THE ENGLISH WITNESS Read Online Free PDF Page B

every level – strength, aggression, resourcefulness, ambition
– and barring a nasty accident would almost certainly outrank him within months.
There was unbroken silence for a couple of minutes during which Serrano thought
wishfully about nasty accidents, then came the response: “I’d stay put as long
as possible. But when I decided it was time to move I’d want to neutralise the
main advantage that we have now.”
    “Which is?”
    “Transport. And the kind of firepower
that’s hard to handle on foot.”
    “OK, so what does that suggest? What are
the worst obstacles to a vehicle like this? Not paved road, obviously, and not
open ground either. Come on, man, think!”
    Wondering why his squad leader did not
invest more energy in thinking for himself, and inclined to think that having
someone else to blame for failure was part of the picture, Martí hesitated
before replying: “The river,” he said finally. “The road bridges are well
spaced out. There’s a lot of space over on the Mundaiz peninsula. A lot of
fences too. We can’t drive through many of them.”
    “Good thinking, but which way would they
go?”
    “I’d use the railway viaduct,” announced
the junior man. “Hell, they’d be inaccessible from the road. With care they could
walk the tracks all the way up to the station. And there’s any number of places
they could cut away—the university campus, maybe, or over the fence to the new
riverside development.”
    It was as well for the squad leader’s already
shaky standing in the eyes of his subordinate that his face was in shadow; Martí
could not see his complexion going grey. Serrano knew that time was running
out, that any time now he would be expected to order a withdrawal.
    “Thank you, Martí,” he said at length,
opening the door as he spoke. “I need you to take the wheel and get me down to
the viaduct. As quietly as you can, but quickly.”
    As Martí stabbed at the accelerator and
the big SUV lumbered forward, Serrano already had his phone out. It was not
totally secure, but it was less porous than short-wave radio. “Get two units across
to Mundaiz and take control of the road bridges from that end. And I want the
crews from another two units inside the station on foot. They need to park
discreetly, and keep a low profile pending further orders.”
    As his partner brought the SUV smoothly to
a halt alongside the railway line and killed the engine, Serrano leapt out and
scrambled up onto the unfenced track bed. He saw in a moment that Martí had called
it right but that an opportunity had been missed. There was just enough daylight
left to make out movement on the viaduct, and resonating through the structure
came the sound of multiple footfalls on the narrow steel catwalk that ran
alongside the tracks. The river was not very wide at this point, but in the
near-darkness the fugitives had a significant head start.
    “They’re on the bridge,” he called
back to Martí in a hoarse stage-whisper. “Get on the radio. One of the Mundaiz
units to cover the tracks below the station, one to patrol between the tracks
and the riverside development. Station units to deploy to the southern end of the
platforms.”
    As soon as Jack heard the roar of Serrano’s approaching SUV and his agitated
voice carrying on the night air, he knew that they were not going to get away
as cleanly as he had expected. His field of vision suddenly filled with roiling
black smoke and flickering red light. For a moment the flashback eclipsed the
reality around him, and he teetered dangerously on the narrow catwalk before regaining
his balance.
    He swore under his breath as his vision
cleared, one blackness giving way to another. He had been anticipating a brisk
march across the university campus and  up the Mundaiz peninsula to the
railway station. From there, he had intended a quick dash over the river, to vanish
into the evening crush of the Old Quarter.
    A moment later, Jack saw that history had