And then a blur of grey within many blurs of grey, Alex's peripheral vision caught a movement that was irregular, hesitant, pulse-driven. He looked directly at it, lost it, looked away and had it again. The shape was frozen now, as if scenting the breeze.
And now moving again. Could it be a fox? A badger?
Not that shape. That animal was human.
Adrenalin kicking in.
Heart-rate increasing.
Thumb to safety catch. The Glock streaming rain. Range what? Perhaps thirty-five yards?
Come on, you bastard. Come on .
Thirty, perhaps, but the rain dramatically reduced visibility. Shit! As the foresight and backsight wavered into grey alignment so the target seemed to disappear.
Come closer.
Should he charge him. Just race over there and try and drop him as he ran?
No. His target had the advantage. Knew every inch of this... The figure crouching now, half standing.
Alex hugged the sodden ground. Come on, he prayed. Come this way.
But the figure seemed to be in no hurry. Infinitely cautious, it moved against the monotone backdrop of the woods, seemed to dissolve, reappeared further away. Alex could hear movements now, footfalls through the undergrowth.
He decided to follow.
Leopard-crawling through the wet grass, he made his way slowly to the edge of the woods. The figure was standing beneath a tree now, scanning his surroundings.
Five more yards, thought Alex, and I'll be close enough for a shot. There was a broad beech trunk in front of him and Alex used its cover to stand up. In front of him the figure had moved away again.
Silently, Alex followed. They seemed to be on some sort of grass path; their progress was soundless.
Grandmother's footsteps.
He had him now. The figure it had to be Meehan was standing motionless against some dark evergreen bush. Three more silent paces and the kill was a certainty. Alex raised the Glock in front of him, straightening his arms, minim ising the distance.
First pace. Fast. Step it out.
Second pace. Keep going.
A split second before the trip flare exploded, Alex felt the wire just below his knee, ligament-taut, and then the world around him exploded into blue-white light.
Out of sheer instinct he hurled himself sideways to the ground. Blinded, and with his hard-won night vision destroyed, he could see nothing outside the area lit by the phosphorous glare. All beyond it was black.
Shit!
The flare smoking and crackling. The sound of running feet and Alex stumbling blindly after them, Glock in hand, face whipped by branches.
Meehan was making not for the church, but the house. Fifty yards behind him now, Alex tried to blink away the searing blast of light imprinted on his retinas.
But it stayed there, dancing in front of his vision so that he could barely see as he ran.
He slipped in the mud, went down hard and, picking himself up, ran straight into a tree stump and fell again, setting the knife wounds screaming in protest. A hundred yards ahead of him he saw the other man race into the house. Meehan's night vision was unimpaired he had deliberately kept his back to the trip flare.
Somehow Alex reached the front door. Behind him, in the wood, the flare was no more than a popping smoulder on its steel picket. His night vision was shot and he was following a presumably armed man into a lightless house.
Shit, just when the Maglite could have helped him, he'd left it outside in the rucksack. On the other hand the torch would betray his own position... Crouching motionless just inside the front door in the musty darkness, Alex listened intently.
The crunching of feet on fallen plaster, then silence except for the rain on the roof tiles. Meehan was above him.
How did the layout of the house go.. . Think.
Twenty stairs up, that much he remembered. The top corridor T-branching to left and right Meehan was in the left wing, his location confirmed by a dull thump. What did he have up there?
Do or die, thought Alex. Let's go and see.
As silently as possible he crept up the stairs. The photo imprint of the flare was still in front of his eyes, but the beginnings of night vision were returning to him. He could see the top of the stairs now and the corridor. To the left were three doors, one of them opened.
He had left them all closed, he remembered.
Bracing himself, readying the Glock, he burst into the room. It was empty, but the boards previously covering the window opening had been booted outwards and rain was spattering the floor. Alex raced over towards the opening, guessing that Meehan had had some sort of rope or other escape route readied there. The thump must have been Meehan hitting the roof of the porch below.
An instant before Alex reached the window, however, the floorboards collapsed beneath his feet with a desiccated sigh. There was a burst of dust and crumbling lath and plaster, and then there was no support at all and Alex felt himself pitched downwards through the choking darkness. He hit the hall floor below hard and unevenly, smashing on to one elbow and the back of his skull.
Son of a bitch Meehan had booby-trapped the floor with rotten boards and cut out the beams. Painfully, Alex got to his feet. His parachute training had ensured that he had automatically rolled with the fall and saved himself a broken limb but he was badly shaken.
Had Meehan made a break for his vehicle, or was he waiting outside with his weapon cocked, ready to blow his pursuer away?
A distant scream of tyres on the wet road gave Alex his answer. Still dazed, he shook his head, dislodging a gritty cloud of dry plaster. Time to go, he whispered mechanically to himself. Time to go. Meehan already had a clear two minutes' start.
The rucksack. Run. Find it.
He slipped on the wet ground again, wrenching the stitches, but was beyond pain now. Safety-locking and holstering the Glock, pulling the rucksack of kit to his shoulders both sets of actions seemed to take for ever he forced himself in the direction of the main gate. The fall through the floor seemed to have affected his balance and he had to concentrate hard in order to place one foot in front of the other. Keep going, he repeated to himself, desperately attempting to order his thoughts. Not dead yet. Not dead till you're dead. Keep going.
It took him a clear minute to climb the gate and he managed to gash his thumb badly on the barbed wire while doing so. When he finally made it to the top, he sucked the blood from his shaking hand and looked blearily around him. To his left, perhaps a mile away, a tiny thread of light showed for a moment. The Watchman had gone east.
Keep going.
Even pushing the bike was difficult to begin with, but eventually he got it to the road, hauled off the night-vision goggles and pulled on the motorcycle goggles and helmet. With the aid of the pen torch his hands were still shaking badly he checked the tank. It was full and probably held nine or ten lit res of unleaded petrol. The jerry can in the cotton rucksack bungee corded to the rear of the seat held approximately the same again.
The KTM had an electric start and bur bled immediately into life. Cautiously, Alex let out the hydraulic clutch and moved forward. The power was there, smooth and immediate, but the knobbly motocross tyres gave him the sensation that he was riding on marbles. The seat was hard, narrow and unyielding. This was not a machine that lent itself willingly to road riding
Go, he ordered himself. No lights. The roads were empty and Meehan had to be allowed to think that he had got away. Alex had no night vision, though.
He had been wearing the image-intensifying goggles for too long.
Too bad. Drive. And fast.
No lights.
At speed, it was like riding a road drill. The KTM could do 80 mph on tarmac but it wasn't what it had been designed for, and the knobbly tyres shook Alex to the bone, blurred his vision, made the teeth dance in his mouth. And with no lights... Faster. Risk everything.