‘I told you this was an irregular mission,’ Carstairs said. ‘Are you turning it down? Well here’s my private number’ – handing him a plain black business card with no name on it – ‘in case you change your mind. But you’d better do it pretty damn fast. Minutes count, literally.’

‘To hell with that,’ Ben said. ‘I’m ready. Let’s go.’

Chapter 9

From the anonymous office building, the same cars sped away through the city. Though as usual none of his escorts spoke a word to him, Ben quickly understood where they were headed. As anyone living in its vicinity was aware, the air base at RAF Northolt in west London had long been used by both civilian and military aircraft. Less well known was the fact that some years earlier, an SAS unit had been relocated from Hereford to a new secret base within the station, with the purpose of keeping them close by in the event of a major terror attack on the capital.

The cars whisked through security checkpoints and across the air base to an empty area where they pulled up outside an unmarked hangar much larger than its neighbours. Inside, vast and imposing inside the huge hangar, stood an A400 Atlas troop transport plane from 7 Squadron of the Joint Special Forces Aviation Wing. The four-engined monster was one of the biggest military aircraft in existence, the replacement for the venerable old Hercules aboard which Ben had flown into many theatres of operation. The Atlas was the same type of plane that the RAF had used to airlift some 17,000 people out of Kabul as part of the joint forces evacuation effort, before the gates slammed shut. It could carry more cargo a greater distance in a shorter time than its aged predecessor, with a range of over 3000 kilometres and the ability to refuel in mid-air, so this one wouldn’t need to touch the ground a single time on its round trip delivering the task force to their destination.

As Ben walked into the hangar he spotted a group of men gathered by the aircraft’s enormous nose landing gear. He guessed they must all have been waiting on standby pending his decision to join the mission or not. Which meant he was the last man on board. A couple of the group were obviously air crew, while the rest were dressed in casual civilian gear. A tall, athletic, dark-haired man in his mid-thirties, who had been leaning against the huge front wheel deep in discussion with one of the pilots, broke off his conversation to walk over with something of a swagger and greet Ben, smiling cordially enough. He introduced himself as Jack Buchanan, Operation Hydra’s mission commander.

‘Pleased to meet you, Commander.’ Ben wasn’t going to ‘sir’ anybody because he no longer considered himself part of the military. If Buchanan was taken aback by that, he didn’t show it.

‘Heard a lot about you,’ he said.