Janson worked hard to keep up with the others, gritting his teeth as the stresses moved along the cord. At one moment, it tightened around his chest like a python, constricting his breath; at the next, it was digging into his gluteus muscles. Body-rappelling was natural, he supposed, in the way that natural childbirth was. The agony was what made it real. His hands were overstrained; yet if he let go of the rope, there would be nothing between him and the rocks below.

He had to hold on just a little longer. He had to keep reminding himself that at the base of the cliff, the other team members would be waiting for them, in the ultralightweight rigid inflatable boat that had been stowed on the BA609. They would be rested and ready. Janson and the others would be safe in their hands. If only they could reach them.

Clear like water, cool like ice.

Seconds ticked by like hours. He could hear the sounds of the aquatic team as they untrussed Peter Novak and bundled him into the boat.

This race would go to the swift. If there was any doubt where they had gone, the cable anchors would tell the sentries everything they needed to know. And if those anchors were sliced in the next few minutes, three people would plunge to their death. The darkness and fog were their only allies, time their greatest enemy.

The only hope of survival lay in speed—to get off the ropes and into the boat as fast as possible.

How much time had passed? Forty seconds? Fifty? Sixty?

Just when his muscles had reached the point of total depletion, Janson felt hands reaching up to grab him, and finally he let go of a lifeline that had turned into an instrument of torture. As he took his seat in the flatbottomed watercraft, he looked around him. There were six of them. Novak. Hedderman. Katsaris. Andressen. Honwana. Hennessy would be piloting the BA609, taking second shift.

The motor whined as the rigid inflatable boat—a Sea Force 490—shot off from the rocks, hugging the shore for half a mile as it moved south, and then out into the mist-shrouded waters. The poor visibility would make it difficult to sight the RIB, and they had chosen a course that would take them out of the way of the rebels’ fixed artillery. “All accounted for,” Andressen said into his communicator, alerting Hennessy in the BA609. “Plus one guest.”

A few bullets pocked the waters some distance from them. They were bullets fired out of desperation, fired for show. But such stray projectiles could sometimes achieve the same result as ones that were carefully guided.

Only when they were half a mile out could they no longer hear the sounds of the rebel forces; KLF gunfire no doubt continued, not least out of sheer frustration, but the reports were lost amid the sound of the restless ocean.