Close Quarters

by Adrian Magson

  FORTY-SEVEN

  ‘Have you always done this work?’

  ‘No. Not always.’

  ‘So what got you into it?’

  Now Travis was more or less fully awake he was nervy and desperate to talk, and I had no reason to shut him up. If we were to get out of this, I needed him alert and ready to react to anything, not dulled by sleep and painkillers. Talking seemed a good way to go. In any case, I doubted he’d remember much of what I said when we got out of this. Just to be sure, I gave him the short version.

  ‘I was in the military for a while. Got shot at, missed a couple of IEDs, the usual stuff. Then I figured if I was going to risk my life I might as well do it properly, so I applied for special training.’

  ‘Delta?’

  ‘Not Delta. That kind of area, though.’

  ‘Iraq?’

  ‘Among others. We got moved around a lot, wherever we were needed.’ The moving had included liaison spells in counter-terrorism, in anti-drug operations in Latin America, reconnaissance missions in Africa and southern Europe on attachment with combined units of French Foreign Legion, Spanish Legion and the Italian 4th Surveillance group.

  ‘So how did you end up doing this?’

  ‘I wanted to choose my own assignments. I’d done a lot of close protection details and a colleague gave me the heads-up about a couple of private high-paying contracts for experienced personnel. It seemed the obvious way to go.’ I’d also discovered a dislike of operating in military units and being responsible for others, often in impossible situations. For the most part it was fine, but losing colleagues was something you never truly got over.

  ‘What happened?’ Travis was fully awake now, and sharp.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Something bad happened. I can see it in your face.’

  ‘There were plenty of bad times.’ One was worse than most, but it was something I wasn’t prepared to talk about in detail – not to a man who was relying on me to get him home safely.

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Short story, we had to leave a colleague behind on an anti-insurgent snatch op in Djibouti. He got separated in a sandstorm and lost contact.’

  ‘American?’

  ‘French. Our unit was on attachment to the Legion. We were about to go back and shut the area down to look for him, but the situation went hot and the politicians ordered us out. It was a lousy deal but we had no choice. Not then, anyway.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We found him but it was too late.’ That was all I wanted to say. It had taken us three days to convince the local command to allow us back in to mount a search. When we got the green light we went in and located him, but he was dead. The insurgents had tied him to a tree as a warning message. What was left of him. ‘One of the Legionnaires was a skilled bush tracker, so we made a group decision to shut down our communications and go after the people who’d killed him. It took us five days.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We found them, too.’ It was about that time that I’d decided I didn’t want to answer to politicians anymore; that going on operations on the say-so of people who’d never done it themselves, was no longer a career choice. I wanted to make my own decisions. That way if it all went bad I’d only have myself to blame.

  It was also the time that I decided I’d never leave anybody behind again.

  Travis said nothing for a while, then: ‘I don’t get it. Isn’t this the same kind of thing – being responsible for others? Worse, even – we’re people you don’t even know.’

  ‘It’s not the same at all.’ I couldn’t explain it to him, but operating remotely, or even up as close as this, as I’d been forced to do with Travis, allowed a level of disconnection. He wasn’t a colleague or friend, he wasn’t going to throw himself into a lethal situation; he was relying totally on me to get him out, to protect him. That meant I had the call on everything he did, when he did it and how fast.

  It wasn’t the same.

  I was about to explain this when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.

  Helicopters.

  I dropped the window for a better look. Two bulky transporters, the Mi-8s, lumbering along at five-hundred feet. They came over the brow of a hill three miles away and headed towards us. Low to the ground, heavy metal dragons, the throb of the engines already stirring the atmosphere around us.

  ‘Hold tight.’ I’d been keeping an eye out along the way for suitable tracks or side roads where I could make a rapid diversion if necessary. It didn’t have to be long-term, but enough to avoid a traffic jam or a potential threat. We’d passed a pull-in about a mile back, but it was too open and now too far off to turn back.

  I saw a turning up ahead, little more than a gap in the verge and a grass-covered track leading into a small copse of trees. It would do. I hit the brakes and turned off, feeling the wheels beginning to slide as we hit the grassy surface and the moisture turned slick under the tyres. There was a crash as we hit a bump and everything in the car jumped, and Travis yelped. But we were OK. We slid behind the cover of the trees and I stopped.

  Two minutes later the air around us throbbed and the trees were buffeted violently as the shapes of the helicopters passed overhead.

  We watched them go, trailing swirling plumes of exhaust smoke behind them, and I let them disappear over the horizon before getting ready to move.

  ‘Watchman, report. You OK?’ Lindsay again, checking our progress. She’d been timing the situation and was checking we hadn’t been drilled into the ground.

  I killed the engine. ‘We’re good. How’s it looking?’

  ‘Quiet for now, but our cameras show static heat signals ten miles ahead of your location either side of the road. It’s most likely a collection of large vehicles parked up. Probably trucks. We’ll get pictures if we can.’

  ‘Do you think it’s military or a roadblock?’

  ‘We’re waiting on another camera pass, but I’d suggest a military convoy on a temporary stop. I haven’t seen a build-up of haulage trucks for some time now, and we have no reports of police or official roadblocks in operation anywhere near you.’

  ‘Copy that. Out.’

  Cameras. Lindsay must be using an overhead spotter; most likely a drone. It would be telling what was happening in real-time, relaying pictures back to its controller, who would be feeding them through to Langley. Allowing for a slight time delay, she would be seeing us as we moved. I couldn’t even make a guess at how tough it had been getting authorization to call in a drone over a sovereign territory in this neck of the woods, but it was a clever move.

  I debated on what to do next. If the vehicles up ahead were part of a military convoy they would have sentries posted with orders to watch out for any other traffic movement too late in the day. It meant that our getting past them without being stopped was unlikely.

  I checked the map. There was a small town off to our left, but heading away from where we wanted to go. It was risky but so was heading off along some other track in the dark into open country. A breakdown would leave us stranded with no way out. And if Lindsay’s cameras could pick out heat signals, then so could Grey Suit if he had access to the same technology – and if he was still alive.

  I made sure we were as concealed as we could be and checked the Grach, then called Lindsay and told her we were going to be static for a while.

  ‘Copy that, Watchman.’

  ‘What are we doing?’ Travis looked tired, and his words were indistinct, as if he really couldn’t connect the dots. Exhaustion was hitting him hard on top of everything else and he wasn’t coping too well.

  ‘We’re stopping here.’ I handed him a bottle of water. ‘We need to rest. Drink as much of that as you can take and eat something. Then get some sleep. I’ll keep watch.’

  He protested but his heart and mind weren’t in it. I took off before he could argue further and walked back to the road, checking in both directions for incoming traffic. I hadn’t se
en another vehicle for a while and figured most sensible people were staying off the roads until daylight. I walked back away from the trees and checked the layout from the road. We were concealed from the road, especially with the falling darkness, and it looked just like a bunch of trees, not an obvious stopping place.

  I walked back to the car and took a drink. Travis was snoring, which was fine by me. He had asked enough questions for the day and needed as much rest as he could get. We still weren’t out of the hot stuff and I had no idea what lay ahead. All I knew was we’d have to be prepared to face anything that came our way.

  After a while I felt my head going down. It was a bad sign and I shook myself awake. I could get by on little sleep, but I couldn’t risk Travis by letting myself go. I checked my watch and was surprised to find we’d been there nearly two hours.

  I walked back to the road to stretch my legs and get some blood into my veins and brush off the tiredness. Checking your surroundings in a hostile area is always a good way of staying awake. But you have to be wary of seeing shadows where there are none, which is a product of general lack of sleep and battle fatigue. Shooting holes in the darkness might be good for a couple of seconds, but it’s no way to scare off the bogeys.

  I got to the road and looked both ways. Nothing. In fact, less than nothing. Total blackness, which suited me fine. This was big country with zero lights and no stars to guide us or light the way. But just for a few moments all that dark was relaxing in a way that daylight would never have been.

  It was a reminder that it had been a long time since I’d stood and listened to the dark without wondering if someone was out there coming for me. Smelling the coffee was a modern cliché, but it was easy to lose sight of the fact that there was a world going on around you, and sometimes you had to kick back and look at it.

  Then I heard something. Or maybe it was simply an animal thing, of being in the night and using usually dormant instincts. I turned and looked back along the road towards Pavlohrad. Nothing out there that I could see. A long stretch of empty road swallowed by the night.

  Then I saw a light.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  It was just a flicker, there then gone. Like somebody opening a car door. I waited for five long minutes but didn’t see it again. If it had been a vehicle, it was static, and if my judgement was right, it was approximately at the point where I’d seen the pull-in earlier. Whoever they were they must have decided to stop for the night for the same reason we had: to avoid running into trouble.

  Or to make sure they didn’t miss us in the dark.

  I gave it five minutes to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me, then set off along the road, ready to dive into cover. It was easy going on the metalled surface, but with no lights to guide me also easy enough to wander off course and stumble over the rough grass verge.

  I stopped periodically to check my bearings. The trees where I’d left Travis were now invisible, as if they’d never existed, and I was in the dark in more ways than one. But at least I had the road to follow as a guide in both directions.

  I hoped nobody else had the same idea.

  The first indication I got of other humans present was the smell of cigarette smoke. It was faint, but unmistakable. Then came a short burst of laughter. It was probably no more than a hundred yards away and whoever they were they clearly weren’t expecting company.

  I stopped and hunkered down, closing my eyes and slowly absorbing the night sounds and atmosphere and the area around me. If this was Grey Suit and his men they would almost certainly have someone on watch. And the easiest and most logical place to do that was by the side of the road.

  I stepped across the grass verge, feeling my way across a shallow ditch on to more solid ground the other side. Then I started walking in a parallel line with where I judged the road to be. It was unscientific and entirely by guesswork, but the only way I could do it.

  The best scenario would be to find that I’d stumbled on a lone traveller or a family that had stopped for the night. The alternatives were pretty obvious.

  There was a dry clicking sound a few feet away, and it took me a moment before I recognized the noise as a cigarette lighter being used. Then I saw sparks flying off into the dark before the flame caught. I closed my eyes instinctively and froze. But even with the initial spark of light I had an image printed on my retinae of a square block of a vehicle standing nearby, its utilitarian outline instantly recognizable and confirmed by the powerful tang of diesel.

  A military UAZ jeep.

  I ducked my head and waited for the lighter to go out. I’d seen enough. If it was the same UAZ from before, and I guessed it was, then Grey Suit was here, too, or not far behind. By now he’d have realized the helicopter wasn’t going to work, so he’d closed in as far as he dared and was waiting for daylight to continue the chase.

  Just to be sure, I made a wide sweep of the area, keeping the sound of voices within my hearing and stopping when talk ceased in case they heard me moving. By a process of elimination I picked up three different voices. Occasionally I saw the flare of a flashlight and a face would be lit up, then I heard the sound of paper being torn. I guessed they were eating some kind of field rations. The absence of a fire or more obvious lighting meant they were keeping their presence low-profile, which indicated that these men, whoever they were, were not comfortable being this far west.

  I backed off and turned to go. I’d already spent enough time out here. Time to get back and check on Travis. But I hadn’t gone more than three paces when I sensed somebody else very close by. A smell of stale sweat and tobacco washed over me, and I started to move to one side, but realized just in time that the man was stepping out from behind a tree to my side and was probably as surprised as me.

  I reacted instinctively. There was no use pretending I wasn’t there; it was too late for that. But turning and running wasn’t an option. I’d also picked up on another smell coming off the man, one that I recognized all too well from years of handling weapons.

  Gun oil.

  I was holding the Grach with the safety on. I saw just a faint hint of movement in front of me, so close I could have touched him. There was a sharp intake of breath as he opened his mouth to yell, so I swept the Grach up and across, and felt the heavy metal connect with the side of his head. He went over without a sound, and I managed to catch him and ease him to the ground gently.

  Then I stepped away and retreated. I was a hundred yards away and walking along the roadside towards the trees when I heard someone calling out in the dark. I picked up my pace to a jog. It was time to go.

  Travis was awake when I got back, and looked jumpy.

  ‘Where did you go?’ he asked. ‘I could have sworn I heard voices.’

  ‘You did. But don’t worry about it. You ready to go?’

  ‘Anytime. Was it them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I climbed aboard and turned the ignition. Travis said he’d heard the sound of voices, but I was hoping the drone of our engine would be more difficult for the men in the UAZ to pinpoint. I couldn’t use the lights or the brakes until I was certain we were in dead ground, so I had to drop the window and drive slowly until I heard the faint whine of rubber on solid road. It was risky moving anyway, but we had no choice. If we stayed where we were, come morning I was pretty sure the men in the UAZ would see us as they drove by.

  Then we’d be dead meat.

  Once we were clear of the area I switched on the cell phone and dialled Lindsay.

  ‘Hey, big eyes, are you listening?’

  She must have been alert and watching her screens because she barely missed a beat. ‘I’m here. Are you mobile?’

  ‘That we are. What’s the situation on the ground?’

  ‘No local activity anywhere close on the last camera pass. The next one is due in ten minutes. What’s your situation?’

  ‘We’re bugging out from the current location. We had company.’

  ‘Hostile?’

  ‘Definite
ly. If not then, certainly now. Can we get past the convoy?’

  ‘That’s a yes. We last picked up their signature moving due east from that position on what we believe is a military access road. Your route now looks clear but be aware.’

  ‘Copy that.’

  I switched off and focussed on driving and watching the road for signs of life. Running into a patrol was a possibility, but I was hoping we’d get some warning before we hit trouble.

  The road was clear and easy to follow once I could use the lights, and it was almost easy to forget that we were in hostile territory and making our way out.

  ‘Do you have family?’ Travis asked after we’d been travelling a while.

  Jesus. More questions. And it was stuff I didn’t want to discuss. I debated ignoring him, but that wouldn’t help either of us. And I needed him to be with me whatever I did, one hundred per cent. The best way to do that was to play along for a while.

  ‘A sister. Why?’

  ‘I’m trying to understand you, that’s all. I’ve got two sisters and a brother. All accounting professionals, would you believe that?’

  Somehow I would, but I didn’t want to offend him. ‘Not really. What made you join the State Department?’

  He deflected the question by saying, ‘Actually, I’d rather talk about you.’

  ‘Of course you would. But I’m a closed book. You first.’

  He nodded. ‘OK. I guess I took the easy route all along; through school, then college, then the military, and when I’d had enough of that, I applied to the State Department. I figured four accountants in the family was way too many.’

  ‘What about your family?’

  ‘I told you about them.’

  ‘I mean your own family – your wife and kids. You have two, right?’

  It was a brutal reminder, but I figured he couldn’t not think about them for long. And talking about them might help, too.

  He was quiet for a while, then started talking. It was slow going at first, but he picked up enthusiasm and speed, and even started to smile a lot more. After a while he stopped and looked at me and said, ‘You’re a sneaky bastard, you know that? But thank you. It was good using their names out loud. Kind of made a connection, you know?’