sticking to his wet cheeks. Shit, and I'd been worrying how many bayonets would be on target. They looked at me with the same question in their eyes as I had in my head: Who the fuck are you?
I looked away. They weren't important to me. Working out how to separate myself from these Americans was.
As I turned my head a boot tapped me on the side of the face and motioned for me to look down. I rested my chin on the floor and my hands were forced in front of me, where they could be seen. They'd taken prisoners before.
I counted a few seconds, then lifted my eyes and tried to look around, trying to gather as much information as possible to help me escape. I saw no scenes of frenzy; everybody seemed to know what they were doing.
There was a lot of efficient movement by bodies in white, some with their hoods down, exposing their black ski masks. There are many different reasons for wearing uniform, but mainly, in situations like this, it's for identification purposes.
The atmosphere seemed to be that of an efficient open-plan office. They were all armed, everybody had the same type of weapon, all suppressed.
The pistol that each of them carried was very unusual. It had been a long time since I'd seen a P7, but if I remembered correctly, it fired 7.62mm rounds. There were seven barrels, each about six inches long, and contained within a disposable, Bakelite-type plastic unit. The unit was sealed and watertight and clipped into a pistol grip. The rounds were fired conventionally by pulling the trigger, but instead of a firing pin, an electrical current was sent to one of the barrels each time the trigger was pulled, via terminals, which married up when the barrels and grip were clipped together. The power source was a battery in the pistol grip.
Once all seven rounds had been fired, you simply removed the barrel unit, threw it away and put on another one.
The P7 was originally designed to be fired at divers at close range and underwater, to penetrate their diving sets and, of course, their bodies. I didn't know if they were any good at longer range; all I knew was that they were silent and extremely powerful. Because of their size, they were being carried by these guys in shoulder holsters over their whites, along with thick black nylon belt kit that held their HK mags. I couldn't remember who made P7s, or if it was the weapon's real name. Not that it really mattered to me at the moment.
What did matter was that these people were uniformed and efficient, and they hadn't been sent here because the computers on site weren't Y2K compliant.
They had to be from a security organization CIA, maybe, or NSA it didn't matter which. It was highly unusual for them to be carrying out such an operation within a friendly nation's territory. That sort of thing was normally left to dickheads like me, so that everything could be denied if it went wrong. The reason they were on the ground must be that they desperately wanted something that belonged to them, and whatever it was, it must be so sensitive that they didn't want, or trust, anyone else to go and get it. Had I been trying to steal American secrets? I hoped not. That was spying, and with no help from Her Majesty's Government I'd be lucky if I got out of prison in time to see Kelly's grandchildren.
I realized what had been causing the dull glow from the left hand side of the house. Through an open door I could see it hadn't been room light escaping from the broken shutter but the glare from banks of TV screens. I made out CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, and some Japanese program, all with anchormen and women talking business. Running captions displayed financial information across the bottom of the screen. So it wasn't Friends after all. I felt even more depressed. This was just like the weather, getting worse every minute.
In among the TVs were banks of computer monitors, most of them turned off, but some with streams of numbers running vertically down the screen, just like I'd seen Tom messing about with. The computers and VDUs were being unplugged, while more white clad figures fiddled with other machines and keyboards in the room. I saw one hand sticking out from its whites and working some keys. It was immaculately manicured, feminine and wore a wedding band.
The rest of the horizontal surfaces were in shit state, covered with candy wrappers, pizza boxes, cans, and large half-empty plastic bottles of Coke. It looked like a dorm room, but with a couple of truckloads of cutting-edge technology thrown in. I realized what they'd been carrying in last night from the 4x4: It must have been pizza time.
My little recce was cut short when I saw pairs of black boots coming toward me, snow still in the stitching and laces. They were Danner boots, an American brand. I knew the make well, as I had a pair high leg, with leather outer and GoreTex inner. The U.S. military wore them, too.
The Tom lookalikes on the floor behind me were moving about or being moved. The one who'd been crying suddenly sounded muffled, as if he was resisting something. I risked turning my head to see what was happening, but I was too late. A hood got pulled over my head, smearing the snot even more over my top lip, mouth, and chin. It was pointless resisting; I just let him do it as quickly as possible. I'd learned that the best thing to do was concentrate on breathing through these things and let your ears do the work.
The drawstrings were pulled at the bottom and I was in a world of total darkness. Not even the faintest glimmer of light could penetrate. My face started to sweat up rapidly as the hood moved against my mouth and then out again as I breathed and tried to recover completely from the spray.
I heard boots on both sides of my head, followed by heavy breathing as my hands were forced together in front of me and a plasticuff was applied. The short, sharp sound of ratcheting was accompanied by the pain of the plastic tightening around my wrists.
There was more movement next to me and the rustling of clothes. The pizza boys were getting dressed. That was a good sign; they wanted them alive, and I hoped me, too. Between the sounds of muffled sobs and zips being done up I could hear, 'Danke? hhtos? spasseeba ? thank you.' Obviously these boys didn't know the nationality of the men in white and were hedging their bets wildly, sounding off like Brussels translators.
The floorboards flexed under the pressure of bodies walking past, heading toward the door. Trailing cables and plugs dragged and clattered across the floor just past my head. Some plugs hit the steel ram in the doorway and sent out a dull ring. I presumed the computers were being lugged out. By the sounds of it, everything was being piled up outside on the deck.
The roar of engines filled my hood as vehicles drove into the compound.
The temperature inside the house had started to drop as the wind whistled through the main door. To my left, I could just make out the low mumble of voices exchanging short sentences on the deck as the vehicles approached.
They stopped and emergency brakes were pulled up on lock. Engines were left running, just like a heli on an operational sortie it never shuts down in case it doesn't start up again. Doors opened and closed and there was a flurry of boot steps around the deck. I could hear the creak and echo of what sounded like the door of an empty van; it was confirmed when I heard a sliding door lock into the open position. This area was beginning to sound like a super store's loading bay.
I tried moving my arms, as if to get comfortable, but in fact to see if we were being guarded. My answer came very quickly when a boot made contact with my ribs, the same side as my fall. I stopped moving and concentrated on the inside of my snot-lined hood as I took the pain.
I lay there waiting for the agony to subside. The sobbing and snuffling next to me got louder. The culprit was given the same sort of booted persuasion to shut him up, but it just made him worse. The boy was panicking big time, and he made me think of Tom. I was still hoping that he wasn't dead and had got away, or was he, like this boy, hyperventilating in a hood, stuck in one of those vehicles?
The floorboards still gave and plugs clattered and rattled out toward the deck. Others loaded the stuff into the wagons; I could hear their boots on the vans' metal floors.
The floorboards bent even more as the three lying next to me were hauled to their feet, amidst muffled groans and cries. The sobbing one was dragged past me and taken outside; the others followed. As the last of the three bodies passed, I heard a scream from the first one echo inside a van. I tried to convince myself they wouldn't go to all this trouble if they didn't want us alive.
As I listened to the second being manhandled after his friend, boots came for me, the creaking leather stopping just millimeters from my ear. Two pairs of large aggressive hands grabbed each side of me, under my armpits and on the arms, dragging me upright. I let my boots trail on the floor. I wanted to appear weak and slow, I wanted them to think I wasn't any sort of threat, somebody not worth worrying about, just a gray man in a bad way.
