Driven Read Online Free PDF Page A

streets, were burning – the more distant ones seeming to flicker in the humidity. Traffic could be heard, but was so slight he could even hear individual cars in different directions at the same time. Gradually, his heart rate and breathing began to slow.
    Straker knew comrades had returned from active tours with limbs and faculties missing, and continued to suffer physical disability and pain. He knew he was lucky. Even so, his experiences and subsequent trauma had not been without their painful consequences. They had cost him his career – even his marriage.
    Civvy Street should have signified a new beginning, particularly his recruitment by Quartech. Working for its Competition Intelligence and Security team looked like filling a large part of the gap left after resigning his commission in the Royal Marines. His new role was certainly stimulating – it demanded imagination, intelligence, resourcefulness, persistence and the taking of calculated risks. Contributing further to this sense of recovery, Straker’s first assignment for Dominic Quartano – salvaging a multi-billion-pound weapons contract with a Middle Eastern state – had been a triumph. So, fuck it, why the regression now? Why tonight?
    Standing on the balcony overlooking dark and sleeping Monte-Carlo, he tried to make sense of the episode. In therapy, he had been encouraged not to see each episode as a flashback to the original emotional scarring – but to see any such reversion being triggered by more recent troubles. Straker went through his encounters, conversations, experiences and feelings of the previous day, as he had been taught.
    What, then, had caused this?
    He could only conclude one thing.
    This relapse had to have been tripped subconsciously by the mention, yesterday, of someone’s name.
    Charlotte – “Charlie” – Grant.

FIVE
    S traker found it impossible to get back to sleep that morning. Rarely, if ever after such an episode, could he do so. He knew that, invariably, his only solace under this torment was to purge his soul through the pain of physical exertion. At half-past four in the morning he found himself – like so many times before – out in the darkness, trying to run off the disturbance in solitude. This time, it just happened to be along the streets and across the hillsides of Monte-Carlo.
    As they went, this attack had been a bad one. Despite the energy expended in his two-hour run, its effects completely suppressed his appetite.
    Not having any interest in breakfast, Straker dragged himself down to the harbour, still fighting to regain his composure – barely even noticing the Riviera paradise all around him.
    As arranged, Backhouse was waiting for him at the main entrance to the paddock. Engagement with the race engineer was Straker’s first proper distraction following the episode.
    Walking along the waterfront on the western side of the harbour, they passed down the line of the teams’ massive and jaw-droppingly expensive motor homes and mobile headquarters. Ptarmigan’s own – an articulated eighteen wheeler with extendable sides and smoked-glass windows – was dressed overall in the team’s brilliant turquoise livery.
    Punching a code into the security key pad, its door hissed open; Backhouse led Straker up and into Ptarmigan’s mobile command centre – equipped as high-tech as a moveable platform could allow. The team set-up was impressive. Straker was relieved it was all so engrossing. His mood began to change significantly for the first time that morning.
    Everything in the motor home was striking – it was decked outin rosewood, chrome and glass, with pale turquoise-coloured leather seating, edged with navy blue piping. Down one side, a row of eight turquoise-liveried team members sat at a bench-like desk that ran the full length of the truck. Each member wore a set of Ptarmigan-branded headphones and sat at a console, with a keyboard and bank of plasma screens in front and above them. It looked to