The cloud was disorienting. Shepherd couldn’t see more than ten feet in front of him. The parts of his face that were exposed were ice cold and the surface of the black thermal suit was soaked. His body was dry, though, and surprisingly warm.

There was no sense of movement. He felt as if he was suspended in fog. And other than the occasional static through his earpiece, it was eerily silent. He looked up but could barely make out the black canopy above his head. It was a GQ-360 nine-cell flat ramair canopy that was designed to be virtually silent as it moved through the air. He checked his watch: forty-four minutes since he’d jumped out of the Nimrod. He checked his altimeter: eight thousand feet. They should reach the ship in sixteen minutes. Give or take one minute, and they’d miss it by a quarter of a mile.

He wiggled his toes inside his boots, then worked his fingers in his gloves, keeping the circulation going. The last thing he needed was cramp as he came in for landing.

‘Comms check,’ said Gannon, in his earpiece. ‘Alpha One.’

‘Alpha Two,’ said Shepherd.

One by one the remaining eight troopers sounded off.

Shepherd looked down past his feet. He saw wisps of cloud, and then suddenly he was through it, hanging in the darkness. Above him, there was cloud, and far below, the blackness that was the sea. In the distance he could see Gannon’s canopy, a dark shape in the night sky. He checked his LCD display. Their forward speed had slowed while they’d been in the cloud, but that had all been calculated for. Hopefully. According to the computerised display, the target was eleven miles away.

The captain swept his binoculars right, then stopped. ‘I see it,’ he said. ‘It is a jet. Four engines. It’s big, too.’

‘Any markings?’ asked Carpenter.

‘Can’t see any. And I can’t make out the number.’

‘Not Army or Customs?’

‘It looks like a Nimrod, but it’s flying close to stall speed,’ said the captain.

‘I thought Nimrods were for high-altitude surveillance,’ said Carpenter.

‘They are. Six miles and above.’

One of the Colombians said something in Spanish and the other four laughed. Another took out a cigar, but before he could light it the captain spoke to him. The Colombian glowered and put away the cigar.

‘So what the hell’s it playing at?’ asked Carpenter.

‘Could be lost,’ said the captain. ‘Navigation system might have failed and they’ve dropped down below the cloud to get their bearings.’ He muttered to one of the crewmen, who reached for a radio microphone. ‘We’ll try to make radio contact with them,’ said the captain.

Carpenter stared into the darkness. He was getting a bad feeling about the plane.

‘Alpha One, I have visual on the target.’ Gannon’s voice crackled in Shepherd’s earpiece.