“Some crops, mostly tobacco I think, and some livestock.”
“Did they have an army or anything like that?”
“This,” he said, “I do not know. I shall ask word to be spread among the people for anyone who knows the valleys.”
I nodded, scooping up the map and bidding him goodbye. As I always did when I needed another brain to bounce off, and usually before I took any kind of plan to Dan, I went to find Mitch and hoped to kill two birds with one stone.
He wasn’t in their room, both he and Alita, the young woman who had attached herself to him before the battle for Sanctuary, being absent which wasn’t surprising given the hot weather. He claimed that it was the Squaddie in him, but whenever the sun was out in force I seemed to turn my back and he was at least topless to soak up the rays. Worst case was finding him spread out like a starfish in what he sickeningly called his budgie-smugglers. I shuddered at that unwelcome thought and retrieved my dog before wandering down to the docks to try and find him.
“Nemesis, heel,” I said, seeing the dog scramble to its feet in undisguised excitement.
Spark out to flat out in under a second, Dan always said that about Ash and his uncanny ability to be asleep in seconds and switch to full alertness even faster. His daughter was no different, other than the darker colouring and smaller size, but from the moment she had been given to me as a puppy I had trained her to be the equal to her father in every way possible.
Dan used to say that it wasn’t the size of the dog that made it hit hard, but the speed. He joked, bragged really, that Ash was big and fast whereas Nemesis had to be taught guile instead of brute strength. She could track like a train, her nose gluing itself to the ground and following a scent like a bloodhound, and she could chase and bring down a man almost as well as her sire could. Where she was identical to him was in her loyalty, which to me was as unwavering as Ash was devoted to Dan. We both still worked each other’s dogs, for their benefit as well as ours if we ever had to give commands to the other’s sidekick.
At just over three years old she was fully grown and stood to my thigh with almost three-quarters the width across her back as Ash, and I was prouder of her than I was my battered, camouflage dappled M4 which I couldn’t face parting with, even if there were brand-new HK416s in our armoury ready to be cleaned of the packing grease and used.
With Nemesis at my side, which I never got bored of saying, we walked to find Mitch to ask his opinion on how to impress my dad.
Failure to Plan…
I was lucky. Lucky that Mitch wasn’t doing what he called ‘rocking out’ and was still wearing shorts at least. His skin had turned a rich golden brown, like tea stewed for too long, and that tan seemed to last him all year round so that when summer followed spring he only had to top it up instead of starting from scratch like many who had started their journey in the cold centre of England.
“Hola, Nikita,” he said in an accent that still sounded unmistakably Scottish even when tinged with Spanish. Alita was originally from Spain but had travelled all over the world as a diving instructor, living on holiday resorts everywhere from the Canary Islands, Las Palmas as she called them, to Mauritius to the Caribbean and back to Southern France not far from where she was born near Barcelona.
“’Sup,” I said, nodding my chin upwards and bumping his offered fist as I neared him. “Possibility of an Op,” I explained, “could do with a second opinion for brainstorming it.”
I could always be this blunt with Mitch and could always count on him to impart some knowledge to me. His life, or at least his previous life, as an infantryman had made him expect very little in the way of comfort in life, so he took it wherever he could and didn’t complain when it was taken away. He was a joker, not quite as bad as Neil but then again nobody was as bad as Neil, but just like my dog he could switch on in an instant.
Okay, perhaps likening him to my dog isn’t the nicest thing but… well, the cap fits.
“Step into my office,” Mitch said, indicating a patch of shade beside his sun spot just as Alita returned bringing two drinks. The glasses rang out with the tell-tale tinkle of ice cubes, a rare commodity given the low voltage supply of electricity from the far-off wind turbines and the individual setups using alternators from cars attached to large vehicle batteries. The latter, a trick we hadn’t used before arriving in Sanctuary, supplied each individual room or house with a small supply of energy working much the same way as a car’s engine had worked before with the belt charging the battery through the alternator. Only now instead of being powered by a moving combustion engine they were connected to wheels like children’s toys, spinning either in the coastal breeze or else in the running water of the stream coming from the cliffs behind the town.
“Hola, Leah,” Alita said, handing a drink to Mitch and smiling back at him to return his wink. “You have this one,” she said in English, “I get more.”
“Thank you,” I said warmly, knowing that she would insist if I tried to vacate her seat and refuse the drink which had obviously been her own.
“So,” Mitch asked, more business-like after a sip of his drink, “seven questions?”
The seven questions were the way he had taught me how to plan an operation and could be applied to pretty much everything that required forethought. It was an echo of the British Army that no longer existed but lived on through him.
“Situation?” he asked.
“Radio call from Andorra, two hundred K’s inland. Offering trade and reporting some hostile activity,” I said.
“Task and reason?”
“Travel there, asses situation, possibility of trade and allies. Offer assistance if practicable,” I answered, not realising how much I sounded like Dan.
“What do you need?”
“Vehicle, fuel, translator.”
“Hmm,” Mitch said, narrowing his eyes at me, “we have those,” he answered. Covering questions four and five in one go, he asked, “When and where?”
“One eighty to two hundred K’s west by northwest. Alternative routes requiring a further one hundred each way. Three days expected.”
“Control measures?” he asked finally.
In answer I smiled wickedly and pointed at Nemesis who had found shade and was laid down panting. Mitch got the gist; the only control measure required was to deal with any threat harder and faster than they could deal with me.
“Okay,” he said, sitting up and sipping his drink again. “Land Rover with the long-range fuel tank, diesel, a translator and one additional fighter unless the two are one and the same, route plan with alternatives, assess and return. Simple. Dan okay with you doing this on your own then?” he finished.
Now my hostility at being treated like a kid was long since passed, but it still bridled me to have to ask permission to go outside the walls. I volunteered to run protection on every trip going between the three settlements we regularly did trade with, one of them being our own inland farm where Mitch and I had witnessed the uncomfortable coupling of Ash and Nemesis’ mother, and where we had first learned about their ingenious workaround using the alternators and batteries to supply electricity. I knew that everyone had to ask Dan’s permission for any kind of mission, I mean the man was in charge, but it still hadn’t dawned on me by then that I probably had it easier being his adopted kid than I did have it tough because of the same reason.
“He wants to hear my plan this afternoon,” I said, only a trace of sullen teenager in my voice.
“Well it sounds like the objectives are simple,” Mitch said, “you just need a fighter who can speak Español.”
I nodded, knowing just who I could ask.
~
Because I had shit to do, and also because I was never really that hungry in hot weather, I skipped the midday meal when everyone took to the shade for a light snack and a break. Winter was different, but summer took on what Marie called the Mediterranean way and usually included a siesta for most people.
Over the last few
years, since the aftermath of the battle had left us with dead to bury, wounds to heal and rebuilding to do, Polly had asked us – the fighters – to train a few people in our methods to a higher standard than the general militia training that most people received. Volunteers came forward, some from the farm inland and others already in Sanctuary, and they were equipped and trained from scratch. I could still hear Dan’s forget everything you think you already know speech from day one.
The main reason for this swelling in ranks was to take the pressure off Dan, myself and Mitch, to be present for every supply run inland and to allow us a break from being on standby night and day in the wake of the attack when most people were still scared. It had taken us another half a year to heal; Mitch and Neil having been shot and Dan having been battered and sliced and blown up. I’d escaped relatively unscathed, only the chunk of rock slicing my cheek deeply left a mark and that was far better than the alternative of the enemy sniper turning my head into a gooey piñata. If I hadn’t have crawled out under the tiny cover of the remaining parapet and got myself shot at, then we would have been overrun, but I had managed to get Mitch’s detonator and call the ball for him to destroy the attack against us by what had been our own vehicle. I can still feel and smell the impossibly loud crack and boom of the two bar mines crushing the people and vehicles on the roadway.
In that time, the last of the Legionnaires had been rounded up, at least those who hadn’t had the sense to flee far away as we assumed their leader had, even with an arrow stuck in him and a forty-foot fall off the ramparts of the Sky Fort. One of the people with them, however, wasn’t a soldier. He was a Spanish boy of eighteen or nineteen, and he was kept by them as a kind of pet after they had slaughtered the group he was travelling with for refusing to contribute to their cause. He had begged for mercy when captured, and not being armed or dressed like the others his pleas were listened to. He was brought back to Sanctuary and stood a kind of trial like I had seen on TV way back when, and his story had been believed. He just wanted to survive, and now he wanted to be one of us. He had earned our trust and even shown a natural aptitude towards our profession, finding himself pulled out of militia training and elevated to the training ranks of the elite alongside his usual guard duties.
Rafael, or Rafi as he went by, was thin and fast but strong like a goat. Mitch said that most of the special forces types he had ever seen were more like him than big muscle men, that strength came more from willpower than from a gym, and Rafi proved himself capable. Seeing that I needed a fighter and a translator and taking three people just increased the odds of failure, and added another thirty per cent to our load, he was the obvious choice to come with me.
“Rafi,” I called out after walking the length of the sea wall with another militia man I had grabbed to replace him, “I have a job for you.”
“Si?” he said, a flash of white teeth in his olive face showing that he thought anything was better than guard duty on a hot day. He gave all of his food and water to the man replacing him, offering him a book to read which the man turned down as he was French and didn’t grasp the language well enough to enjoy reading.
“Si,” I echoed, “come with me.”
I took him back to the central keep, the thick stone walls instantly dropping the temperature as soon as we escaped the hot sun and walked through the communal areas until stopping at a table in the dining area and laying out the map. Looking around for one of the children who usually hunted in packs near to the kitchens, I snapped my finger at one of them and beckoned him over. Producing a brightly coloured wrapped sweet from my pocket I waved it at him enticingly, totally missing the irony of my actions. The scope of how bad it had looked didn’t even strike me as I had offered these children to come and see my puppies when Nemesis was only a few weeks old.
“Tu connais Neil?” I asked in my poor French, hoping that he would understand my meaning and not just agree to anything to get the offered treat.
“Oui,” he said, his eyes never leaving the prize.
“Va chercher pour moi,” I asked slowly, guessing that my French wasn’t perfect but hoping he got the point. I wanted the man brought to me and snatched back the sweet as he reached for it, adding, “Non. Après.”
The boy pulled a face but disappeared, chased by the others of his pack who shouted questions at him only to be ignored in case he was forced to share the bounty. In the week, those children would be in classes, being taught different things by different people for half of the day until they were released to learn the trades of their parents. It was what formed the basis of a kind of school system and ensured that the children didn’t grow up feral. Waiting for Neil to be brought, I turned to Rafi and told him what was on.
“We need to drive to Andorra,” I said slowly, keeping it as simple as possible as I knew he understood my hand signals in simulated combat better than he did my words. “Have you been there?”
“Si,” he said smiling, “many times. My father and his father went to there for buying their tobacco and brandy. They do not have the tax as we do Spain.”
Good to know, I thought, completely irrelevant, but at least he’s been there. I kept the sarcasm from my face, something I had only recently learned how to do, and went on.
“We need to drive there and speak to the people. They sent a message.” I dug out the paper from my pocket containing the translated message and smoothed it down on the table. Rafi leaned over it, running his finger over the words until he paused.
“What is this word?” he asked, pointing to the English translation from the French and Spanish before.
“Thieves,” I said, “why?”
“This is not true Española,” he said. “This Catalan, and this word does not mean thieves, it means how you would say a highwayman. A… a robber? On the road?”
“Great,” I said, no longer keeping the sarcasm locked up inside, “let’s keep that one to ourselves, shall we?”
Rafi smiled and nodded, making me suspicious that he hadn’t really understood my meaning, but we were interrupted by Neil’s entrance.
“Who disturbs my rest?” he boomed like some medieval monarch roused from his bed at an ungodly hour.
“Me,” I said, “siddown,” I added with a smirk, making Neil pretend to jump to attention and hurry to comply. I saw the kid who had fetched him chewing on a mouthful as he waited beside me, knowing that the boy had already wrung some treat out of Neil, probably freely given, but waited to extract his promised reward from me. Not being of a mind to break my word to the young entrepreneur, I handed over the sweet and heard a high-pitched and rushed ‘merci’ through his mouthful as he fled to defend his prize against the others who ran after him.
“We need the Land Rover,” I said, getting straight to business, “and full tanks.”
“Hey, Sarah Connor, how ’bout the fillings outta my fuckin’ teeth?” Neil answered in an American accent, no doubt quoting some film older than me that I hadn’t seen.
“Can you do it?” I asked, smiling but ignoring his attempt at humour to draw me in. He did that thing that he always did when Dan asked him for something, wringing his hands and sucking in a breath through his teeth before finally releasing the breath and grinning.
“Of course I can. It’s me you’re talking to, kid.”
I let the quip at me being a kid go. At my age I would probably have only just got my driving license, and that was if my mother had been able to find the money to pay for lessons. I’d been driving since I was thirteen, around the same time as I had been given my first Glock and a G36 carbine, so I’d convinced myself long ago that my childhood had drawn to a rapid close.
“Okay, thanks,” I said, “ready for first light tomorrow?”
“Your will, my hands,” he said, feigning a bow of subservience.
“You not even going to ask what for?” I said questioningly.
It was Neil’s turn to smile.
“I assume because you and Rafi are driving to Andorra.”
“Yes,” I answered, hoping that Dan had already spoken to him to see if the obvious plan I was forming would be viable. I decided not to press any further, suspecting that he would report back to Dan what I said anyway.
“I shall take my leave then,” he said rising. “I still have some rat-packs,” he said, meaning the supply of British Army rations taken so long ago and likely still inside their best before date for a few years to come, “I’ll leave them in the truck.”
I thanked him, watched him leave the room, and turned back to Rafi where I traced along the route on the map.
“We go west, pick up the toll roads which should still be clear enough,” I explained, “head north towards Perpignan but avoid the city, head west again through Villefranche and keep going to the Pyrenees and into Andorra.”
Rafi nodded along as my finger traced the route, which my string-measuring technique had told me was closer to one hundred and sixty kilometres, even cutting out one of the tunnel choke-points by taking the winding mountain road instead and leaving only the main tunnel itself into the protected valley.
“If we can’t get in that way,” I said, “then we have to go back down and through Spain, adding another seventy-five or eighty kilometres to come in from the south.”
“It looks good,” Rafi said, smiling.
And it did. It looked good. And it looked easy. And it was completely wrong.
The Six P’s
“Allow me to lay some knowledge on you,” I said cockily just over an hour later as I spread the map in front of Dan and looked over my notes hastily scribbled on the pad I had retrieved from my new equipment vest. When I had taken it off the stand Neil had built for me in my room it dawned on me that nobody had ever actually shot at me when I had worn it, and I couldn’t be sure if that made it lucky or whether it was statistically due to be put to the test and prove its claim of being bulletproof. Shaking that away I had transferred everything from my head to the paper.
The Leah Chronicles_Andorra Page 3