‘X-rays?’ asked Ethan.
‘Enemies,’ explained Kat, then turned to Johnny. ‘And by “compromised” you mean killed, don’t you?’
Johnny nodded and looked at Ethan. ‘You keeping up with this? It’s a lot to take in.’
‘Yeah,’ said Ethan, smiling. ‘It’s not every day you become part of a covert ops team, is it?’
‘Shit happens,’ Johnny said with a shrug.
The plane dropped suddenly and Ethan heard the engines squeal a little, felt his stomach flip. It had been doing that a lot in the past few minutes.
‘This situation Sam’s in…’ he said. ‘Does it mean we have to take guns with us?’
‘For a start, we use the term weapon rather than gun,’ said Luke. ‘And, no, we won’t go in armed. We never do. The job of the team is always to try and slip in under the radar, not to go in and take people out. We need to be invisible. Weapons have a habit of making people very obvious indeed. But we will be taking in explosives to create a diversion.’
‘He means we’ll blow shit up,’ said Johnny.
‘Sounds dangerous,’ said Ethan.
‘Comes with the territory,’ Johnny replied, ‘and it’s all part of the fun. Anyway, who wants to live a life that’s risk-free? Better to live as a lion for a day than a lamb for a year, right?’
‘That’s cheesy,’ said Ethan.
‘I know,’ said Johnny. ‘Can’t believe I said it.’
‘True though,’ Kat put in quietly.
‘If the op goes well, we’ll still be going to the competition,’ Luke added. ‘It’s all part of the cover story.’
Ethan looked at the team – his team – four people he now counted as the best friends he’d ever had. He was about to jump from a jet with them – on a mission for MI5 to rescue the toughest bloke he’d ever met in his life. Just a few weeks ago he wouldn’t have believed it was possible, wouldn’t have believed he could have the skills for such a mission. But it was and he did. He was confident of that. Sam – the team – wouldn’t have chosen him otherwise. All he had to do was stay sharp, stay focused, and remember everything he’d been taught.
‘OK,’ he said, ‘ignoring the lion/lamb thing, I do have one more question.’
‘What’s that?’ said Johnny.
Ethan smiled. ‘What’s the pay like?’
25
‘We go in thirty,’ said Johnny. ‘Let’s move.’
The team moved to the rear of the plane.
‘You’re with me,’ Kat told Ethan. ‘We’re going in tandem.’
‘Tandem?’ said Ethan. ‘But isn’t this a high-altitude jump? I didn’t know you could do that.’
‘Well, you can,’ said Kat, ‘and we can’t have you doing one without any prep. Natalya’s got no experience of doing tandems and she’s taking the explosives in anyway. And you’re too heavy to go with Johnny or Luke. So it’s me.’
‘Explosives?’
Kat nodded. ‘Natalya’s the expert in that area. Seems to know more than Sam, and that’s saying something.’
‘I can’t work her out,’ said Ethan.
‘You’re not the only one.’ Kat led him through a door and down some metal stairs. ‘I’m probably her closest friend and all I know is that I know nothing about her. This way.’
They went through another door, and immediately Ethan noticed the temperature drop.
‘At this altitude we’ll be jumping with oxygen,’ Kat explained. ‘And it’s very cold so we’ll be wearing thermals. I’m sure you’ll look very sexy in them.’
Ethan found himself in a section of the plane that had been entirely stripped of anything comfortable. The walls were just metal plates and struts riveted together. And the sound of the plane’s engines had seriously risen in volume. To speak and be heard, everyone had to shout.
Johnny nodded at them. ‘I’ll give Gabe eight out of ten for kit prep,’ he said.
‘Only eight?’ queried Ethan, trying to stop his teeth from chattering.
‘He left my lucky teddy bear behind,’ said Johnny.
Luke pulled out a map, laid it on the metal checker-plate floor. ‘This is the DZ,’ he said, pointing just below a patch of dark green on the map as everyone else gathered round. ‘We’ll be nicely hidden by the trees and we’re only half a click from here, which is where Sam and the disk are. Our job is to draw attention away from that point and allow Sam sufficient time to get in and recover it.’
‘Click?’ asked Ethan.
‘Kilometre,’ translated Kat.
‘What is “here” exactly?’ asked Johnny. ‘Doesn’t look like much on the map.’
‘That’s because it isn’t,’ said Luke. ‘In fact it’s what’s left of a fifteenth-century castle. It’s built right above these sea cliffs here. This is what our satellite picked up,’ he added, producing some black and white bird’s-eye-view photos of the castle. Ethan couldn’t quite believe he’d just heard Luke refer to a satellite as though they owned it.
‘Main access to the castle is from the beach, here,’ Luke went on, pointing at the map again. ‘This line here is a path that runs from the beach up to the clifftop.’
‘Looks lovely,’ said Johnny. ‘When can I move in?’
Luke ignored him. ‘We HAHO into the DZ, then we’re on with the diversion. RV is the beach. Sam is to meet us there. I’ll contact him when everything kicks off.’
At this, Natalya piped up. ‘I have spoken to Gabe and checked the kit,’ she said, her face as serious as ever, though she sounded excited. ‘We have more than enough detonators and P4. To secure the beach, we are taking anti-personnel mines – Claymores.’
‘And how do we get off the beach when we’re done?’ asked Kat.
‘One of the packs we’re taking contains two inflatable canoes,’ said Luke. ‘A sub’s on course to pick us up at dawn.’
‘A sub?’ said Ethan. ‘You’re joking, right?’
Luke shook his head.
‘What if the beach is compromised?’ Natalya asked.
Luke rested a finger back on the castle, then dragged it up a little to rest on a small black shape nearby. ‘In that case we leave from here,’ he said. ‘It’s the old watchtower.’
‘Thanks for the added colour there,’ said Johnny. ‘You see, Eth? It’s not just fun, it’s a learning experience too!’
Ethan leaned closer to look at the map, then back at the pictures of the castle. The watchtower was perched right at the top of the cliffs behind the castle ruins.
‘How do we get down those?’ he asked. ‘It’ll take ages to climb.’
‘It would…’ said Kat, looking across at him. ‘Actually if we go that way, you’ll be doing your first BASE jump sooner than you think! But we’ll only do that if everything goes tits up – our aim is to make sure it doesn’t, OK?’
Ethan couldn’t think of anything to say to that so he kept his mouth shut.
‘That’s it,’ said Luke, bringing everyone back to the task in hand. ‘Final point to remember is that this is a covert op. We need as little contact with the x-rays on the island as possible. We get in, provide Sam’s diversion, and get out. Understood?’
Talk over, everyone leaped into action. They started to sort through bags of kit Ethan had never seen before, handing out various bits and pieces to each other, checking everything once, twice and then a third time. And they were getting changed out of their everyday clothes, into stuff that looked considerably more hardcore.
Ethan turned to Kat, who was now dressed in black combat trousers, a black jacket and black boots. The outfit made her look scary as hell.
‘Why’s it so cold?’ he asked, finding it impossible to stop shivering.
‘No heating,’ said Kat. ‘No point making the luggage nice and cosy. Don’t worry, though – this’ll sort that out.’ She handed him a pile of clothing. ‘You’ll need to strip and put the black kit on first,’ she explained. ‘You’ll be in that for the mission after we land. It’s a pretty fab material actually: breathable, as close to silent as you can get, and completely waterproof.’