‘Runner?’ I ask.
‘Mmh?’ he hums from the hollow of his hammock.
‘You know…the night I came storming through the snow, ready to stick a knife between your ribs? I’m ashamed I even thought you were… I don’t even know how you could forgive such a thing so quickly.’ My voice fades. Pale blue and orange shimmer through the trees where the sun will soon crawl over the mountains.
‘There was nothing to forgive. You showed great courage, even though you were terrified, shaken to the bone. You wanted to save my daughter. And you still do.’ He falls silent and I think of that night, and the following morning when he washed my feet to apologise. I still don’t understand what it was he apologised for.
You know,’ he says softly, ‘that was one of the two main reasons I took you as an apprentice.’
‘I can guess the other,’ I answer. That could only have been the days I dragged the Runner-tent-noodle through the snow and we almost didn’t make it.
‘Yeah…,’ he whispers. ‘Sleep now, Micka. The sun is rising.’
‘Good night,’ I mumble, roll into a ball, and pull the blanket over my eyes. I think of Cacho and wonder what insults Kat will slap at him when he calls. But I don’t get far theorising. The gentle wind rocks the trees and my exhausted body to sleep.
Leaves dance in the wind, owls hoot and laugh and screech. Cicadas play their tiny percussions, click click click. The forest sings and teems with life. The greys and greens of my night-vision goggles push the musical flavours of the woods into a harsher and colder spectrum. Softly, I smack my lips and blink.
My legs work automatically, placing one foot in front of the other, pushing on and farther up the gathering slopes. No need to think much, just keep going, stay on Runner’s heels. He’s grown tired by now — his gait has lost its spring. We’ve been hiking through dense vegetation, climbing rocks and fallen trees the past five hours. We’ve made good headway, though. The target is within our reach.
Within reach. As if I wanted to go there. With every step, my stomach tightens more. When Runner drops his ruck and unfolds the tarp to make camp, I’m drenched in sweat, my nerves ready to snap.
He tips his head at me, takes in the trembling of my hands, the stiffness of my shoulders. He is about to take a step forward, maybe to offer help with my ruck or to say a few reassuring words. I raise my hands, blocking his approach. He nods acknowledgement and says quietly, ‘All we’ll do the next few days is observe the camp and prepare our hideouts. We’ll fire only in emergencies. Let’s eat, drink, and rest a few minutes. Then, we’ll get to work.’
Get to work. Why does that sound so wrong?
Although I’m starving, I can barely get my food down. What is it anyway? I look at the bowl. Fruit we picked on the way, chestnuts baked a day ago, a few nuts. No meat. We’re close to the enemy. The enemy. Target. Reconnaissance. Strange, how my vocabulary changes simply by walking in one direction and not in another.
Runner extracts the SatPad from a side pocket of his ruck. I know our plan by heart, but going through every single step one more time calms me; it’s like a mantra assuring me that there’ll be no surprises.
His fingers draw a straight line from the crest we’ll reach tomorrow, across the river to the BSA camp on the opposite side of the gorge. The forest behind the camp is where we’re heading now. It dips a few metres below the camp’s highest point of elevation and that makes it hard to observe from the crest. Our plan is to scan this area for guards, hideouts, weapons, and escape routes. We also want to know where we can best dig our own hideouts and plan our own escape routes.
The tip of Runner’s index finger comes to a halt at our current location. It’s my turn now.
‘We hike until we’re a kilometre from the camp and hide our rucks. I’ll cover your back while you approach up to here.’ I point to a location two hundred metres from the camp. ‘When all’s clear, you give the signal and I’ll follow, get in position here, and you’ll be either here or there. Surveillance until nightfall — that’ll be something like twenty hours.’
‘Good.’ He nods at me. ‘What if we’re discovered?’
‘Open fire. Bring down the targets. Retreat and meet where we left our rucks.’
‘What if they open fire first?’
‘Er… does that change our plan in any way?’ I ask perplexed.
‘No, it doesn’t. What if one of us is injured? What if they rigged the forest floor and one of us steps on a trigger?’
‘Well…’ I swallow. ‘If there’s anything left of you, I’ll get you out of there, same as last time, but without the tent wrappings.’
Runner chuckles and places a hand on my shoulder. ‘Are you ready?’
Since I have no clue how it feels to be ready for this kind of shit, I can only shrug.
‘Can I trust you, Micka?’ he asks.
‘You can. Do you want me to walk into this without thought?’
He frowns. ‘No, of course not.’
‘How did it feel, your first time?’
He opens his mouth and closes it again, as if he were about to dictate something he’d prepared for this occasion: for a question likely to be asked by people who have never had to kill someone; strangers who might be fascinated by the aura of the predator. He cocks his head as he usually does when he’s digging through his memories.
‘I hardly had time to think about it,’ he begins, his gaze directed at a place far behind me. ‘I was in an occupied city. Bullets were zipping past us, the BSA was shelling us and the shit was hitting the fan. There was only one thing I could do. I killed more than twenty men that night. The feelings of shame, guilt, emptiness — those came later, much later, when I was back in my own bunk, surrounded by my own people. When I was safe, it all came down.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I wept.’
‘For the men you shot?’
‘No. For my mother and my sister. Now, I had the power, skills, and knowledge to save them, but I was too late — by years.’
He plops the last chestnut into his mouth and scans me from head to toe. ‘All weapons and ammo on your body? Your rifle loaded?’
I nod. Of course, it is. His questions feel like insults.
‘Good. Rub dirt on your face and on the back of your hands. You are too white.’
Now, I do feel like an idiot, but I tell myself he’s just lecturing me because he feels responsible. I do as he directs and darken the patches of skin that have been rubbed clean during the hike. My knees are about to buckle when I hump my pack, but I manage to take a step forward. And another. It gets easier; as if I’m practicing to walk into death.
I fall into step behind Runner until we are only one kilometre from the BSA camp. We hide our rucks under a pile of twigs and leaves, and I climb a tree and scan the area.
‘All clear,’ I whisper.
‘See you soon,’ he answers and moves forward in a low crouch.
Fear creeps in when he’s out of my sight. At the corners of my vision, trees turn into armies, branches into rifles. I blink and focus on the circular view of night-eye and scope.
‘All clear. You can come now, Micka. Straight ahead, eight hundred metres,’ he speaks through my earbud.
Awash with contradicting thoughts and emotions — forward is where Runner is, but it’s also where the enemy is — I make my way down and approach the camp copying Runner’s crouch.
‘You just passed me,’ he whispers. ‘Five metres behind you.’
I trace my steps back and find him flat on the ground, scanning the area with his scope. We’re close, very close to the BSA: two hundred metres between my very mortal body and their submachine guns and explosives. I’ve never felt so vulnerable. My heart hammers in my throat when Runner points me up a tree and signs to me that he’ll creep forward and will need cover. The sudden urge to have him by my side overwhelms me. Don’t go! I’m about to say. But that wouldn’t serve our purpose at all.
Breathing slow and deep t
o settle my nerves, I choose a thick branch as my hideout, position my rifle and gaze through the scope. No movements. I scan our surroundings a second and a third time, but see no one. ‘All clear,’ I whisper. And boy, am I glad no one moves. They can stay in their camp and never show up, if I get a say in the matter.
Runner crawls closer to the camp; he looks like a small elevation among the leaves, clumps of grass, and twigs. And then, he vanishes completely.
‘All clear, here,’ he speaks through my earbud. ‘You can come. Eleven o’clock, straight line.’
Silently, I slip down the mighty trunk watching my feet so as not to step on a twig. I watch all shadows, the movements of foliage in the breeze, the flitting-past of a small rodent. My ears are wide open, and now the earbud bothers me, because my right side is muffled and feels half-blind. The blaring birds and crickets serve as some kind of sonar — I map their location and know that right where they produce noise, the place is void of men with guns.
I come to a halt next to Runner and almost explode with pride. ‘Am I that visible?’ he whispers.
‘No, but you are an excellent teacher. Surveillance next?’
‘Yes. Use this tree; I’ll move two hundred metres to your right.’
I nod and scale the trunk. Runner is already gone when I settle on a branch roughly ten metres above the ground. My night-vision goggles show me the surroundings crisp and clear. No movements on either side of me, but there are dim lights ahead where the camp is. My skin begins to itch at the thought of Erik.
‘In position,’ I hear Runner say. ‘What do you see?’
‘Give me a minute.’
I push the goggles off my face, lay my cheek against the gun’s stock and gaze through the night-eye. The camp is right ahead; a few of the huts and tents are lit inside — possible oil lamps judging from the colour, the thermal signature, and the size of the light source. The large dark rectangles are still there at the centre of the camp. No noticeable changes since we dropped the camera. No movements. I tell Runner what I see, then again make sure there’s no guard close by and the foliage above me is thick enough. Odd, how quickly one adapts to the constant threat of being seen from space. The small silvery dots moving across the night sky are easy enough to detect — satellites orbiting Earth at high speed. But the human brain doesn’t notice how the sky moves aside slowly, while all geostationary satellites stay where they are, remaining unnoticeable to us. To me, stars have lost their beauty.
The hairs on the back of my neck are constantly pricked. My ears are straining for the smallest sound, and the soft crackling from the earbud is almost hurting my brain. Every faint noise from the BSA camp accelerates my heart to a loud pounding; I can even feel the blood surging through my fingertips.
Thick fog begins to waft through the forest an hour before sunrise. My night-eye automatically cranks up the infrared signal because the image amplification can’t see through fog. Sweat beads on my forehead when light-green shapes step out of the camp and into the forest.
‘Two guards at twelve o’clock, five metres from the sandbag wall,’ I whisper. Runner answers by tapping the earbud once.
Mesmerised, I watch them leaning back against a tree. One man lights a cigarette. It flares up like a torch in my finder. I blink and hear another tap in my earbud. ‘Yes?’ I whisper before realising he taps because he can’t speak.
‘Do you want me to change position?’
Two taps. That means no. Oh shit, I asked the wrong question. ‘If I can only tap to alert you, always ask first, if you are in immediate danger. Second question is, if I am in immediate danger and need help. Third question is, if we must retreat.’ That’s what he taught me.
‘Someone close by?’ I grab my rifle harder.
One tap.
Fuck.
I scan the area, but the only men I see are the two guards smoking close to the wall. My breath comes in sharp bursts, my vision flickers. Breathe, Micka, I tell myself. Breathe.
Fidgeting won’t get me anywhere but shot. Pressing myself as flat as possible against the branch, I scan my surroundings again. Nothing.
‘Do you need help?’ I whisper to make sure he’s okay.
Two taps.
‘Are we retreating?’
Two taps. With that, I’m out of questions.
Then, a series of taps sounds in my earbud. Nine taps. That means nine o’clock. Odd, because that’s where I checked only moments ago. Slowly, I shift and bring my rifle in position. The night-eye shows me nothing but shrubs and trees. A few birds begin their morning songs and soon the air is filled with their blaring. The fog is thickening even more now, covering the forest floor and everything that grows only five or six metres tall. And then I see it — a subtle movement not twenty metres away from me. There’s a leg folded casually over the other, his back is leaning against the tree, a rifle pointed to the ground. I’m in full view of a BSA guard and I didn’t even notice him.
‘Thank you,’ I breathe.
One tap.
That leaves only one other question.
‘Do you want me to engage the target?’ I can’t bring myself to ask if I’m to kill a man. Target sounds much easier. Target isn’t human.
Two taps. I exhale a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
When we climb the last twenty metres to the crest, there’s no tiredness in my bones. I’ve been so close to the enemy and they had no idea I was there. I’ve never been so happy to be alive. I feel like a conquerer, survivor, warrior, all in one. My chest seems too small to contain all these personalities. I can’t stop grinning, my cheeks hurt, and Runner tries not to laugh at me.
He drops his ruck, and crawls to the edge of the cliff. I join him and we scan the gorge, and the crest with the BSA camp on the other side, through our night-eyes.
Odd, how different the camp looks from here — protected by a sheer rock wall that sharply drops down to a river about five hundred metres below us; a death trap. The clearing, with its tents, huts, weapons, and sandbag wall, lies sheltered in the arms of the thick forest Runner and I left just before midnight.
We keep our scopes trained at the camp until, not half an hour later, the first sunlight touches the canopy.
‘Retreat,’ Runner says, and we crawl back to our rucks. ‘They picked a good spot, but it has two main problems. One: access to water is cumbersome. Two: they can’t see us and it’ll take them a long time to reach us by foot. As long as we don’t give away our location, they have no reason to fire the rocket launcher in our direction.’
Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. The main problem with our location is that the BSA can blast the entire crest off the map and us with it. No craftsmanship needed; just some rough pointing with one of their big guns.
While I extract the last two handfuls of roasted chestnuts from my ruck, Runner says, ‘The distance to the nearest hut is eight hundred and thirty metres. Within your shooting range. We can pick them off like ripe plums.’
‘Which would give away our location,’ I say.
‘That might be part of our plan. Hmm. I’ll think about it.’ He sounds as if I’d made a suggestion. But all I do is chew my dry chestnuts and stifle yawn after yawn. Exhaustion hit half a minute ago and it feels as if a wall has come down on me.
We debrief, drawing lines on the forest map of Runner’s SatPad, marking locations of the guards and where we’ve set our feet or prone bodies — all proven clear of explosives. No one has seen us, and no one seems to have guessed their heads were in our crosshairs. They’ll be pretty surprised fairly soon.
When I yawn the umpteenth time and a piece of food drops from my mouth, Runner says, ‘Sleep now. I’ll wake you in four hours.’
———
A hand touches my shoulder and I jerk awake.
‘Breakfast.’ He nods towards a ditch covered by pines. Smoke curls up in small and pale wisps; it travels along the tarp and netting cover and slowly thins, disappearing into the treetops.
He briefs me
when we sit down to eat a bird he must have shot earlier. The meat is tough and weasels itself in between my teeth.
‘I counted fifty-six men and thirteen children aged approximately eight to fourteen — two of them are mothers. All individuals are armed at all times.’ He pulls his ruck closer and places the SatPad on it. ‘Here’s the layout; camp, cliff, forest. I’ve measured the distances and adjusted the position of the wall and the buildings.’
He must have spent more than an hour switching quickly between SatPad and the IR laser of his scope. As Runner talks, his fingers point and slide across the screen. I can see the wall of sandbags in my mind’s eye and on screen. There are a few details that I didn’t notice last night.
‘Erik exited this hut at oh seven hundred. He doesn’t appear to have slept tonight. Several men exited these tents and huts here between oh six hundred and oh seven hundred.’
He describes the movements in the camp with precision: who left when, where the guards were located at what time of the morning, and what weapons they carried. ‘I’ll sleep now,’ he says. ‘Wake me in four hours. Keep track of who’s doing what and when. Pay special attention to the outer areas of the camp, areas in the forest everyone seems to be avoiding — those might be rigged. Try to find patterns in their actions, and anything that’s outside these patterns.’
‘Okay,’ I answer and fetch my toothbrush.
‘I’d also like to know if all of their heavy weaponry is under these tarps or if they have more hidden somewhere else. I want to know where they keep the explosives and if they move them — watch the kids, they’ll give it away. I want to know if what’s underneath that tarp really is a helicopter, and where they store the fuel. Erik kept his SatPad on him at all times; maybe he doesn’t trust his men; I need to know this. It’d be too good to be true.’ He touches his knuckles to my shoulder, crawls into his hammock, and covers it with a blanket to shut out the light. I spit my tooth powder on the ground and toe a bit of soil over it. My rifle leans against my ruck. I pick it up, grab a canteen and my ghillie, and make my way to the edge of the crest.
Fog: The Climate Fiction Saga Page 12
