Andy McNab - Brute force

As I drew level, I could see it was two-up. Both sat well back; no conversation, no movement. The side windows were tinted but the windscreen had a direct view of the tollgates. Both guys had black hair, days of growth, black leather jackets. I'd know that look anywhere.

I checked the rear-view as I got to the booth. The Golf cut out into the traffic at the same time as the VFR appeared in the distance.

I took my ticket and the barrier went up. We had two choices: left towards Genoa and the RV, right to head south, further down the coast.

I took the right.

'No, Nick, we want left, towards-'

I put my hand on his to stop him pointing. 'Shut the fuck up.'

The Golf was coming with me.

The Yamaha reappeared as we spiralled up to the autostrada. Good, just the bike and the Golf to contend with so far. With luck, everyone else would have been staking out the RV. Now that we were committed, they would be gunning it down to the next junction.

'We're going the wrong way. We're going to be late.'

'Listen in. Do not look back. Just look at me or ahead.'

He shuffled around in his seat, trying to decide what to do.

'We're being followed, got that? I thought you said Skype was safe…'

'It is, Nick. I don't know what's going on.'

'Well I fucking do.'

A sign said the next exit was a K away. I moved over to the right-hand lane, making it easier for them.

'This can't be them. I trust them-'

'Trust them or not, they've stitched us up.'

The Golf had followed us into the right-hand lane.

'We're going to try and lose them, dump the car and then do a runner.'

The slip road curled steeply to the right. The surface was canted; our wheels juddered on the rumble strips that lined the concrete drainage ditch.

Lynn turned to see what I kept checking in the mirror.

'For fuck's sake! Don't let them know!'

It wouldn't have mattered. The Golf came up close, with the Yamaha following. They were coming for us now we were out of view of the autostrada anyway. It was the best time and the only place to do it.

The Golf was going to ram us into the ditch. The rider would then pull up and drop us with a weapon.

'Fucking hold on!'

I rammed the wheel to the left and moved out into the centre of the road then hit the brakes so hard Lynn's head banged on the dash.

The Golf had been coming up alongside. Now it nearly overshot us. The bonnet was ahead.

I hit the wheel hard and sharp, banging into it and turning immediately back to the centre. There was a screech of metal and its rear windscreen shattered. The driver's arms flailed at the steering wheel as the Golf lurched then disappeared into the ditch. It flipped twice, landing on the driver's side.

The Yamaha braked so hard his back wheel smoked as it slid out from underneath him. I racked the wheel hard and clipped him. The bike banged against the concrete wall that towered up to the autostrada. The rider fell off and tumbled end over end along the tarmac. His machine spun in mid-air.

I put my foot down to clear the area, tyres squealing. Little Fiat Puntos weren't made for this sort of thing. I pumped the brakes to slow down before I hit the exit booth, and came to a screeching halt just in time. I handed over my eighty cents to a woman who didn't even glance up. This was Italy, after all. She'd seen worse.

I was pouring with sweat as we hit the road. 'Tell me where to go. Somewhere to dump this fucking thing and get on a bus so we can get out of here. Tell me.'

We sat on the bus for Chiavari, still heading south along the coast, away from Santa Margherita. Our seats were halfway along the single-decker and out of view of any vehicles that followed. We'd dumped the Punto in a residential street and Lynn had navigated us to a bus stop. We'd bought our tickets at the roadside machine and jumped on.

His head hung down. He was feeling shit for compromising us, and so he should. But I had to keep him revved up. We still had a lot to do.

'Fuck it. Don't worry, it's done. We all fuck up. Besides, they were going to hit us anyway.' I leant over. 'I guess we now know it's the Firm.'

His head jerked up. 'Do we, Nick? It couldn't have been Skype. It's secure. All the Firm knew was our RV. They wouldn't have had operators scouring the whole length of the autostrada just to follow us in. Why bother, if they knew where we were going?'

He had a point.

'And if they'd got a fix on us from the call, why wait until we were on the road? Why not hit us at the flat? Why take the chance of the surveillance being compromised, why take the chance of us not going to the RV?'

He was right. We still did have a place to hide.

The bus stopped for a couple of waffling women and some kids with day sacks. The air conditioning kept everything nice and cool and calm. It was helping me, for sure.

We got to the edge of Chiavari and the bus stopped. I stood up and Lynn followed. We might as well stay on the outskirts of this place and move back to the flat once it was dark.

We went into a cafe to keep out of sight of the road. I nursed an espresso as I visualized the opening of my cache down on the Golden Lane Estate. I picked up the menu and gave it to Lynn. 'Might as well order some food, eh?'

I played with my coffee. In my mind's eye, the screws were still in place. The mortar was still in place. Even the clingfilm; everything was as it should have been. I swallowed the shot and shuddered – only partly because the coffee was so strong. Mainly it was the thought that whoever knew about my cache would have my passport details, and everything else would have followed. They would have trawled through any credit card movements. My passport would have been pinged by the biometrics as soon as it was put under the reader at Genoa, and that would have confirmed that the tickets I'd bought on the credit card weren't a decoy. The hire car would have turned up on their screens, and all they had to do was check the camera information coming out of the tollbooths.

It all pointed back to the Firm, no matter what Lynn believed.

They would have some intelligence-sharing agreement in place with the Italians. They'd be able to link into their cameras and access plate-recognition machinery at the tollbooths without even leaving their desks. The Italians wouldn't have had to know what was going on. The request would have been entirely routine, and submitted with a big pile of others.

Once they knew where we'd come off the autostrada, they would have had to start checking the old-fashioned way, and they wouldn't have involved the Italians in that, for sure. Meanwhile, they would have been looking for us electronically, waiting for credit cards to be pinged.

Lynn was busy waffling away to the waiter when I realized that there was someone I'd overlooked – someone else who knew about my passport.

The waiter left.

'Can you get me a phone card?'

'We calling Vauxhall Cross?'

'Fuck Vauxhall Cross.'

A few seconds later a couple of paninis appeared, along with glasses of chopped-up carrot and celery.

I asked for a cappuccino.

The phone rang six times.

I cut straight in when I heard her voice. 'Just phoning to say thanks for the ginger cake; it was lovely – as always.'

But she didn't screech with delight as she usually did at the sound of my voice, or launch into intimate details of her latest bingo adventure.

She was in shit state.

'Something terrible… I… It's…' She gulped in air.

'What's happened, Leena? Is it Brendan?'

There was a long silence.

The phone clattered to the floor.

Traffic raced up and down the coast road and I pressed my ear hard against the receiver.

'Leena?'