Inside the Wessex helicopter – roomy enough to take ten men – Tweed peered out of the window from his seat. Newman sat in front of him by the door where the swivel-mounted machine-gun was positioned. A member of an airborne division sat beside him, his beret slanted at a slight angle. He was satisfied Newman could handle the weapon. They'd had a practice shoot while the machine hovered above Fairoaks Airport. The target, a pile of wooden crates, had been shattered by Newman's first burst. The airfield had a notice at the entrance. Closed for Repairs.
Marler was travelling with Nield in the second machine which was not visible. The radio op was keeping in close touch with its twin helicopter. Tweed was impressed with the swift conversion job. Both machines carried the legend Traffic Control in large letters. Only Butler was somewhere on the ground, riding one of the two waiting BMW motorcycles. Nield had said, 'Thanks, but no thanks. I'm not riding one of those death-traps.' Butler had made a rude reply and wheeled his bike aboard the other Wessex.
The second machine had landed on a deserted main road, waited briefly while Butler disembarked with his BMW near Brize Norton, and had immediately taken off.
Tweed stared down at Cherry Farm from two hundred feet. Raising the glasses looped round his neck, he scanned the buildings carefully. No sign of life. He dropped the glasses and spoke into the microphone, part of the headset he had attached to himself.
'Nothing down there, Bob. That place has been derelict for a decade at least.'
They flew on as the airborne soldier, Harper, shifted to the seat on the starboard side and raised his own glasses. Very little traffic on the roads at this hour. The wind was strong and Tweed was thankful he'd had the foresight to take Dramamine as the chopper rocked like a boat in a storm.
At the last minute Howard had been forbidden to join them, much to his chagrin. The PM had phoned. 'Someone must be there to mind the shop…'
But every member of the search party had copies of the car outlines Howard had produced – together with Paula's photographs of the furniture van seen from different angles. Everyone – including Butler riding his motorcycle round the country lanes – was concentrating on detecting a furniture van. Except Tweed who kept studying the car silhouettes, with an Austin Metro added.
They had been cruising round the edge of the forbidden flying zone over Brize Norton for an hour without seeing anything. Marler came on the radio from his machine at regular intervals. 'Nothing to report.'
Then Tweed saw the Austin Metro.
Behind the wheel of the Metro Foster was driving along a winding country lane east of Brize Norton, close to the village of Ducklington. He saw the chopper appear over a ridge straight ahead about half a mile away. Beside him Saunders leaned forward. In the rear seat Seton-Charles peered out of the window.
'Yes, it's that bloody Traffic Control machine,' Foster snapped. 'Something funny about it – there's no traffic round here.'
He slowed down as a large copse of trees masked them from the helicopter. The copse was beyond a bend in the road. Glancing to his left, Foster saw a crumbling barn, the roof still intact, open at both ends. He looked in his wing mirror. Road deserted, behind as well as ahead. He jammed on the brakes in an emergency stop. Saunders was thrown forward; only his safety belt saved him diving through the windscreen.
'What the hell,' he rasped.
Foster made no reply. He swung the Metro through ninety degrees, drove off the road straight at the ancient farm gate. As the car hit it the gate fainted, collapsed inwards. Foster drove over it and continued across the field, pulling up inside the barn.
'Let the bloody thing find us in here.' He switched off the engine. 'At least we've found four possible places to site the vans tomorrow.'
'The chopper's coming,' warned Seton-Charles.
'You must have imagined it,' Newman commented. 'I didn't see a car.'
'Please keep flying along the country road below us,' Tweed instructed the pilot. He raised his glasses again as he replied to Newman. 'I tell you, I saw an Austin Metro. It matched the outline. And it was darkish – could have been blue.'
'We'll find it…'
'Which is exactly what we're trying to do.'
They were flying at eight hundred feet – the minimum altitude permitted because they were close to the forbidden flying zone round Brize Norton. The pilot followed the winding course of the empty road below. Tweed had the glasses screwed tightly against his eyes. He scanned every likely hiding-place.
A dense copse of evergreens came up in his lenses, a copse which straddled the road where it turned a bend. He ordered the pilot to circle it so he could study it from every angle. Where the devil had the Metro gone to? The pilot completed one circuit, commenced another.
Tweed saw an isolated barn standing in the fields a short distance from the road. From that height he looked down on the sagging roof. Nothing. Anywhere.
'Fly a mile or two, behind that ridge we came over. Then turn and come back,' he ordered.
Inside the Metro the chopper sounded like a giant bee circling. Saunders was sweating. He mopped his forehead. Foster sat patiently, gloved hand tapping the wheel. Saunders stiffened, lowered his window. A blast of icy air came inside.
'We might as well keep warm,' Foster told him.
'That chopper's going away. I can hear the engine sound receding. We've done the job. We might as well get back.'
'Not yet. It could be a trick. Go away and then come back – find us in the open.'
'You're assuming it's looking for us.'
'I always assume the worst. We wait…'
Five minutes later they heard the helicopter returning. Foster stared ahead in silence. It wasn't his way to say, 'I told you.' He waited half an hour until the machine had flown off a second time, then started the motor, backed on to the road, drove back the way they had come.
The Wessex cruised round the approaches to the perimeter of Brize Norton air base for another three hours. They frequently crossed the Vale of White Horse, maintaining the permitted altitude of eight hundred feet. Tweed's eyes were aching from staring through his field glasses. As they returned to Fairoaks, coming in to land, Newman made his comment.
'Well, you were wrong about the Metro. And we've found damn-all. Marler reports the same result from his machine.'
Tweed had a map of the Brize Norton area spread out on his lap. He had marked with a cross the place where he was sure he had spotted the Metro. Using a ruler, he measured three miles in each direction from the cross, then drew a circle with a diameter of six miles. He handed the map over the seat to Newman.
'That's the area we concentrate on tomorrow.'
'Why? We never found your Metro.'
'For that very reason. I couid have been wrong- the car could have belonged to anyone. But it did a vanishing trick. And we scoured the ground without finding it. I think it went into hiding. That's highly suspicious. I scanned every road after it disappeared. No sign of it.'
'If you say so.'
'And,' Tweed added as they were landing, 'I'm changing the dispositions of Force Z tomorrow. We need more men on the ground.'
They drove back to London to spend the night at Park Crescent, to see if any further information had come through. Butler left his motorcycle at Fairoaks. 'Didn't see a thing,' he reported as they drove back. 'But I have a few more roads to check – to the east of the air base.'
'Which I'd guess is where Winterton's men would place their missile launchers,' Tweed remarked. ' East. Because that's the direction Gorbachev's plane will fly in from. And I have to call the PM when I get back. She was insistent on that for some reason I can't fathom…'
They had just arrived back at Park Crescent when Paula called from Somerset. 'I'm speaking from Minehead again,' she opened. Tve had quite a day. The police brought back a woman's body found in the Somerset Levels – that sinister area we crossed on our first trip here.'
'I remember. Sounds a bit grisly.'
