~
“Eyes up,” I said, leaning forward in my seat and slowing the truck after taking the wheel at our last stop, “looks like a police post.”
“It is,” Rafi said. “It is the French border where police and customs make searches.”
“Looks abandoned,” I said hopefully, slipping the key out of the ignition and opening the door quietly to slide down. I brought my weapon up, leaving the door open for Nemesis to follow me, and heard the muted click of Rafi shutting his own door as quietly as possible. My peripheral vision caught him taking in a full three-sixty as I moved forward with the dog at my left heel and my body crouched over my carbine. I reached the door of the building, effectively a single room with a roof that extended far beyond the walls like a fuel station, and glanced through the grime-covered windows.
Empty.
Empty and ransacked, by the look of it.
“The police here,” I asked Rafi, “what guns did they carry?”
“The small machine guns,” he answered. “The ones taking the same bullets as these,” he added, tapping the Glock on his hip.
MP5s then? I thought, doing a tactical assessment that our own weapons carried a heavier projectile over longer distances. The place was long since inhabited, so I led us back to the truck and started it up, going through the last few turns on the mountain road before a small complex opened up ahead of us.
“It is like a small town there,” Rafi said as he pointed. “I know because they have a McDonalds there.”
I smiled in spite of the heightened tension at being near to our objective, but there was something about the place that unsettled me. I couldn’t place it, and there was nothing I could see to support my feelings, so I stopped and switched off the engine to listen. Rafi said nothing, simply watched with me until he finally broke the silence.
“I can see nothing,” he said softly.
“I don’t like it,” I said, fighting the urge to press on and reminding myself of my promise never to ignore my gut feeling ever again. A few times Dan had come too close to not returning to me because he’d ignored his feelings, but those times he had ignored Ash as well. I shot a glance at Nemesis who just returned my look. She didn’t stare or focus on a direction, nor did her ears twitch at the suds my own couldn’t detect. I said nothing, just started the car again and pulled slowly forward.
Choices
Now, I didn’t know it at the time, but the little town we had bypassed was where the General Council sat back when the world was still overcrowded, and where the public library and shopping mall were. There was even a hotel there. What I also didn’t see was that there were actually three ways into Andorra, the tunnel and the road to the south, but also a mountain road that wasn’t clear on the map but passed over the peak where the tunnel had been dug through the rock and joined back up with it on the other side just past the toll booth.
Rafi didn’t know this either, because he had always visited via the southern road from his own country, and we opted to take the direct route.
The tunnel was long. I mean really long, like I had never been in a tunnel that long ever. With the lights off it looked like a big, black semi-circle of a mouth yawning at me and just daring me to drive inside. Not wanting to look scared in front of Rafi I drove in, flicking the switch on the steering column to turn the headlights on. The truck used to have those lights that were always on, but Neil had seen to that years ago which is why the car always showed a little warning light of a bulb to signify that they were out. It still had the main lights which is what illuminated the way ahead. As soon as we drove in the temperature dropped by a good eight or nine degrees and the smell was damp and musty like it never really dried out. I saw Rafi shift in his seat and shift the grip on his weapon; the map folded back to its original creases like I’d told him to and explained why.
If we’d have taken the mountain road I don’t know what would have been different, but I still kick myself for driving in blindly.
I’d glanced at the mileage clock on the way in, illuminated in a dull greeny-yellow when I had turned the lights on, and counted up one point seven miles of progress through the darkness before we saw the daylight again having passed only one landmark near the halfway point of an abandoned van.
We were met at the far end by two men, both holding a long shotgun of the law enforcement type and not hunting weapons, so I slowed to a stop a good twenty paces away. I left the engine running, growled a stay to Nemesis, and slid out again to bring my carbine up into a low-ready position. Rafi did the same on the other side, not fanning out away from the truck like I did and staying on the same line making me rebuke myself again for not teaching him to get clear of vehicles in any kind of contact unless you were forced to use the engine block as cover.
I stopped, leaning into my weapon slightly, and called out to the two approaching men.
“That’s far enough, stop,” I said loudly, hearing my commands echoed in Spanish from Rafi. The two men stopped, looking between themselves and us before one of them answered in Spanish.
“They say that they mean us no harm,” Rafi translated, “that they live here and do not know who we are.”
“Tell them we heard their radio message,” I instructed, “that we came to talk.”
The two men rattled off a short conversation amongst themselves before one went back into the toll booth and picked up a handset. I longed to use the scope to see what he was doing, but that had the unfortunate look of taking aim on him, so I kept my nerve and my gun barrel low. I stayed in the low-ready with my safety off and my index finger held out straight along the trigger guard should I need to open up. Noises around me sparked my interest, that of birdsong and other small sounds that threatened to take away my total concentration, but the man came back out and spoke to his friend.
“The leaders say you are permitted,” Rafi translated, “but we must leave our weapons here.”
Well, I thought, fuck that in the face with a chair.
“Tell them we will leave our rifles in our vehicle and that’s the best they can expect,” I said, hearing the authority in Rafi’s tone as he relayed the words. The man went back to the phone, waving his arms this time as he spoke before coming back out and sounding a little more annoyed.
“They say you cannot be permitted,” came the translation, “not unless they know we are not the invaders from the south.”
“Tell them,” I snarled, already feeling too exposed to weapons fire and the early evening sun, “that we are from the French coast. Tell them that we are not from the south and that we are here to discuss trade, just like their message asked.”
Another exchange in Spanish, another phone call from the booth.
“They say we are to wait here,” Rafi said, “and someone will come to speak with us.”
We waited. We waited for almost ten minutes until my nerve was about to break and I was thinking of getting back behind the wheel and driving off to abandon the fool’s errand of helping someone. My wanderlust at wanting to be outside the safety of our walls had already been satisfied and the return journey would see to the remainder. If these people were so twitchy, not that they were much different in Sanctuary, then Sanctuary wouldn’t want to do business with Andorra anyway.
A car drove up the hill from the beautiful valley below. A black Mercedes of all things, a large one with blacked-out rear windows and chrome alloy wheels. The car stopped at the toll booth and a woman climbed out wearing boots, jeans and a shirt under a gilet which she zipped up despite the heat. She walked straight past the two shotgun-carrying guards and waved one of them away as he spoke with her. She paced straight towards Rafi which pissed me off no end, making me flick the safety on and walk to intercept her.
“I’m Leah,” I said, holding out a hand and barely disguising my passive-aggressive hostility, “we heard your radio message about trade.”
The woman stopped, stared at my hand then glanced between Rafi and my face.
“I apologis
e,” she said in good but accented English, “I made an assumption.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said with a smirk, “a lot of people have underestimated me.”
I tried to carry off the same arrogance that Dan did when he met people, only from me it sounded a little too sarcastic sometimes. The heat and the wait had tipped me over the edge into a little aggression, so I tried to dial it back.
“What’s got you so paranoid?” I asked.
She seemed to relax slightly, her small frame and short, grey hair not detracting from the authority she leaked into the atmosphere.
“I am Carla Sofia Rovira,” she said grandly, rolling so many R’s into her name that she sounded like an engine revving, “and I am the head of our General Council. Please, come and speak, but I have to insist that you leave your weapons behind.”
“Thanks,” I said, “but I already told them that we won’t go anywhere unarmed. We learned lessons the hard way.”
Her eyes narrowed at this, no doubt assessing how sincere I was and searching for some form of compromise.
“We shall talk in there then,” she said, indicating the booth. I nodded, turning to Rafi and asking him to stay outside.
I followed Carla inside and lent against the counter where I could still see the truck and Rafi. He was walking towards the other guards, his gun held low and his trigger hand up in greeting. I bit my lip at this, but let it slide to save face with this severe sounding woman.
“So you got our message?” she asked without preamble. “Which one?”
“How many did you send?” I shot back, my arms folded across my chest.
She seemed to hesitate before answering.
“We sent messages about trade but have since asked for help in lifting a blockade. This is why we are careful about who comes from the tunnel because we have had people who are not interested in trading but instead seek to take over our country.”
It seemed more than a little ludicrous to me that someone could take over a country, even one this small with only a few roads in and out, but I let her speak.
“We have over two hundred people here,” she went on, “mostly locals but many who were here on vacation and some who have come since from other towns and villages on both sides of the borders. We had a…” She hesitated again. “A problem with someone who used to live within our valleys. He has since returned to the head of a band of bad people and we are trapped inside.”
I frowned, speaking before I had thought through my response. “We saw nobody as we drove in,” I said, “I would have noticed.”
“Trust me, Leah.” She smiled as she used my name, no doubt trying to soften her words with the charm of a politician. “They are there. Anyone we have sent out to seek help has not returned. To the south they have set up camp across the roads and filled it with old cars so that we are behind a wall. They raid us, taking people and things, and we cannot stop them.”
“Don’t you have any more fighters?” I asked, flicking a hand towards the two men who were now smoking and speaking with animated hand gestures with Rafi outside.
“These men are not fighters,” Carla said sadly, dropping her head fractionally as she spoke, “they are mostly from jobs in tourism as most of us where. We have no army, no police left now that Tomau was forced out, and I fear we will not last another year before they take over.”
That was a lot of information to take in, so I stayed silent a moment. As I expected, she filled the gap as she had more to say than I did.
“Tomau was a good man for many years,” she said, “he was the only man of our police force to live after the plague, but he sought blood and did not agree with how I and the other council members ran the towns.”
“What happened?” I asked, hoping she would keep talking and give me more time to think.
“He…” She swallowed, then raised her head to look me in the eye. “He executed a man accused of stealing. There were no witnesses to the crime, and no justice was served by a trial. He just decided to do it himself and claimed that he would not work to keep a man alive in prison to do nothing but eat the food others have grown. The townspeople rallied and forced him out, making our decision impossible. We could not imprison him or kill him, so we marched him to the southern road and told him never to return.”
“But he did,” I guessed, “and he brought friends.”
“Yes. They began in spring, but it is getting worse each day. I fear we will not be able to resist them when the snows come.”
“How many and how well equipped are they?” I asked.
“Twenty or more at the southern road,” she answered. “I do not know how many on this side, but I think less, or they would have blocked the road here also.”
I leaned back a little, taking it all in and looking for solutions to the problems. Alone, I could use the 417 and drive them away from the southern road with relative ease, unless they had their own counter-sniper which was highly unlikely but hunting down the others would take more than just me and Rafi.
“We could help,” I said after a pause, “and we could open a trade route afterwards.”
Her eyes met mine and narrowed.
“You two?” she said, “you are not enough to stop them.”
I fixed her with a look, and that look conveyed that despite my young years I was a hardened warrior who had a skill set beyond the understanding of most people. Some were farmers or fishermen or politicians, but my trade was hunting and killing when I needed to.
“We are more than just two,” I said, “and do you know what a force multiplier is?”
The look on her face stayed vacant to show that she didn’t.
“I’m worth ten civilians given a shotgun and told to keep guard on a road. I could’ve breezed in here so easily you would never have known about it. I could have stopped in the tunnel and killed your guards from half a mile away; double that if I had come in from the mountain road. I am a force multiplier, and I’m not even the best we have. Trust me when I say we can take these people out.”
I finished, leaning back and cringing at how bloodthirsty I had sounded so I tried to soften my words.
“We are peaceful,” I said in a gentler tone, “but everyone who has tried to take from us is dead. Now, what can you trade with us after it is done?”
Carla explained that they had adapted to grow fruits and vegetables as well as rear cattle. Instantly I cast my mind back to when Dan and Lexi had found a farm near our old prison home and swapped the cockerels and bulls to keep the animal’s breeding lines healthy. I asked her about pigs too, which was a clear option open to us. It didn’t sound like a monthly thing, but a yearly exchange was definitely on the cards. I promised to return with news, hoping that the news would be a force of us ready to use the remaining summer to drive off the thieves.
“Please,” Carla said, “stay with us tonight and leave in the morning. You would be our guests.”
Not relishing the thought of travelling in the dark, and even less enjoying the thought of sleeping overnight in an abandoned building in the open, I agreed. I went back outside to retrieve Rafi, who had somehow managed to become best friends with the two men in a few short minutes and told him to stand down and get back in the truck.
“We are staying?” he asked.
“Overnight,” I told him, “I’ll catch you up on what she told me later.”
“I already know about Tomau and the others,” he told me with a smile, “so we are to help them?”
Hospitality
True to my word, I had agreed that we didn’t appear among the Andorrans as warriors, so I left my vest and carbine in the Land Rover along with the 417. Rafi did the same, but both of us held on to a sidearm which didn’t go unnoticed but at least we weren’t the only ones to be similarly equipped. Over dinner, a rich Catalan dish which tasted of tomatoes and beef, they told me that every household had been required by law to possess a firearm and be called upon to defend the valleys as part of a militia. There was an army
as such, but it was just a few people who undertook ceremonial duties and the police force had consisted of only a few even before it happened.
We ate, drank a little even though I was sure not to have too many glasses of the wine they brewed, and I reminded Rafi not to get drunk. He failed, and although not falling down he had taken enough drink to make his tongue loose and I was forced to kick him once under the table when he described the layout of our town. He seemed to realise what he had done and tried to excuse his lack of awareness by saying that he hadn’t told them where it was.
“A fortified town on the south coast of France?” I asked him quietly. “How many places like that do you know of?”
He took my point, keeping his mouth closed on matters that pertained to our home after that. I saw him pour water into his glass instead and steer clear of the wine.
An older man, with red cheeks and kind eyes came over to us and asked a question in such rapid language that I couldn’t understand a single word.
“He asks if we smoke?” Rafi translated.
Now, despite Dan having almost permanently had one hanging from his mouth for most of the time I had known him, he had always forbidden me from trying it. Being a teenager and not liking anyone telling me what to do I had obviously rebelled but found that although I liked the smell of it, the actual act of smoking didn’t agree with my lungs. I liked to think of myself as just a passive smoker and tried to convert that to words that Rafi could explain.
“I like others smoking,” I told him, seeing that he understood and listened to his rapid exchange with the man. He smiled, beckoning us to join him outside.
The Leah Chronicles_Andorra Page 6