and down the road. There were headlights about a mile away but the car turned off to the left. 'What does he want to talk about?'

'He wants to pick your brains.'

'About what?'

'That's why he wants to see you, Stan. Says he doesn't want to work through me on this.'

Yates licked his lips. 'How much?'

'Didn't want to tell me, Stan, but he said he'd make it worth your while.' Fletcher sighed. 'Look, if you're not interested just tell me and I'll pass the message on.'

'I'm not saying I'm not interested,' said Yates hastily. 'It's just I've always worked with you.'

'And I work for him,' said Fletcher. 'It's his money you're salting away.'

Yates thought about it. 'Where?'

'He's waiting for you, not far away. Follow us in your motor, okay?'

Yates went back to his car, spat out his chewing gum, climbed in and started the engine.

The BMW flashed its headlights, then pulled out and drove on. Yates followed at a safe distance. His mouth was dry and he wanted a drink. Yates never drank while driving. In his twenty-seven years at the wheel he'd never so much as touched a glass of shandy while he was working. But as he followed the BMW through the darkness, he wanted a whiskey, badly. And he wanted a cigarette.

The promise of extra money was tempting, but Yates wasn't sure if he really wanted to meet Fletcher's boss. Fletcher had approached him two years earlier as Yates was sitting in a bar round the corner from his bedsit. Yates didn't like being at home: it felt too much like a prison cell. Six paces long, three paces wide, a single bed, a cheap chest of drawers and a wardrobe with a loose door, a microwave oven on a rickety table and a cramped shower room with a leaking toilet. Looking back, it had been a slow courtship. The occasional drink. A late-night curry. Fletcher listened to his complaints about his ex-wife, his job, his boss. Fletcher had always seemed interested in Mackie, who he was and whom he met. Then one night Fletcher slipped him an envelope containing five hundred pounds. It was a gift, Fletcher had said, just to help him out. Yates had taken it. That night Fletcher had asked some specific questions about Mackie. Where he lived. What car his wife drove. Yates had answered without hesitation. He'd had a few drinks, but it wasn't the alcohol that had loosened his tongue. It was the resentment. At the way his life had gone down the toilet. At his wife for stealing his children. At Mackie for lording it over him, treating him like shit.

The meetings with Fletcher had become less social: weekly debriefings, then a brown envelope full of cash. After six months Yates had asked for a rise and Fletcher gave him a thousand pounds a week. Pat Neary had started to attend the debriefing sessions. But Fletcher made demands, too. Specific questions about Mackie. Who he met. Where he went. Then, after another year, Fletcher had asked him to take the Rover to a garage in Shepherd's Bush in west London. It was a tiny place under a railway arch. A mechanic had fitted tiny microphones into the rear of the car and a micro tape deck in the glove compartment. The money went up to two thousand pounds a week and Yates had to hand over a bag of tapes at his weekly debriefings. There were no more late-night curries, no chatty drinking sessions, just a straightforward trade. Information on HODO for money. Lots of money. Yates felt no guilt, no shame. The way he looked at it, if his wife hadn't dumped him and run off with her fancy-man solicitor, if Mackie had treated him better, maybe he wouldn't have had to do what he'd done. But he'd made his bed and was quite happy to lie in it. Especially if that bed was a king-size in the Philippines with two beautiful young girls. Maybe three.

The BMW indicated a right turn. Yates indicated, too, even though there was nothing behind him. Yates had never asked what Fletcher and Neary were doing with the tapes and the information he gave them. He hadn't cared. Fletcher and Neary hadn't seemed over-bright and Yates had always assumed they were working for someone else. He popped a fresh piece of nicotine gum into his mouth and grimaced at the taste. He'd been meaning to switch to patches but kept forgetting to visit the chemist.

The BMW turned down a rutted track. Yates cursed as the Rover hit a pothole and mud splashed over the door. Mackie insisted that the car was always in pristine condition so he'd have to be up early in the morning, washing and polishing. The Rover's headlights picked out a wooden sign with faded paintwork. It was a limestone quarry. Yates was annoyed at the cloak-and-dagger. The meeting could just as easily have taken place in a pub.

The track curved to the right and Yates lost sight of the BMW. He flicked his headlights to main beam and huge tunnels of light carved through the night sky. Ahead he saw huge metal sheds with corrugated-iron roofs and two silos with conveyor belts running up to the top. The road curved back to the left and Yates saw the BMW. It was parked in front of a metal-mesh fence. Yates frowned. The gate into the quarry was padlocked and there was no other vehicle to be seen.

He brought the Rover to a halt and sat there, chewing slowly. Fletcher climbed out of the BMW and walked towards him, his hands in his coat pockets. Yates wound down the window. 'Where is he, then?' he asked.

'Pat's calling him on the mobile,' said Fletcher.

'What's the story?'

'He's a bit wary of being seen, that's all. Come on, stretch your legs.'

Yates climbed out of the Rover. Fletcher took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. Silk Cut. He offered it to Yates. Yates was going to decline, then changed his mind. He spat out his gum and took a cigarette. He shielded it from the wind with his cupped hands while Fletcher lit it for him.

Neary got out of the BMW and leaned against it, his hands in his pockets.

'How much is he going to give me, your boss?'

'Don't worry, he'll take care of you,' said Fletcher.

Yates shivered. 'I'm going to the Philippines,' he said. 'Fed up with this weather. Fed up with the whole country.' He took a long pull on his cigarette and blew a plume of smoke down at the ground.

'Don't blame you,' said Fletcher.

Neary waved for them to go over to the BMW.

'Now what does he want?' said Fletcher.

Yates started walking towards Neary. He took another pull on his cigarette and filled his lungs with smoke. It wasn't just the nicotine he missed, but the smoking. The feel of the cigarette in his hands, the inhaling, holding the smoke in his lungs, exhaling. Even the flicking of ash. They were all tactile sensations that were missing from the gum and the patches. He was going to start smoking again, he thought. So what if he got cancer down the line? He was just as likely to get hit by a bus while crossing the road. 'How long have you been smoking, Kim?' he asked.

Fletcher didn't answer. As Yates turned to see what Fletcher was doing, a .38-calibre bullet exploded into the back of his skull and blew away most of his face.

'Run it by me again, Spider. From the top.' Superintendent Hargrove leaned back in his chair as Shepherd told his story for the third time. Hargrove steepled his fingers under his chin and listened. They were in an interview room in Paddington Green police station at the junction of Harrow Road and Edgware Road. Shepherd didn't know why Hargrove had wanted to interview him at Paddington Green. It was the most secure police station in the country and the place where Special Branch interviewed suspected terrorists. Shepherd didn't know and didn't ask.

The story that Shepherd told the superintendent was close to the truth. The best lies always were. The interview room had a tape-recorder with two decks, but it wasn't switched on. It was an informal debriefing, Hargrove had said, but if it had been that, they could have chatted in a pub or a coffee shop. So Shepherd checked and cross-checked everything he told the superintendent. One slip and he knew the man would pounce.

The story he told was simple. Shepherd had been sitting in his cell. The door had been opened by a man in a ski mask. Then he'd been taken to Carpenter's cell. The man in the ski mask had knocked Carpenter out and forced Shepherd to carry him. That was pretty much the truth. Shepherd had no choice in that because it would all have been captured on CCTV.

They'd been taken to a van and driven out of the prison. Somewhere on the outskirts of London, Shepherd had been thrown out. Carpenter had gone off with the masked men. End of story. End of lie.

'Did they have accents?' asked Hargrove.

'Irish, maybe.'

'Maybe?'

'Everything was staccato. Rushed. It's hard to pin down an accent when all they say is "Run, run, run." But if I had to choose, I'd say Irish.'

'North or south?'

'I couldn't say. Hand on heart.'

'We found a discarded Russian RPG launcher. Fire and throw away.'

'That was how they got in?'

'Blew the gate off. It was part of a shipment from Bosnia that Six tracked during the late nineties. Disappeared when it got to Belfast. Red faces all round but no heads rolled.'

'IRA?'

'Real IRA. The nutters.' Hargrove leaned forward. 'So, why do you think the Real IRA would break into a Cat A prison to break out a drug-dealer and not rescue their own?'

Shepherd pulled a face. 'Money?'

'Carpenter paid them? Is that what you think? Terrorists for hire?'

'Overseas funding is down since September the eleventh. Carpenter's got millions stashed away.'

'So he pays politicals to break him out?'

Shepherd didn't say anything. Hargrove was either being deliberately vague or setting a trap for him.

'You ever have any dealings with the IRA in your former life?' asked the superintendent.

'Some,' said Shepherd. 'Provos mainly.' Hargrove knew exactly what Shepherd had done in the army, where he'd served and who with.

'What's your opinion of the Real IRA?'

'Like you said. Nutters.'

'Well trained?'

Shepherd exhaled deeply. 'Not really. They don't have the same discipline as the Provos or the training facilities.'

Hargrove nodded. 'That's my opinion - and, in fact, most people I've spoken to don't think the Real IRA would be physically capable of mounting an operation like the one at Shelton.'

Shepherd tried to look relaxed. Hargrove was an experienced interrogator so his body language wasn't necessarily an indication of what was going through his mind.

'At least we know who Carpenter's man in the Church was.'

'Who?'

'Stan Yates. He drove the Head of Drugs Operations. Carpenter knew about everyone Mackie met outside the office, every phone conversation he had from the car.'

'Yates is talking?'

'Yates is dead. At least, we assume he is. He went missing the day after the breakout. Car's gone too.'

'He might have done a runner.'

'His stuff's in his flat. Passport, money, personal stuff. Carpenter's had him killed, for sure.'

'Red faces at the Church, then.'

Hargrove chuckled. 'Mackie will probably be processing VAT refunds until he retires,' he said.

'And Rathbone was Carpenter's man inside Shelton?'

Hargrove nodded. 'We've arrested Stafford. Gosden has been suspended pending an inquiry. I doubt he'll ever run a prison again.'

Shepherd had no sympathy for the governor. If he'd done his job properly, Carpenter would never have been able to run his operation from behind bars.

'You didn't have any clue that Carpenter was planning to break out?' asked Hargrove.

Shepherd forced himself to relax. The interrogation was back on. 'None at all,' he said.

'And if you had?'

'Hypothetically?'

'Hypothetically,' said Hargrove.

'I'd have called the number you gave me. Or gone through the governor.'

'You wouldn't call anyone else?'

Shepherd frowned. 'Such as?'

'We ran a check on all phone calls made prior to the breakout. There was just one from you. To DC Jimmy Sharpe.'

Shepherd looked at the superintendent, keeping his eyes steady and his breathing regular. No looking away. No fiddling with his hands. No biting his nails. 'I wanted him to check on Liam.'

'I can understand that. You were worried about your boy. It's only natural. Did he go to see him?'

'I'm not sure. He said he'd write to me.'

'And he never wrote?'

Shepherd shook his head. 'It's water under the bridge now, isn't it?'

'It might be,' said Hargrove.

'Did you talk to Jimmy?'

'Oh, sure. He said he was about to call on your in-laws when the shit hit the fan. He never got the chance to see if Liam was okay.'

Shepherd nodded slowly. 'That sounds about right.'

'He was a bit vague about the other thing you asked him to do.'

'What was that?' asked Shepherd.

Hargrove smiled tightly. 'Your memory really is giving you problems, isn't it?' he said. 'I hope it's not early Alzheimer's.'

'I've been under a lot of pressure.'

'You said if there were any problems, he was to call a number you'd given him.'

'Don't remember saying that.'

'So you don't remember who Sharpe was to call?'

'Sorry. No.'

'Must be contagious,' said Hargrove. 'Sharpe said he couldn't remember the number either. Said he didn't call because there wasn't a problem.'

'There you are, then,' said Shepherd.

Hargrove studied Shepherd with unblinking brown eyes. Shepherd looked back at him. Now he knew what was coming. He forced himself to relax.

'You had a visitor. On the fifteenth.'

'I guess.' He smiled. 'You lose track of the days in prison.'

Hargrove was still staring at him. 'You applied for a visiting order. Joe Humphreys. You put him down as a cousin.'

'Bob Macdonald's cousin.'

'Who is he, Spider?'

'Just a friend.'

'Must have been important if you were prepared to compromise the operation to see him.'

'I needed to see a friendly face, banged up in there.'

Hargrove chuckled. 'Interesting choice of words,' he said. 'I had a look at the CCTV footage for the visiting room, the day Joe Humphreys visited.'

'And why would you do that?'

For a brief moment Hargrove's eyes hardened. 'Just to put my mind at rest. It wasn't the best picture quality in the world, but there wasn't much of his face to see anyway, not with the baseball cap and sunglasses.'

'It was a sunny day, when he visited.'

'Yeah, that's what I thought,' said Hargrove. 'How long have you known him?'

'A few years, I guess.'

'An elusive character, this Humphreys.'

'In what way?'

'He had photo ID to get in, but the address on the visiting order is a newsagent's in Battersea.'

'He moves around a lot.'

Hargrove settled back in his chair. 'Going back to the phone conversation you had with Detective Constable Sharpe. Can you remember what you said?'

Shepherd had been expecting the change in subject so he wasn't fazed by it.

'Not word for word.' A deliberate lie. Shepherd's memory was faultless when it came to conversations.

'Because I've listened to the conversation. Word for word.'

Shepherd kept on looking at the superintendent, kept a smile on his face, kept breathing regularly, kept his hands in his lap.

'I think your exact words to Sharpe were that if there was anything untoward, he was to call the number you'd given him and tell him what had happened. "But that's all. Don't start raising red flags." That's what you said. What did you suspect might have happened?'

'I just wanted reassurance that my boy was okay, that's all.'

'This man you wanted Sharpe to contact, he wasn't the mysterious Mr Humphreys, was he?'

'No.'

'You're sure of that? You being confused and stressed and everything.'

'I'm sure.'

'I'd like to talk to Mr Humphreys.'

Shepherd looked pained. 'Like I said, he moves around a lot.'

'You've always been one of my best men, Spider,' said Hargrove. 'I know you're not bent, so I've got to ask you, unofficially and off the record without the machine running, is there anything you want to tell me?'

Shepherd stayed silent.

'Anything at all?'

Shepherd shook his head.

There were two dozen DEA agents working out of the American embassy in Grosvenor Square, but Matt Willis was the one Major Gannon regarded most highly, not least because Willis had spent seven years as a Navy Seal and had seen action in the Gulf and Afghanistan.

The American's Special Forces background gave the two plenty to argue about whenever they met up, and often led to early morning drinking sessions in the Special Forces Club, behind Harrods in Knightsbridge.

Gannon arranged to meet Willis there at lunchtime, so they would not be tempted to embark on a drinking binge. The club was in an anonymous red-brick mansion block. The brass plaque identifying it had been taken down after 11 September and now passers-by had no idea that some of the most specialised soldiers in the world were inside the building, or that drunken SAS and SBS officers often hurtled down the stairs on metal trays - a makeshift toboggan run.

Gannon signed in and went up to the first-floor bar, all dark wood and leather armchairs. Willis was already sitting in a corner, his back to the wall, nursing a tumbler of whiskey and ice. He stood up, shook hands with Gannon, then slapped him on the back and ordered him a whiskey as the major dropped into an armchair. 'Busy?' asked Gannon, placing his case on the floor next to the chair.

'As ever,' said Willis. 'You?'

Gannon pulled a face. 'Sitting on my arse in the barracks,' he said.

'Really?' said Willis, grinning.

'The Provos are finished, what's left of the Republican movement are nutters, pretty much, and Al Qaeda aren't up to much here. All quiet on the western front.'

'Pity you missed out on Iraq.'

'Tell me about it. Three-quarters of the Regiment were there but all I did was babysit the bloody sat-phone.' He gestured at the case by his side. Wherever he went, Gannon had to take the Almighty with him.

The two men clinked their glasses and drank. 'Have you got time for lunch?' asked Gannon. The club's dining room offered the sort of food that soldiers enjoyed - good solid meals with no-fuss service. Willis shook his head. 'We've got a satellite conference with Langley this afternoon.'

'It was a lot easier before the spooks got involved in drugs,' said Gannon.

'It was the end of the Cold War did it,' said Willis. 'Had to find themselves a new role and drugs was the war of choice. Half the undercover operations we run come up against CIA agents. They treat us like we're the enemy.'

'Same with the cops and our spooks. Hate the sight of each other, and we end up in the middle.'

Gannon waved at the elderly barman for more drinks.

'So?' said Willis.

'What?'

'You didn't ask me here to complain about the security services, did you?'

Gannon grinned. Willis knew him too well. 'There's a drug-dealer we'd like to sort out. Gerald Carpenter.'

'I know the name.'

Gannon smiled. Of course the American knew the name. Carpenter was one of the biggest players in the country, and his escape from Shelton prison had been plastered across the newspapers for the best part of a week.

'Why didn't you sort him out when you had him?' asked Willis.

Gannon's eyes narrowed. 'What are you getting at, Matt?'

'Don't try to kid a kidder,' said Willis, evidently enjoying Gannon's discomfort. 'The papers might fall for that crap about the Real IRA breaking into Shelton to get their men out, but I'm a bit too old to believe in fairy stories.'

'So what do you think happened?'

'I haven't a clue. But I know one thing for sure. The Real IRA don't have the expertise to break into a shoebox, never mind a high-security prison.'

'And?'

'Hell, I don't know, Allan. Why don't you tell me? Four men in black use an RPG to blow their way into a high-security prison. They cut all communications, overpower a couple of dozen trained officers and disappear into the night with two prisoners from the remand wing. Sounds like special forces to me, buddy.'

'You might be right.'

'Then there was the other prisoner that got out with Carpenter. What was his name?'

Gannon shrugged.

'Macdonald,' said Willis thoughtfully. 'Armed robber. Seems strange company, doesn't it? A big-time drug-dealer and a small-time thief. I mean, if the Real IRA had gone to all that trouble, don't you think they'd have gone the extra mile and broken into the Special Secure Unit and got a few of the boyos out?'

Again, Gannon shrugged.

Willis leaned back in his chair and sipped his whiskey, watching Gannon over the top of his glass. 'So, where were you when it all went bang?' he asked.

'I was playing squash with my staff sergeant.'

'You win?'

'I did,' said Gannon.

'Interesting,' said Willis.

The barman brought over their drinks and they waited until he'd gone back to the bar before continuing their conversation. 'We'd like to undo the damage,' said Gannon.

'All the king's horses?'

'And all the king's men. Snag is, we don't know where Humpty Dumpty is.'

'But you're looking?'

'The Regiment doesn't have that expertise. And the security services don't usually react favourably to requests from us for help. We work for them, not vice versa.'

'And you're looking for the two of them? Carpenter and Macdonald?'

'Just Carpenter.'

Willis looked up at the ceiling. 'Why am I not surprised?' he mused.

'Just the big fish,' said Gannon.

'And you're assuming he's left the UK?'

'He'd be mad to stay,' said Gannon.

'And am I to assume that's the end of it, so far as MI5 and MI6 are concerned?'

'I wouldn't be coming to you if they were on the case,' said Gannon. 'Interpol are on the lookout for him, but Carpenter won't be travelling on his own passport.'

'What about his family?'

'They left the country the day after he was taken out of prison. Got on the Eurostar to Paris and vanished.'

Willis ran a finger round the lip of his glass. 'You want me to get our guys active on the case?'

'He killed one of yours.'

'I know he did, but there's no proof. If there was, we'd have had him back in the States.'

'Couldn't have been extradited, not with the death penalty a possibility.'

Willis grinned. 'There are ways around that. We'd have had him. But, like I said, there's the little matter of proof.'

'The cops and the Church had proof, but Carpenter came close to getting off.'

'Inside help, I hear,' said Willis.

'What big ears you have.'

Willis swirled his whiskey in the glass. 'So, going back to your request, you want the DEA to find Carpenter, and then what?'

'Put in a request for the Increment to go and get him.'

'That'll depend on where he is.'

'He won't be in the States, that's for sure.'

'And then what?'

'We take him back to prison.'

Willis took a long pull on his whiskey, his eyes never leaving Gannon's face. He put down his glass. 'Are you sure about that, Allan?'

Gannon looked at Willis levelly. 'Absolutely.'

'Cross your heart?'

Gannon grinned. 'And hope to die.'

The organist started to play a hymn that Shepherd could only dimly recall. Weddings and funerals were pretty much the only times that he walked on hallowed ground. The vicar closed his Bible and smiled reassuringly at the congregation. A small hand slipped into Shepherd's. 'Don't be sad, Daddy.'

Shepherd smiled down at his son. They were sitting in the front pew at the small stone church down the road from the house where Moira and Tom lived. They'd wanted their daughter buried close to them and Shepherd had agreed. His in-laws were sitting in the same pew on Liam's other side. Liam was in his school uniform, his shoes polished, his tie neat. Shepherd was wearing a suit.

'I'm not sad,' he said, and put an arm round his son to pull him close. That was a lie. He was sadder than he'd ever been in his life. He hadn't had time to grieve for Sue while he'd been in prison, but as soon as it was all over the enormity of what he'd lost had washed over him.

'What happens now?' asked Liam.

'We live our lives,' said Shepherd. 'We remember her all the time and we think about her and we miss her, but we have our lives to live.'

'And then we see her again in Heaven?'

'That's right,' said Shepherd.

'Are you still going to be a policeman?' asked Liam, squeezing his hand.

'I'm not sure,' said Shepherd, and that was true.

'I want to be a policeman when I grow up.'

'Really? Why?'

'Because they help people.'

Liam was right, Shepherd thought. Sometimes policemen did help people. And sometimes they killed them. And sometimes they brought misery to those around them.

He looked over his shoulder. At the back of the church he could see Major Gannon, in a dark suit, flanked by O'Brien, Shortt, Armstrong and Mitchell. Gannon nodded at Shepherd, who smiled thinly. It was reassuring to know that they were there, watching his back literally and figuratively. Shepherd didn't believe in angels with wings and harps, but guardian angels were a different matter and the five men at the back of the church were just that.

Shepherd walked out with his son and into the churchyard with Moira and Tom. Tom was wearing a tweed hat that hid the plaster covering his head wound. He had his arm round Moira's shoulders.

Outside, Shepherd stopped and stared up at the cloudless sky. It was a perfect summer's day. Birds were singing in the trees that bordered the churchyard. Butterflies flitted around yellow-flowered bushes on either side of the path that led from the church to the road. It was a perfect day for a wedding, thought Shepherd, but a lousy one for a funeral. Funerals should be held on rainy days, with cold winds blowing from the north and leaden skies overhead.

Gannon came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. 'I'm sorry about your loss, Spider,' he said. He was carrying the sat-phone briefcase in his left hand.

'Thanks, Major.'

'Do you know what you're going to do?'

'It's all up in the air.' He gestured at Sam Hargrove, who was walking to his car. 'He wants me back in harness.'

'You do good work,' said Gannon.

'Thanks.'

Gannon knelt down so that his head was level with Liam's. 'You should be very proud of your father.'

'I am,' said Liam.

Gannon ruffled the boy's hair. 'Is that your gran over there?' Liam glanced at Moira and nodded. 'Why don't you go over and see if she's all right?' said Gannon. 'I want a word with your dad.'

'Okay,' said Liam, and ran over to his grandmother.

Gannon straightened up. 'We've found him,' said Gannon.

'Where?'

'On a Colombian ship in the Atlantic. Used the ship's sat-phone to talk to his wife and kids and the NSA tracked it.'

'And?'

'We're going out to get him.'

'Officially?'

'Oh, yes. The DEA has formally requested that the Increment do the dirty.' The Increment was Gannon's unit, an ad-hoc pulling together of SAS and SBS troopers capable of carrying out tasks deemed too dangerous for the Security Services. On the far side of the graveyard, Moira held one of Liam's hands and Tom took the other. 'Do you want to come?' asked Gannon.

Shepherd watched Tom and Moira walk away with Liam. He knew that his place was with his son, being a father. But the adrenaline kicked in and his heart beat faster. He wanted to be a father, but he wanted to see Carpenter pay for what he'd done. Carpenter had kidnapped Liam and threatened to kill him. He'd forced Shepherd to help him escape. And he'd ordered the killing of Jonathon Elliott. Carpenter had to pay for his crimes, because if he was allowed to get away with them then everything Shepherd had done would count for nothing.

'Yes,' said Shepherd. 'Yes, I do.'

It was a vision from Hell, Shepherd thought. Black figures with protruding snouts, huge eyes, and massive humps on their backs, crouching by the walls, bathed in red light. Their chests rose and fell as they pulled air into their lungs through tubes that ran up to the roof. The troopers were all bent forward, not wanting their parachutes to rub against the fuselage of the Nimrod. They were cradling their Heckler & Koch submachine-guns, barrels pointing down. They were all kitted out with full high-altitude parachute life-support system equipment. All the men wore black balaclavas and helmets, oxygen masks, bottles and carriers, boots and insulated over-boots. They wore felt gloves close to the skin for insulation and leather ones for protection, goggles to protect the eyes from the icy wind. Strapped to their chests were the LCDs of their computerised navigation systems. Their black thermal suits had felt liners to protect them against the high-altitude sub-zero temperatures. A thermometer on the fuselage of the Nimrod gave the temperature as minus 48 degrees Fahrenheit, and once they jumped, the wind-chill factor would kick in. Without the protective clothing they'd be blocks of ice by the time they reached the target.

On their backs were parachute canopies, two-thirds larger than a standard sports parachute, attached to a standard army harness, with a smaller reserve chute at the front of the rig. They had handguns in holsters and knives strapped to their legs. The submachine-guns were on webbing harnesses. All the troopers had the Heckler & Koch MP5SD4, a silenced model with a three-round burst facility in addition to single and full automatic fire. It had no butt stock so it was less likely to get tangled in the parachute rigging, and the silencer meant they'd have the element of surprise. They had extra ammunition in pouches on their webbing belts. Everything, in fact, that the trooper about town needed to drop in from thirty thousand feet and kill people.

They'd all been weighed at the Royal Navy Air Station in Culdrose and equipment had been distributed to equalise the men's weights. The time taken for a high-altitude high-opening jump was dependent on weight. The heavier the man and his equipment, the quicker he'd descend, and for what Gannon had in mind it was vital they landed together.

Gannon was at the front of the plane, closest to the crew exit door. There was a loader there, a man in olive green overalls and a quilted jacket linked to the fuselage with thick webbing straps. The Nimrod was designed for high-altitude surveillance not for dropping two four-man SAS bricks out at six miles high, so the loader was far from happy about what he was being asked to do. He was more at home in a Hercules C-130 transporter. Like the SAS troopers, he was breathing from an oxygen mask connected to the plane's central system. The Nimrod had been depressurised ten minutes earlier, when they had come close to the dropping-off point. Two of the four jet engines had been switched off so that it could be slowed to below a hundred knots.

'Okay, communications check,' said Gannon, into his radio microphone. One by one the troopers went through their call signs. Shepherd was Alpha Two.

Then Gannon told them to set the altimeters they were wearing on their right wrists. Thirty-two thousand feet above sea level. It would take them almost an hour to reach the target and during that time they would travel forty miles. A needle in a haystack didn't come close to hitting a converted oil tanker sitting in the Atlantic Ocean, but the GPS-linked navigation system brought the odds down to an acceptable level. But there was no margin for error: they were doing the drop at night and if anyone missed the ship it was one hell of a long swim home.

The eight troopers split into twos and checked each other's equipment - the oxygen supply, the webbing straps, the Irvine height-finder and the device that would ensure all the chutes opened at precisely twenty-six thousand feet.

Shepherd checked Gannon's rig, then gave him the OK sign, a circle formed from the thumb and first finger of his right hand. Gannon checked Shepherd's then clapped him on the shoulder. He put his masked face close to Shepherd's ear. 'You okay?' he yelled, over the noise of the engines. 'Stay close, yeah?' He was shouting because if he used comms the rest of the troopers would hear what he was saying.

'I'll be fine,' Shepherd shouted back. He'd done high-altitude high-opening drops before, admittedly never on to a ship in the middle of the ocean with little in the way of a moon, but the principle was the same: exit the plane; hope the parachute opens; guide the canopy down to the target; don't break anything on landing. Simple.

The ship was a medium-sized oil tanker. There was a superstructure at the rear containing the bridge and crew accommodation, but all over the quarter-mile long deck there were hatches and pipes that could easily snap a leg or a hip. It would have been a difficult jump at the best of times. A HAHO drop would give them plenty of time to make the right approach, though, and the chutes were so big that they'd move in slowly. The alternative, HALO - high altitude, low opening - wouldn't give them time to make a safe approach and Gannon had discounted it, even though it would have reduced the risk of them being spotted in the air.

There was a third option - high altitude, no opening - but the SAS tried to avoid that manoeuvre as far as possible. A twelve-stone trooper with fifty pounds of kit travelling at a hundred and twenty miles an hour made a hell of a mess on impact. Shepherd flashed back to his first HALO jump high over Salisbury Plain in the West Country. He had been one of six on the course, under the wing of a grizzled sergeant who'd been with the Regiment for going on fifteen years. As the sergeant was lining up Shepherd and the others, he'd stuffed a large piece of parachute silk into Shepherd's pack. When it was Shepherd's turn to exit the plane, the sergeant had tapped his shoulder. Shepherd had turned, seen what looked like a ripped chute, and the sergeant had pushed him out. It was the longest two minutes of Shepherd's life, hurtling towards the ground at terminal velocity in full kit, not knowing if he had a faulty chute on his back. It had been a week before he'd seen the funny side.

The red light on the bulkhead flicked off and the amber one went on. The troopers took off the oxygen masks linked to the plane's supply and replaced them with their own, then shuffled towards the front of the plane. The loader nodded at Gannon and opened the crew exit door. Shepherd stood next to Gannon, breathing slowly but deeply, the adrenaline coursing through his veins, heart pounding, stomach churning as his body geared up for what was to come. Part of him was terrified at the thought of jumping out of a plane six miles above the ocean, but another part relished the fear. He was doing what he'd been trained to do.

The engine noise died down as the pilot pulled back on the throttles of the remaining two engines to idle and the nose of the plane went up. Shepherd almost lost his balance and Gannon reached over to steady him. The Nimrod shuddered as the pilot fought to keep it steady at the close-to-stalling airspeed. Shepherd looked through the open door at the black night sky, peppered with a million stars. Far below was a layer of thick cloud, from fifteen thousandfeet to six thousand, which meant gliding through nine thousand feet of close-to-freezing water vapour. That and the landing would be the most dangerous phases of the operation. It was easy to get disoriented in cloud and there was a risk of collision - dealing with tangled chutes in cloud at night was an interesting proposition that Shepherd was keen to avoid.

The amber light winked off and the green light went on. Gannon grinned at Shepherd, behind his mask, then jumped out of the exit door, thrusting out his arms and legs in a starfish pose. Shepherd took a deep breath and followed him. He gasped as the wind tore at him, pulling, twisting, pummelling. He fought to keep his arms and legs out as he fell through the slipstream. As soon as his descent stabilised he pulled in his arms and legs slightly, adopting the stable position, his back arched so that his centre of gravity shifted towards his stomach.

Gannon was to his right so Shepherd crabbed towards him, feeling the air pressure shift under his body. More of the troopers joined them and Gannon turned slowly, checking numbers until he was satisfied that everyone was in free fall.

They reached twenty-six thousand feet above sea level and the automatic opening devices kicked in. Shepherd felt a tug at his shoulders as his canopy deployed, then his arms snapped in and his legs went down as the chute filled with air and slowed his descent. He reached up for the toggles that controlled his direction and pulled the left one, heading after Gannon, then checked his jet-black canopy. It was fine, totally rectangular, no tangled lines. In the distance, the engines of the Nimrod were a dull roar.

Shepherd tilted his head down and looked at the chest-mounted liquid crystal display screen of his GPS system. It showed his position and, some forty miles to the south, a red dot that represented the tanker.

He looked over his shoulder. Behind him, he could see the rest of the troopers, their canopies unfurled. He did a quick count. So far so good.

The harness was biting into his groin and Shepherd kicked out with his legs, moving the webbing. He took a deep breath of oxygen and let it out slowly.

'You okay, Alpha Two?' Gannon's voice crackled in Shepherd's earpiece.

'No problems,' said Shepherd.

'Just sit back and enjoy the ride,' said Gannon.

Carpenter hated ships. He hated the cramped rooms, the constant motion, the never-ending distant throb of massive engines. Bonnie had been nagging him for years to take her on a luxury cruise, but he'd steadfastly refused. There was a certain irony in the fact that the safest place for him had turned out to be a tanker prowling around the Atlantic.

His place there had been arranged by Carlos Rodriguez, a Colombian with whom Carpenter had dealt for more than a decade. The Rodriguez cartel had links to the Colombian government and was one of the country's biggest and most successful cocaine and heroin dealers. The tanker had been Rodriguez's idea, a floating warehouse that went into port twice a year for maintenance, and only when it was empty. It was a quarter of a mile long with facilities for two dozen men. Drugs were flown out from South America and dropped into the sea where they were picked up by small speedboats sent out from the tanker, then taken aboard and kept in compartments at the bottom of the hold. In the event of a raid, the compartments could be emptied, sending the drugs to the bottom of the ocean, far out of reach.

The tanker had once been owned by a Greek shipping magnate but now sailed under a Panamanian flag. Buyers, only people known to Rodriguez, paid offshore and collected from the tanker in their own boats. Rodriguez shipped drugs worth more than a quarter of a billion dollars a year through it. It was a perfect system. Usually there were only two dozen men on the vessel, a crew of ten and fourteen armed guards, and Rodriguez had vetted them all personally. It was equipped with state-of-the-art radar and sonar so that a surprise attack by the DEA or Customs was virtually impossible. But Rodriguez had more than enough law-enforcement officials on his payroll to ensure that no one took him by surprise. He was untouchable, and as long as Carpenter remained on the tanker, so was he. He was arranging for a new passport to be sent out from the UK, based on a whole new identity. The paperwork would be faultless, reflecting the premium price he was paying. Once he had it he would go to Brazil for extensive facial surgery. When his new identity was in place, he'd set about removing the old one from the Police National Computer in the UK. It would cost an arm and a leg, but it would be money well spent. Without his prints on file, he'd be able to disappear for ever.

He'd have to stay in South America - Europe would never be safe for him and the United States would be out of bounds. But there were plenty of countries in South America where a man with money could live in privacy. Bonnie and the children could join him eventually. He would buy them new identities, and Bonnie had been suggesting she had a facelift anyway. It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was far better than twenty years behind bars.

Carpenter appreciated the irony that his present living space was similar to his cell at HM Prison Shelton. His cabin wasn't much bigger and he had no choice in his companions. There was little natural light unless he went up on deck, and the bulkhead doors were like the cell door that had clanged shut on him at night. The food was better- Rodriguez had hired a top Argentinian chef - and he could use the well-equipped gym whenever he wanted. There were more TV channels than he had had in Shelton, too: the tanker had a state-of-the-art satellite system and a library containing thousands of DVDs. There was plenty of alcohol, too. But it was still a ship, and Carpenter hated ships.

He was sitting in the mess, a large room with a pool table, a big-screen television and several large sofas. Five Colombians were playing poker at a card table, laughing loudly and drinking a bottle of Chivas Regal. They were playing with stacks of hundred-dollar bills and their Kalashnikovs were close at hand. The Colombians were for protection; the crew were Ukrainian.

One of the crew came in and barked at the Colombians in fluent Spanish. He was in his fifties, his face flecked with broken blood vessels, his nose almost blue from years of hard drinking. He spoke passable English but had said barely ten words to Carpenter since he'd arrived on board. Like the rest of the crew, he seemed to resent Carpenter's presence. The only man who'd been friendly had been the captain, a guy in his thirties who wore a pristine white uniform and a peaked cap. He saw Carpenter as a chance to practise his English, but Carpenter had soon got bored with the man's interminable conversations about twentieth-century novelists and avoided him when he could.

The Colombians got up, grabbing their weapons as they headed up to the bridge.

Carpenter went up to the bridge. He asked the captain if he could join him. The bridge was the captain'sdomain and only the crew or invited guests were allowed in. The captain nodded. He was looking aft through a large pair of binoculars. Two other crew members were with him, monitoring the radar and sonar systems, and the five Colombians stood at the windows, their Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders, talking to each other in Spanish.

'What's the excitement?' asked Carpenter.

'Plane, coming from the north,' said the captain. 'It was up at thirty thousand feet but it started descending and now it's heading back this way under the cloud cover.'

'What sort of plane?'

'We don't know, but it's moving fast so it's not a small plane. Maybe a jet.'

'Is it a problem?'

'It's too big to be a seaplane and even the Americans wouldn't blow us out of the water, but it might be a spotter plane. Surveillance.'

'DEA?'

'Or Customs. Who knows?'

'What will you do?'

'Watch it. We'll only dump the gear if we see a boat approaching.'

'How much is on board?'

The captain grinned. 'A lot.'

Carpenter stood up. 'If you even get a whiff of a ship heading this way, I want off this tub,' he said.

'Don't worry. No one has ever tried boarding us at sea,' said the captain. 'We are in international waters so we are free to defend ourselves,' he chuckled, 'and we are well equipped to do that.'

Carpenter knew he wasn't joking. The Colombians were all crack shots. He'd seen them throw oil drums into the sea and fire at them for target practice. And he'd been told that there was a major arms cache below decks with enough firepower to fend off anything short of a full military attack, including Stinger surface-to-air missiles. 'Can you see it?'

'Not yet.' The captain turned and spoke in rapid Ukrainian to one of his crew, who answered him.

'It's down to four thousand feet and descending,' said the captain.

'Engine trouble?' asked Carpenter.

'They're not broadcasting on the emergency frequency, and it looks as if they're under power,' said the captain. 'Don't worry, Mr Carpenter. One plane isn't going to do us any harm. And if it looks as though it is, we'll shoot it down.'

The cloud was disorienting. Shepherd couldn't see more than ten feet in front of him. The parts of his face that were exposed were ice cold and the surface of the black thermal suit was soaked. His body was dry, though, and surprisingly warm.

There was no sense of movement. He felt as if he was suspended in fog. And other than the occasional static through his earpiece, it was eerily silent. He looked up but could barely make out the black canopy above his head. It was a GQ-360 nine-cell flat ramair canopy that was designed to be virtually silent as it moved through the air. He checked his watch: forty-four minutes since he'd jumped out of the Nimrod. He checked his altimeter: eight thousand feet. They should reach the ship in sixteen minutes. Give or take one minute, and they'd miss it by a quarter of a mile.

He wiggled his toes inside his boots, then worked his fingers in his gloves, keeping the circulation going. The last thing he needed was cramp as he came in for landing.

'Comms check,' said Gannon, in his earpiece. 'Alpha One.'

'Alpha Two,' said Shepherd.

One by one the remaining eight troopers sounded off.

Shepherd looked down past his feet. He saw wisps of cloud, and then suddenly he was through it, hanging in the darkness. Above him, there was cloud, and far below, the blackness that was the sea. In the distance he could see Gannon's canopy, a dark shape in the night sky. He checked his LCD display. Their forward speed had slowed while they'd been in the cloud, but that had all been calculated for. Hopefully. According to the computerised display, the target was eleven miles away.

The captain swept his binoculars right, then stopped. 'I see it,' he said. 'It is a jet. Four engines. It's big, too.'

'Any markings?' asked Carpenter.

'Can't see any. And I can't make out the number.'

'Not Army or Customs?'

'It looks like a Nimrod, but it's flying close to stall speed,' said the captain.

'I thought Nimrods were for high-altitude surveillance,' said Carpenter.

'They are. Six miles and above.'

One of the Colombians said something in Spanish and the other four laughed. Another took out a cigar, but before he could light it the captain spoke to him. The Colombian glowered and put away the cigar.

'So what the hell's it playing at?' asked Carpenter.

'Could be lost,' said the captain. 'Navigation system might have failed and they've dropped down below the cloud to get their bearings.' He muttered to one of the crewmen, who reached for a radio microphone. 'We'll try to make radio contact with them,' said the captain.

Carpenter stared into the darkness. He was getting a bad feeling about the plane.

'Alpha One, I have visual on the target.' Gannon's voice crackled in Shepherd's earpiece.

Shepherd peered into the darkness. He could see Gannon's black canopy in the distance, swooping down like a giant bat. But he couldn't see the tanker. He looked down at his LCD display. The red dot was less than a mile away. He checked his altimeter. Two thousand feet. That should be more than enough height to reach the target. He looked back to Gannon, then beyond. Lights. Red, green and white. As he stared at them he could make out the shape of the tanker. It was sailing towards them at an angle. The superstructure was at the rear.

'Alpha Two, I have visual,' said Shepherd, into his mike.

Then Shepherd saw movement in the air, several miles beyond the tanker. It was the Nimrod, flying low. If Gannon's plan worked, everyone on the ship would now be staring aft and the troopers should be able to land without being seen.

'Alpha Three has visual.'

Gannon's chute swung to the right, lining up with the tanker. Shepherd waited ten seconds, then did the same. He concentrated on keeping his breathing slow and even. It was easy to hyperventilate under stress.

'Alpha Four has visual.'

Shepherd flexed his fingers on the toggles that controlled the direction of the chute. The key to landing without getting hurt was all down to the toggles. Getting the direction just right, slowing the descent, emptying air from the chute so that it deflated. Done right, it should be as easy as stepping off a chair. Done wrong, he'd slam into the deck or, worse, miss it.

'Alpha Five has visual.'

The troopers were stacking up behind Gannon, drifting down towards the tanker. Shepherd wondered how many had done a similar jump before. The SAS regularly trained at HALO and HAHO, but during his days in the Regiment they'd never jumped on to a ship.

'Alpha Six has visual.'

By the time the last trooper had the tanker in his sights, Gannon was only two hundred metres from the prow. Shepherd used small tugs on the toggles to keep his descent even. Suddenly he was no longer flying over waves but over metal plates, glistening wet, pipes and manholes, welds and rivets. Ahead he saw Gannon's chute flare, then heard a thump as Gannon hit the deck and rolled, the chute flapping like a huge, dying bird. Gannon had hit midway down the length of the tanker, more than a hundred metres from the superstructure.

Shepherd pulled hard on both toggles and let his knees give as his boots hit the deck. He let go of the toggle in his right hand and hauled on the one in the left, deflating the canopy. He heard a dull thud behind him. Alpha Three. He grabbed armfuls of black silk, rolled it up tight and unclipped his harness. Gannon ran over, bent low. They shoved their chutes under a pipe and unclipped their oxygen masks. 'Nice job, Spider,' said Gannon, clapping him on the back.

Shepherd took off his mask and unclipped the oxygen cylinder. 'Hell of a ride,' he said.

'You should knock the cop job on the head and come back to the Regiment.' Gannon's face hardened and Shepherd realised the major had remembered why Shepherd had left the SAS in the first place. Sue.

Shepherd waved away any apology that the major was about to make. 'Let's get to it,' he said.

Another bump. Alpha Four. Shepherd looked up. The six remaining troopers were lined up in formation, coming in to land.

Shepherd unhooked his MP5 from the webbing. Gannon had made it clear at the briefing that no one was to be hurt unless absolutely necessary. The mission was to apprehend Carpenter and take control of the vessel. The tanker was then to be sailed into US waters. The Americans would take it and the drugs, the British would apply for Carpenter to be extradited to London. Everybody would win. Except Carpenter and Carlos Rodriguez.

Gannon waited until all of the troopers had landed, stowed their chutes and oxygen tanks, and checked their weapons. Then he motioned for them to head towards the superstructure. He and Shepherd led the way. Four of the troopers moved across to the port side, and the second brick took starboard. They moved slowly, keeping low.

It took them several minutes to reach the base of the three-storey superstructure. Three hatches led from the deck into it, one each on the port and starboard sides, and one in the centre, facing towards the bow. Four men headed for the port, four went starboard, and Gannon and Shepherd took the centre. They opened the hatches and slipped inside, Heckler & Kochs at the ready.

The captain took his binoculars away from his eyes and spoke to the communications officer in Ukrainian. He replied tersely.

'No communication,' the captain translated for Carpenter's benefit but the officer's shaking head had already told him that much.

In the distance, the plane was climbing again, showing that it wasn't having engine problems.

'Whatever the problem was, they seem to have sorted it,' said the captain.

'And there's no ship heading our way?'

'Nothing within fifty miles,' said the captain.

'And they weren't talking to anyone?'

'No radio communications,' said the captain. 'The direction they were heading, they might not even have seen us.'

Carpenter nodded thoughtfully. He still had a bad feeling about the plane. He left the bridge and headed down to the mess. It was deserted, but through the open doorway he could see half a dozen Colombian heavies sitting at a table. Roast meat was piled high on a platter and they were helping themselves to rice. Three more Colombians came up from the cabins. They had handguns in shoulder holsters and were all wearing skin-tight T-shirts with designer jeans. They headed into the canteen. They, too, regarded him as a nuisance.

As Carpenter turned for the stairs to the cabins, he heard footsteps. Several people, moving quickly. He frowned. There were five guards on the bridge, nine in the canteen. That was the full complement. The crew who weren't on the bridge were in the engine room.

Carpenter dropped behind a sofa, his heart pounding. He knew instinctively that the men running up the stairs were connected with the mysterious plane. And that they meant trouble.

Major Gannon had obtained structural plans of the tanker from its original builders, a huge industrial conglomerate in South Korea. They'd rehearsed the storming of the superstructure a dozen times in the Stirling Lines barracks in Hereford with troopers from the counter-revolutionary warfare wing playing the part of the Colombian foot-soldiers. Gannon had never managed to seize the objective without taking fewer than two casualties. But the counterrevolutionary warfare wing troopers were the best-trained soldiers in the world bar none, and the Colombians on the tanker were just thugs with big guns.

Shepherd had been at the briefing and at the rehearsals. Twice he'd taken a fictional bullet in the chest. Not that it worried him: that was the purpose of rehearsals, to iron out all the kinks so that no one got hurt during the real thing. Now he followed Gannon up the narrow stairway that led from the deck to the crew's quarters. Troopers were already moving through the cabins. All were empty. Four troopers headed down towards the engine room.

The rest moved up the stairs to the mess and canteen level, with Gannon and Shepherd.

They rushed through the mess area, sweeping their weapons from side to side, and heard laughter from the canteen. The lead trooper burst through the open doorway, telling the men to get down on the floor. One of the Colombians got to his feet, grabbing for his Kalashnikov. Two more troopers piled into the canteen. One let off a three-round silenced burst and the Colombian slammed into the wall. The rest raised their hands as their colleague slid to the floor in a pool of blood. The troopers pushed them to the ground and started to bind their hands and legs with plastic ties.

Shepherd did a quick head count. One dead, eight captured. No home team casualties. So far so good.

Gannon waited until all the Colombians had been bound and gagged, then motioned for three of the troopers to move up the stairs to the bridge. The fourth stood guard over the Colombians. There were two stairways, at either end of the mess room. The three troopers went up the right-hand side, Gannon and Shepherd the left.

As Shepherd reached the bridge he heard the muffled explosions of a three-shot burst and saw a Colombian slump to the floor over his Kalashnikov. The captain was standing with his hands held high. Another Colombian had his weapon up and was about to fire. Gannon let loose a burst and the Colombian spun round, blood spurting from his neck.

There was more gunfire from Shepherd's left and a third Colombian slammed against the window and fell to the floor, blood pouring from his chest. The last two dropped their weapons and raised their hands.

Shepherd looked round the bridge. There was no sign of Carpenter.

Gannon went over to the captain and jabbed him with the barrel of his MP5. 'The Brit, where is he?'

'Downstairs.'

'Where downstairs?'

'I don't know,' said the captain. 'He left just before you got here. Who are you?'

Gannon turned to Shepherd and nodded for him to go downstairs.

'Who are you?' asked the captain. 'Americans?'

Gannon grinned at him. 'If we were Yanks half our men would have been hit by friendly fire.'

'You are SAS?'

'Just do as you're told, Captain, and you'll be fine.'

'I am just a seaman, doing my job.'

'You can argue that with the DEA when we get to port,' said Gannon, 'but if you make a move to dump any of your cargo I'll personally tie you to an anchor and throw you in after it.'

Shepherd headed for the stairs. The mess was still empty so he went to the canteen. The eight tied Colombians were struggling in vain to get loose.

Their Kalashnikovs had been piled on the table. Shepherd frowned. An SAS trooper was supposed to have been standing guard over them. He pushed the door open. The trooper was lying on the floor, face down.

Shepherd cursed. He stepped out of the canteen and felt the cold barrel of a gun press against his neck. 'You couldn't leave well alone,' said Carpenter.

'It's over, Gerry.'

'Drop your weapon.'

'I can't. It's on a sling.'

'Let go of it.'

Shepherd let the MP5 slide through his fingers. It swung loose on its webbing.

'You're my ticket out of here, Shepherd. Again.'

'They won't wear that, Gerry. This is officially sanctioned. The government wants you back. The Americans want the boat.'

Shepherd raised his hands and turned slowly. Carpenter stepped away from him. He was holding a blood-smeared Kalashnikov. 'You're not taking me in,' said Carpenter.

'We'll see about that,' said Gannon. He was standing in the middle of the mess room, his MP5 aimed at Carpenter's chest.

'I'm not going back to prison,' said Carpenter.

'That's your call,' said Gannon.

As Carpenter looked across at Gannon, Shepherd took hold of his MP5 and slid his finger on to the trigger.

'I want off this boat,' said Carpenter.

'That's what we're here for,' said Shepherd.

Carpenter looked back at Shepherd. 'You're not taking me back. You were there. You've seen what it's like. I can't take twenty years.'

'If you can't do the time . . .'

'Fuck that!' said Carpenter.

'No one forced you to do what you did,' said Shepherd. 'You made choices every step of the way. You dealt drugs, you had Jonathon Elliott killed, you had Rathbone and Yates killed, you tried to kill Sandy Roper, you kidnapped my son. Did I forget anything?' He frowned. 'Oh, yeah, you tried to shoot me.'

'I should have done it when I had the chance,' said Carpenter.

'One of life's missed opportunities,' said Shepherd. 'It's over, Gerry. They've got Fletcher and he's singing like a canary. Can't shut him up.'

'Bullshit.'

'Pat Neary, too. The guys they paid to break into Roper's house got caught in a black-on-black shooting in Harlesden and they gave up Fletcher to cut themselves a deal. And Digger's become very co-operative. Selling you down the river and Tony Stafford, too.'

The colour drained from Carpenter's face. 'So it's over,' he said quietly. 'Bar the shooting.'

'Pretty much.'

'I could shoot you now,' said Carpenter. 'Easy as pie.'

'It's an option.'

'You'd get off one shot, so you'd better make it count,' said Gannon coldly, 'because if you fire that weapon, I will take you out.'

'That's all it would take, one shot,' said Carpenter.

'You'd be firing at an unarmed man,' said Gannon.

'What?' said Shepherd.

Gannon continued to stare at Carpenter. 'You didn't think we'd give him live rounds, did you? Spider here's out of practice, he'd be a liability firing real bullets.'

Carpenter frowned. 'Bullshit.'

'Not that shooting unarmed men is a problem with you, is it?' said Shepherd. 'Jonathon Elliott didn't have a gun. Neither did Sandy Roper.'

'If you're going to shoot anyone, I'd be the one to aim at,' said Gannon.

'I don't care about you,' said Carpenter.

'Making it personal is a big mistake,' said Gannon.

'Shut up!' shouted Carpenter. 'Let me think!' He kept the Kalashnikov levelled at Shepherd's stomach.

Shepherd stared back at him. Gannon's revelation that his MP5 was loaded with blanks was worrying, but Shepherd figured it was a bluff. But he had one secret that he was keeping from Carpenter: underneath the black thermal suit he was wearing a Kevlar vest. The Kalashnikov was a powerful weapon and Carpenter was up close and personal, but with luck the vest would hold. It would hurt like hell but the bullets shouldn't penetrate.

'There's nothing to think about, Gerry,' said Shepherd. 'It's over. Put the gun down.'

'If I go back to prison, I'll never get out,' said Carpenter. 'You know that. The drugs charge. Kidnapping. Conspiracy to murder. Perverting the course of justice. They'll throw away the key.' His finger was tightening on the trigger.

'You've no choice,' said Shepherd.

'There's always a choice,' said Carpenter. 'You've just got to have the balls to make it.'

'Don't do this,' said Shepherd.

Carpenter had the Kalashnikov at waist height and tilted it so that the barrel was pointing at Shepherd's head.

'Lower your weapon or I will fire,' said Gannon. There was no doubt that he meant what he said.

'You understand, don't you?' asked Carpenter, his eyes still on Shepherd. He was ignoring Gannon.

'Yeah,' said Shepherd. 'I understand.'

'Fuck it,' said Carpenter.

'Yeah.'

Carpenter swung the gun towards Gannon. Gannon pulled the trigger of his MP5. Three bullets thudded into Carpenter's chest, dead centre. He fell back, three red flowers blossoming on his shirt. The Kalashnikov clattered to the floor. Carpenter's legs buckled and he fell to his knees, then slumped on to his back. His chest juddered, bloody foam frothed between his lips, and then he was still.

'It was his choice,' said Gannon. 'He wanted it that way.'

'I know,' said Shepherd flatly.

'He could have surrendered. He could have come with us.'

'I know,' saidShepherd. But he also knew how Carpenter had felt. There wasno wayhe could have spent twenty years in prison. That went for Shepherd as much as Carpenter. Life was for living. It was about being with family and friends. Watching your children grow. Being with people you loved. And if you couldn't do that, then maybe a bullet was better.

He turned and walked back to the bridge.

'We gave you real bullets,' Gannon shouted after him.

'I know,' said Shepherd.