Alfie was shouting as well now, calling out “Dad! Dad! Wait for me! I’m coming too!” And what happened next made Howard think he’d woken into a nightmare.
Alfie took a knife from his belt and began slashing at himself, cutting across his face and neck and arms. Blood ran down him like a torrent, soaking into the canvas provision sacks that lined the bow. Howard could only just see it in the darkness, but he could hear it spattering onto the deck as if a tap had been left on. Yet still Alfie showed no sign of stopping, hacking instead from his abdomen to his chest in long vertical slashes that cut across the ones he’d already made. Then he went for his eyes, gouging and lacerating his face. Howard’s eyes had now adjusted to the dark; he could see chunks of flesh dropping to Alfie’s feet. Strips of bloodied skin hung from his face like tattered rags. And still he didn’t stop.
“What are you doing?” Howard said. Then again, louder, “What the hell are you doing?”
He looked to the sergeant, wondering why he wasn’t intervening. The sergeant was still shouting into the blackness, but had now picked up a jerry can which he was holding over his head, pouring petrol over himself. Then he let go of the can—it bounced almost comedically off his head—before taking out his lighter and clicking the lever on the side. It made a flame at the first attempt, and then the sergeant was on fire from head to toe. He didn’t move from that spot, but kept shouting and screaming, and still there was that name “Tommy!” in amongst the shouts, which he kept on yelling as his skin blackened and crinkled.
Howard rushed forward to try and knock him to the floor to roll him and smother the flames, or even push him into the water, but the sergeant actually pushed him back, even as he burned. He was stronger than Howard, and sent him staggering back to painfully bang his head on the far gunwale. Howard got back up, only then wondering what the other Marines were doing. He looked back to the helm, where Vance was meant to be driving. Vance was there, but was staring mechanically ahead with his hands off the wheel. Instead he had his revolver in one hand, slowly bringing it round to point at his own face. Then he said something, indistinct to Howard over the screaming of Alfie and the sergeant, before pulling the trigger and blasting his own head to oblivion.
Further back in the boat the others were on their feet, but were no more coherent. Only Howard seemed to be in possession of his senses. One of the others—it might have been Georgie—went to the stern and pushed himself head-first off the back, into the water and the spinning blades of the propeller. Howard couldn’t see what happened after that, but he heard it, and felt it, the sound of meat being cleaved and mangled, violently enough that the whole boat rocked in response. Another of them was kneeling nearby, knifing himself as Alfie was doing, but stabbing himself repeatedly in the stomach. Then the last of them—Dixon, Howard thought—simply stood on the gunwale of the boat and let himself fall forward into the water. The boat was still moving, driverless and aimless, and looking to the rear Howard saw Dixon face down in the water making no move to right himself, until he was lost in the darkness.
“What is going on here?” Howard shouted. For a moment he seriously doubted he was even awake. Then he looked forward and saw that the boat was just seconds from hitting the left hand bank. Alfie was still dismembering himself, his face hanging in tatters down to his shoulders, and the sergeant was still burning, and screaming, when he could have jumped into the water at any time. Then Howard looked to the wheel, remembering too late that Vance was no longer there, and realised there was no time to take control for himself. He threw himself down, hoping the sacks and kit bags would be enough to cushion him, and waited for the impact.
The boat ran into the undergrowth that hung out over the river bank, and wedged itself in amongst the exposed roots of the waterside trees. The roots curved out like buttresses, but tangled and disordered. They brought the boat to a violent stop, sending everything—including Howard—sliding forward to pile up by the bow.
Howard got up, his arm and whole left side aching from the impact, and looked around. The sergeant was finally silent, as was Alfie; they’d both been thrown clear of the boat and into the tangled roots further up the bank. The sergeant was still burning, but was no longer moving. The other Marines were immobile too, those that were still on board, either dead or dying from the injuries they’d inexplicably inflicted on themselves. Howard had to step over one of them to get to the side of the boat nearest the river bank; he didn’t look too closely at who it was or what state they were in.
The boat was wedged in by the roots. Howard tried grabbing them to push away, but the slime that covered them prevented any hope of getting a secure grip. He could see damage to the hull as well, a long crack below the water line which was now steadily flooding, and only the grip of the roots was preventing the boat from sinking. He knew then that there was no chance of it ever sailing again.
He briefly considered trying to get back into the river, using one of the boat’s life vests to keep him afloat, but once in the water there was nowhere to go. He searched the boat for a radio of some kind—he hadn’t once seen the Marines make any kind of radio call, and guessed that radio silence had been planned from the start. He did find one, like a miniature battery-powered field telephone, but got nothing but static when he tried to use it.
Reluctantly, he realised the only way out of this situation was going to be over land. But even getting out of the boat in this darkness would be difficult. And yet if he stayed there, he would have the bodies of the Marines for company. He could see them around him, and now that silence had returned to the boat the full enormity of what he’d just witnessed began to sink in. He remembered Teddy, and what he’d done to himself as they’d flown over all those days before. Some kind of weapon, Simon had described it as, and looking round at the fallen soldiers, Howard had no doubt it had just been deployed again.
He had to move—darkness or no, there was no way he was going to hang around there until daybreak and risk the same thing happening to him. He searched the boat again, helping himself to rations and water, and anything else that looked both portable and useful. He took a revolver as well, plus a box of ammunition, only then remembering Simon’s nonsensical instruction to avoid anything made of metal. Simon wasn’t there though—he was probably tucked up in bed, or putting his feet up in his club enjoying a late night Cognac or two. Howard pocketed the the revolver and the ammo, then stuffed all his supplies into a back pack, and got ready to leave.
He climbed out of the boat onto one of the nearer tree roots. Clambering on all fours, gripping the slime-covered tangle of wood as hard as he could, he made his way onto the bank. The mud beneath his feet was sodden and spongy, and every side except for the water behind him was blocked by dense foliage. The mission was now a non-starter, that was clear; he didn’t even know where the Marines had planned to drop him, let alone what he was meant to do then, and his search of the boat hadn’t revealed any sealed orders. The assassination mission had now turned into a survival mission.
He knew that north was the direction he needed to get back to the coast, but he didn’t want to think what the journey would be like. They’d travelled days by boat to get here; on foot it would take weeks. The other alternative was France, and the border to the west, still days away but a fair bit closer.
He had a compass with him that he’d taken from the boat, with a dial which he could just about read in the darkness. The compass however gave no clear reading, spinning aimlessly instead. He tried to visualise which way was which, thinking back over the way the river had brought them. If France was his aim then he’d have to continue upstream, to start with at least, but at some point he’d have to leave the river and go cross country. The impossible jungle around him made him doubt he was even on the right part of the planet though, let alone the right part of Germany.
All he could do was trust his senses. He faced upstream, and began to walk.
He covered a mile in the first three hours, judging by the progress he w
as making. He’d brought a machete from the boat, but every step required the wall of vegetation in front of him to be cut back and tunnelled out. Some of it was no more than bushes and saplings, relatively easy to cut, but some was a kind of bamboo, with razor-sharp edges to its rigid leaves. On top of that the bamboo was thicker next to the water, which meant the only way to make any progress was to veer away from the river, and hope his sense of direction was enough to keep him following its course. He’d lost all sign of it long ago though, and soon had no idea if he was even going the right way. The compass, no more use than it had been before, still spun aimlessly. It was daylight now, but even the sun was keeping its location hidden in the haze. Animals were moving all around him, big ones by the sound of them, some moving through the undergrowth, some climbing and jumping between the branches above, but all were out of sight. He got the distinct feeling he was being tracked though, as if something large and predatory was keeping just out of sight behind him, and he brought the revolver round where he could grab it from his belt in a hurry. The ground rose and fell here, in places with chest-high roots that he had no hope of cutting through or climbing over, and that combined with the natural razor wire formed by the bamboo growths was pushing him further and further from the direction he wanted to go.
The things he’d witnessed that night were preying on his mind too. He’d fought in wars before, albeit from the air, but still he’d seen things that took stomach and character to deal with. This though, the sergeant screaming and burning by his own hand, and making no effort to save himself, while Alfie sliced his own face and body to shreds—that and what had happened to the others—and Teddy too—had filled him with a feeling of dread, that what he was seeing wasn’t just horrific, it was unnatural.
He stopped to get water and rations out when he was hungry, then did the same an hour or so later, following the “little and often” rule that his escape-and-evasion survival training had drummed into him. The fact that he was in enemy territory wasn’t lost on him; it may have stopped being a functioning enemy nation ten years ago, but any people he encountered would be people he’d spent the past decade and a half periodically bombing, and a civil reception was not guaranteed. There was no sign of anyone though, just dense tropical jungle and the stifling heat of approaching midday.
It was near the end of the day that he began to think about bedding down. A shelter wouldn’t be needed in this heat, even overnight, but being off the ground would be vital, as would some kind of net or screen to keep biting insects away. He’d done jungle training as part of his Burma deployment, and now, somewhere in the North Rheinland of Germany he was dredging up the things he’d learnt, trying to remember how to survive and navigate in this humid, bug-infested rainforest.
He managed to clear a space between two trees, large enough to string up a hammock, and was just looking round for likely materials when he heard the voices.
They were off to the side, deeper into the jungle assuming the river was still where he thought it was, and he could hear more than one person shouting in German. It sounded like the calls of a work gang, the way a group of labourers might call back and forth on a building site.
Howard’s first instinct was to leave, and go the other way, immediately. He forced himself to stop though, and think through his options. If it was a village then they might have food, or supplies of other kinds; the rations he’d taken from the boat were never going to be enough for the journey he had ahead, and if foraging could be supplemented with stealing then he’d have a better chance of making it. Night was falling fast though, so he began to move toward the sounds, as quietly as he could, hoping to get there and take a look with the light on his side before deciding what to do next.
Yet still he could barely see more than a foot in front of him, and had to cut his way for every step. And as a result, he came to the cliff edge with so little warning he almost fell straight down it.
He was at the edge of a quarry, looking down into its depths, and while the land around it was choked with vegetation, the bottom of the quarry was clear, and had plainly been kept that way. For there were people down there, and machinery, and signs of organised effort.
Howard could see rows of trailers, each one about ten feet long, the kind that would be towed behind a jeep. They were made of plywood, like big boxes with sides that hinged down. Most of them were painted dark camouflage green, with the old Wehrmacht cross stencilled on the side in black. A couple of them had the sides folded down, but what was inside was hard to identify. Howard got an impression of lenses and prisms, like quartz crystals, refracting the light into iridescent colours. Whatever they were though, they’d been manufactured, evidence of industry and technology which would attract a bombing mission within eight hours if it was ever spotted. Yet somehow whoever had collected all this equipment together had managed to keep it hidden, using the cover of the quarry to conceal what they were doing.
He looked down into the nearest part and saw the source of the voices he’d heard. A group of four men were wheeling another trailer into position at the end of the line formed by the other ones, while a fifth man stood further back shouting orders. None of them were in uniform of any kind, though their trousers and shirts had been stained to the same colour by the mud and dirt they were working in.
Howard ducked low, even though none of them were looking up; once they’d got the thing into place they were pretty much right below him. Then he saw another group of four pushing a similar trailer, also under the shouted orders of their supervisor.
Howard scanned the scene in front of him. The quarry was an irregular shape, with many curves and corners to its outer edge, shapes which would have formed bays and inlets if ever the thing had been left to flood. It looked like a number of separate circular excavations had been allowed to join up, forming a larger pit divided into distinct areas. The one immediately below him was a storage area for whatever machinery was being kept here. Further away a line of large tents had been set up, dark green again, clearly military in origin. Beyond that was an area filled with benches and trestle tables which had bundles of rope laid out along their lengths, sparkling as if diamonds had been knotted into them. Beyond that the quarry continued round a corner, and whatever was there was hidden from sight.
Then one of the men pushing the trailers into place called out to the supervisor, who walked over and talked to him for a minute or so. They were looking at something in the nearest trailer as they spoke, and kept reaching inside as if trying to release some kind of mechanism, after which the supervisor called back over his shoulder, toward the tents. The word he shouted was “Kapitan.”
In response, another man came out of one of the tents, and walked over to join the others. And even from this distance, staring down into a fifty foot pit, Howard could tell that he was looking at the man he’d been sent here to kill, at John Erebus Ardent.
Then he felt a hand over his mouth, and the tip of a knife pressing between his shoulder blades, and all hope of entering this place unseen was lost.
ARDENT
THEY MARCHED HOWARD down into the camp with the knife still held at his back and his hands tied behind him by a leash. There were two of them, the two sentries who had discovered him, one of whom held the leash and the knife while the other carried everything Howard had with him apart from the clothes on his back. Unarmed and incapacitated, he had no choice but to comply.
The route down was a steep, narrow walkway which had been cut into the cliff that lined the quarry. Howard nearly lost his footing several times, each time earning a shove from the man behind him. Eventually they got to the bottom.
Howard looked round, trying to see Ardent, but the area where the trailers were stored was now deserted. He was being led the other way anyway, toward the line of green tents. There were four of them in all, with a bonfire burning outside the furthest one, and that was the one they led him into. The fire was piled high with scrap wood and branches, but had been started using petrol and st
ill reeked of the stuff. Large glass jars of it were lined up alongside the fire, far too close for comfort.
The tent was large, about ten feet wide and five times that in length, tall enough to stand in, and was divided into rooms by canvas walls, the same dark green material as the outside. Howard was pushed into a flimsy wooden chair in the first room they came to. There was a small table there too, with one other chair on the other side. They kept the leash in place, with his wrists still tied behind his back.
Howard had been trained to deal with capture and interrogation, but every time he’d rehearsed this situation he’d known that it was just an exercise, just make-believe. Now though, experiencing it for real, the question “Is this how I’m going to die?” was running through his mind in a way he’d never before experienced. He felt nauseous, and his hands were shaking even within their bindings. He tried telling himself to breathe, and focus, and control himself, but it wasn’t working.
One of the sentries left with Howards possessions while the other stayed to watch over him. Bizarrely, Howard could hear women’s voices coming from elsewhere in the tent, giggling and laughing as if at a party. Then, two minutes later, the flap that divided this area from the rest of the tent was lifted, and John Erebus Ardent walked in.
He was old, a good ten years older than the photograph Howard had seen, with a tall, rake-like figure. He stood and looked down on Howard for ten wordless seconds, before sitting opposite him and laying everything Howard had been carrying out onto the table.
He placed everything in a line—the radio, the revolver and ammunition, then the machete, then the compass, followed by the ration packs and the water bottle—shaking his head as he did so. Lastly he added the canvas bundle that Simon had given Howard, opening it on the table to reveal the dagger inside. He picked it up and looked at it closely, feeling its edge with his fingertip.
The Levelling Page 4