Crossfire (36 page)

His body went into spasm, and eventually
went limp. I kept the hosepipe there for a while
longer, then reached down and felt for a pulse on
the side of his neck. There was nothing.

I pulled away the curtain. His face was frozen
in a silent scream. I watched it for movement.
He'd stopped breathing. His mouth was full of
water. More dribbled from his nose.

Headlights bounced through the night sky just
the other side of the rise.

I skirted the back of the Mondeo and jumped
over the fence. I started to run. Not having
soldiers on the border any more wasn't just an
advantage to drug-runners.

As I melted into the darkness, brilliant blue
flashes lit up the yard.

I carried on running.

I waited at the bottom of the wall as the two
flashing blue lights rushed past and turned left,
away from me.

The wall wasn't as high as I remembered it. I
could probably have managed without the aluminium
ladder.

I looked up. There was no security lighting,
but the moon was out. There was no sign of razor
wire glinting along the top.

I put the ladder against the wall and started to
climb. It wasn't long before I was sitting on the
coping. I stopped, looked and listened. It was just
after two in the morning, and there was just the
occasional car or truck, but it would take only
one pair of eyes to spot me. There might even be
security inside. I didn't know; there hadn't been
time to do a proper recce.

I leant down and stretched out my hand. A
small one gripped mine. She was light, and it
didn't take much effort to lift her up beside me.
'Wait there a minute. Just sit quietly.'

The next one up didn't need help. It wasn't
long before we were all sitting in a row. I leant
down, grabbed the top of the ladder and hauled
it up, then swivelled on my arse and
lowered it the other side.

We came down in reverse order.

Moonlight glimmered on a strip of grass, and
then we were on concrete. It was only a few steps
more to the water's edge.

'Nick, can you hold this a sec? I just want to
say something to Ruby.'

Tallulah smiled and handed me the container.
She knelt down and gave her stepdaughter a hug.
The big shock of hair framed a slightly happier
face than she'd worn last time I saw her.

I'd made contact with Dom two days later.
They'd gone straight to Siobhan in Donegal and
had the great love-fest reunion.

The media coverage was as it should be. The
rounds recovered from the bodies confirmed that
it was another drugs-related incident, ex-UDA
versus ex-PIRA. Forensics revealed that the AKs
that had fired them had some previous. They had
killed British soldiers in the eighties.

The dead men were discussed at length, but
there wasn't a single mention of the Yes Man.
There never would be. Every man and his dog, in
both governments, would take his story to their
graves.

Siobhan was with Finbar in Arizona now,
tinkling bells and chanting. Some kind of trendy
New Age rehab woo-woo, Dom said.

He was back in Afghanistan with Kate, his new
right-hand girl. Basma had arranged a meet
between Dom and the Taliban dealer, who was
very pissed off that his British contacts
had gone to ground and backed away from their
agreement. It would have been worth getting
satellite TV just to watch Dom's programme go
out. I said I'd pop in and see the three of them in
Dublin when it aired, but I knew I wouldn't. I
was going to do this one last little thing, and then
I'd move on.

'Ruby, remember how we looked at the films
of you and Daddy playing at this pool?'

I watched their moonlit reflections on the surface
of the water.

'He's mostly in the garden now, so he'll always
be with us, in all the places he loved most. But
remember how he loved to swim here?'

Too right. In my mind's eye I could see the big
stupid grin across Pete's face.

'Nick?'

'Here you are.'

I handed Ruby the urn, and watched as she
unscrewed the lid. She had to turn it almost
upside down before the tiny handful of ash fell
out and spread across the water.

Tallulah put a hand on my arm. 'Nick, thank
you. For everything . . .'

One of Dom's first jobs had been to bang four
hundred thousand dollars into an account in
Kabul, the same amount as I'd invested in Ruby's
trust fund. Well, the Yes Man had offered. It had
cost five per cent to deposit and move, a bit more
than a drug-dealer would pay, but worth every
penny.

Basma was going to take a small percentage for
her refuge, and administer the rest for Magreb's
widow. She'd promised to make sure the four
boys received the education the silly fucker had
been so passionate about. They'd be doctors one
day, maybe.

Everyone's future seemed secure. Except mine.
I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but I'd have
to get my skates on. My invoice to Moira for
helping Dom with his Kabul research was still in
dispute, and I was skint.

That $50 million bounty on bin Laden's head
was beginning to look awfully fucking tempting.

THE END

At last, the long-awaited sequel
to the international bestsellers,
BRAVO TWO ZERO and
IMMEDIATE ACTION

They were like a band of brothers...

In 1983 Andy McNab was assigned to B
Squadron, one of the four Sabre Squadrons
of the SAS, and within it to Air Troop,
otherwise known as

This is Andy McNab's gripping account of
the time he served in the company of a
remarkable group of men – from the day,
freshly-badged, he joined them in the
Malayan jungle, to the day, ten years later,
that he handed in his sand-coloured beret
and started a new life.

From the pen of the man who invented the
modern military memoir comes another
storming battering ram of thrill-packed,
unforgettable drama. Never before revealed
operations and heartbreaking human stories
combine to create a new classic of the genre
and a book that takes us back to where it all
began...

Coming in September 2008
from Bantam Press