Detonator

I put some distance between us as Rexho smashed the entire structure off its mounting and went into a ninety-degree skid. He added another two parked cars to his scorecard, sorted himself, and was thirty behind me when I took the next left, along the remains of the old city wall.

This was the highest-risk stretch for me.

I couldn’t step on the gas.

It was too narrow to dodge and weave.

And if my plan was going to work, I needed him to be close enough not to be able to take evasive action.

His headlamps started to fill my rear-view again as I passed the shop where I’d bought the maps and then the boutique hotel. I careered through the small square overlooking the water.

Every parking space was taken.

I reckoned the SUV’s fucked-up radiator grille was ten behind me as the scaffolding-covered apartment block loomed ahead.

I took a round in the right shoulder as I hit the throttle again but I still had enough control to swing the wheel left and take out the last two upright poles.

For a heartbeat, fuck-all happened.

Then the timber planks began to cascade off their supports and a few hundred tubes of heavy metal and sheets of tarp crashed down to fill the space between the front of the building and the harbour wall.

I hit the brakes as soon as I was a safe distance away. I got out, but didn’t walk back. I just needed to make sure all that shit had landed on Rexho’s head.

It had.

The front of the SUV had been flattened. The roof was half the height it had been two minutes ago.

But when the last pole and plank had fallen and the dust had started to clear, I saw movement behind what was left of the windscreen.

I scrambled over the debris and peered through the driver’s window.

Rexho turned his very bloody head towards me. His mouth opened and closed like a goldfish, but no sound came out.

It would take a squad of firemen and cutting equipment to extract him. And the chances were that he’d be dead before they arrived.

But I didn’t want to leave anything to chance.

I took off A

He probably thought he was being fast-tracked to Paradise. I hoped he’d end up somewhere he could carry on feeling the pain.

As shutters started to open further down the street and across the square, I slid back behind the wheel of Luca’s slightly bruised Alfa, draped the sash back around my shoulders, and drove away. Keeping a memento wouldn’t bring them back. But I knew that any time I looked at it I was now going to feel a little bit better.

EPILOGUE

They stitched my nostril and sorted the rest of the damage at the hospital a little later that morning, a couple of floors above the pathology lab where A

Luca was very understanding about the damage to his wagon, and keen to bring me up to speed on the GIS. They’d picked up the coffin. The rods of depleted uranium 235 inside it had come from a decommissioned Oscar-11 Class sub. Its ID code had been stamped into the casing.

Three rods was enough to make a very big dirty bomb, irrespective of whether they detonated it in Otranto or in St Peter’s Square. No wonder the GIGN, TIGRIS and the GIS had been going ballistic for Dijani and his crew.

A

The last three members of Dijani’s cell were in custody. One of them seemed to be keen to trade in his passport to Paradise for a place in their witness-protection scheme. He wasn’t telling them everything, but had fed them one or two details.

He’d confirmed that Rome was in their sights.

They’d been tempted by the idea of reminding the world about Gedik Ahmed’s great victory in Otranto in 1480, but St Peter’s was a more iconic target. The cradle of Christianity. And since the Pope continued to ignore his security advisers and walk among the infidel, they had been confident of success.

I liked Luca a lot, and not just because he’d saved my life. But I found him tough to be around. The sharply chiselled crusading journo I’d met in the mattress shop had been replaced by a whipped dog. He still couldn’t hide the things I was trying to bury. So I wasn’t sorry to see him go.

I retrieved my day sack from where I’d hidden it, sparked up the Seat and drove towards the cemetery. Luca had told me that a couple of graves had already been selected for A

I stopped halfway down the cypress avenue, and looked at the slightly weird motif on the stark white panels each side of the entrance: a couple of crossed bones and the Grim Reaper’s scythe.

I hadn’t gone down to see their bodies in the hospital. I wasn’t going to visit their grave sites now. I had the sash, and that would do me.

My mantra had always been: Why worry about what you can’t change? If I said it often enough, I might start to believe it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

From the day he was found in a carrier bag on the steps of Guy’s Hospital in London, Andy McNab has led an extraordinary life.

As a teenage delinquent, Andy McNab kicked against society. As a young soldier, he waged war against the IRA in the streets and fields of South Armagh. As a member of 22 SAS, he was at the centre of covert operations for nine years, on five continents. During the Gulf War he commanded Bravo Two Zero, a patrol that, in the words of his commanding officer, ‘will remain in regimental history for ever’. Awarded both the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) and Military Medal (MM) during his military career, McNab was the British Army’s most highly decorated serving soldier when he finally left the SAS.

Since then Andy McNab has become one of the world’s bestselling writers, drawing on his insider knowledge and experience. As well as three non-fiction bestsellers – including Bravo Two Zero, the bestselling British work of military history – he is the author of the bestselling Nick Stone thrillers. He has also written a number of books for children.

Besides his writing work, he lectures to security and intelligence agencies in both the USA and the UK, works in the film industry advising Hollywood on everything from covert procedure to training civilian actors to act like soldiers, and he continues to be a spokesperson and fundraiser for both military and literacy charities.

www.andymcnab.co.uk

Also by Andy McNab

Novels featuring Nick Stone

REMOTE CONTROL

CRISIS FOUR

FIREWALL

LAST LIGHT

LIBERATION DAY

DARK WINTER

DEEP BLACK

AGGRESSOR

RECOIL

CROSSFIRE