James Barrington - Overkill

There was some cover to the north of the auto-route, where men could be concealed, and the central reservation had established shrubs, which would act as a shield between the two carriageways. Dekker returned to the Transit and looked inside. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘this is it. The two artics will be positioned about two hundred yards in front of us.’

‘Where are they now?’ Richter asked.

‘Patience,’ Colin Dekker said. ‘According to Erulin, they’re on their way to the parking area we used for our rendezvous. They’ll wait there until we know the convoy is a bit closer.’

Dekker called the troopers out of the Transit and stood with them by the side of the autoroute, shielded from the view of passing traffic by the van. By his gestures Richter knew he was trying to decide on force disposition and arcs of fire for his men, and probably also for the Gigènes snipers. Richter looked back at the Trafic van, where a group of a dozen men in camouflage clothing were standing. He could see two were carrying 7.62mm FR–F1 sniper rifles fitted with flash suppressors and laser sights – the standard GIGN weapon.

‘Nervous, Paul?’ John Westwood asked.

‘Of course I’m nervous,’ Richter said. ‘I don’t ambush armed Russian convoys carrying nuclear weapons every day. There’s a hell of a lot riding on this.’

‘Granted. What do you think of the site?’

‘It’s not perfect. I would have preferred a sharp bend immediately before it, but you don’t get sharp bends on French autoroutes.’ Richter looked at the passing traffic and then at the terrain to the north. ‘Once the traffic stops, it should be quiet enough. No houses in view, no awkward farmers ploughing fields. It should do. In fact,’ he added, ‘it will have to do.’

Oval Office, White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.

News of the crisis had, of necessity, spread. Key congressmen had been summoned to either the Pentagon or the White House and been briefed on the situation. The Secretary of Defense was still flitting between the White House and the Gold Room at the Pentagon. They had adequate communications between the two establishments, but the President preferred face-to-face discussions. You can’t, he often said, tell what a man is thinking if you can’t see his face.

‘I think,’ the President said, at the end of a meeting at the White House, ‘that it’s time to start taking preventative measures.’

The Secretary of Defense nodded. ‘Agreed, Mr President. I’ll implement JEEP as soon as I get back to the Pentagon.’

Autoroute A26, vicinity of Couvron-et-Aumencourt, France

Five minutes later Lacomte arrived in an unmarked light blue Trafic van, parked in front of the Transit, got out and walked back to Erulin’s vehicle. He returned with the GIGN lieutenant, motioned to Dekker, and then to Richter and the other two men. The back of Lacomte’s Renault was a mobile command post, with radio and other communications equipment. Two operators sat in swivel chairs wearing headphones and listening intently. As they clustered together at the back, one of them raised a hand and then addressed Lacomte. ‘Valmy,’ he said.

‘ Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça? ’ Lacomte responded, picking up a map.

‘ Ils sont à Valmy. Près de Sainte Menehould .’

‘ Bien ,’ Lacomte said, then switched to English. ‘The convoy’s on autoroute A4 and we’re getting a position report every time it passes a junction or service area. It took the northern route, through Metz, as we thought it probably would, and it’s now between Sainte Menehould and Châlons-sur-Marne, heading west. We have what I believe you would call a revolving long-tail, Mr Beatty. Six vehicles, swapping places regularly, sometimes ahead of the convoy, sometimes behind. The drivers pull in for fuel or just into a rest area to get behind the target, then overtake again later. As a matter of interest,’ he went on, ‘the convoy has been averaging almost exactly eighty-five kilometres per hour.’

‘Fine,’ Richter said. ‘What’s its disposition – where are the escorting cars?’

Lacomte addressed the question to one of the radio operators, who replied at once in rapid French. Lacomte translated. ‘The Mercedes saloons have been swapping positions fairly regularly, but generally they have one in front of the lorry and one behind, about a hundred metres distant. The limousine has always been the last vehicle in the group, sometimes as much as a mile behind.’ The radio operator spoke again and Lacomte paused to listen. ‘They’ve just changed places again. It looks as if their standard procedure is for both cars to accelerate in front of the lorry if they see any sign of problems ahead.’

‘How far ahead do they go?’ Richter asked.

Lacomte waited for a response from the radioman before replying. ‘It looks like about one kilometre. Why?’

‘Just an idea. What do you think they’ll do when they see our little accident?’

Lacomte shrugged. ‘If they do what they’ve done up to now, the two saloons will accelerate ahead to investigate it.’

‘Exactly,’ Richter replied. ‘We’re not really interested in the cars – it’s the lorry and the limousine that we want, so let’s isolate them.’

‘How?’ Colin Dekker asked.

‘First,’ Richter asked Lacomte, ‘have you got radio links with the lorry drivers?’

‘Of course.’

‘Good. Let’s revise our original plan. We don’t use the articulated lorries to block the autoroute in front of the convoy. We use one to block the autoroute in front of the lorry, but behind the two saloons, and the other to shut the back door, to block the road behind the limousine. I don’t want that car doing a U-turn and vanishing somewhere in northern France.’

They considered this for a few moments. ‘That’s better,’ said Dekker. ‘Separating the cars from the truck makes good sense, and might avoid some problems. But we still need to rig an accident or something else to entice the saloons ahead.’

‘Time is running out,’ Lacomte interrupted, looking at his watch. ‘If we are to implement this change we will have to do it quickly. I will have to re-brief the lorry drivers and the road crew by radio, and the convoy is probably now only around a hundred and ten kilometres away. That’s just over an hour.’

‘How’s this?’ Richter said. ‘Our lorries are waiting at the parking area in the Forêt de Samoussy, near Laon?’

‘If they aren’t there now they will be within about five minutes,’ Lacomte replied.

The radio operator interrupted again. ‘ Saint Etienne-au-Temple ,’ he said.

Lacomte nodded, glanced at the autoroute map on the inside rear door of the Trafic and checked his watch. ‘They’ve speeded up a bit. That puts the convoy due north of Châlons-sur-Marne, with about one hundred kilometres to run. Carry on,’ he said, looking at Richter.

‘Your plan was to get the lorries moving ahead of the convoy, block the road and wait for it to arrive, yes?’ Lacomte nodded. ‘Change the orders,’ Richter said. ‘Tell the first driver to move out as soon as the Russian lorry has passed the parking area, and the second to pull out after the limousine. When they get to the ambush site, the Mercedes saloons will probably accelerate ahead. Once the driver of the first lorry sees them do that, he should pass the Russian artic, get about a hundred yards ahead of it but still behind the two cars, and then brake hard, slewing the lorry across both lanes of the carriageway and the hard shoulder. That shouldn’t be a problem, should it?’

Lacomte smiled slightly and shook his head. ‘No. That particular driver spends most of his spare time racing trucks on international circuits – that’s why we selected him for this job. It will not be a problem. And the second lorry will block the road in the same way, but behind the limousine?’