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SOCAR unit was on-site at the time, having just returned several members of a notorious gang of London blaggers to Gull Rock, after supervising a day out for them at the Old Bailey.
    Chief Inspector Andy Braithwaite had tactical command. He was a rugged Yorkshireman with lean, pitted features, a shaven head and a huge handlebar moustache. A former Royal Marine, even at forty-seven he was wiry and fit, and suited his Kevlar body armour with POLICE plastered across the back of it. If he ever drew the Glock nine-millimetre that he wore at his hip, you’d have no doubt – and you’d be right – that he was ready, willing and able to use it.
    Braithwaite listened intently, chewing gum, while Maxine Mulgrave, Security Governor at Gull Rock, outlined the circumstances to him in the outside corridor connecting to the prison infirmary. ‘The ambulance has got here already, but obviously we need an escort urgently,’ she said, pale-faced. ‘You couldn’t have come at a better time.’
    ‘We’re ready to go now,’ Braithwaite said, affecting his usual nonchalant air when taking custody of an offender whose potential for wreaking havoc registered on the seismic scale. ‘I’ve got two gunships, containing six men each. We’re all kitted out for a spin.’
    ‘Good. There’s no time to waste.’
    And within less than ten minutes, just after midnight, an armoured cavalcade left HM Prison Brancaster, bound for King’s Lynn, a journey of just under thirty miles. Two motorcyclists from the Norfolk and Suffolk Road Traffic Unit, who’d accompanied the SOCAR team on their initial journey to the prison with the blaggers, now rode at the point. Next came the SOCAR command car, a sleek high-performance BMW, white but covered with bright orange flashes, asterisks and other insignia to enable friendly forces to identify it quickly. The two gunships came next – heavily armoured troop-carriers bearing similar markings to their command vehicle, both filled with highly trained, heavily armed men, though an ordinary civilian ambulance, containing prison staff as well as two medics and the actual casualty, was sandwiched between them.
    ‘Road should be clear enough at this time of night,’ Braithwaite said to his number two, Sergeant Ray Mulligan, a burly, bull-necked former rugby player with a battered face and a blond crew-cut, who was wedged behind the BMW’s wheel.
    Mulligan merely grunted.
    The coastal road from Gull Rock wasn’t a coastal road as such – it curved inland around the edge of the North Norfolk coast, but it was hemmed in from the north and east by mile upon mile of barren saltmarsh. It was a desolate enough scene by day, but now, in the pitch dark, there was an awesome blackness broken only occasionally by sentinel streetlamps, these usually located at sharp turns or unexpected bends. To the right, where the marshes lay, was a solid void with only tiny pips of light to denote the fishing boats out on the Wash. At least the road was high speed. Sightseers almost never had cause to drive along here, so though it was narrow and inclined to weave, the cavalcade proceeded at a steady fifty miles an hour.
    ‘How’s he doing?’ Braithwaite asked his mobile phone.
    ‘No change,’ came the tinny voice of the prison officer riding in the ambulance. ‘We need to get there soon.’
    ‘ETA twenty-five,’ Braithwaite said.
    Mulligan grunted and continued driving, the reddish glow of the motorcyclists’ tail-lights reflecting on his tough but solemn features.
    Braithwaite checked his watch. Everything was going to plan so far.
    They’d proceeded about ten miles, but were still in the midst of marshy desolation, when the motorcyclists flashed their hazard lights and started slowing down.
    Braithwaite’s eyes narrowed. He felt for his Glock, but then reached for his radio instead, passing a quick message to the team in the first gunship. ‘Possible hold-up ahead. Everyone stay loose … looks like an RTA.’
    Mulligan