at some officers before he realised he was very much in the wrong place. Since that day pilots were warned their careers would be over if they so much as skimmed the border.
The pilot turned well before the frontier and cruised north-west and parallel with it. Stratton could see a combined army and police checkpoint forming below on the main road to Monaghan. It was the smaller roads that worried him. He made out an army foot patrol heading across fields toward the border. For the umpteenth time he checked the signal tracking device attached to the craft’s control panel in front of the co-pilot seat. Where the hell was Spinks’s marker?
Spinks held the small device in front of his face. He could not see it, but it helped him, memory wise, to locate the small switch on its side. He had tested it that morning, as he always did prior to heading out on to the ground, before he positioned it in the best hiding place he could think of. He was often reminded of its existence when the corner of the device dug into his testis and required an immediate adjustment. Otherwise he usually forgot about it. It was just another piece of equipment operatives carried and only a last-resort device in the event of the improbable. He could forgive it for all the discomfort it had given him in the past three years because that bastard who shot him had not found it. Now his only prayer was that it actually worked.
He clicked up the tiny switch with his nail. A pinheadsized LED light blinked in the darkness. It was working, apparently. He rested it on his chest and exhaled heavily, and as he did so a sharp pain shot through his chest and shoulder to remind him of his injury. ‘I’ve been shot,’ he said to himself, as if fully realising it for the first time. ‘I’ve been fucking shot and kidnapped, shot and kidnapped!’
Stratton saw the red light flash the instant it came on. A burst of excitement raced through him as he tuned the tracker. All the lights on the panel began to flicker as it warmed to the signal. A gradient of tiny bead-sized lights indicated the signal strength was low but readable, and a single larger one at the bottom of the panel indicated it was behind them.
‘Turn around,’ he said quickly to the pilot. The pilot responded and banked the Gazelle steeply one eighty degrees. ‘Whisky one, I have a signal. I repeat I have a signal towards yellow four.’
The words conveyed the rush of excitement straight into the operations room and the tension rose sharply. Mike beat Graham to the handset and snatched it up. ‘Roger, whisky one, towards yellow four. All stations, towards yellow four. Stay off the net unless it’s an emergency, out.’
The intelligence team hurried in from the int cell just to watch. That’s all they could do now.
The phone rang. Graham picked it up. ‘Ops,’ he said quickly and listened to the voice the other end. ‘It’s Bill Lawton,’ he said to Mike.
Mike was engrossed in the map and allocated a small part of his concentration to the call. ‘What has the Gardai said?’ he asked.
‘Did you hear that?’ Graham said into the phone. Bill had and rattled off an answer. ‘He said they’re sending as many people to the border opposite Aughnacloy as they can spare,’ Graham relayed.
‘What about London?’ Mike said as Graham aimed the phone at him, then back to his own ear for the reply.
‘The boss took care of that,’ Graham said into the phone.
‘He hasn’t heard anything, as in Bill hasn’t heard anything,’ he said to Mike. ‘Bill thinks they’re going to leave it up to us.’
‘That means they don’t have a clue what to do,’ Mike said. ‘Fine. Anything else?’
Graham listened for a moment. ‘Okay,’ he said and put the phone back into its cradle. ‘No. He’ll be on the end of this phone if and when he’s needed, and he said good luck.’
‘Save it for Spinks,’ Mike muttered as he started pacing a small area, keeping his eyes on the map but not really seeing it now. His ears, and just about everyone else’s eyes, were glued to the speaker on the wall. It was all up to Stratton now.
Aggy stood outside her wrecked car in the field listening to the transmissions. She and Ed were more or less forgotten about and unless they called up on the radio with a problem it would remain that way until this was all over. Ed was in the car smoking a roll-up. He was his old, calm self again and already spouting suggestions as to how and what the ops room should be doing. Then she heard the Gazelle and her thoughts left everyone else.
She walked further out into the field, hoping to see it beyond the trees across the road. It sounded close. When the Gazelle did come into view it was further south along the wood than she expected, the direction and distance of the sound deceiving as always. It was about half a mile away, black against the sky and going like a rocket. She’d heard his voice over the radio and knew he was in it. Perhaps he would see her. It would pass across her front, maybe a bit closer than it was now. He would know where she was and that she was all right. Then she wondered who she thought she was kidding. He wouldn’t be thinking about her, let alone worrying if she was in one piece. It was too much to expect he might even glance in her direction. There was no way of knowing what was on that man’s mind no matter what the situation. Often she caught him looking at her but never once had she seen anything in his eyes that gave her encouragement. A hint of desire or even a thin smile would be nice, but there was never anything remotely like interest, it was just as if he happened to be staring in her direction.
At that moment his only thoughts would be of what he loved most and did best. She wasn’t worried about him nor did she fear for him, not even slightly. Her feelings about him might well be confused but she was sure of one thing: there was hope for Spinks while he was up there. Stratton gave everyone that kind of feeling. When he was part of your team, on an op, when his calm, strong voice came over the radio, you knew you were on a winning team. She wondered if it was nothing more than simple hero worship she felt for him. She would follow him into hell itself if that were where they had to go. He was larger than life and there was no one else she had ever met who made her feel that way.
Stratton stared unblinking at the direction indicator as the light went to the right, then flickered to the top, then to the left. He spewed instructions to the pilot, trying to keep the top button lit, which meant the signal was dead ahead. ‘Left a bit, left . . . straight. Don’t go any lower. Stay at five hundred. Left a little more. Straight.’
He checked his map. A line drawn through their location and in their exact direction went above the border, but only just. That meant Spinks was still in the North. He glanced over his right shoulder at a field half a mile away. Near the edge, just beyond the skirt of the wood, was a car a few yards from the road, in a field. A figure was standing alone beside the car, looking up at the helicopter. He watched for a moment longer then went back to the transponder receiver.
Brennan sat in the front of the van beside Sean at the wheel. They were out of the town, in the countryside. Two other men were in the back, sitting on the trunk, which was the only other object in the van. They were middle-aged, red-faced, weathered, as if they had spent their entire lives digging roads in the open air. The van pulled to a stop at a crossroads.
‘Straight over,’ said Brennan.
‘I know where I’m going,’ said Sean, aware he was playing with fire. Any backchat to Brennan was to take your soul in your hands. Sean wasn’t even sure why he had said anything other than it was his nature to be outspoken and arrogant. Perhaps the danger had got his blood up and he was feeling like a fight. Brennan wasn’t the only one capable of a bit of madness, especially behind the wheel of a vehicle.
‘I don’t give a fock what you know. Just do as I say, when I say it and without lip,’ Brennan barked. ‘This isn’t a focken test to see if you know your way around. If we were walking through your focken house I’d still be telling you where to go. Lippy focken bastard.’
Brennan was aware he was not as cool as he normally was on a job. He had done a lot worse than this, but he felt more nervous than he could remember. His eyes were everywhere, inside every passing car, in the air, beyond the hedgerows. Every mile closer to the border increased his unease as well as his excitement. But his fear of failing was greater than his fear of battle. That was engraved on his soul from a lesson he learned early in life. He was sixteen when he did his first kneecapping but he had to wait until he was twenty-one before he could carry out his first execution. It was on his birthday and he’d had a few drinks, not that he needed any such courage. The boyos had arranged it as a surprise coming-of-age party.The victim was a sixteen-year-old Protestant they had
