‘Where are we heading now?’ Angela asked.
‘Pau,’ Bronson replied. ‘It’s just north of the border and the Pyrenees. Even sticking to the minor roads we should be able to get there by late this afternoon.’
They stopped for petrol shortly after they’d made the turn towards Segovia. Bronson wanted to make sure they had plenty of fuel for the crossing of the Pyrenees, and adequate petrol in reserve, just in case at any point they had to make a run for it.
He was very aware that crossing the Pyrenees and later the English Channel would probably be the two most dangerous parts of the journey. There were very few roads linking France and Spain across the mountains, and putting a team of men on each one wouldn’t involve an enormous expenditure of manpower. And the opposition would need an even smaller number of people to cover both the Channel Tunnel terminal and the handful of ferry ports on the French side.
They could lose themselves in the byways of France without any difficulty, Bronson knew that. But first they had to get across the border. The main problem was that the major roads, or autopistas, which would allow them to travel quickly, also had barriers at each exit. These were obvious places where a watch could be kept for them, and where he would have nowhere to go if the opposition suddenly appeared in front of him.
But he had another idea. A car is a lethal weapon: over a ton of metal moving at sixty miles per hour takes a lot of stopping. He’d checked the maps very carefully before they’d set out, and he’d been pleased to find that there was at least one fast road across the mountains that didn’t have any barriers, due to a strange quirk in Spanish road-building practices.
‘So where are you planning on crossing the mountains?’ Angela asked, as though she was reading his mind.
‘We’re taking the E-7, which is an autovia. They look pretty much the same as autopistas, and are usually dual carriageways, but traffic like bicycles and tractors and stuff is allowed to use them. Once we get on that road, I can wind the speed up quite a bit and cross the border into France as quickly as possible without having to stop.’
‘I see what you mean,’ Angela said, looking down again at the road atlas on her lap. ‘That road is marked slightly differently. Do you think we’ll have a clear run through?’
Bronson glanced across at her and shook his head.
‘I genuinely don’t know. It all depends on how many men they have available to watch the roads over the mountains. And there are a lot of other factors, a lot of unknowns, as well. They might have access to helicopters, or possibly some of the members of P2 might actually be serving as police officers or forest rangers, that kind of thing. But it’s our best chance.’
95
The autovia ran fairly straight once it had left a small development called Villanua, and a short distance further on, positioned at the top of a small hill that offered an excellent view both up and down the road, a young Spaniard who called himself ‘Juan’ had been positioned with very specific instructions, a two-way radio and a set of powerful binoculars. Every time a car appeared on the gentle bend in the road where the autovia emerged from Villanua, he’d focused the binoculars on it.
He’d been lying in that same spot for a little over seven hours, and had been told that he was to stay there until it was too dark to see the occupants of any of the passing traffic. He’d also been told that there was a bonus in it for him if he managed to identify the vehicle his people were looking for.
As another car came into view, he tensed, focusing the eyeglasses on it, concentrating on the occupants. The people who had given him his orders were well aware that their quarry might have changed the number plates, or even the car. Privately, he had assumed he was just wasting his time, and that the man and woman in question would be taking another route out of Spain. But it looked as if he’d been wrong about that. It was immediately apparent that there were two people in the vehicle, a large dark-haired man behind the wheel and a pretty blonde woman sitting in the front passenger seat.
Juan glanced down at the ground beside him, where he had a large A4-sized colour photograph of the woman they were looking for, then looked back through the binoculars. It was them.
The moment he was certain he picked up the two-way radio lying beside him and keyed the transmit button.
‘Miguel, soy Juan.’
For a few moments, there was no reply, and he imagined the man at the other end of the radio link, a couple of miles further up the valley, being almost startled by the hitherto-silent radio suddenly bursting into life. Then a deep voice, speaking heavily accented Spanish, sounded from the earpiece.
‘Si. Dígame. What is it?’
‘I’m looking at them, right now. They’re in a silver-grey Renault Megane, the same car as before, but the number plates have obviously been changed.’
When Miguel replied, his voice was tinged with excitement.
‘Are you sure? Completely certain?’
‘Yes. I’ve got a photograph of the woman. It’s definitely her.’
‘Right,’ Miguel snapped. ‘And they’re heading towards me? Give me the new registration number.’
As the target vehicle passed in front of the hill where Juan was lying, he read the number into the radio microphone.
‘Leave the next bit to me,’ Miguel said. ‘But make your way up here as quickly as you can. You know what to do when you get to the scene.’
‘Understood.’
Juan slid the binoculars into the case, picked up the remains of his scratch meal and stuffed everything into a bulky rucksack. He slung the straps over his shoulders and started jogging quickly down the slope to where he’d parked his old Suzuki jeep, at the side of the rough track that ran almost parallel to the autovia. He would be on the road behind the two fugitives in less than two minutes.
As he ran down the hill, he smiled slightly. The bonus was his.
96
Miguel had chosen his position with some care. He knew that there were no major junctions on the autovia to the north of Villanua until the road reached Canfranc-Estaciòn. There it split, the E-7 autovia running through the Túnel de Somport while the mountain road continued north, winding back and forth along the sides of the valleys until it finally rejoined the E-7 at Les Forges d’Abel, a few miles north of the French border. He had no doubt that if the two fugitives decided to try to leave Spain that way, they would take the tunnel. And that meant he had to stop them before they reached the entrance and vanished from sight into the solid stone safety of the mountain.
He knew it wouldn’t be easy. He’d had to choose a vantage point that was inevitably a compromise. He’d needed to be sufficiently far away from the road so that he would have a clear view of his approaching target and have time to take his shot, but close enough so that he would be reasonably certain of hitting it.
He had also wanted a long enough stretch in front of him so that if somehow he missed with the first round, he would have sufficient time to work the bolt on his favourite long-distance weapon, a Remington 700 BDL chambered for the powerful .270 Winchester round, and take his shot before the car moved out of sight. He needed at least two or three hundred yards distance.
Hitting a stationary target at that range, with that weapon, would not be difficult. But hitting a moving target, especially a car that could well be travelling at over one hundred kilometres an hour, was more complicated. He would have to factor in the bullet’s flight time, and aim his rifle not at where the target was, but at where it was going to be when the bullet arrived.