Huge thanks to everyone for the reviews. I appreciate you taking the time to write. I was hoping that the flashbacks in part one were going to work but I was a little nervous about using them. Without further ado....part 2

A40 – 2215 Friday 13th January

She could hear nothing but the sound of her own stilted breathing. The steady rumble of the car along the road had vanished, to be replaced by an almost oppressive silence.

She struggled to work out what was going on; her brain desperately trying to make sense of the world around her. There was a sickening pain in her right leg and a throbbing ache in her head. The side of her face felt wet and sticky. What was she doing here, wherever here was? Why was everything in blackness? Demands for answers threatened to overwhelm her but she tried to force down the panic that was rising in her chest. Deep breaths, she told herself. Deep calming breaths.

The images came to her in flashes; the car on the road and the awkward silence between herself and Azhar; the car behind them and the loss of the mobile signal…the car gaining on them... They had been forced off the road…The driver had told her to hold on tight and then everything had gone into a strange kind of slow motion – the car ploughing through trees and undergrowth, shouts and yells and then silence.

She tried to move her head and felt a wave of nausea wash over her. She closed her eyes and prayed that the spinning feeling would soon stop. She was still in the car. Instinct told her that she had to get out of the car and find out where they were.

Before she could move, a powerful beam of light washed over her and her initial feeling of hope was quickly replaced by fear. The rear doors were yanked open and the previously still air was suddenly filled with barking commands and the blinding beam of a torch shone directly into her face. She couldn't make out anything that the urgent harsh voices were shouting. She could hear Azhar calling out, asking what was going on and she could hear the screech of metal upon metal as someone fought to open the driver's door.

Ruth felt hands grabbing her arms and hauling her out into the biting cold air; her body protested immediately at the movement; messages flooding her brain telling her that things were not right. Her right leg felt as though it was on fire and she seemed to not be moving under her own steam. Her body convulsed and she retched; her muscles cramping in her stomach and her head now thundering with pain as a result.

She struggled to work out what was going on but could make out nothing in the confusion.

The powerful white beam of a flashlight shone in her face and she tried to turn her head away from it, blinking rapidly against the light that burned into her eyes.

A hand grabbed her jaw and shook her head until she felt as though her teeth were going to rattle in their sockets. The man holding her chin grunted something she couldn't make out to the man holding the torch, and moments later the beam was lowered.

She felt his breath on her face as he leant in and shouted something. Through the fog that clouded her brain she was unable to work out anything clearly. The words were repeated again and again until she finally began to piece them together.

"Who are you?"

"...Translator..." she finally forced the word out.

"Translator?"

"Other passenger…speaks no English."

"Shit!"

The hand left her face and she heard the man turn away.

She followed him with her eyes as he proceeded to gather three of the party together. She could hear only snatches of their conversation. She felt her head drifting forward and was immediately shaken by the man holding her.

She blinked and watched as Marcus, the driver, was pulled from the front of the car. He looked to be in a great deal of pain.

She wanted to reassure herself that he was ok, but was unable to make eye contact with him as, without warning, she was turned round and pushed against the side of the car. Her coat was torn from her shoulders before she could protest and then she was roughly checked to see what else she was carrying. Instinct told her to flinch away from the search, but she closed her eyes and forced herself to remain still – don't give them any reason to hit you – the words of the training instructor ran through her head.

The group, it seemed, had made their decision. She was ushered forward, back up the bank. She tried to move, but her right leg wouldn't support her weight and she sank towards the ground; her system overwhelmed with the messages of pain that were reaching it.

The world became nothing more than a blur of activity. Hands grabbed her right arm and she was moved up the bank towards a white panel van that was sat idling at the side of the road.

Thames House – 2350 Friday 13th January

Harry stared round at the other occupants of the meeting room. His relief at being given an excuse to escape an exceedingly dull dinner with other senior officials had quickly vanished as he was informed of the reason for the red flash. He pulled at his bowtie, attempting to loosen the stranglehold it appeared to have on his neck.

"What information do we have so far?"

Jo pushed a copy of a report across the table in Harry's direction.

"We've intercepted some traffic from the local police. A black Lexus bearing the same registration plates as the car we used to transport Azhar al-Hassan has been found in a ditch on the A40 near Tetsworth."

Harry turned to look at Jo. "Any news on the occupants of the car?" his tone was neutral but Jo knew the question he was really asking.

She skimmed through the message on the printout in front of her. "One male fatality confirmed at the scene. White male, believed to be the driver of the vehicle." She looked up apologetically. "No more details than that at the moment."

Harry pulled a face. "When they say fatality, do they indicate whether or not the crash was the cause of death?"

Jo shook her head. "There's no detail at all at the moment. I'm checking the usual sources, but no-one has any information."

"I want answers to that as soon as you can get them."

"Right."

"As there are no other reports of anyone else at the scene we have to surmise that either Ruth and al-Hassan are making their way across country to find help, or they've been spirited away by parties unknown," Harry summed up the situation. "At this stage I think it best to assume the worst. Ros, the list that Ruth prepared detailing the possible threats to our recent visitors, I want you to go through it and find out where our most likely suspects have been spending the evening. Jo, get onto the local police; I don't want anything at the scene touched by the plods until we've had a chance to look at it for ourselves." He glanced at his watch. "Shake Adam and Zaf into life. I want them out at that crash site as soon as possible. If there's anything out there, then I want it found, preferably while it's still of some use to us"

Crash site A40 – 0200 Saturday 14th January

Adam slammed the door of the car and made his way towards the taped off area ahead of him, pushing his hands deep into his pockets as he was blasted by the chill night air.

"Sorry sir," a uniformed officer moved to block his path, one arm raised to try and ward him away from the area.

"Your boss should have told you we were coming," Adam told him flatly, pulling his I.D from his pocket and holding it up.

The uniformed officer squinted and grabbed hold of the bottom of the card, trying to angle it so that the light from the lamppost above him illuminated it.

"Sorry sir," the officer apologised as he let go of the pass and immediately reached forward, lifting the tape for Adam to pass under. "If there's anything you want…." he let the sentence trail off.

"Thanks, I'll let you know."

Adam walked slowly across the carriageway, his eyes scanning the surface of the road, looking to see if there was any evidence of recent tyre marks, or any scattered fragments from a smashed rear light. The police report had suggested that the car had been forced off the road, but as far as he could see, there was no evidence to support that theory. He stepped up onto the kerb and tried to block out the steady rumble of traffic from the motorway that ran alongside the, now deserted A road.

Zaf joined him moments later and the pair of them looked down the steep muddy embankment towards the twisted wreckage of the Lexus.

"It looks like these guys knew what they were doing," Zaf noted. "This is a quiet stretch of road; if it hadn't have been for a late finishing shift worker, then the chances are that no-one would have seen the car for hours."

Adam nodded. "From what Malcolm's said about the disappearing trackers, I'm betting that they used a jammer to knock out the phones and the GPS before making their move."

"How did they get it off the road though? Playing shunt against a well-trained driver isn't the most reliable way to go about things."

Adam placed a foot on the frozen ground. "Let's get down there and take a look."

Thames House – 0230 Saturday 14th January

Harry raised his head from his work as he heard a measured knock on the door. Ros was standing in the doorway, a handful of paper clutched in one hand. He beckoned her in.

"What have you found?"

Ros frowned as she took a seat across from him. "So far there's nothing from the list that Ruth left."

"So you're in here because?"

"Because I decided to widen the search arc whilst I was waiting for the initial searches to complete themselves," Ros answered smoothly. "al-Hassan's name crops up in some unlikely places. It would appear that we weren't the only department keeping an eye on him."

Harry raised an eyebrow. "Who else has been expressing an interest in the activities of al-Hassan?"

Ros handed him the results of her search.

"I didn't recognise any of these tags; I thought they might mean something to you," she explained, watching as Harry's eyes narrowed. "I take it that they do mean something to you?"

"I've got a meeting to arrange," Harry announced abruptly, pushing his chair away from the table and rising to his feet. "I'll be back later."

Ros watched him go and couldn't help feeling a little sympathy for whoever was about to be on the receiving end of this particular visit.

Crash site A40 – 0240 Saturday 14th January

Zaf looked at the mangled remains of the front of the car.

"Looks as though the driver didn't stand a chance."

Adam moved round to the back of the car and knelt down, shining a torch across the rear bumper.

"Doesn't look as though there was any contact between the vehicles; no obvious signs of paint or scratch marks."

"So what drove them off the road?" Zaf continued with the train of thought. "The car was obviously still moving at some speed when it left the road." He glanced down at Adam. "I guess that counts out some sort of EM pulse."

"Not necessarily," Adam countered rising back to his feet and turning to look back up at the steep embankment. "The car's trying to pull away from its pursuer, there's heavy fog…perhaps he swerves to avoid something in the road and….bam….that's when it gets hit with the pulse...The car was out of control by the time it was coming down the embankment. The driver would have been experienced enough to deal with that…something had to have happened to the car."

Zaf let out a long breath. "What were they doing taking this route? Why come off the motorway in such poor visibility?"

"That's the problem when you get a diligent driver who goes by the rules," Adam remarked. "In these circumstances I would have conveniently forgotten the rule book and followed the most direct route, wasting as little time as possible."

Zaf raised the torch that he was carrying and passed it over the crumpled remains of the back of the car. The rear doors were open - the door on the driver's side hanging awkwardly as the frame had buckled under the impact.

"You think they walked away from it?"

Adam pulled a face and shone his own torch over a section of the footwell. A dark reddish brown stain was visible upon the pale interior flooring.

"Whoever was seated here didn't completely escape without injury." He let his torch pass across the rest of the car's interior. "With the speed at which it crashed, I'd say it's more than likely that we're looking at injuries being received by both rear passengers."

"That's not a comforting thought."

"It wasn't supposed to be."

"Sir?"

Adam turned his head at the approach of one of the uniformed officers.

"Would you follow me sir, we think we've found something."

Adam exchanged a look with Zaf and then indicated that the officer should show them the way.

Picking his way through the undergrowth, the uniformed PC led them away from the car and towards a small heap of objects that had been partially buried.

The officer let the beam of his torch play over the discovery.

"We wondered if you knew anything about these sir?"

Adam knelt down at the edge of the small collection of belongings and, careful not to touch anything, gave them a quick inspection.

He glanced back up to the man holding the torch.

"It's a good find. Get your SOCO over here."

"Sir."

Adam waited for the man to move away.

"Is there something keeping you?"

The officer looked at the bundle on the floor and then back at Adam.

"You won't touch anything....will you?"

Adam's eyes widened.

"Are you questioning my professionalism?"

The officer began to look nervous.

"It's not that sir...it's just...."

"Your boss told you not to trust us, right?" Adam guessed the dilemma that the officer was facing. "Well what if I put my hand on my heart and promise not to touch anything and you run along like a good man and do as I've asked...before one of my colleagues is murdered!" Adam spat the final words out, not making an effort to hide his frustration.

"Sir," the officer replied nervously and turned and headed back off through the undergrowth.

Zaf moved round so that he could get a better look at the bundle of clothing, bringing the beam of the torch he was carrying round to bear on it.

"It's Ruth's coat," he confirmed, frowning as he watched Adam pick a stick up from the ground and begin lifting up the corner of the coat. "What are you doing?"

"I want to know what else they've left here...If there's anything here that identifies al-Hassan, then I don't want the plods getting their hands on it. It may take some time to get them to leave things to us...in the meantime I don't want the world and his wife to be able to intercept information about al-Hassan." Adam tilted his head to one side and peered beneath the coat, catching sight of a mobile phone and wallet. "Gotcha." He glanced up at Zaf. "Don't suppose you've got a bag on you I could use?"

Littleton Farm 0300 Saturday 14th January

Ruth shivered in the cold of the dimly lit room, watching as her breath dissipated in the air. The events of the last few hours were nothing but a confused haze in her mind.

She struggled to order her thoughts but she found herself unable to concentrate long enough to form a cohesive picture of what was going on.

She'd been in a crash; that much she knew. But for some reason she also knew that the crash wasn't a straightforward accident.

Her head was thumping painfully, her left wrist was throbbing, and she wanted nothing more than to close her eyes and sleep.

She felt someone tug on her arm. She shrugged off the hand and let her eyes drift shut.

The tug on her arm came again and she forced her eyes open; staring straight ahead and fighting against a wave of nausea that washed over her.

"Are you alright?"

Ruth recognised the concerned tones of Azhar.

"I can honestly say that I've felt better," she muttered.

She tried to turn her head to face Azhar but was almost overwhelmed by the feeling of nausea. She leant her head back against the cool stone of the wall and closed her eyes again. The side of her head ached and there was now a tight feeling accompanying the wetness near her right temple. She raised a hand to the source of the wetness and was unsurprised when the hand came away coated with blood. There was, she realised, the reason for the nausea and dizziness.

"You must stay awake," Azhar persisted. If they think you are weak they will kill you."

Ruth forced her eyes open and looked down at her right leg; blood was congealing around the tear in her long skirt. "I'm in no condition to make a run for it," she hissed. "If that's what you were thinking."

Azhar shook his head and motioned for her to be quiet. "We have to stay strong." He took her hands and pressed them tightly. "You have to stay conscious." He paused, waiting for some response. "You must do this. They will be back soon."

Ruth forced herself to concentrate and ignore the now stabbing pain in her left wrist; she could feel herself starting to drift, the world becoming hazy around the edges. She screwed her eyes shut for a few seconds, waiting for the feeling to pass.

There was a sense of urgency in Azhar's tone and she wanted to assure him that she understood the seriousness of the situation. She opened her mouth to reply but then promptly shut it again as another wave of nausea washed over her.

"You have to stay with me," he told her firmly. "You pass out and they'll reason that you're more of a liability than a help." He held her hands tightly within his own. "They will be able to find another translator," he warned her. "In this matter you are entirely replaceable."