Detonator Read Free Page A

pretty sure I hadn’t missed any numbers out.
    I moved on to sixty. It was slow work, but I was ridiculously pleased with myself. I felt a stupid smile spread across my cheeks.
    I reached a ton and felt like cheering. I wasn’t firing on every single cylinder yet, but maybe my brain wasn’t terminally fucked after all.
    I grabbed the day sack to check out what else was in there. Had I done that before? Probably. But there was only one way of finding out. I was about to put the Sphinx on the ground beside me when I heard another of those voices. ‘Pistols are always attached, you knob-head. On the body, or in the hand. You must keep control …’ No Russian accent. Jock, maybe. An instructor somewhere.
    Control. Fuck. If that voice could see me now …
    I hauled myself to my feet and tucked the barrel of the weapon into the front of my jeans, polymer grip within easy reach in case I had to draw down. These things don’t have a safety any more. They’re double action, so unless I did something really fucking stupid I wasn’t going to lose my bollocks as well as my marbles.
    I peeled off my bomber jacket, spread it out on the ground and emptied the contents of the day sack on to the lining.
    Clean shirt and boxers. Socks.
    Compact Pentax 10x50 binoculars on a strap.
    Titanium pen. UZI stamped on the barrel. It looked like you could use it to hijack an aircraft or fire it from a Rarden cannon. The top end, above the clip, had been designed to punch holes through toughened glass.
    Disposable lighter.
    Clear plastic Silva compass. Not a bombproof prismatic number with folding sights, one that you could put flat on a map.
    Small bottle of mineral water.
    A couple of second-hand Nokia mobiles, ten SIM cards and four battery packs.
    But no ID.
    I was getting the strong impression I was the Invisible Man, but this was fucking outrageous. Even if I was on the holiday of a lifetime, I’d need ID.
    And if I was on the holiday of a lifetime, I wouldn’t need a 9mm Sphinx and a spare mag.
    I gave the day sack a good shake, then felt around in the lining and found a zipped compartment. Tucked inside was a wad of euros, a UK passport and photocard driving licence, both in the name of Nicholas Head. The Nick bit made sense. The Head bit made me frown. Nickhead. Was that my real name or some kind of joke?
    I unscrewed the top of the mineral water. Got the lot down my neck. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d rehydrated. And the inside of my mouth needed all the help it could get.
    I threw everything back into the sack, including the empty bottle, and slung it over my shoulder, then moved towards the track.
    I did a three-sixty before stepping out beyond the treeline. My head was spinning a bit, but maybe that was because of the sunlight. Pretty much everything stayed in focus as I looked right, up the hill. No sign of anything moving except the gentle sway of the firs as they reached for the ribbon of sky.
    There was a trail of snapped branches and gouges in their trunks, some flecked with blue vehicle paint, on both sides of the track. The turf between them had been chewed up by tyres. Parallel furrows slalomed about eight metres to my left, ending with a short stretch of churned earth and rock where the funnel narrowed. Then nothing.
    I walked to the edge of what must have been a four-hundred-metre drop.
    A buzzard rode the thermals below me.
    Then rock.
    More rock.
    Pasture.
    A river snaking through a valley.
    Smoke billowed from a chunk of burning wreckage. I narrowed my eyes. Shielded them with my hand. Some kind of wagon. Smashed beyond recognition. But I knew with sudden certainty that it was a Nissan. A 4WD. And that Hesco and his black sidekick thought I was still behind the wheel.
    Good. Perhaps they’d relax now and leave it at that. Perhaps they’d get careless. But that didn’t mean
I
could.
    I turned back and followed the scars the Nissan’s tyres had ripped into the grass that carpeted the break between the