Operation Omega

by Hilary Green

  ‘Do you reckon he’s going to Swancombe?’ Stone asked.

  ‘If he is, he’s taking the scenic route,’ Leo commented. ‘It would have been much quicker and easier to head for Esher and get on the A3.’

  ‘What’s he up to?’ Stone muttered. ‘Is it just some kind of elaborate plan to get the boy into a compromising situation?’

  ‘Knowing some of Farnaby’s contacts I imagine that wouldn’t be difficult,’ Leo said. ‘But then he wouldn’t need Zahran. Looks like kidnapping to me.’

  Once again Nick’s voice crackled over the radio.

  ‘Omega, report your position please.’

  ‘On the A25 heading west towards Guildford; just passed through Westcott,’ Leo reported.

  ‘Thank you, Omega. Message from Control. They are scrambling a helicopter to help with surveillance. It should be over you in about ten minutes.’

  ‘Hold it!’ Leo exclaimed. ‘Rolls is turning left onto minor road leading in the direction of Friday Street. We’ll keep you posted.’

  They saw the police car turn and followed into a narrow lane which ran steeply downhill. Within minutes the road was running between high banks with the full-leaved beech trees arching overhead, so that the lane was full of green shadow pierced by the slanting, amber rays of the late afternoon sun.

  ‘Now what are they playing at?’ Leo muttered.

  ‘Short cut?’ Stone suggested.

  Leo shook her head. ‘There’s nowhere they could get to down here that they couldn’t have reached easier and quicker by sticking to the main roads—unless their objective is somewhere very close. This area is a maze of tiny lanes, but none of them really lead anywhere.’

  They rounded a bend and abruptly Leo stepped on the brake. Ahead of them a Land Rover towing a horse-box had apparently jack-knifed coming out of a gateway and was completely blocking the road. Between them and it stood the blue Sierra, the driver in the act of getting out. The Rolls had disappeared.

  Stone swore softly but Leo had already slammed the car into reverse.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

  ‘Just pray there’s nothing close behind us,’ she replied tersely.

  As they whined back round the bend he saw what she was aiming at. To their right another lane led off downhill.

  ‘Does this join up?’ he asked as Leo pushed the car into first and swung into it.

  She nodded, concentrating hard on the road. ‘Yes, but it’s further. We shall have to push on.’

  She reached forward and pushed down a switch on the dashboard. A high-pitched bleep pulsed through the car.

  ‘You bugged him!’ Stone said.

  She grinned briefly. ‘That’s another thing I did while I was playing my rejected woman scene.’

  This lane was, if possible, even narrower than the first. The banks flashed by and the tyres squealed as they slid into a sharp s-bend. Stone found himself bracing both feet hard against the floor.

  ‘Stop for a minute,’ he said sharply. ‘I’ll take over.

  ‘You’re crazy!’ she replied. ‘We could lose them that way.’

  The car swooped into the bottom of the dip, rounded a bend in a controlled skid and snarled up the hill on the far side.

  ‘Look,’ he shouted, ‘I’ve had experience of this kind of driving!’

  She glanced at him and laughed suddenly. ‘You know your trouble—you just don’t like being driven by a woman!’

  ‘I don’t like being driven by anyone at this speed!’ he gasped, as Leo roared up through the gears on a brief straight stretch.

  ‘Well, hard luck!’ she replied.—‘It’s a case of “shut your eyes and think of England”.’

  They topped the rise and as they hurtled down into another valley Stone saw a large farm truck, of the type used for transporting livestock, heading down the opposite hill towards them. The lane was too narrow for two cars to pass comfortably. They had no hope of getting past a truck.

  ‘Watch out!’ he yelled.

  ‘Seen it!’ Leo replied, but her foot went down on the accelerator, not the brake.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Leo!’ Stone screamed. Then, as they came to the bottom of the hill, he saw what she was aiming for. In the valley a track led off to the left and at its start the lane widened briefly, enough to allow two vehicles to pass. The truck had almost reached that point and Stone saw it brake violently as they hurtled towards it, Leo’s hand hard down on the horn. He braced himself as she slammed the gear lever into third and the near-side wheels ran up onto the bank just before the turning. The car tilted wildly, then dropped down as the lane widened, bounced, crashed under some low branches as it skimmed past the tail of the truck and then roared away up the next rise.

  Stone drew a deep breath. ‘Remind me never to come driving with you again.’

  ‘Get on the radio, tell them where we are,’ she said.

  He reached for the mike and called, ‘Watchdog, this is Delta One...’

  There was no reply. He tried the call sign again, with the same result.

  ‘Could we be out of range?’ Leo asked.

  ‘Not with this equipment,’ he assured her.

  He wound down the window and craned his head and shoulders out to peer up at the roof.

  ‘Hell!’ he said, wriggling back in. ‘We’ve lost our aerial. It must have got snapped off when we went under those low branches.’

  Leo said nothing for a moment. Then she remarked, ‘Looks like we’re on our own.’ Another thought occurred to Stone. He reached out and twiddled a knob on the dashboard.

  ‘We’ve lost our bleep, too.’

  ‘There’s a hand-held receiver in the glove box,’ she told him. ‘We’re almost back to the original road now. When we get there you may be able to pick them up if you get out of the car.’

  The car approached a T-junction and slowed. ‘This is it,’ Leo said. ‘They must be somewhere in this area.’

  Stone took the receiver and got out. He picked up the signal from the bug almost at once.

  ‘They’re ahead of us,’ he told her, ‘but not very far.’

  She turned right and gunned the Jag along the new road. They slanted down the escarpment of the Downs and through a gap in the trees Stone caught a flash of silver below them.

  ‘There he is,’ he said. Then, remembering, ‘Where the hell is that chopper they were supposed to be sending?’

  ‘Wondering where the hell we are, I expect,’ Leo replied. ‘With all this tree cover he’ll have a hard job spotting us. And he may well be looking for us on the wrong side of the hills. That would be our last reported position.’

  A few minutes later they came within sight of the Rolls, now heading serenely out across the level ground at the foot of the Downs. Leo throttled back and the sedate forty felt like a crawl after their former speed.

  ‘Beats me where they’re heading for,’ Stone murmured fretfully.

  They drove in silence for a while. Then Leo said, ‘Hallo, this could be it!’

  The Rolls signalled left and disappeared up a long drive which led to a farmhouse and a collection of large barns. Leo stopped the car and Stone read the notice on the gatepost.

  ‘Huntersford Farm—private property; no right of way.’

  ‘Now what?’ Leo asked.

  ‘Good question,’ he replied. ‘I think you leave me here to keep an eye on things while you get to the nearest phone-box and call control.’

  She nodded, and then stiffened suddenly and wound down her window.

  ‘Listen! What’s that?’

  Stone put his head out of his window and listened.

  ‘The chopper?’ he suggested, but she shook her head. Then without warning she started the engine and swung the car into the drive.

  ‘What...?’ Stone began.

  ‘Look!’ she yelled. ‘Over there, to the left of the barns.’

  He looked. On that side of the buildings the ground was almost flat for some distance, and suddenly he saw what she was looking
at. Just visible beyond the corner of a barn a windsock floated in the light breeze. Then he knew what it was they had heard. It was the sound of a light aircraft warming up.

  The Jag hurtled up the drive. As they approached the house two men leapt into their path, one of them armed with a shotgun.

  Stone yelled. ‘Look out!’ and flung his arm across his face as the windscreen shattered under a hail of pellets. Leo ducked for an instant and the car swerved wildly, then came back under control and squealed round the end of the nearest barn. Stone drew his pistol and knocked out the remaining glass. They skidded round another corner and almost collided with the parked Rolls. Beyond it was the landing-strip and, at the far end, an executive jet was turning into the wind ready for take-off.

  ‘There!’ Stone shouted, but already Leo was hurling the Jag down the runway.

  ‘How much distance do those need to take off?’ she yelled.

  ‘Not much!’ he shouted back.

  The wind coming through the broken windshield lashed their faces. He glanced at the speedometer and saw it climb past eighty to ninety and then on up towards the hundred. Ahead of them the plane held on its take-off path. The gap, he reckoned, must be closing at over two hundred miles an hour. His mouth went dry as he realized Leo’s intention. The jet had its nose up, but there was less than a hundred yards between them. He saw the plane tilt as the pilot tried frantically to drag it off the runway. Then the car skidded and yawed violently to the right as Leo stood on the brakes and there was a rending crash as the plane’s wing-tip seared across their roof, followed by a few seconds of blessed silence as they rocked and bounced to a standstill.

  Stone punched his seat-belt loose and looked round. Behind them the plane had slewed onto the grass and stood, one wing hanging like a wounded bird, the other dug into the earth. People were already clambering out of it. He turned to Leo. She was slumped across the steering-wheel, apparently unconscious. Stone kicked the door open and hauled himself out, levelling his pistol across the roof at the little group who were now hurrying towards the farmhouse.

  ‘Hold it right there!’ he shouted.

  There were six of them. Stone recognized Farnaby and the boy being hustled along by Zahran, still in his chauffeur’s uniform. Two of the others turned at his shout and he saw that they were both armed, one with a revolver, the other with a machine-pistol. Bullets ripped and ricocheted along the roof of the Jag as Stone ducked. He leaned round the tail of the car and took a snap shot at the man with the revolver and saw him twist away and fall to his knees. The other one dived for shelter behind a heap of old tractor tyres but, as he drew back into the shelter of the car, Stone saw the two men who had tried to intercept them on the way in heading down the runway in a Land-Rover. He remembered Leo, still helpless in the front seat, virtually unprotected from their assailants’ fire. As a last desperate hope he tugged his personal radio out of his pocket and gave his call sign.

  ‘Delta Two, this is Delta One. Come in please!’

  There was no answer. He tried again, but Nick was clearly out of range. The Land-Rover skidded to a halt a short distance away, one of the men in it covering Stone with the shotgun. Peering round the tail of the Jag he saw the other one emerging from the shelter of the tyres, the machine-pistol trained on the car. Reluctantly he threw his gun out onto the grass and stood up, raising his hands above his head.

  They searched him quickly and efficiently and then the two men from the Land-Rover held him with his arms twisted behind his back while the third turned his attention to Leo.

  ‘Be careful. She may be injured!’ Stone said sharply but the man ignored him. He undid the seat-belt and dragged Leo out of the car onto the grass. She regained consciousness at this point, moaned and tried to sit up. He pushed her brutally back onto the ground and searched her, but, as usual, she was unarmed and carried no identification. When he was satisfied of this he dragged her to her feet and half marched, half carried, her towards the house. Stone and his two captors followed.

  The rest of the group were in a big room at the back of the house which was obviously the farm kitchen. The PM’s son was sitting at the table, ashen-faced, with Zahran behind him holding a pistol. At the end of the table was Farnaby, looking almost as shaken as the boy. As Stone was pushed through the door he was saying, his voice as always in moments of stress several notes higher than its normal pitch,

  ‘You told me there was no risk! You never mentioned kidnapping…’

  ‘Shut up!’ said Zahran harshly. ‘You’re in this as deep as the rest of us.’

  Farnaby turned to look at the new arrivals and his rather too fleshy mouth dropped open. ‘Leonora! What on earth…’

  Zahran, meanwhile, had recognized Stone.

  ‘You!’ he said, coming round the table. ‘I thought I told them to finish you that night by the river.’

  ‘It appears your men aren’t as efficient as you thought,’ Stone replied insolently.

  ‘And you…’ Zahran turned to Leo. ‘Of course, the woman in the car-park.’

  ‘But there’s some mistake,’ Farnaby babbled. ‘This is Leonora Carr—the film star. You must recognize her!’

  ‘So!’ Zahran nodded. ‘I thought the face was familiar.’ He turned to Farnaby. ‘You fool! You have been taken in by one of their agents. This man works for the Special Security Service—and the woman is obviously working with him.’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous!’ protested Farnaby. ‘I’ve known her for months. Everybody knows who she is…’

  He broke off and stared at Leo in horrified comprehension. Zahran turned to his companions.

  ‘Well, we know who they are, and we must assume that they have told their superiors where we are. The question now is what to do next.’ He looked towards a man whom Stone had not noticed before. From his dress one would have taken him for an English gentleman farmer; only his dark complexion and hawk-like features proclaimed his origin to be quite other than that. Zahran spoke to him in a language which Stone took to be Arabic and he replied. The discussion continued for some little time, with occasional interjections from the others. There appeared to be some difference of opinion between Zahran and the man whom Stone took to be the owner of the farm but in the end Zahran seemed to have won the argument. Stone looked at Leo but she stood limply in her captor’s grip, her head bent and her eyes downcast. He wondered if she was understanding any of what was being said. At the table Farnaby lit a cigarette with shaking hands and sat slumped as if overcome with shock. The young man stared from one face to another as if desperately trying to make sense of the situation. Stone caught his eye and tried to send a message of encouragement but he simply stared as if incapable of distinguishing friends from enemies.

  Zahran turned to the men holding Stone and Leo and gave them an order of some kind. The owner of the house opened a door into the hallway and they were propelled through it and then through a further door which led to a steep flight of steps down into what was obviously a cellar. At the top of the steps the man unhooked a coil of rope from a nail and handed it to one of their guards. Stone submitted without wasting energy on resistance while his arms were bound tightly at the wrists and elbows behind his back. He was glad to see that Leo’s hands were tied only at the wrists. Once they were satisfied with their work the men shoved them down the steps. Stone almost lost his balance and was saved only by the fact that his guards still had hold of him. Leo was not so fortunate. Half-way down the man holding her gave her a push and let her go. She stumbled and, unable to save herself, fell heavily down the rest of the flight and lay in a heap at the bottom. Above them a heavy door slammed to and Stone heard the bolts being shot home.

  He dropped awkwardly onto his knees beside Leo and, unable to touch her with his hands, leaned down and put his face against her hair.

  ‘Leo, are you all right?’

  She made a small sound which was suspiciously like a sob and then struggled to her knees.

  ‘I’ve heard some bloody stupid qu
estions in my time, but that…’ She looked at him, sniffed and managed a laugh. He looked back at her, in the dim light of the single, dust-furred electric bulb above their heads. The elegant white trouser suit was torn and filthy, her face was bruised and smudged with dirt and the sophisticated wig which was part of her Leonora Carr persona and which had miraculously survived the car crash had finally parted company with her head as she fell down the steps, leaving her own short curls flattened to her head and, in one place, matted with drying blood. On an impulse he leaned forward and kissed her cheek.

  ‘OK?’

  She let her head droop onto his shoulder for a moment.

  ‘I shall be, in a minute.’

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘could you understand any of what they were saying up there?’

  She nodded and sat back on her heels. He could see her making an effort to clear her brain.

  ‘Yes. They were arguing about what to do next. They think that we must have let Control know where they are.’

  ‘Yes, I gathered that much.’

  ‘The man who seems to own the house was trying to persuade Zahran to make a run for it. I think he didn’t reckon on becoming actually involved in what’s going on and he just wants to get rid of them. He suggested they take the Rolls and try to make it to Farnaby’s place and then get a boat. Zahran thinks there will be road-blocks all round by now and they have a better chance of holding out here. He said, “What we are planning to do can still be done, from here”.’

  ‘What exactly are they planning, that’s the question,’ Stone murmured.

  ‘Obviously they intended to get the PM’s boy out of the country and then, presumably, to use his life as a bargaining counter. Now, they’re going to do it from here.’

  ‘They can’t really expect to hold out here for more than a few hours, surely,’ Stone said.

  ‘It’s a classic hostage situation, isn’t it?’ she replied. ‘They’ve got him—and they’ve got us.’ ‘You know what that makes us, don’t you?’ he said flatly and she nodded. ‘Pawns—very useful, but expendable.’