'It's tough,' Tony agreed. 'But you can't do anything about it.'
'Why the luck didn't I drop Farrell while I had the chance? There's something about that guy, Tony. It's as if there's a superior force protecting him. I'm getting to think he's invincible.'
'Aw, you're imagining things.'
But Tony had never seen Farrell. He'd flown out to Colombia with our training team, but when everything had gone tits-up he'd had to stay behind in Bogotfi as our anchor-man, liaising with the British Embassy and the Americans. The result was that, to his great chagrin, he'd missed the fire-fight in the jungle. I'd already described the final showdown to him half a dozen times — how we'd blown up a pile of ether drums in the laboratory with a mega bang and fought our way back to the air-strip; how I'd slashed the tyres of the narcos'
Twin Otter so that it couldn't take o and how, as Farrell had tried to slip away into the forest, I'd wounded him with an MP 5 before running out of ammunition. I'd told Tony about that moment, when I had Farrell on the deck in front of me, when a mate had run up and handed me another sub-machine gun with a full mag on it, shouting, 'Go on, finish him oflq.' But somehow the hatred had drained out of me, and I'd let my victim get captured…
'All we needed to do was throw him in the river,' I said now. 'The crocodiles would have had him in a flash. The water was heaving with them. I didn't even have to kill him; the crocs would have done the job for me. He'd just have disappeared off the face of the earth.'
'Too bad,' Tony agreed. 'But don't let the guy bug you. You'll get even with him in the end.'
Neither of us wanted to make a night of it, so Tony went back to camp soon after ten-thirty, and I locked up all round.
Foxy Fraser and his SB team didn't seem to think that I was under any threat myself on the contrary, he'd said I was the fulcrum over which the PIRA would try to exert pressure with their lever. In other words, they positively needed me where I was, so I could initiate moves to have Farrell released. All the same, I didn't feel like taking any chances. That was why I'd badgered the store man in the armoury in camp into letting me take a Sig 226 pistol home overnight.
So, after a soak in a hot bath, I took a few precautions before I went to bed. Ever since my bad experiences in Iraq I'd had a thing about the bedroom door, finding it impossible to sleep unless I locked it. I turned the key and stood a chair against the inside with two saucepans balanced on it, so that even if somebody did get through he couldn't come in without making a hell of a clatter.
I put the phone on the floor beside the bed, laid the pistol on the bedside cabinet, and finally turned in.
I must have laid awake for some time, because afterwards I remembered how our resident owl had tuned.up in the oak tree outside the window, but in spite of all my anxieties I eventually dropped off. Some time later I became aware of a scratching noise. I rolled over on my back and listened. There it was again: a scrape, followed by a click. I knew the sounds exactly because I'd made them myself, dozens of times — sounds of someone picking a lock.
The noise was coming up from the front of the house and in through the open window. Without being able to see anything, I somehow knew that the men at the door were wearing black balactavas Jesus Christ! The PIRA were back. And this time they'd come for me! Moving my hand carefully I reached down, brought phone and receiver under the bedclothes, and dialled the incident room. All I got was Mac's recorded voice saying, 'Sorry, old boy, we can't deal with your call at the moment, we're rather busy.
Call back in half an hour.'
'Twats!' I muttered. 'Fucking useless!' Then I thought: the Sig. Of course, the Sig. What was best?
Fire out the window at the intruders, maybe drop one and scare the rest off?. Or let them come in and hope to drop the lot?
But it was too late to wonder; they were inside already. I heard a sound on the stairs, a low voice. The door handle of the room turned, and at the same moment there was a different noise outside, the faint clank of my aluminium ladder being stealthily placed in position. Then I became aware of movement at the window and saw a black figure loom up, blotting out ' the starlight. I was trapped.
I lay dead still on my back, holding my breath. The window was to my left, the door straight ahead. The door began to open. Faint light showed through the crack — a torch. The chair I'd propped against the door fell over and dropped its load with a crash. At that instant I sensed movement in the opposite corner of the room, over my right shoulder. Someone else had got in already, and was coming from that direction. There were men all round me.
I reached for the Sig, felt, groped, snatched in the dark — but the pistol wasn't there. It had gone from the top of the cabinet. Panic. I went to roll out of bed, only to find I couldn't move. A tremendous weight was holding my legs down. I glanced to my left: the black figure was half-way in through the window. I looked straight ahead and saw the man with the torch coming at me from the doorway. Looming bigger and bigger, he was almost on top of me. In spite of the dark I could make out the shape of a pistol in his hand. Within seconds I could see the faint sheen on the muzzle, the ring of death. I was looking straight down the barrel at point-blank range.
BANG! Instantly I was wide awake, shaking and soaked with sweat. The sheets were knotted up around me. Struggling free of them, I felt for the bedside lamp and switched it on. The Sig was still on the cabinet, the phone on the floor where I'd left it. The chair and saucepans stood unmoved against the door. The corner to my fight was empty.
I lay back on the pillow, gasping. My watch said 2 .45. For a few seconds I glared round the room in disbelief, llinking; then I turned the lamp offagain, got up and went to look Out of the window, standing well back. By now the moon had risen and the garden was brightly illuminated. I watched for a minute or two and saw that all was peaceful.
I started shuddering. After the Gulf I'd been plagued by terrifying dreams very much like this one. It was those bad nights that started the trouble between me and Kath. My answer to this terror had been alcohol; I'd gone on the booze, and that had made everything far worse. Was all that crap about to start again? And would a Scotch or two be a good idea now?
'No, for Christ's sake,' I told myself. 'The one thing you do not need is a drink.' So I went back to bed, sickened by the knowledge that a long, lonely war of nerves lay ahead. I'd just come through one nightmare, but another was beginning, and this one was going to be far worse.
THREE
Even though I was dog-tired I couldn't sleep. I'd got over my fear of an immediate attack, but there was no way I could stop thinking about Tim and Tracy. After a while I went to lie on Tim's bed, imagining the look of his head on the pillow when we came in to check him last thing at night, the way his flaxen hair lay softly on the back of his neck. Even at four and a bit he was still wedded to Billy, his teddy bear, and usually dropped offsucking one of the damn thing's ears. Now Billy sat forlornly on the window-sill, and I knew that Tim, wherever he was, would be all the more miserable because he hadn't got the little bugger with him. What heartless bastards the PIRA were, to lift a kid as young as that.
In time I began to feel cold, and forced myself to accept that lying in his room wouldn't bring him back.
So I returned to my own bed and tried to shut my mind down. I heard the clock in the hall strike three, then four — but that was all. I must eventually have nodded off, and the next time I came to it was seven o'clock.
Since I was officially on leave I had no need to hurry into camp. So instead I called the incident room to make sure there had been no developments, then made myself breakfast and spent an hour going through Tracy's things. As usual, her desk was in perfect order: there were a couple of unpaid bills, but otherwise she had everything beautifully squared away. A school