Aggressor ns-8

by Andy McNab

  Bastard was staring at me wild-eyed. He tried to speak but couldn’t.

  I let go of the tree root and crashed hard against the fallen pine.

  I grabbed the carry-on and flung my free arm over the trunk. I hooked a leg over a branch, but the rest of me still trailed in the river. I let myself be buffeted by the force of the water until I managed to draw breath and heave myself up. I lay there for a moment, my knuckles whitening as I fought to hang on to the handle of the carryon. Then I started to crawl slowly towards the bank.

  I hauled myself upright and made my way back upstream.

  Bastard saw me coming. ‘Get me out of here, now!’

  It was like being accosted by 250 pounds of stranded bull walrus.

  ‘Hey! I’m here… Here! What the fuck’s keeping you?’

  For a split second I toyed with the idea of cracking him on the side of the head with the carry-on and watching him float away. Then I gave myself a reality check. If we lost Bastard, we lost our broker. I began to lower myself down the bank and back into the water.

  ‘This is our raft,’ I yelled. ‘Grip the fucking thing as tight as you can and don’t let go. I’ll hang on to you. Now kick… Come on, kick!’

  He nodded obediently but didn’t move. The carry-on bounced up and down in the swell between us.

  Bastard was experiencing Fear Up big-time at first hand. He couldn’t bring himself to let go of his anchor. I punched down hard on his hand to get him to release, and we were away.

  I locked my hand on the collar of Bastard’s blazer, kicking to propel us out into the current to clear the fallen tree.

  Bastard was putting all his energy into keeping his head above water.

  ‘Get kicking! Fucking help me here!’

  The signal finally made it from his ear to his brain and he kicked. The current grabbed us and we thundered past the pine tree. The further we travelled, the closer we were being thrown towards the far shore. It was only a matter of time before my boots hit the riverbed.

  I struggled to my feet and half pulled, half dragged Bastard into the shallows. A few moments later, he was lying beside me on solid ground.

  I took off my shirt and T-shirt, and twisted as much water out of them as I could. To make the most of what was left of my body heat, I had to get some air into the fibres. That was what I told myself anyway. The rain soaked them as fast as I could wring them, but somehow the whole process made me feel better.

  I put the shirt and T-shirt back on, then knelt to take off my boots. I fumbled to undo the laces with numb, trembling fingers. Finally I wrung out my jeans.

  Once I was dressed again, I tucked everything in, trying to minimize the number of ways in which the wind could get to me.

  A familiar voice boomed down at us from what was left of the road. ‘That was really big of you, lad, but you needn’t have bothered.’

  I looked up at Charlie and shrugged.

  His eyes twinkled. ‘I could easily have made do with a carrier bag.’

  Bastard lay beside me like a beached whale.

  I kicked him. ‘Time to move. Check you’ve still got your ID.’

  Bastard dug around and pulled out his wallet.

  He gave it a squeeze and fished out the laminated card. ‘You really do need me, don’t you?’ He had the faintest of knowing smiles on his face. ‘Well, fuck you.’

  2

  The mudslide had demolished the road, leaving little more than a trail of boulders and uprooted trees in its wake. Even if we’d managed to hang on to the Pajero, we couldn’t have gone any further.

  I slumped down next to Charlie and fought my way back into my jacket. After my Baywatch experience, the effort of pushing Bastard back up the slope had almost finished me off. He sat a little way away from us. I hoped he might be suffering from a touch of wounded pride, at the very least, but if he was, he wasn’t going to let us see it.

  In a completely futile display of defiance against the still-torrential rain, he had fastened all three buttons on his blazer and pulled up the collar. Amazingly, he’d hung on to both his shoes, and apart from a few bruises, seemed little the worse for wear.

  ‘I’ve no weapon,’ Charlie muttered. ‘You?’

  I shook my head. ‘It was a simple choice: the seven-six-two or you. Fuck knows why, but you won out.’

  Charlie grinned, but only briefly. ‘Better not hang about, lad. We need to get a move on. Doubt we’ll make the border before tomorrow, in this shit. The road the other side of town won’t be a pretty sight either. So, first stop Borjomi, sort our shit out, hit the local Hertz kiosk, and crack on, eh?’

  ‘I reckon we’ve done about a hundred and thirty odd K, so it can’t be much more than twenty to tab. Four or five hours maybe, even with you in Hopalong Cassidy mode.’ I got to my feet and grabbed Bastard by the scruff of his neck. ‘I’ll grip him; you just keep that ankle moving.’

  Charlie set off and I manhandled Bastard to his feet. Normal service had been resumed; he was complaining about everything in the universe. I didn’t envy him the next few hours though. Charlie and I were soaked, but at least we had a layer of outdoor wear and, more importantly, we had boots. Bastard was going to have to tab in wet loafers, and they weren’t built for it any more than he was. His feet would be blistered to fuck before we’d gone a thousand metres.

  ‘Time to get going. We’ve got a little brokering to do, remember?’

  Bastard didn’t reply, so I gave him a shove. It was like trying to fast-forward a hippo; he didn’t budge an inch.

  ‘Time to go, Big Boy.’

  ‘Fuck you!’ He obviously liked that phrase. It was his default reply.

  ‘I’m doing you a favour, mate. You’re not going to last five minutes out here on your own in that gear, are you?’

  We kept on the road, or what we could see of it. Large cracks had opened across it, and water sluiced through them like they were storm drains. We had to move as fast as we could: not only to get to Borjomi as quickly as possible, but also to keep our drenched bodies warm.

  I looked ahead of us. Charlie might have been the cripple, but he was doing a whole lot better than Bastard. His body swung from side to side as he tried to compensate for his swollen ankle, but he’d been in this kind of situation more times than he could count. On a tab, you’ve got to get from A to B, so you just crack on with it. It’s pointless worrying about the weather, your physical condition, or how pissed off you feel. It doesn’t help you make the distance any quicker.

  Bastard didn’t get it. I guessed I couldn’t blame him for feeling sorry for himself, but now wasn’t the time or the place. I laid a hand on each of his shoulder blades and pushed.

  He was grumbling big-time, but it wasn’t helping him much. Bumping your gums doesn’t get you to where you need to be. The only way you’re going to do that is by putting one foot in front of the other as quickly as you can, and if it’s not fast enough, then someone needs to come behind you with a cattle prod.

  It was like being back in the infantry; I had been pushing or pulling flaking bodies since I was a sixteen-year-old boy soldier, trying to keep the slower guys up with the squad. It was all part of the deal. You moved as fast as the slowest man, but you had to make him as fast as you could. You carried his weapon, carried his kit, encouraged him, took the piss out of him — fucking well slung him over your shoulder and carried him if need be, not that I was in any hurry to try that with Bastard.

  We’d been going for about an hour, and covered maybe four or five Ks, when Charlie limped off the road and heaved himself under a low fir tree. He lay back on the grass and stretched out his leg.

  Bastard and I closed up on him.

  ‘Thought I’d better hang around for you two lardasses.’ He took a series of short, painful breaths.

  Bastard couldn’t even marshal the strength to move off the road; he just fell to his knees instead, and slid towards Charlie in the mud. It was probably the furthest he’d ever walked in his life, certainly in monsoon co
nditions and dressed in a blazer and loafers. His head slumped forward, displaying a very nice crocodile-clipshaped bruise.

  I left him where he was and went over to the tree.

  Charlie was resting the sole of his boot against the trunk, in order to ease his damaged ankle.

  I collapsed alongside him. I wasn’t going to ask him if he was OK. If the time approached when he couldn’t take any more, he’d give me plenty of warning.

  Charlie grunted. ‘We’d better step up the pace or we’ll be stuck out here all night. If he could tab as energetically as he gobs off, we’d be there by now.’ His face was lit briefly by one of his stupid grins. ‘He’s a bit like you, lad; he can talk the talk, but he certainly can’t walk the walk.’ He liked it so much he shouted a repeat for Bastard’s benefit.

  Bastard looked up, but either couldn’t or didn’t want to hear.

  I wasn’t looking forward to trying to keep Bastard on the move all night. If he couldn’t shift his arse in daylight, he’d be ten times worse after dark. People like him become uncoordinated; they stumble, they injure themselves.

  Bastard looked the part inside a Pod with a coffee machine at his elbow and a wad of tobacco in his hip pocket, but that was about it. He’d boast a good night out, but I didn’t want to have to nurse him through one.

  I doubted he’d ever gone more than a couple of hours between doughnuts.

  I checked Baby-G, which was still chugging along after its dip in the river. It was 3.27, which meant only about another four hours before dark. At this rate, it wouldn’t be enough.

  Charlie moved his foot off the trunk of the tree and onto my shoulder. Bastard watched, and maybe it made him feel even more like Nobby Nomates. He sounded pretty sorry for himself. ‘How much fucking longer in this goddam shit country, man? How far we gotta go?’

  ‘What’s the matter, Big Boy?’ Charlie watched him fiddle with his soaking wet loafers. ‘Never been cold, wet and hungry before?’

  I broke into a smile. ‘Cold and wet, maybe. Hungry? I don’t think so!’

  Charlie almost choked with laughter.

  ‘You fucks think we’ll get there before dark?’ Bastard scowled at us as he wiped the rain from his face. ‘I don’t want to be out in this shit all night long, that’s for sure. And don’t even think about leaving me out here. Nothing’s changed. You fucks can’t get out of here without me. Don’t forget it.’

  Charlie grimaced as his foot made contact with the ground again. ‘Don’t fret, Big Boy. We’ll push your fat arse all the way to Turkey if we have to.’

  He hobbled off up the road. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew it would be contorting with pain with every step.

  I’d have offered myself as a crutch, but he would only have fucked me off. He knew as well as I did that he wasn’t the priority right now, whatever Hazel might think.

  3

  I pushed and shoved Bastard for another hour. He was slowing down, without a doubt. It couldn’t have been easy shifting that bulk of his; I could almost hear those big wobbly thighs chafing together with every step he took.

  We were still following the pipeline scar to the left of the road. The rain was a solid grey curtain.

  As we rounded a sweeping bend into high ground, I saw a splash of white about 150 metres ahead of us. I wiped the rain from my eyes and looked again. It was the arse end of a van, static beside the road.

  Bastard and I drew level with Charlie.

  Charlie rested his arm on my shoulder to take the weight off his injury. ‘Looks like our luck’s in, lad.’

  Bastard began sounding off as if he’d spotted an empty cab at theatre time and we were about to let it go. ‘Hey, what’re you fucks waiting for?’ He shambled off up the road, trying desperately to make his legs move as fast as his instinct for self-preservation.

  As we got closer, the white blur became a Mercedes van, up to its axles in the mud. Both sets of rear wheels were spinning, but the driver was only burying them deeper.

  I dodged the spray coming off the tyres and made my way round the passenger side. I saw two shapes in the front seats, but they were too intent on working the steering wheel and gear-stick to notice me.

  I tapped on the glass.

  The figure in the passenger seat spun around, clearly startled. I could see her dark eyes, as wide as saucers, through the rain-blurred window. She stared at me for several seconds then switched her gaze to Charlie and Bastard as they closed up behind me. I could understand her concern. We were in the middle of nowhere, in a torrential storm; we must have looked as though we’d just crawled out of a primeval swamp.

  I unzipped my jacket, lifted it up, and turned from side to side. ‘No weapons,’ I mouthed. ‘We… are… unarmed.’

  I let my jacket fall as the others followed suit, but kept my hands up.

  She wound the window down about six inches, but her expression made it clear that she still wasn’t exactly delighted to see us.

  ‘It’s OK, it’s OK…’ I smiled. ‘Speak English?’

  She turned to the driver and said something in rapid-fire Paperclip. He took his foot off the gas and bent forward to see round her. He had a very short, just grown-out crew cut, and hadn’t shaved for a day or two.

  I kept my smile so wide my face was starting to hurt. ‘English? Speak… English?’

  The girl faced me again, her brow still furrowed. ‘Who are you?’ The accent was Eastern European, but with an American TV twang.

  I spoke very slowly. ‘Our car… It got hit…’ I mimed a collision. ‘The mud…’

  The driver leaned forward again. ‘We understand.’

  Bastard appeared at my shoulder and pushed me aside. He pulled his accreditation from his soaked leather wallet and thrust it through the gap. ‘Borjomi,’ he barked. ‘Take us to Borjomi.’

  If that was his idea of a charm offensive, our tab was far from over.

  The woman took the ID.

  Bastard didn’t waste any time. ‘We wanna get to Borjomi. See that ID? That says you take us.’

  The two inside the Mercedes had another exchange in Paperclip, glancing at each of us in turn. I never liked not knowing what was being said in situations like this, particularly when I appeared to be the subject of the conversation, and the outlook didn’t sound good.

  Eventually she shrugged. ‘Sure… It’s not so far. No more than thirty minutes. We’re going there ourselves, if we can get out of this mess.’

  She passed the ID back and Bastard tucked it into his wallet. In the state he was in, I doubted she’d been able to match him with the photograph. I hoped she wouldn’t recognize me.

  Bastard reached for the handle to the sliding door halfway down the wagon, as if he already owned it, but she waved him away. ‘You will have to dig us out first.’

  She slid across into the driver’s seat, and he climbed out. He was tall and lanky, maybe mid-twenties, and wore a black Gore-Tex jacket. He came round the front of the vehicle and thrust out a hand. ‘I’m Paata.’ He nodded towards his companion. ‘And she’s Nana.’

  Charlie and I both introduced ourselves. I hoped that our expressions would help distance us from the tub of lard still wrestling with the sliding door.

  Bastard glanced in our direction. ‘Hey, this goddam thing’s stuck.’

  Paata shook his head. ‘It’s locked on the inside. Security. We’ll undo it in a minute.’

  Bastard pulled up his collar and went to lean against one of the few trees to have been left unscathed by the side of the road. He leaned forward, hands on his knees, resting his huge buttocks against the trunk. I tried not to laugh; he looked like a bear trying to scratch its arse.

  Charlie and I grabbed the rear bumper and started to push and lift, trying to free the wheels from the ruts they’d created. Paata shouted out to Nana to keep them turning, then came to join us. He unzipped his jacket, to stop himself overheating. Me, I was looking forward to it. Mud flew like muck from a spreader as Nana floored the accelerator.

&nbs
p; Paata yelled more instructions and Nana hit the pedal again. This time the wheels spun more gently.

  Charlie and I leaned against the back door and tried to lift, then let go so it rocked back into the rut. I wasn’t sure how much good we were doing. His hands were starting to shake like a demented percussionist.

  ‘Paata,’ Charlie called out. ‘Have you had to get out of this stuff before?’

  ‘Sure. I am an expert!’ Paata gave us a beaming smile. ‘Every time, I call a tow truck.’

  ‘Good thinking.’ I laughed. ‘But not this time?’

  ‘Cells don’t work this far out. Not until Borjomi.’

  Charlie tapped him on the arm. ‘Thing is, lad, I’ve dug a few vehicles out of snowdrifts in my time. It’s not as bad as mud, but the principle’s the same.’

  Charlie bent to inspect the axle. ‘The mud clings to the undercarriage until there’s no way to get any traction, and spinning the wheels only drives them deeper. Us three strong lads need to stay here, at the back, but Nana must help us rock the wagon back and forth. She needs to keep the wheels as straight as she can, shift quickly from first gear to reverse, and we’ll get a nice rhythm going. When we manage to jump this thing free, she should keep it moving until it’s on firm ground. And she should try not to spin the wheels if she can help it.’

  Paata headed up front to pass on Charlie’s instructions.

  ‘Hey, driver,’ Bastard shouted from under his tree. ‘What about getting me a hot drink?’ He was well and truly back to his old gobshite self.

  Paata sensibly ignored him.

  The engine revved and the three of us started to push and shove. I wondered how much more of this Charlie could take.

  Nana threw the Merc into reverse and Paata wiped a fistful of mud off his face.