‘What I’m saying, George, the Service has rather outgrown these tasty jobs – exciting, of course, as they are – and I’d like you to be the one who weans personnel off cloak and dagger and into the realm of serious analysis of the problems our customers need to know about. Blood and guts has had its day, and you’re the man to preach that sermon – been there, done it, moved on. Gamekeepers and poachers, that sort of thing. Give me a shout in the morning, will you? Rankin, isn’t it? I assume there’s damage-limitation spin ready if it doesn’t all pan out for the best. Yes? But we should stay staunchly optimistic. Let me know when he’s back between clean sheets and enjoying a decent sleep. Thank you, George.’
He’d used about half of the last magazine, and thrown most of the grenades, but each time the fall and explosion had been closer to him and further from the lights, and the shouts had been crisper, clearer. He had tried to count how many bullets from the last magazine he had used, but had lost it. He needed one left, must have it. He thought the torches’ beams would reach him soon; it was harder each time to turn his back on them. Unable to run any more, he could only stumble.
‘Shall we push on?’
‘Have to.’
‘Going further from him?’ Henry snapped. ‘It’s foul.’
Belcher grunted back, ‘It’s where we are. I can’t help, and nor can you. Accept it.’
They were beyond the plateau edge and had come into a field – wide, limitless – of sand. She knew that they were going north and that there would have been a route crossing the wasteland of the desert, followed by the merchants and the camel trains and the men who dealt in cargoes of myrrh and frankincense and spices and peppers and silks, a route known to those on whom a civilisation was centred. She and Belcher could find no trail and no markers, but they stumbled forward. And they heard, more distant, echoes of gunfire – once automatic bursts and now single shots, as if a flow of water had become a drip – and the rumble of small explosions. All further back, and soon, she reckoned, beyond the range of their hearing. It was hard for them to tramp in the sand, each step exhausting . . . but a man was behind them, shielding them, and she felt an obligation to stamp out each stride, not slacken.
Belcher clung to her and propelled her on. There were questions she could have asked, but only for the empty satisfaction of hearing her voice, and she knew the answers.
‘Was it him they wanted or us? Are we equal to him in their eyes? If they have him will they press forward faster to try to reach us? What would they do to us?’ She kept quiet and trekked on, and the sand penetrated their mouths, noses, ears and into the folds of their clothing. She thought again: she could not share her life, afterwards, with anyone who had not been here. The choice had been between Belcher and the one who had watched as she’d washed and whom she had tried to stare out. Belcher, the bravest of the brave, and the Sixer who was giving them the chance to survive. She had made that choice. One foot in front of another, a desperate repetition.
They were lost, going into the desert, were far from any proposed helicopter pick-up point, were beyond help from the guys who were supposed to have offered a degree of protection and who had not waited. They had only each other’s strength.
Two more shots mingled with the rip of the wind in their clothing, and a dulled explosion, and she didn’t think they would hear any more; they would have gone too far and too fast.
A new fear.
Corrie did not know how many bullets were left in the magazine – but they would be countable on the fingers of one hand. And he did not know how many more paces he would be able to walk, and then had the new fear. He had exhausted bullets, but in the darkness had kept back one grenade. He would have it against his chest and they would swarm close to him and the torches would burn into his eyes and they would be in front of him and beside him and one from behind would launch on to him and try to pinion him, but he would have pulled the pin on the one grenade left to him and would hold it close against his body, and count the digits out, five seconds, slow, and wait for the detonation. But it might be smoke. If it were smoke then he’d choke and they’d cough, splutter, spit, but not be fatally injured. Flash and bang were classified as non-lethal, but against a bare throat might – just might – do the necessary. He would not be able to shine a light on the grenade to check, and he could not get much further away from his pursuers.
He thought they sensed it. Men made little darting runs away from the main group and the line, coming closer, and there were shouts that the wind muffled and he thought they were insults being hurled at him. Their confidence seemed to grow. Total tiredness enveloped him.
He could end it then, there, could sink down on to his knees and put the barrel tip under his chin, and then pull the bloody trigger and lose the top of his fucking head, and they would go on past him, speeding up, and take up the trail left by her. So he kept moving, but each step was shorter, and it was harder to get air down into his chest, and if he gulped then he sucked in sand. It was nearly over, easy to see that.
He had read before that a man’s or woman’s life floated past their eyes in the moment before drowning. He saw his mother, and annoyance on her face because he’d made an excuse and headed for the pub, and saw the darts board and the cat stretched out and faces laughing, grinning at him. Saw a bare-arsed little apartment where nothing much belonged to him, and saw the men and women, veterans and crèche carers and cleaners he walked past on his way to work, and the cheeriness of the guard on the gate and the uniform in the shadows behind him who had the H&K, and saw the Third Floor corridors and the face of a young woman who no longer met his gaze, now looked away. Saw them all, tried to take another step.
They were homing in, were nearer to him. He thought he had a single bullet left in the rifle magazine, and the prayer on his lips was that sand had not entered the mechanism, would not jam it. He tried to take a last step . . . so weak, and sinking.
‘Am I on free fire?’ Xavier asked.
Bart answered, ‘I’m not sending it to the Oval Office for a tick.’
‘Do we need a say-so?’
‘At Hurlbert they’ve only eyes for Mosul – look at the screen.’
Xavier might have acknowledged that getting an image on the big screen from the on board camera depended on Casper’s flying skills. Rules of Engagement, over Yemen, tended to be flexible. The images were not good, but they were all they had, and time was against them. Xavier had a hand hovering over his control panel, had a finger extended above the necessary button. Press the button, send the signal. Get it up to the satellite, have it on a down-leg that searched out the electronics inside the airframe of NJB-3, and it would run either port or starboard and into a wing and down to a pod, and would get a message to a Hellfire. A snappy business but, as the screen showed, they needed to be quick.
One figure, almost stationary. A loose line spread out behind, gaining ground.
Procedure would normally be to consult a superior, be given access to what intelligence existed, and then to weigh the pluses and minuses of permitting a strike. But that might take twenty-five minutes or more, and would have relied on finding someone with a background in Yemeni affairs, who was up to speed on the Marib Governorate and its supply of High Value Targets. It might have been stalled because the relevant official was on a comfort break, or had gone for lunch, and they’d not be hurried and liked to cover their backs. There was a certain freedom, but a crew would have to answer for its actions in a court of inquiry. Was this worth laying their careers on the line for?
No funeral and no wedding. A night of horrible weather. A fugitive, so slow that he seemed almost dead on his feet, and in close pursuit a gang of thirty or more armed men. Puffs of burnout on the screen when grenades exploded. A fugitive going nowhere.
Casper said, drily, ‘I’ll go for it. Can you tell me what’s on his feet?’
‘They are boots. He wears boots.’
Xavier was lying, and gave a cold little chuckle of conspiracy – he co
uld not see the feet. He called it for the tape. They had picked up the trace, while rocking in the skies, the bird being thrown every which way, and had found a steady trail of downed shapes – bodies, was Bart’s call. Now they had the one figure alone, who Xavier said wore boots, and a line of men nearing him.
Casper said, ‘I’ll hold her as firm as I can, and let the beauty go into the middle of them, the mother-fuckers. Just do it.’
A career on the line? A long line and all their careers. But it did not seem to any of them in the dark little cubicle, food wrapping on the floor and coffee cartons alongside, that there was any good reason not to shoot. Casper held the stick, and Xavier did the lock. The Hellfire went. Eighteen pounds of blast fragmentation, on a laser homing system, accelerating to a speed of 995 miles per hour. And the screen held its shape, and the small figures, white on grey, were in a lacy line across it – and the picture collapsed.
Corrie was blown backwards. He had been on his knees and wrestling with the bag containing the grenades, and there had been a noise like an express train breaking out of a tight tunnel. A sudden, thundering sound had overwhelmed the noise of the wind and then there had been a flash of light, brilliant and blinding, and afterwards, a moment later, the shockwave, which had toppled him. The breath was stripped from his body. There was burning heat on his face, and his ears were clogged with the roar of the explosion. There would have been shrapnel careering in every direction, but he had been low down and it had cleared him. Corrie gasped – then understood. The impact point had been in the middle of the line of men, perhaps seventy-five yards from him. The line had broken and the torches flashed in many directions and more had fallen to the sand. He did not hear screaming, instead the sound, mixed with the wind’s howl, was of a subdued moan, whines, and little keening cries.
He understood that he was being watched over – might have been the old angel up there, might just have been a guy doing a nine-to-five shift on another continent, on the other side of the world, who had him up on a big screen. It was as if a rope had been chucked to him, but a long rope. He could not, of course, hear the drone. Could not see it. But he felt the presence of the thing – it would be wide-winged and struggling to hold its station, driven by an engine that might have pushed a ride-on lawn mower, with two missiles as a payload. And did not know if the bird had come looking for him or had happened on him and then interpreted his situation. But he understood there could be no rope ladder snaking down and calls for him to get on and climb, and the chance of a helicopter being in tandem were small, he thought. He had to move, get clear. He was on his feet and there would be some minutes when the shock of the detonation and the adrenalin kick would kill the pain and give him energy, like a syringe in the arm, and he had to get distance between himself and the line behind. It would re-form, the ones who were able to would come on, and would have the hate worse. Like a window had opened, but it would not stay unlatched, would slam shut. Head down and into the wind, lost and alone, trying to force a pace. He heard the first of the shouts start up again behind him. God was Great, their faith was intact. He could not run, but staggered away and into the darkness ahead; sand was loose under his feet and hard to get a good grip on, and he did not dare look back.
Chapter 19
A step forward, a pause, another step, another pause, but he was making progress.
As in Syria, Corrie felt the exhaustion but not the pain. His beaten legs, bruised chest and injured shoulder were – almost – irrelevancies.
Ahead of him was sand, loose and shifting under his boots; his boots chucked it up. The grains layered the inside of his mouth and were into his nose. His eyes were near closed, just slits. There was nothing to see in front of him but the wall of darkness, not a flicker of light and not a peep of the moon where the cloud might have broken. The torches were behind him. Before the missile had come down, he had longed to sink in the sand and hold the grenade tight and let fate take its course, get the show over – but not any longer.
Men watched over him. He couldn’t see them, couldn’t hear them. Corrie believed those monitoring their screens would not have blasted off one Hellfire and then turned away, job done, mission completed. They would track him and wait for another gap in the cloud ceiling. He rarely turned his head, but the last time he had stopped, stood in awkward defiance, and gazed back and into the small beams of the torches, he had thought there might be a dozen of them remaining. They were clustered close together, which was not clever but would have given them each greater courage, and loathing him, Corrie Rankin, the career officer at VBX, with a vengeance. He reckoned that what kept him alive, had done so in the last hour, was the fact they’d been ordered to take him in a condition where the full force of their justice could be used on him. They would not end his life until they had found a digital camera, and they’d want a tripod to stand it on, and fresh batteries and a memory stick to safeguard the recording. The last time, he had fired one shot. Another bullet had entered the breech, so at least another shot remained. He believed the big bird, silent, unseen, was over him and probing for gaps in the cloud banks, but he could not depend on it, and needed one bullet and must have a grenade that was not smoke, and preferably not a flash and bang either. These were the issues that filled Corrie’s mind – it had gone beyond a girl’s face, and a pub with a cat and a log fire, and people on the Third Floor, and the cheeriness of guards and of those whose homes he walked past in the early morning and the early evening. He tried to go faster, and each time he stopped to swivel and look behind him he lost speed. And what of the dawn? Not there yet.
The nightmare scenes in his mind were that the last bullet might be used and he would have none left to fire up through his chin, or that he had the wrong grenade, pin out and lever loosed, as they rushed him, stampeded the last few paces, the torches shining in his face. He added another factor: dawn would come. Dawn was the worst of the scenes playing in his mind – they would form a half-circle around him, and he would see their faces and would at last be cowed. He went faster.
He did not know how much longer he could hold up that speed and stay beyond the torches’ range. One of the pursuers, to praise the bravery of those who’d survived the Hellfire, had shouted, hoarse-throated, that God was the Greatest, and others had joined in but less surely, and he wondered if, even for these faithful men, doubt ever entered their minds. The sand eased under his boots, each step the heel slid back and into the softness. He went over a dune and then down into the valley at its far side, where his boots sank deep. He had to believe they were watching over him and that a gap in the cloud would come; he had nothing else to hold to.
They took turns in supporting one another. Part of the time Henry held up Belcher and dragged him, kept him moving, then they would swap. Her legs would fail and he would take the burden of keeping her upright. Henry Wilson was damned if she was going to be the one who caved in first, and damned, also, if she was going to take the load of the two of them. They were joined at the hip, arms looped across each other’s backs, his hand on her waist and under her ribcage, finding a grip there, and hers was around his belly and would have been where the C shape had been drawn, which he’d told her about, and where the incision would have been made for the explosives under local anaesthetic. Each of them, she was sure, would live the rest of their lives – one week, one year, one decade, or more – in the shadow of the experience. And they would never tell friends or relatives, and if there was a debrief in some goddamn office block or somewhere they would describe events with an economy verging on the insolent.
If she thought Belcher was veering away to the right or left, then she heaved him back and they would go straight ahead. Always ahead, though she did not know what they would find there. Their boots slid and could find no grip when they went up and to the crest of a dune, then they would plunge down on the far side, falling and rolling, but they would cling to each other, cursing and swearing as they went. They were changed people – who would have known her? Not
her mum and dad, and not any of the neighbours, in the leafy street where autumn would not yet be far enough advanced to have turned the trees red and gold, nor any teacher at school or college, nor any of those old-guard academics who had been good to her and had prised open the vaults with funds for her study courses. She had left a world behind, and would not, again, touch it or reach it.
To talk was to waste breath. But necessary . . .
‘Don’t let me down, don’t you dare. You fail and I dump you.’
‘You’re a burden, dead weight. Don’t think I’ll carry you.’
‘Fail and I’ll leave you and not look back. Believe it.’
‘Be a passenger and you’ll end up on your face in the sand, and just waiting for me to piggy-back you – you won’t see me.’
And they held tight to each other and his arm was firm under her armpit and her hand was locked on to his hip, with no time for romance, or sweet talk, or for her to tell him why she would never really leave him to die on his own, and her own conviction that she could depend on him for her life. The big explosion had been far behind them. It would be the business of the Sixer, who covered their backs. He had not been asked to, and there’d been no argument; he would have done it because he had seen her with Belcher and noted the way they were hand in hand, an item of sorts.
She realised what the Sixer had done for her, and was humbled, and pressed on. She noted that Belcher had ditched the rifle and the magazines, and his coat, and she let slide a shawl she’d worn for modesty, damn all use now, and next she’d unhook the rucksack that was heavy with the few pottery pieces and ornaments she’d taken, precious artefacts of a queen and a civilisation, which had seemed so important, but were now only dead weight.
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