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.