Chapter 5
They went forward, and were into the third hour since they had trudged away from the drop-off point. Foxy Foulkes still led. There were no maps to follow and this was ground that Ordnance Survey did not cover. Anywhere he had worked in Britain or Northern Ireland there had been big-scale maps with signs marking telephone boxes, churches, pubs and points of interest, like the summit of high ground. There were no buildings and no elevated terrain. He was slowing but he’d be damned if he’d allow the younger man to pass him and take on the role of pace-setter.
There was emptiness and stillness. Both, in Foxy’s mind, were delusions and delusions bred a climate of danger. Among the reed beds and on the little mud islands that rose, perhaps, a metre above the waterline of a channel or an open space, or two metres above a dried-out bed, there would be the small villages of those marsh people who had survived the persecution of the dictator, the ebb and flow of the war fought along the frontier, an invasion of foreign troops, gassing, bombing and shelling, drainage, reflooding and drought. There would be tiny village communities that had TV screens but no schools or medical care. They could exist through murder and thieving, and by being paid for information. Foxy did not doubt that small craft, of which he had seen photographs in the intelligence reports at the interrogation centre seven years earlier, nudged through the passageways between the reed banks. He did not doubt that their progress, not as fast as when they had started out, left a track of sound. The sun was climbing.
It was now ‘bare-arsed ground’. He and Badger had, an understatement, insufficient cover, and no map that helped; the GPS handset guided him. They had been through water to their knees, in stinking mud to their ankles, and in reeds that towered over their heads. The option now was to walk in more water or climb a bank, scramble to the top on all fours, and get on a bund line, or it might be a berm – there was a difference. A berm was an earthwork thrown up by bulldozers as a military defence or a flood barrier, and a bund was a raised road. To go up would make an easier route but they would be exposed – ‘bare-arsed’ – which would break every rule in the croppie’s bible. He wanted water… Better, he needed water.
And speed. He realised he couldn’t set the pace required. To get onto the flat top of the bund, or the berm, would ignore one of the core basics – Foxy taught them when he was out with recruits: Shape, Shadows, Shine, Surfaces, Space and Silhouette. If he went up onto the bund, and took the young’un with him, he would be silhouetted against the skies, the reeds and the mud – might as well have brought a bull horn with him and shouted that they were coming. He stayed down.
His boots went through the water. It was a small satisfaction that their prints in the mud would be hidden by the water.
There was clear, quiet breathing behind him, like the guy had no problems with the weight of his bergen. If they were seen, they would be at the mercy of thieves, who lived off what they could steal and sell on. They would be stolen and sold on, and then they’d be right for the orange jumpsuits, and for what used to be called ‘the Baghdad haircut’ in the interrogation centre. The sun’s light and strength drained his energy, and the cloying mud sapped the muscle power in his legs. There would be plenty of groups ready to stand in an orderly queue for the chance to bid big money at any auction if a pair of Crusaders were up for grabs. Orange suits were the uniform for the camera shows where poor bastards pleaded for their lives and rubbished their politicians’ policies: the jihadists put them always in the same colour as the Americans’ prisoners wore at Guantanamo, as if that legitimised the killing. The ‘haircut’ wasn’t a short back and sides but the head wrenched back and the throat exposed so that the blade had an easier cut… and the same bloody camera would be running. The bastards in Luton and the West Midlands, Bradford and the north-west, who lived in the mean terraces and who – between their prayer sessions – flitted between the Internet sites that showed the beheadings, would likely get a hard-on if they had a fuzzy view of Foxy Foulkes’s head going back and the flash of the knife… Damned if it was him who was going to stop first, and he didn’t know how far they had still to travel to the frontier. The symbols and numbers on the GPS were blurred with the sweat dribbling off his forehead into his eyes.
They stayed in the lee of the bund, and there was a toppled battle tank ahead. His feet sloshed in water, and his stride was shorter. It was only the third hour and there might be another three to the border, then two more at least to where they would make the hide. He wore his gillie gear, and the bit that covered his head and face. A ‘gillie’ was a man who held the rods for the gentry on a salmon river, or guided marksmen towards deer; they’d been called up in the Great War from the estates to match the Prussian snipers with their skill in concealment, their knowledge of the elements and cover, and they’d developed their own suits, which gave them greater protection from searching eyes and lenses. The camouflage was good for the mud and dirt wall of the bund, but poor in the reeds. He listened for a gasp behind him – exhaustion, at the limit – but heard nothing.
Should have concentrated. Had the orange suit in his head and a man – himself – pleading to a lens for mercy. Guys were behind with rifles and one had a knife. He went by the tank. Its body was intact and he couldn’t see the entry hole of an armour-piercing missile but one of the tracks was broken. It would have been a mine, then an internal explosion and fire. The plate on the turret was rusted by the wind and dark from the fire. It could have happened thirty years ago and they might still be inside. Thieves would have stripped the interior, the wristwatches and jewellery from the dead crew, if they were salvageable, but would have left the bodies. The thoughts of the jumpsuits and then the rotting dead brought him back to Ellie.
A car’s wheels on the gravel, its door slamming. A key in the lock, her coming in.
Him: ‘Hi, darling, where’ve you been?’
Her hesitating, then: ‘Up to see Tash – didn’t I tell you I was going?’
‘Do I know Tash?’
‘Course you do. She used to work with me. You never listen, love. Course I told you.’
‘Made it home earlier than I’d thought…’ He’d moved to kiss her, but she’d averted her mouth and he’d just caught the back of her neck, but he’d smelt the perfume, lovely scent. He couldn’t see her face.
A sort of distant voice: ‘I came back through Wootton Bassett, love, and got held up. They were bringing home one of the soldiers. The traffic was stopped. I couldn’t go anywhere. I watched. They’re all heroes, aren’t they? His coffin had the flag on it. The Legion was there. Everyone stood to attention. Old blokes had medals on. There was a family with flowers, people crying, loads of them. It was for a real hero, fantastic.’
He’d said, ‘Well, love, I’m not a hero but I negotiated the motorway all the way up from the far west and…’
It was a poor effort at a joke. She’d rounded on him and the rant had started. ‘You don’t bloody listen, do you? I’m talking about heroes; the bravest of the brave. Real men. It’s about sacrifice – a man told me that at the petrol station. Giving their lives for us. He called it ‘‘paying the ultimate price’’. That’s nothing to make some stupid remark about.’
And there had been a slammed door. The bloody irony of it. He was slogging through mud at the edge of a bund, had a bergen on his back and a gillie suit that about suffocated him, and he was doing hero stuff. His throat was parched, and he was dehydrating, and they’d not allowed him to send a decent text. Irony was cold comfort.
Two trucks had come off the bund and gone engine first down the sheer slope. Their bonnets were in the water. Maybe they’d been bulldozed off to make way for more tanks. The water was stagnant, and the smell was bad. He retched, and had to step further into the water until it was lapping his knees. He saw three legs of a creature stuck upright, and wondered where the fourth was. The carcass was of a water buffalo, and it was about fucking landmines. He was swaying. The heat and smell were destroying him. He started to sink.