Crisis Four

by Andy McNab

  There didn’t seem to be any other activity, but then again, if the police were switched on I’d be very lucky to ping them. It was decision time: I could either get her out and complete the task, or let her get carried away and drown. Then it hit me that there was a third option. She could be swept away and survive.

  I looked around for a branch that was long enough to do the job. It didn’t have to be strong, just long. Jumping up, I grasped one with both hands and pulled down with all my weight. Water sluiced onto me from the leaves. The branch snapped. I twisted and pulled, and it finally parted from the tree. I didn’t bother stripping it of its smaller branches, just headed down towards the bank.

  I stopped to pull off first my boots, then my jeans. For a moment I fantasized that maybe I could be doing the world a great service here. Maybe London knew that she was going to be the next Hitler. Then my jacket came off and the wind bit into me. What the fuck was I doing, freezing cold in the back of beyond, with the police after me, taking my kit off to save a woman’s life just so I could kill her somewhere else? I gave myself another reality check. ‘Shut the fuck up, Stone. It’s pointless honking, you know it has to be done.’

  I secured my weapon and the contents of my jeans in the bag and put it back over my shoulder. With my boots back on, but my jeans and jacket in my hands, I left the canopy and ran out towards the bridge. I must have looked like someone doing a runner after being caught in bed with another man’s wife.

  As I hit the railway sleepers that made up the walkway, I could see her still playing the limpet, the current pushing her head against the support as she fought to keep it out of the river.

  She saw me. ‘Nick, Nick. I’m here . . . here!’

  As if I didn’t know. I leaned over the handrail. ‘Shut up!’ I had to holler above the noise of the water as I started to pass down the end of one jeans leg, knotted to help her grip. The other was tied to one of the sleeves of my jacket. I could never remember the name of the knot. If I’d wanted to know it I would have joined the Navy. The other sleeve also had a knot at the end, to help me.

  ‘Take the jeans end only,’ I shouted. ‘Now listen to me, OK?’

  She looked up, shaking the water from her face. Her eyes kept flicking towards the knotted jeans leg that was her lifeline. They were wide with fear.

  I kept hold of the knotted sleeve as I dangled the material so that it would be easy for her to get hold of, yet still keep in contact with the support. Her teeth made contact with the material first and she bit down, turning her head to bring it closer to her hands. Once there I could see by the determination in her expression that she wasn’t going to let go.

  ‘Sarah, look at me.’ I wanted her to understand exactly what was expected of her. When people flap they nod and agree to everything without really understanding what’s being said. ‘I’m going to drop the rest of this lot into the water, and retrieve it on the other side of the bridge. When I shout, I want you to let go of the support and just hold on to the jeans. Got it?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Hurry.’

  ‘Here goes.’ I checked again to see if anyone was watching, then I threw the rest of the makeshift rope under the bridge.

  I switched to the other side, lying on my stomach on the sleepers and leaning down. My jacket was snaking from side to side in the current. Looking back upstream under the bridge, I could see her coughing and spitting out water, only to take another mouthful.

  Moving the branch down into the water, I made contact on the third attempt and pulled up the free end of the rope. Wrapping the knotted end round my wrist, I braced myself against the wood supporting the handrail, ready to take the strain. I could no longer see her.

  ‘Now, Sarah. Now!’

  She must have let go and the current swept her under the span. There was an almighty jolt, then what felt like the world’s biggest dog pulling on its lead. I held on to the jacket sleeve like a man possessed.

  ‘Kick, Sarah. Kick.’

  She didn’t need telling twice. The combination of her efforts and the pendulum effect of the current swept her in towards the bank like a hooked fish.

  I got to my feet and managed to reel in two more twists of the jacket, taking a few steps towards the end of the bridge. By the time I reached the bank I had hands full of jeans. I dropped to the ground above her and we linked arms. She didn’t need to be told what to do next. I heaved and rolled and she used my body as a climbing frame. A moment later and she was lying beside me on solid ground.

  I thanked whichever guardian angel was looking over me that day.

  She was coughing and fighting for breath. She wasn’t going to be in any condition to help herself for a little while, and we had to get away from here. I hauled myself to my feet, bent down and scooped her up in a fireman’s lift over my shoulder. I picked up the knotted jeans and jacket as I moved off, staggering more than running into the trees. I needed us to be out of sight of the helicopter, and to find some shelter.

  Ahead of me was a steep rise. I put her down while I got some breath back. I was shivering violently, and Sarah moaned as she, too, fought the cold and shock. I wanted to get beyond the rise into another lot of dead ground, so we couldn’t be seen from the other side of the river.

  Her head lolled over my shoulder, her face close to mine. I was looking straight ahead and focusing on the trees, but I still heard the words. ‘Thank you, Nick.’ I tilted my head towards her and did my best to shrug. It felt strange to be thanked like this, and for the second time.

  Safely inside the tree line, I stopped and helped her to the ground. I turned away and leaned against a tree, my lungs greedily sucking in air. ‘Can you manage on your own?’ I asked.

  To my surprise, the reply came from very close. I felt her hand on my shoulder as she said, ‘I can do it. Let’s go.’

  I moved off with her following, over the rise and onto dead ground. We couldn’t be seen from the opposite bank any more, but we still needed cover from the air and the biting wind. It wasn’t as strong as last night, but wind-chill could really slow us down after what we’d just been through.

  Normally, when looking for shelter from the elements, the last place you want to be is in a valley bottom or a deep hollow, because hot air rises, but we needed the cover. We also needed to try and find a place where we could preserve what little body warmth we had left, and away from the noise of the river so I could listen out for pursuers.

  As I bustled her through the canopy, needles pushed themselves sharply into my face, and bucketfuls of water spilled off the disturbed branches.

  The best hide I could find was a massive fir about 100 metres from the river, whose branches hung down to the ground. Sarah was clearly in pain as she crawled towards the base of the trunk. The branches started about a metre up the trunk and met the ground about a metre away from us. There was no noise here, except for the wind against the outer branches. It was just as wet inside as out, but it felt wonderful just to be under cover. It’s a psychological thing; get up against, or under, something and you begin to imagine you’re a bit warmer.

  We huddled against the trunk, both of us shivering and shuddering. Adrenalin had kicked in when we were on the move, but its effects were subsiding. I just wanted to lie there, but I knew that if I made an effort it would pay off. I pulled the strap of Sarah’s bag over my head and dropped it on the ground. Then I took out the knots with cold, numb and very fumbling hands and teeth. With my foot on the collar of the jacket, I got hold of the rest of it and started to twist out the worst of the water.

  Sarah looked at me like an abused puppy, huddled up and shivering. I untwisted the jacket and threw it at her. I wanted her to stay alive for two reasons now: I still didn’t want to have to carry a dead weight out of the area, and I wanted her to answer some questions.

  She put the jacket around her shoulders and hungrily wrapped herself up in it. Then she wriggled backwards until she was resting against the tree, cuddling herself, trying to tuck the jacket around her legs.<
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  I took off my shirt and T-shirt, and wrung them out, too. I was shivering so badly that it felt as if my muscles were in spasm, but it had to be done. I had to get the water out and some air into the fibres so that my body heat – what was left of it – could sustain itself. Not that cotton has that many air pockets. ‘Cotton kills,’ the saying goes in outdoors circles, and for good reason, but what I was doing was better than nothing. It made me think of Shirts KF, the thick woolly shirts we had to wear in the infantry. I’d never found out what the letters KF stood for; all I knew was that the material used to itch and scratch, and in summer make you feel as if you were wearing a greatcoat, but in the field during winter they were great – wet or dry, the fibres retained heat.

  I put the shirt and T-shirt back on, then knelt to take off my boots, fumbling to undo the laces with numb, trembling fingers. Finally I wrung out my jeans, taking care to keep the pistol away from Sarah’s grasp.

  When I was dressed again I tucked everything in, trying to minimize the number of ways in which the wind could get to me. I pushed the pistol into the back of my jeans by the base of my spine, where she wouldn’t be able to get at it.

  I sat back against the trunk, with Sarah on my left. She was still in the same position as before, sitting in a curled-up ball and using the jacket as best she could to keep herself warm, her hands keeping the collar pulled up around her face.

  It’s always best to share body warmth, and two people of opposite sexes huddled together generate five per cent more warmth than two of the same sex. I nudged her with my elbow, held out my arms and motioned with my head for her to move over. She shuffled across, sniffing, her hair soaking wet and plastered over her face.

  High above, a strong gust of wind made the tree sway. I straightened my legs and she arranged herself in my lap with her left side against me, then I lifted my legs to press her closer to my chest, which insulated her from the ground, and got more of her skin in contact with mine. Her wet hair was over my shoulder as her body pushed into mine. I put my arms around her. Neither of us could control our shivering. She snuggled into me, her head against my chest, and I could feel the benefit almost immediately. There was a silence during which we both willed ourselves to get warm. I looked down on her wet, muddy hair, flecked with pine needles and bits of bark.

  It almost took me by surprise when she spoke. ‘I suppose they told you I’m a runner?’ Her body was shaking. She didn’t move her head for me to see, but I could tell by her tone that her period of compliance was coming to an end.

  ‘Something like that.’ I bent my head to listen for any follow-up, and raised my knees more to pull her nearer for warmth.

  ‘And I suppose you believed them? Christ, I’ve been putting this operation together for over four years, Nick. Now it’s destroyed by some dunderhead who’s sent to fuck me over.’

  The dunderhead bit pissed me off. ‘Four years to do what? What operation? What the fuck are you talking about, Sarah?’

  Her speech was slow, the tone that of a schoolmistress trying to show patience as she explains simple things to tiny minds. It was only partly working; her shivering was making her speech disjointed. ‘Four years to infiltrate deep enough to discover their network in the US and Europe – that’s what I am talking about.’

  ‘Infiltrate who? What? Why didn’t London know?’

  ‘London . . .’ She paused. ‘The reason London doesn’t know is because I don’t know who I can tell. I don’t know the whole network yet, but the more I learn, the more I know I can’t trust anyone.’

  There was another pause. She intended it to give me time to think, but I left it for her to fill. After pulling the collar up further around her face to fight the cold, she took the hint. ‘I suppose they sent you to kill me?’ Her voice was slightly muffled by the jacket.

  ‘No, just to get you back to the UK for questioning. It seems you are becoming an embarrassment.’

  She scoffed at my answer. I could feel her shoulders shaking as she covered her mouth to hide the noise of her coughing laugh.

  ‘Ah, London . . .’ The laughter stopped and the coughing took over. She looked up at me. ‘Listen, Nick, London have got it wrong. This isn’t about embarrassment, for Christ’s sake. It’s about assassination.’ I must have had that vacant expression on my face again, because she reverted to her kindergarten-teacher voice. ‘The team in the house; they were planning a hit on Netanyahu.’

  To be honest, I didn’t really give a shit about Netanyahu, so I couldn’t help a grin. ‘The hit has failed. They’re all dead, apart from one.’

  Her head started shaking like a mechanical toy. She was deadly serious, or as serious as you can be when all your extremities are purple, including your nose. ‘No, you’re wrong. There are still two more members of the cell. They were going to RV with us at the house today. You don’t understand, Nick; it’s not a job to them, it’s a quest. They will carry on.’ There was real frustration in her voice. ‘Believe me, if Netanyahu dies, you will give a shit. It will change the way you live, Nick. That is, if you do.’

  I hated all this beating around the bush; it was like being in the middle of a conversation with Lynn and Elizabeth again. ‘What the fuck are you on about, Sarah?’

  She thought for a while as she buried her head back into the jacket collar. The sound of the rotor blades kicked in to join the wind above us, then died as quickly as it came.

  ‘No, not yet. I’m going to keep that as my insurance; I need to make sure you get me out of here. You see, Nick, I don’t believe you’re here to take me back to London. It must be more important than that, or they wouldn’t have sent you.’

  She was right, of course, I would do exactly the same if I was in her position.

  ‘Look, Nick. Keep me alive and get me out of here, and I’ll tell you everything. Don’t let them use you; give me time to prove it.’

  I hated not having control. I wanted to know more, but at the same I wasn’t so desperate that I would lie awake at night with worry. I didn’t reply; I had to think. And I was going to take her out of there anyway, whether she liked it or not.

  She adjusted her body on my legs, and looked up again and stared into my eyes. ‘Nick, please believe me. I’ve got involved in something where nobody can be trusted – and I mean nobody.’

  She kept her eyes locked on mine. She had just opened her mouth to speak again when we both heard the sound of somebody crashing through the trees.

  Whoever it was wasn’t having much luck with their footing. They hit the ground with a loud curse. ‘Shittt!’ It was a man’s voice.

  I didn’t need to say anything to Sarah. She jumped away from me and my hand reached for the pistol.

  The man must have got up, only to fall down again immediately with a grunt as he scrambled to recover. ‘Oh fuck, fuck . . .’

  On my hands and knees, I moved slowly to the edge of our hide and pushed my face against the branches. It was the American. He was stumbling around in the mud, his clothes soaking, his moustache looking like a drowned rat. He was heading in our general direction, looking as bedraggled as we were. But he wasn’t just running, he was looking for ground sign. He was tracking us.

  I crawled back to Sarah and whispered in her ear, ‘It’s your American. Go bring him in.’

  She shook her head. ‘It won’t work.’

  ‘Make him.’

  ‘He won’t fall for it.’

  ‘You’re the one that needs his clothes, not me.’

  She thought about it, then nodded slowly and took a deep breath. I watched as she turned away from me and crawled out of the hide.

  I heard her call, ‘Lance! Over here! Lance!’

  I moved to the opposite side of the tree, pushing back under the branches, just in case Sarah decided to become Lance’s best friend again. I lay down and brought my pistol up into the aim, the barrel just clearing the branches.

  I could hear her talking to him as they got nearer. It was Arabic, but spoken rapidly. She was
still gobbing off to him at warp speed as she shuffled backwards into the hide. I started to feel vulnerable now. Why was she talking to him like this? I’d already heard him speak English. It could only mean trouble. But fuck it, whatever she was planning was about to happen.

  19

  The first things to appear were his hands, the backs of which were covered in hair and looked way too big for his wrists. Then his head and shoulders, face down to avoid the low branches as he pushed his way in. He was nodding and agreeing with whatever it was that Sarah was saying as she followed him in.

  He didn’t look up until he was right inside the shelter. When he did, he saw me crawling out of the branches opposite him. His eyes widened as he saw the weapon, and he shot a glance back at Sarah, looking for some kind of clarification or reassurance. He looked back at the weapon, then at her again, trying to work it out. After a couple of seconds he gave a deep sigh and lowered his head, rocking it slowly from side to side.

  Sarah was level with him now, and jerked her head to indicate for him to crawl forwards a bit more; he did as he was told. She ran her hands underneath his jacket. I watched her like a hawk, ready to react if she tried to grab his weapon and draw down on me.

  She looked at me and shook her head.

  I motioned him to move to the left of the hide and he shuffled over on his hands and knees. I stopped him before he was too close to me, in case he fancied his chances.

  The black bomber jacket he was wearing had a Harley-Davidson motif on the left-hand side and looked warm. I motioned with the pistol.

  ‘Clothes.’

  Still on his knees, bent over with his back parallel to the ground, he started to remove the jacket. His gaze switched between me and Sarah; he didn’t say a word, still trying to work it all out. Sarah was sitting against the tree with her hands in her jacket pockets and her knees against her chest.