Close Quarters

FORTY-SEVEN

‘Have you always done this work?’

‘No. Not always.’

‘So what got you into it?’

Now Travis was more or less fully awake he was nervy and desperate to talk, and I had no reason to shut him up. If we were to get out of this, I needed him alert and ready to react to anything, not dulled by sleep and painkillers. Talking seemed a good way to go. In any case, I doubted he’d remember much of what I said when we got out of this. Just to be sure, I gave him the short version.

‘I was in the military for a while. Got shot at, missed a couple of IEDs, the usual stuff. Then I figured if I was going to risk my life I might as well do it properly, so I applied for special training.’

‘Delta?’

‘Not Delta. That kind of area, though.’

‘Iraq?’

‘Among others. We got moved around a lot, wherever we were needed.’ The moving had included liaison spells in counter-terrorism, in anti-drug operations in Latin America, reconnaissance missions in Africa and southern Europe on attachment with combined units of French Foreign Legion, Spanish Legion and the Italian 4th Surveillance group.

‘So how did you end up doing this?’

‘I wanted to choose my own assignments. I’d done a lot of close protection details and a colleague gave me the heads-up about a couple of private high-paying contracts for experienced personnel. It seemed the obvious way to go.’ I’d also discovered a dislike of operating in military units and being responsible for others, often in impossible situations. For the most part it was fine, but losing colleagues was something you never truly got over.

‘What happened?’ Travis was fully awake now, and sharp.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Something bad happened. I can see it in your face.’

‘There were plenty of bad times.’ One was worse than most, but it was something I wasn’t prepared to talk about in detail — not to a man who was relying on me to get him home safely.

‘I’m listening.’

‘Short story, we had to leave a colleague behind on an anti-insurgent snatch op in Djibouti. He got separated in a sandstorm and lost contact.’

‘American?’

‘French. Our unit was on attachment to the Legion. We were about to go back and shut the area down to look for him, but the situation went hot and the politicians ordered us out. It was a lousy deal but we had no choice. Not then, anyway.’

‘What happened?’

‘We found him but it was too late.’ That was all I wanted to say. It had taken us three days to convince the local command to allow us back in to mount a search. When we got the green light we went in and located him, but he was dead. The insurgents had tied him to a tree as a warning message. What was left of him. ‘One of the Legionnaires was a skilled bush tracker, so we made a group decision to shut down our communications and go after the people who’d killed him. It took us five days.’

‘What happened?’

‘We found them, too.’ It was about that time that I’d decided I didn’t want to answer to politicians anymore; that going on operations on the say-so of people who’d never done it themselves, was no longer a career choice. I wanted to make my own decisions. That way if it all went bad I’d only have myself to blame.

It was also the time that I decided I’d never leave anybody behind again.

Travis said nothing for a while, then: ‘I don’t get it. Isn’t this the same kind of thing — being responsible for others? Worse, even — we’re people you don’t even know.’

‘It’s not the same at all.’ I couldn’t explain it to him, but operating remotely, or even up as close as this, as I’d been forced to do with Travis, allowed a level of disconnection. He wasn’t a colleague or friend, he wasn’t going to throw himself into a lethal situation; he was relying totally on me to get him out, to protect him. That meant I had the call on everything he did, when he did it and how fast.

It wasn’t the same.

I was about to explain this when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.

Helicopters.

I dropped the window for a better look. Two bulky transporters, the Mi-8s, lumbering along at five-hundred feet. They came over the brow of a hill three miles away and headed towards us. Low to the ground, heavy metal dragons, the throb of the engines already stirring the atmosphere around us.

‘Hold tight.’ I’d been keeping an eye out along the way for suitable tracks or side roads where I could make a rapid diversion if necessary. It didn’t have to be long-term, but enough to avoid a traffic jam or a potential threat. We’d passed a pull-in about a mile back, but it was too open and now too far off to turn back.

I saw a turning up ahead, little more than a gap in the verge and a grass-covered track leading into a small copse of trees. It would do. I hit the brakes and turned off, feeling the wheels beginning to slide as we hit the grassy surface and the moisture turned slick under the tyres. There was a crash as we hit a bump and everything in the car jumped, and Travis yelped. But we were OK. We slid behind the cover of the trees and I stopped.

Two minutes later the air around us throbbed and the trees were buffeted violently as the shapes of the helicopters passed overhead.

We watched them go, trailing swirling plumes of exhaust smoke behind them, and I let them disappear over the horizon before getting ready to move.

‘Watchman, report. You OK?’ Lindsay again, checking our progress. She’d been timing the situation and was checking we hadn’t been drilled into the ground.

I killed the engine. ‘We’re good. How’s it looking?’

‘Quiet for now, but our cameras show static heat signals ten miles ahead of your location either side of the road. It’s most likely a collection of large vehicles parked up. Probably trucks. We’ll get pictures if we can.’

‘Do you think it’s military or a roadblock?’

‘We’re waiting on another camera pass, but I’d suggest a military convoy on a temporary stop. I haven’t seen a build-up of haulage trucks for some time now, and we have no reports of police or official roadblocks in operation anywhere near you.’

‘Copy that. Out.’

Cameras. Lindsay must be using an overhead spotter; most likely a drone. It would be telling what was happening in real-time, relaying pictures back to its controller, who would be feeding them through to Langley. Allowing for a slight time delay, she would be seeing us as we moved. I couldn’t even make a guess at how tough it had been getting authorization to call in a drone over a sovereign territory in this neck of the woods, but it was a clever move.

I debated on what to do next. If the vehicles up ahead were part of a military convoy they would have sentries posted with orders to watch out for any other traffic movement too late in the day. It meant that our getting past them without being stopped was unlikely.

I checked the map. There was a small town off to our left, but heading away from where we wanted to go. It was risky but so was heading off along some other track in the dark into open country. A breakdown would leave us stranded with no way out. And if Lindsay’s cameras could pick out heat signals, then so could Grey Suit if he had access to the same technology — and if he was still alive.

I made sure we were as concealed as we could be and checked the Grach, then called Lindsay and told her we were going to be static for a while.

‘Copy that, Watchman.’

‘What are we doing?’ Travis looked tired, and his words were indistinct, as if he really couldn’t connect the dots. Exhaustion was hitting him hard on top of everything else and he wasn’t coping too well.

‘We’re stopping here.’ I handed him a bottle of water. ‘We need to rest. Drink as much of that as you can take and eat something. Then get some sleep. I’ll keep watch.’

He protested but his heart and mind weren’t in it. I took off before he could argue further and walked back to the road, checking in both directions for incoming traffic. I hadn’t seen another vehicle for a while and figured most sensible people were staying off the roads until daylight. I walked back away from the trees and checked the layout from the road. We were concealed from the road, especially with the falling darkness, and it looked just like a bunch of trees, not an obvious stopping place.

I walked back to the car and took a drink. Travis was snoring, which was fine by me. He had asked enough questions for the day and needed as much rest as he could get. We still weren’t out of the hot stuff and I had no idea what lay ahead. All I knew was we’d have to be prepared to face anything that came our way.

After a while I felt my head going down. It was a bad sign and I shook myself awake. I could get by on little sleep, but I couldn’t risk Travis by letting myself go. I checked my watch and was surprised to find we’d been there nearly two hours.

I walked back to the road to stretch my legs and get some blood into my veins and brush off the tiredness. Checking your surroundings in a hostile area is always a good way of staying awake. But you have to be wary of seeing shadows where there are none, which is a product of general lack of sleep and battle fatigue. Shooting holes in the darkness might be good for a couple of seconds, but it’s no way to scare off the bogeys.

I got to the road and looked both ways. Nothing. In fact, less than nothing. Total blackness, which suited me fine. This was big country with zero lights and no stars to guide us or light the way. But just for a few moments all that dark was relaxing in a way that daylight would never have been.

It was a reminder that it had been a long time since I’d stood and listened to the dark without wondering if someone was out there coming for me. Smelling the coffee was a modern cliché, but it was easy to lose sight of the fact that there was a world going on around you, and sometimes you had to kick back and look at it.

Then I heard something. Or maybe it was simply an animal thing, of being in the night and using usually dormant instincts. I turned and looked back along the road towards Pavlohrad. Nothing out there that I could see. A long stretch of empty road swallowed by the night.

Then I saw a light.