Zero Option

by Chris Ryan

  'That's the point, exactly. They said it didn't sound like him at all.'

  'He's got a split tongue and lip, that's why. He hit his face when we rammed the prison van and got his teeth smacked together. He can't use his tongue properly.

  That's why he sounds peculiar.'

  'We need to get a proper look at him. We need to see it's himself.'

  'Ah, bollocks! Like I said, you would have seen him if you'd been on time this morning.'

  'We need to see him, or there's no del.'

  The way the man kept repeating himself, like a zombie, really got to me. I put my hand over the mouth piece again and exclaimed. 'This is shite!' Opening up again, I said, 'Wait one.'

  With my hand back in position I asked Farrell, 'D'you know this guy?'

  'Not at all.'

  'Well, speak to him anyway. He doesn't believe you're yoO.'

  'Holy Fucking Jesus!' Farrell grabbed the phone and blasted off, bollocking the fellow to kingdom come. But for all his obscenities he made little progress; the man at the other end was like a brick wall. In the end Farrell yelled, 'All right, then! I'm going to call one or two of my friends in West Belfast and get them to put a fucking bomb under you.' He would have rung off if I hadn't signalled him urgently to give me back the phone.

  'So wht are you proposing?' I asked.

  'Come to the Great Western marshalling yard at Swindon 9t eleven tonight.'

  'Wait one, I need to write this down.'

  I looked round for a pen and paper, but it took a hell of a searcla before we dug out a pencil from a drawer.

  The only thing we could find to write on was the opened-oat packet which had held the cod steaks. At last I was ceady. 'Carry on,' I said.

  'Go down Brunel Road

  to the bottom, past the station…'

  'OK.'

  Brunel, I repeated,

  'At the bottom, don't turn left where the main road swings roond, but carry straight on through a gateway.

  There's wire mesh gates across it. They may be closed, but even if they are they aren't locked, you can push them opera. Are you with me?'

  'I am.'

  'There's two brick pillars at the entrance, holding the gates. Pass between them and you're in the old yard.'

  'Got it. Eleven o'clock, you said?'

  'Eleven, so it is. Farrell and two. No more.'

  I said. 'One to drive and two to look atier your man.

  'All riglt. Three. In that case there'll be three of us as well.'

  The line went dead.

  Farrell's face was- dark with anger. 'What a shower of cunts!' he snapped. 'They've got some bloody cheek, demanding to see me. Wait now while I get the bastards sorted.' He started to dial Belfast numbers again, but things quickly went yet further downhill. One after another, his cronies gave him the brush-off. Either they refused to speak to him and let their side-kicks take the call, or they told him to get stuffed and stick to the plan already made. With every call I could see him growing more rattled; it was clear that he couldn't understand why the players in Belfast were behaving as they were.

  It didn't make sense to him. Something had changed.

  Gradually his bluster abated, and by the end of his calls he was looking really scared.

  'What's the problem?' I asked. 'They don't sound very happy.'

  'Fucked-ifI know.' He shook his head in a mixture of disbelief and alarm, muttering, 'They've all gone round the twist.'

  I tried to draw him out, but he wouldn't say any more - and as I knew the telephone conversation had been recorded I didn't press very hard. We could check it out later.

  As if to change the subject, Farrell suddenly said, 'I need a shower.'

  Since he was smelling like the ferrets my Uncle Phil used to keep at the bottom of the garden. I said, 'Good idea,' and suggested that after he'd had a clean-up we should all get our heads down.

  We'd taken the precaution of screwing the bathroom window shut, so that it presented no security risk, and I reckoned it was safe to unshackle Farrell while he washed, provided there were two of us present when he came out again.

  'You can let him go,' I told Doughnut. 'But he's to get undressed in the passage and leave his clothes outside.'

  The ablutions went according to plan. When Farrell stripped off, I saw that he was indeed well built, with powerful shoulders, but running to fat around the midriff. When he went into the shower I stepped outside and walked round the back of the cottage to keep an eye on the bathroom window, lust in case he tried anything funny. For a few minutes I stood there, enjoying the sunshine, listening to the birds, and fervently wishing that we could bring this horrible nightmare to an end, so that life could return to normal.

  We'd bought Farrell shaving kit, toothbrush and so on before the intercept, and when he emerged ten minutes later, he was looking a lot more spruce. The wound dressings had got wet, so I peeled them off and put new ones on. The inflammation seemed to have gone down a bit, but as a precaution I made Farrell take a couple more of the white tablets. As soon as we had him shackled to the bed again, wrist and ankle, everyone felt more relaxed.

  I was all for getting my head down as well, but first I had to take another walk into the wood. Halfway down the hill a grey squirrel ran across the track in front of me and raced up the beech tree I was proposing to stand under. For a moment it sat on a horizontal branch with its tail fluffed up behind it, but when it saw me coming in close to the trunk, it whipped up into the greenery above. Saucy little bastard, I thought. It's all right for you. You don't have much to worry about.

  'We're OK so far,' I told Yorky over the mobile.

  'Did you pick all that up - the details of our rendezvous for tonight?' I confirmed the arrangements, such as they were, and asked him to get surveillance on the site as soon as possible. 'The PItLA are bound to send in dickers,' I said. 'But probably they won't turn up until evening. It would be great if we could get eyes in there first.'

  'No problem,' Yorky replied. 'There's two guys on their way already. I sent them off as soon as I heard the plan. The other thing we need to do is stick a tracking device on the PIRA car. This should give us a great chance. As soon as we've got an idea of the topography, we'll work something out - the optimum placing of your vehicle and all.'

  'Thanks, Yorky. We're going to need some backup, too. It's possible the PIPA will try to lift Farrell. We could do with a Q1LF somewhere close.'

  'That's no problem either. Again, we'll suss out the site and make arrangements. Geordie, you sound tired.'

  'I am. I'm fucking knackered. We've been on the go since five this morning. Didn't get much sleep, either.'

  'Why not get your head down, then?'

  'I'm going to. There’s not a lot we can do between now and then. Er… Yorky?'

  'What's that?'

  'Any more news about PIRA safe houses? Any news at all?'

  'Yes. They're concentrating on two flats in Acton.

  Our 1Led Team's moved up to Hounslow Barracks.

  They're on standby there. Twenty guys, all their vehicles and kit. The police have a team from SO19 standing by as well. In fact, the commander ofSO19 has just been here, going through various options with the head-shed.'

  'So there is some movement?'

  'Definitely.'

  'Thanks, Yorky. That sounds great.'

  'Don't worry, lad. Everything's in hand at this end.

  Listen - your prisoner doesn't sound a very nice guy.'

  'What d'you mean?'

  'The RUC faxed us his dossier. The things he's been suspected of but never got for: three murders, GBH, arson, extortion.'

  'Didn't I tell you?'

  'You did,' Yorky admitted. 'But when you see it written down… Keep a good grip on him, anyway.'

  'Will do. But the bastard doesn't seem very happy.

  Something in those last calls pissed him off.'

  'I know,' Yorky suddenly sounded quite chuffed.

  'I've been listening to the tapes. Hi
s people seem to have turned against him, for whatever reason. They were giving him two fingers. One of them was talking about putting a CAT team on to investigate him.'

  'No wonder he's shitting himself, then. I don't know what he's done, but obviously he's dropped a bollock somewhere. Since those last conversations he's really gone down.'

  'That's fight.'

  'The sooner the miserable sod's off my hands, the better,' I said. 'Listen, Yorky, I'll call in again at four o'clock to check the form. OK?'

  Now I understood why Farrell had become so agitated. The Civil Administration Teams are the PIIA's notorious means of enforcing discipline within the ranks. If someone gets a call saying, 'We need to come round and have a talk,' he knows he's for it - at the very least a few cold baths and some beatings to make him produce information, at worst a kneecapping or even an execution.

  For three and a half hours I was dead to the world, and I awoke with the unpleasant but familiar sensation of not knowing where I was. Staggering up, I found Tony in the kitchen, heating up some soup.

  'Get to sleep?' he asked.

  'Yeah. How about you?'

  'Sure did. Couple of hours. I feel a whole heap better. Like some soup?'

  'Great. In a minute, though.

  Again I slipped out, down the track and into the wood.

  'Yer daft bat,' said Yorky straight away. 'Where've you been?'

  'Kipping it deadly,' I told him.

  'Well done, lad. I was hoping you'd come on. We have two guys in an old railway wagon right alongside the IV site - Andy Peake and Terry Mason, from the SP team.'

  'Fabulous,' I said. 'What wagon is it?'

  'It's a closed freight car with the serial number zero nine two painted in big white numbers on the side. The sides are fairly intact, but part of the floor's gone, so they've got easy access to the track. They've a good view ofthff yard, and they're pretty sure no PIRA have shown yet.'

  'All right. So what do we do?'

  'You'll need to decoy the PIRA car as close to that wagon as you can. Then, while the players are concentrating on you and Farrell, somebody will slip out from between the wheels with a little goodwill package…' Yorky explained that the yard was a couple of hundred metres long but only fifty wide. Our best tactic, he said, would be to drive in along the left-hand side, close to the rails, and then at the end do a U turn, so that we came to rest facing back towards the entrance gate, with our left-hand doors close to the high wall that bounded the yard on the road side. Parked there we'd be opposite the occupied railway wagon, and the logical place for the PIIA to pull up would be right beside it, across the yard from us.

  'Sounds good,' I said. 'What about backup?'

  'There'll be two cars, each with four, in the road above. There's a pub up there, the Railway Arms, so there should be enough people coming and going to create a bit of a distraction. But our guys won't do anything or show themselves unless the PIRA start messing about. They'll only intervene if there's an attempt at a snatch.'

  'Fair enough. Will you brief the police to stand off?.'

  'C)fcourse. What vehicle will you be in?'

  'The Granada. And I'm not taking any chances on this one. We're going to be there early.'

  We set out in good time, with Farrell blindfolded once again. To give Whinger and Tony a break I had left them to house-sit, taking Stew to drive and Doughnut to act as principal minder. Another belt of wet weather had moved up from the south-west, and a soft rain was falling - no bad thing, as it would reduce visibility at the RV site. In another conversation with Yorky and Fraser I'd learned that, sure enough, two young fellows with every appearance of being PIRA dickers had appeared outside the Railway Arms at about half-past four and walked along the road that ran above the marshalling yard. They'd made one pass out and another back, and were presumably based in a car parked up there on the high ground. Without doubt they'd report our arrival to colleagues over a mobile phone or CB radio.

  Whether or not Farrell had any ink.ling about where the safe house was, I couldn't be sure. On our way out to the rendezvous in the morning we'd made one diversionary detour off the M4 and driven through a few of the roundabouts on the outslirts of Swindon, purely to confuse him and give the innpression that we weren't doing a sustained motorway run. Next, back on the M4, we'd come on the block at Reading and had to turn round, which providentially added to his disorientation. Then on the way horre we'd come via the M40 and Oxford, so that once again there hadn't been any long stretch at high speed. All in all, it seemed to me that he'd have to be a bloody genius to work out the location of the cottage.

  This time, as a further variation, we went north- about through Gloucester and across country to Cirencester, so that we came into Swindon from the north-west. By the time we hit the outskirts it was almost fully dark, and under the sodium lamps the streets were glistening with rain.

  It may be that some other town in Britain has more roundabouts per square kilometre, but if it does I don't know where it is. We went through dozens of the bastards, some single, some double, and many of them practically touching each other.

  'The town planners went fucking mad here,' I said as we missed a turn and had to circle yet again to pick up the fight road.

  'Too fight,' Doughnut agreed.

  We found Brunel Road with fifteen minutes in hand, so we decided on-a drive-past.

  'There's the entrance,' I said as we came towards the left-hand bend. The big mesh gates were shut, as predicted, and we only caught glimpses of the yard beyond.

  'Pretty damn dark in there,' said Stew.

  'Yep,' I agreed. 'But that's to our advantage.'

  Again we were caught up in an insane network of roundabouts and one-way streets, with the result that it was nearly 2255 by the time we made our second run.- This time I jumped out, slid back a bar-catch and pushed the right-hand gate open. Its base scraped over a rough surface - earth or cinders - but I forced it back, left it wide open and nipped into the car again.

  'Now,' I said. 'Just take a swing round and park.

  Anywhere will do.'

  Stew knew that my last remarks were cover. I'd briefed him on the exact procedure that Yorky and I had worked out.

  There were the old railway wagons, on a line right beside the yard. They looked very tall, because there was no raised platform at that point and we were down on the same level as the tracks. Farrell was still hooded, so as we came level with number 092 I pointed at it silently, and Stew nodded. He drove past, then swung right-handed into a U-turn, brought the Granada to rest about three feet from the high wall, switched off the engine and doused the lights.

  'OK.' I turned to Farrell. 'We're there. Now it's up to them.'

  He only grunted in reply. I think he felt as nervous as we did, and I don't blame him. If anyone did attempt a snatch a fire-fight would erupt within seconds, and he'd be in the middle of it.

  The only light in the yard was a feeble spill-over from street-lamps along the road above. Under the wall, we were in deep shadow. The floor was uneven and pock-marked with holes. I presumed it must once have been covered with railway tracks, and now pools of water glistened in the depressions left behind where the sleepers had been ripped out. The whole place looked black as coal, and whenever a train went by on the main line, only a few yards away, the noise sent my mind back to the steam engine which used to pull a few tourist carriages up and down a branch line near where I was brought up, in the north.

  I wished to hell we could use our covert radios. I was a good friend of Andy Peake, one of the guys hidden in 092, and I longed to chat him up. Had he seen the dickers any more? Had they come down and sussed out the yard? Had any other car made an approach? Were our own guys in position up top? Andy would be listening in on the net, and would know the score exactly. M1 we could do was hope that the lads had everything under control.

  Once again the deadline came and went. To cover my anxiety, I began mentally rehearsing possible moves.

  'When they arrive,'
I told Farrell, 'you're going to stay put. You're not getting out. If they want a good look at you, they'll have to come up close and take a shufti through the window.'

  'We'll see,' he said. 'I can't vouch for what cunts like that may do.'

  Suddenly I found myself thinking of the hot, clear nights in the Libyan desert, a world away from this soft English rain. I thought of the moment when Norm had found he'd left his Magellan behind, and the crazy, blaring crackle of the muezzin's first call to prayer as dawn was about to break. Once again I saw our target in his death throes, and heard his slippered feet going slap, slap, slap against the wall.