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mirrored shades, and neither man seemed inclined to remove them.
    ‘ID please, ma’am,’ the man said, sounding bored and wary at the same time.
    His gloved hand was resting on the windowsill, and as he moved a little, Drake spotted a tattoo on his forearm. A sword intersected by three lightning bolts.
    Drake recognised the tattoo well enough; it was the unit symbol for US Army Special Forces.
    McKnight handed over her ID card. ‘We’re here to inspect the crash site.’
    The guard’s head swivelled to stare at Drake and Keegan.
    ‘And your passengers? I’ll need IDs for them too.’
    ‘No, you don’t,’ Drake informed him.
    The man’s head snapped back towards Drake in an instant. ‘Yeah, I do. This site is locked down. Nobody gets in or out without authorisation.’
    ‘How about the Director of National Intelligence?’ Drake challenged him, irritated by the delay. ‘Is that good enough? Or should we take it up with your CO?’
    The guard stared at him a moment longer, saying nothing. Drake was quite certain the man was glaring at him behind those mirrored sunglasses, though he returned the stare with equal intensity.
    Without saying a word, he turned away, retreated several paces and spoke into his radio, keeping his back to them. His companion stood in front of the vehicle, barring their way and making sure his assault rifle was plainly visible.
    Several seconds passed, during which no words were spoken. Drake glanced at McKnight but said nothing. Now wasn’t the time for voicing his thoughts.
    Then, just like that, the guard turned to face them, marched over to the driver’s side window and handed McKnight her ID back.
    ‘Go on through, ma’am,’ he said, practically spitting the words at them.
    ‘Appreciate it,’ McKnight returned as she revved the engine and hit the gas, forcing the other perimeter guard to dodge aside as the big vehicle lurched forwards.
    ‘What an asshole,’ Keegan remarked, glancing back at the two men from his window seat.
    Drake had been thinking along similar lines. ‘Is it always like this, dealing with PMCs?’
    McKnight shook her head. ‘This is frontier territory. You can’t blame them for being cautious.’ She gave him a sidelong smirk. ‘Anyway, I thought you Brits were all about politeness and fair play.’
    ‘Only in cricket. And I don’t play.’
    Cresting the ridge at low revs to keep from skidding on the loose dirt, the Explorer’s nose dipped and they began their descent of the reverse slope.
    At last they saw the crash site.
    The Black Hawk, or what was left of it, lay about 50 yards from the base of the slope, having come down in flat open ground that had once been a broad floodplain in wetter times. These days it was a barren expanse of rocks, dirt and dry scrub, all of it blending to the same washed-out brown as everything else.
    All of it, except a wide swathe around the wreckage. There the stones had been blackened, the brush incinerated, the dusty ground itself charred by the intense heat. Bits of twisted wreckage lay everywhere, most so badly burned and deformed in the explosion that it was impossible to tell what they had once been.
    The airframe itself was still recognisable, barely. Two of the massive rotor blades had sheared off, probably during the crash, but the other two remained attached to the engine assembly.
    Clustered around the wreck were half a dozen men in similar attire to the two guards they’d just encountered, all armed with a mixture of assault rifles and sub-machine guns. The protection detail was backed up by a couple of armoured 4x4s that Drake recognised as RG-33s.
    Made in South Africa, they were popular with the UN and other peacekeeping forces because of the excellent protection they offered, and it seemed Horizon felt the same way. These ones both had 50-calibre remote weapons stations mounted on their roofs, allowing operators inside the vehicles to track and engage targets without ever having to leave their