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good news
because they were going to be operating as partners
for much of the time. And Danny was glad that one
member of the team was a lot closer to his own age.
    Now they were sitting together in a vehicle on a
firing range. Their objective was to carry out an
anti-ambush drill, with Danny at the wheel of the
Audi A4 and Lee in the passenger seat.
    Danny had proved to be an instinctive and fearless
driver, without being reckless, which at the
speeds he'd been travelling would soon have
proved fatal. He'd advanced smoothly from the
basics of cockpit drills and getting the most from
the vehicle by the use of the gears, through to intensive
high-speed work and then offensive and
defensive driving, which was carried out on the
firing ranges.
    The high-speed work took place on the roads
between Hereford and Bristol – everything from
country lanes to forest tracks, dual carriageways,
motorway, and the city of Bristol itself.
    Now Danny was ready for his final test.
    He was far from what anyone in the Regiment
would describe as the finished article, but there was
no more time. He'd had a couple of run-ins with
Phil Reddington, who was almost as hard a
taskmaster as his grandfather – maybe that was one
of the reasons why Fergus had wanted him on the
team.
    Danny sat behind the wheel of the A4 as they
prepared to go. Lee's MP5 was in the footwell,
covered by a coat, just as it would have been if they
were out on the street. The automatic machine gun
was an excellent car weapon. Its collapsible butt
made concealment easy, but the 9mm high-powered
rounds could easily rip through a vehicle
windscreen.
    Lee looked at Danny. 'You ready then?'
    Danny pulled his seat belt across his body, but he
didn't click it home. On operations, they didn't
wear seat belts because of the time it took to
unbuckle them. Even SAS troops under fire have
forgotten to unbuckle themselves, losing precious
seconds in getting out of a vehicle to take on the
enemy.
    That was why Danny and Lee had Velcro glued to
the buckle and holder. The seat belt had to look as if
it were being worn correctly so that they blended in
with the third party.
    Danny secured the belt and nodded. 'Yep.'
    He pressed the send button on the gear stick and
spoke into the concealed microphone on the
dashboard.
    That's Delta One mobile.'
    Danny shoved the gear stick into first and got his
foot down; soon he was doing seventy mph along
the narrow track, cutting through the woods
towards the range. The trees on either side became
a green blur, and when Danny took it over a rise, the
A4 flew into the air, the engine roaring. Lee pushed
his feet into the footwell to support himself as they
touched down again and the range came into view
about half a mile away.
    Danny hit the gear stick pressel, taking a sharp
bend as the track cut across fields.
    'That's Delta One approaching the range.'
    Lee's MP5 was still in the footwell; he wouldn't
draw down the weapon until it was needed.
Everything was played as if it were for real.
    The A4 was still doing seventy as it entered the
range. Ahead, Danny saw a tall berm – a thick manmade
earthworks, five metres high on three sides of
the square, so that rounds could be fired to the sides
as well as forward.
    In front of the vehicle were six wooden targets –
men and women in civvies, all of them holding
weapons. An explosion directly in front of them
lifted a fireball into the air and Danny hit the brake
and pressed the send pressel.
    'Contact! Contact! Wait out!'
    Lee had already raised his MP5; he pulled out the
butt before ramming it into his shoulder and pushing
down the safety. The A4 skidded towards the
enemy; Danny's feet were pushed hard down onto
the brake and clutch and he fought to keep the
vehicle straight as Lee started firing.
    The windscreen shattered and the automatic
weapon's empty casings bounced off the roof and
down onto Danny. As the A4 screeched to a standstill,
Lee was still firing and giving Danny some
cover.
    'Go, Danny!