Zero Option

by Chris Ryan

  In Reading our first port of call was a general bookshop, where we bought a copy of the local 1:25,000 map. That showed some detail, but what we really needed was the relevant sheet of the six-inchestothe-mile Ordnance Survey, and we ran one to ground in a specialist map shop in London Road

  . Thus armed, we stoked up with some good spaghetti in an Italian restaurant, and pored over the maps while we drank our coffee.

  'Roman coin hoard found here, 1953,' Tony read out, twisting the map at an angle.

  'Is that right? Near where we're heading?'

  'Not far off.'

  'They'll have to add another line to the next edition,'

  I said. 'Barrett Fifty sniper rifle found here, 2002.'

  The site of the transit hide was easy enough to identify within a hundred yards or so, even though we couldn't pinpoint it. The PIRA guy had said the old well was on the southern edge of a small, triangular wood called Kate's Copse, which had its apex pointing north and its base running east and west. We found the wood all right, but we couldn't tell how far along the half-mile base the well would be.

  The route given us by the PIRA would bring us in along a lane which ran one field away from the northern point of the wood. If we took that road we could park within a couple of hundred yards of our objective. I checked the route through, turn by turn, against the map, and saw that the description was painstakingly accurate: go south off the main drag on unsigned side road, three cottages on corner; 500 yards, farm on right; 500 yards, sewage works on right, ninety-degree turn left; 700 yards straight, then deciduous wood on right; 200 yards on, grass ride on right. Leave car here…

  The more I looked at it, the less I fancied it. If dickers were out that was where they'd be: watching that lane, anywhere between the main road and the site. With the motivation of the PIRA so uncertain, my instinct was to keep well clear.

  'Look at this,' I said. 'Kate's Copse is on the brow of the hill. But there's another track here, to the south of it, along the bottom of this valley. We can park down here and walk up over. Then, if anyone's watching the top lane, they'll miss us.'

  'I'm with you,' Tony agreed. 'It's not much farther.

  Better all round.'

  Back in the car, I called Whinger's mobile. The first time it didn't connect, and I assumed that he was on the move in some low-lying area. When I tried again five minutes later he came on, patchily, but clear enough to say that they were on their way to a new safe house 'with ten miles of target', with an ETA of 2000 hours.

  I didn't want to ask the place's precise location because I knew Farrell would be listening to the conversation, so I told Whinger I'd call again when they'd arrived.

  The evening was dim and murky. No rain was falling but there was heavy cloud cover, and I could see that darkness was going to fall early. All the same, we had an hour in hand, and I'd been planning to stop in a quiet lane so that we could get in a few minutes' kip. But by the time we cleared the northern outskirts of 1Leading the old adrenalin was running again, and I felt too hepped up to be sleepy.

  'Tell you what,' I said, 'I don't want to count any chickens, but we've got time to recce a site for the test- shoot tomorrow. Let's take another look.'

  I pulled off the road on to a patch of earth under some big beeches, and we'd hardly started scrutinising the map again when Tony pointed with his forefinger and said, 'Hey! Whaddaya know? A genuine rifle range, all ready for us.'

  Sure enough, in a remote, wooded valley a few miles east of our site, the 1:25,000 map showed a narrow rectangular opening in the forest, nearly half a mile long, marked white among the green, and bearing the legend 'Rifle Range'.

  'I don't believe it,' I said. 'If it's like the map shows, it's got everything: six or seven hundred yard sight-line and a remote location, no houses for miles. Let's go for it. You drive, though. Those little roads could be private tracks; if we get stopped, you do the talking. We'll be American tourists, lost in the great British jungle.'

  'What do I do?' said Tony in mock alarm. 'Act dumb?'

  'Act yourself,' I told him, 'and that'll fool anybody.'

  He gave me a look as we changed places.

  Twenty minutes later, we left the main road and dived down a spectacularly steep lane. At the bottom the ground flattened out, but soon the road swung left- handed into the beginning of the secluded valley. We passed a pair of cottages on our right, then a farm on our left. Beyond the farm the surface suddenly deteriorated from tarmac into pitted gravel, and a hand-painted notice, black on white, proclaimed it a ,P, lvArE P, OAD.

  'Thought so,' I said. 'Keep going.'

  We crawled on, lurching through potholes, with steep grass fields lifting away on either hand. A few minutes later we passed the remains of some ancient building on our left, walls smothered with ivy, standing back from the road.

  'Jesus!' Tony exclaimed. 'It's the ruins of a church.

  This place is getting spooky.'

  Soon we were into the woods, which turned out to

  be dense beech, with branches hanging over the lane and turning it into a tunnel. In there the light was already so dim that I instinctively glanced at my watch to make sure we weren't running out of time. In fact we were fine, and I could see from the map that we were almost at our objective.

  'lkound this next corner, it'll be on our right,' I said.

  'I'll believe it when we see it.'

  But see it we did. Tony swung left, and after a couple of hundred yards we came upon an opening in the trees on our right, with a red and white barrier pole across it.

  We pulled off the track, got out of the car, dodged under the pole and walked throughthe gap, to find ourselves, sure enough, on a rifle range. A long, narrow strip of rough-mown grass sliced through the forest along the contours at the foot of the hill, and ended in a natural butt away to our right. There was a firing point every hundred yards, and although the place had an amateurish, partially-kept air about it, the range was clearly in use. Tyre-marks in the mud showed that quite a few vehicles came and went, the grass had been cut lately, and a couple of poles for flying danger flags had recently been repainted white.

  'Incredible!' I said quietly. 'It must be the TA who use it. There's not even a range hut. They must bring everything with them when they do a shoot. But what a place! We've even got the distances marked out for us: no need to step them out.' We'd come out at the 200 yard mark, and away to our left we could see five more firing-points stretching away, giving 700 yards in all.

  'That big rifle's going to make one hell of a noise down in here,' said Tony, looking up at the sides of the valley all round. 'It'll sound like a cannon.'

  'Won't matter. We'll just take a couple of shots and slip away. I don't fancy driving in along this bottom track, though. We could easily get trapped. There must be some way we can come in on foot.' .

  Recourse to the map showed another track running steeply uphill to the north, past the far end of the range, towards a main road on the next ridge. We took it, but soon saw we'd made a mistake: rainwater had carved deep channels out of the mud, and even a four-wheel- drive vehicle would have had problems negotiating the track. Seeing that the Granada wasn't going to make it, Tony eased off and backed carefully down.

  'That's our way in for tomorrow, all the same,' I said.

  'Park at the top, walk down, shoot, and away on foot.

  If anyone turns up we can disappear into the trees. Let's get round there now for a shufti - back the way we came, out along the valley, then up and over. All we need is to find a place where we can park in the morning.'

  As I'd forecast, night came early while we were driving towards the transit hide. Full darkness had fallen by the time we reached the lane I'd earmarked. Again we parked under trees, and we hadn't gone fifty metres from the Granada before the car had vanished from sight. Our walk-in to the site was relatively short about a mile - and as we were in no hurry, I took it at a snail's pace. For camouflage purposes we'd pulled on DPM smocks over our civilian
gear; we both had pistols in shoulder holsters, and each of us carried an MP 5 with spare magazines. From camp, I'd also brought a night-sight of the kind we'd used in Iraq - an image intensifier that gives really good vision in the dark. I had it slung round my neck on para-cord so that I could bring it up with a single movement. And for the first time since the intercept at Ludlow, we were wearing our covert radios.

  Tony and I kept about ten metres apart as we walked uphill over a grass field beside an overgrown hedge, myself leading. Even with my eyes accustomed to the dark I could see very little - but memorised details of our route were printed in my mind.

  There was practically no wind, and what there was a breath from the west - was coming from our left, through the hedge.

  After four hundred metres, another hedge led off across the hill to the right at ninety degrees to the one we were following. Luckily cattle had pushed their way

  through it, creating gaps, so that we were able to slip through with scarcely a sound. Another five minutes brought us to the point on the brow of the hill where our guiding row of bushes came to an end. A barbed wire fence ran across our line of advance, just visible on the horizon against the cloudy sky. I beckoned Tony forward and held the top strand down taut while he went over it, to prevent the wire twanging. Then he did the same for me, and we crept on silently over the big field beyond, the last before our target wood.

  Still the breeze was steady on my left cheek. I stopped. Ahead and to our left, something pale was showing. The night sight revealed it as a sheep, outlier of a large flock. Hearing Tony move up close behind me, I whispered, 'Sheep. We'll detour right so we don't panic them.'

  On we went. Frequent checks with the sight showed that the sheep were aware of our presence - they had their heads up and were looking in our direction - but by skirting round them we persuaded them that we weren't a threat, and they stayed where they were.

  Now the southern face of the wood loomed ahead of us like a black wall. We were coming in towards its right-hand corner. About a hundred yards out I stopped and went down on one knee for a thorough scan. The sight revealed fence posts and tree-trunks, but nothing sinister. Thinking back, I remembered the PIll's instructions about a clearing and a disused chalk-pit.

  The old well, they said, was just inside the wood, close to the fence, but the clearing and the pit were behind it.

  Therefore, I reckoned, I should see some sort of opening in the trees.

  'Got it,' I breathed. 'I can see an open space. OK.

  We're on course.'

  Heading slightly left, we approached the straight boundary of the wood at an angle. Our feet were

  making no sound on the sheep-mown grass, and the night was so dark that anyone without special equipment would be practically blind. Nevertheless, something made me stop twenty yards out from the trees.

  When I went down flat, Tony did the same a few feet behind me. For a minute we lay listening. Nothing.

  Then on the wind I caught a very faint whiff.” cigarette smoke. A shiver went up my back as I thought of the moment in the Libyan desert when Whinger had smelt smoke, just as we were about to establish our LUP.

  Reaching round, I snapped finger and thumb quietly, and I heard faint rustling as Tony wormed up beside me.

  'Cigarette smoke,' I whispered. 'There's someone out to our left.' I raised the night sight and scanned again. 'There he is,' I said quietly. 'A man, on the corner of the wood.'

  'What's he doing?'

  'Standing there. He's got binoculars. Looking round.'

  'He'll never pick us out - too dark.'

  'No, but let's get into cover.'

  We crawled forward, belly to the ground, and in a few seconds were under the bottom strand of another barbed wire fence. Inside it, out of sheep-reach, longer grass and shrubs were growing.

  Leaning outwards, I took one more look at the corner. The man hadn't moved. 'You stay here,' I breathed. 'Get your arse backed into the undergrowth while I go and look for the hide. Take the sight and keep an eye on our friend. If he heads this way, warn me, and we'll lie low till he's gone past.' I lifted the cord over my head and handed the sight over.

  'OK,' Tony whispered. 'Good hunting.'

  In the cover of the woodland edge, it was safe to stand up, so I got to my feet and shuffled carefully forward. My mind was moving far faster than my body.

  The guy on the corner could be a gamekeeper, on the look-out for poachers, but at this time of the year that seemed unlikely. More probably it was a dicker - and if it was, what was his brief? What the hell was he doing here? Was he supposed to intercept us as we came to the hide? Or pretend he'd caught us stealing the weapon, and drop us in possession of it? Did he have a colleague on the hide itself?

  My sixth sense told me that the answer to the last question was no. Already I was on the edge of the clearing and very close to the hide, yet I had no feeling that anybody was near me.

  I moved on, pushing each foot gently through the long grass. At the south-western edge of the clearing according to my brief- there should be an old iron hand-purrip mounted, on a brick base . . . I nearly bumped into it before I saw it, standing shoulder-high in front of me. This was the means by which people living in the cottage had once brought their water up out of the ground. I reached out and touched the rounded top of the pump. From the rough feel, I could tell that the cast iron was pitted with the rust of ages.

  The opening of the well had been described as six feet out from the base of the pump. I dropped on to hands and knees. The temptation to use a torch was strong, but I resisted it - better to operate by feel. I was looking, or groping, for a circular wooden cover covered by sods of tuff. Pulling my Commando knife from its sheath, I began jabbing the blade vertically into the ground, and after four or five soft touches I suddenly hit something hard, which gave out a quite different sound. I reached out farther and jabbed again. This time I got a definite hollow thump.

  A moment later I had located the two wooden

  291 handles. Steady, I told myself. This could be booby- trapped to blow when someone moves it.

  Feeling carefully about in the surrounding mulch, I picked, out the perimeter of the cover and ran my fingers round it. When I came on no wires or catches, I reckoned all was well, and lifted the cover clear.

  For a moment I sat back on my heels and held down the pressel switch of my radio. 'Tony,' I said quietly.

  'I'm on site. Found the hide. What's our guy doing?'

  'Hasn't moved.'

  'Nobody at the other corner?'

  'Nope.'

  'OK, then. I'll get the weapon up.'

  Below ground level it was safe to use the torch, so I reached down into the cavity and switched on. The beam lit up a blue nylon rope, anchored at the top to an iron ring set into the neck of the well, and dropping ten feet into the old, brick-lined cistern. On the dry mud floor at the bottom lay a fat grey cylinder about five feet long.

  Quickly I switched off, pocketed the torch and began hauling the rope up. The tube was a fair old weight thirty pounds, I guessed - but it came up hanging at an angle, so that I was able to bring it through the neck of the well without it touching the sides.

  Just as I laid it in the grass Tony's voice suddenly came in my ear. 'Watch it, Geordie. The guy on the corner's heading this way. Fifty yards . . . forty . . . thirty. Ah, Jesus!'

  I wriggled the MP 5 off my back and knelt silently with the weapon at the ready, watching, waiting. I kept thinking, if this were Northern Ireland we'd simply grab the guy, hand him over to the police and have him whipped away.

  When nothing happened I asked, very low, 'What's he doing?'

  No answer. That could only mean the man was extremely close. 'Is he within ten yards?' I went.

  Back came one briefcase, as Tony gave his pressel a single nudge. That meant yes.

  'Is he within five yards?'

  Psssch.

  Bloody hell! I concentrated intently on keeping still, and counted seconds to give myse
lf an idea of how much time was passing. I'd gone past 180 - three minutes which seemed like thirty - when at last I got another beep in the earpiece.

  'Moving off?' I asked.

  Psssch, psssch.

  'Great. Tell me when he's clear.'

  I waited another whole minute. Then Tony came up with, 'OK. He's down at the other corner.'