Gerald Seymour - Condition black

Zack said, and he laughed but sure as hell it wasn't funny to him, that he'd be kissing goodbye, and the rest of them, to what they had raised in the pub. Kev said, bright-eyed in excitement, that Colt had the gun, and that Colt would take them with him. Fran cried and buried her cheek in Johnny's chest.

All of them, waiting for the action, waiting for it to end, stood among the puddles and the tractor mud. They watched what Colt had brought to their village, his village.

In a blur of movement the shrouded figures ran to take their positions round the building and the outhouses and garages at the back. Heavy movements because they were weighed down with their bulletproof vests and ammunition pouches and radios and the battery-driven power lamps and the image intensifies on the barrels of their rifles.

Hobbes tried to scrape the helicopter sound from his ears. He hadn't got a bloody coat, and he had walked across the football pitch from the helicopter and already his London shoes squelched. He was told that an American, an F. B. I. agent, had been allowed forward because he was the only one on site with a handgun.

"Where forward, Sergeant? The back door?" In a sickening instant Hobbes could see how this nightmare would end.

"Commander," he yelled.

"Right beside you, Mr Hobbes," said a calm voice. "We've seen him, and we know where he is. Do you want him out of there?"

"What's he doing, for Christ's sake?"

" H e looks as though he's counting to a hundred before he goes through the back door."

"Well… My God Almighty would certainly say that he's earned the privilege, going in first. Your cat's paw, eh, Commander? Just don't have him shot by one of ours. Or the boffin, for heaven's sake. Got that?"

" Y e s, Mr Hobbes."

He thought that Colt should have been back.

All the time he watched the staircase. It must have been three, four minutes since he had last heard Colt's step from the ceiling above the back bar.

He did what Colt had done. He untied the laces of his shoes and he retied them tight, strained the cord and then tied a double knot. They would be running across fields, couldn't have his shoes sucked off in the mud, not if he were running and needing to keep up with Colt.

It was the third time that he had undone his laces and retied them, reknotted them.

They should have been, if they had taken off from the airport when he had been told they would take off, somewhere over the Eastern Mediterranean, somewhere over Greece, or over Cyprus.

They should have been beyond recall, sharing a drink and a meal with Colt in the safety of the aeroplane. He was tired, so tired…

The dragging on of the day that had started with breakfast in Lilac Gardens, and with the drive up Mount Pleasant and Mulfords Hill, and with the check at the Falcon Gate, and with the examination of his I/D at the H3 barrier. So tired… He thought of the hours he had spent in front of his screen, working, concentrating. So tired… and he heard again Basil's muttered and embarrassed praise of his paper, and the cheerfulness of Boll's departure. So tired… and there was a meeting in the morning of Senior Principal Scientific Officers and Senior Principal Engineering Officers at which he was expected. It was all madness, and sharp through the exhaustion of his mind was the shouting of his name in the airport, the clatter of gunfire, the collapse of a man in pursuit.

So tired, and so scared by the running away. But they had still the chance of the ferry.

He watched the staircase behind the bar counter. He looked for the reckless and vivid smile of Colt.

He was ready, ready to run with Colt.

" M r s Bissett, until we can resolve our differences, you won't get to bed, I won't move out of your house, and you don't get your children back."

"I have nothing to say."

The Security Officer settled again on the kitchen chair. The house was quiet. There were only two policemen left in the house with them, and they were sprawled out in the sitting room. The search was over. She knew they had found nothing, because as the ripping and tearing went on she had heard the bad temper replace their earlier laughter and chat. She had not heard them attempt to repair what they had broken.

She stared out through the window. She had not turned when the telephone had rung, nor when the Security Officer had been called out of the kitchen, nor when he had come back and the chair had groaned under his weight.

" M r s Bissett, please listen to me very carefully. Your husband was being escorted from the country by a man wanted for murder in Athens, London and Australia. He was intercepted. This young man… "

She muttered the name, the name was Colt.

"… is armed. He is dangerous and unstable. We have to fear for your husband's safety. They are together at the moment in a public house in Wiltshire. They are ringed by armed police.

There is a distinct possibility that the young man will reject ail sensible courses of action, that he will try to break out. He is armed, so he may open fire on police officers, and the armed officers may be forced to return fire… "

She shuddered.

"… and then Frederick would be in the gravest danger. It is a small thing to ask of you, but it could save his life."

She thought of him going out into the dusk, going through her front door, stumbling after Colt, the humiliation of her rejection.

"… We can put you in direct contact with the police there.. ."

" N o. "

" S o that you speak to Frederick, and urge him to surrender… "

" No. "

" We want him out of there, Mrs Bissett, away from the potential crossfire."

"I said, no."

She stared at the window set in the kitchen door, at the raindrops dancing on it like a curtain in the wind.

The Security Officer said, "With a bitch like you for a wife, it's no wonder the poor devil wanted out."

His hand was on the door latch.

He had the Smith and Wesson tight in his hand, barrel against his ear.

Past Flight or Fight, way beyond that.

Erlich would fight…

As he raised the latch he heard the first shimmer of the grating of the metal pieces.

No more caution.

His hip barged into the unfastened door.

The light spilled into his face, and he was moving.

Erlich came into the back bar, and he cannoned off a table, glasses flying, smashing, and he tripped on a chair, and he stumbled, and all the time he was in motion. It was Condition Black. He saw the table peel away towards the fireplace, and the chair career towards the bar counter. He saw the line of upended bottles with optics on their necks, the mounted fox's head with its teeth bared, and the half-finished glasses on the other tables and the ashtrays full. All the time moving until he reached the solid protection of the jukebox. He was crouched down. He was at Isosceles stance, and he pivoted his upper body behind the aiming position of his revolver in Turret One.

He saw the man from the airport on his knees, dark curly hair, his eyeline caught him, thick-rimmed heavy spectacles, dismissed him. He quartered the back bar… No sign of Colt… Shit…

The adrenalin draining from him. All the push, drive, impetus of belting his way into the back bar, safety off, index finger inside the trigger guard, and he did not find Colt.

He yelled, "Where is Colt?"

The man seemed frozen in the position of tying his shoe-laces.

He was met by the empty, terrified stare of the man, and the silence trimmed his shout.

He gazed down at the man over the V-sight and foresight of the revolver, and he could see that there was the increasing shake of his locked fists. Keyed up to go in, and he had lost the brilliance of surprise and his nerves caught at him and the barrel cavorted in the grip of his hands.