Free Detonator by Andy McNab Page A

gangfuck.
    The boss man with the megaphone certainly felt that way. He told us so in three languages. He was now inviting anyone inside the chalet to come out with their hands raised.
    What about staying in? Was there somewhere we could conceal ourselves? I scrolled through the possibilities on the screen inside my head. It was finally beginning to work. But it didn’t give me a solution.
    Inside cupboards and under beds were strictly for sitcoms.
    And the attic was the first place I’d look.
    Did Frank have a panic room? I hadn’t seen any sign of one.
    No. Frank didn’t do panic. And neither – I now realized – did his son. Most seven-year-olds would have been flapping and crying and hiding under the bed right now. He just rolled his eyes. The kid seemed to have the same part of his brain missing as his dad.
    The megaphone kicked off one last time. Same message, harsher delivery. If there was anyone inside, they had three minutes to make themselves known.
    I didn’t want to make myself known. I never had. Not even to the postman.
    As the assault team moved in, I went over to his chair and gripped him. ‘There must be a way out, yeah? What would your dad do right now?’
    The kid got up and limped towards the left-hand end of the photograph display. He opened the storage cupboard beneath it and reached inside.
    The front door burst off its hinges at the third strike of the GIGN battering ram. The speakers in Frank’s hideaway captured the moment in cinema-quality surround-sound. But even if it had been dead quiet, I doubt I would have heard the shelving unit rotate to reveal the mouth of a tunnel that had been bored into the mountain.
    I took two steps towards it, then turned back to the desk and grabbed the security remote. Fuck it, this thing had more buttons and icons than an Enigma machine. I didn’t know which ones to punch.
    Stefan gripped my arm and tried to pull me away. I shook him off. ‘The security cameras. They would have recorded us coming in, yeah?’
    He nodded.
    ‘And me going through every room.’
    He nodded again.
    ‘I need to wipe the memory.’
    He treated me to something very like a smile, and more words in a single sentence than he’d given me since I’d dragged him out of the Evoque. ‘You left me in charge, remember? That was my job.’
    We both heard shouted orders and boots on the ground at the far end of the corridor. As we legged it across the threshold, the room was plunged into darkness and a trail of LED lights showed the way ahead. The shelving unit closed silently behind us. There was a touchpad set into the rock for a return journey, and a screen the size of an iPad, which showed an infrared image of the place we’d just left.
    Apart from our footsteps, all I could hear now was the gentle whir of the ventilation system.

12
     
    There was obviously nothing wrong with Stefan’s mind, apart from it being a pint-size replica of his dad’s, but his ankle stopped working again after another fifty. I picked him up and kept on going.
    I soon lost track of how far we’d walked, but I didn’t care. It was all about making distance, and a steadily downward slope really helped. I had no idea whether we’d emerge in Bulgari Land or out in the wild. I stopped every so often and listened for any sign of pursuit. Unless the boys in blue had found their way through Frank’s secret escape hatch and changed into the world’s quietest brothel-creepers, there was none.
    Eventually a shiny steel door appeared out of the gloom in front of us. A spyhole glinted at head height. I peered through it into what looked like a neon-lit lock-up. I pressed the button that opened the door and moved from a spotless designer planet into the one I was more used to – the one with dirt under its fingernails, sweat on its bollocks and oil stains on its floor.
    A couple of old bicycles hung from the ceiling. The shelves that lined the walls were loaded with all sorts of shit that even real people