He gave a faint smile, but his eyes were closed, and he drifted offinto a doze. I adjusted the position of the Kleenex box slightly, and we slipped out of the room.
In the corridor I saw a doctor whom I recognised from my own visits. It turned out that he had helped with Pat's operation, and he welcomed the pair of us with a friendly mock-salute. I knew word had been put about that Pat's wound had been caused by an accident on the ranges, so I didn't refer to its origin; but the doctor raised one eyebrow and said, 'You fellows are getting a bit trigger-happy, aren't you?'
'Well…' I spread my hands. 'These things happen.'
I could see he knew more than he was letting on, so
I changed the subject. 'What's the long-term prognosis?'
'Pretty good, we reckon. He's a strong lad. The leg should knit up OK, provided we can keep infection out.'
My mind flashed to Farrell and his septicaemia — but all I said was, 'Back to full mobility?'
'We can't be sure, but there's every chance.'
'He'll be all right,' said Whinger loftily. 'Hot cross bun. This one will run and run.'
NINE
It turned out to be a filthy night of rain and wind — but that made no difference to our plans. By 2145 we were rolling along the bypass towards Impact Pamp, and five minutes later all three vehicles were parked in the turning area. Our main getaway car was a souped-up Audi Quattro that had seen service in Northern Ireland.
It had been brought back to the mainland because it had been co.mpromised: after a couple of successful operations the IRA knew it too well, so it had come home for a respray and the issue of new plates.
From the outside it looked the same as any other silver Audi; but lurking beneath its skin it carried potent extra assets. One was the engine, which had been given racing specification during a visit to the workshops at the DoningtonPark circuit in Leicestershire. The tweaked unit fired the car with fearsome acceleration and a top speed of 150 m.p.h. There were also slices of Kevlar armour in the doors and down the backs of the front seats — and to cope with the extra power and weight, both brakes and suspension had been uprated.
The result of all this was that the driver Could throw it about the road like a racing-car — which was lust what Whinger fancied.
Our other vehicle was an old black Granada — less brutal, but solid, dependable and fast enough for most contingencies. I'd nominated Stew as driver, with Doughnut Dyson as his co-pilot. The rammer van was being driven by two other guys from the Regiment.
Someone had pointed out that, as the police were not going to give chase after the intercept, there was no need for us to use such a high-performance beast as the Audi. I countered with the possibility that other people might get caught up in the operation — accidentally or on purpose — and we might in the end be glad of a genuine getaway car. In any case, it was important that, once we had Farrell on board, we should cover a few miles at seriously high speed, as though the law were truly on our tail.
In our jeans and trainers we looked like any old layabouts, but covert radios and pistols in shoulder holsters under our sweatshirts gave us the teeth we needed. In the boot of the Granada were three MP5s, a box of loaded magazines, and a case of flash-bang stun grenades.
On our vantage point at the top of the Impact lamp we sat in the dark and waited, the raindrops pearling on the windscreens. The Audi was first in line, with the Granada behind it, and the rammer van last.
The traffic on the bypass below us was spasmodic.
For several seconds at a stretch the road would be empty, then a car or truck would come past, its lights glistening on the wet tarmac. The first sign of activity or rather, lack of it — should come soon after 2215, when the police were due to seal off all approaches to the ring road.
'Does he know what's happening?' asked Tony quietly.
'Who?'
'Farrell.'
'Can't tell. It's possible word's got back to him, but I doubt it. He hasn't seen any outsiders since the ban on visitors was imposed.'
'Where does he think he's going, then?'
'I don't suppose he's got a clue; they don't have to tell prisoners where they're taking them. That's why it's called the ghost train. He may think he's going down to the IKA nick at Evesham. Or there's another one called the Dana at Shrewsbury. That's not far off, either.'
Time dragged. I stared out of the window at the dismal conditions, thankful that at least all the guys on the team knew what our target looked like. Mugshots of Farrell, full face and profile, taken in the nick, had gone up on the board in the incident room. Seeing them, I had realised that even after months of pursuit I had never had a really good look at him. The night I'd seen him at the barn outside Belfast he'd been thirty or more metres off, standing in poor, flickering light; it was my colleague in the C)P, a guy from the Det, who'd recoguised him. And when I had chased him into the edge of the Amazon jungle it was in half-darkness, and in any case I'd been nearly blind with rage. The pictures taken in Winson Green showed him looking pretty rough, with hollow cheeks and dark shadows under the eyes.
Something else was niggling at my mind as we waited: a sheet of a telephone transcript which I'd glimpsed on Fraser's desk in the incident room. It was a record of a conversation with the PIPOk which had obviously taken place while we were in Libya.
Somebody had rung in, demanding to speak to Geordie Sharp, and 'KT' — Karen Terraine — had taken the call.
For a while she'd stalled the man with stock answers, but when he had insisted on talking to me, she'd said: 'Well, you can't. He's not in the country. He's gone abroad for a few days.' Beside these words somebody had made a couple of big red crosses with a felt tip, as if to draw attention to a major breach of security. Why, for Christ's sake, had the woman said that I was overseas? Was it just carelessness, or was it spite 207 revenge for my giving her the brush-off in that bout of midnight fisticu? Either way, I got the impression that Fraser had moved her smartly out of the team working on my problem. He told me she'd gone on leave, but I reckoned she'd been fired. Whatever had happened to her, one potentially dangerous fact was now in enemy hands. To some extent Operation Ostrich had been compromised.
I looked at my watch again and said, 'Now. It's quarter past. The road blocks should be in position.'
For a while we saw no change; the occasional vehicle continued to come past. Then, after one last lorry from the south, the flow from that direction ceased. A couple of minutes later the same thing happened from the north — a single car came down and disappeared south wards trailing a cloud of spray — and then everything went quiet.
'Standby,' I said over our chatter net. 'Engines running.'
Whinger turned the ignition key, and the Audi burbled into life with a deep, throaty grumble. I switched to the police channel, and a moment later heard a voice I recognised as that oflkoss Tucker, driver of the lead vehicle in the convoy: 'Point Alpha now.'
Back on our own net I called, 'OK. Take up position.'
Whinger switched on his headlights, which blazed out across the bypass, and rolled the heavy car down the slope. He headed a few yards to the left, so as to leave the rammer van a clear run, and brought the Audi to rest at an angle across the carriageway, its nose pointing south. In a couple of seconds Stew had eased the Granada round ahead of us and backed it up so that its rear-bumper was touching our front mudguard. By the time he'd switched on the alarm flashers and raised the lid of the boot, the two vehicles presented the very picture of an unfortunate shunt.
I nipped to the boot of the Granada, grabbed the power-saw, switched on and gave a couple of pulls on the starter cord to make sure it would run. At the second tug the engine burst into life, and after belching out a cloud of white smoke, rewed up smoothly. I switched off and returned the saw to its place. The rest of the team stationed themselves on the south side of the barricade, away from the impact area.