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  Kinsella could feel them under his training socks and boots. He’d picked them up during the big runs through the Brecons. Now there was a huge blister on his big toe, and Christ, it hurt like fuck. He’d tried to treat the problem by piercing it with a sterilised needle, but the pain was still there. He could feel it turning septic. Sooner or later he’d have to treat it properly, Kinsella realised. Otherwise he was in danger of coming down with septicaemia. And then my chances of passing Selection will be well and truly fucked.

  He was sitting in the back of a Bedford four-tonner army truck, along with nineteen other green army students. They sat in cold silence as the four-tonner motored south along the A470, heading for the starting point for the Fan Dance. Diesel engine growling, icy wind blasting through the gaps in the canvas and scraping at the students’ faces. None of the guys had said much since they’d pulled out of the training camp at Sennybridge half an hour ago. Partly because it was the first week of Hills Phase, the students mostly came from different parent units and they’d not yet had time to bond. But mostly because they were dreading the day’s exercise.

  For the past five days the students had been beasted rotten by the instructors on the Directing Staff. They had been taken on a series of big runs through the hills around the Beacons, carrying weighted Bergens and rifles. They had done sickening circuits of shuttle runs and push-ups and fireman’s carries. Now they were approaching the end of the first week of the Hills Phase, and Kinsella wondered how the hell he was going to make it through the day on his rag order feet. He closed his eyes and repeated the motto that had been drummed into him during pre-Selection training in 2 Para.

  Push through the pain. Close your mind to it. Remember, pain is merely weakness leaving the body.

  That morning had started like any other for the hundred and fifty guys trying out for Selection. Kinsella and the others had woken up at first reveille at 0400 hours in their dilapidated barracks, the air thick with the stench of piss and sweat. After performing their morning ablutions the students had made their way over to the camp cookhouse to scoff down the vast portions of starch and grease served up by the slop jockeys. They’d returned to the billets to collect their Bergens, then headed over to the armoury to retrieve their dud SLRs using the weapon keys that had been issued to each student on arrival. Then they’d formed up into two separate groups of seventy-five men each for the morning roll call at 0600 hours.

  Kinsella had stood there in the icy darkness, listening to the chief instructor’s voice as he read out their names. The students all knew what was coming next. They’d been briefed on the day’s exercise the previous evening, and a list of names had been posted on the guard room wall so everyone knew which group they were in. After the roll call the students had clambered into the backs of the eight Bedford four-tonners waiting to ferry them down to the Brecons. Now Kinsella could feel his stomach muscles constricting with fear and self-doubt. The endless routine of early rises, hard runs and regular beastings were starting to take their toll on the young Para. He wondered if he really had what it takes to join the hallowed ranks of the SAS.

  This is it now. No going back.

  Do or fucking die.

  ‘Got a good one for you, mate.’

  Kinsella popped open his eyes and looked across at his friend. Lee ‘Weasel’ Stubbs was a short, squat guy with a heavily knitted brow and a nose with more breaks in it than the Guinness Book of Records. Stubbs had joined the Paras at the same time as Kinsella. They had spent the past few years living in each other’s pockets in Patrols Platoon, A Company, going out on the lash in Colchester and drinking the town dry. Stubbs was a total gun nut with a dirty sense of humour, and he was the closest thing Kinsella had to a brother. When Stubbs had announced that he planned to try out for Selection, Kinsella had decided to give it a go as well. Seeing a familiar face among the strangers helped ease the anxiety brewing in Kinsella’s guts. He smiled warmly at Stubbs.

  ‘All right, Weasel. Let’s hear it.’

  Stubbs rubbed his hands and grinned like a wanking Jap. The two of them had a tradition of telling each other jokes on the journey to the mountains each morning. It was something they’d started doing in 2 Para, and they found it helped take their minds off the pain they were about to suffer.

  ‘So there’s this doctor, right,’ Stubbs began, chewing on a mouthful of gum. He was never without a stick or two. ‘He’s been shagging one of his female patients, and after a while he starts to feel proper guilty about it. He’s tormented, right?’

  The four-tonner bounced over another pothole in the road, shaking the troops crammed into the back. Kinsella nodded. ‘Go on, mate.’

  ‘Now this doctor, he goes to one of his mates and tells him how he’s feeling. His mate looks him in the eye and says, “Don’t worry. You’re not the first medical practitioner to nail one of your patients and you won’t be the last. You’re not even married, for fuck’s sake.”’

  Stubbs paused. A smile trembled on his lips. Kinsella waited for the punchline.

  ‘Then the doctor speaks to the second friend. And this one tells him, “You might be a doctor, but you’re a veterinarian, you sick bastard.”’

  Stubbs leaned back and folded his arms across his chest, looking pleased with himself.

  ‘Well?’

  Terrible, thought Kinsella.

  ‘Terrific,’ he said.

  Stubbs grunted. ‘Telling you, mate. I missed my calling in life. I should have gone into stand-up.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Kinsella replied, widened his smile. ‘Put a wig on you and a pair of tits and you’re a dead ringer for Dawn French.’

  Stubbs pretended to look hurt. ‘Take the mick all you want, but I’m telling you. Women like a fella who can make them laugh. I seem to remember it was yours truly who was getting the dirty looks from Becky down the King and Queen last month.’

  ‘Becky Morgan? Sweaty Betty?’ Kinsella raised an eyebrow and pulled a face. ‘That’s nothing to brag about, mate. She’s had more pricks in her than a second-hand dartboard. Even the tide wouldn’t take her out.’

  The two Paras shared an easy laugh. Stubbs popped another stick of gum in his mouth, and for a moment Kinsella forgot about the hell that was waiting for them on the steep slopes of Pen y Fan.

  He reminded himself that they’d both trained hard for this moment. For the past year they’d stuck rigidly to the same routine. A ten-mile run before breakfast, circuit training in the afternoons followed by thirty lengths of the swimming pool at the end of the day. In the months leading up to Selection they’d thrown in some orienteering sessions and hill reps, heading down to the Chilterns at the weekends and loading up their Bergens with heavy rocks. They’d race each other up the big hills, empty their Bergens and then scramble back down again as fast as they could. Kinsella and Stubbs were as fit as they’d ever been. The pair of them were literally glowing.

  But Kinsella still felt anxious. Everything was on the line today. Fail the Fan Dance and he would be RTU’d, just another Selection hard luck story.

  I won’t fail. No fucking way.

  I’ve not come this far to give up now.

  Suddenly the truck slowed and the engine dialled down to a gentle hum. Kinsella tensed. We must be arriving at the starting point, he realised. Around him the other students gripped their dud rifles and sat up straight. Stubbs was chewing his gum furiously. Then the four-tonner jerked to a halt and the driver lowered the tailgate. From outside the truck Kinsella heard one of the DS guys barking at the students to ‘get off the wagons’, his throated voice cutting through the gloom like a chainsaw through rusted metal. Kinsella grabbed his Bergen and glanced across at Stubbs.

  ‘You ready for this?’

  ‘Do me a favour. I was fucking born ready.’ He flashed a sly grin at Kinsella. ‘Tell you what. If it doesn’t work out for you today, I’ll put in a good word for you when we get back to Colchester. Get Becky to give you a sympathy shag.’

  Kinsella screwed up his face.
‘You offering me sloppy seconds, Weasel?’

  ‘You know me, mate. I’m all about sharing.’

  They exchanged grim smiles. Then Stubbs turned and hopped down from the tailgate after the rest of the students, clutching his Bergen and his SLR. A vicious wind lashed across the blackened landscape and Kinsella felt a chill in his bones as he stepped forward. Then he took a deep breath and dropped down from the truck, ready for whatever Selection could throw at him.

  FOUR

  0627 hours.

  Two miles to the north, a silver Ford Mondeo turned off the A470 and steered into a deserted lay-by.

  Kavlak sat behind the wheel. He was the more experienced of the two men. He’d spent ten years fighting in the White Eagles Serbian paramilitary unit and he knew how to stay calm under pressure. Petrovich was the younger guy. This was his first time on the job and he sat in the front passenger seat, sweating like a one-legged man at an arse-kicking contest. His eyes constantly glanced at the rear-view mirror to check that they weren’t being followed. His knees were bouncing up and down like a couple of jackhammers. The kid’s nerves were understandable, Kavlak figured. After all, they were sitting on a hundred pounds of military-grade C4 high explosive.

  There were six men on the op in total, five Serbs and the Brit. They had been divided into three separate teams. Bill Deeds and Sinisa Markovic were the kill team. They were tasked with knocking out the comms link at the RV on top of Pen y Fan. Two more guys were on the overwatch. Their job was to observe the target area at the Storey Arms. That left Kavlak and Petrovich. They were the third team, and they had the most dangerous job of the lot. They were the delivery team.

  Kavlak killed the engine and sat back in his chair. Petrovich reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pack of twenty Marlboro Reds. His hands were shaking as he plucked out a cigarette from the pack and popped it between his lips. Kavlak turned to him and arched an eyebrow.

  ‘You really think that’s a good idea, nephew? Did you forget I only quit smoking last month?’

  Petrovich froze. He was several years younger than Kavlak, and it showed. He was all attitude and front. He sported a mohawk and he had a young, podgy face and smooth hands that hadn’t done any killing. He probably spent his downtime listening to Dr Dre, playing PlayStation and watching Scarface. The kid was out of his depth and Kavlak instantly knew it had been a mistake to bring him along. Realising his error, Petrovich plucked the smoke from his lips and carefully slid it back into the pack. Kavlak breathed a little easier.

  ‘What’s the time, uncle?’ Petrovich asked, for maybe the thousandth time since they’d set off that morning.

  ‘Try to relax,’ said Kavlak. ‘We have to wait a while yet, and you’re making both of us nervous.’

  Petrovich stilled his legs. Kavlak nodded at him, then looked away. Patience, Kavlak reminded himself. The kid needed patience. He was new to the game. Kavlak and the other Serbs had all been soldiers back during the dark days of the Bosnian war. That was how Kavlak got into the bomb-making business. He started off small, fixing up crude explosive mixes in the back of battered old Zastavas and blowing them up outside Croatian government offices. Then he moved on to bigger, more sophisticated devices. He car-bombed Croat leaders and terrorised their supporters. That was when the Tiger had taken notice, and asked him to be a part of a team to carry out an attack right on their enemy’s doorstep. Kavlak had jumped at the chance.

  The bomb stowed in the back of the Mondeo was a thing of beauty. Fifty clear-white blocks of C4 had been carefully arranged in the boot. Each block weighed 1.25 pounds and looked like a brick made out of putty. Half a dozen one-kilo bags had been placed either side of the C4. The bags were stuffed with ball bearings and eight-inch nails. Shrapnel. The explosive package was rigged with a length of det cord, thin plastic tubing that looked like rope on a washing line. Except the det cord was filled with pentaerythritol tetranitrate, otherwise known as PETN high explosive. One end of the det cord was attached to the bomb. The other end was attached to a battery cell and a radio receiver unit. The detonator was one end of a two-way walkie-talkie, purchased from a hardware store in Newport and set to the same frequency as the receiver unit. Once the remote was activated, it would transmit a signal to the receiver and spark the battery into life, sending a charge down the det cord, triggering the bomb.

  It was going to be his masterpiece.

  A single block of C4 packed enough of a punch to blow a hole in the side of a wall. Half a dozen blocks could destroy a large truck. Fifty blocks – equivalent to sixty-two-and-a-half pounds – would cause a hell of a bang. There would be an initial outward explosion, a huge orange fireball engulfing everything inside a twenty-five metre radius. There would be a second, even more lethal inward explosion as the gases compressed and sucked everything towards the centre. Anyone who survived that force would be caught in a shower of lethal shrapnel, hot metal shards lacerating flesh and piercing vital organs.

  Kavlak smiled to himself. The soldiers wouldn’t stand a chance.

  He reached into his jacket pocket and dug out a Motorola C250 pre-pay handset. All the guys on the team were using them. It was a trick they’d picked up from Baltimore drug dealers. After each call they would replace the SIM card with a new one and then crush the old card, to cover their tracks. Kavlak figured it was unlikely that the authorities were listening in, but the Tiger had insisted. He didn’t want any blowback. He’d been very clear about that.

  There were plenty of stories about the Tiger, but Kavlak recalled one in particular. A few years ago the Tiger had learned of a snitch in his organisation. After he’d discovered the identity of the snitch, the Tiger had the man kidnapped and beaten to death. Half a dozen of his trusted lieutenants took hammers to the guy, crushing every bone in his body. When they were finished beating him to death, the Tiger ordered his men to cut up the snitch’s body and feed it into a meat grinder. Then he had the minced guts served up for lunch. He ate what was left of the snitch and had the skin on his face made into a mask. It was rumoured to hang in the Tiger’s study.

  He was not someone Kavlak wanted to disappoint.

  Kavlak selected the only number stored in the Contacts list and tapped the call button. There was a long click, followed by a series of light trills. The guy on the other end answered on the third ring.

  ‘We’re here,’ said Kavlak.

  There was a pause. The line hissed and crackled, like someone trying to tune in to a distant radio station. Figured, thought Kavlak. They were in rural Wales, miles from the nearest town. It was hard to get a reception. Two or three bars at least.

  ‘Good,’ the voice said at last. ‘The soldiers have just arrived.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Another pause. This one was longer. ‘We’re still waiting for the others. We’ll be in touch.’

  Click.

  Kavlak listened to the dead air for a beat. Then he ended the call. Removed the phone battery and took out the SIM. Opened the car door, dropped the card and crushed it under the heel of his boot. Reached for the tobacco tin in his pocket and took out a new SIM. Inserted it into the back of the Motorola, replaced the battery and rested the phone on the dash. A strange calm washed over Kavlak, as it always did before the start of a mission. They’d gone through the plan maybe a thousand times. The six-man team had spent months poring over maps, calculating times and distances and preparing for every possible scenario. Nothing had been left to chance.

  They were ready.

  ‘What happens now, uncle?’ Petrovich asked.

  ‘Now,’ said Kavlak, ‘we wait.’

  0630 hours.

  Fifty minutes to go.

  FIVE

  0631 hours.

  John Porter watched the students as they piled out of the four-tonners into the gloom. A filthy January morning in south Wales, the wind was like ice, whipping down the side of the mountains, and Porter badly needed a drink.

  The newest instructor on the Regimen
t Training Wing had short, dark hair and two stumps on his left hand where his index and middle fingers had once been. He was standing alongside the other half-a-dozen instructors in a car park deep in the heart of the Brecons, ten miles due south of the training camp at Sennybridge and miles from anywhere on a map. In front of them the last of the seventy-five students were spilling out of the backs of the Bedford trucks, gripping their rifles and their weighted Bergens as they prepared to tackle the Fan Dance.

  The plan for the Dance was simple. The students had been split into two equal-sized groups back at Sennybridge, with half starting at points at either end of the course. The first group would begin from a wooded area several kilometres to the east of Pen y Fan, not far from the Roman road and the old railway station at Torpantau. The second group would set off from a sandstone trail next to a two-storey building across the road from where Porter was standing. The Storey Arms had once been a café, then a youth hostel. Now it stood empty. Each student’s Bergen would be checked for weight. Then they would be split into groups of roughly twenty with their own instructor. Then it was simply up to the students to make sure they kept pace with their instructor during the race up and down the mountain. The Fan Dance was a race against the clock, and against their own limits of endurance.

  Porter’s group would be leaving first. They would also be joined by half the SP Team, the Regiment’s specialist counter-terrorism unit. It was something of a tradition for a few of the SP lads to join in on the Fan Dance. The tab was a good way of maintaining their fitness, and it helped to alleviate the boredom of sitting around Hereford all day waiting for the phone to ring. According to the briefing yesterday afternoon, the SP team lads would RV with the rest of the guys at the Storey Arms at 0640 hours.

  My first time leading the students on the Fan Dance, thought Porter. I’m supposed to be the pride of the Regiment. I should be setting an example to these lads, and all I can think about is my next fucking drink.