Steam was rising from the undergrowth as the sun climbed higher with the morning’s passing. Caitlin was sweating inside her brush camouflage. She wished she was closer – take down this officer and the two unfortunates flinching under his harsh commands, and she’d almost certainly draw a couple more guards out the door, scratching their heads and squeezing their dicks, wondering what the hell was going on. With her brand new HK-417 providing kick-ass moral support, she’d wipe out most of the opposition and force an entry in just a few seconds. She pondered the odds.

The Heckler & Koch had been selected as Echelon’s long arm for non-urban field work, just five months earlier. Bearing some similarities to the M4 carbine on which it was based, it had been re-engineered by the old German gunsmithing firm primarily for use by special forces. A proprietary short-stroke, piston-driven system kept the weapon’s interior free of combustion gases, making it much more reliable than the impingement systems used in the M16 and the M4.

Dozens of other tweaks, some major, some minor, had gone into the design of the 417 to craft an exemplary killing implement. Added to which, Echelon had provided an unusually hefty flash and sound suppressor, courtesy of the agency’s engineering shop in the London Cage. It fitted snuggly onto a bespoke barrel for those occasions when operators such as Caitlin Monroe needed to send a withering bullet storm down-range, into the body mass of some ne’er-do-well. Discreetly; in a quiet, voiceless reproach.

But her observation post now was too far removed for such precipitate action. She watched, chagrined, as all three men returned to the dark, unknown interior of Facility 183.

*

Two hours later, with the noonday sun burning through the canopy, she lay on her stomach, concealed by a thicket of brightly coloured foliage; all waxy green leaves and startling pink and red flowers that formed giant cups in which rainwater collected so deeply that dozens of tiny frogs had colonised the self-contained ecosphere. The former police station was directly across the road from her new position.

The screaming had stopped abruptly an hour earlier, giving her a few moments of concern that these clowns had killed Lupérico, if indeed that was who the torture victim was, before she could ‘debrief’ him herself. But nothing else indicated anything untoward. No bodies appeared, being manhandled by the dishevelled guards, and the movement she had glimpsed inside the front windows spoke of no urgency. Quite the opposite. The militia troops moved about with languorous sloth. She saw cigarettes glowing and once or twice heard raucous laughter. She wondered when they might eat lunch, and whether any of them would sneak away into a quiet corner afterwards for a siesta. That fucking ramrod-straight funcionario didn’t look the type for napping on el Presidente’s dollar, but the hapless slobs under his jackboot surely did.