‘Here. SAS check-in.’ Three voices acknowledged in sequence.
‘Lieutenant Erulin?’
‘Here.’
The radio operator spoke to Lacomte, and he tapped Richter on the shoulder. ‘Chambry,’ he said.
‘All positions,’ Richter said into the microphone. ‘This is Control. The target vehicles have passed Chambry. We estimate they’ll be with us in four minutes. Stand by.’ Erulin repeated what Richter said, in French, to the GIGN troopers. The rear doors of the Renault had small windows, and Richter stood up and looked back down the autoroute. The road was empty, no traffic moving in either direction. Lacomte told one of the radio operators to get out and fiddle with the engine of the van – an added touch to lend veracity to the scene.
Then Richter saw them. The lead Mercedes was just passing under the flyover that carried the D967 between Laon and Crécy-sur-Serre, and as he watched the second saloon moved into view from behind the bulk of the articulated lorry. Richter pressed the transmit switch again. ‘All positions, Control. Two minutes.’
Richter turned his attention back to the autoroute. The road was almost perfectly straight, and he couldn’t see either of the French trucks, but he could see both blue saloons. ‘Both Mercedes are ahead of the truck and accelerating.’ Richter looked back through the window. Behind the Russian truck he could just see the cab of another articulated lorry coming into view, obviously accelerating to overtake. It looked to Richter as if he had left it too late.
‘Something’s wrong,’ Bykov said.
Modin had been dozing quietly. ‘What?’ he asked.
‘Something’s wrong,’ Bykov repeated. ‘There’s too little traffic. I have a feeling—’
He broke off, lowered the limousine’s partition and spoke urgently to the escort in the front seat. ‘Send the two Mercedes ahead. Tell the crews to look out for anything unusual.’
‘They’ve already started moving,’ the escort reported.
Bykov turned to the driver. ‘Ease back. Stay well behind the lorry.’ Bykov twisted round in his seat. Nothing behind but a single articulated lorry, about five hundred metres back. In front, another French-registered artic was just passing the Russian lorry. On the opposite carriageway, nothing moved.
‘It’s probably just another accident,’ Modin said, stifling a yawn. ‘We’ve seen two today already.’
‘No. This is different,’ Bykov snapped. He reached for the car phone clipped below the partition. He looked at the status display, then showed it to Modin. The tiny grey-black letters proclaimed ‘No service’.
‘All French autoroutes have excellent cellular coverage,’ Bykov said. ‘Somebody has disabled the local cells.’
Modin rubbed his chin thoughtfully, sat up straighter in his seat and peered ahead up the autoroute. ‘You might be right, Viktor,’ he said softly. ‘I think we may have a problem.’
‘One minute.’ The Mercedes were coming, one in each lane, the two lorries about half a mile behind them. ‘Thirty seconds.’ Both Mercedes, running almost side-by-side, swept past the Renault and on towards the Transit. ‘Twenty seconds.’
The French lorry had eased in front of the Russian vehicle and was moving back into the nearside lane. The Renault shook, twice, as the two heavy goods vehicles roared past. Richter turned his attention to the autoroute in front, and looked through the front screen of the Trafic. ‘Ten seconds,’ he said. He was guessing, but that should be near enough. As Richter released the transmit button, the leading articulated lorry’s brake lights went on, and then everything seemed to happen in slow motion. The lorry lurched to the left, and Richter could see the smoke of burning rubber from its tyres. The trailer skidded and slipped, almost hopping, and turned broadside on to the carriageway. Speed dropping all the time, the cab just brushed the steel barriers on the central reservation.
The brake lights flared on the Russian truck. The driver had reacted late, but he had reacted. The leading lorry halted, completely blocking the carriageway and obscuring the view of everything beyond it. The cab door opened, and a diminutive figure wearing an orange jacket jumped out, vaulted the central barrier and disappeared from sight to the south of the auto-route. It had been one of the most impressive pieces of driving Richter had ever seen.
The Russian truck was slowing gradually, then lurched to the right. Richter saw the puff of dust and rubber as a tyre exploded under the impact of the 7.62mm round, and the cab start to weave. But its speed was already low enough for there to be no real danger.
Richter glanced quickly out of the rear windows. The other lorry was parking, the driver taking his time, broadside on to the carriageway about half a mile back, and between it and the Renault van Richter saw the black limousine for the first time.
Anton Kirov
The Spetsnaz trooper halted outside the door of the Second Mate’s cabin and knocked twice. After a few seconds Colonel Zavorin slid the door open. ‘Yes?’
‘He’s gone, sir. Captain Bondarev has gone ashore.’
‘Good. Tell the technician I’ll meet him outside the hold.’
‘Yes, sir.’ As the trooper hurried away, Zavorin closed the cabin door and followed. It was time for the final check on the weapon before it was unloaded, and Zavorin was keen to ensure that Bondarev knew nothing about it. Zavorin had been embellishing the cipher machine story in their recent conversations, and was certain that Bondarev believed it.
But if Bondarev found out that the Anton Kirov’s cargo included a nuclear weapon that was going to be unloaded the next day and left, primed and ready, when the ship departed from Gibraltar, Zavorin was not sure what he would do. Sometimes, ignorance was best for all concerned.
Autoroute A26, vicinity of Couvron-et-Aumencourt, France
‘There has been an accident,’ a calm voice reported from the front dashboard speaker in the limousine. ‘Two small trucks are involved, but the road ahead is not blocked.’
‘Look behind you,’ the escort shouted into the microphone.
‘We’ve burst a tyre,’ the lorry driver yelled, ‘and some idiot Frenchman has just slewed his truck right across the road in front of us.’
A babble of voices burst out of the speaker. ‘Quiet,’ Bykov shouted, grabbing the microphone. He looked behind, and saw the second lorry just completing its manoeuvre.
Modin smiled faintly. ‘I think, Viktor,’ he said quietly, ‘that someone has found out.’
‘Convoy,’ Bykov called, ignoring the older man. ‘This is Bykov. Assume an attack is imminent. Await my command to respond.’
Richter looked ahead. The Russian truck had stopped, and as he watched a figure rolled out from underneath the trailer and sprinted off over the hard shoulder and into the scrubland. Behind. The limousine was coasting to a stop, around fifty metres behind the Trafic. Ahead. For a long moment nothing moved. The Russian truck sat idling, exhaust fumes just visible above the twin silencer boxes behind the cab. No noise, no movement. Then the plastic explosive detonated with a crack that Richter heard even through the headphones. ‘Go!’ he shouted into the mike. ‘Go! Go! Go!’ The figure in camouflage gear stood up beside a bush just off the hard shoulder and pointed a stubby, bulky weapon at the cab of the artic. The figure recoiled as the gun spat flame and the right-hand-side door window disintegrated. A second round followed, and suddenly the cab was billowing with the distinctive white fumes of CS gas.
A long way ahead Richter heard the sudden crackle of small-arms fire.
Colin Dekker ducked down behind the steel barrier at the side of the autoroute as the rear window of the leading blue Mercedes saloon slid down six inches. All SAS personnel are required to be expert in weapon identification, and he knew instantly that he was looking down the barrel of a Kalashnikov assault rifle. He raised his Hockler, selected semi-automatic, flicked off the safety catch, sighted quickly and fired two rounds at the vehicle.
His first bullet slammed into the rear door of the Mercedes, scattering flecks of paint and leaving a dent which
confirmed that the vehicle was armoured. The second round went higher and hit the partially-lowered window, but by then the Kalashnikov had added its deeper voice to the exchange, and Dekker tumbled flat on the ground as bullets ploughed through the steel barrier within inches of where he lay. Where the hell were Erulin’s men?
Even as the thought crossed his mind, Dekker heard two sharp cracks, then a third, as two of the Gigènes fired through the partially open window of the Mercedes, the bullets bouncing around the inside of the armoured vehicle. Dekker heard a sudden scream, a cry of pain, and then silence as the Kalashnikov’s muzzle dropped out of sight.
Richter tore off the headset and looked behind. Fifty metres away the limousine was starting to make a U-turn, to head back to the east. Richter kicked opon the rear doors and pulled out the Smith, but at that range it was useless. One of Erulin’s GIGN snipers was crouching behind the Renault and Richter shouted to him. ‘Stop him,’ he yelled. ‘Shoot his bloody tyres!’ The GIGN trooper looked round blankly. Richter cursed. What the hell was French for ‘tyre’?
Lacomte jumped out of the van. ‘Les pneus!’ he shouted. ‘Tirez sur les pneus!’ The sniper nodded, took aim and fired. The echoes of the shot had hardly died away before he fired again, and when Richter looked the limousine was lurching drunkenly towards the hard shoulder, both left-hand tyres in shreds. Erulin was right about the shooting skills of his men. Richter shouted to Lacomte as he took off at a run down the autoroute. ‘Check with Colin.’
Richter didn’t think the occupants of the limousine would want to abandon their car and head off on foot into rural France, but he wasn’t going to take a chance on it. He stopped about ten metres short of the car and directly behind it. Richter could clearly see the faces of the two men in the back seat looking at him, and at the Smith and Wesson he was pointing at them. He heard running footsteps and glanced to his left. Two of the GIGN snipers were approaching. Richter waved one to his left and the other to the right; they stopped in line with him, crouched and sighted their rifles at the Mercedes, covering both sets of doors.
‘It’s over,’ Richter shouted in Russian at the car, reinforcing his words with gestures. ‘Open the doors and step out. Left rear seat passenger first.’
‘That’s it,’ Modin said.
‘What? We just give up?’
‘Viktor,’ Modin snapped. ‘Use your eyes, and then use your head. We’re outnumbered and out-gunned. If we fight, we die.’ He nodded to Bykov. ‘Get out,’ he said. ‘And Viktor,’ he added, ‘try not to do anything stupid.’
Modin leaned forward to the driver. ‘Switch off the engine,’ he said.
Richter saw the movement and turned towards the sniper on his right, but the trooper was way ahead. His rifle cracked twice and both right-hand tyres blew. The Mercedes was going nowhere. ‘The next ones go into the fuel tank,’ Richter shouted. ‘Get out now.’
The left-hand rear door opened, and the passenger slowly emerged, his arms held high above his head. ‘Walk towards me,’ Richter commanded. When he reached about five metres away Richter shouted again. ‘Stop. Lie down, face down, hands and feet apart.’ The Russian hesitated. Richter raised the Smith and Wesson and Viktor Bykov looked straight down the barrel. ‘Your choice,’ Richter said. ‘You’ll lie down, alive or dead.’ Bykov lay down.
Richter followed the same routine, straight out of an American police basic training manual, with the second passenger, and finally the driver and escort. While Richter ensured the co-operation of the prisoners with the intimidating presence of the Smith and Wesson, one of the GIGN snipers lashed their hands together, behind their backs. No rope, no wire, just cheap plastic cable ties. Virtually unbreakable, and no keys to lose.
Richter tucked the Smith back in the shoulder rig, left the four Russians lying in the road and trotted back to the Renault van. Lacomte met him halfway there. ‘The limousine OK?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Richter said. ‘Any problems with the lorry?’
‘No. The cab crew got a good dose of CS gas, and came down without any trouble. Both of them have lacerations of the head and neck caused by flying glass, but nothing serious. Our problem is the two Mercedes.’
‘What happened?’
‘They stopped when the lorry started the blocking manoeuvre, but Erulin thought they might try and make a run for it, so his men shot out the tyres.’ The GIGN snipers seemed to be getting quite good at that.
‘And?’
‘The occupants of one of them opened fire, so the Gigènes fired a few rounds through the windows which stopped them. We don’t know whether they’re dead or alive inside the car, but at least they’re not still shooting. The second car is just sitting there. The men inside have weapons available – we can see them through the windows – but they aren’t using them, and neither do they seem to want to come out peacefully.’
Richter thought for a moment. ‘Leave it to me,’ he said. ‘Tell Colin and Erulin not to take any action yet.’ He turned back towards the limousine.
‘Where are you going?’ Lacomte asked.
‘To consult a higher authority,’ Richter said. He walked past the GIGN guards and knelt down beside the older of the two men lying on the tarmac. ‘Are you the senior officer?’ Richter asked him, in Russian. Nicolai Modin nodded. ‘Right,’ Richter said. ‘Let me help you up.’ Richter got Modin to his feet and walked him back towards the limousine.
‘We have a problem,’ Richter said, and pointed up the autoroute. ‘Both your escort vehicles are sitting immobilized about half a mile up the road, full of Spetsnaz soldiers armed to the teeth and surrounded by our men, also armed to the teeth. There’s already been an exchange of gunfire and I guess some of your men will need medical attention quickly.
‘Now,’ Richter continued, ‘we can do this the hard way, or we can do this the easy way. The hard way is they stay in the cars, and we pop an armour-piercing round through each window and follow it with a grenade. That makes a mess on the road and means I’ve got a lot of boring forms to fill in.’
‘And the easy way?’ Modin spoke for the first time, and in English.
‘The easy way is you get on the radio—’ Richter pointed through the window of the limousine ‘—and tell them to leave their weapons in the cars and get out, one at a time.’
‘And then?’ the Russian asked.
‘And then we have a little talk,’ Richter said. ‘If your men surrender I can guarantee they won’t be harmed.’
‘Do I have much of a choice?’
‘Frankly, no.’
‘Can you release me?’ Modin asked.
‘I’d rather not,’ Richter said. ‘Not just yet. I’ll operate the radio for you. My Russian,’ he added, ‘isn’t fluent, but I promise you I’ll know if you say anything you shouldn’t.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Wednesday
Autoroute A26, vicinity of Couvron-et-Aumencourt
By five they had the situation sorted out. Two Spetsnaz troopers had been found dead when Dekker’s men opened the rear doors of the Mercedes; the other two occupants had serious wounds and were on their way to hospital. The two lorries that had been used for blocking the carriageway had gone, as had the tractor unit from the Russian artic. A new tractor, summoned by Lacomte, had been hitched to the Russian trailer and driven into the next rest area, a few kilometres further up the autoroute. The Mercedes cars had been winched on to breakdown trucks and were parked in the same rest area, awaiting new tyres. Both carriageways of the autoroute were closed to all traffic between the Chambry and Courbes junctions, and were going to stay that way until everyone was ready to leave. The Minister of the Interior was expected imminently, by helicopter, to inspect the cargo in the Russian lorry.
The surviving Russians, with two exceptions, were sitting with their wrists bound with cable ties and locked in the back of Erulin’s Renault van. The first exception was the senior officer who had ordered the Spetsnaz personnel to surrender without a fight. He was sitting comfortably
enough at a stone picnic table, thoughtfully provided by the French autoroute operating company, and eating one of the sandwiches left over from Colin Dekker’s lunch. Trooper Smith was standing ten feet away, watching him carefully, his Hockler at the ready.
Richter was sitting in the back of the Transit van, looking at the second exception – the younger of the two Russian passengers they had pulled from the back seat of the limousine. ‘My name is Beatty,’ Richter said, ‘and I represent the British government.’ A somewhat sweeping, and almost entirely inaccurate, statement, but there was nobody around who could dispute it. ‘Can I please have your name?’ Richter asked politely.
The Russian stared at him. ‘You have seized my passport,’ he said. ‘If you can read, you will see that it is a diplomatic passport, and that by holding me you are in breach of international regulations. I have nothing further to add.’ He turned to look out of the window.
Richter picked up the passport and glanced at it. ‘According to this document,’ he began, ‘your name is Petr Lavrov and it states that you are a diplomat. I do not believe either of those pieces of information. I do not believe that your name is Petr Lavrov, because I heard your superior address you as “Bykov”. And I do not believe that you are a diplomat because real diplomats do not attempt to smuggle nuclear weapons into another country.
‘Perhaps, Comrade Bykov,’ Richter said, after a few moments, ‘it would help if I explained the facts of life to you. The operation to halt your little convoy and prevent you positioning a nuclear weapon in London was a joint effort. We used a detachment from our Special Air Service, a squad from the French Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale and the whole thing was coordinated by the French DST, that’s the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire.’
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