‘What am I supposed to be grateful for—another gun? Next time, for Christ’s sake do what you plan to do!’
‘Get stuffed!’
MacConnachie stamped off and churned about in the scrub, muttering angrily,
‘How the hell did I get lumbered with you in the first place?’
‘You chose me. I was no friend.’
‘You aren’t now!’
‘All right, then—let’s go our own ways!’
‘Let’s do that!’
A silence. Ansell said,
‘If we can’t trust one another, we might just as well.’
MacConnachie said,
‘I didn’t see any tank, I’ll tell you that. There was damn-all tank on the back of that thing.’
‘What did you expect it to be? Painted bright red and labelled petrol?’
‘Now, look, kid—’
‘No, you look! I told you where it is—now trust me. We trust one another, or we’ve had it! I rely on you, bloody well rely on me!’
MacConnachie turned away, and after a moment said quietly,
‘I do rely on you.’
‘All right, trust me then. We can’t afford another mistake like that.’
‘All right, all right! We were both wrong. Now forget it!’
Ansell had to settle for that. He reached for their new gun, and began to strip it down. MacConnachie said,
‘I’ll do it.’
But Ansell ignored him. Trust. MacConnachie sat at his side and looked up at the helicopter.
‘We’ve got him for the rest of the day.’
‘Um. It’s funny.’
‘I’m glad somebody thinks so.’
‘I mean, he can’t come down in case we hit him. But we don’t want to use ammunition. So he sits there, and we sit here, and neither of us does anything but watch the other.’
‘He’s doing something. He’s talking in the Goons right now. We’ll have to move soon.’
Ansell had unscrewed the barrel of the gun; he sighted along it, then handed it to MacConnachie. It was impossible to see from one end through to the other. The gun had struck barrel down, damaging that component beyond repair. MacConnachie said,
‘Great for shooting round corners.’
‘That’s what I thought. The rest of it’s okay, though.’
‘What about the magazine?’
‘Nearly full.’
‘We’ll keep that and the breech-block when we chuck it away. Hang on to it for now.’
‘Right.’
Concentrating on reassembling the weapon, Ansell said carefully,
‘Was he really trying to kill me, do you think? That’d be against orders; they’ll take us alive, if they can.’
MacConnachie flushed.
‘Can’t think of everything, you go by instinct.’
‘I mean, he must be pretty clever, to have someone leaning out of the cab, just in case you took a shot at him.’
MacConnachie glared up at the sky.
‘He’s clever,’ he muttered, ‘that man, he’s good.’
The kid was right. He should have gone for the chopper. He shouldn’t have been fooled. But what the hell did he expect? Sackcloth and ashes. Counter-attack.
‘Where the hell’s the canteen?’
‘Behind the pimple.’
‘Is it hidden?’
‘Of course.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, are you?’
‘I don’t make mistakes like that.’
It wasn’t the mistake Ansell would have expected of MacConnachie. A too great ruthlessness, yes; a careless overplaying of the hand. But an absence of ruthlessness, that was disturbing. To see MacConnachie unsettled, as now, was to suffer a frightening lapse in his own confidence. He needed MacConnachie, stupid, fearless and bold. Without him, he could never survive; and for that, he should be prepared to pay any price. He looked at the sulking figure, and smiled with affection. Not stupid, limited. He said,
‘I’m sorry, Mac. I’ll bet you got him.’
‘Of course. Three times. They all struck.’
‘Will the pilot go back for that?’
‘Not him. If the observer’s dead, it doesn’t matter. If he’s still alive, that man will let him bleed to death. It’s what I’d do.’ MacConnachie screwed up his eyes as though projecting himself into the helicopter. ‘There’s brains all over the inside of that crate.’
‘Nasty.’
‘He’s not bothered. He wants us now, so bad.’ MacConnachie’s voice was as soft as Ansell had heard it. ‘He’ll stick till his petrol runs out.’
‘Soon?’
MacConnachie slowly unlocked his eyes from the helicopter to look back at the last ridge.
‘Not soon enough. The River Boys are very close now. We’ll move.’
Ansell rose with the reassembled gun; MacConnachie took up the undamaged weapon and the suitcase. Ansell said,
‘Where are the other choppers?’
‘Don’t be greedy.’ Then MacConnachie looked up at the helicopter, waved his gun towards the distant heights, and shouted,
‘Oi! We’re going that-a-way!’
Ansell was sure the pilot waved back.
From the pimple, where they retrieved the canteen, they headed for the secondary height, their day’s objective. Already it was afternoon, and the sun was falling towards the horizon. They were badly behind schedule, and had no chance of completing the planned march by nightfall. Ansell said,
‘Is there any point in leading the chopper the wrong way?’
‘No. We have to cross the ridge. They’ll cover the whole thing.’
And so the helicopter came with them, never far ahead, never far behind, an unshakeable and unmistakable marker as to their location. In a curious way, thought Ansell, they were not ungrateful for his company.
The sun lay low, the shadows stretched eerily, and Ansell was tired: for the first time, really weary, dragging himself along. Hill followed hill, gully joined gully behind them, each indistinguishable from the last, or the next. He was at a low ebb, knees aching and ankles unreliable. But, in a daze, he maintained his all-round watch: right and to the rear, left and to the rear, then fully behind. He wondered how much longer he would stay awake.
MacConnachie had been staring at, and through, the country ahead, reaching beyond the heights for each protuberance, shelf and configuration. He had them now. He knew them.
They could march by night.
The two things happened almost together.
First, the helicopter left them, turning back to disappear over the sun-bright ridge behind, giving one last wink of its blades in the dying sun. Sudden quiet. Then Ansell saw, or thought he saw, movement on the ridge.
‘Mac.’
‘What?’
‘I think the River Boys are with us.’
From the comparative darkness of the plain, they could see the still glowing forward slopes of the ridge clearly. Tiny figures appeared on the skyline, forerunners of a larger party.
‘It was bound to happen.’
‘They can’t see us.’
‘They know where we are. That’s why our friend could retire for the night.’
MacConnachie turned forward again to look up at their target feature for the day. He said,
‘We’re four hours from the top of that thing. We’ll get up there, and then decide what to do.’
Ansell nodded wearily.
As they climbed, night overtook them, reaching the summit long before they did. It grew cold, and very dark. Later, perhaps, the translucent glow of the previous night might reappear, but in these first hours there was nothing to warn them of the ankle-wrenching pothole or the foot-snaring cranny. Tedium flowered into every kind of small agony, until their nerves contracted at each jar, and their systems cried out in disproportion for relief. A major catastrophe might have spurred them to greater effort; a shower of rain could have unmanned them completely.
/> The ascent took six hours, and when they reached the peak, near midnight, the sky grew light too late to help them.
‘Oh God.’ Ansell lay back with his eyes shut. ‘I’m so tired.’
‘Me too.’
Silence.
‘What now?’
‘It’ll take them eight hours to reach us.’
‘They won’t come tonight.’
‘They’ve got to. They know where we are, they know we’re tired. They won’t get so good a chance again.’
‘They must be tired too.’
‘Not as tired as we are. They’re hunting, we’re running.’
‘Now I know how the animals feel.’
‘That’s something in your favour.’
Silence.
‘So what do we do?’
‘Sleep. Four hours. That’ll leave us well ahead. If we don’t sleep, we go nowhere.’
‘Good. Give me the gun.’
‘What?’
Ansell took the gun, fiddled with it, and pushed it back to MacConnachie.
‘It’s still on single-shot. Good night.’
He rolled over to sleep. MacConnachie chuckled.
‘Food first.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘We eat, then we sleep.’
‘Oh, come on.’
‘Do what you’re bloody well told!’
Ansell sat up, muttering mutinously, while MacConnachie unroped the suitcase in the darkness and opened it.
‘I don’t see what the bloody hell . . .’
‘Shut up!’
MacConnachie was groping about in the suitcase, trying to identify one tin against another in the pale light. He suddenly said,
‘What order are they in?’
‘What order are what in?’
‘The tins, for Christ’s sake!’
‘What do you mean, order?’
‘Well, you put ’em in order, didn’t you? How do we tell one from another at night—strike a bloody match?’
‘Are you taking the mickey?’
‘You stupid little bastard—don’t you think of the simplest things?’
‘What does it matter?’
‘It matters whether we have hot soup or cold soup; when we can light a fire, and when we can’t!’
‘I’m not hungry anyway!’
‘You’ll bloody well eat when I tell you!’
Both men lost their anger simultaneously. After a moment, Ansell murmured,
‘You can tell them apart by feeling their bottoms.’
‘It’s their contents I’m interested in, not their sex.’
‘For God’s sake, look!’ Ansell rummaged in the case. ‘The big one’s condensed milk. That’s that one. The soup have got rings round the bottom. The meat haven’t. That’s meat.’
‘Why the hell didn’t you say so?’
‘I didn’t think of it.’
‘Well done.’
MacConnachie tore open the tin with a knife, and gouged out a hunk of meat for Ansell.
‘Half now, half before we set out.’
‘Thanks.’
MacConnachie then cut out his own piece, and they sat eating. Ansell said,
‘It’s pretty nauseating.’
‘Be grateful.’
‘I am.’
They had a drink each, and slept; but not before, at MacConnachie’s insistence, they had untied their slacks from round their waists, put them on, and then their uniform jackets. This last function MacConnachie had to perform for Ansell, who slept on his feet like a scratchily exhausted infant.
Under the blanket, they huddled together for warmth.
It seemed to Ansell that he had barely lost consciousness when, four hours later, MacConnachie was pulling off the blanket and shaking him.
‘Time to move.’
‘God, oh God.’
Exhaustion lay over him like a sheet of lead. He struggled to come awake as a man buried under a collapsed building struggles, hopelessly against impossible odds. MacConnachie shook him more brutally.
‘Wake up, damn you!’
His head rattled about, his half-formed thoughts careened, as MacConnachie gripped his coat front and wrenched him violently back and forth. When MacConnachie let go, he put a hand to his head, and muttered,
‘’m tired.’
‘So am I!’
Then MacConnachie struck him across the face, knocking his arm aside.
‘Wake up, you gutless little bastard!’
Ansell woke.
‘Sorry.’
‘That’s better,’ said MacConnachie, and turned away. Ansell felt suddenly very sick but, although he retched, nothing came, and it passed almost at once.
‘Morning sickness,’ he said. MacConnachie said,
‘Get changed and ready to move.’
MacConnachie was busy in the gloom, stripping off his jacket, packing it with the blanket, tying his slacks round his waist again. Ansell said,
‘It won’t happen again.’
‘It’ll be my turn to lie in tomorrow.’
As they worked, preparing for the new day’s march, Ansell came to understand their physical condition. It was now ‘the day after tomorrow’, the moment at which the effect of their initial outlay of effort should overtake them, and it did. He ached at every joint; each limb flared in pain at the smallest movement. His stomach was unnaturally tender, his neck and shoulder muscles cracked audibly, and every time he stooped his head spun. But the greatest pain came from his feet, which were badly blistered, and his left shoulder, which had been eroded by the strap of the canteen and burned persistently. All the same, he knew that MacConnachie was no better off than himself; and if MacConnachie didn’t complain, he wasn’t going to.
As if reading his thoughts, MacConnachie laughed and said,
‘It’ll go.’
‘It had better.’
MacConnachie packed the empty tin and the second breechblock, roped up the case, and thrust the remains of the damaged gun deep into a fissure, where it should lie hidden for ever; the spare magazine was already under his belt. The meat he had scooped on to a little pile of grass, and now they had breakfast, and then a drink. Finally, MacConnachie scratched a shallow hole in the earth but, apart from urinating, it was a forlorn hope for them both.
‘It’ll come.’
They advanced to peer down into the gloom.
‘Damn. We’ll be in low ground when the sun comes up.’
‘At least they won’t see us.’
‘They will when the chopper comes.’
The back slope of the secondary feature proved unexpectedly steep, and they fell many times in the half-light, jarring their bodies painfully. But as the descent unwound, Ansell came slowly to realize that each new impact, with the effort of concentration to which it gave rise, was driving the aching stiffness from his bones, routing the over-sensitivity from cringing nerves. A small victory was being won, and it gave him renewed zest. They would never set out so tired again.
MacConnachie was concerned. Day had broken in the high ground above, but still they travelled downhill, enveloped now in a thick mist that had risen, pale and mysterious, with the dawn. Somewhere ahead the bulk of the main ridge loomed, but he was blind.
Then, as gently as it had come, the mist melted away, and the massif stood before them, two hundred yards to their front. A towering, scrub-grown scar rose straight up its sheer face, much like the one they had climbed the day before, but infinitely taller. It was the only available cover and, now that they were exposed to the sky, he led the way hurriedly towards it, humping over cracks and gullies, taking many anxious glances over his shoulder for the helicopter.
At the foot of the scar, he crouched and waited for Ansell.
‘We’re going up that. Stay close, but not less than ten feet. When the chopper comes, close up to talk.’
‘Right.’
‘And stop grinning all the time.’
‘I’m happy in my work.’
An
sell didn’t grin for long. The scrub was, if anything, even thicker than the day before, twisted and tough, gnarled and deep-rooted. Certainly the slope was steeper. Every yard had to be fought for and won; nothing was yielded; and the cost was measured in torn fingers, wrenched ankles, and nails laid back. He came to feel tiny again, in face of an impossible ascent. Sheer, repetitious labour took command.
Then the helicopter came, and they burrowed deep into the brush.
Ansell started to worm his way upwards through the binding growth, heading for the point at which he had last glimpsed MacConnachie, but somehow, with the dust puffing in his face, and the chopper swishing rapidly closer, he missed him. He rooted about with the beginnings of panic. Then MacConnachie called, ‘Here, here!’ and he turned left, wriggling towards the voice. From the height of a small animal’s head, it was impossible to see beyond the nearest stalks, and it was without warning that he came up suddenly against MacConnachie’s back. MacConnachie hissed, ‘Still! Lie still!’
The helicopter seemed to be almost directly overhead, its blades beating the air about them, the scrub rustling furiously in the buffeting down-draught. He didn’t want to risk exposing his face, so he shouted into the ground,
‘Has he spotted us?’
‘No.’
It was becoming oppressively hot again as the sun marched up the sky. Heat not only beat down on their unprotected heads and backs, but rose up into their faces in stifling waves from the earth. To gain some relief, Ansell very slowly raised his head a little until he could look back at the secondary feature; he saw to his disappointment that they were still below the level of the peak where they had spent the night; they had travelled no more than two hundred feet up the scarp. Sweat ran into his eyes and curled under his chin to hang there, tickling. He lowered his face again and listened to the helicopter as it moved off, the sound rising and falling, marking the pattern of the search they would have to avoid. After a while, MacConnachie said,
‘God, this is a bastard. He’s doing a lateral search, sweeping half a mile in each direction, working his way up the scar.’
‘What do we do?’
‘Only one thing. Crawl when he’s at the end of the sweep, freeze when he comes close again.’
‘But that’ll take hours! Days!’
‘I know it.’ Then, urgently, ‘Watch it! Keep still!’
The chopper swept in over their position again, hovered, and slid back the way it had come. As the rotors diminished, MacConnachie said,
Figures in a Landscape Page 6