The Merc slewed to the left, did a shimmy with its rear end, the bumper almost scraping the road, then went like the clappers as Steve jammed his foot to the floor. Two more screeching turns and they were back at the brick viaduct, which was exactly where Steve wanted to be – this time passing through the adjacent archway. A flick of the wheel, foot hard down on the brake-pedal. Hidden momentarily by the central, arch, the Merc went into a spinning half-turn just as the Sierra shot out from under the bridge and passed them, the driver's head whipping round in dismay and disbelief.
Steve whooped.
Gotcha!
Grinning from ear to ear, he applied reverse lock and the Merc's tyres steamed as he performed another spinning half-turn, gave the 140 bhp engine its head and zoomed up behind, the Sierra's arse-end in his sights.
Closing fast, he gave the Sierra a gentle nudge, pulled away and gave it a harder one. There was the tortured sound of grinding metal and then a clang as the Sierra's bumper was wrenched half-off, the dangling end scything a trail of orange sparks down the centre of the road. Getting desperate, the driver took the only evasive action he could, picking at random one of the streets to his left to get the hell out of the way. Turned out it was a desperate mistake too, because as Steve was well aware, all those streets finished in a sheer brick wall that bordered the tracks out of King's Cross.
The Sierra's driver very quickly got the message. Reacted fast too – but by then all he could do was slam on the brakes and helplessly watch, frozen at the wheel, as the car went into a skid and slid sideways, left side on, smack into the wall.
Dillon expected Steve to slow down, but unbelievably the crazy bastard didn't. He kept right on going. He was doing what he'd been trained to do, following the anti-terrorist manual to the letter: when you have the enemy pinned down and cornered, take all effective steps for total disabling action. In this case it meant ramming the Merc's beautiful gleaming bonnet into the side of the Sierra, trapping the two men inside and preventing further hostile action.
Dillon covered his face. In the back seat the two Arabs were crouched double, petrified with fear, the big man uttering a kind of sing-song dirge. Steam hissed out, and there was a fizzing and crackling as the electrics shorted, the fascia display flickering like mad.
Dropping his hands, Dillon peered through the steam rising from the crumpled bonnet. The Sierra's driver was slumped over the wheel, his head at a nasty angle. Blood was streaming from the other man's nose, and he looked groggy, but then Dillon saw his hand move – saw him reaching inside his jacket – and he didn't wait to see any more, screaming at Steve, 'Back off! Back off!'
There was a horrible jangled cacophony of tearing metal as Steve reversed, leaving the Merc's radiator grille and the remnants of all four headlights in the roadway. Dillon was out even before the car had stopped, flat to the ground, snaking forward on elbows and insteps. Behind him, Steve scuttled head down below window-level and did a neat shoulder-roll to land up against the Sierra's front wheel.
Dillon pointed to the door handle, pointed at Steve, made a twisting motion. Steve nodded and reached stealthily for the handle. Dillon rocked himself onto the balls of his feet, hands curled, ready to make the dive the instant the door was opened. The man inside the car was yelling something, difficult to know what because his voice was high-pitched with panic. Cautiously, Dillon raised his head and took a peep. Steve did the same. They bobbed back down again and stared at each other with a sagging, sickly realisation.
Not a gun the man had been reaching for at all. But a badge. He was holding up a silver badge. The man was a police officer and they'd just rammed a Flying Squad car.
Squatting on his haunches, Taffy listened to the police siren getting nearer and nearer. Further off in the distance, the clanging of an ambulance bell. The two sounds converged, competing with one another, loud and clamouring, and then suddenly died away as both vehicles reached the pub three streets from where Taffy was crouching in a vegetable patch in someone's back garden. Reflected on the chimneys and slate roofs opposite, flashing blue and red lights, like the blue and red tracer fire spewing from the machine-gun emplacement the night they took Mount Longdon. Some of the blokes thought it made a pretty display, arcing out of the darkness, until they remembered that between each blue and red streak there were five live rounds, any one of which could have your name on it.
That had been some firefight. Taffy's bowels had become liquid and he'd nearly cacked in his britches. Belly-down in a rocky crevice, cushioned by his bergen, he'd stuck the business end of his L1A1 SLR rifle over the top and pumped the trigger. Didn't matter a flying fuck what you were aiming at, the object was to overwhelm the enemy with sheer firepower. That John Wayne Hollywood crap about picking off individual targets, with your head out in plain view, was strictly for the punters. You kept your finger on the trigger until the magazine was empty, slapped in a fresh mag, did it all over again. There was always more ammo where that came from, there was only one of you.
And yet, for all the bowel-churning fear, it was bloody great. What you'd sweated through years of training for, and never dreamed, in all your wildest hopes and imaginings, to be actually engaged in a live firing attack against a real enemy who were trying to kill you. Suddenly everything made sense. You had a role, an identity, a purpose. You were doing the job you'd been made for, doing it with skill, guts, pride, and total uncompromising commitment, and you were going to show those Argie bastards what it was like to come up against a real soldier.
That's what Taffy had been then, a real soldier, still was, always would be.
A fine chill drizzle settled on his face. Time to get mustered. In FIBUA training – Fighting In Built-Up Areas – he'd had to crawl through sewer pipes as a means of infiltrating enemy lines, but bugger that for a lark. Taffy didn't fancy the Cardiff sewerage system, and besides, speed and distance were the top priorities.
Spitting on his palms, Taffy dug into the soft damp earth and plastered his face, smeared the backs of his hands. He could hear shouts now, running footsteps. He straightened up, and taking a couple of deep breaths, ran swiftly across the garden and leapt at the high brick wall, scaling it with ease, and dropped down into the deep shadow of a cobbled alleyway, light as a cat.
A few minutes after 1.30 a.m. he was standing on the hard shoulder of the ring road that connected with the M4. Probably his uniform helped, because only the third truck he thumbed – a Bristol meat packer's refrigerated artic – slowed down and pulled over.
Taffy climbed on board.
CHAPTER 14
From the holding cell Dillon, tieless, beltless, and with no laces in his shoes, was taken two floors up to the interview room. Little more than a cell itself; a bare table, one metal ashtray, two chairs, a sixty-watt bulb in a green plastic shade that threw a cone of light over the man already seated there, somewhere in his thirties with puffy, handsome features gone to seed and a flourishing head of hair streaked with grey that overlapped his collar. He was smoking a Marlboro, and he offered the packet as Dillon sat down opposite him, more out of icy politeness than as a gesture of friendship. And his voice too had an antiseptic ring to it.
'Mr Dillon. I am Alastair Sawyer-Smith.' He pushed a rather dog-eared card across the table. 'I am acting on behalf of Mr Salah Al-Gharib.'
'Thank Christ -' Dillon accepted a light, sucked in smoke. He had a headache and his eyes burned. It was long gone three and he felt strung-out. 'Look, this has all got out of hand… and I have to call my wife, she'll be worried stiff.'