‘Zero Alpha,’ answered the desk. ‘Roger.’
‘Fuck it!’ I gasped. ‘Why didn’t we drop the bastards?’
‘I know. It drives you up the bloody wall.’
Mike stood up and shook himself, as if to throw off the weight of frustration. Then he called, ‘Delta Eight. Those four X-rays — two unknown to me, but the others are Eamonn O’Reilly and Jonty Best. Over.’
For the next half-hour all we could do was listen as the hit team moved in erratically on its target. We heard the Det cars reporting the Rover forward, from Green Five to Green Four and Green Three. From there it was only four or five hundred metres to the target, but for some reason the players veered off into open country and disappeared for twenty minutes. Then at last they were picked up again, heading back to Green Three. This time we reckoned the raid would go down within the next few seconds. But then came an unexpected twist: instead of stopping at the farmhouse, the assault vehicle went straight past. One of the intercept teams requested permission to take it out, but the head-shed refused. The desk wanted to let things develop and see what was going to happen.
Mike and I waited tensely, wound up on full alert. I imagined all our people being in the same state — some in the farmhouse, as I’d been a few days back, some in an OP outside the house; most in cars, all poised to react. Had something spooked the players? Time and again a job collapsed when they took fright at the last moment. Maybe they’d spotted one of our cars lurking in a strange place. Maybe they’d seen something at the house itself. We listened out, expecting to hear a report from the agency monitoring CB radio, which normally caught what the players were saying to each other.
Half an hour went by. Then suddenly somebody picked up the Rover again, incoming towards the farmhouse, apparently making another run. This time the desk decided on action, and scrambled two intercept teams to take it out before it reached the target. After a quick manoeuvre they trapped it, by the simple expedient of placing one car to block the lane ahead of it, and sending another up behind.
Then came another twist. The trapped Rover wasn’t carrying the hit team. The two men in it were unarmed, dressed in ordinary clothes, and claimed to be on their way home from a session in the pub. A preliminary search of the car revealed no weapons. The vehicle seemed to be completely clean.
Consternation. Was this the hit car, emptied out? Or was it a look-alike decoy? Suddenly, as I listened to the exchanges, I realized that the desk was calling me, asking again if I’d got the number of the car we’d reported.
‘Sierra Two, negative,’ I replied.
The desk ordered the two men to be brought in for questioning, and the car detained for forensic examination. Was that it for the night, then?
Not for us. It was Mike who saw the lights coming at high speed from the north.
‘Look out!’ he said. ‘They’re back.’
The car came screaming down the narrow road. The driver was in either a great hurry or a great rage. He flung the Rover right-handed through the gates, roared past us and scorched to a halt with the nose of the car in the barn doorway and the headlights still on. The illumination was so good that binoculars were more use than kite-sights. The same four men leapt out, all effing and blinding at the tops of their voices, and began to unload their weapons. One kicked the straw away from the top of the hide and lifted the cover, but they were all furious for a few moments and stood arguing.
‘Sierra Two,’ I reported urgently. ‘Four X-rays back at Black Two. They still have their weapons. We could smack them all. Permission to open fire. Over.’
‘Zero Alpha,’ the desk answered. ‘Roger. Wait one.’ Then, ‘Zero Alpha to Sierra Two. Negative — no permission. Don’t do anything. Let them go. Over.’
‘Sierra Two, roger.’
‘Oh for fuck’s sake!’ whispered Mike in my ear.
Such was the commotion that until the very last moment the players didn’t realize another car had arrived. Nor did we. It must have come very quietly, maybe without headlights. All at once it was in through the gate and sliding past us, to stop behind the Rover. Two men got out, leaving the doors open, and strode towards the shemozzle in the barn. Something made me focus on the driver, a big man with a slight limp. As he advanced he called out in a deep voice, ‘What the feck’s going on here? Cunts! Get a hold of yourselves.’
The instant he reached the light and I saw his face, I knew.
So did Mike. ‘Fucking Farrell!’ he exclaimed. ‘There he is!’
‘Sierra Two,’ I called again. ‘Two more X-rays now on location. One is Declan Farrell, repeat Farrell. Request permission to fire. Over.’
Again the answer was negative. I couldn’t believe it. I had the cross-hairs of the sight steady on the side of the bastard’s head. My finger was on the trigger. One touch, and Kath’s death would be avenged. Between the two of us, Mike and I could have dropped all six terrorists where they stood. Not one of them would even have got out of the barn.
Then suddenly we found we had an urgent problem of our own. As I lowered my G3, I noticed Farrell’s car rock on its springs, as if someone was shifting around inside it. The car rocked again. Against the dim light I saw something leap over the back of the front seat, and out of the driver’s door came not another player, but a bloody great dog, a Rotty.
‘Jesus!’ I breathed. ‘Now we’re in it.’
The blessed north wind of the day had died away, and odd puffs were coming from all directions. The dog trotted across to the front of the cottage and lifted his leg against the door-post. Then he began sniffing along the front wall. If we moved we’d be bound to attract his attention, but if we lay still he’d get us anyway. It would only be a matter of seconds before he picked up our scent.
‘Come on,’ I hissed at Mike, ‘we’ve got to pull out.’
Too late. The dog stopped, lifted his head and stood staring in our direction. Then he let fly a volley of barks and lunged forward. We lay flat. He pulled up two feet away, dancing high on his toes, barking and snarling like hell.
‘BUSTER!’ yelled Farrell from the barn. ‘Quiet, you bastard! Come here!’
The dog’s only response was to bark even louder. He began really doing his nut. Gobs of spit were flying out of his chops and landing on us. His barks would have wakened the dead. We were in an impossible position. If we kept still, someone would be over to see what he was going mad about (perhaps even Farrell himself — this at least could provide me with an excuse to take him out). But then again, if we shifted, the dog would go for us.
All this went through my mind in about half a second. I tried to slide my right hand down my side to bring my knife out of its sheath, but even that slight movement was enough to trigger an attack. With a thump like a sack of cement landing, the dog was on top of us, gnashing viciously. His jaws closed on Mike’s right forearm, and he was growling thunderously. Still I wanted to get the knife into him, but the instant I moved he let go and bit again, this time Mike’s shoulder. The dog was bracing his rear legs and twitching his arse about as he got pressure on and tried to drag backwards. There was only one thing for it. I rammed the muzzle of the G3 against the dog’s ribs and put one round through his chest. The report was slightly muffled, but still there was a loud, dull boom.
The impact of the shot lifted the creature clean off us and threw his body on to the bank, where he lay twitching, with a few last noises, half-barks, half-grunts, choking out of his mouth.
‘Run!’ I hissed.
We scrambled backwards out of the ditch and stumbled into the boggy field. For a second the voices in the barn had fallen silent. Then the men began to yell. We ran as best we could, tripping over the tussocks. Through the screen of trees we saw figures pour out of the barn. A moment later there came a rattle of automatic fire, and rounds went cracking over our heads. We dropped into a hole, about fifty metres back from the ditch. In the dark we were reasonably safe. A second rifle opened up. We heard rounds smacking into the ground away to our right. Obviously the players thought we had come in from the road and were going back that way. They fired wildly, whole magazines full, in that direction.