Herschel Zubinski drummed his fingers quietly on the tabletop. It was a habit he’d had all his life that displayed itself when he was concentrating. He listened to the Prime Minister. ‘I know, Bill, I’ve just finished reading the summary from the NSA. The President is outraged. He’s genuinely angry about this, and his anger is your best ally.’

‘We can’t do this without your help, Hersch,’ said Blight. ‘We’re impotent and they, whoever they are, know it.’

‘What about the Indonesian government? Forget the intel reports, what’s your gut tell you?’

‘To be frank, my gut’s arguing with itself on this. I can’t believe that a legitimate government would behave in this way, but at the same time I find it difficult to conceive that all this could be going on behind Jakarta’s back.’

‘It does seem unlikely, but Indonesia is that kind of country. And its armed forces have historically been a little on the maverick side.’

The phone rang.

‘Excuse me, Bill.’ The ambassador listened and nodded several times, saying, ‘Yes sir,’ and, ‘Thank you, sir, I’ll pass that on,’ before hanging up.

‘That was the President himself, Bill. The Joint Chiefs and the Sec Def have come round to the President’s thinking on this. They want to know what’s going on quickly. They have authorised me to let you know that our resources are to be put at your disposal during this crisis. When a Muslim nation, any Muslim nation, starts behaving erratically, it makes everyone nervous.’ Zubinski opened the sheet of writing paper on which the Prime Minister had listed his requests. ‘Are you sure this is all you want, Bill?’

‘Thanks, Hersch. Please pass on our gratitude to the President. Our Commander in Chief, Ted Niven, believes this can be done quietly. I have to go with his advice. So, yes, I believe what’s on the list will do nicely.’

Zubinski ran his eye down the paper again. He snorted to himself. ‘Since when was a Carrier Battle Group and an MLP, a marine landing platform, doing things quietly?’

The PM smiled and opened his hands as if to say, ‘beats me’.

Dili, East Timor, 0515 Zulu, Friday, 1 May

SGT Wilkes and his men had spent most of the morning poring over maps and photographs of the crash site and the surrounding area. It was difficult planning for a mission that didn’t exist, but that wasn’t unheard of in the SAS. Lance Corporal Gary Ellis and Private Al Coombs were out scrounging for extras. Wilkes liked to have backups of backups. Radios that worked perfectly well inside the barracks sometimes went mysteriously dead in the bush. And, of course, a radio was useless junk without batteries. They also needed a few extra NVGs because some arsewipe had lifted some of theirs. Gear had a habit of making the rounds like that — the stuff you nicked sometimes got nicked back — and with so many troops from so many different countries in Dili making up the UN force, there was some pretty tasty gear lying around for the taking.

Scrounging was not something the SAS needed to do. They had access to equipment other regiments only dreamed about. But the feeling in the group was that pinching articles from under the noses of some of the toughest hombres in the world kept them sharp. It was also just plain good fun.

Ellis and Coombs swaggered back with a couple of bulging duffel bags.

‘Gather round, fuck-knuckles, and see what Santa brung you,’ said Coombs in his best imitation of a London barrow-boy, lowering his bag gently to the table.

He unzipped it and disgorged a whole range of booty from compact sleeping bags to radios, knives, webbing and a scoped and silenced full-automatic H&K carbine, which he began stripping down. ‘Ooh, this is nice,’ he said, squinting down the barrel’s rifling. PTE Coombs had no intention of using the new prize in the field. Interchangeability was important on the job and he wouldn’t put his life in the hands of weaponry he didn’t know inside out, and trust unreservedly. He even felt a touch guilty stealing the rifle but it served the owner right. The soldier concerned would take more care of his next one.

‘Do these work?’ asked Wilkes, picking up the radios.

‘Best of British, mate,’ said Ellis happily, ‘so probably, no,’ he joked. ‘We nicked most of this stuff from those tough-shit SBS pricks. Like candy from a baby. Hang on a sec,’ he said, after examining the radios more closely. ‘These are Kraut-made. Maybe the Poms have been a bit light-fingered themselves.’

‘They’ll be spitting fucking chips when they find them missing. Serves them right for leaving it all lying around. Well done, blokes,’ said Wilkes as he turned the radios’ switches to the standby mode and got green lights and plenty of static until he tuned them to the ETFOR base frequency.

‘Spare batteries?’ he enquired.