'Got it,' I breathed. 'I can see an open space. OK.
We're on course.'
Heading slightly left, we approached the straight boundary of the wood at an angle. Our feet were making no sound on the sheep-mown grass, and the night was so dark that anyone without special equipment would be practically blind. Nevertheless, something made me stop twenty yards out from the trees.
When I went down flat, Tony did the same a few feet behind me. For a minute we lay listening. Nothing.
Then on the wind I caught a very faint whiff.” cigarette smoke. A shiver went up my back as I thought of the moment in the Libyan desert when Whinger had smelt smoke, just as we were about to establish our LUP.
Reaching round, I snapped finger and thumb quietly, and I heard faint rustling as Tony wormed up beside me.
'Cigarette smoke,' I whispered. 'There's someone out to our left.' I raised the night sight and scanned again. 'There he is,' I said quietly. 'A man, on the corner of the wood.'
'What's he doing?'
'Standing there. He's got binoculars. Looking round.'
'He'll never pick us out — too dark.'
'No, but let's get into cover.'
We crawled forward, belly to the ground, and in a few seconds were under the bottom strand of another barbed wire fence. Inside it, out of sheep-reach, longer grass and shrubs were growing.
Leaning outwards, I took one more look at the corner. The man hadn't moved. 'You stay here,' I breathed. 'Get your arse backed into the undergrowth while I go and look for the hide. Take the sight and keep an eye on our friend. If he heads this way, warn me, and we'll lie low till he's gone past.' I lifted the cord over my head and handed the sight over.
'OK,' Tony whispered. 'Good hunting.'
In the cover of the woodland edge, it was safe to stand up, so I got to my feet and shuffled carefully forward. My mind was moving far faster than my body.
The guy on the corner could be a gamekeeper, on the look-out for poachers, but at this time of the year that seemed unlikely. More probably it was a dicker — and if it was, what was his brief? What the hell was he doing here? Was he supposed to intercept us as we came to the hide? Or pretend he'd caught us stealing the weapon, and drop us in possession of it? Did he have a colleague on the hide itself?
My sixth sense told me that the answer to the last question was no. Already I was on the edge of the clearing and very close to the hide, yet I had no feeling that anybody was near me.
I moved on, pushing each foot gently through the long grass. At the south-western edge of the clearing according to my brief- there should be an old iron hand-purrip mounted, on a brick base… I nearly bumped into it before I saw it, standing shoulder-high in front of me. This was the means by which people living in the cottage had once brought their water up out of the ground. I reached out and touched the rounded top of the pump. From the rough feel, I could tell that the cast iron was pitted with the rust of ages.
The opening of the well had been described as six feet out from the base of the pump. I dropped on to hands and knees. The temptation to use a torch was strong, but I resisted it — better to operate by feel. I was looking, or groping, for a circular wooden cover covered by sods of tuff. Pulling my Commando knife from its sheath, I began jabbing the blade vertically into the ground, and after four or five soft touches I suddenly hit something hard, which gave out a quite different sound. I reached out farther and jabbed again. This time I got a definite hollow thump.
A moment later I had located the two wooden 291 handles. Steady, I told myself. This could be booby- trapped to blow when someone moves it.
Feeling carefully about in the surrounding mulch, I picked, out the perimeter of the cover and ran my fingers round it. When I came on no wires or catches, I reckoned all was well, and lifted the cover clear.
For a moment I sat back on my heels and held down the pressel switch of my radio. 'Tony,' I said quietly.
'I'm on site. Found the hide. What's our guy doing?'
'Hasn't moved.'
'Nobody at the other corner?'
'Nope.'
'OK, then. I'll get the weapon up.'
Below ground level it was safe to use the torch, so I reached down into the cavity and switched on. The beam lit up a blue nylon rope, anchored at the top to an iron ring set into the neck of the well, and dropping ten feet into the old, brick-lined cistern. On the dry mud floor at the bottom lay a fat grey cylinder about five feet long.
Quickly I switched off, pocketed the torch and began hauling the rope up. The tube was a fair old weight thirty pounds, I guessed — but it came up hanging at an angle, so that I was able to bring it through the neck of the well without it touching the sides.
Just as I laid it in the grass Tony's voice suddenly came in my ear. 'Watch it, Geordie. The guy on the corner's heading this way. Fifty yards… forty… thirty. Ah, Jesus!'
I wriggled the MP 5 off my back and knelt silently with the weapon at the ready, watching, waiting. I kept thinking, if this were Northern Ireland we'd simply grab the guy, hand him over to the police and have him whipped away.
When nothing happened I asked, very low, 'What's he doing?'
No answer. That could only mean the man was extremely close. 'Is he within ten yards?' I went.
Back came one briefcase, as Tony gave his pressel a single nudge. That meant yes.
'Is he within five yards?'
Psssch.
Bloody hell! I concentrated intently on keeping still, and counted seconds to give myself an idea of how much time was passing. I'd gone past 180 — three minutes which seemed like thirty — when at last I got another beep in the earpiece.
'Moving off?' I asked.
Psssch, psssch.
'Great. Tell me when he's clear.'
I waited another whole minute. Then Tony came up with, 'OK. He's down at the other corner.'
'I'm coming out then.'
Hurryi'ng now, I brought out my knife again, cut the cradle of rope round the container, dropped the severed ends down the well, replaced the circular lid, swept the grass back and forth a couple of times to mask the edge of the cover, picked up the pipe by the webbing cradle round it, and nipped back to the fence.
Seconds later Tony and I were away across the middle of the field at a fast walk; but only when we got back to our marker hedge, out of sight and hearing of the wood, did he burst out with, 'Boy, was that a close one! The bastard was standing with his. heels three feet from my head!'
We ran the other lads to ground at the new safe house not far from Great Missenden. Whinger guided us in on the phone, calling the turns, until finally we pulled round the back of a farmyard to find a hideous modem bungalow built alongside the biggest heap of shit in Buckinghamshire — or so it seemed: there was a mountain of old straw and manure piled up right in front of the turn-around, and the air was full of the stink of cows.
'What have they done to us?' I yelled as I walked in.
'What a shower!'
'Close the door, for fuck's sake,' said Whinger. 'The only hope is to keep the smell outside.'
Cowshit apart, the place was nothing like as good for us as the cottage in the Dean. For one thing it was too close to the main road and to the farmyard; for another, it had big plate-glass windows, so that anyone passing could see in. A third defect was that the internal walls were paper-thin, so people could hear what was going on in the room next-door. And to make matters worse the telephone was insecure; there hadn't been time to instal a new one.
'Oh, well,' I said. 'At least it's in the right area, and we're not going to be here long. Nothing new from Fraser, I suppose?'
Whinger shook his head. 'All quiet on the western front, I'm afraid.'
'All fight, then. Let's suss out this damned rifle.'