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highly vulnerable to assault. At the very least the operations centre should be moved indoors. The head had heard him out and then informed him that the system had been set up by a company owned by a school old boy. The old boy in question - and here the head had tapped the side of his nose meaningfully - had spent some time in one of the hush-hush departments, and jolly well knew what was what.
    Slater had shut up. The lodge, with its imposing
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    [Jbank of screens, was clearly a selling-point for nervous rents, and -- equally important to the management -- leant that the security teams could be kept at a istance; the staff and pupils didn't have to suffer their ain-smoking and filthy jokes. Pushing the lodge door open with the chair-leg, he peered quickly inside. The monitors were blank, and 5th men were slumped forward against the control stem console, which was running with spilt tea and blood. A holed and crumpled parka jacket lay on the jor. One of the men had crapped himself before he ied -- probably when witnessing his companion's fate and the stench in the small overheated room was Overwhelming.
    Slater visualised the scene. The terrorists would have jrst in. The man with the knife would have held soud while the gunman -- his weapon muffled in iie parka - would have immediately shot one of the ecurity men. The second man, all but paralysed with would then have been ordered to open the Electronic gates before suffering the same fate as his ler - a single shot below the ear. With Masoud in aw there wouldn't have been any question of Ssabling or gagging; the security men had had to die. far from the main building, no one would have Ikeard anything.
    Slater leant over the dead men and flicked the Miitors back on. Nothing, just the darkness and trees sting in the wind. The main gate, as he had :ed, had been opened. But Slater knew he
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    wasn't far behind the kidnappers, and with luck, assuming their vehicle was laid up away from the gate, they hadn't got Masoud into the vehicle yet. Would a driver be waiting there?
    Still carrying the heavy chair-leg - the security men were not permitted to carry firearms or any other salvageable form of weapon - Slater sprinted down the grass verge at the side of the drive. The frost was hard now, and he was grateful for the treads on his Timberland boots. The high winds had dispersed the cloud cover, and the moonlight glimmered on the hard-frosted landscape. He could see tracks on the drive now -- two pairs of cleated soles and one much smaller pair of bare feet - and it was clear from the erratic pattern that Masoud was resisting hard. Good lad, thought Slater. Slow them down. Make it hard for them.
    As he ran, Slater cursed himself for not having followed through on his suspicions about the Cherokee. How could he have been so stupid as to think those security guards would take the threat seriously? He'd known so-called hard men like them all his life - over-the-hill ex-regulars who pitched up with their thickening bodies and their Aldershot tattoos, sitting around on their arses, telling war-stories and hoping that nothing would happen.
    At the open gates the tracks swerved to the left. The lay-by, thought Slater, his mind racing - that's where they've got the vehicle. If I follow them down the quarter-mile along the road they're going to see me 34
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    jtthey could easily risk firing at me, and there's no bloody cover of any kind. If I go through the school ;l grounds, on the other hand, I'll be covered by the wall. He broke back into a fast run, jumping brambles, I hedgerows, dead bracken and frozen ditches. Four hundred yards to go. Despite the extreme cold, he could feel the sweat coursing down his back. At one I moment he stepped calf-deep into an ice-crusted Stream - but barely registered it. The pounding of his I feet echoed that of his heart. His breath sawed in his chest. His hands and face burnt with the cold. Two f hundred yards to go. So