Close Quarters

FORTY-EIGHT

It was just a flicker, there then gone. Like somebody opening a car door. I waited for five long minutes but didn’t see it again. If it had been a vehicle, it was static, and if my judgement was right, it was approximately at the point where I’d seen the pull-in earlier. Whoever they were they must have decided to stop for the night for the same reason we had: to avoid running into trouble.

Or to make sure they didn’t miss us in the dark.

I gave it five minutes to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me, then set off along the road, ready to dive into cover. It was easy going on the metalled surface, but with no lights to guide me also easy enough to wander off course and stumble over the rough grass verge.

I stopped periodically to check my bearings. The trees where I’d left Travis were now invisible, as if they’d never existed, and I was in the dark in more ways than one. But at least I had the road to follow as a guide in both directions.

I hoped nobody else had the same idea.

The first indication I got of other humans present was the smell of cigarette smoke. It was faint, but unmistakable. Then came a short burst of laughter. It was probably no more than a hundred yards away and whoever they were they clearly weren’t expecting company.

I stopped and hunkered down, closing my eyes and slowly absorbing the night sounds and atmosphere and the area around me. If this was Grey Suit and his men they would almost certainly have someone on watch. And the easiest and most logical place to do that was by the side of the road.

I stepped across the grass verge, feeling my way across a shallow ditch on to more solid ground the other side. Then I started walking in a parallel line with where I judged the road to be. It was unscientific and entirely by guesswork, but the only way I could do it.

The best scenario would be to find that I’d stumbled on a lone traveller or a family that had stopped for the night. The alternatives were pretty obvious.

There was a dry clicking sound a few feet away, and it took me a moment before I recognized the noise as a cigarette lighter being used. Then I saw sparks flying off into the dark before the flame caught. I closed my eyes instinctively and froze. But even with the initial spark of light I had an image printed on my retinae of a square block of a vehicle standing nearby, its utilitarian outline instantly recognizable and confirmed by the powerful tang of diesel.

A military UAZ jeep.

I ducked my head and waited for the lighter to go out. I’d seen enough. If it was the same UAZ from before, and I guessed it was, then Grey Suit was here, too, or not far behind. By now he’d have realized the helicopter wasn’t going to work, so he’d closed in as far as he dared and was waiting for daylight to continue the chase.

Just to be sure, I made a wide sweep of the area, keeping the sound of voices within my hearing and stopping when talk ceased in case they heard me moving. By a process of elimination I picked up three different voices. Occasionally I saw the flare of a flashlight and a face would be lit up, then I heard the sound of paper being torn. I guessed they were eating some kind of field rations. The absence of a fire or more obvious lighting meant they were keeping their presence low-profile, which indicated that these men, whoever they were, were not comfortable being this far west.

I backed off and turned to go. I’d already spent enough time out here. Time to get back and check on Travis. But I hadn’t gone more than three paces when I sensed somebody else very close by. A smell of stale sweat and tobacco washed over me, and I started to move to one side, but realized just in time that the man was stepping out from behind a tree to my side and was probably as surprised as me.

I reacted instinctively. There was no use pretending I wasn’t there; it was too late for that. But turning and running wasn’t an option. I’d also picked up on another smell coming off the man, one that I recognized all too well from years of handling weapons.

Gun oil.

I was holding the Grach with the safety on. I saw just a faint hint of movement in front of me, so close I could have touched him. There was a sharp intake of breath as he opened his mouth to yell, so I swept the Grach up and across, and felt the heavy metal connect with the side of his head. He went over without a sound, and I managed to catch him and ease him to the ground gently.

Then I stepped away and retreated. I was a hundred yards away and walking along the roadside towards the trees when I heard someone calling out in the dark. I picked up my pace to a jog. It was time to go.

Travis was awake when I got back, and looked jumpy.

‘Where did you go?’ he asked. ‘I could have sworn I heard voices.’

‘You did. But don’t worry about it. You ready to go?’

‘Anytime. Was it them?’

‘Yes.’

I climbed aboard and turned the ignition. Travis said he’d heard the sound of voices, but I was hoping the drone of our engine would be more difficult for the men in the UAZ to pinpoint. I couldn’t use the lights or the brakes until I was certain we were in dead ground, so I had to drop the window and drive slowly until I heard the faint whine of rubber on solid road. It was risky moving anyway, but we had no choice. If we stayed where we were, come morning I was pretty sure the men in the UAZ would see us as they drove by.

Then we’d be dead meat.

Once we were clear of the area I switched on the cell phone and dialled Lindsay.

‘Hey, big eyes, are you listening?’

She must have been alert and watching her screens because she barely missed a beat. ‘I’m here. Are you mobile?’

‘That we are. What’s the situation on the ground?’

‘No local activity anywhere close on the last camera pass. The next one is due in ten minutes. What’s your situation?’

‘We’re bugging out from the current location. We had company.’

‘Hostile?’

‘Definitely. If not then, certainly now. Can we get past the convoy?’

‘That’s a yes. We last picked up their signature moving due east from that position on what we believe is a military access road. Your route now looks clear but be aware.’

‘Copy that.’

I switched off and focussed on driving and watching the road for signs of life. Running into a patrol was a possibility, but I was hoping we’d get some warning before we hit trouble.

The road was clear and easy to follow once I could use the lights, and it was almost easy to forget that we were in hostile territory and making our way out.

‘Do you have family?’ Travis asked after we’d been travelling a while.

Jesus. More questions. And it was stuff I didn’t want to discuss. I debated ignoring him, but that wouldn’t help either of us. And I needed him to be with me whatever I did, one hundred per cent. The best way to do that was to play along for a while.

‘A sister. Why?’

‘I’m trying to understand you, that’s all. I’ve got two sisters and a brother. All accounting professionals, would you believe that?’

Somehow I would, but I didn’t want to offend him. ‘Not really. What made you join the State Department?’

He deflected the question by saying, ‘Actually, I’d rather talk about you.’

‘Of course you would. But I’m a closed book. You first.’

He nodded. ‘OK. I guess I took the easy route all along; through school, then college, then the military, and when I’d had enough of that, I applied to the State Department. I figured four accountants in the family was way too many.’

‘What about your family?’

‘I told you about them.’

‘I mean your own family — your wife and kids. You have two, right?’

It was a brutal reminder, but I figured he couldn’t not think about them for long. And talking about them might help, too.

He was quiet for a while, then started talking. It was slow going at first, but he picked up enthusiasm and speed, and even started to smile a lot more. After a while he stopped and looked at me and said, ‘You’re a sneaky bastard, you know that? But thank you. It was good using their names out loud. Kind of made a connection, you know?’

‘I know.’

A little later he said, ‘Do you have a girlfriend? I’m guessing you aren’t married.’

‘No, I don’t have a girlfriend, and no, I’m not married. Never found the time or the right person.’

‘Don’t you have aspirations for something different?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like marriage, kids — that kind of thing.’

‘No. Maybe one day I’ll hit the wall and do it, but not yet.’

‘The wall?’

‘The point at which I find that there’s something else I want to do, that life will throw me a random card and use up whatever chances I might have been given.’

‘Random? Is that another way of saying fate?’

‘You can call it that if you wish. Life is random; it’s not predictable like a lot of people think. If it was, the biggest growth industry on the planet wouldn’t be technology or social media or alternative energy; it would be soothsayers and palm readers. Look at Denys: he thought he was out of it and clear. Then random came along in the shape of Voloshyn.’

‘I guess. I hadn’t really thought of it that way before.’ He was silent for a while and I let him be, allowing the rumble of the engine and the tyres on the road do their stuff. It was soothing, being out there in the middle of the dark, especially after what we’d been through. There was no intrusion from outside, no phones, no traffic, no lights.

‘That helicopter back there,’ he said eventually. ‘That was pretty random, wasn’t it?’

‘Actually, that was fairly predictable because we knew it was coming. But the helicopter crew, now they’d have said the fighter was random.’

He chuckled, which was a good sign. ‘You think you’ll hit your wall one day, Portman?’

‘I guess I will. Until then I’m doing a job. Like you.’

‘You’re nothing like me.’ He stopped. ‘Sorry. I don’t mean that to be offensive. We’re just very different people, you and I.’

‘You’re right. And that’s a good thing.’

He didn’t say anything after that, but his words left me thinking about my own life and how long it could go on. We all make choices and I’d never seen mine as any different to a thousand others. I knew other guys in the same line of work, most of them on the surface no different to Travis; they had family and hobbies and ambitions, they played ball with their kids and to everyone else they looked normal on the outside. Then one day they hit the wall. It could be brought on by seeing too much bad stuff happen and having too many near misses. Who knows? Some deliberately shrugged it off, but others decided to do something else with the time they had left.

I wasn’t shrugging off anything; I just hadn’t yet reached that point.

Two hours later, as a thin dawn began to push back the night, I discovered we had a more immediate problem than fate to deal with. A vehicle was coming up fast from the rear. It was the first one I’d seen since last night. It approached to within half a mile or so behind us, then held station for a while before dropping back and disappearing. The light wasn’t good enough to make out the type of car, but it looked to me like the profile of a sedan. It might have been a fellow traveller looking for some morale-boosting company on a lonely road, before having a change of heart.

But I had my doubts.