Zero Option (21 page)

'I don't suppose he's got a clue; they don't have to tell prisoners where they're taking them. That's why it's called the ghost train. He may think he's going down to the IKA nick at Evesham. Or there's another one called the Dana at Shrewsbury. That's not far off, either.'
Time dragged. I stared out of the window at the dismal conditions, thankful that at least all the guys on the team knew what our target looked like. Mugshots of Farrell, full face and profile, taken in the nick, had gone up on the board in the incident room. Seeing them, I had realised that even after months of pursuit I had never had a really good look at him. The night I'd seen him at the barn outside Belfast he'd been thirty or more metres off, standing in poor, flickering light; it was my colleague in the C
)P
, a guy from the Det, who'd recoguised him. And when I had chased him into the edge of the Amazon jungle it was in half-darkness, and in any case I'd been nearly blind with rage. The pictures taken in Winson Green showed him looking pretty rough, with hollow cheeks and dark shadows under the eyes.
Something else was niggling at my mind as we waited: a sheet of a telephone transcript which I'd glimpsed on Fraser's desk in the incident room. It was a record of a conversation with the PIPOk which had obviously taken place while we were in Libya.
Somebody had rung in, demanding to speak to Geordie Sharp, and 'KT' - Karen Terraine - had taken the call.
For a while she'd stalled the man with stock answers, but when he had insisted on talking to me, she'd said: 'Well, you can't. He's not in the country. He's gone abroad for a few days.' Beside these words somebody had made a couple of big red crosses with a felt tip, as if to draw attention to a major breach of security. Why, for Christ's sake, had the woman said that I was overseas? Was it just carelessness, or was it spite 207 revenge for my giving her the brush-off in that bout of
midnight
fisticu? Either way, I got the impression that Fraser had moved her smartly out of the team working on my problem. He told me she'd gone on leave, but I reckoned she'd been fired. Whatever had happened to her, one potentially dangerous fact was now in enemy hands. To some extent Operation Ostrich had been compromised.
I looked at my watch again and said, 'Now. It's quarter past. The road blocks should be in position.'
For a while we saw no change; the occasional vehicle continued to come past. Then, after one last lorry from the south, the flow from that direction ceased. A couple of minutes later the same thing happened from the north - a single car came down and disappeared south wards trailing a cloud of spray - and then everything went quiet.
'Standby,' I said over our chatter net.
'Engines running.'
Whinger turned the ignition key, and the Audi burbled into life with a deep, throaty grumble. I switched to the police channel, and a moment later heard a voice I recognised as that oflkoss Tucker, driver of the lead vehicle in the convoy: 'Point Alpha now.'
Back on our own net I called, 'OK. Take up position.'
Whinger switched on his headlights, which blazed out across the bypass, and rolled the heavy car down the slope. He headed a few yards to the left, so as to leave the rammer van a clear run, and brought the Audi to rest at an angle across the carriageway, its nose pointing south. In a couple of seconds Stew had eased the Granada round ahead of us and backed it up so that its rear-bumper was touching our front mudguard. By the time he'd switched on the alarm flashers and raised the lid of the boot, the two vehicles presented the very picture of an unfortunate shunt.
I nipped to the boot of the Granada, grabbed the power-saw, switched on and gave a couple of pulls on the starter cord to make sure it would run. At the second tug the engine burst into life, and after belching out a cloud of white smoke, rewed up smoothly. I switched off and returned the saw to its place. The rest of the team stationed themselves on the south side of the barricade, away from the impact area.
'Standby!' called Tony.
'Lights to the north.'
On the chatter net I called the driver of our rammer van. 'All set, Joe?'
'Turning and burning,' he replied calmly.
'Fine.
Listen out for my countdown.'
The lights bore down towards us, at first only one big glare through the drizzling rain, then three distinct pairs of headlam, ps, with blue police lamps flashing fore and aft. They were less than a quarter of a mile off when Tony's voice suddenly broke into the chatter net.
'Geordie,' he called. 'The cops are saying a rogue vehicle's bust through the cordon. There's a fourth car coming down the road.'
Jesus! I thought. Somehow the PIPA have rumbled us. They've overheard one of our planning conversations. They're coming to loin the party.
I had about five seconds in which to make a decision.
Abort or carry on?
Pointless to abort.
If this was the PIP-A, we were fairly well equipped to take them on here and now. If it was someone else pissing about we could stuff them with the greatest of ease. I said, 'Carry on as planned. Whinger, watch for a fourth fucking vehicle.'
In the distance, beyond the convoy lights, another faint glow was already visible. But I had no more time to worry about it.
loss
, driving the lead police car, had seen our obstruction and began to brake. The middle vehicle closed on him a bit,
then
slowed, increasing its distance again. The little group cruised on towards us at a diminishing pace. I kept mentally calculating the distance they had to run.
'Stand by to roll,' I told Joe. 'Five, four, three, two, one… GO!'
We stripped off our covert radios and dumped them in the boot of the Granada. Tony and I pulled on pairs of lightweight goggles. My eyes were glued to the approaching convoy, but my ears were listening for the engine o pounds
ur
van. There it was, running at high revs in second gear.
I flailed my right hand at the oncoming lights, urgently waving them down. The lead car had barely coasted to a halt when the van, its engine screaming, hurtled down on to the carriageway at right-angles and caught the meat wagon broadside. With a huge, crunching crash of metal and a screech of tyres the wagon was hurled sideways. As the wheels caught on the tarmac, the impetus toppled the van on to its right side and sent it powering on, sparks flying from the side that scraped over the road. From close quarters the violence of the impact was shocking. With a sudden stab of alarm I thought that the van was going to catch fire. If Farrell got roasted alive, that would be the end of everything.
It came to rest with the roo pounds ertical, on the edge of the shallow ditch. Then things happened very fast. I dived for the power saw, grabbed it, ran to the ditch, started up and applied the carbon blade to the metal.
Tony stood beside me, directing a torch on to the roof.
Above the scream of my saw I heard rounds going down in bursts, then the boom of flash-bangs.
The saw bit through the thin metal sheeting of the roof as if it were cardboard, and in a few seconds I'd made two big cuts running downwards and outwards from a central point at the top. A hail of fiery red sparks flew in all directions, and I thanked my stars that the fuel I could smell spilling out over the verge was diesel, not petrol. Out of the corner of my eye I saw somebody struggling out through the left-hand door of the cab, which was uppermost. Knowing it was one of our own guys I didn't worry; he'd keep out of the way, or.maybe just
lie
down.
One more cut across the bottom of my triangle and the job was done. As the piece came away, Tony stuck his head in through the hole, swept his torch beam and fired offwith a canister of pepper spray in the direction of the tail. Then he scrambled in through the opening and I followed.
The vehicle's lights had gone down in the crash, so the torches were our only illumination. In the beams I saw two gures piled into one back corner, struggling on top of each other, gasping and cursing and rubbing at their eyes. Tony reached them first and lifted the upper man bodily into the air, only to find he was attached to the second by a handcuff and a short chain.
Which was which? The top man had fair hair, the bottom one was dark; the minder was uppermost, Farrell on the deck.
Bolt shears out. Snap through the links.
Blood shining on the floor of the van - or rather on the wall.
Grab Farrell.
He yelled a string of obscenities as t slammed him face-down, wrenched his arms behind him and got a pair ofplasticuffs pulled up tight on his wrists. 'Take it easy, Seamus!' he managed between coughs and splutters.
'That fucking gas!
It's you, Seamus, is it not?
Jaysus, man, get offme! Get me out of this!'
That was all he could manage. He couldn't open his eyes. Blood was frothing out of his mouth, and as the pepper got to him properly he relapsed into incoherent roars. The spray was getting to me as well. My eyes were OK inside the goggles, but my nose, mouth and throat were burning, and I tried not to inhale.
I saw Tony had Farrell under control, so I dived back through the hole into the open and gasped in a few breaths of fresh air. Outside it sounded as though a full- scale battle was in progress: bangs, flashes, rounds clattering down, police sirens screaming. The moment Farrell's head appeared in the opening I grabbed him by the hair and pulled him bodily out. He collapsed on to the ground, bellowing and choking. A second later Tony dived out as well. Between us we hoisted the prisoner to his feet and gave him the bum's rush in the direction of the Audi. To right and left I noticed bodies lying on the ground.
It had originally been my intention to get Farrell in the back seat between Tony and myself. But on impulse I opened the boot, dumped him bodily inside and slammed the lid.
'Let's go,' I yelled.
Whinger loomed up in front of me, thrusting his MP 5 in my direction as he went for the driving seat. I grabbed the weapon, pointed it up in the air and squeezed the trigger, purely to make sure it was unloaded. To my amazement, five or six rounds hammered off into the night before the magazine was empty.
'For fuck's sake, Whinger!'
I shouted.
'Get in! Get in!' he yelled. 'Stop pissing about.'
He already had the engine running. I leapt into the passenger seat, Tony into the back and with a squeal of tyres and the engine howling, the Audi shot away down the bypass.
'Those guys on the deck,' I panted. 'What happened to them?'
'Nothing.' Whinger sounded perfectly cool. 'They just lay down when we started firing.'
'What about the extra car?'
'A
pale blue Lexus. It went past.'
'How?'
'Scraped round the front of the Granada, on the verge.'
'What
was it doing?'
'Not a clue. But it was going like shit
offa
shovel.'
'Phworrh!' I was still choking and spluttering. '
Your
tucking pepper, Tony.'
'I know. But it did the trick. I don't reckon our guy saw anything at all.'
In seconds we were nudging
120 m.p.h
. Having tried an experimental ride in the boot earlier that day, I knew that Farrell couldn't possibly hear us talking: the noise inside the tin can was diabolical. 'Take it easy,' I told Whinger.
:At
this rate Stew'll never keep up.' On the radio I called, 'Zulu One to Zulu Two, what's the score? Over.'
'Zulu Two,'
came
Stew's voice.
'
Mobile
towards you.
We have you visual.'
Looking back, I saw the Granada's lights in the distance. 'Zulu One to all Papa stations,' I went.
'Clear Point Charlie now.
Anticipating Point Charlie figures six-zero seconds, repeat six-zero seconds.'
'Papa Nine,'
came
the answer. 'Roger.'
Whinger had throttled back to ninety and the lights of the Granada had closed a little. But then ahead of us our own lights picked up the shape of another car parked beside the road.
'Fuckin' 'ell!' cried Whinger. 'It's that bastard Lexus.'
He put his foot down again and the Audi surged forward.
'Zulu One to Zulu Two,' I called. 'Watch yourselves. The intruder vehicle's parked up ahead.'
As we hurtled down towards it I had to remind myself that this was Shropshire, England, not some godforsaken bog outside Belfast. I was so hyped up by the intercept that our best option seemed to be to spray the Lexus with a few busts from the MP 5s as we went past . . . Take it easy, I told myself. You can't do that here. The guys in that car may easily be PIRA. Farrell hoped I was Seamus. Was he expecting an intercept? But equally, the Lexus crew could be drunks trying to evade the breathalyser, or joy-riders baiting the police.
By the time we reached the Lexus it was already rolling, gathering speed. I caught a glimpse of three young faces, two in front and one behind. Just after we'd roared past, its lights came on.
'Hey!' I yelled. 'These bastards are after us. Sort them, Whinger. Don't kill 'em, for fuck's sake, but put them out of contention.'
Over the radio I called, 'Zulu One, the intruder's now between us.'
We were rounding a gentle curve. A moment later our speed had carried us out of sight of our tail. From our recce I remembered that there was a picnic site coming up on our left, a pull-up with rustic chairs and tables, screened from the road by conifers.
'There!' I exclaimed. 'Dive in there!'
Whinger had seen the entrance too. He hit the brakes with such a thump that the Audi slewed left and right. With a juddering rush we banged down off the tarmac on to the gravel of the pull-up. Whinger doused his lights and simultaneously switched offthe ignition so that the brake-lamps wouldn't light up.
'Slow down, slow down!' I called to Stew. 'Keep back. We've bombed into a lay-by. We're going to hang in here, then take them out.'
In about five seconds the Lexus overshot. Maybe the driver had been confused by the disappearance of his target - at any
rate,
he seemed to be moving more slowly than before. Whinger watched the lights go past outside the screen of firs, then started the engine again and came out after him.
Like a greyhound after a hare, the Audi surged up behind its prey, showing no lights at first, then with everything blazing. Before the other driver had time to react Whinger was up beside him, still accelerating hard.
Then, just as our tail was about to clear the Lexus's front, he braked fiercely and .jerked the steering wheel to the left.