Zero Option

TEN

The night wasn't exactly a rest cure. First I'd had to put fresh dressings on Farrell's wounds. A furrow through the flesh on the inside of his upper arm was healing well, but the twin punctures, fore and aft, at the edge of his abdomen lust below the bottom rib, didn't look so good. I could see that somebody had made an exploratory incision — presumably to clear out debris drawn in by the bullet — but there was an angry flush round both ends of the wound, and some suppuration coming out through the stitches. Even though medical training had killed the last of my squeamishness, I didn't enjoy patching up this particular patient; I'd rather have stuck a knife through his ribs and be done with it.

For the rest of the night we chained him to one of the iron bedsteads in the double room, wrist and ankle.

To make doubly sure he didn't do a Houdini on us, Tony volunteered to sleep in the other bed.

With Farrell safely shackled upstairs I took a walk down the drive with my mobile phone, and called the incident room from the middle of the wood. Ever since the intercept I'd been shitting myself with worry that we might have hurt or even killed somebody, so when I got through to Fraser, my first question was, 'Was everyone OK on the bypass?'

'Fine, fine,' he answered. 'No problems at all.'

'What about the guys in the van? Both vans.'

'A few bruises. A couple of vehicles bent. Otherwise, nothing.'

'That's great. Who were those guys in the Lexus?'

'We don't know yet. They cleared off on foot into the hinterland. By the time the cops got there they'd gone. The car'd been stolen in Shrewsbury.'

'So we don't know if they were players or joy riders?'

'The last, we reckon.'

'Well — hell. They gave us a fright and a half. And did you monitor those three calls?'

'We did. We got some numbers to work on. What about your lot?'

'We're all in good shape.'

'Your guest behaving?'

'More or less. But listen, we've set up the exchange for the morning…' I confirmed details of the arrangement and asked for back-up, both from SB and from the Regiment.

'Crafty bastards!' Fraser said. 'Typical, to call the 1LV on a motorway. Especially there. At that point the M25's four lanes in each direction, and at that time of the morning it'll be heaving with traffic, even though it's the weekend. Hell of a place to put on surveillance.'

'I know. But for Christ's sake don't do anything obvious. Don't have a car on the hard shoulder anywhere, not even on the opposite side. The slightest thing could put them off.'

'Leave it to us,' said Foxy. 'We'll be.watching you.

And once you've done the swap, we'll be going for a quick intercept of the PIRA vehicle.'

'OK. Can I speak to Yorky, please?'

Yorky came on, and when I had gone through things with him he echoed Fraser's disgust about the choice of location. 'Bah gum, it's bang under the flight-path out of Heathrow.' He paused. 'We'll have a chopper airborne, but it'll have to stand right off. There's no way it can come overhead around that area.'

'I know,' I said. 'For Christ's sake keep everyone out of sight.'

'Fear not, Geordie. I've been in this business longer than you have.'

'I know. I'm getting jumpy, that's all. Any media leaks anywhere?'

'A reporter from a local paper got on to the police in Ludlow, and they told him there'd been a minor accident, that was all. That choked him off.'

I didn't get to sleep until nearly three o'clock. And all too soon the alarm went and Doughnut came in with a brew. Farrell, he told me, claimed he hadn't slept a wink, but Tony knew this was garbage because he'd heard the man snoring. I was glad to hear that Farrell had made no fuss about putting on the clothes we'd bought for him: black jeans, a white T-shirt and a dark- blue sweat top. Of course, he hadn't much option but to wear them: he couldn't carry on in his prison kit of striped shirt and brown trousers, and his own clothes, such as they were, had been left in a bag inside the police meat wagon. Having discovered from the screws at Winson Green that he had a thirty-six-inch waist, we'd deliberately gone for the next size up so he'd have to winch the trousers in with the belt that had been doctored to contain a tracking chip. When we got him he'd only been wearing a pair of cloth slippers on his feet, and so he also went happily for the new trainers we'd supplied. They looked like brand-new leeboks, but they'd had a little expert attention around the heels.

By the time I got up, Doughnut already had some porridge on the go, and Farrell surprised me by consenting to get a bowl of it down his neck. His face and tongue had swollen more during the night and he had problems swallowing (he also looked fairly grotesque), but at least his fever seemed to have eased.

Nobody spoke much at breakfast. I think we were all feeling shattered. After a quick nosh we hooded our prisoner again, to make sure he didn't pick up any idea of where the safe house was, and set forth.

We pulled out in the minivan at 0500, Whinger again at the wheel, myself beside him, and Farrell.cuffed to Tony in the back. To give each of them slightly more freedom we'd put them on two pairs of cuffs with a short chain linking them. We'd left Doughnut and Stew to look after the cottage, confident that the Regiment would have put plenty of other guys out to OP the rendezvous.

The rain had moved away, leaving the sky clear, but mist still hung in the hollows and made driving tricky until the light was strong.

We headed down through the Forest of Dean to the M4, and 15y the time we hit the motorway my spirits had really picked up. The thought of seeing Tim and Tracy again in a couple of hours gave me a tremendous lift. The dawn mist had burned off, and the glorious day that was developing exactly matched my mood. The early sun shone in our faces as we headed east, but I welcomed every ray of it.

To help while away the time, I tried to work out how many days had passed since I'd got back from Bogotfi. It was twenty-eight or twenty-nine, but with Libya thrown into the middle the time seemed longer.

No doubt it was the same for the hostages. With no word from me or anyone on our side, the four weeks must have stretched out like eternity. I worried that Tracy would be blaming me for not making more effort to find her. Well, I thought, it shouldn't be long now.

All went well until we were on our way past 1Leading. The traffic had been steadily building up, but all three lanes were still moving fast and everything seemed normal. Then, maybe three miles short of Exit 10, where we wanted to turn south for Bracknell and the M3, Whinger let out a curse as he saw brake-lights coming on in front of us. There was no chance of sliding up some slip road; all he could do was stick to the outside lane and wind down to a halt in company with everyone else.

'Shunt,' he said. 'Must be. What do we do?'

'Sit it out,' I told him. 'We've time yet.'

We sat and waited. Five minutes, ten, fifteen… and no movement. Twenty minutes, and we couldn't even see any flashing lights in the distance ahead. The block had tailed back for miles behind us.

The irony of the situation was not lost on me. If we'd have been responding to a real emergency we'd have ignored the rules and gone like shit off a shovel up the hard shoulder, prepared to front it out if the police turned snarky. But now, the last thing we could afford was any entanglement with the law. I knew SB would have warned off the force operating in the area of our rendezvous, telling them to keep their hands offa white 1Lenault van with our plates on it, but down here in Berkshire it might be a different story. If coppers caught us with a hooded, cuffed prisoner in the back, our entire deception would be up the spout, Farrell would realise that he was being conned, and the only chance of recovering my family would be gone.

At last the lines of massed cars began to creep for ward, only to stop again after a few yards. Whinger kept cursing and muttering under his breath, and presently his impatience started seeping into me. I shifted around in my seat, wondering what we could do.

'What the hell are all these people doing, heading into town on a Saturday?' I said irritably.

Nobody answered. Our covert radios were on board, but bundled up inside a bag. Because, we couldn't afford to let Farrell see or hear us using them. What we could use, though, was the mobile phone.

I turned round and said to Farrell, 'Here — we're in the shit with this traffic. You'd better call your contact in London on my mobile. Say we've got held up and may be late.'

'Jaysus,' he mumbled through his hood. 'I don't have the number. I left it in the house.'

'Call Belfast then, get the number again.'

'Get this fucking hood offofme first.'

'Not likely, mate. You can keep it on and talk through it. What's the number over there?'

Before Farrell could give it there was a sudden move ment in the traffic ahead, and we began making ground again, reaching a reasonable speed. 'Cancel that,' I said.

'Hold on a minute. Looks like we're going now. I don't think you need call after all.'

Then, “inevitably, everything slowed down. This time, before we came to a halt, I spotted a break in the central barrier. A section of the heavy rail had been removed, maybe for repair, and the gap was blocked only by plastic cones. The traffic coming the other way was light.

To alter the tkV time would be the final resort.

Anything rather than that…

'Through there, Whinger!' I said on impulse, point ing at the cones. 'Whip through and turn round. We'll go some other way.'

Whinger wasn't the sort to query a decision like that.

He watched for a gap in the oncoming traffic, made the U-turn in a second and joined the stream flowing west.

Some officious turd hooted in protest, but as I looked back in the wing-mirror I saw one or two other cars following our example.

'If any self-righteous bastard reports us, I'll murder him,' I said. 'Now for a bit of map-reading.'

Heading west, we came off the motorway at the next exit, and immediately entered a nightmare of suburbanised villages and towns: Spencer's Wood, Swallowfield, Finchampstead, Crowthome, Bagshot, all crawling with pottering weekenders. As I called the turns, Whinger went as fast as the van, the road and its competing users would let him, and eventually we battled our way through to Junction 3 of the M3. From there I calculated it was sixteen miles to our RV: sixteen minutes if we kept to sixty m.p.h, and met no more hang-ups. Since we had four minutes in hand, I told Whinger to pull into the forecourt of a garage, keeping well away from the pumps and the office.

'Where are we?' Farrell wanted to know.

'In some godforsaken arsehole of a lay-by,' I told him. 'We're going on in a minute.'

'I need a piss,' he said.

'You're not getting one here, with that hood on or without it. There are too many people passing. The cops have probably put out mug-shots of you all over the country. They've probably had pictures on the TV news. It only needs one person to see you and that's it.'

Four minutes later we slipped on to the M3 and stuck with the inside lane, which was moving at just about sixty. I felt my adrenalin coming up. Our target area was practically in sight, yet still there were umpteen things that could go wrong. I kept thinking of Tim, seeing the boy so clearly that I was pretty much talking to him.

Tracy, too: I was getting the feel and smell of her again.

We reached the junction with the M25 in eight minutes — exactly what I'd reckoned. Eight more minutes to go. On our side of the big ring-road a solid river of traffic was flowing northwards, four lanes abreast. Again we kept in the slow lane, reaching Junction 13 in four minutes. As Yorky had predicted, the traffic there was yet more dense, all four lanes jam232 packed with vehicles, nose to tail.

Three minutes to Exit 14, then a minute more. I looked at my watch, at Tony, at the hooded figure of Farrell. Jesus, I thought, the trouble this guy's caused me.

'Fourteen,' announced Whinger coolly, pointing up as we passed under the blue and white board.. 'Sixty seconds to run. There's the phone, up ahead now.'

'Just pull in gently, as if we've got engine problems.

There — go over. now.'

Whinger put on his left indicator and cruised in. All we need now, I thought, is an AA or IkAC van on patrol, coming to rescue us without being asked.

I checked my watch. We were thirty seconds early.

As yet the lkV was empty.

As Whinger came to a halt and switched on his panic lights, I said to Farrell, 'OK. We're on site. Stand by to transfer. The drill is going to be this: they'll park fifty metres behind us, one guy will walk towards us with the hostages, Tony will go back with you. In the middle of the gap, once my people are past him, he'll release you.

Are you with me?'

'I am.'

'And don't luck about. Don't start pulling or trying to run before he unlocks you, OK?'

Farrell nodded. Through the hood I could hear him breathing fast. I knew he was hot — we all were — but was sure this panting was caused by adrenalin.

'Pull the bonnet catch,' I told Whing'er. As soon as I heard the click, I jumped out of the passenger door and whipped round the front of the van. There in the open the traffic roar was horrendous, and a wide-bodied jet, labouring up off the runway at Heathrow, adeded its scream to the general clamour. When I dialled the incident room on my mobile, I could hardly hear the voice on the other end.

'Zulu One on RV now!' I yelled, and I just made out a man's voice say, 'loger.'

At least I'd confirmed that we were in position, and word would fly out over the radio to the guys deployed around us. The head-shed's intention was to go for a hard arrest on the PIIA wagon as soon after the exchange as possible. As I looked round I wondered where the hell anyone could have established an OP in this urban jungle. All about me were asphalt, brickwork, concrete walls, the blank ends of buildings, electric wires, pylons, roaring lines of traffic. Yet doubtless the guys were deployed in there somewhere, watching me.

I raised the bonnet of the van and propped it with the stay, pretending to tinker with the engine. A British Airways 747 came roaring over, drowning out even the traffic. I wondered where it was heading. America, maybe. I thought of the passengers settling themselves for a long flight, the stewardesses putting on their aprons to start serving breakfast.

My watch said 0847. Already the opposition were late. Typical PIRA. I felt sure that at any moment some of their dickers would pass in some vehicle of their own — maybe two separate lots of them — and send word back over their CB radio links: 'Yeah, yeah, they're there. It looks OK. It's clear. It's on.' I tried not to stare at the drivers as they whipped past, for fear of putting the wind up one of the scouts.

Back round the passenger side of the van, I stuck my head in through the window. The noise was less deafening inside.

'Late!' I yelled at Farrell. 'We made it on time. Your bloody people are late.'

'Don't worry,' he shouted. 'They'll be here.'

Yet his composure was only skin-deep. When another minute had gone by with no sign of action, he began to fidget arid curse. I stood by the passenger door, gazing back at the unending flood of vehicles pouring up from the south. Another.jet screamed out of the airport. It looked like the control tower was launching a plane every two minutes.

At five minutes past H-hour, Farrell started effing and blinding, abusing the underlings in the PIRA for their incompetence. 'They're swine,' he went. 'They get pissed out of their minds at night, and can't get up in the morning for wallowing in their own shite.'

His tirade was getting on my nerves. 'Swine yourselfl' I shouted. 'It was you who got us into this mess in the first place.'

At that instant Tony snapped, 'Look out! What's this?'

Through the small rear windows he'd seen another vehicle pulling up behind us. The first sight of it made my heart'jump. It was an old banger of an estate car, beige-coloured, scruffy, decrepit, lop-sided, with patches of rust showing along the bottoms of the doors; exactly what I'd expect the PIRA to be driving. But a second later I realised there was something wrong. The arrangement was that the PIRA would pull up fifty yards short of us, not five. Besides, this wagon was going down fast. Steam and smoke were pouring out through the radiator grille and from the sides of the bonnet.

The smouldering wreck wobbled to a halt about four feet from our rear bumper. The driver's door opened, and a stout, middle-aged Indian, a Sikh with a grey beard and white turban, eased himself out on to the hard shoulder. He took one despairing look at the smoke and steam, then waddled towards me.

Shit, shit, shit! I thought. Of all the world's disasters, this is the worst that can befall us. With that thing there, nothing on earth will make the PI1KA stop.

The Sikh came lurching up. 'Sir, I am apologising most profoundly,' he began. 'Car is overheating. You help me with rope? Yes?'

It flashed through my mind to say, 'Do the fucking rope trick yourself, mate, car and all,' but it wasn't the moment for jokes, and I didn't want to be rude. What could I tell the poor bugger? Even if I'd drawn my pistol and ordered him to get his jalopy away from me it would have been impossible for him to obey.

All I said was, 'Sorry, no rope.' I spread my hands, and fervently hoped that was it. But the brute had spied the mobile sprouting from my pocket.

'Make call, please,' he went, pointing at it.

'Sorry, it's not working. No batteries.'

'Sir — you are very kind gentleman. You are giving me lift to garage.'

I felt frantic. I glanced at my watch. Six minutes past the deadline. Through the open window of our van I could hear Tony relaying events to Farrell.

'Sorry,' I said. 'I'm broken down as well.' I pointed at the raised bonnet. 'That's why I stopped by this phone.' Then I had a brainwave. 'There's a service station a couple of miles ahead,' I said, inventing the place on the spur of the moment. 'If you go on slowly, you'll make it.'

It was a shameless lie; I knew there was no service station for miles.

As I stood looking at the stranded Indian, my face twisted into a grimace of totally false goodwill, some sixth sense made me glance out into the passing traffic and there, right beside me, was a small, grey van, old and dirty. The vehicle had slowed down, causing others to concertina behind it. Somebody clapped a hand on his horn, and others responded. For a second I had direct eye contact with the driver and front-seat passenger. Both were staring sideways at me, two pale young faces concentrating in a way that could mean only one thing: this was the PIIkA wagon.

By the time I'd made the connection it was past. For a few yards it wavered in and out, as if the driver was about to pull on to the hard shoulder, but he never did.

A few seconds later the van straightened and carried on to the north.

I stared after it, suddenly out of breath. Jesus, I thought: Tim was in that thing. Tracy was in it. My family had gone by within inches of me. I felt a terrific pull, as if that vehicle had been a powerful magnet.

Ignoring the Indian, I leapt back in front of our own wagon. Using the raised bonnet as a shield to make sure Farrell couldn't hear, I redialled the incident room.

When I heard a voice answer, I said loudly, 'Zulu One.

The PII

Didn't st6p. It's a grey Morris Thousand van with some black logo on the side.'