Zero Option

by Chris Ryan

'What about the extra car?'

  'A pale blue Lexus. It went past.'

  'How?'

  'Scraped round the front of the Granada, on the verge.'

  'What was it doing?'

  'Not a clue. But it was going like shit offa shovel.'

  'Phworrh!' I was still choking and spluttering. 'Your tucking pepper, Tony.'

  'I know. But it did the trick. I don't reckon our guy saw anything at all.'

  In seconds we were nudging 120 m.p.h. Having tried an experimental ride in the boot earlier that day, I knew that Farrell couldn't possibly hear us talking: the noise inside the tin can was diabolical. 'Take it easy,' I told Whinger. :At this rate Stew'll never keep up.' On the radio I called, 'Zulu One to Zulu Two, what's the score? Over.'

  'Zulu Two,' came Stew's voice. 'Mobile towards you. We have you visual.'

  Looking back, I saw the Granada's lights in the distance. 'Zulu One to all Papa stations,' I went. 'Clear Point Charlie now. Anticipating Point Charlie figures six-zero seconds, repeat six-zero seconds.'

  'Papa Nine,' came the answer. 'Roger.'

  Whinger had throttled back to ninety and the lights of the Granada had closed a little. But then ahead of us our own lights picked up the shape of another car parked beside the road.

  'Fuckin' 'ell!' cried Whinger. 'It's that bastard Lexus.'

  He put his foot down again and the Audi surged forward.

  'Zulu One to Zulu Two,' I called. 'Watch yourselves. The intruder vehicle's parked up ahead.'

  As we hurtled down towards it I had to remind myself that this was Shropshire, England, not some godforsaken bog outside Belfast. I was so hyped up by the intercept that our best option seemed to be to spray the Lexus with a few busts from the MP 5s as we went past . . . Take it easy, I told myself. You can't do that here. The guys in that car may easily be PIRA. Farrell hoped I was Seamus. Was he expecting an intercept? But equally, the Lexus crew could be drunks trying to evade the breathalyser, or joy-riders baiting the police.

  By the time we reached the Lexus it was already rolling, gathering speed. I caught a glimpse of three young faces, two in front and one behind. Just after we'd roared past, its lights came on.

  'Hey!' I yelled. 'These bastards are after us. Sort them, Whinger. Don't kill 'em, for fuck's sake, but put them out of contention.'

  Over the radio I called, 'Zulu One, the intruder's now between us.'

  We were rounding a gentle curve. A moment later our speed had carried us out of sight of our tail. From our recce I remembered that there was a picnic site coming up on our left, a pull-up with rustic chairs and tables, screened from the road by conifers.

  'There!' I exclaimed. 'Dive in there!'

  Whinger had seen the entrance too. He hit the brakes with such a thump that the Audi slewed left and right. With a juddering rush we banged down off the tarmac on to the gravel of the pull-up. Whinger doused his lights and simultaneously switched offthe ignition so that the brake-lamps wouldn't light up.

  'Slow down, slow down!' I called to Stew. 'Keep back. We've bombed into a lay-by. We're going to hang in here, then take them out.'

  In about five seconds the Lexus overshot. Maybe the driver had been confused by the disappearance of his target - at any rate, he seemed to be moving more slowly than before. Whinger watched the lights go past outside the screen of firs, then started the engine again and came out after him.

  Like a greyhound after a hare, the Audi surged up behind its prey, showing no lights at first, then with everything blazing. Before the other driver had time to react Whinger was up beside him, still accelerating hard.

  Then, just as our tail was about to clear the Lexus's front, he braked fiercely and .jerked the steering wheel to the left.

  The hit was perfectly timed. There was no way the other driver could have avoided us. In a split second he found his car whacked sideways and sent out of control.

  As Whinger straightened and accelerated away, I saw the Lexus spin through 360 degrees, go half round again, and finally roll over on to its side.

  'Brilliant!' I went. On the net I said, 'Zulu One.

  Problem Solved. Continue as per schedule.'

  'Roger,' Stew answered.

  'That's as far as they'll get tonight,' said Whinger.

  'Whoever they were.'

  'Dickers, for sure,' I told him.

  'You're joking. I reckon they were joy-riders, I bet the car had been nicked.'

  'Maybe.'

  'I got to see their faces quite well,' said Tony. 'I shone my torch on them as we came past. All youngish twenties, I guess.'

  'Irish?'

  'Coulda been. I don't know. How do you tell?'

  'You can't,' I said. 'SB'll show us some mugshots when we get back. See if you recognise any of them.'

  'Ah, come on!' said Whinger. 'You're getting PIRA on the brain. We shook 'em up, anyway.'

  After all that things quietened down a bit, and I had a moment to wonder how Farrell had fared during the violent maneuvering. At Charlie Three, the southern roundabout, there were no police cars in sight. I guessed that some were about, but standing well back, as arranged. We went across unopposed, and sped on southwards past Leominster to a spot where a side-road carried up through some woods. There, on the brow of a hill, we were due to switch from the Audi into a minivan - another precaution laid on to bluff Farrell, who would certainly have the wit to realise that in any real chase the police would radio details of the getaway car ahead, leaving it liable to arrest.

  Just before we reached the rendezvous I said quietly to the other two, 'Don't forget - from now on we've all got to act.'

  They knew what I meant: until then we'd been on our own, but for the next few hours or maybe days we were going to be at close quarters with our man.

  Everything we did or said in his presence must confirm our claim to be renegades, acting on our own for my personal benefit. No hint must be given that we had the full backing of the legiment and the security services.

  The white van was standing on the designated spot beside a bus-shelter on the outskirts of a village.

  Although there was nobody in sight, I knew that some guys from the legiment had the place staked out; they'd be somewhere in the background, eyes on the vehicle. They would pick up the Audi as soon as we were clear, and drive it back to base.

  As Whinger pulled in and parked alongside the van, I jumped out and went round to open the boot. My torch beam revealed Farrell lying on his right side, hands cuffed behind him, his knees drawn up to chest.

  'Out!' I snapped. 'Get out!'

  'Get out yourself, yer fucking twat!' he exploded.

  'What in God's name d'you think yer doing, giving me shite treatment like this?'

  'Out!' I repeated.

  I noticed that his voice had sounded thick and peculiar, but I grabbed him by the upper shoulder and dragged him into a sitting position. 'On your feet.'

  'Is Seamus with you?' he spluttered. 'Or is he not?'

  'He's not.'

  'Who are you, then?'

  'You'll find out. Come on.'

  His voice definitely sounded odd - thick and lisping.

  It was something I didn't remember from before.

  Slowly, painfully, his wrists still tied behind him, Farrell knelt up on the floor of the boot, then lifted one knee over the back of the car so as to lower his foot to the ground. 'Get these fucking cuffs off me,' he gasped.

  'They're after killing my hands.'

  I ignored the complaint, heaved him upright, dragged a balaclava hood down over his head with the eye-holes'at the rear, a.nd propelled him in the direction of the van. He walked unsteadily, and I remembered that the man had a chronic limp, apparently the legacy of a car accident.

  'OK,' I told him. 'You're beside the other vehicle now. Get in, to your left, and sit in the middle of the back seat.'

  With Tony to his left on the bench seat, me to his right and Whinger back at the wheel, we set off again, heading south. The arrangement was that the
Granada, which had stood offwhile we switched.vehicles, would proceed to the cottage independently.

  We went by a roundabout route - although, with his eyes full of pepper spray, the hammering in the boot of the Audi and now the hood, I didn't think Farrell had a clue where he was or whether he was facing east, west, north or south. It gave me an odd feeling to be shoulder-to-shoulder with this murdering, torturing pride of the Belfast Brigade. Because of his plasticuffs he had to sit forward awkwardly, and I could see he was in some pain, but I just thought, Ah, stuff the bastard.

  Occasionally he asked some question about where we were and where we were going, his voice muffled by the hood, but when none of us answered he gave up.

  The silence left me time to think. I was trying to work out what he knew and what he didn't. The fact that he thought he'd been lifted by his own guys showed surely - that he was totally in the dark: maybe the PIRA had been trying to set up a lift, but obviously he hadn't got wind of Plan Zulu, and it dawned on me that he might not even know that Tim and Tracy were being held hostage. After all, we'd captured him in Colombia before they were lifted, and, including the first two days in Bogotfi, he'd been in the nick ever since.

  Looking back over the interception, I couldn't remember anything we'd done that would give our game away. I started to wonder: did Farrell even know who I was? He'd shown no sign of recognising me.

  Then I remembered that on the only occasion he'd seen me, when we had fought in the Amazon jungle, I'd had my face blacked up for the night operation.

  Whinger drove brilliantly, never missing a turn, even when he came to the steep, winding lanes of the Forest of Dean. Admittedly he'd recced the approach to Laurel Cottage the day before, but his route-finding was impressive. Not knowing that part of the country myself, I found the roads thoroughly confusing. On the final stretch I reminded myself not to make some stupid remark like 'Is this it?' which would betray the fact that our destination was new to me. In fact, I decided I was going to say as little to Farrell as possible. My aim was to move him on as fast as we could. He surely knew by now that we weren't his own people, and I hoped he'd be in shock for a few hours after the lift, and that the prospect of a quick escape would stop him trying to analyse the situation too deeply.

  Eventually we climbed a steep gravel track through a wood, passed a battered white gate that stood open, and pulled up outside a house which was already lit up; Stew and Doughnut, in the Granada, had got there ahead of us. While Whinger went on in, Tony and I got Farrell out of the van and hustled him through the front door into a small hallway and on into the kitchen. Only then did I bring out a pair of regular steel handcuff. Having locked Farrell's right hand to Tony's left, I cut the plasticuffs away with my Leatherman pliers. And none too soon; because the prisoner had been tugging away at them, the cuf pounds had ratcheted themselves up tighter and tighter and his hands had started turning blue.

  Removal of his hood gave me a shock. He looked a right mess: face pale, eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot from the pepper, dried blood crusted over one cheek, and his ulSper lip all puffed out with a split down it to the right of centre - I guessed from being thrown against the wall of the meat wagon in the crash. There was blood on his blue and white striped prison shirt as well, and on his regulation-issue brown trousers.

  'Better wash your face,' I told him. 'Use the sink there.' It wasn't that I felt sorry for him, just that I didn't fancy looking at such a wreck.

  While Tony led him across to the sink and stood beside him as he scrubbed off his face, I took a quick look round the house with Whinger: lounge, bathroom and separate bog on the ground floor, three bedrooms upstairs. Everything was painted white, with terrible, twee little pictures of animals on the walls. A woman laid on by the tkegiment had been in to make up the beds and put out towels and suchlike. The place was so small that the idea of spending days there gave me instant claustrophobia.

  'Get a brew on, Whinger, for fuck's sake,' I said quietly. 'We've got some talking to do.'

  I found Tony and Farrell side by side on the settee in the lounge.

  'He's bitten his tongue,' Tony told me. 'He's got his teeth smacked together in the crash. That's why he's speaking kinda funny.'

  'Does it need stitches or anything?'

  'No, no. The bleeding's stopped. It'll be fine. He just can't talk any sense.'

  The telephone stood on a glass-topped coffee table near Farrell's left hand, so I pushed it towards him and said, 'Right. You'd better get talking.'

  The dark-blue eyes glared at me from out of their inflamed rims. 'Talking?' he spat. 'What about?'

  I stared back at him. Was he trying to wind me up,

  or had he really no inkling of what was happening?

  'D'you know who I am?' I asked.

  'Not a clue.'

  'In that case, I'll start from the beginning. My name's Geordie Sharp I'm in the SAS. Some of your people in the PIRA have lifted my four-year-old, Tim, and his guardian, Tracy. They're holding them hostage, to get you released.'

  I watched the information sink in. Farrell's eyes were wary, as if he didn't believe what he was hearing. He said, 'SAS? Like luck you are. How would the SAS be after attacking a police convoy?' With his split upper lip and swollen tongue, Farrell couldn't get his mouth round the consonants and he was lisping.

  'They wouldn't,' I said. 'That wasn't the SAS. That was myself and a few pals - my private army.'

  'But you're in the regular army. You just said so.'

  'I'm on leave. I've taken time off specially, to sort this out.'

  'Who are these other turds, then?'

  I gestured towards Tony. 'He's a friend over from

  the States. He's doing some BG work here.'

  'BG? What's that?'

  'Bodyguarding. Close protection.'

  'All right. And these others?'

  'Also friends. Former members of the Regiment, in civvy street now.'

  Farrell looked out through the doorway, towards the rest of the guys in the kitchen. Again, he seemed to be weighing up what he was hearing. 'So . . . what's the game?'

  'The game's dead simple,' I told him. 'Your people have told me that if we get you out, they'll release my two. We've got you out. As soon as the kid and the woman are in my hands, you can go.'

  At that moment Whinger came in with a couple of mugs of tea. 'Will I do one for him as well?' he asked.

  I was about to say no, but I changed my mind and told him, 'All right, then. Give him a cup.'

  'You can keep yer fucking tea,' Farrell snapped.

  'Whisky if you have it, but not fucking tea.'

  Ah, sling yourself, I thought, but all I said was: 'Just get on the phone - right? And set up a rendezvous for an exchange.'

  He shot me a look of hatred and said, 'Look, I've not been in Belfast for over a month. I don't know where any of the lads are.'

  'You'd better find someone, and quickly. Otherwise you may not make it until daylight.'

  Farrell reached for the phone, bu stopped and withdrew his hand. 'Hey! Sharp! You're the little prat that was after shooting me at Ballyconvil.'

  'What if I am?'

  'You made a fair cock of that operation, didn't you?'

  'Dial!' I told him. 'And get something set up for first thing in the morning.'

  At last he moved. Holding the receiver in his left

  hand, he had to draw Tony's left hand across with his right in order to pick out the buttons. I knew the call would be monitored and recorded, so I didn't bother trying to memorise the numbers, although I did notice the dialling code for Belfast, and guessed he was calling one of those sleazy bars on the Falls tkoad where IRA players drift in to drink at all hours of the day and night.

  The first man he got was evidently pissed out of his mind.

  'What are you at?' Farrell snapped after a moment.

  'Answer my question, will you?'

  'Bollocks!' came the answer, so loud I could hear it across the table.

  'Bollock
s yourselfl' Farrell shouted. 'Pull yourself together, man.'

  A bellow of laughter came down the line. Farrell held the receiver away from his ear and I heard a voice say, 'By the powers, we have a right prick on here!'

  'Get off the line, twat!' yelled Farrell. Tll speak to someone sober… Hello?'

  The man had gone. Another came on, apparently in little better shape.

  'Is Eamonn there?' Farrell demanded.

  'What's that?'