by Andy McNab
‘Nicholas …’
The Russian girl again.
Fuck, my head hurt.
Other voices.
Faraway voices.
Maybe I was imagining them as well.
No, I wasn’t. They were coming closer.
That was why I was lying up. That was why I’d brushed over my tracks.
I rolled on to my belt buckle, raised my head and scanned my immediate surroundings. I was at the lower edge of a stretch of densely planted firs. I couldn’t tell how far they ran uphill. To my immediate left there was a break: a path or track through the trees.
I grabbed the day sack and crawled deeper into cover. I lifted the waistband of my bomber jacket and reached for my pistol. It wasn’t there.
Had I dropped the fucker?
A mag in my pocket, but no weapon in my belt.
Concentrate, for fuck’s sake.
No, relax.
Breathe.
And don’t lose control.
I peeled back the zipper of the day sack and slid my hand inside. It came out holding a matt black compact Sphinx 9mm. The Swiss might be neutral, but they knew a thing or two about stuff that goes bang. I pulled the top slide back along its rails until it locked. Next came the mag. I checked that the rounds were correctly bedded and slid it slowly into the pistol grip until I heard a gentle click.
I needed to keep noise to a minimum, so instead of allowing the top-slide spring to snap into place I released it with the side lever and eased the working parts over the mag. Then I pulled it back a couple of mills. The glint of brass in the ejection opening told me a round was in the chamber. I examined it closely, wondering why I knew this shit, then pushed it home again.
The weapon was ready. I hoped I was. For what, I hadn’t a clue. These guys might have been coming to admire the view, but if there was a drama, I didn’t want to take any chances.
The voices were louder now. I could also hear footsteps. Two voices. Two sets of boots on the ground. Getting closer.
I had no idea what they were saying to each other. Their waffle was low and guttural, one of those languages that makes even kids having fun in the playground sound like they’re pissed off with each other.
Something else stirred in the depths of my mental databank. Then it was gone.
My eyes followed two pairs of legs coming down the track. One in shiny black tracksuit bottoms. One in khaki combats. They slowed to a halt some distance from the edge of the mountain. Turned towards me.
Acid attacked my sinuses as I lowered my nose into the pine litter. Unless you’ve caked it with cam cream, the shape of your face can give you away, and skin shines in the dark. If I knew stuff like that, maybe I wasn’t completely fucked.
I felt my gut heave and vomit flooded over my tongue. To me, it sounded like an earthquake. Had it to them? I tightened my hold on the pistol grip. Fought to swallow as I slowly raised my head.
But they didn’t move in. They bent to examine a trail of torn branches and scarred bark.
Were those lads on my side? Had they come to see if I was OK?
I kept eyes on them, hoping to catch sight of anything distinctive that might trigger some form of recognition. All I got to start with was footwear – hiking boots beneath the khaki, gleaming red and white trainers beneath the tracksuit. Then the occasional hand. The ones closest to me the colour of ebony. The furthest away tanned, white, a mat of dark hair sprouting from the backs of them, all the way down to the knuckles.
Nothing above the waist.
I followed the hands, looking out for a distinctive watch, a ring, a bracelet, a wristband … Though fuck knew how I’d hang on to the information if I did. No matter how hard I tried to focus on incoming sights and sounds, I could still feel them disappearing through the cracks in my brain.
No luck with the hands. These lads were bling free.
Then they stepped into the sunlight and looked over the precipice. I could see now that the shiny black tracksuit bottoms were topped off with a sleeveless Puffa jacket that matched the red of the trainers. The khaki combats went with a khaki shirt.
I could still see only bits of them, and from behind, but I could tell they liked whatever it was they saw. There was a lot of nodding and grunting and one clapping the other between the shoulder blades.
Wait a second …
A glint of silver. Khaki Combats did have a ring. A silver device in a red setting. A double eagle, maybe, but I couldn’t be sure. Albania is the land of the eagles. Why did I know that? An Albanian eagle?
I began to make out the odd word among the grunts. It wasn’t tourist chat. It was satisfaction at a job well done. It was how you reacted when you’d pushed a guy off a mountain, then confirmed the kill.
The lad closest to me – with the flash trainers and Puffa – was a very big unit. He was the one with hands the colour of ebony. And a headful of dreads.
A chunky gold bracelet slid out of his sleeve and hung around his wrist as they gave each other a huge high-five.
I could almost hear the cogs whirring inside my skull. I’d seen that boy in action before. But the where, when and how remained beyond my reach.
His mate was shorter and squarer. Not just dressed like a Hesco barrier. Built like one too. Something about his body language said he was the boss. He brought out his mobile, jabbed the speed dial and waffled into the mouthpiece. Either he was ordering himself a takeaway or he was sharing the good news.
Then, out of nowhere, words I recognized.
‘Yeah. You’re right. Fuck him. He got what he deserved.’
He cut the call, waved an arm then they both turned and tabbed back up the slope.
I never saw their faces.
3
As soon as they were out of sight I opened my mouth and listened. I needed to make sure they were well clear before I carried on trying to work out how the fuck I’d got into this shit.
I didn’t count backwards again. I couldn’t be arsed. When I could no longer hear voices and footsteps I started counting forwards instead. Much easier. And it helped me measure time and distance. I couldn’t move on until they were well gone.
I got to thirty. I was pretty sure I hadn’t missed any numbers out.
I moved on to sixty. It was slow work, but I was ridiculously pleased with myself. I felt a stupid smile spread across my cheeks.
I reached a ton and felt like cheering. I wasn’t firing on every single cylinder yet, but maybe my brain wasn’t terminally fucked after all.
I grabbed the day sack to check out what else was in there. Had I done that before? Probably. But there was only one way of finding out. I was about to put the Sphinx on the ground beside me when I heard another of those voices. ‘Pistols are always attached, you knob-head. On the body, or in the hand. You must keep control …’ No Russian accent. Jock, maybe. An instructor somewhere.
Control. Fuck. If that voice could see me now …
I hauled myself to my feet and tucked the barrel of the weapon into the front of my jeans, polymer grip within easy reach in case I had to draw down. These things don’t have a safety any more. They’re double action, so unless I did something really fucking stupid I wasn’t going to lose my bollocks as well as my marbles.
I peeled off my bomber jacket, spread it out on the ground and emptied the contents of the day sack on to the lining.
Clean shirt and boxers. Socks.
Compact Pentax 10x50 binoculars on a strap.
Titanium pen. UZI stamped on the barrel. It looked like you could use it to hijack an aircraft or fire it from a Rarden cannon. The top end, above the clip, had been designed to punch holes through toughened glass.
Disposable lighter.
Clear plastic Silva compass. Not a bombproof prismatic number with folding sights, one that you could put flat on a map.
Small bottle of mineral water.
A couple of second-hand Nokia mobiles, ten SIM cards and four battery packs.
But no ID.
&nbs
p; I was getting the strong impression I was the Invisible Man, but this was fucking outrageous. Even if I was on the holiday of a lifetime, I’d need ID.
And if I was on the holiday of a lifetime, I wouldn’t need a 9mm Sphinx and a spare mag.
I gave the day sack a good shake, then felt around in the lining and found a zipped compartment. Tucked inside was a wad of euros, a UK passport and photocard driving licence, both in the name of Nicholas Head. The Nick bit made sense. The Head bit made me frown. Nickhead. Was that my real name or some kind of joke?
I unscrewed the top of the mineral water. Got the lot down my neck. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d rehydrated. And the inside of my mouth needed all the help it could get.
I threw everything back into the sack, including the empty bottle, and slung it over my shoulder, then moved towards the track.
I did a three-sixty before stepping out beyond the treeline. My head was spinning a bit, but maybe that was because of the sunlight. Pretty much everything stayed in focus as I looked right, up the hill. No sign of anything moving except the gentle sway of the firs as they reached for the ribbon of sky.
There was a trail of snapped branches and gouges in their trunks, some flecked with blue vehicle paint, on both sides of the track. The turf between them had been chewed up by tyres. Parallel furrows slalomed about eight metres to my left, ending with a short stretch of churned earth and rock where the funnel narrowed. Then nothing.
I walked to the edge of what must have been a four-hundred-metre drop.
A buzzard rode the thermals below me.
Then rock.
More rock.
Pasture.
A river snaking through a valley.
Smoke billowed from a chunk of burning wreckage. I narrowed my eyes. Shielded them with my hand. Some kind of wagon. Smashed beyond recognition. But I knew with sudden certainty that it was a Nissan. A 4WD. And that Hesco and his black sidekick thought I was still behind the wheel.
Good. Perhaps they’d relax now and leave it at that. Perhaps they’d get careless. But that didn’t mean I could.
I turned back and followed the scars the Nissan’s tyres had ripped into the grass that carpeted the break between the trees. The gradient steepened as I went. Thank fuck I hadn’t a clue about my journey down. Was I even conscious? It must have been one hell of a ride.
I stopped short of the open ground and ducked into cover. I needed to check out the next tactical bound before making it. I knew that. Just like I knew the rules of concealment. Shape, shine, shadow, silhouette, spacing and movement are the shit that give you away. Two more lessons that must have been driven into me so deep they had become second nature.
I wove my way twenty or thirty paces through the wood, until I found a vantage-point with a clear view of the next three hundred and fifty metres of slope.
My eyes swept right to left and back again. Outcrops of bare rock, bald baby’s heads, were scattered randomly across the turf. A small furry creature appeared briefly beside one, sniffed the air, then made itself scarce.
No other bodies, no other sign of life in the territory that separated me from the place the tyre marks seemed to begin. Black-and-white-striped rods, spaced at regular intervals, stood proud of the crest to either side of it.
I guessed that was where the road must be.
I waited, listened and looked.
Still nothing.
I set off, running at the crouch. My head bounced around on my shoulders, like my neck had turned into a Slinky.
About fifty up, I doubled over and puked my guts out again. There was hardly anything there, but it seemed to take for ever to come out. Not good in open ground.
Once I’d stopped retching, I waited for my vision to clear. The splashes of watery puke by my boots were a world away from the multi-coloured explosions you see outside pubs and kebab shops: they were clear and shiny and flecked with brown. I kicked over the traces anyway.
About a hundred up, I had a clearer picture of my objective. A stretch of retaining wall to my half-left; thickly mortared stone, constructed to stop the tarmac throwing itself downhill. I paralleled the tyre tracks then veered left towards it. As I drew closer, I could see it was waist high, enough to give me cover. I stooped beside it and listened for vehicle engines and the crunch of boots on gravel and allowed my stomach to settle.
All I could hear was a siren. Somewhere behind me, a few Ks further down the valley. It wasn’t getting any louder.
I raised my head fractionally above the parapet and scanned beneath the safety barrier. There was no one in my field of vision in either direction. A two-lane blacktop that had been carved out of the rock face which towered above me. I was at the apex of a curve. Fragments of shattered glass glittered in the sunlight on the far side of it.
I skirted the stonework for a metre or two, then clambered on top of it. To my right, violent skid marks swerved across the white centre line, leading to a point, short of the barrier and beside another clump of trees, where the edge of the metalled surface had crumbled on to the turf.
This was where my rollercoaster had kicked off.
A sudden flashback …
I’m leading a two-car convoy. A shiny black SUV with darkened windows is behind me. I can see it in the rear-view. Then red lights fill the screen inside my head. A big fuck-off flatbed artic slamming on the anchors with zero warning.
A big fuck-off flatbed artic with a company name on the rear panel and an eagle logo on each mudguard.
The kind you’d expect to see clutching at a swastika.
I can hear the screech of tyres, see the smoke pouring out of the wheel arches. I can smell the burning brake fluid and bubbling rubber on the tarmac …
I could feel the sweat prickle in my armpits and groin and on the gash below my hairline. I could feel my shoulder muscles clench. But I tried to hang on to the image.
I needed to know what happened next.
4
The artic’s brake-lights faded, bleached by the sunlight. I hadn’t a clue where the SUV had gone.
But I could see another skid pattern on the tarmac now. Twin sets of parallel tracks – a wide-wheel-base monster – starting behind the first traces of the smaller vehicle’s attempt to avoid collision, and ending after its side exit from the highway.
I took a closer look at the nearest of the striped poles that lined the roadside, designed to keep winter drivers from taking the quickest route – my route – down the mountain. There was an ID code stamped on its paintwork, about a hand’s width from where it had been sunk into the verge. Then the manufacturer’s name: Adler Gesellschaft.
And a graphic of an eagle, with wings and talons outstretched.
I’d seen this shit before.
I fished the UZI pen out of my day sack and rolled back my left sleeve. I saw a pattern of raised, bite-sized scars just below my elbow. Guard dog. German Shepherd? Rottweiler? I had the vaguest recollection of one not liking me in another life.
Painfully slowly, I scrawled ‘Adler Gesellschaft’ on my skin, then did my best to draw the logo as well. The drawing was shit: it looked nothing like an eagle. But the cogs in my brain seemed to be moving up a gear. I knew that one of these missiles had been buried in my passenger seat.
I looked along the line of rods standing to attention at the roadside. There didn’t seem to be one missing. And even if it had been, there was no way it would have jumped up and hurled itself through my windscreen just for the hell of it. It had been launched off the flatbed. And some fucker must have helped it on its way.
I needed to find out who.
I needed to find out why.
And if I got half a chance, I’d plant the pointy end of one of those things – or something similar – in the middle of his fucking forehead.
I walked to the place my downhill adventure must have begun.
The ground fell away big-time from there. Going right or straight ahead, you’d leave the grass sharpish and the odd bit of shru
bbery clinging to the rock couldn’t stop a wagon launching itself off the precipice. That must have been the reason they’d chosen to force me off at this point. The wooded strip bottom-left offered the only safety barrier once you’d left the tarmac. And it didn’t look as big from here as I’d thought it was when I was hidden in it.
So what had happened to the SUV once it had melted away from my rear-view?
I turned back to the road. As far as I could see, it was still deserted. Both ways. It continued beyond the curve, heading up the mountain through a corridor of trees. There was no sign of the artic. Of course there wasn’t. After fucking me over, it would have kept on going.
I walked about fifty paces in the direction I must have driven from. To my left, the road hugged the hillside. To my right, there was another stretch of safety barrier. In the distance, the mouth of a tunnel bored into the mountain. I retraced my steps past the skid marks and carried on round the curve.
From there the tarmac snaked towards the trees. A hundred-metre length of heavy-duty wire mesh lined the scar that was left where it had been blasted out of the granite.
A signpost came into view, warning of a P half a K ahead. It didn’t tell me where the fuck I was, but it told me what language they spoke here. Beneath a graphic of a big white tyre with snow chains in a blue circle were the words ‘AIRE DE CHAÎNAGE’. So, France or Switzerland. Not Belgium. No mountains in Belgium.
Almost immediately, the bank of firs sheltered the left side of the main. I could see a gravelled area to my right, tucked into a fold in the rock. And another tunnel a half-K beyond it.
As I got closer to the turn-off I heard the sound of rushing water. I left the verge and took to the trees. It was slower going here because of the steepness of the slope and the uneven footing, but I didn’t want to be caught in the open. I dropped down below the level of the road.
I stopped for a moment to draw breath. My head wasn’t pounding any more, but my heart was, and my gut ached. Fuck it, I’d worry about that later if I needed to. Right now I had to keep going. I did my best to avoid the tangle of roots and dead branches that littered the slope, but slid from time to time on loose scree.
