by Rob Sinclair
As my eyes slowly opened and closed, the movement becoming more strained each time, I thought I heard voices.
‘Take him.’
‘No, that one first. She’s already waiting for him.’
And in those last few seconds before I lost consciousness, I knew with absolute certainty that they’d wanted us alive. A stun grenade. A stinger. Rubber bullets. Like riot police. No lethal force.
The only question was: why?
Chapter 4
Three months later
I was running. I didn’t know where to, but I had to get away. I couldn’t see more than ten yards in front of me. Every direction I looked in was simply a wall of white. I ran as hard and fast as I could. I avoided trees at the last second as they finally came into my view. But I was unable to escape the pot holes and undulations in the ground, which were completely obscured by the thick covering of untouched snow, just a few inches deep in places, as much as two feet in others.
Impossible to really run in conditions like that.
More than once I stumbled when my foot went further into the soft white powder than I anticipated, falling flat on my face in the process. At least the falls were cushioned. But they slowed me down and that wasn’t good.
It was cold. How cold, I don’t know. Whatever temperature my brain thought, it would be colder. Take off another five or ten degrees centigrade at least to account for the heat building up from me running and the masking effect of the adrenaline flowing through me. It wouldn’t have surprised me if the temperature was as low as minus fifteen, minus twenty even.
It didn’t matter.
All that mattered was that I get away from there. I could worry about the cold after.
I had on a pair of thick leather boots, one size too small, over my bare skin. I’d commandeered them just minutes earlier. My feet were probably red-raw, the skin scraped off from the constant friction. But I couldn’t feel any pain. Maybe my feet were numbed by the cold already.
The uniform I was wearing fitted me nicely. The overcoat I had on, although weighing me down, would be essential later on when I eventually stopped running. I knew that my hands and face were too exposed, but at least the blood pumping quickly through my body was keeping the cold at bay for now.
I put a foot down, expecting the ground to give by six inches or so as it had done for every other step. But it didn’t. My foot hit hard ice, just below the powder surface. The unexpected step sent a jolt through my ankle. I stumbled, my body fell forward, my chin cracked off my bent knee, which was higher than it should have been. I rolled into a heap in the snow.
Dazed, it took me a couple of seconds to regain myself. A fire ripped through my left ankle. The numbness from the mixture of cold and adrenaline had quickly dissipated. But I could still move and twist my foot. The ankle wasn’t broken. I felt a warmth on my chin, wiped at it with my hand. Blood. I had bitten into my lip when my knee struck my chin. I cursed before lifting my heavy body upright again.
Without thinking twice, I continued my sprint.
A thick mist surrounded me. I knew I was in a forest because of the trees. A pine forest. The sharp, pungent smell from the trees, unmistakable to me, fired pleasant memories in my head of past holidays. Memories that were completely out of place given my predicament.
Because of the darkness, the trees and the mist, I couldn’t sense what else was around me. For all I knew a road or even villages lay directly at either side. But they would be completely lost to me in the cloud of white. I didn’t even know whether I had merely been running in circles. Although the moonlight seeping through the trees allowed me to make out nearby shapes, the eerie haze all around meant I couldn’t locate the moon itself or any stars in the sky to give me any kind of direction. I had to rely on my instincts and nothing else.
I thought I had been running for about twenty minutes, but I had no way of knowing for sure. Taking account of the terrain, my fatigue, my clothing, I couldn’t have been averaging more than five miles an hour, even though I had been going as fast as I could. That would take me close to two miles from where I had started out.
I didn’t know whether they were chasing me yet. They could have been as little as a few hundred yards from me for all I knew. But I couldn’t hear any voices shouting after me, or footsteps close behind.
Maybe they weren’t looking for me at all.
No, I couldn’t think like that. I had to assume they were out there somewhere. And I had to get away.
But how many men would there be? Did they have vehicles? Dogs?
It didn’t matter. Hiding wasn’t an option. I had to run.
During my training many years ago I had been put through survival exercises countless times. Often in terrains not at all dissimilar to this. The rule of three was something that had always stuck with me. Humans cannot survive more than three hours exposed to extremely high or low temperatures. Humans cannot survive more than three days without water. And humans cannot survive more than three weeks without food.
The theory was as basic and unscientifically proven as you could get. I had survived many more than three hours of exposure. You hear miraculous stories of people who have survived far longer than three days without water. For starters, numerous other factors are relevant: the temperature, whether you are at high or low altitude, the humidity level, how otherwise healthy you are. And you see numerous claims by monks and the like of fasting that has lasted for weeks, months, even years.
But the basic rules apply. You need food, water and shelter from extreme temperatures to survive.
And I had none of those.
Running was against every basic rule I had learned. The exertion would be burning my body’s energy supply, my water, far more quickly than being stationary. I knew that. And it started to play on my mind. The doubt crept in: was I doing the right thing?
For the first ten minutes of my run, I had been so focused on getting away, the adrenaline had been pumping so hard, I hadn’t stopped for even a second to think about what I would do next. But now my legs were becoming heavy, my muscles becoming tight from exhaustion and cold. Every step was an effort, like I had on a pair of lead boots.
And I started to question whether what I was doing was actually a huge mistake.
What if nothing was out there?
How long would I run through this vast nothingness?
Wasn’t I best sticking to what I had learned? Find myself shelter. Start rummaging for food. Start a fire. Get out of the cold and reserve my energy. There would be plenty of food I could forage for. Plants, leaves, even small animals were abundant in terrain like this. Reindeer lichen, a type of moss, is so called for the very fact that it grows in vast, icy wildernesses like the one I was in. Virtually every tree trunk around would have it growing around its bark.
Those were all the sensible things I should have been doing. But then, stopping to find food, water, shelter might have been just as much a death sentence as running to the point of collapse. Either way, when I stopped, they would find me. I had to believe that.
And at least running wasn’t giving up. Stopping and burrowing away from the cold would be akin to waving a little white flag. People with extreme hypothermia are known to exhibit what is called terminal burrowing. A last show of despair where they look for confined spaces to hide in. Sounds sensible, right? But even after people have been rescued they burrow. Hiding in cupboards in their own home, under their beds, anything to get away from the feeling of cold and isolation. The brain takes over, animal instinct returning. But it’s a feat of desperation. Literally crawling into a corner to die.
That’s why stopping would feel like giving up. Because if I stopped, I would end up doing just that: terminal burrowing.
But my legs weren’t listening. No matter how much I wanted to keep going, my legs were about to give up.
I stopped running, slowing to a walk. Within a few steps forward progress had been halted altogether. It was the end, I knew. Like in marathon running
. You’ve got to keep going, because the second you stop it’s a signal of defeat to your brain. All the hard work that you’ve done to convince your body that your legs can take it disappears in that instance. Your toes will hurt, your ankles, calves, shins, knees, thighs. The wall.
And I had just stopped. I had just hit my wall.
I sank to my knees. Exhaustion finally taking over. Not only from two miles of running through thick snow, but from the ordeal of the previous three months. And yet I felt more than just fatigue. A feeling of abject failure, of doom, washed over me. I had come this far, only to give in so quickly. So easily.
But my body was no longer responding. I couldn’t go on.
Having only stopped for a few seconds I could already feel the sub-zero air cooling my reddened face. Within minutes my circulation would readjust. Wanting to conserve warmth, my body would no longer pump my blood close to the skin. The network of veins and arteries would close off the pathways to my extremities: hands, feet, face. It wouldn’t be long before they turned blue from cold. Frostbite would come next. I knew all that, and yet my body was no longer responding to my will. It had left me. I was more alone than I could have imagined.
With my own heavy breathing subsiding, I could, for the first time, hear the forest around me. The gentle rustle of branches swaying in the chilly breeze. The whistling as stronger gusts forced their way through the narrow passages created by the vast trunks.
But that was it. Those were the only sounds of life.
Other than that, I was all alone.
Abandoned.
I bowed my head down into my chest. Not to escape from the cold, but because of the melancholic feeling that was sweeping through me.
Nobody was coming for me. Not my own people. And not them. Perhaps they didn’t even care that I was gone. My own people didn’t, so why should they? I almost wished I could hear their voices. Hear their footsteps, the barks of the dogs. See the beams of their torches scattering around the trees towards me.
But there was nothing.
And that was why I began to cry. Because I was out there alone and it wouldn’t matter to a single person whether I lived or died.
Not even to me.
But suddenly I looked up, eyes wide open and alert. At first I didn’t understand why. Then I heard it again. The not-too-distant hum of machinery. I got to my feet, my face creasing from the pain that was spreading through my body from head to toe. The humming got louder, feeling almost deafening compared with the near-silence that had come before it. I thought I could actually feel the vibrations moving through the ground and up into my body like electricity.
The humming turned into a roar. I knew then that I was listening to a vehicle. A powerful four-by-four or maybe even a truck. I spotted the outline of headlights in the distance. They swept across in front of me from left to right as the vehicle turned, moving up and down as it passed over uneven ground. The beams weren’t strong enough to fully break through the thick mist, but I knew it wasn’t far from me.
Relief. That’s what I felt at first. Relief that I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t going to die in some makeshift shelter, forever lost to nature. There was life out there. A road. Maybe a village or a town.
But after the relief came a dilemma over what my next step would be. Because chances were those lights would belong to the very people I was running from. And I would be faced with one of the greatest choices in the animal kingdom since time began.
Fight, or flight.
Chapter 5
I had been dreaming of Angela. I often did. The small piece of happiness in a wasted life. The only time in my sorry existence that I had ever felt such hope, passion, kinship toward another person. Felt so alive. I’d had casual lovers in the past but they’d never meant anything to me. Angela had been different. The attraction I had felt for her had been pure chemistry, a force that couldn’t be stopped.
My life had gone off the rails some twelve months before I’d met her, following my failed assignment to bring a violent terrorist, Youssef Selim, to justice.
Selim had captured me, held me prisoner. He’d tortured and very nearly killed me. In the aftermath, I’d been a mess. Nineteen years of working and thinking like a robot came to an abrupt halt. I’d suffered severe post-traumatic stress. I didn’t know if I could go on. But five months later I’d been back on the job, assigned to track down Frank Modena, America’s Attorney General, who’d been kidnapped in Paris. Selim was the main suspect. Mentally, I hadn’t been ready. But Mackie, my boss, had brought me back anyway. Brought me back to finish Selim off.
Along the way I’d met Angela Grainger, an FBI agent. A woman I had been attracted to like no other person before or after. Angela had come seemingly from nowhere and helped me to turn my life around. To get back some sense of normality in an utterly abnormal existence. My saving grace.
She helped me to track down Selim and I killed him. Thus ending what had seemed like the sorriest chapter of my life.
And yet even my time with Angela had come to a miserable end. She’d lied to me. She’d used me. She’d betrayed me.
She’d shot me!
Angela had been the one behind the plot to kidnap Modena all along. Her aim: to use the Attorney General to identify the man who’d killed her father. Innocent people had lost their lives. And as the plot ran perilously out of control, she used me to help her rectify the situation, all the while having me believe that she was helping me to bring to justice a madman – Youssef Selim – who had taken Modena hostage for his own nefarious purposes.
It would be an understatement to say I felt bitterness towards Angela. And yet, bizarrely, that didn’t take away the sweetness of our time together. That would always remain. The one good thing that could never be taken away from me.
Even in my dreams, where the good times were retold, I knew that she was gone. Knew that when I woke up she wouldn’t be there lying next to me.
But I knew that one day I would find her again.
My latest dream had been a replay of one of our best times together – a hotel in Paris where we’d spent two nights barely leaving our bed.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to see when I finally opened my eyes. It always takes the brain a few seconds to recalibrate after dreaming, to remember where you are and why. But this time, a whole lot more confusion than normal coursed through my mind.
I hadn’t even managed to make out the room that I was in before I was forced to close my eyes again because of the searing pain in my head. I held my eyes tightly shut, waiting for the stabbing to subside. It didn’t go away entirely, but after a few seconds, once it had dulled, I tried again to open my eyes.
What I saw was accompanied by a flash of memories. Semshov’s office. Dmitri lying on the floor, blood pouring from his shoulder. The feet gathering around me as I lay on my side. The voices.
At that moment it dawned on me where I was.
A cell.
No windows, no lights hanging from the ceiling. The only illumination was from the neat slivers of light outlining a door in front of me – enough to show the shape of the room. A square. Less than four yards wide and long. The walls looked black and wet in the dull light. The room was bare except for a large pot in the far corner.
I was lying on the ground, up against the wall at the back of the cell. I slowly, painfully, hauled myself to my feet, only then realising that I was naked. My whole body ached. Possibly from the rubber bullets. A beating from the guards too, maybe. Sleeping naked on the cold, hard floor certainly wouldn’t have helped. I gave myself a once-over. Other than the aches and pains and a few areas of bruising, I had no serious injuries.
I hobbled up to the door and put my ear against the cold metal to see whether I could hear anything on the other side.
Nothing.
I could shout out. Maybe Dmitri was in a cell next to or opposite mine. Maybe a guard was stationed out there who could tell me where the hell I was. Why I was here.
But I didn�
��t.
I wasn’t desperate. I had been in cells like this before. I had always got out in the end. And it had never once been through begging.
I would sit and wait for them to come to me.
I moved back over to the far corner and slumped down onto the cold floor. I held my hands up to my face. I could barely see them in the dim light but I knew from the awkward sensation that they were shaking. It had been months since that last happened to me.
The post-traumatic stress I’d suffered following my encounter with Youssef Selim was something I’d tried my best to ignore, deny even. I’d fought hard for months before finally accepting the problem. The pain I felt in those days had dissipated after I met Angela. After the two of us tracked down Selim and I put a bullet in his head.
But in the cell, some of those painful feelings of isolation and despair from the last time I’d been held prisoner were already creeping back into my mind.
Luckily, with the feeling of doom quickly descending, I didn’t have to wait long. I reckoned a little under two hours since I’d woken up. If I’d been them, I would have left me for much longer.
I heard their footsteps approaching. Two sets. Their boots sounded thick and heavy against the hard floor. Next came their voices. But they were almost whispering and I couldn’t make out any words.
A flap in the door opened, sending a bright stream of light into the room. I winced as my eyes adjusted to the sudden change, holding up an arm to my face. I saw the barrel of a gun poked through the flap. A handgun of some sort. I doubted it would be a regular firearm. Why would they shoot me now after such a deliberate effort to bring me here alive? My guess was that it held tranquiliser darts.
‘Move to the back of the cell. Put your hands above your head,’ one of them said.
I was surprised that I was being spoken to in English. A broken English, but English nonetheless. I wasn’t certain what the accent was. I had presumed that I was still in Russia. But on hearing the man’s voice, the slightest doubt crept into my mind.