mile behind the second Mercedes saloon.
Richter opened the van door and called out to Colin Dekker: ‘Go.’ The SAS officer gave a thumbs-up sign and climbed into the Transit, started the engine and drove off slowly along the hard shoulder, hazard lights flashing. Erulin got into his Renault Trafic and followed.
‘Time we organized your breakdown,’ Richter said to Lacomte. They went round to the cab of the van and opened the bonnet. Then Richter turned on the hazard lights, took a warning triangle from the rear compartment and placed it about fifty metres behind the van.
The traffic flow had reduced markedly as the closures Lacomte had put in place at junctions 12, 13 and 14 took effect, and only an occasional vehicle passed in either direction. Richter looked up the autoroute. About three-quarters of a mile ahead, he could see one of the GIGN men placing cones in a narrow triangle to protect the Transit. To Richter, it looked convincingly ordinary, but his opinion wasn’t the one that mattered. He climbed back into the van, closed the rear doors, put on a headset and thumbed the button. ‘Colin?’
‘Here. SAS check-in.’ Three voices acknowledged in sequence.
‘Lieutenant Erulin?’
‘Here.’
The radio operator spoke to Lacomte, and he tapped Richter on the shoulder. ‘Chambry,’ he said.
‘All positions,’ Richter said into the microphone. ‘This is Control. The target vehicles have passed Chambry. We estimate they’ll be with us in four minutes. Stand by.’ Erulin repeated what Richter said, in French, to the GIGN troopers. The rear doors of the Renault had small windows, and Richter stood up and looked back down the autoroute. The road was empty, no traffic moving in either direction. Lacomte told one of the radio operators to get out and fiddle with the engine of the van – an added touch to lend veracity to the scene.
Then Richter saw them. The lead Mercedes was just passing under the flyover that carried the D967 between Laon and Crecy-sur-Serre, and as he watched the second saloon moved into view from behind the bulk of the articulated lorry. Richter pressed the transmit switch again. ‘All positions, Control. Two minutes.’
Richter turned his attention back to the autoroute. The road was almost perfectly straight, and he couldn’t see either of the French trucks, but he could see both blue saloons. ‘Both Mercedes are ahead of the truck and accelerating.’ Richter looked back through the window. Behind the Russian truck he could just see the cab of another articulated lorry coming into view, obviously accelerating to overtake. It looked to Richter as if he had left it too late.
‘Something’s wrong,’ Bykov said.
Modin had been dozing quietly. ‘What?’ he asked.
‘Something’s wrong,’ Bykov repeated. ‘There’s too little traffic. I have a feeling—’
He broke off, lowered the limousine’s partition and spoke urgently to the escort in the front seat. ‘Send the two Mercedes ahead. Tell the crews to look out for anything unusual.’
‘They’ve already started moving,’ the escort reported.
Bykov turned to the driver. ‘Ease back. Stay well behind the lorry.’ Bykov twisted round in his seat. Nothing behind but a single articulated lorry, about five hundred metres back. In front, another French-registered artic was just passing the Russian lorry. On the opposite carriageway, nothing moved.
‘It’s probably just another accident,’ Modin said, stifling a yawn. ‘We’ve seen two today already.’
‘No. This is different,’ Bykov snapped. He reached for the car phone clipped below the partition. He looked at the status display, then showed it to Modin. The tiny grey-black letters proclaimed ‘No service’.
‘All French autoroutes have excellent cellular coverage,’ Bykov said. ‘Somebody has disabled the local cells.’
Modin rubbed his chin thoughtfully, sat up straighter in his seat and peered ahead up the autoroute. ‘You might be right, Viktor,’ he said softly. ‘I think we may have a problem.’
‘One minute.’ The Mercedes were coming, one in each lane, the two lorries about half a mile behind them. ‘Thirty seconds.’ Both Mercedes, running almost side-by-side, swept past the Renault and on towards the Transit. ‘Twenty seconds.’
The French lorry had eased in front of the Russian vehicle and was moving back into the nearside lane. The Renault shook, twice, as the two heavy goods vehicles roared past. Richter turned his attention to the autoroute in front, and looked through the front screen of the Trafic. ‘Ten seconds,’ he said. He was guessing, but that should be near enough. As Richter released the transmit button, the leading articulated lorry’s brake lights went on, and then everything seemed to happen in slow motion. The lorry lurched to the left, and Richter could see the smoke of burning rubber from its tyres. The trailer skidded and slipped, almost hopping, and turned broadside on to the carriageway. Speed dropping all the time, the cab just brushed the steel barriers on the central reservation.
The brake lights flared on the Russian truck. The driver had reacted late, but he had reacted. The leading lorry halted, completely blocking the carriageway and obscuring the view of everything beyond it. The cab door opened, and a diminutive figure wearing an orange jacket jumped out, vaulted the central barrier and disappeared from sight to the south of the auto-route. It had been one of the most impressive pieces of driving Richter had ever seen.
The Russian truck was slowing gradually, then lurched to the right. Richter saw the puff of dust and rubber as a tyre exploded under the impact of the 7.62mm round, and the cab start to weave. But its speed was already low enough for there to be no real danger.
Richter glanced quickly out of the rear windows. The other lorry was parking, the driver taking his time, broadside on to the carriageway about half a mile back, and between it and the Renault van Richter saw the black limousine for the first time.
Anton Kirov
The
‘He’s gone, sir. Captain Bondarev has gone ashore.’
‘Good. Tell the technician I’ll meet him outside the hold.’
‘Yes, sir.’ As the trooper hurried away, Zavorin closed the cabin door and followed. It was time for the final check on the weapon before it was unloaded, and Zavorin was keen to ensure that Bondarev knew nothing about it. Zavorin had been embellishing the cipher machine story in their recent conversations, and was certain that Bondarev believed it.
But if Bondarev found out that the
‘There has been an accident,’ a calm voice reported from the front dashboard speaker in the limousine. ‘Two small trucks are involved, but the road ahead is not blocked.’
‘Look behind you,’ the escort shouted into the microphone.
‘We’ve burst a tyre,’ the lorry driver yelled, ‘and some idiot Frenchman has just slewed his truck right across the road in front of us.’
A babble of voices burst out of the speaker. ‘Quiet,’ Bykov shouted, grabbing the microphone. He looked behind, and saw the second lorry just completing its manoeuvre.
Modin smiled faintly. ‘I think, Viktor,’ he said quietly, ‘that someone has found out.’
‘Convoy,’ Bykov called, ignoring the older man. ‘This is Bykov. Assume an attack is imminent. Await my command to respond.’
Richter looked ahead. The Russian truck had stopped, and as he watched a figure rolled out from underneath the trailer and sprinted off over the hard shoulder and into the scrubland. Behind. The limousine was coasting to a stop, around fifty metres behind the Trafic. Ahead. For a long moment nothing moved. The Russian truck sat idling, exhaust fumes just visible above the twin silencer boxes behind the cab. No noise, no movement.
