Ultimate Weapon by Chris Ryan Page A

the front of the house, and a hundred yards across the field, so that he was looking straight down at the cottage. He could see thelight seeping out from behind the curtains, and underneath the front door. The light above the porch cast a few pale shadows across the path that led to the road, and just about touched the bonnet of his six-year-old Rover parked a few yards from the door. Otherwise, the hillside was shrouded in darkness.
    The rain was starting to gather strength. Nick could feel it starting to beat on to him. Water was curling around his hair, and dropping down over his face. The blacking on his face was starting to smudge. He looked down towards the house, his eyes scanning the surface of the ground. They’ll be somewhere, he told himself. And they’ll be looking in the wrong direction.
    Nothing. He scanned the field that lay directly in front of the cottage, and where he had seen the movement last night, but it was completely still. The rain and the darkness made it hard to get an accurate picture, but two men even lying flat under a green sheet should be visible from here. He started to inch closer. Maybe I just need to get nearer, he thought.
    Nick advanced ten, then twenty yards. Somewhere to the left he felt certain he heard a noise. He paused, listening harder. A creak. He glanced nervously in the direction the sound had come from. A tree was starting to sway as the wind and the rain battered against it. Nick pressed forward. He was seventy yards from the front of the house now, in the centre of the field looking down on it. No sign of them. Maybe the buggers decided to knock off for the night. Maybe they don’t like getting their hair wet.
    He started to move to the left, heading towards the next field. He squatted down close to the hedge and came to a gap. The ground was chewed up by the cattle that sometimes grazed there, and the rain had filled it with puddles that mixed the mud with cow dung to create a foul-smelling pond. Nick held his breath, and crawled through the gap. The dung was soaking into his body. Too risky to stand up, he warned himself. If they’re here, they’ll see me.
    A gust of wind whipped up through the field. Fifty or sixty yards in front of him, Nick felt certain he saw something. It was just a shape. The field was rough, sloping down towards the side of the cottage, but the hump was a distinct mark. It rose up out of the ground by a foot or so, and it was looking straight down at the cottage. Nick crawled forward. He was forty yards from the lump now. And the conviction was growing within him: he’d found them.
    He steered himself further along the field, then looked straight down. He was twenty yards back from their position. Nick sometimes wished he’d kept a gun in the house, but with his reputation for drinking, the local police would never have given him a licence. Instead, he’d armed himself with a thick, two-foot length of lead pipe, and a sharp, six-inch steel kitchen knife. That should be enough, he told himself. You don’t need guns to take vengeance on a man.
Just muscles, determination and the will to fight.
    Suddenly, he heard a voice: it was just a whisper, but carried on the wind it managed to travel to where Nickwas squatting as vividly as if the man was lying right next to him. ‘Shit, this rain.’
    You’ve got worse things to worry about than the rain, pal, Nick thought grimly.
    Nick pulled himself forward. He could feel his body rustling in the long grass, but in the wind and rain the noise of his approach was smothered. His skin was soaked already, and the mud made progress slow. He could smell the cow dung reeking off his body. Ten yards. He hesitated, and took a closer look. The sheet measured six foot by five, and was spread flat over the ground so it blended into the ground. Nick could just about see the soles of four boots sticking out of it. Two men. Lying flat on their stomachs, with binoculars trained on the house. They probably did shifts