Free The Hostage by Duncan Falconer

before he realised he was very much in the wrong place. Since that day pilots were warned their careers would be over if they so much as skimmed the border.
    The pilot turned well before the frontier and cruised north-west and parallel with it. Stratton could see a combined army and police checkpoint forming below on the main road to Monaghan. It was the smaller roads that worried him. He made out an army foot patrol heading across fields toward the border. For the umpteenth time he checked the signal tracking device attached to the craft’s control panel in front of the co-pilot seat. Where the hell was Spinks’s marker?
     
    Spinks held the small device in front of his face. He could not see it, but it helped him, memory wise, to locate the small switch on its side. He had tested it that morning, as he always did prior to heading out on to the ground, before he positioned it in the best hiding place he could think of. He was often reminded of its existence when the corner of the device dug into his testis and required an immediate adjustment. Otherwise he usually forgot about it. It was just another piece of equipment operatives carried and only a last-resort device in the event of the improbable. He could forgive it for all the discomfort it had given him in the past three years because that bastard who shot him had not found it. Now his only prayer was that it actually worked.
    He clicked up the tiny switch with his nail. A pinheadsized LED light blinked in the darkness. It was working, apparently. He rested it on his chest and exhaled heavily, and as he did so a sharp pain shot through his chest and shoulder to remind him of his injury. ‘I’ve been shot,’ he said to himself, as if fully realising it for the first time. ‘I’ve been fucking shot and kidnapped, shot and kidnapped!’
     
    Stratton saw the red light flash the instant it came on. A burst of excitement raced through him as he tuned the tracker. All the lights on the panel began to flicker as it warmed to the signal. A gradient of tiny bead-sized lights indicated the signal strength was low but readable, and a single larger one at the bottom of the panel indicated it was behind them.
    ‘Turn around,’ he said quickly to the pilot. The pilot responded and banked the Gazelle steeply one eighty degrees. ‘Whisky one, I have a signal. I repeat I have a signal towards yellow four.’
     
    The words conveyed the rush of excitement straight into the operations room and the tension rose sharply. Mike beat Graham to the handset and snatched it up. ‘Roger, whisky one, towards yellow four. All stations, towards yellow four. Stay off the net unless it’s an emergency, out.’
    The intelligence team hurried in from the int cell just to watch. That’s all they could do now.
    The phone rang. Graham picked it up. ‘Ops,’ he said quickly and listened to the voice the other end. ‘It’s Bill Lawton,’ he said to Mike.
    Mike was engrossed in the map and allocated a small part of his concentration to the call. ‘What has the Gardaí said?’ he asked.
    ‘Did you hear that?’ Graham said into the phone. Bill had and rattled off an answer. ‘He said they’re sending as many people to the border opposite Aughnacloy as they can spare,’ Graham relayed.
    ‘What about London?’ Mike said as Graham aimed the phone at him, then back to his own ear for the reply.
    ‘The boss took care of that,’ Graham said into the phone.
    ‘He hasn’t heard anything, as in Bill hasn’t heard anything,’ he said to Mike. ‘Bill thinks they’re going to leave it up to us.’
    ‘That means they don’t have a clue what to do,’ Mike said. ‘Fine. Anything else?’
    Graham listened for a moment. ‘Okay,’ he said and put the phone back into its cradle. ‘No. He’ll be on the end of this phone if and when he’s needed, and he said good luck.’
    ‘Save it for Spinks,’ Mike muttered as he started pacing a small area, keeping his eyes on the map but not really