Blood Hunt

TWENTY-ONE

IT WAS THE THIRD NIGHT, and enemy activity was increasing still further. There were constant patrols, firing searing pink-burn flares into the sky. An order would be yelled, and a patrol would spray their designated area with bullets. Reeve and Jay knew the tactic. The Argentine soldiers were trying to rile them, flush them out. They were trying to break them.

Reeve understood the shouted orders and would shake his head at Jay, meaning there was nothing to worry about. But they were both nervous. They’d been kept so low by the patrols that sending any more data to the ship was impossible; it had been that way for the best part of the day. They’d been forced farther inland, away from the air base, so that they could no longer see the runway or any of the buildings, and the planes taking off and landing were droning flies.

In fact, not transmitting was the only thing keeping them alive. The patrols were so close they’d have DF’d the two-man team in seconds. Reeve and Jay maintained complete silence throughout. Reeve couldn’t remember the last time either of them had spoken. Muscles were seizing up from being kept still and rigid for hours at a time. The back of Reeve’s neck ached terribly, and he daren’t crack it. The fingers on his M16 felt arthritic, and he’d already had two bouts of cramp.

Whenever he glanced over towards Jay, Jay would be looking at him. He tried to read the look in those eyes. They seemed to be saying, quite eloquently, “We’re fucked,” and they were probably right. But because Jay thought that, he was getting edgier and edgier, and Reeve suspected he might be on the verge of panicking. It was all about nerve now: if they lost theirs, the only possible outcome was “brassing up,” blasting away at anything and anybody until your ammo ran out or you copped one.

Reeve fingered the two Syrettes of morphine which hung around his neck. They felt like a noose. He hoped he wouldn’t need to use them. He’d rather put a bullet to his head first, though the regiment considered that the coward’s way out. The rule was, you fought to the death, and if the enemy didn’t kill you but captured you instead, then you did your damnedest to escape. Both men had been trained to withstand various interrogation techniques, but maybe the Argentines had a few tricks Hereford hadn’t heard of. Unlikely, but then torture was a broad sub-ject. Reeve reckoned he could withstand quite a bit of physical abuse, and even psychological wearing-down. What he knew he couldn’t cope with-what no one could cope with-were the various chemical forms of torture, the drugs that fucked with your mind.

The name of the game was beating the clock. On the regiment’s memorial clock back in Hereford were written the names of all SAS men killed in action. As a result of the war in the Falklands, there were already a lot of new names to be added to the clock. Reeve didn’t want his to be one of them.

When he looked at Jay again, Jay was still looking at him. Reeve gestured with his head for Jay to return to watch. They were lying side by side, but facing opposite directions, so that Jay’s boots rested an inch or so from Reeve’s left ear. Earlier, Jay had tapped a Morse message with his fingers on Reeve’s boot-“Kill them all”-repeating the message three times. Kill them all.

The ground was cold and damp, and Reeve knew his body temperature was dropping, same as it had done the previous night. A couple more nights like this and they would be in serious trouble, not so much from the enemy as from their own treacherous bodies. They had eaten only chocolate and drunk only water for the past thirty-six hours, and what sleep they’d taken had been fitful and short-lived.

Even when planning their escape route and emergency rendezvous they had not spoken, but had lain head to head with the map on the ground in front of them. Reeve had pointed to a couple of possible routes-if they were forced to withdraw from the OP in the midst of a firefight, chances were they’d be split up-then had tapped the map at the ERV. Jay had then traced a line with his unwashed finger from the ERV to the Chilean border, leaving no doubt what his route would be after the ERV.

Reeve wasn’t so sure. Would the Argentine command expect them to make for the border or for the coast? They were still a lot closer to the coast than the border, so maybe the border was the best plan. Besides, there was no point reaching the coast if no ship had been alerted of your plight. They wouldn’t be able to radio that message in the middle of brassing up, and if forced to retreat they would lighten their load, which meant leaving the rucksack and very probably the transmitter. Reeve had already mentally checked off the contents of his rucksack and had decided he needed nothing out of it but a few more rations. It was because he was thinking along these lines that he knew the mission was at an end. There’d be time later to wonder where and why it had gone wrong, always supposing he was still alive at the end of it all. The coast was closer; Reeve couldn’t get that idea out of his head. He had an emergency beacon with him. If they could find a boat and head out to sea, they could switch on the beacon and then pray someone would pick up the signal. The problem with that was, it was as likely to be an Argentine plane returning to base as anyone else.

The sky turned pink again and started to fizz and crackle as the flare started its gentle parachute-borne descent. Reeve could see a four-man patrol five hundred yards off to his right. Reeve and Jay were lying beneath netting and local foliage, and the patrol would have to get a lot closer to see them, even with the help of the flare. There was a sudden shrill whistle, like one of the old tin-and-pea jobs football referees use.

“Half time,” Jay whispered. He’d broken the code of silence, but he’d also broken the tension. Reeve found himself grinning, stifling laughter which wrenched itself up from his gut. The way Jay’s feet were quivering, he was laughing, too. It became almost uncontrollable. Reeve took a deep breath and expelled it slowly. The patrol was moving away at speed-and there was nothing funny about that.

Then the first rocket thudded into the ground several hundred yards to Reeve’s left. The earth beneath tried to buck his body into the air, and his face slammed down hard into the dirt.

“Shit,” Jay said, not caring who heard him. Not caring because he knew, like Reeve knew, that there was no one around to hear: the patrols had been signaled to evacuate the area.

Another rocket landed, farther away this time. Then another, and another. Finally, a flare went up. Two blows on the whistle. Reeve guessed patrols were being sent into the freshly bombed area to look for bodies or fleeing survivors.

“What do you reckon?” Jay whispered.

“Lie doggo,” Reeve said. His mouth felt strange when it worked. “A rocket’s as likely to hit us up-and-running as lying still.”

“You think so?” Jay sounded unsure. Reeve nodded and resumed watch. There was sweat in the hollow of his spine, trickling down towards the trouser line. His heart was beating ever more loudly in his ears. Then he heard a distant megaphone, a voice speaking heavily accented English.

“Surrender or we will kill you. You have two minutes to decide.”

The two minutes passed all too quickly. Reeve flipped open the cover on his watch face and followed the sweep of the luminous dial.

“Very well,” the megaphone said. Then another single blow on the whistle. Reeve could feel Jay trying to burrow deeper into the scrape, pressing himself hard against the ground.

Rockets whistled past to their left and right, causing deafening explosions on impact. Great clumps of earth fell on both men. More missiles, more gut-wrenching explosions. Between impacts, Reeve could hear nothing but a loud buzzing in his ears. He’d been too late putting his hands over them, and was now suffering the consequence. He felt fingers tapping his leg, and half turned to see Jay starting to rise onto his knees.

“Get down!” Reeve hissed.

“Fuck this, let’s go!”

“No.”

More explosions caused them both to fall flat, but Jay scrambled up again straight after, dirt and grass and bits of bark falling like heavy dollops of rain.

“They send a patrol out to check this grid, they’re bound to spot us,” he spat.

“No.”

“I say we go.”

“No. We can’t lose our bottle now.”

The flare went up, the double whistle sounded, and Reeve pulled Jay to the ground. Jay started to struggle, giving Reeve two options: let him go, or slug him. Jay came to his own decision first, catching Reeve on the side of the head with his rifle butt. Reeve snatched at the rifle, letting go of Jay in the process, and Jay got to his feet, pulling the rifle out of Reeve’s hands.

Reeve risked a glance around. The patrols would be on their way. Smoke was being blown all around them, but when it cleared they’d be as visible as targets at the fairground.

Jay was pointing his M16 at Reeve, finger just shy of the trigger. He was grinning like a monkey, his face blackened, eyes wide and white. Reeve noticed that there was a 40mm missile in the 203 grenade launcher. Jay raised the rifle above Reeve’s head and fired the grenade into the sky. With the 203 there was no explosion or recoil, but a loud pop as the grenade was launched.

Reeve didn’t use up precious seconds on watching the gre-nade’s trajectory. He was up and moving. Jay had done it now; he’d let the enemy know they were there. They were fair game now for anything the Argentines threw at them. Reeve left his rucksack. He didn’t care whether Jay left his or not, or even if he left the transmitter. It was time to move-and quickly. Behind them, the grenade made impact and exploded.

With his rifle carried low in front of him, Reeve ran.

“Where are you going?” Jay yelled at him, pouring bullets from his M16 towards where the enemy would be hunkered down, waiting for him to expend the lot. Reeve knew his partner had cracked. He’d never been sure of Jay in the first place, and now his worst fears were being realized. Everything Jay was doing was against the standard operating procedure… or any other procedure. Reeve wondered if he’d be justified putting a bullet into Jay himself. He dismissed the thought in less than a second.

“See you in Chile!” Jay yelled. Reeve didn’t look back, but he knew from Jay’s voice that he was moving too, taking a different line from Reeve.

Which suited Reeve just fine.

He knew the first few hundred yards, could have run them blind. He’d been staring at the route for the past twelve or so hours, since switching directions with Jay. They’d changed position so they would stay fresh and alert. Staring at the same spot for too long, you could lose your concentration.

But Reeve had focused his mind on the route, his escape route. He didn’t know what was over the next rise, but the next rise was shelter from gunfire and night sights, and that was his primary objective: shelter. He knew from an earlier compass reading that he was running northeast. If he kept going, he’d reach the coastal road north of Rio Grande. He was taking a risk, since this direction meant he would have to skirt the northern perimeter of the airfield. Well, they wouldn’t be expecting him anywhere near there, would they? More crucial, he had two ob-stacles to cross: a main road and the Rio Grande itself.

He didn’t know why he’d set his sights on the coast, and if Jay was headed for Chile so be it. Jay would wait for him an hour or so at the ERV, then move off. Bloody good luck to him, too.

The bastard.

Reeve went over the rise on all fours, keeping low in case there were any nasty surprises waiting for him. But the Argentine bombing had done him a distinct favor by clearing out all the patrols. He scurried down the other side of the escarpment, sliding over loose rocks and pebbles. It didn’t seem to be man-made. It wasn’t a quarry or a dump for unwanted stone and shale, it was more like the scree Reeve had come across on the glacial slopes of the Scottish mountains. He ended up going down the slope on his arse. Just when he thought there was no end to the drop he found himself on a road and crossed it hurriedly, remembering to turn around first, in case they came hunting him with flashlights. His footprints led back the way he’d just come. The other side of the track, he turned on his heels again, hit another uphill slope at a run, and powered his way to the summit. There was gunfire behind him, gunfire and rockets and grenades. The sky was full of pink smoke, like a fireworks display. Gunpowder was in his nostrils.

That stupid bastard.

There was someone over to his right, about seventy or eighty yards away. It looked like Jay’s silhouette.

“Jay!” Reeve called.

Jay caught his breath. “Keep going!” he said.

So Reeve kept going. And the sky above him turned brilliant white. He couldn’t believe it. Jay had let off a WP grenade. White phos made a good smoke screen, but you didn’t use the stuff when you were already on your way out of a situation. Then Reeve realized what Jay had done, and his stomach did a flip. Jay had tossed the phos in Reeve’s direction, and had headed off the other way. He was using Reeve as his decoy, bringing the Ar-gentine troops over in Reeve’s direction while he made his own escape.

Bastard!

And now Reeve could hear whistling, a human whistle. A tune he recognized.

Row, row, row your boat,

Gently down the stream…

And then silence. Jay was gone. Reeve could have followed him, but that would mean running straight through the smoke into God knew what. Instead, he picked up his pace and kept running the direction he’d been going. He wondered how Jay could have set off one way yet come back around to meet up with Reeve. It was crazy, Jay’s sense of direction wasn’t that bad…

Unless… unless he’d come back on purpose. The enemy had heard only one yelled voice, come under fire from just one rifle, one grenade launcher.

They didn’t know there were two men out here!

Reeve saw it all. The safest way out of this was to lie low and let the enemy catch your partner. But that only worked if your partner was caught. Jay was just making sure. Back at Hereford, it would be one man’s word against the other’s… always supposing they both made it home.

Over the rise the ground seemed to level out, which meant he could move faster, but also that he could be spotted more easily. He thought he could hear rotors behind him: a chopper, maybe more than one, probably with searchlights attached. He had to reach cover. No, he had to keep moving, had to put some distance between himself and his pursuers. Relieved of his rucksack and most of his kit, he felt as though weights had been taken off his ankles. That thought made him think of shackles, and the image of shackles gave him fresh impetus. His ears still seemed blocked; there was still a hissing sound there. He couldn’t hear any vehicles, any commands or gunfire. Just rotors… coming closer.

Much closer.

Reeve flung himself to the ground as the helicopter passed overhead. It was over to his right and moving too quickly to pick him out. This was a general sweep. They’d carry on until they were sure they were at a distance he couldn’t have reached, then they’d come back, moving more slowly, hovering so the searchlight could play over the ground.

He needed cover right now.

But there was no cover. He loaded a grenade into the launcher, got up, and started running again. The rifle was no longer in both hands and held low in front of him: now it was in his right hand, the safety off. It would take him a second to swing the barrel into his other hand, aim, and fire.

He could see the beam of light ahead of him, waving in an arc which would pick him out when the chopper was closer. Reeve dropped to one knee and wiped sweat from his eyes. His knees hurt, they were stiff. The chopper was moving steadily now, marking out a grid pattern. They weren’t rushing things. They were being methodical, the way Reeve would have done in their situation.

When the helicopter was seventy-five yards in front of him Reeve took aim, resting one elbow on his knee to steady himself. As soon as the helicopter went into a hover, Reeve let go with the grenade. He watched the bomb, like an engorged bullet, leave the launcher and head into the sky, but he didn’t wait to see the result. He was running again, dipping to a protective crouch as the sky overhead exploded in a ball of flame, rotor blades crumpling and falling to the ground. Something hot fell onto Reeve’s arm. He checked it wasn’t phos. It wasn’t-just hot metal. It stuck to his arm, and he had to scrape it off against the ground, taking burning flesh with it.

“Jesus Christ!” he gasped. The helicopter had hit the ground behind him. There was another explosion, which almost toppled him. More flying metal and glass hit him. Maybe bits of bodies were hitting him, too. He didn’t bother looking.

His arm wasn’t sore; the adrenaline and fear were taking care of that for the moment, the best anesthetics on the planet.

He’d been scared for a second, though, and what had scared him most was the fear that the heat on his arm had been white phos. The stuff was lethal-it would have burned straight through him, eating as it went.

Well, he thought, if Jay’s smoke screen had hinted I was here, the helicopter was an open fucking invitation.

He heard a motor, revving hard: a Jeep, probably on the track he’d crossed a few minutes back. If it unloaded men, then those men would be that few minutes behind no more. No time to stop, no time to slow. He didn’t have time to pace himself, the way he knew he should so he’d have some idea how far he’d traveled when he got a chance to stop and recce. You did it by counting the number of strides you took and multiplying by length of stride. It was fine in training, fine when they told you about it in a classroom…

But out here, it was just another piece of kit to be discarded.

He had no idea where Jay was. The last he’d seen of him was vanishing behind all that thick white smoke, like a magician doing a disappearing trick. Magicians always had trapdoors, and that’s what Reeve was looking for now-a door he could disappear through. There was a small explosion at his back. Maybe it was the helicopter, maybe Jay launching another grenade, or the enemy redoubling its bombardment.

Whatever it was, it was far enough behind him to be of little concern. He couldn’t hear the Jeep anymore. He wondered if it had stopped. He thought he could hear other vehicles in the distance. Their engine drones were just the right timbre to penetrate his blocked ears. Heavy engines… surely not tanks? Personnel carriers? He couldn’t see any other searchlights. There had been only the one chopper. They might be ordering another from the airfield, but if the crew was sensible they would take their time getting here, knowing the fate of their comrades.

Reeve was thinking about a lot of things, trying to form some structure to the chaos in his mind. Above all he was trying to think of anything but his own running. On a grueling route march you had to transcend the reality. That was the very word his first instructor had used: transcend. Someone had asked if he meant it as in transcendental meditation, expecting to raise a smile.

“In a manner of speaking,” the instructor had said in all seriousness.

That was the first time Reeve got an inkling that being a good soldier was more a state of mind, a matter of attitude, than anything else. You could be fit, strong, have fast reflexes and know all the drills, but those didn’t complete the picture; there was a mental part of the equation, too. It had to do with spirit, which was maybe what the instructor had been getting at.

He came suddenly to the main road which ran from Rio Grande on the east coast all the way into Chilean territory. He lay low, watching army trucks roar past, and when the route was finally clear scuttled across the road like any other nocturnal creature.

His next obstacle was not far away, and it gave him a choice: he could swim across the Rio Grande-which meant ditching more equipment, including maybe even his rifle-or he could cross it by bridge. There was a bridge half a mile downriver, according to his map. Reeve headed straight towards it, unsure whether it would be guarded or not. The Argentines had known for some time now that there were enemy forces around, so maybe the bridge would be manned. Then again, would they have been expecting Reeve and Jay to make it this far?

Reeve’s question was answered soon enough: a two-man foot patrol guarded the two-lane crossing. They were standing in the middle of the bridge, illuminated by the headlights of their Jeep. At this time of night there was no traffic for them to stop and check, so they were talking and smoking cigarettes. Their eyes were on the distance, the direction Reeve had just come. They’d heard the explosions, seen the smoke and flame. They were glad to be at this safe distance from it all.

Reeve took a look at the dark, wide river, the cold-looking water. Then he peered at the underside of the bridge, and made up his mind. He clambered down to the water’s edge and made his way underneath the bridge. It was an iron construction, its struts a crisscrossed series of spars forming an arch over the water. Reeve slung his rifle over his shoulder and gripped the first two spars, pulling himself up. He climbed slowly, quietly, hidden from land but all too visible from the river, should any boat with a spotlight come chugging along. Where he could, he used his feet and knees for purchase, but as he climbed higher, he found himself hanging over the water below by his hands, moving one hand at a time, his legs swinging uselessly in space. He thought of training courses where he’d had to swing this way across an expanse of water or mud-but never this distance, never under these conditions. His upper chest ached, and the rusty metal tore into his finger joints. He thought his arms would pop out of their sockets. Sweat was stinging his eyes. Above him he could hear the soldiers laughing. He could pull himself up onto the bridge and open fire on them, then steal their Jeep or cross the rest of the bridge on foot. But he knew if he opted for this kind of action, he’d leave traces, and he didn’t want that, he didn’t want the enemy to know which way he’d come. So he kept swinging, concentrating on one hand, then the other, squeezing shut his eyes and gritting his teeth. Blood was trickling down past his wrists. He didn’t think he was going to make it. He started to fantasize about letting go, falling into the water, about letting the river wash him all the way to the coast. He shook his head clear. The splash would be heard; even if it wasn’t, what were his chances? He had to keep on moving.

Finally, he found purchase with his feet. He was at the far side of the span, where the struts started curving downwards towards the riverbank. He mouthed a silent “Jesus” as he took his weight on his feet and legs, easing the pressure on his shredded palms. He felt exhausted as he started his descent, and dropped when he reached solid ground, gasping and panting on all fours, his head touching the dank earth. He gave himself thirty precious seconds to get his breath back. He pressed some strands of grass against his palms and fingers, as much of a compress as he could manage.

Then he got to his feet and moved away from the water, heading northeast. He couldn’t follow the river: for one thing, it led back towards the airfield; for another, he was more likely to encounter civilians close to a water source. Stumbling across a fisherman was not high on his Christmas-present list.

Reeve was running the way he’d been taught: not a sprint, because a sprint used up too many resources too quickly-this running was measured, paced, steady, more a jog than anything else. The secret was not to stop, not to falter-and that was the most difficult part of all. It had been difficult on the Brecon Beacons during those arduous training runs. Reeve had jogged past men he regarded as fitter and stronger than him. They’d be standing bent over, hands on knees, spewing onto the ground. They daren’t sit down-with the amount of kit they were carrying they’d never get back up. And if they stopped too long they’d begin to seize up. It was something joggers knew. You saw them at traffic lights or pausing to cross the road, and they jogged on the spot.

Never stop, never falter.

Reeve kept running.

The terrain became much as it had been the other side of the river, steep ridges of loose shale with shallow valleys between. He didn’t bother counting his steps, just kept moving, putting miles between himself and the river. He knew he couldn’t outrun vehicles, but this terrain, inhospitable to a human, would be downright lethal for any vehicle other than the hardiest. No Jeep could take these slopes, and a motorcycle would slew on the loose stones. A helicopter was the enemy’s best bet, and he’d probably wiped that option out for the meantime. He took strength from that fact.

He was climbing again, trying not to think about the pain in his hands, crossing the ridge, then sliding. At the bottom of the slide, he picked himself up and ran forward four paces.

Then he stopped dead.

He couldn’t really see anything, but some sixth sense had told him to stop. He knew why: it was the nothingness itself that had warned him. He couldn’t see the ground ahead, not even ten feet in front of him. He shuffled forwards, toeing the ground, until one foot stepped off into space.

“Christ!”

He took two steps back and got down on his hands and knees, peering into the darkness. He was on the edge of a gully. No… more than a gully: sheer sides dropped he didn’t know how far. A ravine, a deep chasm. Even supposing he could climb down into it, he’d no idea whether he could scale the other side. He might be trapped. He’d have to go around it, but that might take hours. Damn it to hell. He tried to see something, anything down there, something that might tell him what was waiting for him. He unclipped the night scope from his belt and put it to his eye. Its range was limited, but he thought he could make out shapes at the bottom of the hole, rocks or boulders probably. The drop was pretty sheer, tapering off towards the bottom. In daylight, if he wasn’t rushed, he could probably find enough hand- and footholds to climb out the other side. But in darkness with the enemy behind him…

He took the night scope away from his eyes and was confronted by the ravine’s blackness again. It was taunting him. Everybody, no matter how good, needs luck, it was telling him. And yours just ran out.

“Fuck that,” he said, clipping the scope back onto his belt and standing up. His leg muscles complained. He had to make a decision soon, for all sorts of reasons. Turn left or right? Right, and he’d be heading vaguely in Jay’s direction; left, and he might hit the coast. Was that correct? He screwed shut his eyes and concentrated. No: if he turned right he might hit the coast. He had to turn right.

He ran more slowly now, keeping close to the edge of the ravine so he’d know if and when it ended. The problem was, this close to the edge, he daren’t pick up his pace. One stumble might send him over. The ground was dangerous enough as it was. He remembered the dirt track, and the scree, and the boulders at the bottom of the pit… it was a quarry! The landscape made sense now. And if he was right, then he could half-circle the pit without too much difficulty. Quarries weren’t that big. There might even be places he could hide or, as a last resort, a vehicle he could hijack.

He heard voices ahead of him and stopped again, unclipping the night scope. A two-man patrol. Somehow they’d got ahead of him, which was very bad news. There could be any number of them between here and the coast road. One man had called to the other to let him know he was stopping to urinate. The other carried on. Both had their backs to Reeve. He walked forward in a silent crouch and, when he was near enough, reached down to lay his rifle on the ground. His right hand was already clutching Lucky 13.

The man was zipping himself up as Reeve came close. He’d had to lay down his own rifle while he was peeing. Reeve tensed and sprang, one hand over the man’s mouth, the dagger chewing into the exposed throat below. The man’s hands reached up from his fly too late. Reeve kept gouging at the neck, hot blood spilling over him. It splattered onto the ground like urine. He laid the body on the ground and retrieved his rifle. The other man was calling for his friend. Reeve made an affirmative sound and started jogging forward, like he had finished and was now catching up. His eyes burned into the enemy’s back. The soldier was saying something about radioing in when Reeve grabbed him by the head and went to work with the knife. More steaming blood. Another body.

He’d killed them by the book. Quick and silent.

He rolled both bodies over the lip of the quarry, then started jogging again. There was not time for analysis or shock; he simply stuck the dagger back in its scabbard and ran. He had maybe four more hours of darkness.

He reached the other side of the quarry without incident. He’d presumed from the casual attitudes of his two kills that nobody was expecting him to get this far. The patrol hadn’t been primed for sudden contact. At the other side of the quarry he got out his compass. He’d start heading east now, a direct line to the coast. From what he remembered of the map, there were no settlements of any size for thirty miles north of the town of Rio Grande. There was the coast road to cross, and he hoped that would be his next and final obstacle. He heard a chopper approaching, but it veered off again. Maybe there had been a sighting of Jay. He hoped the chopper hadn’t found the bodies in the quarry, not so soon.

He felt good again. He gave himself a few seconds to think about the killings. They’d been necessary, he was sure of that. They wouldn’t exactly trouble his conscience; he hadn’t even seen the men’s faces, just their backs. One of the trainers had said it was eyes that haunted you, that final stare before oblivion-when you kill, never look at the eyes: concentrate on some other part of the face if you have to, best if you don’t look at all. Because the person you’re killing is staring Death in the face, which makes you Death. It was not a role any man should be happy with, but sometimes it was a fact of conflict.

The blood was sticky on Reeve’s hands. He had to pry his fingers off the rifle barrel. He didn’t think about it at all.

He hit the coast road before dawn, and let the feeling of elation have its way for a few moments while he rested and checked the road for guards, patrols, or traffic. He could see nothing, but he could hear and smell the sea. He double-checked with his night scope that the route was clear, then picked himself up and jogged across the paved surface, his rubberized soles making little sound. He could make out the edge of the sea before him, and a ribbon of sand and shale. Lights south of him told the story: he was only five or so miles north of Rio Grande, which put him maybe twenty to twenty-five miles south of the next decent-sized settlement. Reeve knew what he wanted now-he wanted a boat. He doubted he’d find many between here and the next settlement north. He’d have to walk towards Rio Grande and, this close to the ocean and the road, cover was limited to say the least.

He had to use what darkness there was.

And he had to get a move on.

He picked up his pace, though every muscle in his body complained and his brain told him to go to sleep. He popped two caffeine tablets and washed them down with the last water from his canteen. His luck was holding. After barely a mile he came across a small cove filled with paddle boats. They were probably used for fishing, a single rower and lines or a net. Some of them bobbed in the water, attached by lines to several large buoys; others lay beached on the shale. An old man was putting his gear into one of the beached boats, working by the light of his lantern. Reeve looked around but saw no one else. It would be dawn soon, and the other fishermen would arrive. This old man was beating the rush.

The man looked up from his work as he heard Reeve crunch over the shale towards him. He prepared a glint of a smile and some remark about another early bird, but his eyes and mouth opened wide when he saw the soldier pointing a rifle at him.

Reeve spoke to the man quietly in Spanish, stumbling over the words. He blamed fatigue. The man seemed to understand. He couldn’t take his eyes off the caked blood on Reeve’s arms and chest. He was a man who had seen blood before. It was dried to the color of rust, but he knew what he was looking at.

Reeve explained what he needed. The man begged him to take another boat, but Reeve needed the man with him. He couldn’t trust him not to raise the alarm as soon as his fellow fishermen arrived.

What Reeve did not say was that he was too tired to row. That was another reason he needed the old man. There was not yet light in the sky, but the darkness was not as black as it had been. Reeve didn’t have any more time to waste. He pointed the rifle at the man, guessing that a dagger wouldn’t suffice to scare someone who gutted fish. The old man put up his hands. Reeve told him to start hauling the boat out into the water. The man did as he was told. Then they both got into the boat and the old man slid the oars back and forth, finally finding his rhythm and working them strongly. There were tears in his eyes, not just from the wind. Reeve repeated that he wasn’t going to kill the man. He just wanted to be taken out to sea.

The farther out they got, the safer Reeve felt on the one hand, and the more exposed on the other. He was beginning to have doubts that such a small boat could get far enough out into the ocean for any rescue ship to make a rendezvous. He took out the metal cylinder which contained the beacon and twisted off its cap. The beacon was simple to use. Reeve switched it on, watched the red light start to blink, and placed it on the tiny bench beside him.

The fisherman asked how far they were going. Reeve admitted he didn’t know.

“There have been rumors of gunfire around the airport,” the old man said. He had a voice thick with tobacco use.

Reeve nodded.

“Are you invading us?”

Reeve shook his head. “Reconnaissance,” he told the man, “that’s all it was.”

“You have won the war, you know,” the man said without bitterness. Reeve stared at him and found he believed him. “I saw on television. It will all end maybe today, maybe tomorrow.”

Reeve found he was smiling, then laughing and shaking his head. He’d been out of contact for seventy-two hours. Some mission, he thought. Some bloody mission.

They began to chat quite amiably. Maybe the man did not believe a smiling man could kill him. The man spoke of his youth, his family, the fishing, about how crazy it was that allies like Britain and Argentina, huge wealthy countries, should fall to war over a place like the Malvinas. The conversation was pretty one-sided; Reeve had been trained to give away nothing. When he spoke, he spoke generally, and sometimes he did not answer the old man’s questions.

“This is usually as far as I go,” the old man said at one point.

“Keep going,” Reeve ordered.

The old man shrugged. Later he said, “The sea is getting rough.”

As if Reeve needed telling. The waves were knocking the little boat about, so that Reeve held on to the side with both hands, and the old man had trouble keeping hold of the oars. Reeve held the beacon securely between his knees.

“It will get rougher,” the old man said.

Reeve didn’t know what to say. Head back into calmer waters? Or stay here and risk being capsized? He didn’t know how long it would take for someone to pick up the beacon’s signal. It could take all day, or even longer if some final assault were taking place on the Falklands. Nobody would want to miss out on that.

In the end the old man made up his own mind. They re-treated to water that was choppy, but not dangerous. Reeve could see land in the far distance.

“Will other boats come out this far?”

“Boats with engines, yes.”

Reeve couldn’t see any signs of activity on the water. “When?” He was forming an idea. He would make it look like the little boat was in trouble, and when one of the motorized boats came to help, he’d use his rifle to take command and head out farther into the South Atlantic.

“When?” The old man shrugged. “Who knows? An hour? Two hours?” He shrugged again.

Reeve was feeling the cold. He was wet and seriously fa-tigued. His core temperature was dropping again. He asked if the old man had any clothing on the boat. There was an oilskin beneath Reeve’s seat. He put that on and immediately felt more sheltered from the stiff breeze. The old man signaled that there was food and drink in the canvas bag. Reeve rummaged and found bread, apples, chorizo sausage, and a bottle of something which smelled evilly of alcohol. The old man took a swig of this, and told Reeve he could eat what he liked. Reeve ate one apple and half a peppery sausage. The old man pulled the oars in and laid them on the floor of the boat, where they sat in two inches of water. Then he lifted up one of his rods and started to tie bait onto it.

“Might as well,” he said. “While we’re here. Do you mind me asking, what are we waiting for?”

“Friends,” Reeve told him.

The old man laughed for some reason, and baited another rod.

An old man fishing from two lines, and another man huddled in a tattered yellow oilskin. That was the sight that greeted the rescue party.

Reeve heard the engine first. It was an outboard. He scanned the waves, but it was behind him. He turned his head and saw an inflatable dinghy scudding across the foam. It had no markings, and none of the three men in it wore distinguishing uniforms or insignia.

Reeve aimed his rifle at the boat, and two of the men onboard aimed their rifles back at him. When the two vessels were twenty feet apart, the man steering the dinghy asked a question in Spanish.

“What are you doing here?”

“Fishing,” the old man said simply. He had rolled and lit himself a cigarette. It bobbed in his mouth as he spoke.

“Who are you?” the man on the dinghy demanded.

“Fishermen,” the old man said.

Now the man commanding the dinghy stared at Reeve. Reeve held the stare. The man smiled.

“You look like hell,” he said in English. “Let’s get you back to the ship.”

The debriefing took place while the Argentine garrison formally surrendered on the night of June 14. Reeve had been given a thorough physical by a doctor, then was allowed to eat, sleep, and clean up-in any order he liked. Mike Rose, 22 Battalion’s CO, was not on the ship. Reeve was debriefed initially by three of his own officers, and again later by a couple of spooks. There would be a further debriefing next day.

They asked about Jay, and he told them the truth. They didn’t like that. They made him go over the story several times, probing at various details like dentists seeking a pinprick of decay. Reeve just kept telling them the truth. It didn’t go any further. A senior officer came to see him, one on one.

“You’ll be up for a commendation,” the officer said, “probably a medal.”

“Yes, sir.” Reeve didn’t care a damn.

“But the regiment doesn’t air its dirty linen in public.”

“No, sir.”

“No one’s to know about Jay.”

“Understood, sir.”

The officer smiled and nodded, unable to keep the relief off his face. “You’ll be looking forward to a bit of R & R, Gordon.”

“I want out altogether,” Reeve told the officer, quietly but firmly. “Out of the regiment and out of the army.”

The officer stared at him, then blinked. “Well, we’ll see about that. Maybe you should take some time to think about it, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

But Reeve knew he wouldn’t change his mind.

Days and weeks passed. Jay never appeared-in Chile or anyplace else. He was eventually presumed dead, though the Argentine military authorities denied capturing him or killing him. It was as if he really had vanished in that puff of smoke, leaving nothing behind but a snatch of a badly whistled children’s song.

A song Reeve had hated ever since.

And a man he’d hated with it.

TWENTY-TWO

JAY WORE HIS ARMANI-LOOK-ALIKE SUIT to LAX. He liked the way it was roomy: you could strap a holster to your ankle, tape a knife to your leg, and nobody would know. You could carry a small semiautomatic beneath your jacket, an Ingram or one of the folding-butt Kalashnikovs, especially if you had a special pocket and release strap sewn into the lining, as Jay had. The tailor in Singapore had made the alterations after Jay had been measured for the suit. Jay had drawn a picture of what he wanted, and what he wanted it for. The tailor had been bug-eyed, and had knocked a few dollars off his original estimate. It was a tactic Jay had tried since, with similar success.

He toted a Heckler & Koch MP5 to the airport, its stock fully retracted. He had a little snub-nosed revolver around his ankle, and ammo in his pocket. He was chewing gum and wearing Harley-Davidson sunglasses. He wore brown loafers and ice-blue socks with the yellow suit. He fitted right in.

He didn’t carry his two-way radio or a telephone of any kind, but he was wearing a wire. He had three men in the terminal building and two more outside. Not that he was expecting trouble. He was grinning, the way he often did these days, though nobody but him got the joke. He tried to blow a bubble, but it was the wrong kind of gum. It was hard to find the right kind of gum these days. Jay whistled a little tune, knowing the guys listening in wouldn’t appreciate it. He was wondering what kind of stunt Gordon Reeve would pull. Should have finished the fucker off in France. Funny the way fate threw old shadows in your face, blotting out the sun. In-where was it? Yes, Singapore, same trip he bought the suit-in Singapore he’d bumped into a guy he’d known in 2 Para, before he’d joined Special Forces. Jay had been sinking dark rums at some bar, maybe three in the morning, and this guy had literally bumped into him. They’d sized each other up, both keening for a fight; then the man took a step back and dropped his arms.

“Jay,” he’d said. “Fuck me, it is you.”

So they’d had a drink-a few drinks actually-then Jay had taken the guy, whose name was Bolter or Boulter or something like that, to a brothel he knew. It was just a small apartment of two bedrooms above an electrical shop, but it did such good business they had to wait in the rank hallway, plied with beer laced with Christ knew what, for twenty minutes, until Jay kicked down a door and dragged a weary punter off one of the girls. The service got better after that; they had a bloody good time after that. Then Jay and his pal went for a walk down by the docks. You’d never seen so many little boats bobbing on the water. It was getting on for six in the morning, and though both men were bushed, neither wanted to go to sleep.

“Here, this’ll help,” Jay had said, sliding a narrow-bladed knife into the back of his old colleague’s neck. He dragged the body behind some trash cans, took a wristwatch and all the cash on the body, plus any papers he had with his name on them. He got rid of the stuff on his way back to his own hotel. Thing was, he couldn’t have anyone from the old days knowing he was still around-the SAS would want to talk to him about desertion. They’d be terrifically keen to talk to him, and not just to catch up on the good old days. He didn’t know what story Reeve had given, whether he’d told the truth or not; he hoped he’d never have to know.

Funny thing was, next time he was in Singapore and went back to the brothel, one of the girls complained that his friend had given her herpes. So Bolter or Boulter had left something behind. Everybody did.

Jay liked the life he had now, a life he’d carved out for himself-sometimes literally-in America. It hadn’t been easy. In fact, it had been fucking hard-especially those first weeks in South America. On the run, a one-man slaughterhouse. He’d killed three Argentine soldiers that first night, one for each man who’d died on the glacier, but it hadn’t been enough to erase the memory of that doomed mission. Jay had seen something on that glacier, his eyes peering into the whiteout. He’d seen the bland white face of Death. It was an absence, an uncaring void, and the more chilling for that, the more hypnotic. He’d stared at it for a long time, not bothering with goggles. When they’d lifted him onto the helicopter, he’d been snow-blind. But when the blindness receded, there was a clearer vision in its place, a knowledge of helplessness and the will to power. It had taken him all the way through Tierra del Fuego and into Chile.

He’d killed one poor bastard because he needed civvy clothes, and another for his motorcycle, which duly packed up after thirty miles, forcing him to walk for a while. Big fucking country Chile -north to south anyway. He’d stuck to the west coast, killing some bearded Australian backpacker for his passport. Jesus, backpacking in fucking Chile: that was asking for trouble.

He’d crossed into Peru, smiling for the border guards like the man in the picture in the passport, rubbing his chin and laughing, to show he’d shaved a lot of his beard off since the photo had been taken. They stayed somber throughout but let him go. The backpacker’s body would never be found, not while it had skin on it, though one day the skeleton might be found. He bypassed Ecuador and went into Colombia. People in Peru had told him not to do it, but he didn’t see why not-and it was lucky he didn’t heed their warnings, because Colombia turned out to be a great place, and the site of his first civilian job. He’d met up with some hard cases in Cali and ran a few errands for them. He got to know the kingpin, Edouard, and Edouard told him there was always work for those willing to undertake personal risk.

“I’ve taken more risks than you’ll ever know,” Jay had said, though in fact he’d already told Edouard most of the Rio Grande story, exaggerating somewhat and turning Reeve into an early corpse.

Eventually, Edouard had given Jay a job which involved liaison with some Americans. The Americans took him with them to Venezuela and from there to Jamaica, where he decided to stay awhile and was duly passed to yet another new employer. He was learning fast what his employers wanted, and how to know if a proffered fee was a rip-off or not. He stayed in Jamaica more than a year and saved enough to buy an American identity. Later on, homesick, he bought himself a new British passport, too, and now he had a Canadian one as well-all in different names of course, none of them his own.

When the Jamaican police started asking questions about a headless, handless corpse that had been dragged out of a trash dump on the edge of Kingston, Jay left the island, not without regrets, and headed to the USA, feeling immediately at home in Miami. Jesus, what a madhouse. It was in Miami that he found himself talking like an American, even though most people he spoke to still mistook him for an Australian. Jay set up his stall in Miami, but found work hard to come by. It was all organized, mostly along clan lines: he wasn’t Cuban, so the Cubans didn’t want him; he wasn’t Puerto Rican, so the PRs wouldn’t take him. They had their own firepower, and if they needed freelancers, there were a hundred kids on the street, each one with something to prove and nothing to lose.

Jay got in touch with Edouard, who put him in touch with an old friend. Edouard had been good to Jay, and Jay had liked him. There was an affinity between them, two men who only ever liked to be called by a single name. The only hit Jay had ever turned down had been on Edouard.

Edouard’s old friend brought Jay to L.A. The man’s name was Fessler, and Jay had worked for Mr. Fessler-that was what you had to call him, Mr. Fessler; Jay sometimes thought even Fessler’s wife called him that-for three years before setting up on his own. He liked the regular income, but itched to be his own boss. It was tough at first, but got easier after the first couple of jobs. In fact, the money got so good, Jay developed a nose-talc habit which he broke only with the aid of a lot of booze. A lot of booze. The booze had put some weight on him which no amount of workouts seemed able to shift, but he thought he carried it well enough, and in a baggy suit no one noticed, right?

La-La Land, that was what Jay called Los Angeles. He’d come across it in a book about snuff movies. The appellation stuck in his mind, and he pretended he’d made it up, even to people who knew he hadn’t.

He liked La-La Land. He liked being his own boss. Above all, he liked working for big companies. Big companies paid well and let you get on with it. They didn’t want to know the details, the procedures-they just wanted the job done. And they paid on the nail. No fuss, no mess, minimum paperwork. Jay’s cover was as a “corporate restructuring adviser,” and he’d even read books on the subject. Well, articles anyway. He bought the Wall Street Journal sometimes, too, and he was an avid reader of some bits of Time. He had letterheaded paper and knew a guy who could type up an expense sheet or an account if the employer really wanted one. These pieces of paper were art forms, full of terms like “workstation projection analyses” and “capital fluidity advisement,” stuff Jay didn’t understand, but the guy who did the typing swore they meant something.

Kosigin wasn’t like anyone Jay had ever worked for. For a start, he wanted to know everything-every detail. And he would make Jay tell the story several times over. Jay was never sure if Kosigin was looking for him to make a mistake in the retelling, or if the guy just got off on the stuff Jay told him. Certainly, no matter how exaggeratedly gruesome Jay made the details, Kosigin never winced, never showed any emotion. He’d just stand there at his office window, or sit at his desk with his hands together as if in prayer, the tips of his fingers just touching his chin. The fucker was creepy, no doubt about that. No doubt at all.

But Jay reckoned he could learn a few things about deportment from Mr. Kosigin. He liked Kosigin’s style. Kosigin was Brooks Brothers for work and L.L. Bean for casual moments, as buttoned-down as an oxford shirt. He would never feel right in Armani, even if it was original. He was aloof, but that just made him seem stronger. Jay liked to visit him in his office. He liked to study him.

It was like a message, when Kosigin gave him the job which led to Reeve being delivered unto him. It was like a dream. Jay could have taken Reeve out a dozen times since, any number of different ways, but he wanted a face-to-face. He wanted to know what had happened to Reeve, and what he’d told the brass. Just for his own personal satisfaction.

Then he’d kill him.

And if Reeve wouldn’t tell, or made any rash first move… well, Jay would drop him without a second’s hesitation.

“Where’s this fucking bulletin board?” he murmured, walking through the packed concourse. It was like a demolition derby of luggage carts and parties of elderly couples, all with walkers and umbrellas and bags of golf clubs and raincoats folded over pencil-thin liver-spotted arms. Umbrellas in La-La Land! It was a madhouse, and the lunatics had been in charge so long that nobody bothered to question the system anymore.

“I love this town,” he said out loud, maneuvering past the latest obstruction. He finally saw the information kiosk, though it was doing its best to blend in with the scenery. He passed a couple of his guys without acknowledging their presence, but when he got to the board, he stopped and turned on his heels, checking all around, studying the scene through the plate-glass window-a jam of cabs and minibuses and a frantic cop windmilling his arms at them. The cop had a whistle in his mouth, referee-style. Jay remembered that moment in the scrape, when he knew he had to jump and fight or he’d implode, he’d been lying there so long and so quiet. He knew that in technical parlance, he had “cracked”-but fuck that. Reeve was so tight-arsed he’d have lain there and let a bomb detonate between his cheeks. If Jay hadn’t got up and run, very probably neither of them would still be alive. That was something else he wanted to tell Reeve; he wanted Reeve to thank him for getting him out of that situation. He reckoned he was owed a little respect.

He looked around him again, and up towards the ceiling, and nothing he saw looked like a trap.

So then he studied the bulletin board, both sides, and he smiled at the clerk at the information desk, just in case he had something to do with it. Then he turned his attention to the notices again, especially the folded paper napkin with the name JAY written on it. He touched it with a finger, ran the palm of his hand down it, feeling for a bump, maybe some tiny explosive device which would take off a couple of fingers or blind him in one eye. That sort of magnitude.

But there was nothing. He lifted one corner of the napkin, but the layers started to peel, and he had to take off another layer before he could make out that there was writing there. So then he licked his lips and hauled the napkin off the board in a single swift movement, so that the clerk looked at him quizzically. “All clear here,” Jay said, as if to himself. Then he unfolded the note, the note telling him to fly to London. It gave the name of a hotel, and said a message would arrive there for him in the name of Rowe.

Rowe: that was a nice touch.

One of his hired hands came up, removing his earpiece as he approached. “So?”

“So nothing, just a fucking note.”

They’d been all wound up. They’d been told of Reeve’s rep. Jay had wanted them ready for anything. They were going to go away frustrated, pent-up, needing to unwind.

“Everyone to the cars,” Jay said. “We’ll go back to the gym, maybe hit a bar later. I just got to make a call first.”

He went to the public pay phones and called Kosigin.

“Well?” Kosigin demanded.

Jay read the note out to him. “What do you want me to do?” he asked when he’d finished.

“Personally,” Kosigin said, “I want you to follow the instructions.”

“And what if I’m walking into a trap?”

“I thought you were clever enough to avoid traps?”

“I am, but I also don’t believe in walking into them in the first place.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

“I’ll go, but I want to take some men with me. It won’t be cheap.”

“It never is.”

“You want to come along for the ride?”

“Absolutely not.”

“You still want me to go?”

“Absolutely,” Kosigin said before hanging up.

Their conversation had gone exactly as Jay had known it would.

He looked around him for a sales desk, then walked over to the information kiosk.

“Which carriers fly to London?” he asked. He might have to try more than one. Could be difficult to make a block booking at such short notice…