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  Gant's was the fifth attempt, and it had entailed sending two high-speed decoy buggies into the gauntlet first, to attract the enemy's fire, after which Gant's two eight-wheelers had zeroed in on the cave entrance under cover of mortar fire targeted at the enemy's emplacements. It had worked.

  The speeding decoy buggies caught all manner of shit—automatic gunfire, RPGs that smashed into the ground all around them—while Gant's LAV-25 had burst forth from cover, closely followed by a second eight-wheeled beast.

  The mountainside above the cave entrance had erupted in mortar impacts while the two LAVs had shot across the open plain before whipping into the entrance of the cave system, disappearing into darkness, out of the rain of gunfire and into a whole new kind of hell.

  Elizabeth 'Fox' Gant was 29 years old and a newly-minted First Lieutenant, fresh from Officer Candidate School.

  Now, it wasn't often that a brand-new lieutenant was given command of a prized Recon Unit, let alone a stand-alone one, but Gant was something special.

  Compact, blonde and fitter than many triathletes, she was a natural leader. Behind her sky-blue eyes lay a razor-sharp mind. Plus she already had two years' experience in a Recon Unit as an NCO.

  She also, it was said in whispers, had friends in high places.

  Some said that her rapid rise to Recon command had been the result of a recommendation from no less than the President of the United States himself. It had something to do, they said, with an incident at the US Air Force's most secret base, Area 7, during which Gant had shown her worth in the presence of the President himself. But that was conjecture.

  The greatest recommendation, in the end, had come from a highly-respected Marine Gunnery Sergeant named Gena 'Mother' Newman who had vouched for Gant in the best possible way: if Gant were put in command of a Recon Unit, Mother had said, then she herself would act as Gant's Team Chief.

  At six-feet-two, with a fully-shaven head, one artificial leg and some of the most ruthless skills in the killing trade, Mother's word was gold. Her nickname said it all. It was short for 'Motherfucker'.

  And so Gant took command of Marine Force Reconnaissance Unit 9 one month before it shipped out for Afghanistan.

  There was one other thing about Libby Gant worth noting.

  For almost a year now, she had been the girlfriend of Captain Shane M. Schofield.

  Schofield's newly acquired Yak-141 shot through the air at close to

  Mach 2.

  It had been nearly five hours since his battle at Krask-8, and now, spread out before him and Book II, were the formidable Hindu Kush mountains.

  And somewhere in them was Libby Gant—Potential Hostage No. 1 for anyone wanting Schofield's head.

  Their Yak was almost out of gas. A quick pit-stop at an abandoned Soviet airfield in rural Kazakhstan had allowed them to refuel, but now they were running low on fuel again. They needed .to find Gant soon.

  Since he didn't trust anyone in Alaska any more, Schofield tuned his plane's radio to a very obscure US satellite frequency—the frequency of the US Defense Intelligence Agency.

  After his identity had been verified, he asked to be put through to the Pentagon, to David Fairfax in the Cypher and Cryptanalysis

  Department.

  'This is Fairfax,' a young male voice came in over his earpiece.

  'Mr Fairfax, this is Shane Schofield.'

  'Hey, Captain Schofield. Nice to hear from you. So, what have you destroyed today?'

  'I've flooded a Typhoon-class submarine, levelled a building, and launched a ballistic missile to destroy a maintenance facility.'

  'Slow day, huh.'

  'Mr Fairfax, I need your help.'

  'Sure:

  Schofield and Fairfax had formed an unlikely alliance once

  before, during the incident at Area 7. Both had received (classified) medals for their bravery and afterwards had become good friends.

  Now, as he and Book II blasted over the mountains of Tajikistan in the Yak-141, Schofield could picture Fairfax—sitting at his computer in an underground room at the Pentagon, dressed in a Mooks T-shirt, jeans, glasses and Nikes, munching on a Mars Bar and looking pretty much like Harry Potter as a graduate student. A code-cracking genius of a graduate student.

  'So what do you need?' Fairfax asked.

  'Four things,' Schofield said. 'First, I need you to tell me where Gant is stationed in Afghanistan. Exact GPS location.'

  'Jesus, Scarecrow, that's operational information. I don't have clearance for that. I could get arrested just for accessing it.'

  'Get clearance. Do whatever you have to do. I just lost six good Marines because my mission to Siberia was compromised by someone back home. It was a set-up designed to put me in the hands of some bounty hunters. I can't trust anybody, David. I need you to do this for me.'

  'Okay. I'll see what I can do. What else;"

  Schofield pulled out the list of names he'd taken from Wexley, the ExSol leader. 'I need you to look up the following names for me . . .'

  Schofield read out the names on the bounty list, including his own.

  'Find out what these names have in common. Career history, sniper skills, hair colour, anything. Cross-check them on every database you've got.'

  'Got it.'

  'Third, look up a base in Siberia called Krask-8. Find out whatever you can about it. I want to know why it was chosen as an ambush site.'

  'Okay. And the last impossible task?'

  Schofield frowned, thinking—thinking about one of the names he had heard mentioned on the radio at Krask-8.

  At last he said, 'This is going to sound weird, but can you look

  Gant's armoured eight-wheeler skidded to a halt inside the darkened cave entrance.

  Its double rear doors were flung open from within and the six-man team of Marines thundered out of it, boots slamming against the ground, guns up.

  Gant stepped out of the LAV and scanned the area, the gigantic Mother Newman by her side. Both were dressed in sand-coloured fatigues, helmets and body armour, and held MP-7s and pistol-sized crossbows in their hands.

  The cave here was wide and high and completely concrete-walled. A wide set of train tracks disappeared down a very steep tunnel in front of them. The tunnel was called a drift and it was how you entered the mine.

  'Sphinx, this is Fox,' Gant said into her throat-mike. 'We're in. Where are you?'

  A British-accented voice came in: 'Fox, this is Sphinx. Christ, it's bedlam down here! We're at the eastern extremity of the mine! About two hundred metres from the drift! They're bunkered down in front of the two vents, in an air pock—'

  The signal cut off.

  'Sphinx? Sphinx? Damn,' Gant turned to two of her men. 'Pokey. Freddy. Flush out those RPG foxholes upstairs. There's gotta be some internal tunnels giving access to them. Nail those suckers so we can open a safe corridor into this mine.'

  'Yes, ma'am.' The two young Marines took off.

  'The rest of you,' Gant said, 'follow me.'

  • • •

  up a guy called the "Black Knight"? Check the mercenary databases in particular, anything ex-military. He's a bounty hunter-and so far as I know, a very good one-and he's after me. I want to know who

  16 '/r will be done, Scarecrow. I'll get back to you as soon as I can.'

  Schofield's Yak-141 zoomed over the mountain peaks of Tajikistan.

  Fairfax came on the line.

  'Okay, you listening. I found Gant for you. Her unit is working out of Mobile Command Station California-2, under the command of Colonel Clarence W. Walker. California-2 is located at GPS co-ordinates 06730.20, 3845.65.'

  'Got it,' Schofield said, punching the co-ordinates into his trip

  computer.

  Fairfax went on. 'I also got a couple of hits on that list of yours. Seven of the fifteen names matched up immediately on the NATO personnel database: Ashcroft, Kingsgate, McCabe, Farrell, Oliphant, Nicholson and you are all mentioned in something called the "NATO Joint Services MNRR Study".
It's dated December 1996. Looks like some kind of joint medical study we did with the Brits'

  'Where is it kept?'

  'USAMRMC—Army Medical Research and Materiel Command.'

  'Think you can get it?'

  'Of course.'

  'And the other hit?' Schofield asked.

  'One of our Echelon spy satellites caught a voice transmission from an unknown aircraft flying over Tajikistan only this morning. Several of the names on your list were mentioned. I'll read you the transcript:

  ' "BASE, THIS IS DEMON. WE HAVE WEITZMAN, ALIVE, AS INSTRUCTED. HEADING FOR THE KARPALOV MINE SYSTEM NOW. IT'S THE MONEY SHOT—THE BIGGEST CONCENTRATION OF TARGETS ON THE LIST. FOUR OF THEM IN THE ONE PLACE: ASHCROFT, KHALIF, KINGSGATE AND ZAWAHIRI. PLUS SCHOFIELD'S GIRL IS THERE, TOO."'

  Schofield felt his insides tighten.

  Fairfax said, 'There's a notation here. It says that the voice on the intercept had a British accent, and that its owner is—whoa 'Keep talking.' Fairfax started reading: 'Voice identified as that of Damon F.

  Larkham, call-sign "The Demon", former colonel in the British SAS.' Fairfax paused. 'He was big in the '90s, but was court-martialled in '99 because of his links with the former head of the SAS, a real bad dude named Trevor J. Barnaby.'

  'Yeah, I've met Barnaby,' Schofield said.

  'Larkham was sentenced to eleven years' jail but he escaped en route to Whitemoor Prison, killing nine guards in the process.

  'Now alleged to be a principal in the freelance bounty hunting organisation known as the Intercontinental Guards, Unit 88, or "IG-88", based in Portugal. Jesus, Scarecrow, what the hell have you got yourself into}'

  'Something that could lose me my head if I'm not careful.' Schofield swapped a look with Book II.

  'As for that place you mentioned, Krask-8,' Fairfax said, 'the only thing I could find was this: in June 1997, the whole town of Krask, plus its surrounding maintenance facilities, was sold to an American company, the Atlantic Shipping Corporation. In addition to its shipping businesses, Atlantic also has oil interests. It got Krask-8 when it purchased about 10,000 hectares of northern Siberia for oil exploration.'

  Schofield thought about that. 'Nope. Doesn't help me.'

  Fairfax said, 'Oh, and I haven't found anything on that Black Knight guy on the regular ex-military databases. I'm running a search program now on some of the classified intelligence databases.'

  'Thanks, David. Keep at it. Let me know when you find something. I've got to go now.'

  He hit the afterburners.

  Nine minutes later, the Yak-141 landed vertically in a cloud of dust in a clearing not far from a large gathering of American desert vehicles and command tents.

  Schofield had heard that the campaign in Afghanistan had become like Vietnam all over again—principally because Afghanistan, even in war, was one of the world's foremost producers of heroin.

  Not only did the Afghan mountain-men have the uncanny ability to vanish into hidden cave systems, but every now and then, when they were cornered, they would try to bribe Allied soldiers with bricks of 100% pure heroin. And when one such brick was worth about a million dollars on the street, it sometimes worked.

  Why, only last week, Schofield had heard of a Russian unit going AWOL. A whole unit of special forces Spetsnaz soldiers—24 men in total, supposedly there as an observer unit—just stole an Mi-17 Russian-made transport helicopter and disappeared in search of a cavern reputedly filled with thirty pallets of heroin bricks.

  Welcome to Afghanistan.

  Schofield's plane was met by a ring of heavily-armed Marines who didn't take kindly to an unauthorised Russian fighter landing in their midst. But within seconds they recognised Schofield and Book II and escorted them to the tent of the base commander, Colonel Clarence Walker, USMC.

  The command tent stood at the bottom of a low hill, beyond which lay the entrance to the Al-Qaeda mine.

  Colonel Walker was standing at a map table yelling into a radio when Schofield and Book entered: 'Well, find a way to restore radio signals down there! Lay an antenna cable! Use fucking cups and a piece of string if you have to! I need to talk to my men down in that mine before the bombers arrive!'

  'Colonel Walker,' Schofield said, 'I'm sorry to barge in on you like this, but this is very important. My name is Captain Shane Schofield and I have to find Lieutenant G—'

  Walker spun, glowering. 'What? Who the fuck are you?' 'Sir, my name is Captain Shane Schofield, and I think there's more in that cave than just Islamist terrorists. There are probably

  also bounty hu—'

  'Captain, unless you're flying a C-130 Hercules with a laser-guided MOAB bomb on board, 1 don't want to talk to you right now. Take a seat and take a fucking number—'

  'Hey! What the hell is that!' someone yelled.

  Everyone charged out of the tent and peered out into the gauntlet just in time to see a huge Russian transport helicopter swoop down in front of the mine entrance and land in the dust.

  About twenty masked men leapt out of the chopper and disappeared inside the mine under fire from the terrorist emplacements on the mountainside.

  No sooner were the men inside the mine than the chopper lifted off, blasting the sniper holes with its side-mounted cannons before disappearing over a hill to the north.

  'What in God's name was that?' Colonel Walker yelled.

  'It was an Mi-17! With Russian insignia on its flanks!' a spotter called. 'It was that rogue Spetsnaz unit!'

  'This place is nuts, fucking nuts . . .' Walker muttered. He turned. 'Okay, Captain Schofield. Do you know anything about this—?'

  But Schofield and Book II were nowhere to be seen.

  Indeed, the only thing Walker saw was a nearby Light Strike Vehicle skidding off the mark and speeding into the gauntlet with Schofield and Book II inside it.

  The Light Strike Vehicle whipped across the stretch of no-man's-land in front of the mine entrance, kicking up a billowing cloud of dust behind it.

  Gunfire erupted from the slopes above the mine entrance, smacking into the dirt next to its wheels.

  A Light Strike Vehicle is like a dune buggy. It has no windscreens and no armour. It consists merely of a series of roll bars which form a cage around the driver and passenger. It is light, it is fast and it is supremely agile.

  Schofield swung his LSV in a wide circle, raising a billowing dustcloud around himself, hiding his car from view. The snipers' shots began to miss by a larger margin.

  Then he zeroed in on the mine entrance.

  The bullet-fire became more intense—

  —before suddenly there came several explosions from the mountainside above the mine's entrance, six sniper emplacements blasting outward in simultaneous showers of dirt.

  And in an instant there was no more gunfire. Someone had blown up the emplacements from within the mine itself.

  Schofield jammed the accelerator to the floor and zoomed into the darkness of the mine.

  Six hundred metres below the surface, Libby Gant hurried on foot down a long rocky tunnel guided by flashlights attached to her helmet and MP-7.

  She was followed by her three Marines, and she constantly checked her methanometer, a device that measured the levels of methane in the atmosphere.

  At the moment, it read 5.9%.

  That was bad. They were still in the mine's outer protective ring.

  It was a maze down here—a series of low square-shaped tunnels, each about the width of a train tunnel, and all possessed of rigidly right-angled corners. Some tunnels seemed to go off into the darkness forever, others ended in abrupt dead-ends.

  And everything was grey. The rock walls, the low horizontal ceilings, even the creaky wooden posts that supported the roof—all were covered in a ghostly grey powder.

  Nothing escaped the powder. It was limestone dust, an inert substance designed to prevent highly flammable coal dust from flaking out from the walls and creating an even greater firetrap.

  When Gant and her team had reached the bo
ttom of the steep drift tunnel, they'd been met by an SAS commando. After the radio comms had dropped out, he'd been sent back as a verbal messenger.

  'Turn left here, then go straight until you hit the conveyor belt! Then follow the belt to the barricade! Don't stray from the belt, because it's easy to get lost!' he'd said.

  Gant's team had followed his instructions to the letter, jogging

  for about 200 metres down a bending rock-walled tunnel that housed an elevated conveyor belt.

  Methanometer: 5.6% . . . 5.4% . . .

  The methane levels were getting lower as they ventured further into the mine.

  5.2% . . . 4.8% . . . 4.4% . . .

  Better, Gant thought.

  'You know,' Mother said as they jogged, 'I think he's gonna pop

  the question in Italy.' 'Mother . . .' Gant said.

  After this mission, Mother and Gant—together with Schofield and Mother's nuggetty little husband, Ralph—were going on a group holiday to Italy. They were going to rent a villa in Tuscany for two weeks before taking in the famous 'Aerostadia Italia' air-show in Milan—the centrepiece of which were two very rare X-15s, the famous NASA-built rocket planes, the fastest aircraft ever built. Mother was really looking forward to it.

  'Think about it,' she said. 'Tuscan hills. An old villa. A classy guy like the Scarecrow wouldn't miss an opportunity like that.'

  'He told you he was going to ask, didn't he?' Gant said, eyes forward.

  'Yep.'

  'He's such a chicken,' Gant said as they rounded a bend and all of a sudden, heard gunfire. 'To be continued,' she said, giving

  Mother a look.

  Up ahead in the darkness, they saw the beams of helmet-mounted flashlights and the shadows of running Allied soldiers, all moving behind a makeshift barricade constructed of old mining equipment—barrels, crates, empty steel mini-skips.

  And beyond the barricade, Gant saw the all-important air

  vents.

  In this tight, low-ceilinged, square-edged world, the air vent cavern was a welcome stretch of open space. Six storeys high and lit by brilliant white phosphorus flares, it shone like a glowing underground cathedral.

  The two 10-metre-wide air vents disappeared up into the roof via a pair of identical cone-shaped recesses in the ceiling.