Close Quarters

NINETEEN

I stayed on course while checking the vehicles behind me. It’s not as easy to do as they make out in films, especially on crowded streets with shifting traffic. It’s as much a process of identifying a specific vehicle as gut feel, but I was certain I hadn’t picked up a tail after leaving Obluskva Street; the roads out of there had been too quiet and I’d have spotted a car hanging on to me for too long. But when my antennae started quivering as soon as I drove out of Vokzal’na Square and turned south, I couldn’t ignore the warning.

I must have been spotted at random; it was the only thing I could think of. And if that had come down to somebody trawling the streets for a red Toyota Land Cruiser, I figured it had to be Ivkanoy or one of his men.

You read a lot about checking a tail by making a series of turns, doubling back, varying your speed and hoping the other driver makes a mistake and blows his cover. Mostly all you do is warn your follower that you’re on to him. I didn’t want that; I wanted to identify whether they were actually interested in me or had latched on to 24d and the black Polo.

If it was me, I could handle it. It would be inconvenient but not a drama. If it was 24d they wanted, it was official. All they had to do was sit on his tail and keep radio contact with other units and they’d have Travis in the bag at their own time and place of choosing.

Either way I had to take them out in some way. It meant not being able to keep tabs on the Polo, but I knew where 24d was taking him and as long as he didn’t make a wrong turn or get lost or picked up by security police or a stray militia group, I could catch up with him later.

Losing sight of the man I was here to protect was far from ideal, but it was a risk I had to take before we went any further.

Identifying the tail was a process of elimination, discounting each vehicle as it turned off or stopped until it came down to three possibles: a dark sedan with a roof aerial, a small blue Datsun and a scrubby-looking white Isuzu with an extended cab. Any one of them could be a surveillance unit, but I had to find out which one and who they were following: me or the Polo? I slowed down, allowing the Polo to get some way ahead, then braked and hung a right at an intersection, making like an out-of-towner checking addresses and street numbers while keeping an eye on my rear-view mirror.

The sedan, Datsun and Isuzu came with me. So I was the target.

I put my money on the sedan with the aerial. Aerials mean cops or security police. Was this Toyota hot after all? Did Ivkanoy have some juice with the local police department and they’d put out an all-points watch for the car? Or was I about to be stopped by security police working on a hunch?

After a couple of turns the Datsun was gone. One down, two to go.

Two more turns and the sedan and the Isuzu were still there. The sedan had two men in the front, both stony-faced, solid, dressed in shirts and ties. To me they had the look of cops. I couldn’t make out the Isuzu but it looked as if it contained just the driver.

I headed out towards the south-western suburbs and the H15 road. The sooner I got out of Donetsk the better. Quite apart from my follower, the possibility of Ivkanoy and his cue-wielding pal being on the lookout for the car and my skin, and the risk of running into inquisitive or jumpy militiamen, was too great. I’d already seen too many light military vehicles and APCs — armoured personnel carriers — stationed at junctions, and it seemed evident that a serious situation was brewing and about ready to explode.

The H15 looped south out of the city and was an alternative route to Pavlohrad. It was a two-lane highway bordered by twin lines of trees, and had an ageing, pitted surface that forced drivers out towards the centre line. It would take longer to reach Pavlohrad than the northern M04 road, which 24d and Travis were taking, but it would allow me more time and space to watch my back and look out for trouble ahead.

And to ditch the trouble coming up behind.

I drove for twenty minutes, frog-hopping lumbering trucks and ratty old cars, with the sedan and the Isuzu never far behind. I occasionally put on a burst of speed but didn’t make enough headway to lose them completely without making it obvious.

The traffic was mostly military or haulage, with a sprinkling of private cars and pickups. A troop carrier came blasting up behind, spreading exhaust smoke and shouldering its way through by sheer size and velocity. I let it go by. An old Range Rover decided to follow, overtaking on a suicide course and earning an angry blast from the Isuzu, before pulling in right behind me. It was full of kids with spiky hair and face jewellery, and they looked like they were having too much of a ball to care. I let them go, too. Somewhere in the mix of engines when we got bunched up close I could hear the raspy roar of a holed muffler.

The troop carrier ahead of me signalled right and I saw the sign to a truck-stop ahead. It was time to push the envelope. It was a risky strategy but I was pretty sure if the guys behind me were friends of Ivkanoy and had plans to take me out, they wouldn’t do it in front of a bunch of armed soldiers.

If they were official, and had already got my number, then it wouldn’t make any difference.

I followed the troop carrier in and parked at the side of the building and waited. I watched the sedan go on by. The passenger turned his head to look, but not at me. The Isuzu followed, the muffler noise going with him, but the driver was intent on the road.

I checked the café, which was busy, and went inside. I needed to get some food while I had the chance, and to see if anybody took an interest in the car.

The other customers were hunched over their plates, intent on their meals and getting back out on the road, truckers and co-drivers with a job to do and schedules to meet. The situation to the east had cast a cloud over everyone no matter where they were, and was inevitably affecting non-essential movements. That could be a problem if any local cops took an interest in non-military or non-haulage travellers, and gave me another reason to stay off the main roads as much as I could. I went back to the car and called up an app of the area on my cell phone to check the alternatives.

They were few in number. Other than the road I was on, there was the mirror route to the north — the M04 to Pavlohrad — with a thin network of roads and tracks connecting the two across an open expanse of fields, rolling hills, lakes and rough terrain.

I checked I had plenty of fuel and decided to take off. Three miles down the road I took a right turn and found myself on an unmarked metalled surface heading directly north into open country. If my map was accurate, this would lead eventually to the M04. If I didn’t like the look of that I could turn left and burrow deeper into the countryside until I reached Pavlohrad on back roads.

The houses or farms were few in number and scattered; low, small structures on plots surrounded by crumbling walls or wooden picket fences, it was like stepping back in time. I saw a couple of old people, mostly weather-worn and stooped, who watched me go by without expression, but that was it.

After an hour of rough, potholed road, I came up and over an escarpment dotted with a few straggly trees and saw the ground ahead drop away in front of me like diving off a cliff. I stamped on the brakes.

Doesn’t matter who you are, in this game you don’t go over a brow in unknown terrain without first checking your route is clear.

Once I’d made sure there were no surprises waiting for me on the other side, I got back in and began a long ride downhill. The road was narrow here, bordered either side by rough ground and rocks, with overgrown gullies where old river courses had carved their way through the earth from the higher ground.

As I picked up speed, I heard a loud bang and my world went crazy.