“Good man,” Newman said slapping him on the shoulder as he ran by.
As he ran, he keyed the throat mic again. “Newman to Tyler, please come in,” he said, getting no response. He charged through the coarse thicket of bushes and emerged onto the grassland that led back down to the road. Almost immediately, he heard two shots in rapid succession coming from the direction of the road. They had been fired by a small calibre handgun, not a GS36, of that he was certain.
The gunshots were followed by the sound of a woman screaming.
◆◆◆
Dillon stood by the quayside wishing that he had a pair of night vision binoculars handy. He could see the lit wheelhouse of the fishing boat moored on the other side of the river, and he could just about make out the shapes of people moving around inside, but he couldn’t see clearly enough to work out who was who, which was annoying. Surely, one of them had to be Winston, but which?
He glanced at his watch. “They should be going in any minute now, Whitey,” he called to Charlie White, who was still sitting inside the Astra with the heating cranked up to full. “Why don’t you come over and join us for a front-row seat?”
White responded with a disinterested shrug. “I can see fine from in here, where it’s nice and warm,” he replied.
Dillon shook his large head at White to demonstrate his disappointment. He had assumed that being a Scotsman, Charlie would have been used to the cold. He’d obviously gone soft since moving down south, Dillon decided.
Having been released from their observations on The Edna May, Steve Bull and Paul Evans had driven over to join Dillon and White in Rock Channel Quay. Unlike Charlie White, they were braving the cold in order to get a better view of the SO19 interdiction.
“After everything we’ve been through during this job, it feels a bit odd, us not being there for the takedown,” Dillon confided to Steve Bull. He kicked a stone across the quay in frustration, sending it tumbling over the edge and down into the water.
Bull regarded him as though he were deranged. “Speak for yourself,” he said. “Personally, I’m quite happy over here, out of harm’s way.”
“Me too,” Evans admitted, stamping his feet to keep warm. “I don’t mind the occasional bout of fisticuffs, but these bastards are toting shooters.”
Dillon couldn’t believe his ears. “You’re wimps, the pair of you.”
Suddenly, the silence was punctuated by the staccato sound of shouting. There was an awful lot of it, but it wasn’t coming from the direction of the boat, which was a tad confusing.
“Where’s that racket coming from?” Dillon demanded, scanning the opposite shoreline for the source of the disturbance. It wasn’t easy with the wind distorting every sound. “It seems to be coming from way over there,” he told the others, pointing to an area about a hundred yards to the left of The Eclipse.
“I think I just heard someone scream armed police,” Bull said, straining his ears.
Almost immediately, there was another outburst of yelling, this time from directly opposite them, where the boat was moored.
Was it a continuation of the first incident, Dillon wondered, or something altogether separate?
“It must be SO19 moving in,” Evans suggested.
Shots suddenly broke out, and all three men instinctively ducked behind Bull’s car, fearful of being caught by a stray round. Within a few seconds, it was all over, and several SFOs were running along the narrow jetty towards the boat, their combat boots clanking on the wooden slats.
“It’s impressive to watch, isn’t it?” Evans said, his voice full of admiration.
“I suppose,” Bull allowed, although he was hardly brimming with enthusiasm.
As they looked on, two figures appeared at the boat’s prow, one towering above the other.
Dillon tensed. “I think that’s Winston,” he said, involuntarily clenching his fists.
“Who’s the other bloke?” Evans asked.
Dillon shrugged. He didn’t know and didn’t care. “Probably just one of the crew,” he said, dismissively.
Amazingly, the smaller of the two men scrabbled over the side. After a moment of hanging there with his legs dangling, he let go and dropped down into the water.
“He must be raving mad,” Bull said, shuddering at the unpleasant thought of being immersed in the freezing river on a night like this. He’d once dealt with a case where a man suffered a fatal heart attack after jumping into an ice bath at a Turkish sauna. Death had resulted from a myocardial infarction, which had been brought on by vasoconstriction; a condition where the heart has to work much harder to pump the same volume of blood throughout the body.
“Perhaps his ticker will pack up on him and he’ll drown,” Dillon said, hopefully. “That would save the taxpayers the cost of a trial.”
But the unidentified man in the river didn’t die on them; he kicked off from the keel and started swimming away from the boat, being dragged steadily sideways by the strength of the current. As they watched, the second man lumbered over the side, albeit with far less dexterity, and dropped like a stone into the water. He splashed and spluttered, appearing to be experiencing some difficulty staying afloat, but then he stabilised himself and started doggy paddling towards the opposite bank.
Dillon glanced sideways at Bull and Evans, his eyes burning with mean determination. “You two, grab Whitey and go after the first one,” he said through gritted teeth. “The second one’s Winston, and he’s all mine.”
◆◆◆
Unlike the clueless TV star, who was trying to swim straight across to the opposite shoreline, Winston was content to drift with the current and let it take him as far away from The Eclipse as possible.
He wasn’t good in the water and he wasn’t particularly buoyant, and his clumsy attempt at a doggy paddle was probably better described as slow drowning than swimming. Nonetheless, he knew his best chance of escape lay in getting as far
