by Andy McNab
28
We got to the junction at the top of the cliff and stopped at the mini roundabout that helped the three bits of road sort themselves out. It must have been manic at the height of the season with caravans and all sorts snarled up.
I pointed left. ‘Towards that school.’ It was an old Victorian building with extensions out the back. Just beyond it was a car park where we could stop out of sight. ‘Pull in, turn round, and we’ll work out where to stop after that.’
To the left of the school there was a small electricity substation, with fields beyond. Good. It meant we’d be out of view not only of the van but also of the third party.
We turned at the bottom of the drive and parked just short of the substation. Jack switched the engine off, and I shifted the back of my seat down.
‘We could be here some time, might as well get comfy. And it will make us less of a recognizable shape for anyone checking out the car. It might even look empty.’
The mobile vibrated. Jack got ready to move again, but it wasn’t Gabe. It was the tracker. One of the community had walked past my cat.
‘It’s okay, mate, it’s only Gabe wanting a call.’
I hit dial to cover myself, and would ask Gabe for a sit-rep, but he’d been about to call me anyway. ‘All doors are closed. They’re going to be off any minute.’
‘Roger that.’ I gave Jack a look so he’d know there was shit on. ‘But is the target inside? Is she in the van?’
‘She’s in there with the rest of the fucks.’
‘For definite she’s in the van?’
‘Yes! For fuck’s sake.’
‘All right, listen in. When they move, give them distance – don’t get up their arse. Just make sure you know they’re heading up the hill to the junction, all right? Keep the line open. I’ve got the trigger on the junction, and I’ll tell you which way they went. Remember, we’ll take them from the junction, you then back us.’ I motioned for Jack to start the engine. ‘You got that, Gabe?’
‘Yep, here we go. They’re leaving now.’
I jumped out of the Beamer and bent down to instruct Jack. ‘Wait here till I move you up, okay?’
He nodded and I walked fast towards the road and the end of the school. ‘Where are they, Gabe?’ I could hear the Jeep’s engine ticking over.
‘They’re moving uphill now, going up the road. We’re still in the car park, just manoeuvring to get out.’
‘Okay, stay online.’
I reached the corner of the school and could see the worn-out paint of the mini roundabout about eighty metres away. A couple of cars were held there, coming up from the cove. Eventually I saw the blue VW joining the line. I could hardly miss it with all the surfboards strapped on top.
‘Gabe, it’s held at the junction, three vehicles back. No indicators on. Now that’s two cars back. Still no indicators.’
I heard the Jeep’s engine note rise. It would be at the bottom of the hill now, making its way up.
‘Gabe. That’s the van indicating … It’s intending right, towards Land’s End.’
I didn’t move back yet. Until the van turned right, the indicators meant nothing. That was all they were. ‘That’s still two back, still indicating right.’
Gabe was on the ball. ‘Roger that, I’m holding back.’
‘Gabe. He’s now at the junction. Wait. Wait. Okay, that’s the van now turning right, towards Land’s End.’
I waved for Jack to come forward, not looking back to check he saw me. My eyes needed to stay on the target. ‘Gabe. That’s now on the road towards Land’s End.’
The Beamer pulled up next to me and I jumped in. ‘Turn left, foot down, mate, catch the van up.’
Jack did as he was told, and as we passed the roundabout I could see the Jeep approaching it from downhill. They were soon out of sight as we rounded the corner past a pub.
The camper van came into sight.
‘Jack, close up to the car ahead. Let it give us some cover. We don’t want to be too far back on these bendy roads.’
I held the plug mic closer to my mouth as the Beamer’s revs climbed. ‘Gabe, you there?’
‘Yup.’
‘We have the van, just past a pub on the left – he’s slowing down. Wait, wait. He’s indicating left. He’s intending left. Wait. Okay, that’s now gone left into Seaview Holiday Park – Seaview Holiday Park, on the left. Gabe, go in and park up so you have a trigger on the exit, then get out and see what they’re up to. You got that?’
The Jeep’s engine was gunning now to catch up with us and Gabe raised his voice to be heard. ‘Got it, and closing down so I don’t have to listen to you telling me how to wipe my arse.’
I laughed and indicated to Jack to continue along the road, taking a quick glance at the entrance to what I could now see was a big static caravan site.
Jack found an open five-bar gate into a field a few hundred metres further on and drove in, bouncing the Beamer over the grass to turn round. He sounded relieved. ‘We wait until they get their heads down, and we take her?’
‘We could do, mate, something like that if we’re going to avoid those big fucks. But let’s just wait here till Gabe tells us what’s what. The van might be dropping someone off, picking someone up, just stopping for a piss and then out again – we don’t know.’
It looked like Jack was going to stop with his bonnet sticking out of the gate ready to turn left or right.
‘No, mate, behind the hedge. If she moves, Gabe will give us a direction.’
‘But what if we miss her?’
‘Then we miss her – but we’ll have two places to check out later. Better than compromising ourselves on hour one, day one.’
I kept the mobile earplugs in and pointed to Jack’s charging phone in one of the cup holders. ‘Can you get maps up for us? I want to keep mine clear for Gabe.’
If Jack was reluctant to hand over control of his mobile, I couldn’t tell: I was already out of the Beamer and leaning back in to take it from him after he’d entered his PIN.
‘Just checking out what I can see over the fields towards the caravan site.’
I took off towards the gate, checking the satellite imagery of the area until I was out of sight of Jack. Then I hit the tracker app on my mobile, which came straight up on Google Maps and showed me that someone from the community and the Owl had been at the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square about fifteen minutes ago.
Gabe came back into my earplugs. ‘Pass Reception, turn right, and they’re parked up on the left about seventy down.’
‘Good skills, Gabe. Can you see the target? Is she there?’
‘No. Otherwise I would have told you so. They’re unloading their kit, fuck-off black bags, the big vinyl adventure things. But I can’t see where to – the place is full of caravans. They could be in any of the fuckers. I don’t want to get too close.’
‘Okay, mate. We’ll come and take the trigger on the exit.’ I checked the site map again as I spoke. ‘It’s the only one. Then you get back down to Penzance. We filled up by a big Halfords outside the town – get a couple of tents, sleeping bags, all that sort of shit, and give us a call once you’ve done it.’
I closed down and had one more job to do before getting back to the Beamer. I went into Jack’s emails and texts to see if he was stupid enough to leave anything he’d sent to the Owl. There was nothing, but that didn’t mean anything just yet.
Once in settings, I checked his battery usage. Fifty-three per cent of the battery life had been taken up on messages. A lot of waffling had been deleted.
I reverted the screen to maps as I ran back to the Beamer and jumped in. ‘On to the road, turn left. We’re going camping.’
I plugged both mobiles into the adaptor and glanced at Jack. Was there any concern on his face trying hard not to burst through?
29
The caravan site was coming up on the right and Jack hit the indicator.
‘Don’t acknowledge the Jeep if you see it. Just pul
l in somewhere like we’re going to pick up a brochure or something.’
We crossed the A30 and drove in. Gabe and Rio were nosy-parked in the line of cars outside the reception building, which a sign said also housed a restaurant, bar, cinema, shop and bowling alley.
‘Anywhere you want, engine off. I’ll check out the van and try to find Yulia. All you need to do is adjust your mirrors, all three, so you can see behind you. If you spot the van leaving, you follow – without me, if you have to. All nice and slow, because that gives them time to get out of the junction and they don’t see you manoeuvring.
‘You don’t want to be right up their arse – you just need to know which way they’re going and start following. Call Gabe, then give me a shout. Just keep with the van because that’s all we’ve got at the moment.’
Their job done for now, Gabe and Rio reversed out and headed for the main. I pocketed the phone, inserted my earphones, climbed out of the Beamer, closed the door with a cheery wave at Jack, thinking darker thoughts than my face showed, and set off in the direction of the van – right past Reception, about seventy down.
But, first, I went into the shop and came out again a few minutes later with a children’s cricket set under my arm.
Caravans stretched to the horizon. In and around them was the whole circle of life. Young couples kicked sponge footballs to their toddlers. Coming up on my right, older kids raced around a play park. Grey-haired couples sat outside on deckchairs, rugs over their legs as they drank tea. It was good cover having so many of the third party out and about, but if I found Yulia, it was also going to make it hard to get and keep eyes on her.
I passed the play park on the right. The Wolves’ VW was parked on hardstanding a little further down on the left, just off the road and a metre or two before a bend, next to a couple of estate cars with luggage boxes on top and pushbike racks hanging off the tailgates. A sign for ‘Nos 55 to 60’ pointed up the grass to the left.
The camper van had been unloaded of boards, but I couldn’t see inside it. The tailgate window was covered with a sheet of stick-on black film that had bubbled with age and heat. The sliding door didn’t have a window and was closed. The only glimpse I got of the interior was the dashboard. The cans, empty Pringles tubes and car-park tickets were only what you’d expect.
I carried on and caught my first sighting of the Wolves between the first two caravans in the line beyond the car park. Not one of them was skinny with a mass of hair. No problem: I hoped to have a closer view in a second. The road continued in a big horseshoe, and as I rounded the bend the two caravans were on the start of the straight, numbers fiftyfive and fifty-six.
I followed the road, eyes fixed on a caravan in the mid-distance, a bit of a smile on my face at the prospect of playing cricket with my kids in a minute. I had a reason to be there, just like everyone else carrying shopping or ice creams, or the mother running towards the play park, shouting at her kids not to jump off the slide but use it the way it was designed.
The first thing that hit me as the caravans came into view was the music. Rap boomed out of fifty-six, which had the boards leant against it. Its flowery curtains were pulled shut, like they thought that would contain it. I got a good sighting of the Wolves in the gap between fiftyfive and fifty-six, cartons of milk in hand and getting into what I assumed were protein bars. They had changed into fleeces, cargoes or jeans, and Gabe was right. They were massive. This was a fuck of a lot of muscle and not a lot of hair. They all had that white-walled cut with just a little more on top like a lot of gym rats had. Five colossal wetsuits hung on a line stretched between the two caravans, along with another that looked like it belonged to a ten-year-old. It was a good sign. A couple of large disposable barbecues had been lit and were already creating enough smoke to alert the Coastguard.
I tried hard to hear their accents or language but I was too far away, and so much bass was coming from the speakers that the tiles must have been flying off Reception’s roof. Someone would surely say something soon. Or maybe they wouldn’t, once they’d banged on the door to complain and one of the monsters stepped out.
As I came closer, the accents didn’t matter because of what I could see. In Russian prisons, your life story is tattooed on your body. Pictures of bears shagging women, and rats with numbers above them tell anyone in the know the detention centres the owners have been to, and why. The Wolves were too young to have much of a story – they all looked in their late twenties, early thirties at most – but their first chapters were certainly written. On the back of the neck of one, who looked a bit older than the rest, there was a bird’s head, blue and blurred, linking the collar of his fleece to his cropped hairline. Prison ink was normally improvised from a mixture of soot and piss, and injected into the skin with a sharpened guitar string attached to an electric shaver, which sometimes made the design hard to work out. Not this time. It could only have been a phoenix. The rest of the bird would cover his back as it flew out of the flames to each side of it, just like he would, along with thousands of others in prison who got the bird stamped on them.
The brightly flowered curtains were drawn in fiftyfive as well, but as I moved past I saw that the window wasn’t completely shut. A small grey rectangular plastic box, with two leads coming out of it, was suckered to the glass. No other caravan round here had one, just the normal dish arrangement. I wondered if Yulia was at the other end of those leads, doing whatever was so bad the Owl wanted a chat, but until one of us got eyes-on, baby wetsuit or not, I didn’t even know one hundred per cent where she was.
I followed the road up towards my imminent cricket game with my kids. A few brave young souls were trying to enjoy the open-air swimming pool.
The Wolves looked like real surfers: their kit was worn. A couple of wetsuits had patches and the boards were well used, with dings underneath and lots of old wax on top. If they were there to protect Yulia while she did whatever she was doing, the surfing was a credible cover – and the area was probably overflowing with East European workers in the hotels and cafés, so it wasn’t as if their accents would stick out.
Maybe Yulia and the Wolves really were from Belarus. There were ethnic Russians in the country and no doubt Putin planned an invasion to protect them very soon.
I got to the end of the pool and squinted through the fence as if I was rounding up my kids. They must have gone back to our caravan instead of waiting for me. I gave up and headed back down the road. The music still blared, the barbecues were getting smokier, and the lads were on their second round of protein bars.
Lifting Yulia, with that pack around her, was going to be a lot harder than I’d hoped. Maybe I’d strike lucky – maybe Jack was right: if she was caught short during the night and headed for the toilet all I’d have to do was grip her, bundle her into the back of the Beamer, and we’d all head for London while I put in a call to the Owl.
I carried on past numbers fifty-six and fiftyfive, then the van. I had my sights set on the play park, wondering if I could get away with watching from the benches. Single male, sitting next to a kids’ area, even with a cricket set under his arm? Nah, maybe not so much.
I got back to the Beamer and Jack powered down his window. ‘I still can’t see Yulia.’ I wedged the cricket kit onto the back seat. ‘She could be in one of the caravans – who knows? We’ve got to stake it out anyway, so it doesn’t matter for now.’
I opened the door and motioned for Jack to get out. ‘I’ll take the trigger now and phone the others to tell them what’s going on. I need you to go to Reception and book two pitches for the tents in the field next to the kids’ play park. Get right up to the hedges and the bushes so we can hide the wagons from the parking area opposite the caravans – that’s where their van is.
‘From there, we can maybe get a trigger on the caravans – or the van – and find this little fucker.’
Jack clambered out, pleased for the stretch. ‘What happens if we don’t find her? If she’s not there?’
‘We’ll just keep doing what we’re doing, staying with the van. If the van moves, we move. Hopefully we’ll see her getting into it, and if she isn’t in it, hopefully the van will lead us to her. Hopefully the lads will go down to the cove, and hopefully we’ll pick Yulia up like we did today.’
‘Hope’ is a good word to explain what you can’t control, but that’s all. Relying on hope gives pain and panic to events that were better worked at or not worried about. The Stoics had it right: be prepared for the worst, then anything good that happens is a bonus.
Jack pulled his mobile from its charger and set off for Reception and the club area like he had a girl waiting. Maybe he was bursting for a piss.
I jumped into the driver’s seat and adjusted the mirrors, then checked the interior lights. Shit. These new cars all had integral units – there was no way I could take the cover off and disconnect the bulb.
I called Gabe and Rio to see how they were getting on and give them a sit-rep, along with some more odds and ends to add to our shopping list.
30
The caravan site
It was maybe two hours or so since dark o’clock and Rio was stretched out on a roll-mat behind me in the blue nylon dome tent, trying to get comfortable in a sleeping bag. Not that it was his: he and Gabe had their own tent but couldn’t be arsed to move because this one was where the trigger on the camper van was and they would have to keep it later on. I sat cross-legged on a roll-mat of my own, inhaling the stink of the beef-flavour crisps and chocolate he and Gabe had bought on their way back from Halfords.
The ambient light from the site’s streetlamps and the occasional car slowing for the U-bend glowed dully inside the tent, just enough for us to make out movement, not faces. The odd shriek still came from the play park to the left, but it was teenagers now, excited to be unsupervised so late at night. The vehicle traffic had died down after a bit of an exodus: a lot of guests had headed out, probably to the annoyance of the park owners who wanted their cash spent in the restaurant and bowling alley. We’d watched a stream of holidaymakers in towelling robes and flipflops traipse to and from the ablutions block with their washbags.