The response comes back crackled but clear. "Tango-1, copy. Units en route. ETA forty-five minutes. Do not engage. Repeat, do not engage."
Forty-five minutes. The men will be gone in fifteen. That is the math of rural policing. The trike got them here in time to see the crime, but not in time to stop it. Byrne is used to this. The trike is a witness, not a weapon.
The wide front track of the Spyder is intimidating. It looks like a futuristic snowplow. The high-intensity strobes flash once—a silent, blinding pulse. The men freeze. In their world, the Garda arrive in loud, slow cars. They do not arrive on silent, wide, three-wheeled specters that appear out of the fog like a Celtic war chariot.
It is a bluff. Customs are thirty minutes away. The drone has their faces, but the light is poor. The trike has their plates, but the van is likely stolen. But the trike itself is the argument. It is so unusual, so unexpected, that the men cannot compute the risk. In their cognitive map of law enforcement, there is no slot for "Trike Patrol."
He spits on the ground. "Tik-tok, lads," he mutters to his crew. "Into the van."