by Rob Sinclair
The man nodded and looked down at his chest, indicating that his gun was there. Logan reached out and undid the man’s coat, then took the handgun out of its gun strap.
‘I’ll stay on him,’ Logan said to Grainger. ‘You check the car.’
Without saying a word, Grainger put her gun away and quickly searched the car, opening each of the doors, checking the glovebox and boot, taking away anything that was of use. When she was finished, she headed back to the two bodies on the petrol forecourt and searched them too. She called over to Logan when she was done and he took two cautious steps backward, his gun still pointing toward the driver, before he turned and ran back to the car.
When he reached it, Grainger was already inside. He jumped into the driver’s seat and fired up the engine. As he drove off, he looked at the petrol station window, where the worker had been standing when they first arrived. There was no sign of him now. No doubt he was hiding somewhere. And no doubt he had called the police. That didn’t overly worry Logan, though: he was already a wanted man.
Grainger rummaged through the takings as they sped away down the dark single-track road. As expected, the FSB agents had been armed. Logan and Grainger had now acquired three more handguns together with numerous magazines.
Although the agents had been thin on personal items, they did have on them some cash and two credit cards. Grainger had also found passports stuffed in the glovebox of the BMW, but no other identification such as driving licences or documentation to say whom the agents worked for.
Logan could guess why. He generally travelled with little ID unless it was necessary. The passports the Russians had been carrying would be fakes. They were to allow the FSB agents to track Logan and Grainger over the border of Russia, to wherever they were heading. They would all be cover identities.
What the possessions did suggest was that the Russians had been willing to play the long game if necessary, travelling across countries to keep on Logan and Grainger’s tail. He didn’t know why they would do that, or why the trackers had taken the opportunity to confront them at the petrol station.
Logan did know one thing, though: the passports the agents had been carrying were exactly what he and Grainger needed.
‘So what now?’ Grainger asked.
‘We need to get these chips out,’ Logan said.
‘And then?’
Logan smiled. ‘And then we’re leaving Russia for good.’
PART 2
The forgotten enemy
Chapter 7
February 1997
Highlands, Scotland
Logan awoke when he felt pressure on his wrists. He opened his eyes, slowly at first, but then was suddenly alert when he saw the men crowding around his bunk. He tried to jump up, only realising then that his wrists and ankles were shackled with ropes. Each was wound tightly and held firmly by the four men hovering over him. A fifth man, standing right next to Logan, half-smiling, half-snarling, was the leader of the pack of army grunts: Fleming.
‘Wakey-wakey,’ Fleming cackled. ‘If it isn’t the boy wonder. Do you fancy heading out to the mess for some chow or are you a bit tied up?’
Fleming’s men laughed at the lame joke. Logan’s tense limbs relaxed some and he laid his head back down on the bed. He wanted to fight back, but he knew that with the position they had him in, there was little he could do.
‘Okay, lads, get him off the bunk.’
The two men to Logan’s right tugged on their ropes with force and hauled Logan from the bed. He landed on the cold, hard floor with a heavy smack that sent a shock all the way up his spine. The two men on the other side climbed across the bunk, and once in position, all four men pulled tight on the ropes, stretching Logan’s limbs out like he was performing a star jump.
Fleming walked up to Logan and stood right over his face.
‘You still want to be one of us?’ he said, smiling but with anger in his voice. He unzipped his trousers. ‘Then drink up, soldier boy.’
‘No. Come on, please!’
Warm, thick urine cascaded onto Logan’s face and he spluttered and then squeezed shut his eyes and his mouth. The other men groaned in mock disgust and then laughed and then groaned as Logan was covered in the sickly yellow liquid. He held his breath but the ammonia stench still got through, making him gag and retch.
‘You want to be just like us?’ Fleming shouted. ‘Then drink my fucking piss, you piece-of-shit civvy!’
Logan began to writhe, his torso bucking up and down, his head lolling from left to right. Moving his arms and legs was impossible; each was outstretched and secured in place by the strength of a fully grown man. It was hopeless. He simply had to lie there and take it, the ghastly sound of the men’s laughter filling his head.
When it was finally over, Logan opened his eyes. He saw Fleming zipping up and immediately took a deep breath, filling his starved lungs with air. Urine on his face rolled into his mouth and he coughed and spluttered, trying to force it back out, much to the amusement of the men.
‘Get your shit together, Logan,’ Fleming said, turning away. ‘We’re heading out in fifteen minutes.’
The four men let go of the ropes and Logan’s arms and legs slumped down. He instinctively rolled onto his side, curling his legs up into his chest, still coughing, trying to remove the foul smell and taste from his nose and mouth.
‘Yes, Captain,’ he choked.
Twenty minutes later, the six men were flying in a Westland Puma helicopter high up above the Scottish Highlands. Logan hadn’t uttered another word to the men since the latest hazing incident.
Was it really hazing, or just outright bullying? He wasn’t sure anymore.
He did know that he’d been made about as welcome as a rat in a kitchen. For the past month, he’d been teamed up with the small patrol of SAS men, taking part in their gruelling exercises. He’d expected a frosty reception from the army men, but in fact what he’d had was even worse – he was, after all, an outsider being let into their secret world on the say-so of some unseen person they knew nothing about.
They had no idea who Logan was, what his life had been like as a troubled teen, or what he was now being trained for at the JIA. All they saw was a civilian, a young man some ten years their junior, someone who’d never seen war or combat and who didn’t understand the first thing about the military, being thrust into their world to be trained up just like them. And they resented him. Resented who they thought he was.
The men had been staying at the remote base camp in the far north of the Highlands for two weeks, carrying out various exercises and training missions, building up for the final escape and evasion exercise that would last for the next five days.
The five army men were already fully fledged members of the UK’s most prestigious special forces unit, the SAS. They were there to keep themselves fresh in between active missions. Logan was an early twenty-something civilian with plenty of recent combat training but zero real-life experience.
He’d been thrown in with the sharks.
Logan had already been around the world to train in various skills – survival, combat, arms, interrogation – and on many of those stints, he’d been teamed up with battle-hardened military men. The JIA was a small operation and ran few training centres of its own. For virtually all of the long and tiring training period, the JIA shipped recruits out to a combination of the army and the mainstream intelligence agencies, the mix depending on the exact skill set and training regimen of the particular candidate.
So far in Logan’s experience, few of the groups he had been sent to had welcomed him, the outsider. But none of them had been so filled with hate and anger as Fleming and his grunt patrol.
Logan guessed Fleming was in his late thirties. He was six inches shorter than Logan and not as thick in his frame, but he had the grizzled appearance of an experienced warrior and he was lean and strong, fast and agile: everything he needed to be to carry out his gruelling job. There was a lot that Logan admired about the man
– his skills at least – but absolutely nothing that Logan liked or respected.
Fleming was a captain, a commissioned officer. The other four men were sergeants and corporals. They obeyed Fleming’s every word, his every command. They were like his little pets. Even when Fleming wasn’t in the room, Logan had never heard one of the others say a single derogatory word about their captain. Logan hadn’t yet figured out whether that was because Fleming had somehow won them all over or because they were simply so shit-scared of him that they didn’t dare say a bad word about the man even when he wasn’t there.
While training with the men, Logan was supposed to act and live like them. But Logan wasn’t in the army. They could give him a hard time while he was with them, but after next week he would no longer have to abide by their outdated hierarchy and petty rules. And there was only so much bullying he would take before he snapped.
Logan guessed this was one of the reasons he had already completed extensive mental conditioning. A few months ago, he would have tried to tear Fleming’s head off the first time the captain laid a finger on him. Logan was headstrong and seldom scared of anyone or anything. And while on the outside he was mostly calm, placid, almost emotionless, an angry outburst was always bubbling under the surface.
Since the training had started, he’d become more in control of his fiery temperament. Even though he could still feel the anger boiling inside him day by day, he had so far kept it under wraps, playing along with Fleming’s hateful games. But he hadn’t forgotten any of the torment, and he enjoyed thinking of the different ways he could wipe the smirk off Fleming’s face for good.
All he had to do now, before he left this rotten place for good, was make it through the final exercise. Five days stranded and cut off from life in the frozen Highlands of Scotland.
A foreboding and deathly place.
A place where all sorts of accidents could befall even the most experienced survivor, mountaineer, orienteer. Where even the smallest slip could cost someone their life.
‘You ready for this, Boy Wonder?’ Fleming shouted over the din of the helicopter’s rotor.
Logan gave him a cold, hard stare.
‘Yes, Captain. More ready than you could imagine.’
Chapter 8
The helicopter dropped Logan and the SAS men in a small clearing in a pine forest high up in the mountains. They had been shown on a map the night before the drop location and the extraction point some fifty miles away, but they had no luxuries such as maps for the exercise itself.
They had five days to reach the extraction point. But the exercise wasn’t just about orienteering: it was about escape and evasion. The six men would be hunted. The trackers were another group of trained SAS soldiers. Starting from the same drop point as the evaders, the trackers would have simply their wits and their training to figure out where to go. The evaders would have a few hours’ head start and would have to use all their training and guile to stay one step ahead.
As soon as Logan’s feet touched the ground, he sprang into action and followed the other men into nearby wooded cover as fast as he could, cold air blasting into him from the helicopter’s rotors.
When all the men were on the ground, the helicopter ascended and moved off into the distance, its racket fading, replaced by a foreboding silence. Logan crouched down, huddling with the others.
The temperature was well below freezing. It likely would be for the duration of the exercise. Although the helicopter had been unheated and cold, Logan was already shivering from the sudden temperature drop now that he was outside. He knew it would pass as they began to march on, but it was a chilling early reminder of just how tough the next five days would be.
Each of the men had on basic army fatigues and overcoats. No rucksacks, tents, sleeping bags. Just their clothes and a survival tin each that contained little other than a basic penknife, a pocket mirror and a mini compass.
‘Okay, lads,’ Fleming said, ‘we move out quickly. They’ll be tracking us within a few hours so let’s move as far and fast as we can for now, make it difficult for them. Extraction point is south-east. Jones, Medway and Lewis, you head out twenty degrees east of that. Butler and Logan, you come with me – we’ll head out twenty degrees south of extraction.’
‘Yes, Captain,’ the five men chorused.
‘Always remember the basic rules. And we’ll try to align paths after forty miles, some point during day four probably if we keep progress steady.’
‘Yes, Captain,’ the SAS men said. Logan kept his mouth shut this time.
‘And if you get caught, they’re not going to be giving you a nice warm mug of cocoa. It’s straight to interrogation. And they won’t be holding back. So don’t. Get. Caught.’
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘Now let’s go.’
With that, the men stood up and split off into the two mini groups. Each of them, including Logan, understood the basic rules Fleming had mentioned. In fact, everything Fleming had said was as expected. The trackers would be using all of their skills and experience and would have dogs too. And Logan was sure Fleming was right when he’d said the trackers wouldn’t be holding back. They were all trained SAS soldiers. They had as much to prove as Fleming and his team.
Splitting into smaller groups was essential to make the trackers’ job harder from the start. Going off at a tangent to where they wanted to be would further complicate matters for the trackers and meant that within a few hours, the two groups of evaders would be some distance apart.
Logan adopted the rear position as he, Butler and Fleming began their march through the pine woods. He wanted to keep the others in sight at all times. It wasn’t just the trackers he was concerned about. It wouldn’t surprise him at all if Fleming brought his bullying out into the wilds.
The woods were dark and sinister. Easy to get lost in, to disappear for good in, Logan thought with both promise and anxiety. The ground underfoot was mostly frozen with just small, boggy patches of mud. It did at least feel warmer in the woods than out in the blustery open.
The three moved on for close to six hours, taking five-minute rests every hour. The pine forest opened out along the way, leaving them in an icy wasteland with only the natural crevices and undulations of the mountains to keep them in cover. The ground all around was white. Even though it was riskier from a safety point of view, they tried their best to stick to the slippery ice patches rather than the deep snow, which would leave an obvious trail. It wasn’t always possible to do so, because the ice patches came and went at random, but it at least meant the trail left in the soft snow was patchy and erratic.
Rather than heading in a straight line, they zig-zagged across the terrain in order to map out a route that didn’t require never-ending ascents and descents, but also to further complicate their trail. It meant forward progress was slower, but was a necessary technique to aid evasion.
With darkness quickly descending, they finally stopped for a prolonged break. They found a large rock whose overhanging edge created a mini shelter that the three could all fit under if they sat tightly together with their backs to the stony surface. The rocky crevice also provided cover in just about every direction.
‘We’ll rest up for two hours,’ Fleming said. ‘Then get on our way.’
‘Shall we build a fire?’ Butler asked.
‘We’re going to need one out here,’ Logan said, huddling down into the neck of his coat. The shivering had already kicked in even though they’d only stopped moving for a few seconds.
‘It’ll take too long to make,’ Fleming said, ‘foraging through this crap. There’s not exactly an abundance of wood out here.’
‘We’ll get enough from the gorse,’ Logan said. ‘There’s plenty around.’
Fleming glared at Logan, clearly not liking being challenged even if what Logan had said was valid.
‘Plus we need water,’ Logan said. ‘We haven’t passed a stream or a tarn that wasn’t frozen solid in hours. We can use the fire to melt
some snow.’
‘Fine,’ Fleming said. ‘Butler, go and find some stones. Logan, get the gorse. I’ll dig a pit up against the rock.’
It took Logan the best part of twenty minutes to collect the gorse. It was thick and frozen and full of thorns. His hands were blue from cold and covered in nicks and scratches by the time he’d finished. When he headed back to the rock, he saw that Butler and Fleming had already prepared the pit, over a foot deep, neatly lined with large grey stones.
‘What took you?’ Fleming said, sounding pissed off.
Logan ignored the question, just threw down the pile of branches and twigs he was carrying that would act as kindling and tinder. ‘This should be enough to get it started,’ he said. ‘But I’ll need to find some thicker branches if we want it to last.’
‘Okay,’ Fleming said. ‘But be quick.’
Logan headed off again and it took another twenty minutes of foraging to collect some thicker wood. He tried to remain alert to the sounds and sights around him as he searched – looking, listening, for signs of the trackers – but his senses were waning and he was quickly becoming groggy and listless from the combination of exhaustion, lack of nourishment and cold.
Eventually he found some dishevelled gorse that may or may not have been dead and snapped off the thorny branches, then used the penknife to cut the thicker base stems close to the ground. He took the pieces back to the rock.
Fleming and Butler were squatting in front of the pit, where they had already set the tinder and kindling alight. As Logan approached, he could hear the two men talking, but they stopped as he neared and stood up, facing him. Logan dropped the wood by Fleming’s feet.
‘Everything okay?’ Logan asked.
‘Just discussing tactics, that’s all,’ Fleming said, smiling.
‘Anything you want to let me in on?’
‘Guys,’ Butler said, holding up a hand, ‘I think I hear something.’
