A Hostile State

by Adrian Magson

  ‘Back up,’ I said. ‘But slowly.’

  FOURTEEN

  Isobel took her foot off the brake. The gradient did the rest, drawing us back soundlessly down the slope until we were out of sight of the encampment. With a quick spin of the wheel we were facing downwards and building up momentum until we reached the road, where Isobel hit the starter and turned right.

  ‘I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised,’ she muttered. ‘Why wouldn’t they be here, poor buggers. The house is isolated, it’s empty, it’s shelter and they have nothing. No doubt the military will move them on eventually. I’d better inform London as soon as I can in case anyone else is thinking of using the house.’

  ‘How often do they check it?’

  ‘It’s been on the books for years. They’re supposed to get someone to call by every now and then, but I doubt they were able to do anything faced with all those people.’ She changed gear and put her foot down, leaving a cloud of dust behind us. ‘There’s a space I know further on. It’s not shelter as such but hopefully it’ll be deserted.’

  ‘Why do they keep the house on?’

  ‘Who knows? It’s probably a hangover from way back and they never got round to shutting it down. Our civil service is hooked on property-owning, even though it’s not theirs. There are vast tracts of Britain owned by the government but not used for anything apart from lobbing missiles and shells at targets. Are you a property hound?’

  ‘I am.’ In fact I had three properties to my name, all city apartments in different capitals and little more than temporary bolt-holes-cum-investments. I spent little time in any of them and would turn them all in if the need arose and I had to disappear.

  We drove for an hour, passing more columns of military traffic interspersed with motorbikes, mopeds and pickups. The troops gave us the eye as they swept by but made no move to stop us. Eventually Isobel pulled off the road onto a narrow track through a rocky outcrop surrounded by stunted olive trees and dried grass. It didn’t look as if much traffic came this way and I guessed it was a deserted farm track leading nowhere. Once in among the rocks she turned the car around and cut off the engine.

  ‘We need shut-eye,’ she said, and slid her seat back. ‘Can you take first watch? The next stop is a couple of hours away.’

  I took a short walk to keep myself awake and checked out our surroundings. It wasn’t scenic and the heat was hitting me from both directions, weighing on my head and coming off the ground like an open oven. After forty minutes I gave her a nudge and we changed places.

  It didn’t last long enough, and I was jerked awake by her hand on my arm.

  ‘I think we’ve got company,’ she said, and nodded through the windscreen.

  A dusty 4WD was trundling slowly towards us, disappearing occasionally as it followed the winding track, the sun glancing off the windscreen and obscuring the inside. Then it turned and stopped, and three men climbed out.

  They were dressed in dirty combat pants, plain shirts and scruffy trainers and each carried an AK-47 assault rifle swinging by their side. They were young, skinny and I put their ages in their twenties. Thugs looking for trouble and easy money.

  ‘Bandits,’ Isobel confirmed. ‘They watch the road from up on one of the slopes and hope to pick off anyone who looks vulnerable.’

  I checked the Hi-Power and the Kahr and handed the Kahr to Isobel. She took it and checked it over. Whoever the men were it didn’t look good, but the more fire-power we could show them the better. We had no way out of here except past them and I doubted they were going to let us go with a smile and a wave.

  They strolled towards us with a swagger. They didn’t look particularly wary, but I put that down to inexperience or arrogance. They’d seen us go by and decided to try their luck. This was their territory and they could do whatever they liked. Anyway, what could two people in a little jeep do to stop them? To them we must have looked like easy prey.

  I said, ‘Lower your window. When I say, step out, use the door for cover and show them your gun. I’ll do the same. If they look like shooting, shoot back.’ I wasn’t sure it would work but we didn’t have any option. This was the brutal reality of a country where factional groups like this ruled in spite of the military presence because they had the weaponry and the ability to disappear into the countryside like smoke. They lived by their own rules simply because there were no others they respected.

  I let them come on until they were less than fifty feet away. Anything further back and our handguns would be useless. I didn’t know what kind of markswoman Isobel was, but the men were grouped close enough together on the narrow track to present a decent target for both of us if hell broke loose.

  I said, ‘Now,’ and stepped out, kicking the door back on its hinges and settling my gun hand on the edge of the window frame. I aimed at the man in the centre because a flick either way would cover the other two.

  They stopped, confused. Three surprised faces in a neat line as they saw the guns and realized they were out in the open with no easy way back. The man on the right of the group recovered first, shouting and swinging his rifle up. Isobel opened fire with the Kahr, letting off two shots. She missed him but hit the man in the middle, who skipped round with a scream and fell over, dropping his gun. I switched aim and centred on the first man as a hail of wild shots went over our heads and disappeared towards Syria. I fired three times, knocking him off his feet.

  The man on the left decided not to join the party. Instead he dodged sideways and scurried into the rocks at the side of the track like a rabbit followed by more shots from Isobel’s gun. I got the feeling she was annoyed.

  ‘I’ll go after him,’ I said. ‘Stay here and watch your back.’

  I was taking a chance on the lesser of evils. If we drove down the track he’d be able to pick us off as we went by. What he wouldn’t expect us to do was follow him into the maze of rocky outcrops where he’d have the advantage and lots of cover.

  First I ran forward and checked both the men we’d shot. The one in the centre was wounded, with blood oozing from a shoulder wound. His eyes were glassy and he was out of it. I checked him for secondary weapons but he was clean. The man who’d fired first was dead.

  Instead of following number three into the rocks I ran further up the track until I reached higher ground. The air seemed thinner up here, although maybe that was the rush of adrenalin messing with my breathing. There was no sign of the gunman but with the extent of rocks and crevices he could be hiding anywhere. I slid into a gap between two massive outcrops and waited, listening.

  A predator bird high up in the sky above me gave a lonely call, no doubt telling others that there were good pickings to be had down here and just to wait. I ignored it and stepped forward, feeling the heat coming off the rock and seeing a snake slithering away into a hole. I preferred not to think about snakes and stepped past it quickly.

  There was a natural path here, with animal prints in the soft wind-blown surface. No man prints, though. I moved forward towards a bend in the path around an out-jutting rock the size of a house. Then I heard a scuff of noise from nearby. Someone wasn’t accustomed to moving quietly.

  I bent and picked up a piece of rock the size of a golf ball and tossed it ahead of me along the path. There was an immediate blast of shots, tearing up the ground and zinging off the rocks in a mad hailstorm of lead.

  I gave a groan and waited. The feathered predator up top had fallen silent, maybe out of expectation or surprise. I wondered if the shooting could be heard from the road. If any military traffic came along and heard it, they might take it on themselves to venture up here. I hoped not. They wouldn’t necessarily stop the gunman and would start asking us some serious questions about what we were doing here. That’s if they didn’t come in shooting in which case we’d all be losers.

  There’s a time for waiting and a time for precipitating action. I figured we’d been here long enough and had better get moving. As I stepped forward three paces I caught a glimpse of a
shadow to my right. But it wasn’t at my level. It was higher and looking down at me.

  I spun round and dropped to the ground to reduce the target. The third man was standing on the rocks above me. He’d been casting around looking for me, and had just turned my way, bringing his rifle to bear on the path where I’d been standing.

  He sprayed the area with a volley of shots, but the rifle barrel was too high and the shots ricocheted off the hard surfaces like angry hornets, one of them clipping my right leg. By the time he adjusted his aim it was too late. One shot and he went down, tumbling off his perch to land across the path in front of me.

  I got to my feet and watched him. He wasn’t dead and tried to get up, a patch of blood spreading across his side. I used my gun to motion him to stay down and he put up both hands to show he understood. I stepped closer and checked the wound. It had torn a groove in his side but it wasn’t a life or death issue. He stared up at me with eyes like puddles of ink and I knew what he was thinking: this kind of situation went one of two ways. Either I was going to finish him off or let him go – and by his expression he wasn’t an optimist.

  I patted him down. His shirt pocket contained a pack of cigarettes, crumpled where he’d fall off the rock, and his pants pockets held a few small notes, a lighter and a driver’s licence with another man’s face.

  But there was no photo of me, which was good.

  Satisfied he wasn’t about to jump me I checked where the stray shot had nicked my leg. It was a graze which stung rather than hurt but could have been a lot worse. I was still mobile. What was it in the Monty Python film – always look on the bright side?

  I took the man’s rifle and extracted the magazine, then threw the gun over one side of the rocks and the magazine over the other. If he got a second wind he’d have to go searching all over before he got to be a threat.

  I motioned for him to stay where he was. He nodded compliance with what looked like cautious relief, so I walked back to the Suzuki where Isobel was sitting in the shade of the car. She was holding the gun but didn’t look happy.

  I said, ‘Have you been hit?’

  She took a while to acknowledge me, then shook her head. I knelt down in front of her. She’d been crying, tear tracks showing in the dust down her cheeks.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  She brushed away the tears and said, ‘Sorry … I’ve never done that before. Shot anyone, I mean.’ Her voice was shaky and she looked at me with wide eyes. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It gets easier. Just try not to make a habit of it.’

  ‘But I missed! I mean, how could I do that? I could have got us both killed.’

  ‘You didn’t. OK, you missed him but the other man got in the way. Same outcome. It happens.’ It was kinder than saying her shooting was off. I eased the Kahr out of her hand and placed it in the car. Shock does strange things to people and doesn’t always mix well with a loaded gun.

  We drove on, Isobel insisting on driving to occupy her mind. Having no focus other than reflecting on having just killed a man – even someone who’d been trying to kill you – can lead to a desperate downward spiral that does nobody any good. But I didn’t waste time trying to engage her in conversation. She didn’t need it and I had little to say that would help.

  The evening was beginning to close in now and we saw few signs of life off the road other than the occasional flicker of house lights or camp fires or a plume of dust as a vehicle followed a track across the side of a hill. I kept one eye on our rear for signs of vehicles coming up fast but we seemed to have the road to ourselves in this direction.

  We passed a steady stream of pick-ups and small trucks going the other way, and even a few military vehicles, but they showed no interest in us. Isobel gave them a wide berth, which seemed wise considering the way they held the centre-line of the road.

  Not long after we passed a battered sign on our left to El Hermel, she turned off the road and drove up another steep and rugged track into an extensive grove of olive trees with a tiny wooden hut. As we passed by I could see the door of the hut hanging open but there was nobody inside.

  The headlights cast a flurry of shadows among the branches and down the twisted and gnarled trunks of the trees, creating the impression of movement where there was none. With our recent run-in with the three men behind us I had the Kahr out down by my feet, so I lifted it and got ready in case we ran into any opposition. In this deserted spot we might not get much warning of a roadblock even this late and I doubted it would be official.

  We topped a rise between a collection of large rocks which looked like the end of the road. Isobel stopped and reversed into a deep gap before switching off the engine. The ticking as the metal cooled was the only sound, and even winding the window down offered just the sound of the breeze. The sky was huge, showing a vast array of stars, and I once more felt awed by the sheer size of the space above our heads.

  ‘There’s a flat area just down there,’ she said, pointing back down towards the olive grove. ‘Easy for a chopper to land. I’ll give them the new coordinates and they’ll pick us up before dawn.’ With that she took out her cellphone and began tapping at the keys.

  I didn’t bother asking how she knew this. Isobel was becoming more of a revelation as time passed, a contrast to the image she presented to the world, and I wondered how much of her career and experience she had glossed over. Probably a great deal more than I would ever discover. She was a professional.

  I climbed out of the jeep and did a quick recce of the area to make sure we weren’t sharing this space with a unit of Hezbollah on night exercises. I moved carefully among the rocks, wary of stumbling down a hole, until I reached higher and more open ground with a good view across what I hoped was unoccupied rolling hills. Not that I could see much in the dark, but when light falls you have to rely on other senses.

  I stood and tuned into the night, listening to various noises and discounting anything to worry about. Goats I recognized easily enough, along with the smell, but a host of other night-time sounds had me beat.

  I returned to the car and found Isobel gone. I stayed close by, waiting. When she did appear it was like a ghost. She climbed in the car and opened a glove-box, and the small inside light revealed that she was holding a semi-automatic pistol.

  ‘I did some training when they took me back,’ she said quietly. ‘Communications and surveillance – that sort of thing. One was a small arms course. They said I might need it for self-defence. I didn’t want to do it but it was orders, so …’

  ‘Good thing you did,’ I said. ‘For both of us.’

  She smiled gratefully. ‘I mentioned the course to my maiden aunt before coming out here. She’s in her nineties and was in the WRNS – the woman’s branch of the Royal Navy – during the war. She has a pithy sense of humour, as you’d expect. She said, “Just because I don’t, doesn’t mean I can’t.”’

  ‘She’s a wise lady,’ I said. ‘Did they do weapons training in the WRNS?’

  ‘I think she was talking about sex, but I suppose the same rule applies.’

  FIFTEEN

  She looked down at the gun as if seeing it for the first time and put it back. ‘Sorry I wobbled. It’s not the same when you do it for real, is it?’

  ‘No. It’s not.’ I let it go. At least now I knew what else had clunked against the table leg back at the Mansion Café. It made me wonder what she’d have done if the soldiers back at the roadblock had insisted on searching the jeep. Probably sweet-talked them about being lost or maybe gone all nuclear and blown them away. She was turning into a bundle of surprises.

  I walked away back up the slope a little to regain my night-vision and listen to the night. If anyone did turn up uninvited I didn’t want to get caught out. It wasn’t just myself I had to think about, either; Isobel was as much my responsibility as I was hers. It’s what you do in the field – you watch each other’s back.

  A scrape of sound nearby me had me tur
ning with the Kahr levelled and ready to shoot. Isobel was twenty yards away, her white clothing barely visible in what little ambient light there was. She didn’t appear to be the least put out at having me pointing a gun at her head. She was carrying her rucksack.

  ‘I cleared out what little food I thought would be useful,’ she explained, and extracted what turned out to be a mixture of biscuits, dried fruit, local goats’ cheese and bottles of water. ‘I didn’t see the point in letting everything go to waste.’ She looked around. ‘Everything quiet?’

  ‘Nobody here but us. Not even any scorpions.’

  We sat on the ground and ate. It was almost serene apart from the occasional bird call and the hiss of the breeze, and should have seemed intimate, an ordinary picnic, the kind of thing you do with family or friends – although here and now it was neither intimate nor ordinary.

  ‘Why were you in Aarsal?’ I asked, to break the silence. ‘Seems a little out of the way of anything strategic.’

  She nodded and flicked a piece of date stalk away. ‘I know. Some bright spark analyst deep in the bowels of SIS with a bunch of university degrees and zero experience on the ground decided that monitoring an area so near the Syrian border would provide useful information on the movements of cross-border insurgents, refugees and government forces.’

  ‘And has it?’

  ‘Hell, no. I’ve seen graveyards with more excitement. Maybe that’s why they decided to pull me out – that and budget constraints.’ She gave me an oblique look. ‘My orders referred to you as an asset. From the way Vale spoke of you, I’m guessing you’re not on the US government’s regular payroll.’

  I shook my head. ‘It’s been a long time since I was on anybody’s regular payroll.’

  The truth was I preferred being free to take work or reject it. It meant I wasn’t bound by someone else’s idea of duty or their desire to score points on a promotions ladder. I didn’t turn down many assignments unless I was already tied up on something else, but the time would surely come when it would be wiser to step back from a job that I could see promised no chance of a good outcome. Analysts with bright ideas and no field experience existed in both Washington and London, and were to be viewed with caution.