I pulled out my compa.s.s, checked, and headed east for about twenty metres, towards the loop, taking my time now, trying not to leave upturned leaves or broken cobwebs in my wake. Then I turned north, then west, doubling back on myself but off to the side of my original track. After five or six metres, I stopped, looked around for a thick bush, and wormed my way into it.

Squatting on my bergen, b.u.t.t in the shoulder, safety off, I fought for breath.

If they were tracking, they would pa.s.s right to left, seven or eight metres in front as they followed my sign. The rule about being chased in the jungle, learnt the hard way by far better soldiers than me, was that when the enemy are coming fast you've got to sidestep and creep away. Don't keep on running, because they'll just keep on following.

Slowly peeling three rounds from one of the ready rounds I pulled back the bolt.

The bearing surfaces glided smoothly over each other as I caught the round it was about to eject, then fed the four rounds slowly and deliberately back into the mag before pushing the bolt home.

I sat, watched and listened as I got out the blood-smeared mobile. No matter what was going on down here stop delivery, guarantee delivery, whatever I'd failed to do what the Yes Man had sent me here for, and I knew what that meant.

I had to make a call.

There was no signal, but I tried the number anyway, just in case, my finger covering the tiny speaker hole that sent out the touch tone. Nothing.

Baby-G said it was 7.03. I played with the phone, finding vibrate, and put it away again.

s.h.i.t, s.h.i.t, s.h.i.t. The pins and needles were returning. I had the helpless feeling that Carrie had described, that awful emptiness when you think you've lost someone and are trying desperately to find them. s.h.i.t, not here, not now A frenzied exchange in Spanish brought me back to the real world. They were close.

There were more shouts from under the canopy but were they following me? I sat motionless as seconds, and then whole minutes, ticked by.

Nearly seven fifteen. She'll be getting up soon for school... I had f.u.c.ked up, I had to accept that. But what was more important now, at this very moment, was getting a signal on the mobile, and that meant going back uphill towards the house, where I'd seen it used.

There was the odd resonant yell that sounded like a howler monkey, but I saw no one. Then there was movement to my front, the crashing of foliage as they got closer. But they weren't tracking: it sounded too much of a gang f.u.c.k for that. I held my breath, b.u.t.t in the shoulder, pad on the trigger as they stopped on my trail.

Sweat dripped off my face as three voices gob bed off at warp speed, maybe deciding which direction to take. I could hear their M-16s, that plastic, almost toy-like sound as they moved them in their hands, or dropped a b.u.t.t on to the toecap of a boot.

A burst of automatic fire went off in the distance and my three seemed to decide to go back the way they'd come. They'd obviously had enough of this jungle lark.

Anyone tracking me, even if they'd lost my sign and had had to cast out to find it, would have gone past my position by now. Even with me trying to cut down on sign, a blind man could have followed the highway I'd made if he'd known what he was feeling for.

I got just short of the edge of the treeline, all the time checking the signal bars on the mobile. Still nothing.

I heard the heavy revs of one of the bulldozers and the squeal of its tracks.

Moving forward cautiously, I saw plumes of black diesel smoke billow from the vertical exhaust as it lumbered towards the gate. Beyond it, the front of the house was a frenzy of people. Bodies with weapons shouted at each other in confusion as wagons moved up and down the road.

I moved back into the wall of green, applied Safe and started checking up at the canopy as I unravelled the string on the weapon to make a sling. I found a suitable tree about six metres in: it would have a good view of the house, looked easy to climb, and the branches were strong enough to support my weight.

I took out the strapping that was going to be my seat, got the bergen on my back, slung the weapon over my shoulder, and started to clamber up as engines revved and people shouted out in the open ground.

When I was about twenty feet up I tried the Nokia again, and this time I got four bars.

Fastening the straps between two strong branches, I hooked the bergen over another next to them, settled into the seat facing the house, then spread one of the mozzie nets over me before closing down the bergen in case I had to buy out.

I was going to be here for a while, until things had quietened down, so the net had to be hung out on to branches so it wasn't clinging to me, and tucked under to cover the straps. I needed to hide my shape, shine, shadow, silhouette and movement; that wouldn't happen if I didn't spread it out a bit to prevent myself looking like a man in a tree with a mozzie net over him. Finally, cradling the weapon across my legs, I calmed myself down as I hit the keypad.

Not giving him time to think or talk, I got to him in a loud whisper.

"It's me Nick. Don't talk, just listen ..."

THIRTY-ONE.

"Josh, just listen. Get her to safety, do it now. I've f.u.c.ked up big-time. Get her away somewhere safe, she needs to be where no one can get at her. I'll call in a few days, got it? Got it?"

There was a pause.

"Josh?"

"f.u.c.k you! f.u.c.k you! When does this stop? You're playing with a kid's life again. f.u.c.k you!"

The line went dead. He'd hung. But I knew he'd take this seriously. The last time I'd f.u.c.ked up and put kids in danger, they'd been his own.

I felt a flood of relief as I removed the battery before the mobile went back in my pocket. I didn't want to be traced from the signal.

Tasting the bitter Deet as sweat ran into my mouth, I watched the commotion outside the house. I wondered if the police would be up here soon, being given my description, but doubted it. Charlie would want to keep something like this under wraps and, anyway, it wasn't as if the explosion would have disturbed the neighbourhood; big bangs would have been a daily occurrence as they cleared the jungle to make way for his house.

I leant over to the bergen, got out the water and took a few swigs, feeling better about Kelly now. No matter what Josh thought of me, he'd do the right thing for her. It wasn't the answer, just the best short-term solution I had available.

She and I were still in deep s.h.i.t. I knew I should have called the Yes Man, explained to him what I thought I knew, and waited out. That was what I should have done, so why hadn't I? Because a voice in my head was telling me something different.

Charlie had said Sunburn. The Yes Man had sent me here to deal with a missile system that was a threat to US helicopters in Colombia. A ground-to-air missile system. That wasn't Sunburn Sunburn was surface-to-surface. I remembered reading about the US Navy flapping because their anti-missile de fences couldn't defeat it. Sunburn was their number-one threat.

I tried to recall details. It had been in Time or Newsweek, something like that, last year on the tube to Hampstead ... it was about ten metres long because I'd visualized being able to fit two end to end in a tube carriage.

What else? I wiped the sweat from my forehead.

Think, think ... The Pizza Man ... He had been at the locks on Tuesday. The locks webcam was part of the relay com ms from the house. The Pizza Man's team were monitoring drug movements by PARC. He'd also been at Charlie's house and maybe, if Charlie had told me the truth, he had Sunburn.

I suddenly saw what was happening. George was carrying the fight to the enemy: they'd been monitoring drug shipments through the ca.n.a.l, and now it looked as though they were getting proactive, maybe using Sunburn as a threat to PARC that if they used the ca.n.a.l to ship drugs they'd get taken out.

That still didn't answer why I'd been sent here to stop Charlie delivering a ground-to-air system ... The noise of rotor blades clattered over the canopy. I recognized at once the heavy ba.s.s wap wap wap wap the unique signature of American Hueys, coming in low. The two helicopters shot past, immediately above me. The ma.s.sive downwash made my tree sway as they flared into the clearing, then, just feet off the ground, crept towards the front of the house. Mud puddles were blown away, and jungle debris was blasted in all directions. The house was now behind a wall of down draught and heat haze blasting out from the Hueys' exhausts. A yellow and white Jet Ranger followed behind, like a child trying to keep up with its parents.

The scene before me could have come straight from a Vietnam newsreel. Armed men jumped from the skids and doubled towards the house. It could have been the 101st "Air a.s.sault' screaming down for an attack, except these guys were in jeans.

The Jet Ranger swooped down so close to the front of the house it looked as if it was actually going to ring the doorbell, then it backed away and settled on the tarmac near the fountain.

The heat haze from its exhaust blurred my view, but I could see Charlie's family begin to stream towards it from the front door.

I sat and watched through the optic as my former target comforted an older Latino woman, still in her nightgown. On her other side was a bloodstained Charlie, his suit ripped, his arms around her. All three were surrounded by anxious, shouting men with weapons, shepherding them forward. As I followed them with the optic, the post was on Michael's chest for what felt like an age.

I looked at his young, b.l.o.o.d.y face, which showed only concern for the woman. He belonged to a different world from his father, George, the Pizza Man and me. I hoped he'd stay that way.

The air was filled with the roar of churning blades as they were bustled inside the aircraft. The two Hueys were already making height. They dipped their noses, and headed towards the city.

The Jet Ranger lifted from the tarmac, and headed in the same direction. There was relative quiet for a few seconds, then somebody barked a series of orders at the men on the ground. They started to sort themselves out. Their mission, I guessed, was to look for me. And this time I had the feeling they'd be better organized.

I sat in my perch, wondering what to do next as wagon after wagon left the house packed with men and M-16 a.s.sault rifles, and returned empty. Checking Baby-G, I knew I'd have to start moving out of here soon if I was to make maximum use of daylight.

Last light, Friday. That had been my deadline. Why? And why were the Firm involved in all this? They obviously needed Sunburn in place for tomorrow. I had been bulls.h.i.t ted with the ground-to-air story. I didn't need to know what it was really about because, after the London f.u.c.k-up, sending me was their last desperate attempt to get their hands on the complete system.

Last light. Sunset.

Oh, f.u.c.k. The Ocaso ... They were going to hit the cruise liner, real people, thousands of them. It wasn't a drug thing at all... why?

f.u.c.k it, why didn't matter. What mattered was that it didn't happen.

But where was I going? What was I going to do with what I thought I knew?

Contact the Panamanians? What would they do? Cancel the ship? So what? That would be just another short-term solution. If they couldn't find Sunburn in time, the Pizza Man could just fire the f.u.c.king thing at the next ship that came along. Not good enough. I needed an answer.

Go to the US emba.s.sy, any emba.s.sy? What would they do -report it? Who to? How long would it be before someone picked up the phone to George? And however important he was, there'd be some even more powerful people behind him. There had to be. Even C and the Yes Man were dancing to their tune.

I had to get back to Carrie and Aaron. They were the only two who could help.

Movement outside the house was dwindling: no more vehicles, just one or two bodies walking around, and to the left and out of sight, the sound of a bulldozer shunting the damaged Lexus off the road.

It was 8.43 time to leave the tree. I unpinned the trouser-leg pocket and pulled out the map. I bent my head down so my nose was just six inches from it and the compa.s.s on its short cord could rest on its faded surface. It took me thirty seconds to take a bearing, across green, then the white line of the loop road, more green, to the middle of Clayton and the main drag into the city. As to how I got back to the house from there, I'd just busk it -anything, just as long as I got back.

Having checked that my map was securely pinned in my pocket, I clambered down with the bergen and weapon, leaving the hide to the birds. Once the bergen was on and the string back round the weapon, I headed east towards the loop and Clayton, taking my time, focusing my mind and my vision on the wall of green, b.u.t.t in the shoulder, safety off, finger straight along the trigger guard, ready to react.

I could have been back in Colombia, looking for DMPs, carefully moving foliage out of the way instead of fighting it, avoiding cobwebs, watching where I stepped to cut noise and sign, stopping, listening, observing before moving into dead ground, checking my bearing, looking in front of me, to my left, to my right, and, just as important, above.

I wanted to travel faster than I was going, desperate to get back to Aaron and Carrie's, but I knew this was the best and safest way to make that happen.

They'd no longer be thrashing about or firing blindly, they'd be waiting, spread out, static, for me to b.u.mble into them. Tactical movement in the jungle is so hard. You can never use the easier high ground, never use tracks, never use water features for navigation. The enemy expects you to use them. You've got to stay in the s.h.i.t, follow a compa.s.s bearing, and move slowly. It's worth it: it means you survive.

Sweat laced with Deet dripped into my eyes, not just due to the humidity inside this pressure cooker but because of the stress of slow, controlled movement, constantly straining my eyes and ears, and all the time I was thinking: What if they appear to my front? What if they come from the left? What if they fire first and I don't know where the fire is coming from? Contacts in the jungle are so close you can smell their breath.

THIRTY-TWO.

It had taken me two hours to reach the loop, which was a lot quicker than I'd expected.

I dumped the bergen, and unstuck my T-shirt from my back in an attempt to relieve the chigger bites. Then I fingered my wet, greasy hair off my forehead and started moving slowly forward, b.u.t.t in the shoulder. As I neared the road it was time to apply Safe and get down on the jungle floor. Using elbows and the toes of my Timberlands, I dragged myself to the edge of the canopy. The weapon lay along the right side of my body; I moved it with me, knowing that with the safety firmly on, there was no chance of a negligent discharge.

Last night's rain filled the dips and pot-holes in the tarmac, and the sky was still dull. A motley collection of black, light and dark grey clouds brooded above me as I looked and listened. If the boys had any sense, they'd have triggers out along the roads, doing a bit of channelling of their own, waiting to see what emerged from the canopy. Even if they did, I had a bearing I had to stick to.

Edging my way forward a little more so that my head was sticking out from the foliage, I couldn't see anything up the road to the right, apart from the road itself disappearing as it gradually bent left. I turned my head the other way.

No more than forty metres away was one of the wagons from the house, a gleaming black Land Cruiser, facing me and parked up on my side of the road. Leaning against the bonnet was a body with an M-16 in his hands, watching both sides of the bend. He was maybe in his twenties, in jeans, yellow T-shirt and trainers, and looking very hot and bored.

My heart pumped. A vehicle was my fast-track out of here -but did the body have mates? Were they s.p.a.ced up and down the road at intervals, or was he on stag, ready to whistle up the rest of the group if he saw anything as they enjoyed a quiet smoke behind the wagon?

There was only one way to find out. I inched slowly backwards into the treeline, finally getting up on to my hands and knees before crawling to the bergen.

Shouldering it, I removed Safe and slowly closed on the wagon by paralleling the road, b.u.t.t in the shoulder, eyes and ears on full power. Each time my foot touched the jungle floor and my weight crushed the leaves, the sound seemed a hundred times louder to me than it really was. Each time a bird took flight I froze in mid-stride, like a statue.

Twenty painstaking minutes had pa.s.sed when I was brought to a halt once more.

From just the other side of the wall of green came the sound of his weapon banging against the side of the Land Cruiser. It seemed to be just a little forward and to my half right, but no more than about eight metres away.

For a minute or two I stood still and listened. There was no talking, no radio traffic, just the sound of him coughing and gob bing on to the tarmac. Then came the noise of metal panels buckling. He was standing on the roof or bonnet.

I wanted to be in a direct line with the wagon, so I moved on a little further.

Then, like a DVD in extreme slo-mo, I lowered myself to my knees and applied Safe, the barely audible metallic click sounding in my head as if I'd banged two hammers together. Finally I laid down the weapon and took off my bergen one strap at a time, continually looking in the direction of the wagon, knowing that if I moved forward just two metres I would be in plain sight of my new best mate and his M-16.

Once the bergen was on the ground I rested the rifle against it with the barrel sticking up in the air to make it easier to find. f.u.c.k the zero, I didn't need it now. Then, very slowly and deliberately, I extracted my gollock. The blade sounded as if it was running along a grinding stone instead of just gliding past the alloy lip of the canvas sheath.

Down on to my stomach once more and with the gollock in my right hand, I edged carefully forward on my toes and elbows, trying to control my erratic breathing as I wiped the Deet very slowly out of my eyes.

I neared the edge of the treeline at a point about five metres short of the wagon. I could see the nearest front wheel, its chromed alloys stained with mud at the centre of a lot of wet, shiny tyre.

I edged forward a little more, so slowly it would have made a sloth look like Linford Christie. Another couple of metres and the bottom of the door sills and the front wing came into view but in the gap between them and the gra.s.s, I saw no legs. Maybe he was sitting inside, maybe, as the buckling sound had suggested, he was standing on the roof. My eyes strained at the tops of their sockets as I tried to look up. I heard the coughing up of phlegm and spitting; he was definitely outside, definitely up there somewhere.

I counted off sixty seconds before moving again. He was going to hear me soon. I didn't even want to swallow: I was so close I could have reached out and touched the wheel.

I still couldn't see him, but he was above me, sitting on the bonnet, and his heels had started to bang rhythmically against the wing furthest away from me.

He must be facing the road.

I knew what I needed to do, but I had to psyche myself to do it. It's never easy to take on somebody like this. Up there was virgin ground, and when I got on to it, I had to react quickly to whatever I found. What if there was another guy in the wagon, lying asleep? What if he had heard me and was just waiting for me to pop up?

For the next thirty seconds I revved myself up as mozzies hovered around my face. I checked I was holding the gollock correctly with a good firm grip, and that the blade was facing the right way. I took one last deep breath and sprang to my feet.

He was sitting on the opposite wing with his back to me, weapon on the bonnet to his left. He heard me, but it was too late to turn. I was already leaping towards him, my thighs striking the edge of the bonnet, my feet in the air. My right hand swung round and jammed the gollock across his neck; with my left I grabbed the blunt edge of the blade and pulled tight, trying to drag his head on to my chest.

The M-16 sc.r.a.ped over the body work as he moved back with me over the wing, my body weight starting to pull us both to the ground as his legs kicked and his body twisted. His hands came up to grab my wrists, trying to pull the gollock away, and there was a scream. I squeezed his head against my chest and committed to falling backwards off the wagon. The air exploded out of me as my back hit the ground and he landed on top of me, and we both cried out with pain.

His hands were round the gollock and he writhed like a madman, kicking out in all directions, banging against the wheel and wing. I opened my legs and wrapped them round his waist, forcing my feet between his legs, then flexed my hips in the air and thrust out my chest, trying to stretch him as I pushed the gollock against his neck. I worked my head down to his left ear.

"Ssssh!"

I could feel the gollock in the folds of his skin. The blade must have penetrated his neck a little; I felt warm blood on my hands. I shushed him again and he finally seemed to get the message.

Keeping my hips thrust out, I bent him over me in an arc. He stopped moving, apart from his chest, which heaved up and down. I could still feel his hands against mine as he gripped the blade, but he wasn't struggling any more. I kept on shushing into his ear.