by Andy McNab
I gripped Charlie’s coat. ‘Remember the Stoner in Colombia? That could be our way out.’
‘Well fucking hell, you’re not just a nice pair of buttocks, are you, lad?’
We got down on our hands and knees and felt around on the ground for more loose rocks. For this to work, we were going to need a couple each, big enough to fit in the palm of our hands.
Something the size of a brick would be the business.
2
Back in the late ’80s, Charlie and I had been part of Thatcher and Reagan’s ‘first strike’ policy in Colombia. The SAS were sent as advisers to help identify and destroy the cartels’ drug-manufacturing plants in the rainforest.
We patrolled suspected areas, putting in OPs, planning attacks. We weren’t supposed to carry out the attacks ourselves; that would have been one very hot political patata. We were there to aid and guide, usually one of us to every ten local anti-narcotics police.
Every time we gave the bad guys a slap on the wrist, they’d bring in the media and the politicians to celebrate, and we’d melt into the background and go and have a brew. The snappers were never told about an attack in advance. There was so much corruption that if you reported a sighting of a DMP, everyone on site would have evaporated in less than the time it took to snort a couple of lines of marching powder.
Even as it was, the attack helicopters would fly over the target compound, more often than not, on their way to pick us up. They didn’t stop far short of trailing a banner advising the Cali and Medellin boys to leg it.
The day Charlie and I encountered the guy we came to call the Stoner, there’d been an operation that had gone as chaotically as normal. Most of the police had been chewing on coca leaves wrapped around a sugar cube, flapping big-time because they didn’t want to get shot at. Half of them were only good for barking at the moon by the time the attack went in.
We didn’t normally end up with too many prisoners during these attacks. The players stood and fought, and eventually got dropped, which suited us just fine. But this particular time one literally fell into our hands, because he’d been helping himself a bit too liberally to the merchandise. He was so out of it he didn’t know if he was in the jungle or on the first manned flight to Mars.
While we waited for the circus to arrive, we put him into one of the ‘factories’, long sheds made of wood and sheets of wriggly tin, with long, low-troughed channels where the coca was laid out and made into paste. It wasn’t exactly watertight as a detention centre. The one Charlie and I were in now was better.
Stoned out of his brain, he was still sharp enough to grab a rock in each hand. Arms wind-milling frantically, he made a run from the hut to the treeline, taking down anyone who came within range.
The four of us from the Regiment had been sitting around, making a brew; watching the police do a bit of foraging in the generator-run fridges and dead men’s wallets.
The cokehead had three guys down with severe lacerations to the skull before they gave up trying to arrest him and stopped him permanently with 7.62mm. The mixture of surprise and aggression worked well for him, and if his brain hadn’t been so fried he might have got away.
We scrabbled around for a moment or two, but didn’t have to look far. The walls were in bad shape, and the mortar was loose in places. It wasn’t long before we had a couple of big flinty stones each. I felt my way to the door and tested the side opposite the hinges, trying to visualize myself ramming it. Just thinking about it made my shoulder hurt.
Charlie stationed himself to my left.
‘I’ll try first, old man.’ I reached out in the dark, to move him back a little further. ‘I’ll give it three or four goes, then it’s your turn. Once we’re out into that courtyard and we’re not stopped, it’s got to be over the wall and take it from there. If we get split, let’s be outside the Marriott every evening, somewhere within reach of that bus stop. Wait an hour between nine and ten. If we don’t meet up after three days, we’re on our own. OK?’
‘Done,’ he said. ‘Now stop waffling and get on with it.’
‘Listen . . .’ I knew I was in danger of going soft in the head, but I wanted the stupid old fool to be sure of something. ‘Before it all goes ballistic I just have to say . . . thanks for coming with me. You were a fucking idiot not to catch that flight, but thanks anyway.’
‘You trying to get me back for what I said at the cemetery? I know, I’m a good guy, now shut the fuck up and get on with it, before you ask Hari and Kunzru to join us for a group hug.’
I reached out and touched the right side of the door with an outstretched fist. That was one pace. I moved back another two, making sure I kept perpendicular to it. The last thing I wanted to do was to charge into the wall, or hit the door at an angle. Either way, it would give Charlie a good laugh, but probably destroy my shoulder.
Two or three deep breaths, then I dropped my right shoulder and charged. The crash as I connected was so loud they must have heard it in Tbilisi. I reeled. I felt like I’d been hit by a car.
Charlie yelled, ‘Get on with it! Come on! Come on! It’s noisy now, stop mincing about.’
I took another three paces back, closed my eyes and ran again. It hurt like fuck, but the door definitely moved.
Charlie was straight in my face. He sprayed me with spit. ‘And again! Again! Come on! Get on with it!’
Three paces back and bang. The door shifted a bit more and I sank to the floor in pain. I rolled to the right, out of his way. ‘You go! You go!’
He crashed into it and the door immediately folded in on itself. The hinges had given way before the bolt.
I got up behind him, the pain in my shoulder and back masked for the time being by the adrenalin that was pumping around my body. We more or less fell into the undergrowth which lined the yard.
Two hurricane lamps jerked to and fro in the darkness as Hari and Kunzru bomb-burst out of the interrogation room.
I started running at them, windmilling like a man possessed.
The Georgians closed and I lost sight of Charlie as he went for the first one. The second got the contents of my left hand across his neck, or maybe his collarbone, I didn’t know, didn’t care. He screamed out as the rock in my right crushed his gigs against his face. The lamp slipped out of his grasp and I scored another hit on the back of his shoulder as he followed it down to the mud.
I kept swinging. I had to keep moving, keep hurting. My arms cartwheeled like a boxer on amphetamines.
I felt a hand grab my leg and I kicked it away. I brought both rocks down onto the back of his neck. The hurricane lamp rolled away, throwing wild shadows against the walls.
‘Shit, Nick . . .’
Charlie was in pain.
He was lying next to a limp body, trying to get up off the ground, but his left leg wasn’t helping. I couldn’t see any blood, but it was fucked. The body below me writhed in agony, too preoccupied with his injuries to care about us any more.
I shouted out to Charlie. ‘See if your one’s got the keys! Keys! Keys! Keys! Money, anything.’
I fumbled in the pockets of my one’s leather jacket and found a wallet, picture ID, empty holster on his belt, loose change and house keys. Charlie had more luck. ‘I’ve got them! I’ve got them!’
I picked up the lamp and cash and scrabbled around to find my boy’s weapon. It was a revolver, well past its best-before date, but it should still do some damage to whoever it was pointed at. I jammed it into my jacket and ran over to Charlie. He was trying to drag himself up the wall.
‘Keys, where are the keys?’
I took them from him, hoisted his left arm around my shoulder and dragged him into the interrogation room.
We’d obviously interrupted a rather cosy evening. The radio was blasting out the Georgian Hot Hundred, and there were steaming mugs on the table, along with a car battery and a set of jump leads. It didn’t take much imagination to work out how the boys planned to entertain themselves later on.
Charlie
took in the brews. ‘Stop, stop.’ He poured them both into the empty thermos and we carried straight on out to a Lada estate. It wasn’t locked.
I helped Charlie into the front right and eased myself behind the wheel. We were soon doing a twenty-five-point turn as I tried to head it back down the track.
Panting for breath, Charlie ripped open the glove compartment and checked it for anything useful.
I looked over at him. ‘What happened?’
Charlie gave a not-so-convincing laugh. ‘Slipped on the stones. I can’t believe it. My ankle, I’ve twisted the fucking thing.’
‘We’ll sort it. You get any money? Weapon?’
‘Got both.’ His nose wrinkled. ‘Oh fuck, I hate the smell of wet dogs.’
3
My foot hit the floor as soon as we reached the tarmac, and the Lada’s engine made an awful lot of noise while it thought about responding. Eventually the speedo edged around the dial. I didn’t think we were going any faster, but at least it made us feel better.
Charlie put the light on to check his badly cut left hand. It looked as if some of the flint had splintered and gone into his palm, but there wasn’t much he could do about it, except apply pressure by ramming it against his leg. He opened the wallet I’d thrown at him with his right, and pulled out cash and a laminated ID card.
‘Look at old fucking bone-dome here.’
The card belonged to Hari Tugushi. A declaration in Paperclip, Russian and English confirmed his official accreditation by the Georgian government.
Charlie wound down his window and lobbed Hari’s wallet out into the night. Kunzru’s soon followed before we got stuck into the brew, trying not to spill any as the Lada rattled down the road.
‘You see that battery, lad?’
‘Yep.’ I didn’t want to think about it too much.
‘Wouldn’t want those wires attached to your bollocks, would you?’
‘No.’
‘They wouldn’t have managed mine, of course. Those clips were way too small.’
I smiled at him. ‘Makes you think though, doesn’t it? These guys weren’t fucking around. If they had their way, you’d never see Hazel and the grandkids again.’
‘It’s not ideal, lad.’ He shrugged. ‘But I’m dead anyway, remember? It’s different for you.’ He paused. ‘Don’t waste any time fantasizing about that little box-head of yours, though – you should be working out how to get us across the border. It’s your big chance to show the world what you picked up from the master.’
‘That’s the thing . . .’ I hesitated. ‘I have been worrying. I have been thinking about her. It’s the first time something like that has ever worried me. You’ve had it your whole life, haven’t you?’
He shifted about in his seat. ‘Fucking hell, don’t tell me you’re finally thinking of joining the human race?’
‘How did you mix it? You know, “What the fuck am I doing here? I’d rather be at home doing I don’t know what, mowing the grass or finding the cat, or something”?’
‘It was all about trying to hang on to the balance. And that meant finding somebody like Hazel, somebody who understood what was going on in this thick head of mine, and was prepared to live with it. But it’s a partnership, lad, which is one of the reasons she’s going to be pissed off with me at the moment. After all those years, she thought she’d served her time, just like me.’
He had another look at his bleeding hand. ‘But it’s that fucking stallion in the paddock, Nick; that’s what got to me. And with these fucking things starting to behave as if they’ve got a mind of their own – well, I just had to do it without her this time. If you know they understand what’s going on, even if they disagree, you don’t have to worry about the Hazels of this world when you’re in the shit. You know they’ll be counting on you to use what brain you have to get out of the shit and get back home . . .’ He tailed off. ‘Make any sense?’
I nodded. ‘Suppose so.’
‘Good. Remember to write it down, lad. Something else you’ve learned from the expert.’
We must have been travelling for about twenty minutes along the valley floor when the Lada’s engine started to groan and we headed uphill. As we approached the crest, I killed the headlamps and edged forward, hoping not to see a VCP looming out of the darkness below us.
It was worse than that. Less than a K away was a large cluster of American lights illuminating the rows of twenty-man tents and Portakabins. A few Ks beyond that, on the higher ground, was another light cluster. But these belonged to the Russians.
‘Vasiani,’ I muttered. ‘I suppose at least we know where we are.’
Charlie looked up from his first aid. ‘We’ll have to bin Turkey for a while, lad. We need that gear back.’ He nodded down at the lights. ‘Listen, it’ll be suicide trying to get in there and find the duty wagon. I say we go for it in the morning. At least we know where it’ll be. Let the fucking thing come to us.’
‘You think that wagon’s going to be back on the road?’
‘Course – that thing’s gonna last longer than me, lad. Whoever’s running the transport pool down there would already have slapped on new tyres and done a jet spray under the arches. Come on, it’s a fucking army, isn’t it? What they holding it back for, forensics?’
He was right. It was the duty wagon and that was that. Every vehicle was allocated to something or other, and if this one had done a bit of cross-country, so what? That was what they did.
Charlie kept his eyes down. ‘He tell you he was leaving tomorrow?’
‘Yeah – more of the futility stuff, I thought.’
‘Maybe, maybe not. But I know I’d want to get the fuck out of town if I didn’t have control of whatever we got in the back of that 110 – wouldn’t you?’
He turned to me and I could make out just a little of his face in the ambient light from the valley. ‘It’ll be a fucker, but all the more reason to go to the airport, no?’
Two or three sets of headlights fired up and moved around inside the camp. Then one of them broke away and headed towards the main gate.
‘We’d better assume the twins had phones, Charlie boy. We got the Russians or that VCP to get past. Or – you want to get out and leg it? Even you’d be better cross-country than this thing.’
Charlie reached for the dash, smearing blood onto the plastic as he started rocking backwards and forwards in a not terribly serious attempt to make the Lada go faster.
He caught my expression. ‘Russians. Got to be done. I’m not hopping over these hills all fucking night or risking bumping into that squaddie I ripped apart.’
I put my foot down. The acceleration was so feeble that his rocking actually seemed to help.
‘That’s it, lad – to boldly go where no Lada has gone before.’
I changed down into third, trying to get a burst on. The engine whined, but that was about all it did. I rammed the gearstick back into fourth.
My eyes strained to pick out the holes in the road. I didn’t get much joy from the Lada’s headlights – even on full beam they only lit up about two feet in front of us. The junction right was coming up. The other set of headlights was coming fast down the track towards it.
If we didn’t get past first, the other wagon would block us off.
‘Come on! Keep it going!’ Charlie rocked as if he was having a fit.
There was nothing I could do but keep the car pointed in the right direction and ram my foot down.
By the time we reached the junction the engine was not too far short of cardiac arrest. The other wagon’s headlights were immediately to our right, about four hundred metres away.
Flecks of saliva sprayed me as Charlie urged us on. ‘Keep going, lad, come on.’
The engine groaned again as we started to head uphill. It wasn’t steep, but it was clearly steep enough.
The whole vehicle shook as we rumbled over the rough tarmac and I threw the wheel left and right to swerve around the potholes.
‘That’s
it, lad. Keep going . . .’
The other headlights came to the junction and turned to follow. It didn’t take long for them to start closing in.
The lights of the Federation camp were less than a K away. I changed down to try to get a few more revs out of this fucking thing, my face almost against the windscreen as I tried to read the road.
Charlie checked behind. ‘It’ll soon be in spitting distance, lad. Keep that foot down.’
As if I needed telling.
Into fourth. The engine squealed.
The Russians’ floodlights were getting closer, but the hill was getting steeper.
Our speed dropped. Into third. A burst, then slowing.
Into second. We both jerked as the gear kicked in and the engine screamed.
‘It’s a Pajero, Nick! Got to be Bastard!’
Even as he said it, the 4x4’s lights flooded the inside of the Lada and we got the first nudge. It actually speeded us on our way.
‘Is it Bastard? You sure?’
Charlie was still twisted in his seat. ‘Who gives a shit? Just keep your foot down!’
Another slam into the back. Another jolt forwards. If it was Bastard, maybe they’d do without the helis. That had been all about the duty wagon, not his shit.
Not far to the Russians now, maybe four hundred.
The next collision was to the rear nearside. The back of the Lada slewed to the right. All I could do was keep the front wheels facing forwards and my foot on the floor.
The back fishtailed and I spun the wheel like a lunatic.
‘He’s backing off, Nick, he’s backing off. Well done, lad, just keep those fucking wheels straight.’
We were coming up to the Russian camp’s fence line.
I checked the rear-view. Charlie was right, the headlights were receding. Whoever it was, he was bottling out. Charlie checked behind us one final time, then relaxed back into his seat.
The Federation flag fluttered high over the floodlit main gate. Four fresh-faced guards stirred in their sentry posts, and started to prepare a traditional Russian welcome. They were in camouflage uniforms and helmets, AK assault rifles slung across their chests. They stared at us in a certain amount of confusion as we gave them a cheery wave.