“But you knew that something was wrong, that your country was fucked.”
“Yeah.”
“Did it get easier to bear?”
“I asked my Dad that once when I caught him looking at some old photos we'd found whilst travelling north. We were looting as we went on the off chance of finding something useful and he came across this album on the table inside a little cottage. It was a tiny thing with small pictures in little plastic envelopes, the kind of thing you could carry round with you. He didn't know the couple and the children in them pictures, but he was crying when I saw him and I asked him if it would ever get easier for him.”
“And?”
“He didn't answer,” I said, shaking my head. “He just threw the album down and walked out of that cottage and we never went into another house from then on until the day he died.”
“I suppose he did answer then,” she said.
We had our lunch at the kitchen table because the rain finally fell with a vengeance, hammering the corrugate roof of the garage like it was trying to tear it down. Riley ate with a little more enthusiasm as she stared out of the small window, watching the battle take place. I poured her a cup of coffee - the last of the American blend.
“Is there any point in waiting for the Colonel?” she asked. “I mean, I'm sure he's got more on his mind than my nephew.”
“I can't answer that,” I said. “It's your mission, your call.”
“My mission,” she repeated. “I suppose it is. If it hadn't been for 'my' mission I'd be home, helping out.”
“How?”
“I don't know.” She got up and began pacing the length of the kitchen. “Help with the fighting, with the disaster relief, anything. They might have even reinstated me to my old rank.”
“Is that what you want?” I asked.
“No,” she said, defeated. “It isn't. Deep down I know I have to be here, for her, for my sister. That's even if she's still alive. And if she's not then it's all the more important to find Alex and make sure he's safe. For her sake. It's what she would have wanted.”
“Then what do you want to do?”
She stared out of the window some more, her hands clasped behind her back and her bare toes flexing in anxiety.
“We leave tomorrow. Do like you said, search along the flight path of that NSU drone, try and pick up some clues.”
“Sounds like a plan to me.” I said. “But you understand that we'll be doing this on foot?”
“I expected as much. You don't have the fuel and besides, with that drone in the air the Land Rover would ghost our position. I brought hiking gear and the dish is portable enough to be carried in pieces.”
“I'm glad. I'm afraid to say that some of your colleagues didn't share your enthusiasm for walking.”
“I don't doubt it. Fly in, fly out. That's the way they wanted it but it's not the way I trained. If you Brits taught us anything it was that sometimes equipment fails and you need to be prepared to adapt. Anyway, I could do to lose a few pounds.”
“Really?” I said. Then I wished I hadn't. That old flaring heat appeared in my face again. “When do you want to leave?”
“In the morning. Prepare tonight, give the Colonel a chance, then set off.” I nodded my agreement and she turned to leave. “There are MRE's in the garage and I'll make up some other bits and pieces for us.”
“Fine,” she said. “I'm going for a run. I'll be back in an hour.”
If we were leaving in the morning then I wanted to know exactly what she was up to when she said she was running. There were too many places on her track where she would have picked up mud on her shoes - why hadn't she already? I waited until she'd gone from view, then slipped on my jacket and set off across the field and into the woodland where Dad and me would hammock. Then I headed north at a fast pace, walking a long arc around to where I expected to intercept her if she had been running. But as I expected she wasn't there. I followed the trail that circled my perimeter, moving carefully but with as much speed as I could manage. I reached a slope that led up to the top of small rise and circled around it, coming to a clearing and almost walking straight into her sight.
I stopped suddenly and froze where I was. If she hadn't seen me yet then any fast movement might draw her attention. She was in a clearing some of my students had made that hadn't grown back yet and she'd kicked off her trainers, her running pants and her tee shirt and was stood barefoot on the grass in her underwear. In her hand was a large plastic hoop and she was dancing slowly and carefully around, spinning the thing left and right, sometimes into the air and sometimes over and down her body. I was aware of music coming from her tablet that she'd propped against a tree and she was moving with such delicate grace that I was soon entranced by it. Her body, far from the muscular frame I'd expected, was in fact curved and feminine with soft, pale skin marked only by a long black tattoo running down her thigh. She was smiling as she moved yet her eyes betrayed how hard she was concentrating.
I felt a rush of guilt and my face flushed hot with embarrassment. I'd expected the worse and now I'd witnessed the most beautiful thing I'd seen in a very long time. I began to back away very slowly until I was behind a tree, then I turned and began walking back to the house. By the time I'd returned and poured myself a drink, Riley was jogging back across the clearing with a healthy colour to her cheeks. She came into the kitchen and I offered her a glass of water.
“Thanks,” she said. “I'm fucked.”
“I'll stick to walking,” I said. “Much less strenuous.”
“No where near as fun!” she said.
“Do you feel a bit better?”
“Kind of. I'm going to clean up and take a look at the dish.” As she turned I noticed the hoop, twisted into a smaller loop and stuffed into the small of her back under her tee shirt. I hadn't noticed it until now. Even more so I realised there was Riley and there was Claudia and the two never seemed to meet.
We ate well that night and in the morning we got ready to leave just before dawn. Riley had spent most of the evening packing and repacking her kit whilst I spent some time in the kitchen preparing dried meals for the journey. My pack was always ready to go and I had a routine of packing and unpacking every time I used it so I didn't really need to change anything. What would change on this trip was the long hunting rifle I'd be carrying which I'd have to dust off. The last time I'd used it had been to hunt deer with some of my students at the end of their course. I didn't normally have to show Yanks how to hunt - it was usually something they'd been brought up with but on this occasion they'd put a wager down. “No Brit can do better on a hunt than us!” said their unofficial leader - a veteran of the Iran war who claimed to have killed over 30 deer in his time and hunted in an African reserve. I was happy to take the bet because I already knew where to look. By the time I'd brought my first kill back the students were still sat near an old trail waiting for the deer that would never arrive.
The rifle was a gift to my Dad from the US military when I was about to turn 16. He had his own weapon, an old bolt action thing that he'd used for years and he began training me on how to use this one. I'd half-expected to be given the old rifle as a hand-me-down but Dad would have none of it. He claimed he didn't like the sleek, modern stock and scope but I knew that deep down he adored the thing. He showed me how to look after it, to keep it clean and oiled, and then took me out to the deer trails to hunt my first buck. It took a few misses before I got a clean shot on a strong Roe that had lined itself up for me without realising it. I was over joyed at my kill but Dad was quick to calm me down.
“It isn't nice to have to kill the poor thing,” he said, letting me down gently. “It was a beautiful shot, son, but we're killing this animal with the intention of eating it and using every bit of it to the best of our ability. Never hunt these creatures for sport. Thanks to the Panic they're free to breed and be free without us getting in the way - let's not abuse the privilege. A balance is being restored here in our country an
d we'd be wise to maintain it.”
It'd been a message burned into my mind afterwards. Even with the cocky students I'd taken my kill and stripped it of everything I could use, even down to the blood and the bone that I could fertilise my crops with. I'd given some of the meat to the Yanks for a final barbecue but the rest had gone into my stores to keep me alive and I'd been grateful for it the following winter. The Americans even gave me a crate of beer as a reward for winning the bet.
After a big breakfast of bacon, toast and sausage, Riley went upstairs and brought down her pack. It was a well made thing made of black fabric and loaded with straps and buckles and shock cord. On the outside she'd attached her tarp and the bulk of the comms dish and some other bits and pieces. Her rifle lay next to it at the bottom of the stairs, gleaming with the care and attention she always seemed to take with it.
“Are you happy you have everything?” I asked.
“Pretty much. Most of it I brought myself, some of it I took from your stores like you said.” She looked around. “Where's your kit?” she asked. I found my pack and lifted it into the middle of the kitchen floor. “Is that it?”
“Yeah.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“There's nothing fucking there. What about your kit?”
“I have everything in there,” I explained. “The rest we'll find out there in the woods using that bullshit you've heard about.”
She laughed. “Well, I have to trust you know what you're doing but are you sure you haven't forgotten anything?”
“It's all there.”
“How much does it weigh?”
“About 10 kilos.”
“10?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh man, this is going to go wrong. Please, take something else, will you? I don't want to have to bring you home because you didn't come prepared.”
I laughed and began washing the plates. She saw my rifle in its case stood up against the wall.
“Is that yours?” she asked. “Can I take a look?”
“Sure,” I said. She picked it up and unwrapped it, pulling back the cocking lever to check the chamber and ejected the empty magazine in one swift movement. Then she held it up to her eye, aiming through the window. “This is nice!” she said. “US made too. How did you get it? From the Colonel?”
“It was a gift years ago.”
“Hell of a gift. When was the last time you fired it?” she asked, sniffing the breach.
“Last year.”
“May I?”
“Be my guest.”
“Where's the slugs?”
I pointed to a box on the shelf. She began to load the magazine with deft fingers and, taking her tool kit out with her, she went through the door into the clearing. I dried my hands on a towel, found and empty tin can and followed her.
She walked over to the edge of the woods, not far from where I'd seen her dancing, and I passed her the can. She took it to a tree quite a distance back and I could see she was counting the paces as she went. When she was happy with the distance, she returned, counting again and checking the wind direction as it blew through the pines.
“I've made it a bit trickier just to see how it affects your weapon,” she said, lying down on her front and setting up the bi-pod. She shuffled in the damp leaves until she'd got the position she wanted, then loaded the magazine, working the leaver back and forth. “It's been well cared for I see.”
“I've kept up with the oil.”
“Good. Here we go.” She drew the cocking lever back and chambered a round. Then she lifted the protective caps off the front and back of the sight and breathed out, lining up the shot. She seemed frozen there for a long time, not moving a single muscle and hardly breathing. She shuffled slightly, a little nudge of her right knee, then still as a marble statue once more.
The report made me jump and it echoed around my head for a few seconds. Riley didn't seem to have moved at all and she sat there, still staring down the sights. She fired again but this time I was ready. Then she got up, ejected the magazine and popped out the round that was already chambered. Then she passed it to me while she unzipped her tools.
“It just needs a bit of a tweak,” she said. The strong smell of cordite wafted up from the weapon as she began breaking the rifle into small pieces, taking each one and adjusting various bolts and tensioners. Her hands moved with the unnatural speed of a tradesman who knew her craft. A few minutes later and she'd reassembled it.
“Let's give him another go,” she said, dropping to the same position and aiming into the woods once more. This time there was little hesitation and she fired three rounds in as many seconds. “That's better. Here, you give it a try now.”
She passed me the rifle and I led down next to her, tucking the stock into my shoulder and lining up my shot. I could see the tree she'd chosen as her target. She'd ignored the can and grouped her shots on the bark of a beech tree to adjust the rifle with.
“Nail that can, my man!” she said, looking down the makeshift range.
“Before today the aim was off to the left,” I said.
“Forget that. I’ve sorted it out and zeroed the sight for you. Line up the cross-hairs with the can and see where it falls. There's a mild side wind coming in from the east but you need to get a feel for how much it will affect your shot.”
I eased into readiness, lining up my shot and letting out my breath. When I was happy, I gently pulled the trigger back and felt the kick as the report blasted my ears again. When I looked down the sight the can had disappeared.
“You happy?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “What did you do?”
“Nothing much. He's a beauty but things work loose over time so I just gave him a tweak. You already have a good idea how much allowance to give for the wind, hence how you hit that can, but at least now you'll get some repeatability out of your shots.”
“Thanks.”
She waved me away with a grin and got up, dusting herself off. I unloaded the rifle and pocketed the empty shells.
“You must have been a good teacher,” I said once we started walking back. She shrugged and I sensed there was something wrong but this wasn't the time to push her for an answer. She'd been right though - the time in the house wasn't achieving much and I knew Riley needed to be out in the field and busy with her craft. Then it dawned on me that so did I and I was more keen than ever to show her how this bullshit worked. I also realised that there were a host of demons in this woman and I was beginning to worry about how they would find their way to the surface.
I waited for her to gather her gear and bring it over to the huts before locking up the house and hiding the keys in the strongbox buried under one of the bronze benches. Dad had always hidden the keys there rather than risk losing them whilst we were travelling and he'd made a special hole in the ground for them. The strongbox kept them dry.
“I've left a lot of gear I didn't need in my room,” she said as I approached. I could see her shape in the darkness, the rifle across her arms and the pack on her back.
“That's okay. We'll be coming back and forth for a while.”
“Did you consider putting more kit in there?” she said, pointing to my pack.
“Nope.”
“Shame. Looks like one of us will be coming back sooner than they thought they would.”
“We'll see.”
“Lead off, tracker,” she said. It'd been a cold night and an even colder morning and Riley was in her woolly hat once more, her soft, feathered hair flowing out from under it almost like she planned it that way. She had tight fitting marksman gloves on and the index finger of her right hand poked out through an opening stitched specially into it.
I'd layered up for the trip, putting on my own woolly hat and neck warmer but my gloves I kept in the pocket on my thigh. I'd warm up pretty quickly and expected to take off my top at least before the afternoon. In my pack were warmer clothes for the night when the temperatures would dr
op sharply and I always carried a pair of cleated straps for my boots. I enjoyed walking in winter but it came with its own kit list.
I set off across the grounds and led the way through the thick belt of woodland that surrounded that side of the house, heading roughly eastward in the direction of the first bunker we intended to explore. I'd spent a good hour or so the previous night plotting the positions of each possible target onto an OS map, trying to narrow down our search to those that the drone may have been flying over. It was the slimmest of chances that my guess would be right, but it was all we had.
Dawn came with the murmur of a cold east wind and the sky began to smoulder with the heat of a winter sun. Moisture gathered on our neck warmers where our condensed breath touched it in soft, wispy clouds and I could hear Riley's breathing coming in the long, slow inhalations of someone used to exertion.
We walked on for about an hour until it was fully daylight, then broke off south to avoid a sharp climb over some boggy moorland. It was all familiar territory to me and I rarely consulted the map, choosing to walk from memory alone.
“No offence,” said Riley, “But I'm glad to be out of the house.”
“I know what you mean,” I replied. “You can't beat it out here and at least we're doing something.”
“I can't sit around, Miller, you may have noticed. It drives me fucking crazy. My Mom always said the same thing. 'Claudia, you ain't made for sitting' she'd say. She knew one day I'd end up doing something like this.”
“You must have done a fair bit with the Rangers.”
“Yeah, I guess. A lot of that was close action, get in, get out. No time to enjoy the view. Not like this mission.”
“And what do you make of the English countryside then?” I asked.
“Wet,” she replied, laughing. “Wet and cold but it beats sun and more sun like we have back home.”
“I never thought I'd hear someone complain that they had too much sun.”
“Well here you are and I'm saying it. I get sick of the dryness and the constant squinting. I like a bit of rain now and again, but maybe your country is pushing it a bit too far. You can't seem to go a few days without getting soaked.”
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