"That"s what Rick"s going to do," I said.
"I"m sending him home right away. The lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d"s flying first cla.s.s because there are no other seats. And Toad I want you to take him to the airport. OK?"
n.o.body put up any good reason for keeping Rick on the team.
Mal saw the point of what I was saying and finally agreed that Rick should go. The only argument was about his share of the Mafia dollars and in the end we voted that he should still get it, provided he kept his mouth shut about the whole episode when he reached home.
So the day"s training got under way an hour late. I stayed in barracks, fighting to catch up with paperwork mainly the course reports on the students, which we were supposed to be continuously updating.
All morning I kept remembering how, at the climax of the siege of the Libyan Emba.s.sy in London, the police negotiators had kept the terrorists in play by telling them direct lies: that the Libyan Amba.s.sador was on his way, that a coach was coming to take them to Heathrow, and so on. Even Trevor Lock, the policeman trapped inside the building, couldn"t get any straight answers from the police. Several times he asked for an a.s.surance that the building wasn"t going to be a.s.saulted and at the very moment when the SAS men were laying out their abseil ropes on the roof, the cops promised him blind that all they were trying to arrange was the villains" getaway.
Now we seemed to be in an unpleasantly similar situation.
The boss would go on saying, "No, no, Geordie, everything"s fine," until the very moment when Clinton or some other jerk in Washington pressed the b.u.t.ton. The CO was bound to toe the line. But for us poor sods at the sharp end it was different.
Maybe we"d see a brilliant white flash. Maybe we wouldn"t.
At midday I called the Charge again and heard that the American Amba.s.sador had died from his wounds. All US flights into Moscow had been suspended, and American citizens advised not to travel to Russia by any means. More and more I was needled by apprehension that this whole train of events had been set off by us by our partic.i.p.ation in the hit on the apartment. Then I told myself that if we hadn"t gone along with it the result of the shoot-out might have been much the same, with a few more casualties to the forces of law and order but still the feelings of guilt were building up.
Before Toad left I took him aside and asked, "Is there any way you can disable Apple?"
"Not unless we go back down the tunnel," he replied.
"Now it"s live, it"s live."
TWELVE.
We seemed to have two options. One was to call in an R.A.F aircraft and lift the whole team out, taking Orange with us, on the grounds that the situation was too dangerous to stay. That definitely went against the grain: it would be unprofessional and would smell of panic. If we quit, we"d have failed in one of our main objectives.
The second option was to carry out our task and get Orange into place as soon as possible after which we could a.s.sess the position again, and decide whether to carry on with the training course or leave immediately.
To reach a decision we held a Chinese parliament out in the open, in the middle of the a.s.sault course, well away from any bugs. Toad, as usual, remained silent, but the rest of the lads were emphatically for Option Two. The only disagreement was about what we should do once we"d buried Orange in the old air-raid shelter.
Whinger, croaking through his laryngitis, was all for playing it straight.
"We might as well see the course through. n.o.body"s going to push any b.u.t.ton.
They wouldn"t f.u.c.king well dare."
Johnny and Pavarotti agreed with him. But Mal, who"d done a two-year tour attached to the US Marines, had a low opinion of American decision taking in general, and reckoned somebody in a key position in Washington might easily lose his cool under pressure. Dusty and Pete tended to go along with that, and so did I. That meant that three of us were for remaining on the team task, and four for opting out: the narrowest possible majority. In the end we agreed to debate the matter again once Orange had gone down.
Our plan for the second device was perfectly simple. Whinger and I had already decided we couldn"t start digging on the site before we were ready to insert: otherwise somebody might see the spoil. Therefore, we"d fetch the components from the Emba.s.sy that evening, bring them to the camp, stash them temporarily, and take them out to the shelter the next night, starting and finishing the insertion in one shift.
Or so we thought.
For this next run we adopted the same tactics as before: using both cars and keeping well apart, in radio contact. We left Balashika at 8:00 p.m." and reached the Emba.s.sy at 8:55. Taking our normal precautions, Whinger put in a drive-past with the grey Volga; he had Johnny riding pa.s.senger with him, and when they reported all clear, Pavarotti, Toad and I went in with the black vehicle to load the components. We"d done what we could to make the Volgas more road worthy getting them both a service and replacing three of the worst tyres.
As we drove along the embankment an dover the line of the tunnel, I got a peculiar fizzing sensation in my stomach.
I"d already sent word to the Charge that we were coming in. My spiel had been that, because of the international tension, we wanted to recover the last of our bits and pieces so that we"d have everything in one place if the Regiment decided on a quick evacuation. Aliway had said that was OK by him: there"d be no one to meet us, but he"d leave word with security, and we could hand them the keys of the garage on our way out.
That suited us fine. We loaded up at leisure, locked the door and handed in the keys. In the car, before I drove off, I got Toad to hand me Orange"s Rat, and clipped the device to my belt.
We were rolling again less than ten minutes after we"d arrived. Pay was beside me in front, Toad in the back.
"Clearing now," I called to Whinger.
"Roger," he answered.
"I"ll fall in behind."
On our way out through the city centre I couldn"t distinguish his lights from all the others behind us; but I knew he was there, because we kept exchanging messages. The traffic began to thin out, and on the highway the vehicles were well s.p.a.ced. Fine rain had set in, reducing visibility. The black Volga wallowed on the wet road like a boat under its heavy load, and I kept our speed down to sixty-five ks to give myself time to avoid potholes. That meant we were one of the slowest cars on the road, and we kept getting overtaken, but I felt in no particular hurry.
So we cruised on until we were within about five ks of base.
Out in the country the rain was heavier, the air murkier. We"d just gone under the outer ring-road when everything went ballistic.
"Look out," said Pay.
"There"s a flashing blue light up ahead."
At the same moment Whinger came on the radio with, "I think we"ve got a tail."
I glanced in my mirror and exclaimed, Jesus! I think we have one too. There"s a police block up ahead as well. Listen, Whinge.
We"re being pulled in by the GAl. Get off the road and wait out."
In the road ahead, beside the vehicle with the flashing blue lamp, a man was waving us down with one of those white-ended batons. As I braked, I saw in the mirror that the car behind us had swung in close on our tail.
"s.h.i.t, Pay," I said.
"Looks like the GAl are having a purge.
What do we do?"
"Bluff our way. Stop if he tells us to for Christ"s sake. Don"t p.i.s.s him off- otherwise we"ll be in the nick for resisting arrest.
A man in grey GAl uniform, with the red stripe down the side of his pants, was guiding us in towards the verge. As I pulled up, another man appeared beside the window and said, "Dok.u.menti."
I reached down under my seat for the package Anna had made up for each car and handed it to him. He took it, but motioned for me to go with him to a hut at the edge of the highway. Then he started saying, "Kijoucha, kijoucha," and making twisting movements with his hand.
"Keys," said Toad.
"He"s after the keys."
"Suspicious b.a.s.t.a.r.d," I said.
"He thinks we"re going to try and drive off."
"Ah, f.u.c.k it!" exclaimed Pavarotti.
"Shall I deal with him?"
"It"s all right," I said.
"I"ll go. You two sit tight."
I took out the ignition key and handed it through the window. I was on the point of getting out when I remembered the Rat. Better leave it in the car, I thought. Then, measuring the distance to the hut by eye, I thought, No that isn"t a hundred feet. It"ll be OK.
As I stepped out of the car I glanced into the back, and was rea.s.sured to see that the component beside Toad was covered by an old blanket.
I started to follow the GAl officer. He pointed towards the hut, gesturing to me to carry on. Then he turned back to the Volga.
The hut was set just off the tarmac, down a bit of a bank and on the edge of the wood. At first my main concern was that I wouldn"t understand what the cops were asking, and I wished to h.e.l.l my Russian was better. Then, second by second, step by step, I began to get the feeling that something was wrong. The hut didn"t look like one of the regular GAl stations, which were lit up like little guard rooms This thing was only a roads men cabin, and dark. Besides, the other cars parked by it weren"t GAl vehicles, but ordinary saloons. Worst of all, there were at least five men standing in the shadows, not in GAl uniform, but wearing leather jackets that gleamed when the headlights of a vehicle went by on the road. There was something odd about their body language; their postures unnaturally rigid and alert.
At that instant I suddenly heard, through my earpiece, Pavarotti call, "CONTACT!" Before I could react, the guys in 2 front of me started to move in my direction. I glanced over my shoulder at the Volga and saw two men with sub-machine guns closing in from either side.
I jabbed my press el switch and said sharply, "Contact! Contact!
Whinger, in here! Get in! Get in!"
"Negative," came his answer.
"We can"t. We"re in a contact too."
Over the radio I heard a rattle of shots. An instant later the shots came live, through the air.
The five men on the edge of the forest were in a ragged group only ten feet from me. They started moving towards me.
Instinctively I pulled out my pistol and dropped the nearest one with a single shot to the forehead, which jerked his head violently backwards.
I looked back at the Volga. Rounds cracked past my head. As I went down on one knee. I could see that the pseudo-policeman was at the driver"s door. A second guy was trying to force his way into the back seat. Another burst ripped past me. I felt a sharp tug and a stab of pain in my left shoulder. The impact spun me round, only to find one of the others almost on top of me.
Automatically I fired a double tap into his chest, and he went down, but he was so close that his impetus carried him past me, and he narrowly missed me as he fell. I then emptied my magazine into the area where his three remaining mates had suddenly taken cover, and sprinted the last few yards for the safety of the woods.
The trees were pines, fairly well s.p.a.ced. By luck I went between the first few, then ran smack into spiky dead branches, ripping my face. I backed off, skirted left and kept going.
Behind me, pandemonium erupted. Men began yelling like lunatics. Engines started up and revved furiously. Tyres scrabbled and squealed as cars pulled away. Somebody cracked off a few more bursts from a sub-machine gun, and rounds came snapping through the trees, but by then I was a hundred metres into the woods, and relatively safe.
For a few seconds I lay p.r.o.ne, head-on to the road in line with a thick trunk, gasping for breath, more from shock than from exertion.
"Jesus!" I went.
"What the f.u.c.k happened?"
Out on the highway everything had gone quiet. I jabbed the press el of my radio and called, "Black to Grey. Can you hear me?"
"Grey," went Whinger.
"We"ve broken the contact. We"re mobile."
"Where are you?" I gasped.
"Heading on in your direction. Where are you?"
"In the forest behind the hut. Give me one minute. I"ll come back to the roadside a hundred metres past the hut."
"Roger."
I tore through the trees, parallel with the road, with my left arm raised in front of my face to ward off branches. I had a stinging sensation on the outside of my left shoulder, and I could feel blood running down my side. But the arm was working, and the wound didn"t feel bad. Already my night-vision was establishing itself, and I could see enough to make rapid progress.
I counted a hundred and fifty steps, then turned left, running back towards the road. I burst out of the trees and looked back, to the left. I was about the right distance from the hut. Through the rain I saw one car coming fast towards me. In my earpiece Whinger said, "OK, we have eyes on you." I stepped farther out into the road, and the car swung in towards me. As it pulled up, I saw that windscreen and rear window had been shot out.
"Get in! Get in!" shouted Whinger.
"Where"s the other Volga?"
"They"ve got it."
"Jesus! The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds went that way. Back into town."
"After them!"
I dived into the back and slammed the door.
"Watch your hands on the gla.s.s," yelled Johnny "It"s all over.
With a howl of tyres Whinger spun the car and screamed up to high revs in each gear. Wind came whistling through the cabin, fore to aft.
Johnny was trying to tell me something, but with the internal slipstream roaring it was hard to hear. Also, after the gunshots, I was slightly deaf.
In a few seconds we pa.s.sed a car burning on the other side of the road.
"Who"s that?" I shouted.
"That was the lot that came for us," went Whinger.
"What happened to you?"
"Ran straight into an illegal VCP. They had a man out in GAL uniform, waving us down. He demanded doc.u.ments and keys.
Made me go with him towards the hut. Then I saw all these other guys on the lurk. That was the moment you called "Contact".
What about you?"