Line of Fire:

by Andy McNab

  I jumped in behind them and the first thing I saw was the bull’s-eyed windscreen. There was no blood in the crazed glass, but the indentation was so deep it looked like it had been made by a lead football, not Tailgate’s head.

  ‘Gabe – where the fuck’s Jack?’

  Gabe’s face was splattered with blood. His hands on the wheel looked worse. ‘It’s all right. Soon. She’s sterile, nothing on her.’ He jerked a thumb at my hands. ‘Where you learn that?’

  ‘YouTube. Jedi Blade Channel. Let’s go. Out of the danger area. Back on the road.’

  There was no time for Chinese parliaments, just action that I was going to command. Now I’d see if they’d stuck to what they’d all agreed in Jack’s barn: one voice, mine; they carried out what it said or we lost our way and lost everything.

  Rio joined me in the back, throwing the weapons bag into the footwell, and the Jeep was soon bouncing back onto the track. He slumped against the side window, eyes closed, chest heaving as he pulled in oxygen. The KA-BAR rested on his lap, staining his jeans red. His lips were swollen and bloodied, and there were rips at the neck of his sweatshirt.

  ‘Rio, mate. Where are we?’

  He was too fucked to open his eyes, let alone turn his head. ‘Bodmin Moor, mate. The dead woman – what’s the score with her?’

  ‘Later.’

  50

  We careered along the track, shuddering left and right as the wheels hit ruts and bounced out again.

  I leant forward to Yulia and shouted, above the noise, ‘We’re not going to hurt you. Okay?’

  She didn’t respond. Her head stayed down even when I tried to do up her seatbelt.

  I looked around. ‘Tech geek. She speaks English better than we do. Just think about what you say, yeah?’

  Gabe took a more direct approach, banging a fist into her arm. ‘You listening? We’re not going to hurt you. For fuck’s sake, look up, enjoy the view.’

  It wasn’t the warmest of invitations and she slumped even lower in her seat, sending tears rolling off her face and into the mop of hair. Eventually I got the belt across her and got her to click it in, hoping it had let her know we had her welfare at heart. ‘Let’s leave her alone, let her sort her own shit out.’

  I’d had a hand resting on each of the two front seats, but dropped them beside me to force some more blood through the veins. I should at least have been feeling pins and needles, but instead there was a total lack of sensation. They were going to be in shit state for a couple of days, I knew.

  We came to the end of the forestry block and turned right. At once the devastation was behind us and out of sight the other side of the firs. The Beamer was parked by the track about fifty ahead, facing our direction of travel, and as we got closer I made out the shape of Jack’s head above the driver’s seat.

  Gabe put his foot on the brake and the suspension jumped and creaked. He pulled in to the right, half on the track, half on the verge, his window level with Jack’s. They powered them down together. Jack looked happy as he checked that all the faces in the Jeep were present and correct, but Gabe didn’t give him time to offer any congratulations. ‘You follow us, right?’

  Jack nodded. ‘Where to?’

  I leant right forward so I could look left past Gabe. ‘We’re going to do a bound, dump the Jeep, find out what the fuck’s going on from Yulia here, then hide up and sort ourselves out.’

  I wanted to make sure we left as little as possible to connect us with the area in case it was compromised. There was bound to be DNA in the van to compromise me, but there wasn’t a lot I could do about that.

  Jack was looking at my hands and the banana fingers.

  ‘Later. Give me your mobile.’

  Gabe held his arm out of the window for Jack to do as he was told, while I sat back in my seat and focused on magicking the Owl’s number into my head. Gabe passed the phone to me and was instantly impatient. ‘For fuck’s sake, let’s get going. We might as well dump the Jeep and tell the world we’ve been here. We gotta get moving.’

  ‘Not yet, mate, wait.’

  The mobile was fully charged, just as it should have been, and had three bars: that was enough. I fumbled through Jack’s call history. It was clean. I checked the texts for any messages. None. I next pressed the keys a couple of times trying to call the Owl, stopped, erased and started again. Once because I had got the number wrong, and twice because my finger wouldn’t hit the right key.

  Rio had been sprawled on most of the back seat. He opened his eyes. Gabe’s impatience had spread. ‘Nick, we’ve gotta go.’

  ‘Yep, in a minute. This is important. It has to be done here. You know exactly where we are?’

  Rio shrugged. ‘On the moor, mate. We weren’t exactly following the map, know what I mean?’

  As I dialled, I got Gabe to retrieve my neck wallet and mobile from Jack. Three rings and the Owl answered with his usual front-of-house bonhomie. ‘Good morning!’

  ‘We’ve got what you want.’

  ‘Great news. Is it intact?’

  ‘Yes, but we’ve left a mess. Track this signal and find out what you need to clean up. Get a crew here or whatever it is you do – ASAP – to sort it out. Someone’s going to find it. The mobile is staying for you to track.’

  ‘Okay, will do. How many problems am I looking at here?’

  ‘Three normal and three real big ones.’

  ‘Sure. I can do that.’ The perma-smile shone through. The fucker had probably been tracking Jack’s mobile all along because the snide had given him the details. I hoped he had, anyway. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he was already in the south-west, just waiting for a handover. ‘Okay, Nick, so when are we going to meet up?’

  ‘Not yet. Easy-peasy, my arse. This was way above our pay grade. Way above, and that worries us all, big-time.’

  The Owl jumped in again: ‘Hey, don’t be like that. If it’s about cash, I can—’

  ‘Listen.’ It was my turn, and minus the charm. ‘Just get tracking, mop up the mess before the world sees it, then stand by for a call when I’m ready.’

  ‘Hey, I kinda thought we had trust going on between us. Nick, I was just thinking …’

  I left him to it and threw the mobile out onto the beds of pine needles just inside the treeline. ‘Right, Gabe, wheels turning, mate.’

  There wasn’t any training manual to refer to when shit happened. It all boiled down to what I’d told them at the barn: experience, training and knowledge. Getting out of this wasn’t a science: no side had complete control of what might happen. Just as Phoenix and his team had done, we had to accept that there was shit on, and work around it as best we could to protect ourselves.

  I rested my forehead against the head restraint in front of me and checked for Jack’s reaction to losing his mobile. It wasn’t what I expected. He didn’t even do a double-take, just got on with the business of following.

  Gabe powered up his window so we could hear each other a bit better as we rumbled forward. ‘So I’m going to clear a couple of Ks and find somewhere to dump the Jeep, yeah?’

  Rio’s head rocked from side to side, eyes closed once more, his good hand still on the KA-BAR. ‘Oi, midget. How you going to explain this one to Direct Line?’ He laughed loudly at his own joke before remembering his lips were split and had to take the pain.

  Gabe was thinking more practically. ‘You lot will all be pitching in to buy me a new one.’ He then had a thought that brought the situation back to focus. ‘If we get out of this shite to collect the cash.’

  Rio came back. ‘Gladly, mate. Anything not to smell your nicotine shit.’

  I leant forward again to check Yulia. She was still slumped in her seat crying, but that meant she was breathing, nothing was broken and all she was leaking was tears. Everything was good. Most important of all, she was compliant – and that worried me.

  I tapped Gabe’s shoulder. ‘Mate, keep the sun on our right and we’ll head north. No speeding, no violations. I want
to keep away from the A30 and get rid of the wagon.’

  Gabe nodded and his eyes never left the track. When I sat back, Rio was watching me. ‘So aren’t you going to ask us how we found you and saved your arse? Now it’s all over, aren’t you going to ask us how brilliant we were? Locate and confront, mate. Locate and confront.’

  ‘All over? For fuck’s sake, it’s only just beginning. Remember what we spoke about last night in the Beamer before Jack fucked up? If we get the next bit wrong we’re all going to be dead.’

  That certainly got a reaction from Yulia.

  51

  We made it onto a B road that was so narrow and hemmed in by hedges and trees it felt like we were going down a tunnel.

  Yulia was terrified of us. She whimpered, and took a deep, ragged breath. ‘Please, don’t hurt me. All I was doing was—’

  I put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Mate, it’s okay. Do you know where the helicopter was going? To meet a plane, land on a ship?’

  She shrugged and shook her mop of wet hair. ‘I’m sorry, I …’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘It’s okay.’

  Yulia would be as important to them as she was to us, and the fuckers might be up there thinking, You know what? It hasn’t finished yet. The Agusta might have flown out of the area, then decided to come back – and they weren’t the only ones we had to worry about. The Owl might have got something airborne, not only to go and clear up the mess but also to find us. And that wasn’t all. If the caravan site shooting had been compromised, the police could also be up and about, checking whatever they thought they had to. The fact was, I didn’t know who could be out there, up there, looking for us. We had to get the Jeep off the road and concealed as quickly as we could to help us make distance.

  I also needed to warm Yulia up to explain to us who, why, when and how. She needed to know that we were her friends; we weren’t going to fuck her up. It was the people who’d sent us to lift her who were going to cause pain – but if she helped us, we could help her. Unless she didn’t want to help us, of course, and then, for her, everything would very quickly change for the worse. I had a responsibility to the team to keep us all safe, and if that meant hurting Yulia until she helped me do that, it was her problem, not mine. She’d already seen the hard side of us, so for now she needed to see our understanding side and grasp that we were all worker bees together.

  ‘Yulia, look at me, mate.’

  She turned her head.

  ‘Everything will be all right if you do what we say. Okay?’ I tried to get eye-to-eye by bending forward through the seats.

  She nodded a tear-wet face and I gave what I hoped was a soothing smile.

  Gabe broke in: ‘Here we go.’ He’d found somewhere. He slowed, checked his rear-view for the Beamer, and turned into a car park. An earthy sign displayed a happy stickman family striding out for a day on the nature trail.

  Rio was all eyes, checking for vehicles, checking for CCTV cameras. The car park had been dug out and lined with gravel, and the mountains of displaced earth sat in berms around the edges. The place was empty. It was too early in the day, and kids were at school anyway. There wasn’t going to be any stickman family shit just yet.

  I pointed to the far left-hand corner. ‘The other side of those things, mate. Get as far in as you can.’

  Gabe steered towards a row of plastic domes, big as church bells. Blue ones, green ones, white ones. He nosy-parked on the dead side of the recycling station until the front nudged against the berm. The mature trees on its other side spread out into the parking area so we had cover from the air. This wasn’t about taking time and effort to conceal the Jeep for ever: it was just about hiding the wagon from the air.

  As soon as the engine was off I got a grip. We needed to switch on, get ourselves sorted, before we got out of there. ‘Listen in. The weapons, daysacks, tent stuff, and that cricket bat go into the Beamer. Then all three of us need to clean ourselves up, change of clothes – VDMs, remember?’ I pointed at Rio’s bloodstained jeans, then at Gabe. ‘You looked in the mirror?’

  He checked himself in the rear-view as Jack came up and nosy-parked beside us.

  ‘While we clean ourselves up, Jack stays here to pack the Beamer, and we take Yulia with us. Go down that track. There’s bound to be water – it’s a nature trail. If not, we’ll have to make do.’

  Gabe nodded and jumped out to open the rest of the doors. Rio went to grab hold of Yulia, then opened the tailgate to get at the daysacks. He was doing his best to calm her but getting no reply. ‘Yuli, stop flapping. Everything’s all right.’

  Jack had his door open and was helping his false leg out of the car. He looked up when he saw me coming, and his face said he was braced for a bollocking. ‘Nick, I’m sorry, I fucked up. I shouldn’t have …’

  As he waffled I covered his exit by going right up to his door and putting my left hand on the top and the other on the roof, forcing him back into the seat. I lowered my head almost into the cab. ‘Stop. There’s no need. That was yesterday. Today’s today. All that matters is now. We’re all breathing and we have Yulia. Let’s forget the history – there’s not enough time. There’s bigger stuff.’

  He looked shocked. He’d probably rehearsed what he needed to say – whether it was a real fuck-up or on purpose – and he was backtracking. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Good.’ It really didn’t matter to me whether he’d screwed up or not. This wasn’t the time. It wouldn’t get us out of this shit. I’d find out later if he was the snide and had done it on purpose, and then it would matter. But not now.

  He came back with the only question he could ask. ‘What happened?’ He waved at the front of the Jeep, then at Rio as he began to walk Yulia towards the nature trail with our joint daysack over his shoulder containing the spare clothes we’d taken from Jack’s barn. Yulia’s slumped body language said she was thinking the worst, and it didn’t help when Gabe lifted the weapons bag out of the back footwell. Her parents would have told her about all the times Stalin’s men marched intellectuals into the forest and blew their brains out.

  Rio was doing his best. ‘Yuli, mate, I’m not taking you in there for a shag. Know what I mean? It’s all right.’ He took her arm but Yulia wasn’t impressed. He still had the KA-BAR tucked into his waistband in taking-a-knife-to-school style.

  Gabe dumped the weapons in the rear of the Beamer and I heard the clunk of the barrels. Squaddies all over the world would recognize that sound.

  Jack looked up at me but didn’t bother to ask.

  ‘We’re going to get out of sight and clean ourselves up. Hopefully there’s some water down there.’

  ‘What about the Owl?’

  ‘All in good time. Just load up everything from the Jeep. Listen to the local BBC. If there’s anything unusual, like the roads have been closed because of an incident and they aren’t saying what it is, or even closure because of an accident on one of the major arteries coming out of here, we need to know before we move. Also, keep an ear out for helis. All right?’

  He nodded.

  I double-tapped the roof. ‘Done. See you in a bit.’

  I walked away to join Gabe, who had now grabbed his own daysack, and we followed Rio and Yulia down the trail. I wanted to keep Yulia with me at all times. I’d got rid of Jack’s phone, so there were going to be no communications telling the Owl where we were and what we planned to do. If he did as I’d told him, all well and good. If he didn’t, I had no control of that. I just wanted him to think all was good and catch him sinning, let him hang himself, so there would be no doubt.

  52

  Rio was already changing. There was a small trickle of water off to the right about twenty metres down, and Yulia was standing beside him, her arms wrapped around herself as if she needed protection. She was keeping her eyes away from the blood. But it still didn’t look right. The crying, poor-little-girl act on his drive from the moor? This wasn’t the woman I had witnessed in the van. She watched Rio’s withered arm do its best
to help the good one struggle with his jeans. Rio laughed. ‘Yuli, mate, you think this is weird? Wait till you see that fucker.’

  Gabe ignored him as he pulled off his shirt and used it to soak up some water, then scrubbed his face.

  I knelt down, splashed my hair and tried to flatten it, then patted at my face. The jaw joint on the right was swollen and painful.

  Rio had put on some brown chinos and was easing his withered arm into a long-sleeved green T-shirt. Gabe finished wiping his face and threw the shirt at me to do the same, then got to grips with his bloodied jeans. Yulia had a close-up of what Rio had been on about, and looked confused.

  It was the reaction Rio was hoping for. ‘We’re saving the world, one stump at a time.’

  My face was aching now the adrenalin and cold water had worn off. I threw the wet shirt into one of the daysacks. Rio was deciding which hoodie to wear, the grey or the greyer. We both needed one to cover our faces as much as possible. He made his decision and I got the grey one.

  We’d had our down time. ‘Lads, we need to get a move on. We dump our mobiles here. Shove them in the water, in the mud, whatever. No mobiles with us. We move from here knowing we’re as sterile as we can be.’

  I dug my heel into the muddy bed of the trickle and shoved my mobile in, like I was planting a tulip bulb – if that was how you did it. The others were going into the water and being covered with stones.

  Rio couldn’t resist as we headed back to the vehicles: ‘Aren’t you going to ask us, Nick, how we saved your arse?’

  ‘You’re going to tell me anyway.’

  Rio grinned, until his split lips stopped him. ‘We fucked about for an hour or so, driving around the lanes like loonies trying to find you. The idea was to see if we could ram the van and take you.’

  He’d forgotten something.

  ‘And Yulia, of course.’

  Gabe was up for that. ‘Fucking right, and her. I got bills.’ He studied her tattoo, trying to work out what it was. To me it looked like a dark blue bramble in a sea of more brambles. ‘We should have taken them when I said.’

  ‘Who’s telling this fucking story? Anyway, Nick – last known locations, mate. We went back to Sennen Cove, had a look round, then packed up correctly and staked out the caravan site. Saw the recce, saw the van, saw Yulia get out, and decided to wait until we knew you were in the van.’ He banged the side of his head with his good hand. ‘Gimped up, but not fucking stupid. We learn. Know what I mean?’ He didn’t wait for a reply, which was just as well. I would only have said they should have grabbed Yulia and completed the mission.