Devil May Care

was hard to say what was inside. The packages were all of the same size and had clearly been produced and loaded not by hand but from an industrial assembly line.
    As Bond was considering his next move, he heard grinding metal, as of a door being pushed open on to the gallery,and flung himself to the ground behind the stacked cargo crates. There was the sound of a man’s voice, then of another answering it. As he pressed himself against the ground, Bond noticed what looked like a lump of brownish earth.
    He cursed silently. No wonder he’d been heard. The lump was an SID – a Seismic Intruder Detection device – one of the most discreet telltale gadgets of the last decade. It could detect movement of people, animals, or objects up to three hundred yards away. It was powered by three mercury cells and had a built-in dipole antenna with a 150 MHz transmitter, which relayed its findings through coded impulses – and all this in what looked like a small cowpat or clod of earth.
    Bond heard the noise of running feet and shouting. If he went back into the water, he would have to surface for breath before he reached the relative safety of the open sea. Even if he kept beneath the fuselage he would have to come up for air at some point and could then be picked off. There was no chance he could find again the fissure in the steel wall through which he’d entered. He would have to make his exit by land.
    The sooner he could get on to the guard and relieve him of his weapon, the better chance he had. There was no point in waiting while the SID alerted other guards to his presence.
    Cautiously, aware of his vulnerable near-nakedness, Bond edged out from behind the crates. The guard had gone down on to the lower gantry, presumably to make sure the craft had not been damaged. It was fifteen feet below the gallery level where Bond stood and he judged the drop too far for him to be sure of landing uninjured on the man’s shoulders.
    Unsheathing his knife, he took the tyre iron to the railthat edged the gallery and threw it as far as he could. As the guard ran towards the clanging noise, Bond dropped to the lower gantry and sprinted along it to the tail section of the plane. He leaped up and was just in time to conceal himself behind the vertical as the guard turned and started to retrace his steps.
    With his face a few feet from the tail section, Bond noticed a strange thing: it was painted with the British flag.
    He heard the guard come heavily back, and when he was level with him, Bond jumped down the five feet or so from the tail. The man let out a startled grunt as he fell face down beneath Bond’s weight.
    ‘The gun,’ said Bond, now pressing the tip of his commando knife against the man’s artery. ‘Drop the gun.’
    The man twitched and struggled, so Bond jabbed the tip of the knife into his flesh, where it drew blood. Reluctantly, the guard released his grip on the gun, and Bond pushed it away with his knee, a few feet across the metal walkway.
    Rather than cut the man’s throat, Bond used the carotid takedown. Only eleven pounds of pressure to the carotid arteries are necessary to stop bloodflow to the brain and, once the flow has stopped, the average person loses consciousness within ten seconds. As Bond squeezed hard on the man’s perspiring neck, he knew that if he left it at that, the thug would regain consciousness within fifteen seconds, but he would be weakened and disorientated – and fifteen seconds was long enough for the hasty exit he was planning.
    When he felt the heavy body go limp beneath him, Bond grabbed the gun and ran up the stairway to the upper level, where he scooped up the polythene-wrapped package. Ashe made it to the door, he heard the recovering man call out from the gantry below.
    Bond had no time to think what might lie beyond the door as he ran to the opening and leapt through it.

11. Good Trouser
    It took a moment for his eyes to become accustomed to his new surroundings. It was a boat-building yard with a single vessel under construction. There was a high screech of sheet-metal cutting over the sawing and hammering. Bond stood still for a moment. Then he began to make his way slowly along the gallery, at the end of which he could see wooden steps down to a platform where a door stood open, leading to the outdoor stairs – and freedom. He had got as far as the top of the steps when he heard the guard running back from the hangar and shouting from the connecting doorway. Bond