by Crossfire
I would know where she would be. That’s what the kidnappers had told Derek.
I would know where she would be.
And I did.
I approached Greystone Stables, not from the road and up the driveway as my enemy might have expected but from the opposite direction over the undulating farmland, and through the woods on the hill above.
In war, tactical surprise is essential, as it had been during the recapture of the Falkland Islands. The Argentine forces, far superior in number, had believed that it was impossible for the British to approach Stanley, the island capital, across the swampy, uncharted interior, and had dug in their defenses for an attack from the sea. How wrong they were. The Royal Marines and Parachute Regiment’s “yomp” across the island, carrying eighty-pound Bergens over more than fifty-six miles in three days, has since become the stuff of folklore in the army. It had been one of the major factors in that victory.
In my case, I was just glad not to have an eighty-pound Bergen on my back.
I stopped a few feet short of the limit of the trees and knelt down on my left knee. I looked again at my watch with its luminous face. More than two hours had passed since Derek had arrived so distressed at the door of Ian’s flat. It was now three forty-two a.m. The windless night was beautifully clear, with a wonderful canopy of twinkling stars. The moon’s phase was just past first quarter, and it was sinking rapidly towards the western horizon to my left. In forty minutes or so, the moon would be down completely, and the blackness of the night would deepen for a couple of hours before the arrival of the sun, and the dawning of another day.
I liked the darkness. It was my friend.
In the last of the moonlight I studied the layout of the deserted house and stables spread out below me. I could see no lights, and no movement, but I was sure this was where the two men had meant when they’d told Derek I would know where my mother would be.
But would she actually be here, or had it been a ruse to bring me to this place on a wild-goose chase, to fall willingly into their waiting hands while my mother was actually incarcerated somewhere else?
It had taken all my limited powers of persuasion to convince Ian not to call the police immediately. Derek too had begged him not to.
“But we must call the police,” Ian had said with certainty.
“We will,” I’d replied. “But give me a chance to free my mother first.”
Did I really think that Jackson Warren and Peter Garraway would harm her, or even kill her? I thought it unlikely, but I couldn’t know for sure. Desperate people do desperate things, and I remembered only too well how they had left me to die horribly from starvation and dehydration.
I had left Derek and Ian in the latter’s flat, Derek cuddling a bottle of brandy he had returned briefly to Kauri House to collect, and Ian with a list of detailed instructions, including one to telephone the police immediately if he hadn’t heard from me by six-thirty in the morning.
They had both watched with rising interest and astonishment as I had made my mission preparations. First I’d changed into my dark clothes, together with the all-black Converse basketball boots, the right one requiring me to remove my false leg to force the canvas shoe over the plastic foot. Next, I had gathered the equipment into my little rucksack: black garden ties, scissors, duct tape, the red-colored first-aid kit, the length of chain with the padlock still attached, a torch and a box of matches, all of them wrapped up in a large navy blue towel to prevent any noise when I moved. This time I did borrow one of Ian’s kitchen knives, a large, sharp carving knife, and I’d placed it on top of everything else in the rucksack, ready for easy access. I had then borrowed a pair of racing binoculars from my mother’s office, and finally, I’d removed my sword from its protective cardboard tube and scabbard.
“Surely you’re not going to use that,” Derek had said, with his large brandy-filling eyes staring at the three-foot-long blade.
“Not unless I have to,” I had replied casually, as I’d rubbed black boot polish onto the blade to reduce its shine. But I would use it, I thought, and without hesitation, if the need arose.
Killing the enemy had been my raison d’être for the past fifteen years, and I’d been good at it. Values and Standards of the British Army demanded it. Paragraph ten states that “All soldiers must be prepared to use lethal force to fight: to take the lives of others, and knowingly to risk their own.”
But was I still a soldier? Was this a war? And was I knowingly risking my own life or that of my mother?
I wasn’t sure about the answers to any of those questions, but I knew one thing for certain. I felt alive again, whole and intact, and eager for the fray.
I scanned the buildings below me once more, using my mother’s binoculars, searching for a light or a movement, any sign that would give away the enemy’s position, but there was still nothing.
Was I wrong? Was this not the place they had meant?
I had skirted around the walls of Lambourn Hall on my way to this point, but it had been dark, locked and seemingly deserted.
They had to be here.
The moonlight was disappearing fast, and I would soon need to be on the move down across the open ground between my current location and the rear of the stables. I took one last look through the binoculars, and there it was, a movement, maybe only a stretching of a cramped leg or a warming rub of a freezing foot but a telltale movement nevertheless. Someone was waiting for me in the line of trees just to the right of the house as I looked. From that position he would have commanded a fine view of the driveway and the road below.
But if he was looking down there, he was looking the wrong way.
I was behind him.
But where was his accomplice?
The moon finally dipped out of sight, and the light rushed away with it. But I didn’t move immediately, not for a minute or two, not until I was sure my eyes had fully adjusted to the change. In truth, the night had not become totally black, as there was still a slight glow from the stars, but it was no longer possible for me to see Greystone Stables from this position. Likewise, it would now be impossible for anyone down there to see me.
I checked once more that my cell phone was switched off, stood up and started forwards across the grass.
19
I approached the stables in such a way as to take me past the muck heap near the back end of the passageway in which I had hidden the previous week.
I was ultracareful not to trip over any unseen debris as I eased myself silently through the fence that separated the stable buildings from the paddock behind. How I longed to have a set of night-vision goggles, the magic piece of kit that enabled soldiers to see in the dark, albeit with a green hue. My only consolation was that it was most unlikely that my enemy had them either—we would be as blind as one another.
I stood up close against the stable wall at the back of the short passageway, closed my eyes tight and listened. Nothing. No breath, no scraping of a foot, no cough. I went on listening for well over a minute, keeping my own breathing shallow and silent. Still nothing.
Confident that there was no one hiding in the passageway, I stepped forwards. Here, under the roof, it was truly pitch-black. I tried to recall an image in my head of the inside of the passageway from my time here last week. I remembered that I had used an empty blue plastic drum as a seat. That would be here somewhere in the darkness. I could also recall that there were some wooden staves leaning up against one of the walls.
I moved along the passage very slowly, feeling ahead into the darkness with my hands and my real foot. The canvas basketball boots were thin—in truth, rather too thin for such a cold night—but they allowed me to sense the underfoot conditions so much better than I could have in regulation-issue thick-soled army boots.
My foot touched the plastic drum, and I eased around it to the door. I pressed my face to it, looking through the gaps between the widely spaced wooden slats.
Compared to the total blackness of the passageway, th
e stable yard beyond seemed quite bright, but there was still not enough light to see into the shadows of the overhanging roof. I couldn’t see if any of the stable doors were open but, equally, that would mean that no one would be able to see me as I eased open the slatted door from the passageway and stepped out into the yard.
I slowly closed the spring-loaded door and then stood very still, listening again for anyone’s breathing, but there was no sound, not even the slight rustling of a breeze.
Provided he hadn’t changed his position, the man I had seen from the woods on the hillside, the man who had made a movement, would have been out of sight from where I was, even in bright sunshine, but I knew there had to be at least one other person around here somewhere. And if Alex Reece had joined Warren and Garraway, there would be three of them to deal with. The quote from Sun Tzu in The Art of War about relative army sizes floated into my head once more.
If you are in equal number to your enemy, then fight if you are able to surprise; if you are fewer, then keep away.
I was one and they were two, maybe even three. Should I not just keep away?
Another of Sun Tzu’s pearls of wisdom drifted into my consciousness.
All warfare is based on deception . . . When we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near . . . Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.
I folded back the sleeve of my black roll-necked sweater and looked at the watch beneath. It was four forty-seven.
In eighteen minutes, at five minutes past five precisely, a car would drive through the gates at the bottom of the Greystone Stables driveway and stop. The driver would sound the car horn once, and the car would remain there with the headlights blazing and the engine running for exactly five minutes. Then it would reverse out again onto the road and drive away. At least, it would do all of those things if Ian Norland obeyed to the letter the instructions I had left him.
He hadn’t been very keen on the plan, and that was putting it mildly, but I’d promised him that he was in no danger, provided he kept the car doors locked. It was yet another one of those dodgy promises of mine. But I didn’t actually believe that Jackson Warren and Peter Garraway would kill me there and then. Not before I’d returned the million dollars.
“Warfare is based on deception . . . When we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away.” When I was in the stable yard searching for my mother, I’d make Warren and Garraway believe I was down near the gates.
“Hold out baits to entice the enemy.” Make the car wait with its lights on to draw them down the hill away from the stables, and away from me.
“Feign disorder, and crush him.” Only time would tell on that one.
I moved slowly and silently to my right, around the closed end of the quadrangle of stables, keeping in the darkest corners under the overhanging roof. Where would my mother be? I felt for all the bolts on the stable doors. They were all firmly closed. I decided, at this stage, not to try to open any, as it would surely make some noise.
Unsurprisingly, no one had mended the pane of glass in the tack-room window that I’d broken to get out. I leaned right in through the opening, closed my eyes tight and listened.
I could hear someone whimpering. My mother was indeed here. The sound was slight but unmistakable, and it came from my left. She was in one of the stalls on the same side of the stables as I had been.
I listened some more. Once or twice I heard her move, but the sound was not close, and other than an occasional muffled cry, I could not hear her breathing. There were ten stalls down each of the long sides of the quadrangle, and I reckoned she must be at least three away from the tack room, probably more. Maybe she was in the same stall in which I had been imprisoned.
I looked again at my watch. Four fifty-nine.
Six minutes until the car arrived—I hoped.
I withdrew my head and shoulders from through the broken window and moved very slowly along the line of stables, counting the doors. I could remember clearly having to climb over five dividing walls to get to the tack room. I counted four stable doors, then I stopped. The stall I had been in was the next one along.
Would there be a sentry? Would anyone be on guard?
I stood very still and made my breathing as silent as I could. I dared not look again at my watch in case the luminosity of the face gave me away.
I waited in the dark, listening and counting the seconds—Mississippi one, Mississippi two, Mississippi three and so on. Just as I had done here before.
I waited and waited, and I began to doubt that Ian was coming. I was well past Mississippi twenty in the third minute when I heard the car horn, a long two-second blast. Good boy.
There was immediate movement from the end of the row of stables not twenty yards from where I was standing. Someone had been sitting there in silence, but now I clearly heard the person walk away, back towards the house, crunching across the gravel turning area. I heard him call out to someone else, asking what the noise was, and there was a murmured reply from farther away that I couldn’t catch.
I went swiftly to the door of the stall and eased back the bolts. They made a slight scrape but nothing that would be heard from around near the house. The door swung open outwards.
“Mum,” I whispered into the darkness.
There was no reply.
I stood and listened, trying hard to control the thump-thump of the heart in my chest.
I heard her whimper again, but it still came from some way to my left. She wasn’t in this stall but in one a bit farther along.
I recognized the need to be as fast as possible, but equally, I had to make my search undetected. I moved as quickly as I dared along the row of stables, carefully sliding back the bolt on the upper half of each door and calling into the space with a whisper.
She was in the second stall from the end, close to where the man had been sitting on guard, and by the time I found her, I was becoming desperate about the time it was taking.
I thought that Ian must surely be about to reverse the car to the road and depart. Five minutes would seem a very long time to someone simply sitting there afraid that something would happen, and hoping that it wouldn’t. Ian must have been so nervous in the car, willing the hands of his watch to move around faster. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d decided to leave early.
When I’d opened the stable door and whispered, my mother had been unable to answer me properly, but she had managed to murmur loudly.
“Shhh,” I said, going towards the sound and down onto my left knee. It was absolutely pitch-black in the stable. I removed one of my black woolen gloves and “saw” by feel, moving my left hand around until I found her.
She had tape stuck over her mouth and had been bound hand and foot with the same plastic garden ties as had been used to secure me. Thankfully, she hadn’t been left hanging from a ring in the wall but was sitting on the hard floor close to the door with her back up against the wooden paneling.
I laid my sword down carefully so it didn’t clatter on the concrete, then I swung the rucksack off my back and opened the flap. Ian’s carving knife sliced easily through the plastic ties holding my mother’s ankles and wrists together.
“Be very, very quiet,” I whispered in her ear, leaning down.“Leave the tape on your mouth. Come on, let’s go.”
I helped her up to her feet and was about to bend down for the rucksack and the sword when she turned and hugged me. She held me so tightly that I could hardly breathe. And she was crying. I couldn’t tell if it was from pain, from fear or in joy, but I could feel her tears on my face.
“Mum, let me go,” I managed to whisper in her ear. “We have to get out of here.”
She eased the pressure but didn’t let go completely, hanging on to my left arm. I prized her away from me and swung the rucksack over my right shoulder. As I reached down again for my sword, she leaned heavily against me and I stumbled slightly, kicking the sw
ord with my unfeeling right foot. It scraped across the floor with a metallic rattle that sounded dreadfully loud in the confines of the stall but probably wouldn’t have been audible at more than ten paces outside.
But had there been anyone outside within ten paces to hear it?
I reached down, grabbed the sword and led my mother to the door.
Ian must have completed his five-minute linger by now, and I hoped he had safely departed back to his flat to sit by the telephone, waiting for my call and ready to summon the cavalry if things went wrong. But where, I wondered, were my enemies? Were they still around at the driveway? Or had they come back?
My mother and I stepped through the stable door and out into the yard, with her hanging on to my left arm as though she would never let it go again.
There were no shouts of discovery, no running feet, just the darkness and the stillness of the night. But my enemies were out there somewhere, watching and waiting, and they outnumbered me. It was time to leave.
“He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day.”
But I never did get to run away.
My mother and I were halfway across the stable yard, taking the shortest route to the muck-heap passageway, when the headlights of a car parked close to the house suddenly came on, catching us full in their beams.
Whoever was in the car couldn’t help but see us.
“Run,” I shouted in my mother’s ear, but running wasn’t really in her exercise repertoire, even when in mortal danger. It was only ten yards or so to the passageway door, but I wasn’t at all sure we would make it. I dragged her along as all hell broke loose behind me.
There were shouts and running footsteps on the gravel near the house.
Then there was a shot, and another.
Shotgun pellets peppered my back, stinging my neck and shoulders, but the rucksack took most of them. The shooter was too far away for the shot to inflict much damage, but he would get closer, especially as my dear mother was so slow.
