At Risk

51

Liz was about to go online and decode her e-mail when, from the corner of her eye, she saw Don Whitten fold forward and bury his head in his hands. He held the position for perhaps a second before, his face contorted and his fists clenched, silently swearing at the distant roof of the hangar.

There were now eighteen men and three women in the hangar. Six of the men were Army officers, and all of these except Kersley, the SAS captain, were in combat dress. Of the three women one was a Royal Logistics Corps officer, one was local CID, and the other was PC Wendy Clissold. As one, they all fell silent and stared at Whitten.

“Tell us,” said Dunstan, levelly.

“Young man named Martindale, James Martindale, has just reported a twenty-five-year-old racing-green MGB stolen from outside the Plough pub in the village of Birdhoe. Could have happened any time after twelve fifteen this lunchtime when he arrived at the pub.”

There was a collective exhalation-a sound of extreme frustration. It was too much to hope for that the theft of the car was unrelated to D’Aubigny and Mansoor. Whitten reached glumly for his cigarettes.

“Birdhoe, as most of you know, is half a mile the wrong side of the roadblock. They must have outrun us across country while we were setting things up. And now they’ve got four hours’ bloody start on us. They could be anywhere.”

The Army officers looked at each other, tight-lipped. Two battalions of regular and TA soldiers and half a dozen Lynx and Gazelle helicopters were still in deployment in the northwestern sector.

“This man Martindale,” said Steve Goss. “He’s been in the pub all afternoon?”

“He and his fiancée went to the Plough for lunch, he says, and ended up stopping there to watch the rugby on TV.”

“Wait,” said Mackay, craning his head to where Liz was sitting, her fingers poised over her laptop. “A racing-green MGB? We passed one! I told you I used to-”

“Teal blue? The Moneypenny-magnet?”

“Yeah, that’s the one-where were we? Let’s look at that screen. We’d driven southwest from here, been going what, fifteen minutes? Must have been somewhere near Castle Acre or Narborough. So if our appointment at Marwell was for two p.m., and that was the right car we saw-and there aren’t many of that vintage and colour on the roads these days-then it puts our two terrorists near Narborough at approximately one forty-five. Two and a quarter hours ago. You’re right,” he addressed Whitten, “they could be in London or Birmingham by now.”

“But why steal such a recognisable car?” asked Liz.

The police looked at each other. “Because they’re easy to hot-wire, love,” said Whitten. “Most cars less than twenty years old have an automatic steering lock. You can break the lock by jemmying the wheel around, but it takes a bit of strength. Which points to the girl doing the taking away, I’d say.”

“OK. Point taken. Surely, though, that makes it a bit of a last resort? A desperate dash to get the hell away from the roadblock. They couldn’t have known the owner was going to sit in the pub all afternoon; they had to proceed on the assumption that he might come out looking for his car at any moment, find it gone, and dial 999 straight away. They certainly wouldn’t have risked driving into a major city in an immediately recognisable car that, for all they knew, every policeman in the UK was looking for.”

Dunstan nodded. “I agree. They’d allow themselves an hour’s drive at most, sticking to minor roads, then they’d ditch the vehicle.”

“An hour’s drive on minor roads takes them to RAF Marwell,” said Mackay quietly.

No one replied. The woman police officer manning the display computer generated a red line on the map. It moved southwards from Dersthorpe Strand, crossed the blue line representing the roadblock, and passed through Birdhoe and Narborough to Marwell. The line was vertical, and almost dead straight.

“Let’s suppose that Marwell is their target,” said Dunstan, looking around him. “It’s a fair guess that (a) they’re not going to drive too close to a secure government establishment in a stolen car, and (b) they ditched the car within an hour of passing through Narborough. That puts them right now either to the east of a five-mile circle surrounding Marwell, or to the west of it. Lying up out of sight, I should think-they’ve had a pretty stressful day. Either that or preparing to walk up to the target-they’re certainly not going to risk stealing another car at this juncture.”

Whitten crushed out his cigarette. “So what do you suggest?”

“That we draw two rings around Marwell. Establish an inner circle, radius five miles, which we saturate with police, Army and TA personnel right now. Give them night-vision goggles, searchlights, whatever they need… Basically, no one gets past.”

A balding man in the crown and star insignia of a lieutenant colonel made a swift calculation with a pencil. “That’s about eighty square miles in total. If we pull in all the search parties from the northwest sector, bring up another battalion…”

“And outside that,” Dunstan continued, “a further ring, five miles wide-that’s a two hundred square mile area-which we and our Army Air Corps friends overfly all night using thermal-imaging…” He looked around him for approval. “Anyone got a better idea?”

There was silence.

“How does that sound to you, gentlemen? Ma’am?” he asked the Army officers.

They nodded. “Good enough,” said the lieutenant colonel. He turned to his fellow officers with a pale smile. “Let it not be said that we failed to protect our brave US allies from an unbalanced language student and a Pakistani garage mechanic.”

The Army personnel smiled, if only faintly. The police didn’t smile at all. “DS Goss,” Dunstan continued, “I’d like you to get yourself over to Marwell and act as our liaison with Colonel Greeley. I’m going to call him right now and put him in the picture.”

Goss nodded and left the hangar at a run, raising a farewell hand to Liz as he passed her. Kersley and the senior PO19 officer followed him out and made for the huts, in order to bring their respective teams up to date with developments.

Liz stared after them for a moment, and listened to the agitated crescendo as the Gazelle bearing Steve Goss lifted from the ground. In some way that she couldn’t quite define, events seemed to be spinning out of control. There were too many people involved, and too many services represented. On top of this, instinct told her that a miscalculation had been made. Mansoor and D’Aubigny may have been prepared to lose their lives in the course of carrying out their operation, but there was nothing suicidal in their actions so far. The idea of them hurling themselves unavailingly at a USAF base and being cut to pieces for their pains was way off beam, she was certain of that. They had another plan.

With a start, she realised that she had not yet read her message, and without further ado flipped up the screen of her laptop and logged on. The message, when she had decoded it, was a long one. Especially by Wetherby’s standards.

Liz-attached report is for urgent attention yourself, Mackay, Dunstan. Source secret and reliable.

Liz smiled at the familiar cryptic style, and opened the attachment.

TOP SECRET-BEARER EYES ONLY

RE: MANSOOR, FARAJ

At midnight on Dec. 17, 2002, following reports of ITS activity on Pak-Afghan border near Chaman, an AC-130 transporter gunship departed a USAF base in Uzbekistan (believed to be Fergana), on a search and destroy mission. On board was the AC-130’s crew plus 12 Special Operations personnel…

“Cup of tea? They’ve got Earl Grey, apparently, presumably in deference to our metropolitan palates. There’s also a rumour of shortbread fingers…”

Liz looked up from the report. “Thanks, Bruno. I’d love a cup of something. And I’m pretty starving, too, so if you can see your way to…”

“Consider it done. Anything interesting come in from the Death Star?”

“Not sure… Let you know when you come back with those shortbread fingers and that black tea with two sugars.”

“Two sugars! Do I detect a sweet tooth?”

“No.” She frowned absently, one eye on her screen. “I’m in love with my dentist.”

He sauntered off, shaking his head, his laptop swinging in its case beneath his right arm. En route to the folding plastic table designated as the canteen area, he encountered PC Wendy Clissold, who was massaging her temples and watching an Alka-Seltzer dissolve in a Styrofoam cup.

“You haven’t got anything for a pain in the arse, have you?” he asked her, loud enough for Liz to hear.

Liz smiled, and turned her full attention to Wetherby’s message. As she read, however, her smile died. The activity around her seemed to fall away, and the ambient buzz of the hangar to fade to silence. When Mackay returned she was staring straight in front of her, her hands folded, expressionless.