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  Now I’m babysitting a batch of second-rate troops.

  One thing was sure. He was finished with the Regiment after this posting. No doubt about it.

  Carter figured he’d keep his head down, serve his time. See out this gig. Then he’d return to Hereford and tell the top brass he was finished. The Circuit was not as lucrative as it had been at the height of the wars in the Middle East, when there were fortunes to be made for those with the right skill sets, but Carter would find something. An ex-Blade with his credentials would have admirers in the world of private contractors. It wouldn’t be the best-paid job in the world, maybe. Dull work, but steady.

  Better than staying at Hereford and being treated like a pariah.

  Carter glanced at his watch again.

  Two minutes later, he strode over to the soldiers.

  ‘That’s it. Time’s up.’ He cocked his chin at Medel. ‘Captain. Who’s leading the front assault team?’

  The captain gestured to Vargas. ‘Fabian will take the lead.’

  From the sheepish look on the commander’s face, Carter had the impression the decision was a political one. The kid had no doubt insisted on being the first man in, and Medel had decided not to argue with him.

  A grin stretched across Vargas’s mug. ‘I’m gonna teach these fuckers a lesson,’ he said. ‘Drop them like a bad habit. Just you see.’

  ‘Right.’ Carter suppressed his anger and nodded at Medel. ‘I’ll be following the main assault group inside.’

  ‘You will come with us, sir?’ Vargas frowned. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I fucking said so,’ Carter growled. ‘Do you have a problem with that?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Vargas replied icily.

  ‘Stay alert,’ Carter said. ‘Remember the drills.’

  He had a good reason for tagging along with Vargas and his mates. He wanted to make sure the drill went smoothly. Which meant walking in behind the main assault group, following them from room to room. CQB exercises could get tasty, bullets might be flying past you, but Carter regarded it a vital part of his job. These lads were going into a situation with live rounds and live bodies. Multiple teams were going to be pouring into the structure from different directions, looking to maintain the momentum of the attack, pushing forward aggressively and at speed. There was going to be a lot of kinetic action. People running around all over the place. Things could get confusing. That’s when mistakes happened.

  It was the job of each individual assault group to clear the rooms in their sector, engaging targets without shooting hostages or accidentally hitting their mates. In that situation, it was vital that everyone knew what they were doing and coordinated the attack properly. Otherwise there was a risk of ending up with a blue-on-blue.

  While Vargas wandered off to check his kit, Carter took Medel to one side.

  ‘Are you sure about letting him lead the attack?’ he asked in an undertone. ‘He’s hardly a model operator.’

  Medel shrugged his shoulders. ‘Vargas has friends. It is better not to make trouble,’ he said under his breath.

  ‘It’s your call,’ Carter muttered. ‘Get the lads ready.’

  There was a sudden flurry of activity as Ramirez dished out orders. The snipers snatched up their weapons and quickly fanned out across the range, dropping to prone firing positions to cover the various approaches to the stronghold. Then the five three-man assault groups made for their respective entry points around the tyre maze.

  One of the teams hooked round to the far side of the structure. Two more teams made for the entrances on the left; a fourth beelined towards the breaching point on the right. At around the same time Vargas set off with the fifth assault group.

  Carter broke into a quick jog as he followed the main assault team across the training ground. Vargas led the way, hurrying towards the entry door on the southern side of the stronghold.

  The two other guys on the team ran close behind.

  The second guy, Ivan Garrido, was a mean-looking soldier with more muscle than brains. His calves looked like somebody had strapped a couple of sandbags around his legs. His biceps were the size of medicine balls. Too many hours in the gym, probably. Dead-lifting heavy weights and pumping himself full of steroids. The third man on the team, Carlos Zamorano, was a lanky streak of piss. He brought up the rear.

  After fifty metres Carter breezed past Vargas. He ran on and reached the entry point a couple of beats after Garrido and Zamorano. Then he glanced back and saw Vargas twenty metres away, face locked in a grimace as he struggled to catch up with his muckers.

  ‘Get a fucking move on!’ Carter shouted at him.

  Vargas staggered on, then reached the pile of car tyres to the right of the door frame, gasping for breath. Sweat glossed his brow and ran down his face in rivulets.

  Christ, thought Carter. We’ve only just started the drill, and this idiot looks like he’s about to have a heart attack.

  He trained his attention on Garrido as the latter hustled over to the door. Zamorano circled round, reached into a pouch on the back of his colleague’s vest and pulled out a pre-assembled breaching charge. Which was essentially a spool of det cord, about as thick as a clothes line, packed with explosive material, fixed to a strip of double-sided sticky tape and rigged up to a length of electrical wire.

  Garrido peeled off the backing tape and applied it vertically to the middle of the door panel, making sure it was firmly stuck down. Then he removed a chunky handheld firing device from his pocket with a lever and a safety catch. Garrido took the end of the electrical wire and plugged it into the clacker unit. He eased back the safety clip from the handle and shouted to the others, telling them to get behind cover. Vargas and Zamorano quickly shifted to the opposite sides of the entrance, stepping out of the blast radius.

  They were almost ready.

  Carter had taken part in hundreds of similar exercises over the years. The assault drill was simple enough. Once the other teams had confirmed that they were in position, Vargas would give the order to go. Then Garrido would fire the clacker, sending an electrical current down the wire to the det cord. The blast would blow apart the door, allowing Vargas’s team to swarm inside. In the same beat, the other four groups would simultaneously trigger their charges and rush in through their designated entry points.

  Once inside, the assaulters would begin systematically going through each room, putting rounds into the terrorist targets until the entire facility had been cleared.

  Except Carter wasn’t going to make it that easy for them.

  He had a trick up his sleeve.

  One more surprise for the team, to keep them on their toes.

  Over his personal radio, he heard the other teams checking in as they reached their designated breaching points. The soldiers spoke in English for the benefit of their Brit instructor. Carter needed to hear what they were saying, so he could judge how effectively they were communicating with each other during the chaos and confusion of the attack.

  ‘Charlie One, in position,’ Medel said.

  Vargas tapped the pressel switch on his radio.

  ‘Alpha One, in position,’ he rasped into his throat mic.

  The four other teams came over the radio net in quick succession, confirming that they were ready to commence the attack.

  As soon as the last team checked in, Carter thrust a hand into one of the pouches on the front of his vest and pulled out an M84 stun grenade.

  The three Chileans weren’t watching Carter. They had their attention fixed on the door, mentally running through the layout and their responsibilities as they prepared to storm inside. They had no idea what was about to come next.

  Carter ripped out the firing pin, pushed away from the tyre wall and hurled the grenade over the top, towards the centre of the maze.

  He didn’t see the searing flash of light as the grenade detonated, but he caught the ear-splitting bang that followed.

  There was a moment of stunned confusion among the soldiers. Just as Carter
had expected.

  The team hadn’t been anticipating the detonation. All of a sudden, their neat plan of assault was in tatters. Now they had to react.

  Good SF teams had to be able to act fast when things went sideways.

  This wasn’t a good team.

  Garrido and Zamorano were looking towards their group leader, waiting for him to show some initiative. Vargas simply stood there, staring at the door. Paralysed by indecision.

  ‘The terrorists are on to you!’ Carter yelled at him. ‘You’ve got to go, right fucking now! Give the order!’

  Then it all kicked off.

  A staggered sequence of loud booms ripped across the air as the other groups depressed their clackers, triggering their door charges individually. They would have heard the blast of the grenade from within the structure and assumed that the main assault force had breached their door, signalling the start of the attack.

  It was Vargas’s fault. He should have alerted the groups as soon as the grenade went off, ordering them not to detonate their charges until he gave the signal. Now, instead of a smoothly coordinated assault, the teams would be clearing the rooms at different times. Which could lead to all kinds of problems.

  That was the kid’s first mistake.

  It wouldn’t be his last.

  In the next breath, the fat Chilean started screaming frantically at Garrido, ‘Go! Go! Get in!’

  Carter looked towards the entry point. He saw Garrido sidestepping to the left of the door, clacker in his hand. Electrical wire loosely trailing from the firing device, the other end taped to the strip of det cord.

  Garrido squeezed the clacker.

  The opening was instantly engulfed by a swirling cloud of smoke and debris as the charge ripped through the door. In the next moment the main assault group broke forward. Vargas led the way inside, charging through the smoke-wreathed void, keen as fuck to start plugging enemies.

  From inside the facility, Carter heard a series of sharp cracks. Rifle reports. More than one of them. Coming from the nearest room. Vargas, he thought. The guy must have started letting rip as soon as he’d set foot inside.

  Another bad sign.

  A couple of metres away, Garrido was darting through the entrance after Vargas. Zamorano hastened after him.

  As Carter started to follow, he heard Vargas’s breathless voice in his headphones. The kid was yelling above the staccato bursts of gunfire coming from elsewhere in the facility.

  ‘Room X-One clear!’

  Carter stepped through the shredded doorway and found himself in the first room, a square-shaped space, four metres by four, sparsely furnished with a table and chairs and a wardrobe shoved against the wall to the left.

  In the opposite corner, a pair of Figure 11 targets had been mounted on tripods and placed two or three inches apart. One of the targets depicted the standard terrorist image of a masked gunman wielding a rifle. The second picture showed a woman clutching her child. Carter had deliberately positioned them close together to test the soldiers’ accuracy.

  Both of them were punched with bullet holes.

  Carter moved on, sticking close to the assault group ahead of him. Unlike the students he wasn’t carrying an assault rifle; he had his belt-holstered Beretta pistol, but he wouldn’t be engaging any X-rays. Not today. He was taking part in a strictly observational capacity.

  And trying not to get winged in the process.

  Voices crackled over the net as the other groups swept through the rooms in their designated sectors, punctuated with short bursts of gunfire.

  ‘Room X-Seven cleared,’ Medel reported.

  ‘Room X-Nine, clear,’ Ramirez said.

  Carter crossed the room in another quick stride and caught up with Vargas and his two comrades as they prepared to sweep into the next room.

  Vargas caught his ragged breath and shouted something at Garrido. The latter retrieved a flashbang from his webbing, depinned it and posted it through the opening.

  Standard CQB tactics, intended to temporarily disorientate any X-rays lurking inside. Stepping through the doorway was the point of maximum danger in any attack. Fail to disable the enemy, and you’d end up getting plugged as soon as you charged into the room.

  There was a searing flare of light as the flashbang kicked off. Like a million phone torches flicking on and off simultaneously. A thunderous boom pulsed through the room. Then Vargas swept inside, Garrido and Zamorano trailing in his wake.

  Carter hurried after the soldiers, keeping a close eye on them as they began clearing their arcs. Vargas was scanning the right side of the room, his rifle raised, index finger feathering the trigger as he searched for hostiles. He was focused entirely on what was going on at eye level. Carter took another step forward, and then he heard a loud bang at his right. He looked back at Vargas and saw the Chilean swathed in a cloud of acrid smoke, realised that he must have blundered into one of the tripwires.

  Christ, this guy is a liability.

  In his headphones, he heard the four other teams updating Medel on their progress as they pushed on through their individual sectors. Each team had a number of rooms to secure. Once they had cleared the facility the five assault groups would meet in the middle, and Carter would declare the end of the exercise. Then there would be a debrief to run through the mistakes the guys had made.

  A violent blast shuddered from the opposite end of the maze, and Carter guessed that someone had hurled a fragmentation grenade into one of the rooms, dispatching the targets inside.

  The assault wasn’t anywhere near as fast or fluid as the Regiment guys in action, but as far as he could tell Medel was doing his best to coordinate his teams’ movements, getting them to maintain a steady flow of information over the net. It wasn’t the worst assault he’d ever seen.

  But Vargas was doing his best to screw things up.

  Carter hurried after the guy as he barrelled into the next room, mindlessly drilling targetry. Vargas brassed up the terrorist behind the sofa and riddled the two civilians either side as well. Carter couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  Even the slop jockeys at Hereford could do better than this.

  He figured maybe two minutes had passed since the attack began.

  Radio chatter confirmed that most of the rooms had now been secured. Vargas stumbled on towards the opening at his twelve o’clock, setting off another smoke grenade as he waded into the path of a tripwire strung along at waist height. The guy was going for the world record of training-ground fuck-ups.

  Ramirez’s voice hissed over the net, reporting that his group had finished securing their next room.

  ‘Preparing to exit and enter Room X-Four to engage targets,’ the dems man added.

  Carter saw Vargas two metres away at his twelve o’clock, ploughing on through the grey tendrils of smoke as he led his men towards the adjacent room. He stopped at the side of the entrance and signalled to Garrido. The stocky soldier tossed in a flashbang moments before Vargas barrelled through the opening.

  Carter instantly grasped what was happening.

  He hurried towards the assault team, shouting over the comms, but no one was listening.

  Ahead of him, Garrido and Zamorano were piling into the next room after Vargas. The two soldiers quickly peeled off to the left to clear their arcs while Vargas scanned for targets to the right.

  Carter charged through the opening, his heart thumping terrifically. He swept through a curtain of thinning smoke into a rectangular space, substantially larger than the rooms they had previously cleared, with a metal-framed bed next to a desk with a lava lamp on it. He saw Garrido and Zamorano to the left of the entry point, sweeping their weapons across in broad arcs. Looking for hostiles that weren’t there.

  He saw Vargas to his right. Weapon raised.

  Aiming at a paper target on the far side of the room, six metres away.

  Right next to Ramirez’s assault team.

  The three soldiers were stacked up beside a separate exit point lead
ing to another room. Ramirez stood at the rear of the line. One of his colleagues was shaping to chuck a flashbang through the aperture. None of them had noticed Vargas charging in behind them.

  Carter’s heart stopped.

  He had no time to shout a warning at Vargas. The guy was already squeezing the trigger. He didn’t appear to have seen the other assault group.

  The Chilean was suffering from sensory overload. Carter had seen it happen before. Some guys panicked when they found themselves in a highly stressful situation. They stopped looking at what was in front of them and saw only what they wanted to see. Vargas had obviously caught sight of the paper terrorist in his peripheral vision and decided to engage.

  Ramirez was six inches from the target.

  Dangerously close.

  Rounds flamed out of Vargas’s M4.

  Three of them.

  Vargas’s aim was terrible. The bullets missed the Figure 11 target. Two of them thumped into the rubber treads of the tyre directly behind Ramirez, missing him by no more than two or three inches. A third round smacked into a knackered old stereo resting on a table beside the wall, shattering the cassette deck.

  Ramirez and the two other guys in his team were already rushing into the next sector, completely unaware of what had happened behind them. None of them would have heard the gunshots over the incessant chatter in their headphones.

  Carter snapped his gaze back towards Vargas. The guy didn’t seem to realise he’d come close to slotting his muckers. He was already charging headlong through a separate exit point at his twelve o’clock, hard on the heels of Garrido and Zamorano, plugging away with his rifle. Carter clenched his jaw and set off after the soldiers again.

  Fifteen seconds later, he heard Ramirez’s voice coming over the net, confirming that the final room had been secured.

  Carter tapped the pressel switch on his radio.