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  As Alex looked inside, bullets were ricocheting everywhere, bouncing off the steel of the bridge and flying lethally back toward the attackers. He flinched. Even standing in the doorway, any of the rounds could take out an eye or punch a hole in his neck. He kept his finger on the trigger, pumping out round after round. One man was already lying on the ground, shot twice through the head, whilst another was gagging on the blood chocking him after a bullet had opened up a mortal wound in his throat. A third had managed to reach for his gun, staying alive for long enough to fire a trio of rounds, but none of them got close to their target and in only a fraction of a second he’d been caught in a brutal crossfire of bullets. Tumbling to the ground, the life was a ebbing away from him, and by the time Alex put a final round into the centre of his forehead he was already dead.

  Alex spun around.

  A volley of fire had been released from the doorway leading down to the main cabin. The sound of the bullet striking the metal was still ringing in his ears. Alex jumped inside the bridge. He pulled the night-vision goggles down over his eyes, and looked back across the deck. At the centre of the boat, there was a doorway, where the stairs led down to the cabin and cargo hold. A flash of red. One man was standing inside the doorway, a rifle in his hand. An AK-47 reckoned Alex, judging by its shape. Taking shots at them as soon as they showed their faces.

  “You there,” hissed Jack, from outside the window.

  “Here,” said Alex.

  “Then take cover.”

  “Why?”

  “Because a grenade is about to blow.”

  The ear-splitting racket of the explosive charge detonating was already splitting through Alex’s ears as he dropped to the ground. Fucking madman. A burst of electric yellow light suddenly lit up the sky

  “Go, go,” yelled Jack.

  Alex started to run. It wasn’t the plan he would have chosen. Left to himself, he’d have found another way down into the hold, and taken out the remaining crew one by one. But there was no point in arguing about it now, and not much chance that Jack would have agreed anyway. Stealth didn’t interest him. Not when he could blow up a doorway with a grenade, then run into the chaos it kicked off with his guns blazing. Alex gripped his SA-80, bombed a fresh mag into place, and hurled himself towards the doorway. Jack was already a few yards ahead of him. The door had been blown clear away when the grenade detonated, creating a lethal shower of molten shrapnel that had sliced the man standing behind it to shreds. Smoke was still billowing through the air, caught up in swirling gusts of wind blowing across the sea. Jack was plunging down into the darkness below, with Alex following close behind. The lights down in the hold had either been switched off, or else blown out by the grenade. Thank Christ for the goggles, decided Alex. Otherwise we’d be fighting blind.

  “Right,” shouted Jack.

  Alex spun around.

  The layout was typical of a medium-sized cargo tug. The stairs dropped down into a passageway. A kitchen to the left. A living room to the right. Further up, three or four cabins where the crew kipped down. Another stairway that led down to the cargo hold and the engine room. Space for six to eight crew reckoned Alex. And four of them were already dead.

  “There,” hissed Jack.

  A man was creeping along the side of the kitchen wall. Planning on taking them by surprise, decided Jack. The wall was thin, constructed out of nothing more than a single sheet of board, and through the night-vision goggles his body heat was clearly visible from the passageway.

  “He’s all yours, mate,” whispered Alex.

  Jack stepped round the corner. A short double-tap on his SA-80 and the man was dead.

  “We’ll give you money,” yelled a voice.

  Alex looked around. It was coming from the living quarters, off to the right.

  “Please,” shouted the voice. The man spoken in broken English, with a heavy Columbian accent. “Let us go, we can pay you.”

  Alex started to walk cautiously towards the door. Kicking it open, he peered inside. It measured just ten feet by eight. A couple of sofas, a table, a TV with a stack of porn and martial arts videos next to it, and an ashtray filled with cigarette butts next to half a dozen empty beer bottles. The crew were men of simple tastes, decided Alex. They knew how to relax after the day’s work was completed.

  “Hands up,” snapped Alex. “Get out in the open where I can see you.”

  One man stood up. Then another.

  Both with their hands raised in the air.

  Even in the dim, shady light they looked rough. There was stubble on their chins and sweat on their foreheads. The first guy was six foot, the second five ten. About thirty, with thick, working man’s muscles, but with enough flab around their bellies to suggest they were primarily sailors, not fighters. There were fighting men on this ship, that’s for sure, reckoned Alex. But we’ve already dealt with them. It’s the crew we need to pacify now.

  “Drop your weapons,” barked Alex.

  Behind him a shot rang out. The taller man staggered backwards, a bullet hole drilled through his forehead. Another shot. This time tearing into the shorter man’s chest. He crumpled to the ground. Alex spun around. Another pair of shots. He ducked.

  Jack was standing right behind him, his SA-80 in his hands. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Jack ignored him, walking towards the two bodies.

  “There were just a pair of bloody sailor,” growled Alex. “Jesus, man, they were surrendering.”

  Jack pointed to the ground. The smaller man had a Heckler & Koch in his hand. He picked it up and showed it to Jack. “So why did he have this?”

  “I asked him to hand over his damned weapon.”

  Jack pointed. “Then why had he removed the safety catch.”

  Alex fell silent.

  There was no answer to that.

  “I’ve fought Columbians before,” said Jack. “They are lethal fuckers. Like snakes. These guys were just pretending to surrender. They were about to shoot you in the head.”

  Alex stepped over the corpses. If there was one thing he hated more than shooting a man it was being proved wrong. “Okay, thanks,” he said tersely. “Let’s search the rest of this bloody ship and see how many of the bastards are left.”

  A quick check of the living room proved it was empty. So was the kitchen. They’d shot seven men already calculated Alex. Maybe that was the entire crew. “Reckon the job’s done?” he asked, looking across at Jack.

  “The hold,” replied the American.

  “Right.”.

  He swung open the door. There was some rust on its hinges, and it squeaked. Outside, the wind was blowing across the sea, and with no one to steer it, the boat was starting to rock as it heaved across the swell of the waves. Alex steadied himself, grabbing hold of a railing on the metal stair case. Behind him, Jack flashed down a torch, illuminating the space down below. It measured forty feet or so, with the engine room at the back. The boat was at least twenty years old, and although it was perfectly sea-worthy it had collected a lot of rust over the two decades it had been hauling drugs across the notoriously rough seas of the Caribbean. Flakes of brown steel were peeling off the walls, and there was a stench of iron and diesel in the small, confined space.

  Alex started to walk, his SA-80 in front of him.

  If anyone was hiding down here, he’d know there was fight on upstairs, reckoned Alex. And he’d know his mates had lost. He’d be shit scared. And scared men were dangerous.

  “Anyone here, you’ve got five second to surrender,” he yelled.

  Jack had joined him in the cargo hold, switching on a powerful flashlight. There were four crates right at the centre of the hold. Behind them there was a stack of wooden boxes.

  Not much else.

  But that was the way with drugs convoys, Alex reminded himself. A single crate of cocaine could be worth ten million dollars and that was wholesale. You didn’t need much of a cargo to make the journey worthwhile.

  A movement.
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  Somewhere behind the wooden boxes.

  Alex started to walk forwards while Jack shone his torch straight into it.

  “It might be a rat,” he said.

  “Yeah, right, and it might be a Columbian.”

  Alex turned and dropped

  Someone was shivering. Not from cold, realised Alex. From fear.

  “Move it,” he barked.

  The figure started to move. A boy, realised Alex. No more than thirteen or fourteen. Five two, and dressed in jeans and a red sweatshirt. There were tears on his face. Grab him before Jack damn well shoots him, he told himself, as he lunged forward. He took hold of the kid’s shoulders and met no resistance. The boy was too frightened to fight back.

  “This one’s okay,” said Alex, hauling him out, and throwing him across the floor.

  Jack frisked him quickly. But Alex was right. The kid was clean.

  “How many men?” asked Alex.

  The boy shook, unable to speak.

  “Answer the fucking question,” spat Jack. He was pointing his SA-80 straight into the boy’s chest. “And we’ll let you live.”

  “S-s-seven,” he stammered.

  “There’s seven corpses, kid,” said Jack. “That means your pals are all dead. And you’re on your way to jail.”

  The boy was too terrified to speak. Alex pushed him to one side, and walked towards the crates. They’d drop the boy off with social services when they bought the boat into Tobago. They’d probably find him a home in an orphanage somewhere. If he was lucky, they’d move him to the States. He’d be better off than working as a cabin boy for these criminals. He was scared out of his wits, but they’d done him a favour really.

  “What the hell is this?” said Jack.

  He was standing over the first of the three crates. A wooden box, it measured five feet, by three. The kind that might be used to transport industrial equipment. Jack had levered open the crate, and flashed his torch into it.

  Alex walked briskly across. He was expecting to see neat one-pound bags of white powder. Cocaine. That was what they had been told this boat was smuggling into the United States. But as Jack’s torch flashed across the interior of the crate, it glinted. And cocaine didn’t glint.

  “It’s gold,” said Alex.

  Jack grinned. “Hell, I know it’s gold,” he growled. “I’m not a total dumb-ass. I meant what the fuck is a crate of gold doing on this boat?”

  Alex had already walked across to the other two crates, and started to lever them open. “I don’t know,” he replied. “But there are three boxes of the stuff.”

  “You mean there’s no coke on this ship?”

  Alex nodded. They’d searched the three crates. Each one of them was filled with neatly stored bars of gold, each one encased in bubble wrap. There were more boxes in the cargo hold, but they contained tinned and dried food for the voyage, and tools for the engine.

  “Only gold,” said Alex. He looked across at the boy. “Why?” he demanded. “What’s this gold doing here?”

  “I k-k-know nothing,” the boy stammered. “I just serve f-f-food and c-c-clean.”

  Alex started to walk back up the stairs. No one was at the controls. They needed to get back to the bridge, bring the boat under control, and start steering it back towards land.

  “We’ll take this boat home,” he said tersely. “We’ll let the head office worry about what the gold is doing here. It’s way above our pay grade.

  Chapter Two

  Alex didn’t know a great deal about gold. It was shiny, yellow, expensive and after a bad row with a girlfriend it was the best way of getting back on the right side of her. And that was about it. But he was enjoying the lesson. Maybe working for Unit Five isn’t so bad after all, he reflected ruefully, even if all the men in the operation had been press-ganged into the Black Ops division after getting into trouble with whatever part of the military they started out with. You can travel the world, play with lots of high-tech kit, and even get an education thrown in. If it wasn’t for the getting shot at all the time I might even stay after my term is up

  “Gold comes in many types of shapes and sizes, from jewellery, to coins, to the stuff that gets stored in vaults,” explained Major Harford. “But a gold bar manufactured and sold by any reputable deal is going to have a hallmark on it. It should tell you what carat the gold is, who made up the bar, and in which country.”

  Harford was the head of intelligence for Unit Five. A cold, calculating man, Alex hadn’t warmed to him in the few months since he’d joined the team. He’d sent both him and Jack into Libya and would have gladly left both of them to die there. Men in the Unit expected to be expendable. They all been in some kind of trouble, and that was part of the deal. They put their lives on the line, and if by some miracle they lived through it, they would get a fresh start. But they didn’t expect to be sacrificed as cheaply as Harford thought they could be.

  “But these damned things don’t have any kind of stamp on them at all,” he continued, holding up one of the bars they had retrieved from the boat.

  “Why not?” asked Alex.

  Harford smile a thin smile. “That’s precisely the problem. We don’t know.”

  After finding the gold, they’d regained control of the boat, and steered it towards Tobago, the small, sleepy holiday island close to Trinidad. Unit Five had set up a temporary base close to its capital Scarborough while it monitored and counted the drugs dealers who, led by Bilado, were causing fresh mayhem in Columbia, and threatening the stability of the entire region. The boat they’d sailed out in was left anchored in the Caribbean to be collected later. They’d grabbed a few hours rest, then readied themselves for the de-brief. They’d expected to be hauling in a few million dollars of cocaine. They’d be nothing to explain, except for how much of a fight Bilado’s men had put up. But three crates of gold? That was something different.

  “So we have two problems,” said Helen Greenway. “First, how did Carlos Bilado get his hands on so much gold? And how do we keep this covered up?”

  A tall brunette, close to forty, Greenway ran Unit Five with an iron hand. She handpicked the men in the unit, drawing them from right across the Special Forces regiments within NATO and she liaised with the military chiefs in London, Washington and Brussels to decide what targets they should hit. She worked with a forensic attention to detail, and she didn’t accept failure. If it was a choice between sacrificing one of her men, and facing an embarrassing phone call to Washington, she’d abandon the man. And she’d do so without a moment’s hesitation or regret.

  “Why does it need to be covered up?” asked Jack.

  “Because what we just did was illegal, right?” said Alex.

  He was looking up at Greenway as he posed the question.

  “Right,” she answered crisply. “Our intelligence was that the boat was being used to transport cocaine. The rules of engagement allow us to intercept and eliminate drugs traffickers, but…”

  “But there’s nothing illegal about transporting gold is there?” said Alex.

  Greenway hesitated before replying, but then shook her head. “No,” she said. “Of course, I doubt that a man such as Bilado was planning to declare it to the US Customs and pay any taxes on it, so that would be something he could be charged with. But by itself there’s nothing illegal about transporting gold.”

  “So we just shot a bunch of guys who were doing nothing wrong?” said Alex.

  He looked straight into her eyes. For the first time since he’d be working for Unit Five, he sensed a flicker of weakness there. If it came out she’d ordered the elimination of an innocent crew of sailors, her career was over.

  All Alex and Jack had to do was tell someone.

  She’d be finished.

  “Bilado was doing something wrong, we can be sure of it,” said Greenway firmly. “We just need to find out what, that’s all.”

  Chapter Three

  The windows on the briefing room had all been closed, shutting out t
he brilliant sunset that was sinking over the Caribbean. Alex sat down on the stiff plastic chair. The villa was in the hills, a couple of mile outside Scarborough, set in its own grounds of two acres, and in the last forty-eight hours he’d been making full use of the facilities. There was a gym, a swimming pool, a private beach, and plenty to eat. By the end of the second day, Alex felt as fit as at any time since he’d left the SAS. Maybe fitter.

  But now the fun was over.

  He could tell that as soon as he stepped into the room, and saw the collection of papers Major Harford had assembled.

  A new mission was about to begin.

  From which, like every job Unit Five assigned to its men, he’d be lucky to emerge in one piece.

  “I think we’re getting somewhere,” said Greenway, striding into the room with a laptop under her arm.

  A man was standing next to her. Six feet two, with light brown eyes, and wearing pale chinos, and a well-pressed olive green polo shirt. Alex had never seen the guy before, but he recognised something in him. Military, or probably ex-military, given that he looked around forty. You could see it in the way he stood, and the way his eyes swivelled cautiously around the room as soon as he stepped through the door. Surveillance. He expected danger, and knew how to look for it.

  “So what’s the story?” said Jack. “Because we’d be quite happy just to spend a few more weeks here getting back in shape.”

  Alex glanced across at the American and grinned. Jack had settled into the villa like a monkey into a banana plantation. He’d spent the day swimming, sunbathing and eating, and then hooked up with one of the local girls he’d met on the beach and had spent the night with her. He’d promised Alex she’d bring along one of her friends for him tonight. So long as they were still here. “I’m sure you would,” answered Greenway, pursing her lips. “But that’s not going to happen.”

  “Why not?” asked Alex.

  “There’s a job.”

  Harford sat down on the edge of the desk. The briefing room was at the back of the villa. There was a row of chair, a bank of television screens, and five computers, all with encrypted internet connections that could keep them in touch with NATO command centres right around the world twenty-four hours a day seven days a week.