by Chris Ryan
Meehan had to be the guy in the BMW.
Alex was glad he had reached a decision because the two cars separated on the eastern side of the village. The Toyota swung right towards Ashburton, the BMW forked left to Mortenhampstead.
The first fingers of light were now visible at the horizon, and Alex braked and waited at the roadside as the BMW pulled away from the village. He had no intention of being spotted in Meehan's rear-view mirror. As long as he kept his lights off, he told himself... As soon as the BMW was out of sight Alex restarted, gritting his teeth against the pulverising vibrations and dropping back the moment the red tail-lights came into view again. The signpost indicated that it was ten miles to Moretonhampstead and he very much doubted that Meehan was going to turn off the main road.
More worrying was the petrol issue. Meehan, it was logical to suppose, had just returned from London when he appeared at Black Down House. He must have had some nearby place to park the car. Would he have a full tank of petrol? Was he carrying any with him?
The KTM's tank probably held about nine lit res. Four-stroke engine, thirty miles to the gallon.. . say a hundred miles, max, before he needed to fill up again. If Meehan needed a refill before then, fine. Alex could ride in and shoot him with the silenced Glock at the petrol station. Ride away before anyone realised what had happened.
If Meehan didn't need petrol before Alex did, then Alex was in trouble. Meehan would simply outrun him.
He came to a decision. He would follow Meehan until his own petrol gage indicated half-full. Then he would call Dawn Harding on his mobile, give her Meehan's position and let her Service's people take over. This was their speciality, after all.
The arrangement was professionally responsible, but also gave him a reasonable chance of sorting the whole thing out himself, which he very much wanted to do. He needed closure, as he suspected did Meehan. Their destinies had intertwined. One of them had to kill the other.
TWENTY- SEVEN.
From Moretonhampstead the dark-blue BMW took the Exeter road and then turned sharply northwards up the valley of the river Exe towards Tiverton. Hanging well back in the half-dark, Alex was still fairly certain that he had not been seen.
At Tiverton the BMW turned eastwards again. He was making for Taunton, but it seemed that caution was leading him to avoid motor ways in favour of much smaller roads. From Taunton, Alex guessed, he would work his way across country to Salisbury.
At first it appeared that Alex was right. Meehan drove through Taunton and continued eastwards on minor roads for twenty-five minutes. And then, a mile or two short of the village of Castle Cary, Alex rounded a corner to see the BMW at a lay-by three hundred yards ahead of him. Meehan must be taking a piss, he thought, braking sharply.
Shit! The fact that he had stopped on seeing Meehan's car rather than driving straight past would unquestionably have set alarm bells ringing.
As nonchalantly as he could, he wrenched open the cotton bag, pulled out the jerry can and filled the KTM's half-empty petrol tank. Then he slipped the jerry can back in the bag, bungee-corded it to the back of the seat and stretched as if he'd only woken up ten minutes earlier. With luck, Meehan would mistake him for a local. The muddy trail bike was hardly the most likely pursuit vehicle.
A palely anonymous figure a figure that Alex had last seen lit by a trip flare exited the roadside hedge. Unhurriedly, Alex swung his leg over the KTM and pressed the start button,
intending to pull level with the car and shoot Meehan where he stood.
When he was still forty yards away, however, he saw Meehan turn towards him, handgun at full stretch. A series of rounds whipped past Alex's head, and as he desperately braked and ducked he saw Meehan leap into his vehicle and accelerate at high speed down the road.
Pulling out the Glock, Alex fired half a dozen rounds after him, but without visible effect. Right, he thought. Gloves off. Let's cock, lock and rock.
There was no hanging back now. As Meehan took the BMW screaming through the village at close to 80 mph, Alex followed close behind. For the first time in his life he prayed for a police vehicle. A whooping siren and a set of flashing blue lights and his problems would be over.
But of course there was no police vehicle to be seen. Instead, Meehan hurled himself northwards, pulling every trick out of the evasive driving handbook that he could remember. But Alex had done the same course with the same instructors and was driving the more manoeuvrable if also by far the more dangerous vehicle.
He quite simply locked on and stayed there, dropping back and outwards a few yards every time the road straightened in case Meehan slammed on the brakes at high speed generally considered the most effective countermeasure against a following motorcycle.
In this fashion Meehan racing ahead, Alex hanging grimly on to his tail they screamed up through Radstock and Weston to the M4. Still no police and precious little traffic. It was Saturday, Alex realised belatedly. And it couldn't be more than six thirty. Seven at the latest.
At junction 18 of the M4 Meehan pulled hard over on to the motorway and joined the slow-lane traffic at 70 mph. Flattening himself to the KTM's narrow seat, eyes streaming behind his goggles, Alex followed as the BMW swung across to the fast lane: 90 mph, 95. The vibrations from the KTM's tyres were turning his muscles to Plasticene. His body ached, he had a cracking migraine and was having difficulty focusing his eyes.
Touching 100 mph now.
Just hang on. One of us, sooner or later, is going to run out of petrol.
There was nothing, now, beyond staying with Meehan. It was all he had to do.
Just stay on.
The Severn Road Bridge. At breakneck speed, Meehan crashed the baffler and Alex followed. He had a momentary impression of a man in a fluorescent yellow rain jacket peering from a cabin, then the tableau was far behind them and they were swerving through the buffeting winds and rain of the westbound motorway towards Newport.
A screaming turn north next, up the Usk valley. Alex was all machine now and all pain. There was no thought beyond pursuit. At times it seemed as if he and the Watchman were one, controlled by the same hand, racing to a final rendezvous that they both craved.
Which of them would last longer? They roared through Usk, Abergavenny, Tredegar and Cefn Coed. And still the unearthly emptiness and the sense of driving the dawn before them. They were in the Black Mountain country now, among hills known by name to every SAS member, past and present. There was Cefn Crew, rearing blackly over the reservoir, there was the foreshortened bulk of Fan Fawr, there was the jagged ridge line of Craig Fan-ddu. These were the rocks that they had trained over, month after month, sweating and freezing and cursing as they dragged their aching bodies and their rock-filled Bergans over the windy granite peaks.
And then, as the dark blue BMW hurled up the thread-like Cwm Taf valley ahead of them, Alex suddenly knew where the story was going to end. For there, towering over them all, was the pitiless mother of all the Black Mountains Pen-yFan. Every SAS selection cadre knew Pen-y-Fan they were harassed up and down its grey, shale-strewn sides until they hated every unyielding inch of it. One of the final elements of selection into the Regiment was named 'the Fan Dance', as it started and finished with an ascent of the mountain.
The track briefly straightened. On the wet, potholed surface the trail-bike was coming into its own and the gap between the two vehicles was narrowing. Slamming to an angled halt, pulling out the Glock and wrenching the goggles from his eyes, Alex released a fast volley of shots at the disappearing BMW. The first few missed, ricocheting from the roadside shale, but then as Meehan threw the car into the approaching bend his rear driver's-side tyre was suddenly shredded rubber.
The BMW's overturning was both appalling and beautiful. The right-hand side of the car seemed to tuck into the shale-strewn verge for a moment and then the black guts of the machine were suddenly skywards, the roll completing itself with a shuddering crash back on to four wheels.
The vehicle came to a smoking rest
beside the road, its windows glassless, then Alex saw the wiry figure of Meehan drag himself painfully out. The former agent was obviously injured, perhaps seriously, but he began climbing immediately, scrambling desperately over the rocks and fallen slates up the western face of the mountain. Slowly, warily, Alex rode the KTM towards the abandoned car.
Reloading the Glock and unscrewing the silencer silencers tended significantly to reduce muzzle velocity he set off after the fleeing figure.
The two men climbed for several minutes, Alex remaining a steady fifty metres behind Meehan, until the vehicles were toylike on the road below. As they climbed so the wind's roar grew, dragging at them, deafening them, and punching at their clothes. Meehan, despite his injury he seemed to be dragging a leg was setting a ferocious pace and Alex felt the sweat streaming down his back as he followed.
At a thousand feet a shadowy rain squall crossed? the face of the mountain.
Meehan turned, his face pale and contorted with pain, and sent several rounds spattering about his pursuer.
Granite chips flicked lethally about Alex's face and then a rogue shot, deflected by a rock, punched through the cor dura rucksack on his back. Ricocheting from the Maglite torch, the 9mm round tore downwards and outwards through the flesh of the SAS officer's back.
Shit. Shit!
It felt as if someone had laid a block of ice across him. There was no pain, although he knew that the pain would come. He could feel the blood coursing down his back.
Ignore it. Eyes on the target.
Flattening himself against the rock face, Alex saw Meehan's progress was becoming erratic. He was flailing around the shock and the injury sustained in the BMW shunt were taking their toll.
Finally, in a shower of flaky shale, he fell, rolling limply down the hillside to a grassy outcrop a little above Alex's position. His automatic dropped spun past Alex on to the rocks below.
Warily, Alex approached Meehan, who lay face down on the springy turf.
Correct procedure would have been a double tap to the back of the skull, but he felt he owed this man more than a dog's death.
He turned the fallen man over. The thin, pale features were instantly recognisable and twisted themselves into a wry smile. Blood oozed from a cut in his head.
"Lucky shot, boyo, blowing that tyre."
The accent took Alex straight back to Belfast.
"I've no doubt of it," he said and quickly began to search the fallen man. There was a sheathed Mauser knife and several spare magazines, and a pocketful of loose 9mm rounds, but no other firearm.
Meehan pursed his lips.
"Did I hit you back there?"
Alex felt around his back. The hand came back bloody.
"Yeah. Another lucky shot, I'd say."
Meehan looked away.
"So are you going to waste me or what?"
Alex didn't answer. Reaching for his mobile he dialled Dawn's number.
She answered on the first ring.
"Alex. Thank God. Where are you?"
He told her.
"And Meehan?"
Something made Alex hesitate. He looked down at Meehan.
"Dealt with."
A faint smile touched the former agent's lips.
"Stay there," Dawn ordered.
"Don't move. I'll pick up a flight to Brecon be with you in an hour."
"We're not going anywhere," said Alex wearily, and rang off.
"So," Meehan repeated, almost bored.
"You goin' to follow orders, soldier, and waste me?"
"You didn't waste me when you had the chance. Why?"
"Wasn't part of the plan."
"Can we talk about that plan?"
Meehan was silent for a moment, then the corner of his mouth twitched.
"Good place for us to meet, don't you think?"
Alex smiled and nodded.
Curiosity touched the pale features.
"How did you find out about Black Down?"
"A conversation you had," said Alex.
"Connolly?"
"Yup."
Meehan nodded.
"I never told Den Connolly where the house was. Something stopped me, even then."
Briefly, Alex explained how forensic analysis had discovered the solvent in his system.
"Poisoned, was I?" said Meehan thoughtfully, looking across the valley towards Fan Fawr.
"I hadn't allowed for that, I'll admit."
"Connolly said you never turned tout."
"Nor I did. Not ever."
Alex stared at him.
"So what Meehan looked wearily away.
"Just do your job, man, and give us the double tap. Get the fuck on with it."
"I want to know."
"Just do it."
"None of it makes sense. Don't you at least want it to make sense?"
"You wouldn't believe me."
"I might."
The two men stared at each other. Around them the wind scoured the rocks and flattened the grass. The place was theirs alone.
"How much do you know?" asked Meehan eventually.
"I know about Watchman. I know what you were sent over the water to do. I know that the whole thing went bad, agents were killed, all hell broke loose."
Meehan nodded.
"Whatever you've been told by Five, who I'm assuming you're working for right now, remember that it had a single purpose: to persuade you to kill me. Would it be fair to say that?"
"I guess so," said Alex.
"Right. Well, remember that. And remember too that I'm a dead man. I've no need to lie."
"I'll remember," said Alex and moved down the slope to collect Meehan's weapon.
TWENTY-EIGHT.
"The first thing you have to understand," said Joseph Meehan, 'is just how much I've always hated the IRA. My father was a good man, religious and patriotic, and they crippled him, humiliated him and expelled him from the country he loved.
Drove him to an early grave. And there have been thousands like him -innocent people whose lives have been destroyed by those maniac bastards. Whatever else I tell you I want you to remember that one fact. I hate the IRA, I always have hated them and I will take that hatred to my grave.
He paused and the lids narrowed over the pale, fathomless eyes.
"I'm assuming that Fenwick and the rest of them told you the background stuff- the Watchman selection process and the rest of it?"
Alex nodded.
There was a curious blankness to Meehan's words. They were passionate, but delivered without expression.
"When I got over there I started off living in a flat in Dunmurry and working at Ed's they tell you about that?"
"The electronic goods place?"
"That's right. Ed's. Ed's Electronics. And I was dating this girl called Tina.
Nice girl. Grandparents came over from Italy after the war. Had a loudmouth brother called Vince who worked in a garage and fancied himself as God's gift to the Republican movement. Tried the bullshit on me a couple of times but I told him to fuck off- said I didn't want to know.
"That pissed him off, and he made sure that the local volunteers found out that I'd served with the Crown forces -thought they might give me a good kicking or something.
Course they did no such thing, they're not that stupid, but a couple of them started watching me and asking the odd question, and they soon found out I knew my way around an electronic circuit."
Meehan touched his head and regarded his bloody fingertips.
"I'll spare you the details but there was the usual eyeing-up process and I started to hang out with these half-dozen fellers who thought of themselves as an ASU. They weren't, of course they were just a bunch of saloon bar Republicans. I did a couple of under-thecounterjobs for them radio repairs and then a much heavier bunch showed up.
Older guys. Heard I was interested in joining the movement. I'd said no such thing, but I said yeah, I was sympathetic more sympathetic than I'd been in the past, anyway.
"And
?" asked Alex.
"And they didn't fuck around. Asked straight out if I wanted in. So I said yeah,
OK."
"Must have been satisfying after all that time."
"Yes and no. These guys were pretty hard-core. I knew there'd be no going back."
"So what happened next?"
"There was a whole initiation process. I was driven to a darkened room in north Belfast and interviewed by three men I never saw. What was my military history with the Crown forces, what courses had I done and where had I been posted?
Was I known as a Republican sympathiser and had I ever attended a Republican march? Had I ever been arrested? Where in Belfast did I drink.. . Hours of it. And why the fuck did I want to join the IRA?
"I told them I was fed up of living as a second-class citizen simply because I was a Catholic. I told them that I'd been in the Brit army and felt the rough edge of discrimination over there. Said since my return to Belfast I'd come to feel that the IRA spoke the only language the Crown understood. Parroted all the stuff I'd learnt from the Five instructors, basically."
"And they bought it?"
"They heard me out and it must have gone down OK,
because I was told that from that moment on I was to make no public or private statement of my Republican sympathies, not to associate with known Republicans, had to avoid Republican bars et cetera. I was put forward for what's called the Green Book lectures a two-month course of indoctrination which took place every Thursday evening in a flat in Twinbrook. History of the movement, rules of engagement, counter-surveillance, anti-interrogation techniques ..
"The old spot on the wall trick?"
"All that bollocks, yeah. And at the end of it I was sworn in.
"How did that feel?"
"Well, there was no going back, that was for certain sure. But I was finally earning the wages I was being paid."
"Go on."
"I started off as a dicker. I was told to hang on to my job so my volunteer activities were all in the evenings and at weekends. And this started to cause problems with Tina. She was a sympathiser, but not to the point where she was prepared to give her life over. She wanted to do what other girls did go out in the evening, go round the shops on a Saturday .