"Payback" - читать интересную книгу автора (McNab Andy)

6

Fergus and Danny were still barely speaking when they emerged from the house the following morning.

Danny was first out, and as Fergus began to turn the first of the three locks that secured the front door, his grandson pulled his own set of keys from his jeans pocket. Every day it was the same monotonous routine – it was driving Danny insane. Well, today would be different: he would unlock the shutter. His grandfather would moan and grumble and give him another lecture about sticking to SOPs, but Danny was in the mood for a fight.

He squatted down, stuck the key into the padlock and looked up, expecting a shout, but Fergus was still concentrating on securing the front door. Danny grinned and turned the key in the padlock. It sprang open and he unhooked it from the steel hoop.

Fergus heard the metallic scraping noise and turned to see Danny squatting with both hands on the lip of the shutter. Instantly he knew it had been opened since locking up the previous night.

‘No!’ he yelled, and as Danny started to straighten and the shutter began to rise, his grandfather dived at him. He crashed into Danny’s thighs and they both went sprawling to the ground.

Danny lay on the pavement, gasping and winded, as Fergus crawled on top of him, pinning him to the ground, waiting for the explosion.

It didn’t come.

As Fergus looked at the shutter, now raised to just below knee height, Danny turned his head and saw the fishing line fixed to the steel hoop. He’d learned enough over the past few months to know it meant mortal danger.

‘Get to the ERV,’ hissed Fergus. ‘Now!’

It was no time to argue. As soon as Fergus rolled away, Danny sprang to his feet and ran.

Fergus crawled over to the shutter, knowing only too well what was clamped to the inside. He knew too that none of the team responsible for planting it would still be in the area. They were long gone.

Fergus pulled out his Leatherman and carefully cut through the fishing line before lying down on his back and moving his head and shoulders under the shutter. Slowly he raised his hands and gently pulled the IED free. He rolled onto one side and cut the two leads attached to the battery before removing it and throwing it into the garage. The IED was safe now there was no power to initiate the detonator.

Fergus crawled all the way into the garage, then stood up with the Tupperware box in both hands and stared at the plastic explosive. It might come in useful some day.

The ERV brought back bad memories for Danny. Memories of a ramshackle, tumbledown, deserted barn in remote Norfolk.

The barn had been the last ERV where Danny had waited for Fergus. On that occasion Fergus didn’t show, but Danny hadn’t been alone during those six long hours. He’d had an overweight, middle-aged freelance reporter by the name of Eddie Moyes for company.

Eddie had been trailing Danny and Fergus, on the hunt for a world exclusive story about an on-the-run ex-SAS soldier, convinced it would get him back where he belonged: in the big time.

And after Fergus’s capture Danny, with Elena’s assistance, had talked Eddie into helping them in their attempt to rescue his grandfather. Eddie had reluctantly agreed; he couldn’t bear the thought of losing his exclusive – or of the two teenagers walking into unknown and terrible danger.

So he’d helped, against his better judgement. ‘I’m a coward,’ he told them. ‘If it starts to go wrong you won’t see my arse for dust.’

Eddie had played a massive part in the rescue; if it hadn’t been for him they would never have got away. But it was the last thing he ever did. Danny had watched helplessly as one of George Fincham’s team put two bullets into the back of his head.

Danny was thinking of Eddie as he waited at the ERV. It wasn’t the first time he’d thought about him recently. He dreamed about him often – always the same dream, a nightmare in full colour.

Eddie is running from the gunman and Danny is running towards him, trying to save him but knowing it’s hopeless, getting closer and closer as the pistol slowly rises in the gunman’s hand.

He hears Eddie shout, ‘Danny, help me! Please, help me!’

And just as Danny reaches out to grab Eddie and pull him away, the pistol roars, and with his eyes wide in horror and staring accusingly at Danny, the reporter sinks slowly to the ground.

The dream never changed and Danny didn’t think he would ever get over the guilt he felt for Eddie’s death.

‘You deal with it,’ his grandfather had told him many times. ‘You have to – you just deal with it.’

But Danny wasn’t like his grandfather, and after six months he still wasn’t dealing with it.

The ERV was about a kilometre from the house. Fergus and Danny had gone searching for a suitable place soon after moving in. A copse of scrubby trees and bushes stood at the top of a rise in a succession of stony fields. Many years earlier there might have been rows of olives – a few withered survivors were dotted here and there, but mostly the landscape was barren and bare.

From one side of the copse there was a good view down towards the town; on the other the fields slipped away to a dried-up river bed. On the far side there were more trees and bushes and then a quiet road offering an alternative escape route. Good reasons for choosing the spot as the ERV. The middle of the copse was dense and here it was possible to remain unseen while watching for anyone approaching from any direction: another plus point – and the fact that no one ever appeared to go there made it even more appealing.

Once Fergus had settled on the copse as the ERV they had spent the next two nights bringing in and concealing escape kits. Tinned food and bottled water had been stashed in day sacks, which were in turn placed in heavy-duty black plastic bags. Fresh clothes and a wad of cash were put into another black sack and the whole lot was buried just below the surface of the dry earth. The freshly dug soil was covered with leaf litter and a couple of fallen branches and the exact location marked with a large and distinct stone carried in from the field. By the time they finished it looked as though no one had been there for years.

After the drama outside the house Danny had virtually sprinted all the way to the ERV without once looking back. He arrived breathless but not panicking. They had talked about this eventuality many times and Danny knew what was expected of him.

He stayed calm, reckoning his grandfather must be OK. Danny was pretty certain that the fishing line he’d seen hanging from the shutter had led to some sort of explosive device, but there had been no explosion.

What he couldn’t work out was how Fergus had known the device was there. But there was plenty to do while he thought about it. Quickly he removed the branches and leaf litter, and using his bare hands he dug into the loose soil and uncovered the black plastic bags. He took everything from the bags and then filled in the hole and replaced the leaves and branches so that the area once again looked undisturbed.

And then he sat down to wait. Six hours – that was the agreed time. He would wait for Fergus for six hours, not a second less. Danny might have moaned about his grandfather’s endless lectures, but now they were back in a conflict situation he was determined to follow orders and stick to SOPs.

So he waited and watched, and the thoughts of Eddie Moyes began to return.