It worked smoothly.
Within a minute the convoy was travelling south towards Galgate along the A6. Once south of Galgate, the plan was to get onto the M6 and drive like the clappers to Manchester and Strangeways.
A grim-faced Hinksman sat sullenly in the back of the van, subdued and angry. His hands were secured in front of him by rigid handcuffs. The inane chatter of the two officers who sat in the cage with him only served to fuel his anger. Captured by a pathetic detective whom he had grown to hate and vowed to kill, then beaten by British justice, Hinksman was a killer with a grudge.
He rocked back and forth as he thought about his predicament.
Sent to prison for life — and no one had made any attempt to free him. What the hell was going on? What had happened to Corelli, and to Lenny Dakin — the two men who had most benefited from his skills and abilities at causing mayhem and death? Where were they now, he asked himself.
Lenny Dakin was actually parked up in a stolen Jaguar XJS with false number plates on the slip road leading up to Lancaster University.
He was contemplating how easy it had been to snare August. The manager of his casino in Blackpool always kept him abreast of ‘interesting’ people who used the facilities on a regular basis, and August had been a regular for about four months.
Not being one to miss out on any opportunity, Dakin had set him up twice with women. If he’d wished, he could have had pictures then, but he hadn’t bothered. He’d simply put August on the back burner for when he really needed to exploit him.
Then it had been very easy indeed.
Dakin sniggered and peered out of the front windscreen of the Jag.
He had a fairly good view from that position up the A6 towards the city. Suddenly the convoy came into view. He glanced up into the air: the chopper was there. A handset from a CB radio was resting in the palm of his hand. He pressed the transmit button and said coolly, ‘We’re on.’
The village of Galgate lies astride the A6, south of Lancaster. There is a set of traffic-lights at a crossroads in the centre of it, where a country road crosses the A6 at right-angles. A pub is situated on one corner, shops on the others.
It is a quiet place, not particularly picturesque and to be honest, not somewhere you’d normally stop for anything.
But it is a place where, with a little thought and planning, a gang of professional criminals who specialise in springing prisoners from custody could ambush a police convoy if they so wished.
Dakin watched the convoy speed by from his position near the University. His heart began to beat quickly and he became very excited. He’d heard about this team, read about their exploits in the newspapers and now — after a great deal of difficulty in actually tracking them down through intermediary after intermediary — had hired them himself. And they didn’t come cheap. He hoped they were worth their fee. He was about to find out.
The traffic-light control box was easy to break into with a small jemmy. The man had done it many times before. It took him only a matter of seconds and no one saw him do it anyway. Not that anyone would have thought much about it, because he was wearing a Lancashire County Council boiler suit and looked official, like he knew what he was doing with that tool bag at his feet.
The control panel was no different nor more complicated than thousands of others. The man leaned nonchalantly on the control box, whistling, and cast his eyes up the road.
When the convoy was about 200 metres away, he pressed a button. All the lights at the junction went to red and stayed there. He pulled a ski-mask on, reached into his tool bag and pulled out a light submachine gun.
This was the signal for another man who had been sitting patiently behind the wheel of a large furniture removal van, parked a few metres into the crossroad opposite, with the engine idling. He too pulled a mask on, released the brakes and then let the clutch out in such a stuttering manner that the huge van kangarooed out across the junction at right-angles to the approaching convoy, stalled, and stopped dead.
The convoy screeched to a halt. They had actually slowed down as they’d approached the lights, but weren’t intending to stop.
Behind the last police car in the convoy, two masked men leaped out of the back of a Ford Escort van which was parked up by the roadside. They were dressed in overalls and wore running shoes. One carried a machine gun ready for use; the other an infamous Sa-7, surface-to-air missile in a launcher, a type beloved by guerrilla and terrorist groups around the world. He aimed at the helicopter.
For an instant the police drivers couldn’t be sure whether this was for real or not. Was it an ambush? Or was it just an unfortunate incident?
When the rear door of the furniture van dropped open like a drawbridge, slammed down with a clatter and two men emerged from within, again masked, dressed in overalls and carrying weapons, they knew it was for real.
They reacted as they’d been trained. Screaming into their car-to-car radio, ‘Ambush! Ambush!’ the drivers crunched the gears into reverse. There was chaos. The passengers drew their guns in readiness.
None of the police cars got anywhere to speak of.
The man holding the SAM pulled the trigger. With a deadly whoosh! the rocket streaked towards its target in the sky.
The other man who’d leapt from the stationary van at the back of the convoy had already run the few metres towards the rear police cars. No one saw him coming. He sprinted past the cars, spraying them with bullets which smashed through the windows and bodywork with ease, killing all the occupants within seconds.
It was a similar story with the two leading cars; these were dealt with in the same manner by the two men who’d come running from the rear of the furniture van. The only difference was that one police officer, reacting faster than the rest, opened his door and rolled out and got up into a firing position. Before he could aim properly, however, the man who’d sorted the traffic-lights had virtually cut him in half with a sweep of his machine gun.
The pilot of the helicopter and the crew of police officers didn’t stand a chance. The rocket slammed into the under-belly of the hovering machine and there was a massive explosion of blue and orange flame and black smoke. Literally shot out of the sky, the helicopter twisted towards the ground, plummeting down onto the railway line which ran behind the village.
The driver of the prison bus was petrified — literally. He sat in his seat, numb, his hands tightly holding the steering wheel. The policeman next to him was babbling incoherently into the radio. Fortunately the radio operator at force headquarters was a cool customer who had already dispatched assistance and alerted his supervisors.
The driver of the furniture van raced past the two leading police cars holding a double-barrelled shotgun. He stopped at the front of the prison bus, took aim at the engine block and fired both barrels into the radiator. The engine cranked to a mangled stop.
Inside, Hinksman smiled at his two captors and held out his hands. ‘Beaten, I think,’ he said smugly. ‘I think it’s in your interests to let me go.’
‘ No fuckin’ chance,’ one of the cops said. He reached out and grabbed Hinksman’s handcuffs and twisted them. Hinksman screamed and fell forwards off the bench seat and onto his knees. One of the advantages of the rigid handcuff is that there is total control — via pain — of the prisoner, no matter how big, tough or strong he is. ‘If I’m gonna die,’ the officer hissed into Hinksman’s face, ‘I’m gonna hurt you first.’