‘Foxy, what do you weigh? Must be a hundred and fifty pounds. Don’t worry, I’m not dumping you.’ Important to say it. Foxy wondering whether he was going to be ditched and left to face them again.
‘We’re going out through the front of these reeds, Foxy, and it’ll be breaking cover. I don’t know what we’ll find, except there’s guys out there in a cordon line waiting for us. I’ve got the Glock, and a full magazine in it, but I don’t know how far we’ll be from the extraction place, and whether we’ll get any help from them. The border’s ahead but I don’t know how far.’
He couldn’t hide and they had his bootprints to follow. The camouflage of the gillie suit was wrong for the reeds – good for sand and dried dirt. They were close to coming out of the cover and the light around him was more brilliant. Maybe it was that time the squaddies talked about, when they said they thought of their mothers and fathers, the girls they’d been with and babies they might have made. The bloody flies had found him and were striving to break into the headpiece. Maybe it was the time when squaddies decided whether they wanted Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones to play them into church – and maybe it was the time when squaddies became angry and wouldn’t accept the obvious. In half a dozen paces he would be out of the reeds and guns would face him.
‘There may be good ground for us and there may not. I just don’t know. I’m saying, Foxy, that we aren’t taken – not prisoners, no. You up for that? Whatever I shoot, there’ll be two rounds left.’
He heard the crashing and breaking of stems, and didn’t understand it.
‘That’s one for you and one for me. You know what, Foxy? We could get a Bassett job for this. Be good, wouldn’t it? But I’m not lying down and rolling over yet. We’re going to give it a go. You up for it?’
The scream was close. A man cried out, first in fear, then in terror, then in shock, and last, in pain. Badger was at the edge of the reeds. The scream cut his ears, louder and shriller than any of Foxy’s had been. He saw the boar break from the reed bed, blood on its tusks. The men in front of him, who had had their rifles ready and had seemed alert to their main prey, were now running to the edge of the reeds and Badger’s right. He understood. A huge thing. Maybe twenty stone of it, maybe more. As big as the one that had sniffed him in the hide and had had a short blade up its nostril. He understood that the guards at the back, behind him, had driven the beast before them, as they’d driven Badger, but a guy on the flank of the box had been in the way of the boar’s flight. Not a clever option – he might have had his bowels and intestines ripped out of his stomach wall by the tusks. He screamed again, and, likely, they had no morphine. It ran, and shots were fired at it, would have been well wide. The guy kept screaming, and the boys he slept with, served with, went to him. It gave Badger a chance. He went where the boar had, on dried dirt towards the next raised berm.
Chapter 19
Badger had changed the outline of his body. There was open ground ahead of him. Once there had been lagoons and channels, but the water flow had been blocked off and the sun had baked the mud during four or five years of drought. The eco-system in place since the marshlands had been claimed as civilisation’s cradle was wrecked. If a river source, or a filled canal, was left untouched, the marshes survived; if they were all dammed, the reeds died and the water evaporated, the ground dried and life failed. Behind him, the reed bed had taken a last hold in what would have been, once, a wide, deep channel. Now he faced a gradual incline that stretched to the far distance. Where there had once been channels that must have been far outside Badger’s depth, there was now a tacky damp surface below a fragile crust. He couldn’t see where they had come in, but off to the side – too far away to be of help – there was a shimmer that might have been water. He thought himself near the approach route, but not close enough to recognise its landmarks.
He had no cover other than the low wisps of mist that were being steadily burned off. There were indentations in the ground, little scratched paths where water had once run, and stumps of reeds, broken off six inches above the mud. The stems and leaves were long rotted, and there was the ribcage of a boat, overturned and half buried, not protruding more than a few inches. There were, too, slight tumps where silt had once gathered and perhaps the current had been forced to gouge a way to the right or left. The sun was higher, clear of the horizon, and the heat built. He knew in which direction he must go, and remembered a single strand of old wire he must reach. On his own, he might have used his skills to cross the open ground. He would have reached the horizon and found the wire, part buried.
Badger had changed the outline of his body. In doing so he could no longer hug the ground, make it his friend.
With the screaming of the guard gored by the pig, the yells of the others and the shouts of the officer bringing chaos, Badger had taken Foxy off his shoulder – but had not rested. The beast had gone, had careered away and found sanctuary from its enemy in the wafting blocks of ground mist. Badger had not taken the time to rest his shoulder but had hitched the suit up, and heaved Foxy’s body onto his back, then drawn the arms forward until they fell over his stomach and the head rested on his neck. He had let the gillie suit drop over two of them. ‘It’s going to be hot in there for you, Foxy, a steam bath, but it’s the way it is. Nothing I can do about it.’
He was bringing Foxy back. He had said he would, and there had been no complaint from the old bastard. He couldn’t see behind him, and to twist his head might dislodge Foxy. In front of him was a short horizon – much less distance visible than when he had stood at the edge of the reeds – he knew he must trust in his ability.
He could hear shouts still but the screams were fainter. He would crawl for the time it took him to count to a hundred. He would stay statue still for the time it took to count to another hundred. He was on his stomach, legs splayed. His knees took some of the weight as he edged forward but his elbows took more.
‘The problem, Foxy, is that I don’t know whether one of them has us, whether the rifle’s up, whether it’s a game they’re playing. I don’t know what’s behind and I’ve not much idea what’s in front. I just have to go forward. You up for it?’
He thought it right to tell Foxy what he was doing and why.
‘They could have a gun sight on your arse, Foxy, and mine, and we won’t know it.’
Badger went on as best he could, his knees and elbows scraping the ground. He moved and counted, then lay, barely daring to breathe, and counted again, and he thought Foxy stayed quiet and still and Badger could not have asked more of him… and when the next problem came in his mind, a realisation, he did not share it, like Foxy deserved a reward… the next problem was their feet and their boots. Badger’s boots and Foxy’s feet. He did not know whether they stuck out from under the hem of the gillie suit: might just be that a heap of mud or an accumulation of silt, whatever the appearance his gillie suit left for the searching eye, was spoiled, blasted apart, by the sight of a pair of boots and a pair of feet stuck out from under it, and not possible for him to know the answer.
He reckoned he had done a hundred yards from the reed bed out onto the open ground, and reckoned there might be a thousand to cover. Then he’d have to hope he found the single strand of rusty barbed wire.
His skills would count for something, but luck might count for more. They said – smug, complacent beggars – that luck had to be earned. Men with towering self-esteem didn’t accept that luck played a part in success. He was going forward again and he didn’t know how much of a trail he had left, where it was wet or where it had dried out, and didn’t know whether his camouflage was good or useless or how many were looking for him. He had gone past the boat and was level with a buffalo’s white ribs. Immediately in front of him there was a small raised patch of sand that might offer slight cover. The sun climbed above him, and the heat grew.