Too late for regrets. He put the diversion to his mum’s house and to his sister’s grave, and to his own wrecked room, behind him. Like it had never happened. Was done, and in his mind he had moved on, and his breathing was even and he kept up a good pace. On a descending cinder track, he kicked aside fallen branches but who was out that early in the morning to have heard? Maybe a cat, possibly rats, and could have been a fox whose eyes he saw. He focused on his promise, would get his strength from what he had shouted at the skies, and at that brief flicker of light from the undercarriage some 20,000 feet above him.
It should have been the day when, finally, something worked for him and for her, his last brother. Had started well.
They had been intercepted. The group came from their right side emerged from the wreckage of a village that looked to have been pounded by air strikes, and the flies were still thick in the air which meant the killing was recent. There had been the stink of the dead that ran well with the stench of failure. The two of them, Cammy and Ulrike, had been threading their way up what was once a main street and had picked their way past corpses and had shouted at the feral dog pack, and the group had materialised, had challenged them. Seven or eight of them and leaderless, and not knowing where they went, only interested in flight, distance, getting the hell out. And they had some food, and water, but enough to share. Ulrike’s decision. She said he would take them, and under his wing – had made the clucking noise of a chicken and had gained ribald laughter.
They had moved on, and Cammy had been harsh, had insisted on a fast pace although the sun was climbing, but then had started to sing, none of them any the wiser of the meaning and the relevance of his words. Not for days had he seen Ulrike smile.
Cammy felt strong, went well, thought his resolve healed.
He thought she was 41 years old, almost twice his own age. The previous two nights they had slept together, fully clothed, but arms around each other’s backs, just for comfort. She had told him more in those 48 hours about herself than he had learned in their months together in the gang of brothers. From Rostock on the Baltic. A child when the regime had collapsed and her father, who had been an official in the security police, was out of work, out of fashion and hiding out of sight, and a mob baying at the front door and occasional stone hitting the family’s home. Had been smuggled out and sent to her grandmother’s for safety and her parents had fled, had never sent for her, had disappeared from her life. Had gone to school, had flunked a university course, had taken a job in the Rathaus, number crunching. Had lived alone and never used cosmetics or wore jewellery. And the day after her 35th birthday she had signed up for a course in advanced first aid: learned about car accident injuries, bullet and knife wounds, third world sickness and infection problems, and had passed with an alpha grade and had been expected to join an ambulance crew in Rostock . . . Had taken a plane to Istanbul, had gone across the Turkish frontier.
Cammy came off the track, went across a field and ripped his trousers and his anorak on a barbed wire fence and had not slowed to unpick himself, had torn the material free.
She had been attached to a casualty station and worn the niqab. Then had bought forged black flag papers, taken a man’s name, covered her face and put a growl in her voice, and had met the brothers of Kami al-Britani. Became part of the brotherhood from the first day she marched with them; she rode with them, fought with them, and no allowances were made for her, and she would have spat in anger at any who short-changed her efforts. Calm under extreme pressure. Used to say: “Stay calm. It is never a crisis”. Could fight in the front line, strip and reassemble an AK or an M16, a Barrett Browning or a Dragunov and could prime mortar bombs . . .
Cammy scattered sheep, sent them bleating into the darkness and the wind was blustering into his face . . . If it had not been for Ulrike he might have manufactured a fudge for the promise given for the deaths of Mikki and Tomas and Pieter and Dwayne and Stanislau . . . If there had been a chance that he and Ulrike could have gone somewhere – and somewhere was anywhere – and been at peace, with no weapons, no ammunition and no enemy . . . If . . . then he might have evaded the promise. It stood, was locked in his mind. Would be honoured.
The night before they had clung to each other and weakness had consumed both of them, and he had wept and she had sobbed, and they had clung close. And then she had told him a story, a folk story of the forests of Germany, and had calmed them both, and finally they had slept. Now they walked well and they were around three miles short of a wadi, and there would be cover there, and it was late in the morning to be in the open . . . And his bowels broke, the Damascus Revenge came on suddenly. Cammy had ducked to the side of the road, and there was a ditch to take water when the heavens opened, and he was down into it and dumped his rucksack and his rifle and had his belt loose and his trousers down.
Cammy found himself trapped in a hedge. He had remembered a gap, but a pallet had been wired into the space. Stopped for a moment and heard only distant traffic – no sirens and no dogs. Worked himself loose, and went on. He thought the first train would go at about six that morning with the first of the London commuters surging forward for seats. He had expected to be longer at his mother’s, not have time to kill, again.
It might have been the noise their boots made on the dried track, kicking at dust and stones. Might have been the humming in their heads of the music they remembered, might have been the clatter of their weapons against ammunition pouches and . . . from the ditch Cammy heard the sound of the drone’s purring engine, but could not see it. They lived with the sound of the drones. Many attempts had been made, many theories offered, as to how they should be avoided. He listened. The one answer seemed to be that if a man was in a field surrounded by women and children, then sometimes they would not shoot. He heard it and thought it banked to turn. He might have been 200 yards from Ulrike . . . He thought it sounded like an express train hurtling through the closed space of a tunnel, and saw the light flash and his shout of warning was too late and too soft, and with the thunder of the detonation came the dust cloud which was followed by the blast of the air and then by the pitter-patter noise of the fragments landing, and from the few pieces of the missile’s broken casing came the whine of shrapnel.
Cammy felt, quite suddenly, that his strength – not his resolve – weakened, as if the bank of it was emptying, and he was slowing and the ground here was boggy and his feet sank. His mind screamed with the promise given and he had to drag his feet, mud sticking to the brogues.
He had found a leg. Only a leg. He put it in the pit of the crater and threw dirt down on it . . . Good if he could have found wild flowers. There were none. Good if he could have heard small birds making melancholy or chirruping songs, but heard only the soft drone of the engine. Looked up often enough. Once only, saw a light flash in the quiet blue of the sky. Just a leg, nothing more of her, and he did not bother with making a pretence of burying it. His trousers sagged at his knees and he had no paper to clean himself. He hitched his trousers, raised his rifle, pointed the barrel into the skies, let go the entire magazine. Pointless and stupid and all he was capable of. They might see on their screens, wherever they flew the drone from, a lone figure who fired at them and had no relevance. Cammy clenched his fist, shook it at the unseen lens and screamed his promise. They would see him, might chuckle, would not hear him.
His promise, “I will come. I will find you. I will hunt you down. Wherever you are, however safe you think yourselves, I will find you and will come for you . . . That is my promise, believe it.”
Cammy heard the flow of the river. Two years before he had left, a tree trunk had fallen across it and made a dam where a waterfall tumbled. Heard it and knew it. He was stumbling, as he had been at the end of his solitary march, when he had crossed a single strand of wire, in the cover of darkness, and had left Syria, and had started out on the next stage of the journey to fulfil the promise, honour his word. So tired, and his strength leaking.
Past fiv
e, and sunrise due in fourteen minutes and the Station came reluctantly to life.
Arc lights coming on. The first vehicles of the day moving into the heavily guarded area of the main gates.
The rush would come soon, and passes would be flashed irritably into the faces of the guards from the Regiment. And off the Station, in scores of homes, alarms would ring out for air crew and ground crew, and the technicians who did the repairs or maintenance and fine-tuned the electronics, and in the bedrooms of those who cleaned the toilets, hoovered the carpets in the Officers’ Mess, those who would soon get the gas burning under the frying pans, would valet the uniforms of senior officers who that day were expecting a Civil Service delegation looking into cost cutting . . . A myriad of alarms, and a cacophony of grumbling as feet slipped out from under duvets.
But, for all the congenital moans – force of habit – there would be relief amongst many that the Station was a place of safety: rather serve here, the chime would have been, where security was pretty much guaranteed than in the arsehole corners of the Middle East . . . And soon the nurseries would be opening for the day’s business, and the museum, and the centre where the spooks ruled in Intelligence Surveillance Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance. Just the start of another day in the Station’s life. In some electronic archive, tucked away, out of sight and out of mind, would have been the video record of a drone strike that had been launched from Syrian airspace close to the Jordanian border. Not remarkable and not unremarkable, a minor moment in unmanned aerial vehicle warfare. The recording showed, as the Reaper loitered, scattered debris and body parts and a crater. Showed also a single detached leg that had been tossed to the side of the track – and it had showed a guy in a ditch who had had his pants down, and who seemed to fire an entire magazine into the sky, and who had then clenched a fist and punched at nothing.
“Never in doubt,” Baz chuckled and took a hand off the wheel and squeezed Mags’ knee.
“Piece of cake, big boy,” she answered him.
The ferry port was behind them, and so were the banks of arc lights that highlighted the customs area. They had headed through, had waved at a tired-looking woman in uniform, and he had blown her a kiss which was cheeky and probably sealed her belief that too many old people had too much time on their hands, and should get off their backsides and . . . she had given them in return a flutter of her hand. They had not accelerated, had not shown impatience, but had kept their place in the queue of vehicles as they came out of the ferry area and started on the feeder road to the main route north. Very soon, he would turn off, following her directions, and take the B roads that would keep them clear of tracking and surveillance cameras and recognition systems, and they would round the capital by the west side and then drive cross-country back to the east for the last stages of their journey.
“Gone well.”
“Gone a treat.”
“Can I give you a thought, Mags?”
“Give it me.”
Baz said, “Like it’s certainty, I’ll tell you what’ll happen in the next hour. I’m telling you that we were just lucky – two pigs on a dry day finding some mud to roll in. In an hour, might be an hour and a half but not more, they’ll start getting their act together, and the messages that clogged up overnight will unscramble, and they’ll be looking for our wheels, might even have the phoney plate details. Bet your knickers on it, Mags. That dozy cow who waved us through, she’ll be sitting with her head in her hands, and in front of her on a laptop screen will be the picture of our wheels. And the balloon will be up, except – if our luck holds – they’ll not know where to look . . . The schedule’s good, and . . . You all right, Mags?”
“Just gone a bit serious, but all right.” Her head was down on her chest, lips pursed and a frown on her forehead.
“Tell me.”
“It’s powerful kit in the back there. Do some damage. Hasn’t bothered me before . . . You thinking about it?”
“No, what I’m thinking about is the bonanza coming our way. Tell you something . . . it’ll go, whatever it is, to some lunatic who’ll probably shove it under his bed and keep it there for a rainy day, know what I mean? And if he ever did arm it up he’d end up shooting his foot off. Just an idiot from Bradford or Luton who wants to feel he’s the top cat and has a loud enough shout to have brought it into the country. The chance of it going to a guy who knows what it’s about, how to use it, has the training, is less than nil. Believe me, Mags.”
“And that’s not all shit?”
“You worry too much. An idiot, a lunatic, what he’ll be, just a dreamer . . . And when they do get their act together, Mags, we’ll be at home but the camper won’t be. And you remember those pleasant lads we gave a ride to, who sat in the back with all their bags? How were we to know what they left in – after we dropped them off?”
“Smart thinking.”
“Just a pair of old folks, aren’t we? A bit simple and a bit naive . . . and ahead of the game. Give us a kiss, love.”
Cammy reached the river.
Did not stop, did not break his stride. A short steep slope marked the path down to the river’s bank, and Cammy fell there and pitched forward and was spread-eagled on the path. He dug in an elbow and plunged his fingers into the mud, so he did not go into the water.
He had used the path from the age of eight or nine, had never tripped and fallen. He was exhausted and his feet were painful, and the bread he had wolfed, only half of what he had snatched, ached in his gut. Had to get to Canterbury, then have to find somewhere to rest, then would head for the station and would need to buy a ticket. Mud smeared his clothes and likely there was some on his face, and he was unshaven, and had the scars where Vicky’s guy had hit him with the chair. The wind rattled in the tops of the trees on either side of the river, coming in erratic gusts. It would be quiet, then without warning the branches would clatter and the trunks rub together and scream, and twice rotten branches had broken off and come down, made a whip-crack sound. He knelt, trying to recreate the professionalism that his brothers had trusted in. Listened. Heard the water’s fall and the song of the wind and the breaking of more branches. Waited long enough to know that he was not followed.
He remembered the police who had been in the house when they were searching for his brother, and those who had come when his sister had been killed. He had thought them unimaginative and seeming to speak from a script and they would have been of the same standard as those who his mum had said were camped in the Hunters’ home. Had no doubt that he had fooled them, would be far gone by the time that the first light of the sun popped up over the Margate road and came on to the cul-de-sac and fell on the front of his mum’s house, and the Hunters’ . . . because he was clever, they were not.
“Just keep going,” Jonas said into his phone. “Enjoy the spirit of the chase.”
The boy had been puffing and gasping, like he was a marathon runner and short of training, and he could hear the girl behind him, whining and whingeing and struggling to keep up. He had his torch on, and was tracing the route of a stream that ran adjacent to the river. All making sense, all satisfactory. He saw where the stream came out of a ribbon of woodland, and a stretch of open ground. He stabbed that point on the map and the policeman shrugged, accepted.
A few minutes before, they had been edging their way down the Margate road and Jonas had laughed. Tristram and Izzy had come at a gangling run from someone’s garden and a cat had fled in front of them. They had been holding hands. He did not assess that as anything romantic, more in the interests of self-preservation: they needed each other and would have been frightened if separated, him fearful of losing her and her unwilling to take responsibility for leading. The policewoman had looked around at him and he had read her, had nodded. She had flashed them. Two flicks on the headlights and they had stopped, nearly piled into each other and would have looked up the road and not seen, in the gloom, the cause of it, and Tristram had yanked her after him . . . Now they had called him, had
reported where they thought they might be. Very near to the end.
It seemed to Jonas that the dog had also appreciated that matters now moved at pace. It sat upright on his lap and peered through the window, raked eyes over dark pavements, unlit homes and gardens, and a growl was in its throat when they passed two women, trudging along the pavement towards the main road.
His hand went into his jacket pocket, and unzipped a small compartment, a place where a railway ticket could have been stored safely, or coins for a parking meter, or in this instance, or for a key. Attached to the key was a length of pink ribbon. He had asked Vera for some ribbon from her work-basket and she had produced this piece, around a foot long, and he had looped it through and had knotted it securely to the key. For weeks, months, getting on for years, it had remained in his desk drawer. Had been there ever since he had been allocated that small area in 3/S/12 and the desk had been moved in.
They had come on to the main road, the direct route into Canterbury. He checked the time, getting close to five o’clock, and they dawdled, allowing vehicles to power past them. He asked for the time of the first fast train to London: a few minutes before 0630. And what time would the sun rise? More clicking on the young man’s phone. Sunrise was scheduled for 0543 that day . . . what he liked most about both of them, and he thought of them now as Dominic and as Babs, not as police officers but as colleagues, was that they no longer badgered him for answers. Truth was that both could have done the work of Tristram and Izzy for all that they probably had no degrees. Also a truth that neither Tristram nor Izzy could have done their work, carried a Heckler & Koch on a strap around the neck, and the Glock, and the grenades and the Tasers. He offered the key on the pink ribbon to Dominic.
The Crocodile Hunter Page 34
