Mission Raptor

by Bear Grylls

  “Time to camp down.”

  “Like we discussed?”

  They had chatted about all kinds of things, just to make the time pass, and camping techniques had been one of the topics.

  “Exactly. First fallen tree we come to…”

  They found the place they wanted about ten minutes later. A fir tree had fallen over and it lay at a shallow angle, about twenty degrees off the ground, still propped up by its branches. It was near the edge of another clear patch of pasture a couple of hundred metres across. Beck looked thoughtfully across it for a moment, and then glanced up as the plaintive call of a raptor drifted through the air. He couldn’t identify it like Jonas could have — all birds of prey sounded strangely sad, as if they were sorry for the deaths they caused — but he got a glimpse of wide, soaring wings before it disappeared behind the trees. On the lookout for prey, of course, Beck thought — and because birds didn’t waste time, that meant it thought there might be prey here, on the open ground.

  At the moment, he couldn’t see any small animals that the bird might have been after, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. That was useful knowledge, for later.

  Beck turned back to help Jonas prepare the camp.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  They used the trunk of the tree as the backbone for the shelter. The back end was the tree’s root crown, a solid lump of earth that had been pulled up when the tree went over. On either side of the trunk they draped branches cut from further up the tree — flat, wide sprays of pine needles that they could lay down in overlapping layers reaching down to the ground, fresh and full of resin.

  “You’re positive there are no wolves?” Beck asked. He had already asked as they walked, drawing on Jonas’s reliable knowledge of the wildlife. If there was a chance of being attacked while they slept, that would affect how secure they made the camp.

  “Positive. No wolves.” Jonas thought. “Maybe järvs.”

  “Yervfs?” Beck pronounced the strange word as best he could. Jonas grimaced and gestured with his hands.

  “I don’t know the English word. They are like bears… very small bears… but they are not bears…”

  Beck frowned in confusion.

  “But they are very rare,” Jonas assured him. “And can catch their own prey — small mammals. So they won’t go near humans.”

  “Järvs.” Beck tried again.

  “Your accent is getting worse, Beck!” They both laughed quietly.

  The branches insulated the shelter nicely, blocking off any breeze, and they were naturally waterproof so that anything falling from the sky would just run off.

  For the final touch, Beck hung his soaked, muddy outdoor gear up on nearby branches for freeze-cleaning. Then they stood side by side and admired their handiwork.

  “Y’know,” Beck remarked, “that looks pretty cosy. I’d say it is a good job, Jonas.”

  “Visst,” Jonas agreed. “What a shame we won’t be sleeping in it.”

  Beck sighed.

  “Well, at least we can make a fire. That’ll add to the illusion.”

  They had gone to a great deal of care to build a cosy, weatherproof shelter to take them through the night. And that was why they wouldn’t be using it. Anyone who came along would find it abandoned, and conclude the boys had been spooked off and had pressed on…

  …and were not in fact asleep under a smaller more discreet tree nearby.

  Jonas went off to scout for a good location for the real camp, and Beck got busy making a fire for this one. A fire that hadn’t actually burnt, or not having a fire at all, would just give the game away.

  With the knife blade he pried a slab of white bark off a dead birch tree. Even in death, its limbs were silvery and almost starting to glow in the pre-sunset light. Then, again with the knife, he began to scrape away at the inside surface of the slab, scouring off a fine power of bark particles which he knew would be rich in the tree’s natural oils and well able to take a spark.

  He laid down a small base of twigs to hold the slab just off the ground, so that when the fire caught, air would be able to circulate under it. On top of the pile, he built up layers of pine needles, then twigs, then sturdier pieces of wood, each layer offering the fire more potential energy so that the flame could catch and pass itself on to the next. It would be dark soon and Beck wanted the fire to have burnt down to a black patch by then, so it didn’t make them unnecessarily visible.

  He struck the fire steel to spray sparks onto the dry bark powder, and little glow-worms of red heat ran through the pile and up into the needles. After a short while he felt the first touch of warm air against his face. He fed it more twigs and sticks and coaxed it up into a proper blaze.

  “I have our camp,” Jonas reported. He came up and crouched down next to Beck, holding his hands out to the fire. “All set up.”

  “Cool.” Beck stood up and cocked an eye through the trees at the patch of clear land. “Keep this going, keep it as small and hidden as you can, and make us some tea.”

  There was just time to do one more thing before the sun disappeared altogether.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Beck stepped out onto the clear ground with more confidence than before, now that the sun was well past the tops of the trees and all the grass was in shadow. To anyone not right in front of him he would just be one more shadow on a plain of shadows.

  The absence of light strangely made what he wanted to see more visible. Animal tracks — the routes that small creatures had grown accustomed to taking to get from A to B. Blades of grass were subtly pushed aside; the ground was minutely more trodden than the area around it. Almost invisible by daylight, but the pre-sunset twilight picked out all the darks and greys so that they stood out clearly.

  That raptor they had heard earlier — hawk, buzzard, eagle, whatever — had been looking for something here, and Beck intended to catch it instead. Using the wire he had taken from the van, he had already made up some snares before leaving the shelter of the trees — more than one, because you couldn’t just rely on one trap to work.

  Each snare was a noose tied with a slip knot, so that anything that moved through the loop would catch on the edges and pull it tight. He guessed that the most likely prey in a place like this would be small hares. For rabbits, Beck knew a fist-sized loop was best, so for hares he estimated the same.

  He set them up at five different locations, each where an animal path passed between two objects — maybe a couple of tussocks, or a pair of fallen logs. For each snare, Beck pushed twigs lightly into the ground and balanced the top of the loop on top of them. It had to be placed clear of the ground so that the bottom of the loop was at the level of the animal’s chest. The hare might see the twig but just think, oh, a twig, and push past it — and by then its head would already be inside the snare.

  He tied the loose end of each snare firmly to a pointed piece of wood which he drove into the ground next to the animal path. It had to hold the animal in place no matter how much it struggled. Most animals, when they realised they couldn’t get free, would stop trying. They might also try to gnaw their way free, but the wire would prevent that.

  And that was how one or more hares tonight, hopefully, would become tomorrow’s breakfast.

  Beck straightened up from the last trap and looked around. The edges of the trees were now just a shadow and the clear ground was a mess of flat shades of grey. Somewhere out there was the animal, or animals, whose life he intended to use to help both he and Jonas to survive.

  “Please provide us with just enough to keep us alive,” he murmured to the forest. “And in the morning I’ll take the traps down and we’ll be gone.”

  No answer came out of the forest, so he turned and trudged back to Jonas.

  Chapter Forty

  “My uncle always says there’s nothing quite like a nice cuppa,” Beck commented.

  “And this is nothing like a nice cuppa,” Jonas quickly added with a smile. “So I guess he’s right.”
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  Pine needle tea — not something Beck expected to buy in his local supermarket.

  Ever since they had left the lake behind them, they had used moss for drinks of water flavoured with iodine and earth. They had been keeping the flask full of the proper clean stuff, ready for this moment.

  Jonas had put a handful of pine needles in the tin box from the survival pack that had contained the biscuits, now all eaten. Then he had filled the box up with water and hung it over the fire to warm up. Beck could smell the pine-flavoured steam coming off it as he drew nearer.

  Pine needle tea was high in vitamin C; more than a lemon, weight for weight. And it was hot, stoking them up inside as the outside temperature fell to zero and beyond.

  They didn’t have cups, so they sat by the fire within its circle of warmth, and drank from the tin, passing it to and fro between them. In between mouthfuls, they finished off the grubs, berries and pine roots that they had gathered through the day. They could hold the grubs on thin sticks over the fire, which turned them crispier, warmed them up and made them taste a little better. Every little helped.

  “I still worry about my family,” Jonas said quietly. “I know what you said, but it’s been eating me all day.”

  Worry can be so dangerous, Beck thought to himself. Usually, focusing on thoughts of your family was a good thing for a survivor to do. Fun, faith, family, friendship — good, happy memories — it helped keep your frame of mind positive. But persistently worrying about them, when there was nothing you could do right now to change the situation — that was the opposite. Beck knew that, he too, could all too easily work himself up into a state with worry, and that wouldn’t help anyone.

  “We can’t do anything else for them right now,” he said, “but tomorrow we will. If we keep focused and on track then we’ll have reached the authorities by this time. There’s an end in sight.”

  Beck sighed. “That’s what kept me going when—” He stopped, and bit his lip. But Jonas was intrigued.

  “When?”

  Beck shrugged. He would probably never live this memory down, ever. It would make his toes curl until the day he died.

  “When I did the most rubbish thing I’ve ever done and hurt someone who loves me more than you can imagine.” Jonas was round-eyed and all ears, flask of pine needle tea poised halfway to his mouth, so he had to go on. “I, uh, had to fake my own death.”

  Jonas paused, assimilated this information, then remembered the flask and took a sip.

  “Interesting use of ‘had to’,” he remarked.

  “Yeah, well…”

  And after that, Beck couldn’t get out of telling his friend about his adventures in Africa and Nepal. How the once in a lifetime, never to be repeated opportunity to bring down Lumos had arisen — but it would never work if Lumos thought he was still alive. Even Al had to believe he was dead. They couldn’t risk anyone showing the slightest sign of knowledge that he was still okay, and on the trail to Nepal.

  Jonas sat quietly for several moments after he had finished.

  “Wow. So it was worth it?” he asked eventually.

  “I think so,” Beck said.

  “Would you do it again?”

  This time Beck hesitated.

  “I’m not so sure. Maybe I would do it… differently. I hope I never get tired of going after the bad guy, though. That’s what my parents did. That’s what I want to do.”

  “Mm.” Jonas pulled a face as he took a swig of tea. “That’s what my parents do, and look at us now. If I had my own family, I don’t know that I would want to take those sort of risks. I’d be too worried about the effect on them. But I guess I’m also proud of my dad’s work. It makes the world a better place.” He looked thoughtfully at the fire. “Knowing my parents are there for me, knowing I’ll always have them — that’s good.”

  If I had my own family… Jonas had said, and Beck found himself going back in his head to the question he had first asked himself back in China, and again the previous night. How different would his life have been if his parents were still alive?

  He found himself glancing at a spot around the fire — the place where, if there three of them, the third would be sitting. In his mind’s eye the dark-haired young girl he had seen as he slept in China smiled at him and shrugged.

  No, she didn’t know either what it was like to have parents.

  “That’s more like survivor thinking, Jonas,” he said, forcing a smile. Now they had got onto the positive aspects of having families, he felt safe to bring it up. “You just make yourself determined to survive: keep going, keep calm, keep making decisions, keep cheerful. Whatever it takes.”

  He tilted the flask back over his mouth. It was empty, and they had eaten their stored food. Apart from the warmth, there was nothing to keep them here.

  Not that the warmth wasn’t important… but staying ahead of the woman was more so.

  “Come on,” he said reluctantly. “It’s almost dark now. Time for us to move.”

  He clambered to his feet and kicked earth over the fire to extinguish it. It would look more like they had abandoned it in a hurry that way.

  “Time for: Operation Backup.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Jonas had set up the backup camp — the camp where they would actually spend the night — under another spruce tree.

  Beck had described everything Jonas needed to do in advance, and he had got it exactly right. He had found one with a spread of branches that reached almost to the ground, so that they had to get down on hands and knees to crawl under.

  They couldn’t have a fire here — it would be the first thing someone else noticed if they came by. But the low-hanging branches blocked off most of the wind, and Jonas had piled up more branches underneath to block the gap. The camp would be sheltered, and that automatically meant it would be a couple of degrees warmer than outside. If it snowed, the tree and low hanging branches would be a perfect umbrella.

  They camped down on the side away from the wind. Fir tree branches all grow flat, with a natural curve to them, and Jonas had piled them in layers all facing the same way up, so that the boys lay on a natural, springy mattress. They laid one rug down on top of the branches for good measure, and lay top-to-tail with the other rug over the top of them.

  For extra insulation, Beck added a whole heap more fir branches on their improvised mattress, to complete the shelter floor.

  “One layer underneath is worth two on top,” Beck mumbled to Jonas. “We will lose most of our heat through the floor so this will help us.”

  Jonas nodded, and then added: “We will need all the help we can get tonight — to stay warm and to stay hidden.”

  Beck had been getting used to the deer skin that he still wore while his proper gear froze itself dry, and he now spread it out so that it covered both of them as best he could.

  They both kept their hats and boots on. The body cools down when you stop moving, and it cools even more when you sleep. The most important thing over the next few hours was keeping as much warmth in them as possible.

  “I’m looking forward to breakfast…” Jonas mumbled out of the dark. Beck smiled to himself.

  “Sure.” Unfortunately he couldn’t actually guarantee that the snares would catch anything. He didn’t mention it out loud: he would cross that bridge if he came to it. They would both be in the same situation, and another day living off grubs and berries wouldn’t kill them. “It’ll be nice to eat something I catch without looking out for dragons.”

  “Dragons?” Jonas exclaimed, before remembering they were meant to be keeping their voices down. Beck felt too drowsy to explain about the lizards that had been such a pain for him, Ju-Long and Jian, recently in China. Two-metre long carnivores, with bites that could kill, determined on filching everything the humans caught for themselves.

  “Long story.” But still, he thought, even if there weren’t dragons… “You’re absolutely sure about these, uh, järvs?”

  But there was no answ
er, just the sound of breathing.

  Beck lay for a little longer and thought of tomorrow. It was always helpful to wake up with a plan in mind — something you could get stuck right into.

  They would steer clear of the roads, just keep on going cross country and head straight to the police station in Riksliden. He had come through the town on the way to the lodge, and as he remembered there were no suburbs. One moment wilderness, the next moment the buildings started. Good. Two boys walking into town would have plenty of witnesses. But it would be a different challenge to stay hidden there if they were being chased…

  He eventually fell asleep and dreamed of hunting järvs — or being hunted by one, or maybe both. But he still didn’t know what they looked like, and whenever he got close to one, something got in the way and he still couldn’t quite see.

  “Don’t worry,” said the dark-haired girl who also lived in his dreams. “Just rest.”

  “I’ll try,” Beck mumbled, and he stopped dreaming of Dian, järvs or anything else. The next time he opened his eyes he could see the branches above him, picked out against the grey, pre-dawn sky.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  They made their way cautiously back to the dummy camp. Maybe the woman had found it, and been fooled and moved on? Maybe she had guessed it was a fake and was lurking somewhere, waiting for them? Or maybe she just hadn’t come by this way, which meant that the whole deception had been unnecessary?

  There was no sign of her so there was no way of knowing which of the options was the right one.

  Beck’s outdoor gear hung from a branch and, as he had predicted, it was stiff with ice. He took great pleasure in bashing coat and trousers against a tree trunk and then shaking them so that powdered ice trickled out of sleeves and legs.