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'What did you send the truck back for Kaden Pencils for?'

'I was going to bring down some cliff face as well.'

'Good job we got here when we did then,' Villiers said.

'Touch that box and find out. It's on timer.' Lopez glanced at his watch, face streaked with pain. 'Forty-five minutes to go, but there's an anti-handling device that sends the whole thing off instantly if you touch it.'

'Is that a fact?' Villiers nodded to Jackson. 'Bring him in, Harvey.'

He went inside and squatted beside the blue box. Jackson helped Lopez in and eased the Argentinian down on the floor. He sat there, pressing the dressing against the wound.

Villiers said, 'I've seen one of these things before, but only in a manual. Russian, isn't it?'

'That's right.'

'So you depressed the yellow button which controls the timer and, as you say, the damn thing is lethal if I attempt to unplug it.' He took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and stuck one in the corner of his mouth. 'And this red button, as I recall, cuts into the circuit.'

'You know your stuff.'

'Circumventing the timer and giving us three minutes to get out, isn't that so?'

He depressed the red button and Lopez said, 'Holy Mother of God!'

'It's up to you,' Villiers told him. 'I presume you know how to stop it?' He glanced up at Jackson. 'On the other hand, Sergeant Major, it might be politic for you to step outside.'

Jackson produced a lighter from his pocket and gave him a light. 'When you were a subaltern at Caterham, sir,' he said with some emphasis, 'I had to kick your arse in a manner of speaking, on a number of occasions. I'm quite willing to do it again if you continue to make suggestions like that.'

'My God!' Lopez said. 'The bloody English. All mad.' He pulled himself towards the box and said to Villiers, 'All right, just do exactly as I tell you.'

* * *

When Elliot finally appeared, coming down the track an hour and a half later, herding the young Argentinian prisoner before him, Korda and Lopez were inside, out of the rain. Villiers, having worked his way down floor-by-floor, was just finishing disconnecting the final charge.

It was Jackson who went to meet Elliot. 'You're late.'

'I got a warning bleep. Had to stop to take an emergency signal for you and the major.'

Villiers appeared in the doorway. 'What's all this about an emergency signal?'

'H.Q. were on the wire, sir. They want to hear from you like yesterday. Sounded real urgent.'

* * *

It was the throb of the engines that brought Villiers awake with a start. He lay there for a moment in the bunk, staring up at the steel bulkhead, a frown on his face as he tried to work out where he was. Then he remembered. HMS Clarion, a conventional submarine, diesel-electric powered, not nuclear. She'd picked them up off Bull Cove that afternoon.

Jackson was sitting in a chair in the corner, watching him. 'You talk in your sleep, did you know that?'

'That's all I needed. Give me a cigarette.'

'I think maybe you've been playing this game too long.'

'Haven't we all? Why are we on diesels?'

'Because we're on the surface. Commander Doyle sent me down to tell you to be ready to go in quarter of an hour.'

'Okay, I'll see you on top in five minutes.'

Jackson went out and Villiers sat on the edge of the bunk. He pulled on the jeans and sweater they'd given him, wondering what this business was all about. No one had been prepared to tell him anything, nothing worth knowing anyway.

'Ours not to reason why,' he said softly as he pulled on rubber boots and reached for a reefer coat.

The cigarette tasted foul and he stubbed it out. He was tired, that was the trouble. Too damn tired and everything was beginning to blur at the edges. What he needed was a long, long rest.

He went outside, moved through into the control room and mounted the conning-tower ladder to the bridge. Above him, the round circle of the night was scattered with stars and he breathed salt air in his lungs and felt better.

Doyle was looking towards