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“Stay still.” The man knelt down a second time. He had produced a flashlight. He shone it on the ground. It seemed to take an age, but then he spoke again. “It’s a butterfly,” he said, and there was no emotion in his voice at all. “They call it that because of its shape. It’s a Soviet PFM-1, pressure-sensitive blast mine. You’re standing on enough high explosive to take your leg off.”
“What’s it doing here?” Alex cried. He had to fight the instinct to lift his foot off the deadly thing. His entire body was screaming at him to run away.
“They train us!” the man rasped. “They use these things in Iraq and Indonesia. We have to know how to deal with them. How else are they going to do it?”
“But in the middle of a field . . . ?”
“You shouldn’t be here! Who brought you here?” The man straightened up. He was standing very close to Alex, the brown eyes boring into him. “I can’t neutralize it,” he muttered. “Even if I had the training, I couldn’t risk it in the dark.”
“So what do we do now?”
“I’m going to have to get help.”
“Do you have a radio?”
“If I had a radio, I’d have already used it.” The man laid a hand briefly on Alex’s shoulder. “There’s something else you need to know,” he said. He was speaking softly. His mouth was next to Alex’s ear. “These things have a delay mechanism . . . a separate fuse that you’ll have activated when you stepped on it.”
S N A K E H E A D
“You mean—it’s going to blow up anyway?”
“In fifteen minutes.”
“How long will it take you to find someone?”
“I’ll move as quickly as I can. If you hear a click—
you’ll feel it under your foot—throw yourself flat onto the ground. It’s your only hope. Good luck . . .”
“Wait . . . ,” Alex began.
But the man had already gone. Alex hadn’t even asked him his name.
Alex stood there. He had lost any sense of feeling in his leg, but his shoulder was burning and he was beginning to shiver violently as the shock set in. He forced himself to bring his body back under control, afraid that the slightest movement could bring a hideous end to this ordeal. He could imagine the sudden flash, the pain, his leg separated from his body. And the worst of it was that there was nothing he could do. His foot was glued to the device that was ticking away, even now, beneath him. He looked around. Although he hadn’t noticed it before, the mine had been placed on the top of a ridge, the ground sloping away steeply to a ditch at the bottom. Alex tried to work out the distances. If he threw himself sideways, could he reach the ditch before the mine exploded? And if the force of the blast was above him, would he escape the worst of it?
The bombing had stopped. Suddenly everything was very still. Once again Alex experienced the sense of being completely alone, standing like a scarecrow in the middle
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of an empty field. He wanted to call out but was afraid to, in case he accidentally shifted his body weight. How long had it been since the man had left? Five minutes? Ten?
And how accurate was the timer anyway? The mine could go off at any time.
So did he wait? Or did he take his life into his own hands? Alex made his decision.
He took a deep breath, tensing his body, trying to think of the muscles in his legs as coiled springs that could launch him to safety. His right foot was resting on the mine. The left foot was on flat ground. That was the one that would have to do most of the work.
He jumped.
At the very last moment he changed his mind but continued anyway, launching himself down the slope with all his strength. He thought he felt the mine shudder very slightly as his foot left it. But it hadn’t exploded, at least not in the half second that he had left the ground. Automatically, he crossed his arms in front of his face, to protect himself from the fall—or from the blast. The slope was rushing past him, a dark streak at the corner of his vision. Then he hit the ditch. Water, cold and muddy, splattered into his face. His shoulder hit something hard.
Behind him, there was an explosion. The mine. Clumps of earth and torn grass rained down on him. Then nothing.
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S N A K E H E A D
His face was underwater. He pulled his head back, spit-ting mud. A plume of smoke rose into the night sky. The fuse must have given him three seconds before it detonated the mine. He had taken those three seconds and they had saved him.
He got unsteadily to his feet. Water was dripping out of his hair and down his face. His heart was pounding. He felt drained, exhausted. Briefly he lost his balance, put a hand out to steady himself, and winced as he caught it on the barbed wire fence. But at least he had found his way out of here. He rolled back underneath and tried to work out which way to go. Seconds later, the question was answered for him. He heard the sound of an engine, saw two beams of light cutting through the trees. His name was being called out. He hurried forward and found a track.
The four SAS men were in the jeep. This time X-Ray was driving. They were rolling slowly through the wood, searching for him. Alex saw that they had left the coolers behind. But Sparks had remembered his guitar.
