Dark Asset

by Adrian Magson

  ‘I’m not paid to like them. I loathe them and their stinking lives. Any one of them, given the chance, would kill us as soon as look at us.’

  There was no answer to that one, so I let it go. It was an extraordinary and passionate outburst by any standards, but sounded as if it came from the heart. Instead I said, ‘We’re clear for now, but you might like to keep your eyes open for dust clouds. Ratchman and his crew won’t have gone far and they’ll be eyeballing anything that moves.’

  He nodded but said nothing. Whatever was eating him, he’d have to get over it soon. We were now exposed in broad daylight and still a long way off the location of the landing site, and staying out on the road could only last for so long before our luck ran out.

  Masse eventually fell asleep, in spite of the jolting ride, and I wondered if this mission had all been too much for him. The fact that he’d made no attempt to help back in the village made me wonder if it was a lack of sympathy for the plight of the villagers or if he was suffering some kind of deep-seated trauma.

  THIRTY-TWO

  On a low bluff a mile to the east of the village, Vince Ratchman watched a loaded pickup bouncing slowly along the route to the north, dark grey smoke puffing from the exhaust. A pale flash of red showed the driver’s headdress. Elsewhere nothing moved, save for drifting palls of smoke from the village and one or two figures running around trying to put out the fires. He and his men had been lucky, he figured, and had got out of there just in time. It made him wonder if news of their presence had filtered out to the authorities. He’d watched the trucks leaving along the road to the south and figured they were insurgents rather than local forces, and less of a threat. Even so, running into that many armed men would be a serious problem.

  He focussed his binoculars on the village in the hopes of seeing something that might point to Portman still being in the area. It was possible he and the Frenchman had driven straight on through the night before and headed for open country, but he didn’t believe it. He was certain they hadn’t been equipped to go very far in this terrain, and Portman’s training allied with Masse’s reported local knowledge would have had them stop and rest up before continuing.

  Behind him the men were talking in soft tones about Carson’s death, and he sensed a rising atmosphere of tension among them. Carson had been popular, and his skill as a sniper had been invaluable to the unit, making his loss all the more keenly felt. He turned and clicked his fingers to get their attention.

  ‘Bury Carson,’ he said. ‘Ain’t no use us taking him any further.’ There was also, he realised, the question of the smell, which was already becoming a factor and would only get worse as the heat increased.

  For a second none of them moved, exchanging glances. Then Dom stood up and said, ‘You heard the man. Find a soft spot and gather a bunch of rocks to cover him.’

  Ratchman turned back to studying the landscape. Something was bothering him about the scene down in the village, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He ran the drive into the village through his mind, replaying the tight streets and ratty little houses, and stopping to check out a big old building that looked like a fort. It had been empty, with nowhere to hide a rabbit, let alone two men. Then they had moved up a rise to a junkyard with a line of wrecked trucks and stuff, and what Ellison had said was probably an old grain store. They’d seen nothing and heard no movement save for some goats and other animals behind stick fences. If there were people there, they had stayed out of sight. When they had picked up the sound of trucks approaching, they had left immediately and headed for this bluff.

  Now something had changed and he wasn’t sure—

  Wait. He focussed on the junkyard.

  ‘Ellison, c’mon here,’ he called, and when the man arrived, passed him the binoculars. ‘Tell me what you see down there.’

  Ellison sat down and scanned the area. ‘Well, some smoke, burning houses, a few rag-heads and the places we searched earlier. What am I looking for?’

  ‘What’s changed? Look at the scrapyard next to the place you said was a grain store.’

  Ellison looked again and began to shake his head, then stiffened. ‘Hey – there’s a vehicle missing.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ratchman agreed. ‘But not just any vehicle; a crappy little pickup that shouldn’t have been going anywhere.’ He stabbed a finger towards the north. ‘Like the one heading that way right now.’ He could no longer see the pickup, which had dipped below the horizon but he was certain he was right. Ellison had just confirmed it.

  ‘Hurry up with that,’ he called out to his men, and got to his feet. It was time to head north and finish this.

  THIRTY-THREE

  We drove for an hour without seeing another soul. Miles of open countryside, of rocks, trees and bushes, of birds in the sky and on the ground. A few goats nibbling at tufts of coarse grass and spiky bushes, or huddled in the shade of a tree, but that was all. It was a little creepy and I wondered how any place could be so empty of human life when I knew there must be settlements and people out there, like the old man and his reluctant goat-herders with their AKs at the site where Colin Doney had died. I asked Masse what he thought but he’d sunk into some kind of dissociative state and didn’t even acknowledge the question. Then a couple of big trucks loomed up ahead and went by in a blast of wind and trailing a long cloud of dust in their wake, leaning on air horns to clear us out of the way. I didn’t argue and got off the road until they were gone.

  We began to pull up a long slope to some higher ground, so I stopped near the top and studied the road behind us. Save for the dust cloud kicked up by the trucks hanging in the air I couldn’t see a thing. But common sense told me Ratchman would be out there somewhere. He wouldn’t have given up just because he couldn’t find us; he knew the options for our direction of travel were extremely limited, and my guess was he’d already worked out that we were heading for some kind of RV. All he had to do was follow and hope to catch us.

  I took a bottle of water and walked round to the back of the pickup. Ahmed must be getting thirsty and I didn’t want him to croak on us. I pulled back the tarp I’d covered him with and stopped, the water forgotten.

  Ahmed was staring up at me with open eyes. His throat and chest were covered in blood from an open wound just below his chin. If he hadn’t died instantly, it wouldn’t have taken long; the floor of the pickup was swamped with his blood and already attracting swarms of flies.

  I checked the scraps of metal I’d piled in the back, but they were still firmly in place. No way could a sharp piece have toppled and killed him. That took me back to the village. Could one of the young men there have seen him in the back and stabbed him in retaliation? It was unlikely without him making a big deal out of it and alerting Masse.

  Masse. He had a knife; he’d used it to cut the tarps free back at the junkyard. And he hadn’t liked me bringing Ahmed along.

  I looked round just then and found Masse watching me in the wing mirror. His expression was blank but the fact that he was seeing me at all meant he wasn’t as out of it as I’d thought.

  I flicked the tarp back over the body and got back behind the wheel.

  ‘You killed him, didn’t you?’ I said. ‘Want to tell me why?’

  He shrugged, a gesture that was seriously beginning to get to me. ‘He was a passenger we do not need. What were you going to do with him – give him our food and water and cut him loose? Portman, you’re wasting your time. Rats like him exist only to kill us.’ He turned away. ‘Better that we don’t have him to worry about.’

  In a way it was hard to argue with him. Carrying an extra load when it wasn’t called for was only adding to our problem. And Ahmed wouldn’t have wasted a millisecond in putting a bullet in me if I hadn’t silenced him first. Add to that the way his friends had burned and smashed their way through the village, killing innocent people, and he really wasn’t worth a second thought. But the way Masse had done it without hesitation seemed senseless, and with no more qualms than squas
hing a bug.

  I started driving again, trying to push the death out of my mind and focussing instead on what to do next. We couldn’t keep the body with us, that was certain; the heat was already building up, wrapping itself around us like a heavy blanket, and the effects on the body would soon make it unpleasant.

  The road began to take a gentle curve around a rocky outcrop rising by some fifty feet, and I had an idea. I slowed down, eyeing the side of the road, until I saw a gap in the shale and rocks. I kept going for another couple of hundred yards, then stopped and jumped out.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Masse asked, turning to study the road behind us, although there was nothing to see now we’d rounded the curve.

  ‘Help me move this,’ I told him, and tucked the tarp around Ahmed’s body so I didn’t get any blood on me. Masse took the other end and I moved sideways until we were standing at the side of the road. I nodded and lowered my end of the body and Masse did the same. Then I pulled off the tarp and threw it into the back of the truck.

  I pointed at the outcrop. ‘We’re going behind that hill to wait out the day. I need you to move ahead of me and find a way.’

  He looked doubtful. ‘What if they check it out?’

  ‘They won’t. First they’ll be suspicious as hell and expecting an ambush or an IED. It’s what they’ve been trained to do. They’ll eventually check the body because they’ll have to drive past it, but then they’ll be in a hurry to get out of here and back on our tail before anybody else shows up.’

  Masse looked at me. ‘You talk as if you have done this before.’

  ‘I haven’t – but I’ve been on the other end a few times. The rule is to get by and move away from the danger zone as fast as you can. Hanging around too long makes you a target.’

  I walked to the pickup and got back in, and reversed back down the road to where I’d seen the gap in the rocks and shale. Masse saw what I was going to do and ran ahead of me, checking the terrain and pointing out where to avoid rocks, deep potholes and layers of soft soil. It was a hard grind and had to be taken slowly, even though I was tempted to put my foot down; wrecking the steering or blowing a tyre would leave us stranded out in the open.

  The ground was making the whole vehicle tremble and the scrap metal in the back bounce and tip dangerously close to falling over. It didn’t help our manoeuvring on this kind of terrain, but I didn’t want to throw it overboard just yet until I was sure it was of no further use. I was pretty sure Ratchman would have worked out by now how we’d fooled him, but he and his men weren’t the only threat we had to contend with.

  Eventually we reached an area behind the outcrop and a couple of hundred yards back in the shelter of what looked like the dry walls of an old riverbed. I climbed out and scouted around until I saw a couple of sturdy bushes and said to Masse, ‘Have you got that knife?’

  He nodded and took it out of his pocket. As he opened it the sunlight flashed off the blade, which was about eight inches long and looked razor sharp. There was also a brownish residue close to the handle. Dried blood.

  I pointed to the bottom of the bushes and told him to cut them down. When he’d done it I took the bushes and jogged back to the road, and began sweeping at the soil to hide any traces of our passage, moving backwards as I went. It took a while, and was hot work, but an absolute necessity if we wanted to live. When it was done I grabbed the AK and the remaining tarp and led the way along the dried river bed to a point where we had a view of the pickup but couldn’t be overlooked from the outcrop.

  ‘Now what?’ Masse asked. He was puffing like a twenty-a-day smoker and looked grey around the eyes and ready to drop.

  ‘We wait. They’ll be along soon enough.’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  ‘Whoa – what the hell?’ Ellison, who was driving, slammed on the brakes and swerved across the road, making the three other men in the SUV sit up and reach for their weapons. ‘Possible IED ahead!’

  ‘Bale out!’ Ratchman shouted, and kicked his door open. ‘Eyes open and take up defensive positions.’ IEDs were often accompanied by ambushes, which made them an event of maximum threat. He jumped out and checked the area to either side of the vehicle but saw nothing. Not that he was reassured much; insurgents could hide like lizards under a small rock all day without moving and pick their targets off at will.

  Dom’s vehicle had stopped a hundred yards back, and the three men inside followed their lead and dismounted fast, making for the sides of the road, weapons at the ready and watching for ground disturbance to indicate IEDs having been planted in the soft shale. Experience told them that if this was an ambush, the opposition might also have an RPG as back-up. Disabling the team members would be any attackers’ first priority, but the SUVs would follow if that couldn’t be achieved quickly, to make escape impossible. Even if they tried to drive out of the danger area, the chances of them outrunning a rocket on this road were nil.

  Ratchman signalled for Ellison to move forward and check out the shape lying a hundred yards away, while he and another man moved up either side of the road in support, stopping every few yards to look and listen. It was a move they had practised many times before and came instinctively. But experience didn’t stop the feeling of vulnerability that crept across the back of each man’s neck.

  It was almost peaceful here, save for the distant call of a buzzard, the tick-tick of rocks heated by the sun, and the sound of sand crunching beneath the men’s boots. Ratchman had no time or desire to appreciate it and made an urgent signal to move forward until they had closed to within thirty paces of the body.

  ‘What do you see?’ he called, watching Ellison crab closer, keeping as low as possible to the ground. They all knew it wouldn’t help one bit if the shape was a disguised IED; depending on the amount of explosive the blast would sweep along the ground blowing rocks, grit and shale particles in front of it like pieces of shrapnel. Even lying flat didn’t guarantee survival. But only the inexperienced or suicidal ever approached a suspect device as if they were out for a Sunday walk.

  A shrieking sound among some low bushes off the road made them all whirl round, weapons at the ready. But it was a pair of guinea fowl lifting off in panic as one of Dom’s companions moved around to cover the ground further out.

  Ellison stood up and whistled. ‘It’s a body,’ he called out. ‘No device, nothing. Looks like he’s been knifed and dumped.’

  Ratchman swore, but with a feeling of relief. He’d been too close to too many IEDs to ever take them for granted. Those who did rarely survived for long. He stood up and joined Ellison, and they stood looking down at the body. Poorly dressed in faded combat gear and sandals, the dead man looked like a hundred other Somalis they had seen in the past few days. But it was obvious by his clothes that this man had been a fighter.

  ‘I thought it was a kid at first, he’s so small,’ Ellison murmured as if to himself. ‘But I reckon he’s – what, thirty something?’

  ‘Who cares?’ said Ratchman. ‘He’s one more we don’t have to worry about.’

  ‘You reckon Portman did this?’ Dom said, stepping up to join them and examining the stab wound to the man’s throat. It looked like a straight in-out thrust, and death must have been fairly quick.

  ‘No doubts whatsoever,’ Ratchman replied firmly. ‘He did it to slow us down and gain time.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  Ratchman pointed at the ground beneath the body. ‘Where’s the blood? If he’d done him right here, he’d have bled out. There’s nothing. I tell you he planned this.’

  The others looked at him, then began checking out the surrounding countryside. It was clear what was going through their minds: if this had been Portman’s work as a delaying tactic, who was to say he wasn’t out there right now with them in his sights?

  ‘Don’t waste time looking – he ain’t there,’ Ratchman told them impatiently. In spite of himself he couldn’t deny feeling a prickle of unease between his shoulders. In Portman’s place he wo
uld have done precisely this to cut down the odds. ‘If he wanted us dead, he’d be shooting by now. Let’s move. I want to nail this clever bastard and go home.’

  ‘What about this?’ said Ellison, nodding at the body. ‘Shouldn’t we move it off the road?’

  ‘Why?’ Ratchman turned away. ‘He wouldn’t do the same for you.’

  THIRTY-FIVE

  I heard the SUVs stop and cut their engines. Terse commands, distant but recognisable in tone, told the story, and we waited for somebody to appear on the outcrop, maybe even come round to check for tracks. But nobody did. Maybe they hadn’t seen the point. Bad decision for them but lucky for us.

  Several minutes later we heard the sounds of engines starting up and the SUVs heading away at speed.

  ‘Is that it?’ Masse looked shaken, as if this was the first time he’d ever come close to being caught, and went to stand up. ‘They’ve gone?’

  I grabbed his arm and held him down. ‘Maybe. Wait here.’ I got to my feet and moved forward towards the edge of the riverbed where we’d left the pickup, stopped to grab the binoculars, then climbed the slope forming the rear of the outcrop. It was hard going. The top layer of shale and sand was loose, making it difficult to climb without causing a constant rattle as the larger pieces tumbled and slid down the slope in my wake. But eventually I had an overview of the road running north–south, with a dust cloud to the north showing where the two SUVs had gone. I studied the terrain for a couple of minutes, but if they’d left anybody behind, he was well hidden. But frankly, I couldn’t see it happening; they were in just as much of a hurry as we were and as much danger of being seen.

  I skidded back down the slope, signalling Masse to join me, and got in the pickup. As long as we didn’t break anything, we were now on their tail instead of the other way round. And providing we didn’t get careless and move too close, we might be able to exert some control over events for a change.