by Bear Grylls
James paused.
‘It was like a revelation to me that morning on my own. I suddenly realized that I felt a peace and a happiness I’d never felt before. Despite it all.’
He paused again, as if searching for the right words.
‘Here I was, on my own . . . with time to think it all through. For myself. I worked hard, I stayed alive – and the truth is, it was the first proper work I’d ever done. And I had no pressure. No one forcing me to be something I didn’t really want to be. No one telling me it didn’t matter if a person died as long as Lumos thrived. In other words . . .’
He trailed off and didn’t finish the sentence. Beck mentally filled in the blanks. In other words, no poison from his mother.
‘I still miss her,’ James said quietly, as if Beck had said it out loud. ‘I mean, she was my mother. You don’t get over that, do you?’
Beck shook his head.
James was quiet for a moment before resuming his story. ‘Life is ugly sometimes. But we only get one chance and I wanted to live my life right. Not wrong. So, when a plane eventually saw the big SOS I’d marked out on the beach – that was another of your tips, remember? – I realized that I had a choice to make. Live her way or my way. Live wrong or live right.’
‘So, what were you going to do about Lumos?’ Beck asked.
James paused. ‘I didn’t have a clue. But I knew I wanted to live differently.’
Suddenly his smile became warm again as he looked over at Ian. ‘And I knew that Ian could help us.’ He paused. ‘Go on – tell him about yourself, Ian.’
Chapter 46
Ian grimaced. Beck guessed he was not the kind of guy who liked to use unnecessary words.
‘I worked for Abby, James’s mother, when James was just a little kid,’ he said. ‘She and I – we got close. We even thought of getting married. But I didn’t like the direction her life was taking, and I wanted to keep James out of it.’ He turned to James and there was a momentary softening in his hard-guy features. ‘He was a nice kid . . . And so she showed me the door. But James and I – we stayed in touch.’
James waited for a while, but it became clear that this was all Ian planned to say. So he shrugged and continued with the story himself. ‘I told Ian everything that had happened, and he agreed to help.’
Beck thought of how he and Ian had first met in the shanty town, Ian roaring up in the black Jeep and trying to drag him away.
‘You have a really funny way of helping.’
Both Ian and James narrowed their eyes slightly.
‘Funny or not, kid, we saved your life. And your uncle’s,’ Ian said.
‘When? In the shanty town?’
‘In London,’ James told him. ‘Ian was still with Lumos even if he wasn’t working for my mother. He heard that Granddad was planning the big one.’
‘The big one?’
‘The hit,’ said Ian, ‘that would take you out once and for all. They’d tried the clever stuff – remember, the whole Caribbean thing was about disgracing you as well as getting you out of the way, so everyone would forget you . . . Well, Mr Blake decided he’d had enough pussyfooting about. He was sending some guys in with guns. Middle of the night, kick your door down – bang, bang, bang – and that would be that.’
‘And so I had to get you out of there,’ said James. ‘I lured you to South Africa.’
‘You could have just warned us,’ Beck pointed out.
‘And make it clear to Granddad that someone had tipped you off? Nah. It had to be obvious that you were leaving of your own accord. The plan was to get you here and kidnap you in front of witnesses, and then make it appear that you’d been killed – and then we could have the little chat we’re having now. But, of course, you had to make things difficult by detouring to the shanty town, and then getting kidnapped by poachers . . .’
‘We went through plan A, plan B and plan C,’ Ian said. For the first time, he almost smiled. ‘You were hard to find. Especially after you broke the tracking device. After that, I kind of enjoyed the challenge. Tracking you the old-fashioned way. Like a hunter and its prey.’
‘Right . . .’ Not so long ago, Beck and his friend Brihony had been tracking a man across the Australian Outback. It was hard work and frustrating – but, yes, it was fun too, when you looked back on it. Though he didn’t particularly like being described as prey.
‘So what’s this? Plan D?’
‘I suppose it must be,’ said James. ‘I wasn’t really keeping count. Lumos really does think you’re dead – or they will do when Ian reports back that he saw the wild dogs tear you apart.’
‘Blood, screams . . .’ Ian grinned. ‘Horrible, it was. Mr Blake will love it.’
Suddenly the smile vanished and he peered into the distance. He began to remove a pair of binoculars from a case at his belt.
James kept talking. ‘You’re out of the way and off their radar. Which means that we can work together and get back at them once and for all. What do you think?’
Wow, was what Beck thought. He sat back and let it all sink in.
But it wasn’t sinking in. The simple fact was, he still didn’t trust James. He knew from bitter experience that James could tie himself into knots with his lies, and make it all look so easy. Why should things suddenly be any different now? The fact that this was what Beck wanted to hear made it doubly suspicious.
‘So why should I trust you?’ he demanded.
James’s face fell, like Beck had just kicked his puppy.
But Beck needed to be sure. So far, James had told him a good tale. Now he needed proof.
‘Uh-oh,’ Ian said suddenly. He was looking through his binoculars. ‘Company. And not the good sort.’
Beck and James both scrambled to their feet and strained their eyes to see what it was. The horizon was too dark now to make out any detail, but Beck could dimly hear the sound of engines revving as they lurched across the grass.
‘Rangers?’ James asked.
‘Not in beat-up bangers like those. Nope. I think it’s Beck’s poacher friends.’
Chapter 47
‘What?’ James exclaimed. ‘No way! They can’t still be after him!’
‘They’re not after me,’ Beck muttered. The small force approaching was not just a couple of poachers looking out for a pair of annoying kids. This was a miniature army, out for revenge. ‘They’re after the guy who shot up their camp. You’d have been a whole lot easier to follow, in your Jeep.’
‘Yeah. Sorry about that.’ Ian didn’t sound sorry as he put the binos away.
Beck watched as if in a dream as he slowly unslung his gun and began to raise it. ‘No!’
Ian paused and cocked an eyebrow at Beck.
‘You want us to work together?’ Beck snapped. ‘Then you follow my rules, and one of them is: no killing!’
‘Not even guys who are trying to kill you?’ Ian asked.
‘Not even.’
Ian slung the rifle back over his shoulder and sighed. ‘Anyway, I can’t take them all.’ He scanned the group of rocks quickly. ‘And we can’t hold this position. OK, survival boy, what’s your alternative?’
There were very few. Beck peered across the veld and his eyes lighted on the clump of trees he had seen earlier.
‘Run,’ he said. ‘And hide.’
The trees were further away than Beck had thought – maybe two hundred metres. His legs had barely recovered from his life-saving dash earlier. He actually found himself trailing behind James and Ian as they pelted for cover.
‘Did they see us?’ James gasped.
‘Doubt it,’ Ian grunted. ‘We’d have been in the shadow. Come on, Beck!’
The poachers were approaching from the east, and the sun was setting in the west. They would have been looking into the bright light of the sunset and would hopefully have just seen the rocks and them as a black, featureless mass.
‘But they’ll soon find the Jeep,’ Ian added, ‘and they’ll know we’re around here somewhere
.’
They kept the rocks between them and the poachers, and staggered to a halt once they were under cover of the leaves. They hid behind slender tree trunks and peered back.
The poachers had encircled the rocks with their vehicles; men were swarming about. It would only be a matter of time before one of them thought of checking the trees. And sure enough, Beck saw faces looking their way. He quickly pulled back. There were no shouts, no signs of urgency, so he hadn’t been seen. But when he checked again, the men were already making their way over.
‘Fall back,’ Ian ordered. Beck and James didn’t need telling twice, and they withdrew further into the trees.
They soon came to the centre, where the trees had grown up around what used to be a water hole. It had partially dried up and was now just a muddy bog.
The sounds of pursuit were getting closer. They could hear men’s voices now.
‘OK,’ Ian said. He unslung the rifle again. ‘Here’s what we do. You two, just run. I’ll hold them off. I can duck and dodge and make them think I’m a small army – maybe I can slow them—’
‘They’ll kill you!’ James said, aghast.
Ian shrugged. ‘It comes to us all—’
‘No one’s getting killed!’ Beck snapped. ‘We hide, that’s all.’ He crouched down at the edge of the mud.
‘What, climb another tree?’ Ian asked sardonically. ‘Or just dig a hole?’
‘Climb another tree,’ Beck said. He straightened up with a handful of thick, sticky mud that smelled richly of earth and rotting plants. He dug a finger into it and wiped it across his face, just as he had done that morning with Samora. ‘Camouflaged.’
James looked at the mud with distaste, but he slowly reached out for it.
Ian’s eyes lit up with approval. ‘Nice one.’ He scooped up a handful and turned to James. ‘I’ll do you.’
Beck concentrated on himself while Ian took care of James, smearing dark lines over the front of the boy’s beige T-shirt. ‘This’ll stand out like a beacon.’ He slapped a lump of mud into James’s hands. ‘Do your legs too.’
While James did that, Ian took care of his own face.
By then, Beck had already found a tree and was halfway up it. James followed, scrambling up with a boost from below from Ian.
‘We shouldn’t stick together. I’ll find another,’ Ian said, moving off.
Beck and James looked at each other silently through the gloom. Beck lay along one branch; James crouched at the point where the branch met the trunk. Being alone with the boy who had once wanted to kill him – and, for all Beck knew, still did – was a very strange experience.
James’s eyes were wide and trusting, and Beck so badly wanted to believe his story. But he also knew what a good actor James was.
He was torn between wanting to keep an eye on James and watching out for the poachers – which meant turning his back on the other boy. Finally he decided that the poachers were more dangerous, and so he turned round and lay on the branch, looking down at the ground.
And saw the men entering the clearing.
Chapter 48
The poachers stopped at the edge of the trees, and slowly spread out. They moved around the edge of the muddy hole, rifles held out in front of them, peering into shadows beneath bushes and branches.
Beck stayed absolutely still. Any kind of movement could be a giveaway. He wished he had thought to mention that to James.
He had never had to put such faith in camouflage before. Would it work? Would it really work? James was right next to him, and he didn’t look hidden. He looked like a medium-sized teenage boy with mud smeared all over his face.
But what would he look like from a few metres away, blending into the shadows of leaves and branches? That was what mattered.
The men below talked quietly. Even though he didn’t speak Portuguese, Beck could easily translate one tense phrase: ‘Ele está armado.’ He is armed. The man sounded nervous, and with reason. It was one thing to be on the trail of prey. It was another to know that your prey had a gun, was somewhere nearby, and could probably see you, while you couldn’t see him.
The poachers below them weren’t the only ones around. Beck could hear others moving through the trees. His heart pounded as a man came into view directly beneath him. Beck could have reached down with a stick and knocked his hat off.
James shifted. A minute piece of bark was dislodged; it dropped right next to the man’s feet.
He paused and scanned the area around him.
And then he moved away again.
The camouflage had worked.
The poachers searched for close to an hour. The sun had set and the trees were now lit by moonlight. Their task of finding three camouflaged fugitives had gone from difficult to near-impossible. Beck could hear their voices getting louder and angrier. He wondered what interesting Portuguese swear words he would have learned if he could understand them.
And then, abruptly, the men were gone. A few shouted orders, and they were pulling back. They disappeared into the trees, and Beck could hear them tramping away.
James prodded Beck’s foot to get his attention, then pointed down at the ground, eyebrows raised to make it a question. Shall we get down?
Beck was pleased that he’d had the sense to keep quiet. Maybe the poachers were only pretending, trying to lure them down . . . He shook his head. Better to give it a bit longer.
But then he saw Ian coming towards them, dappled in the moonlight. He looked up at the tree next to them. ‘They’ve gone,’ he told the leaves above his head.
‘Over here,’ James said from their tree, and started to climb down.
There were no shouts, no sounds of gunfire. And so Beck scrambled back along his branch and followed James down to the ground.
‘It worked!’ James’s face seemed to shine like the moon above. ‘It really worked! It was brilliant!’
Ian clapped Beck on the shoulder. ‘Good work, kid. Now, where were we—’
A strange, foreign, man-made scent reached Beck’s nostrils. His nose wrinkled. ‘Hey, can you smell—’
Whoomph.
A sheet of fire flashed up beyond the trees. It raced away in either direction, orange light flickering through the leaves. In only a few seconds, the trees were completely engulfed by flames. The African nightlife of birds and insects set up an angry squall in protest.
‘– petrol,’ Beck finished.
The poachers must have splashed their fuel cans all around the edge of the trees, and then thrown a match in. If they couldn’t find their prey, they were going for the next best thing. They were going to burn them out instead.
Beck, James and Ian were caught in the middle of a ring of fire.
Chapter 49
Even in the firelight, Ian looked pale.
‘Not good. What do we do now?’
‘Could we wait it out?’ James asked. He stood at the edge of the bog. ‘It won’t burn for ever, and this bit won’t burn at all. There’s no vegetation.’
He was right – the flames wouldn’t reach them in the middle of the patch of mud. But fire wasn’t the only thing they had to worry about. Beck could smell the other enemy in the air. It was already rasping at the back of his throat.
‘No, but they’ll come right up to the edge, and we’ll choke on the smoke. We have to get out.’
He had done this once before, on an exercise. In a natural forest, full of dead wood and leaves, even the smallest fire could turn into a wild, out-of-control blaze. There were places around the world where they set controlled fires every couple of years to get rid of the natural tinder. He and Al had visited Georgia, in the US, where Al had been speaking to locals about conserving a plantation of rare wood. On one of their days off, Al had talked the local firefighters into taking him and Beck along on a controlled burn exercise. It had been an eye-opening experience and Beck desperately tried to recall what he had learned.
He turned a complete circle, studying the fire on all sides as the wa
rm breeze blew into his face. The heat of the flames meant that air was rising faster than normal – which in turn meant that fresh air was rushing in from all sides. And that just fanned the flames further and made them even hotter . . .
The Americans had taught him to head for a patch that was already burned. It wouldn’t burn again. Unfortunately, that was all on the other side of the flames. They still had to get through them.
There. The flames across the clearing looked a little darker, a little lower . . . All they needed was a small break in the trees so that they could reach that spot – not something you would notice without a fire to show it.
‘We’ll head that way,’ Beck said, pointing. He ran his eyes quickly over to the other two. ‘Are either of you wearing anything artificial? Anything that isn’t one hundred per cent cotton?’
‘This . . .’ Ian fingered his khaki shirt.
‘Then take it off. Artificial fabric can melt – it’s like burning plastic sticking to your skin.’
Ian started to strip down to his vest.
‘James?’
‘Nope, all natural.’ Then, to Beck’s surprise, James crouched down and scooped up a handful of mud and slimy water in both hands. He dropped the contents on top of his head, smearing them over his face and working them into his hair. ‘We need protection, don’t we,’ he said, a little indistinctly as he was trying to keep his mouth closed. ‘The mud will protect our skin . . .’
‘Good thinking,’ Beck said. James really had been learning about survival . . . and doing his own research – Beck hadn’t taught him that trick. ‘In fact, smear it all over.’ Beck smiled at James through the smoke. ‘You know you want to!’
Beck lay down and rolled over several times. The mud was cold and slick, but he could feel it caking him from head to foot. Like James, he rubbed it over his head and face.
‘You too, Ian . . .’
And then they were ready – three mud-caked figures, poised to make a break for it.
