He glanced at Clare and nodded towards the left-hand buildings. She slipped away without a word, the gun held two-handed in front of her. He didn’t wait to hear if there were any shouts of alarm, but started walking around the other side, eyes on the window panel in the door of the nearest hut.
Empty. The missing pane showed an oil-stained floor and an old workbench, the interior walls festooned with cobwebs. It hadn’t been used in years. He skirted the building and approached the next one, feeling the hard standing underfoot, with cracks and crevices in the concrete caused by the passage of time.
Also empty and with a hole in the roof. He glanced across and saw Clare moving away from a hut on her side. She shook her head to indicate nothing found, then stepped up to the next one. She peered through the window and shook her head again.
One more left.
Harry stopped.
The last hut was a dozen paces away, set slightly apart from the other four. Something about it looked different. He gave Clare a warning signal, and she hunkered down by the wall of the hut she had just checked while he gave this last one the once-over. Unlike the previous huts, this last one had a newer door and no window. The roof also looked solid and the grass around the doorway had been flattened by regular use.
He waited, listening for any alien sound above the breeze. A couple of skylarks were kicking up a song high above, and an unseen tractor was clattering away in the distance. Disturbingly ordinary. If the Bosnians were in there, they would catch him flat-footed before he got halfway across the open space towards the door.
To hell with it. He stepped out and moved at an angle towards the hut, which would make it hard for anyone inside to draw a bead on him. Then he cut back in and fetched up against the door. No shots and he was still upright.
He tried the handle. Locked. He walked around the back, checking for a second door, and found a grey Renault tucked in against the rear wall. The bonnet was up and a pool of oil had spread out on the ground underneath.
Clare joined him. ‘Looks like they ran out of luck.’ The keys were still in the ignition. She leaned in and gave them a twist. The engine made an unpleasant noise but refused to catch. ‘Seized up.’
Harry walked back to the door. ‘Sorry, Mr Soran,’ he muttered, ‘but needs must.’ He kicked hard at the panel alongside the lock. The door gave slightly and he kicked again, driving it back until it smacked against an obstruction on the inside.
A wave of musty air came out to greet them, overlaid with body odour and cigarette smoke. Harry stepped inside. Anyone here would not have locked themselves in, waiting to be caught.
The interior was dark. A large battery-powered camping lantern stood on a workbench just inside the door. He switched it on. A pile of wooden crates stood at the far end, with cardboard boxes standing on pallets to keep them off the floor. The floor itself was bare concrete. Against the walls halfway down the hut lay four camp beds, two on each side. A nylon sleeping bag lay on each one with a bare pillow at the head. Two mugs stood on the floor, and an ashtray was perched on an up-ended rubber bucket.
On one of the other beds lay a crumpled T-shirt with a vivid orange starburst pattern on the front. Harry walked across and picked it up. He had only ever seen one like this; Rik had been wearing it. He’d left a clue.
He checked the cardboard boxes, which looked new. Video game consoles with a brand name he’d never heard of. Probably cheap rip-offs if Soran was risking leaving them here. The wooden crates were just small enough to have come through the door, but were heavy, and nailed down tight. He left them. Whatever was in them could wait. He went back out to where Clare was waiting.
‘Anything?’
‘No. Rik was here, though.’ He walked around the outside of the hut, scanning the ground. The grass was shorter here, and clumped haphazardly where it had pushed through the concrete. Further out, though, on the edge of the old runway, it was longer, untouched by vehicles or humans, shimmering in the breeze like waves in the sea.
‘There.’ He pointed to where twin lines ran through the grass towards the far end of the runway, the passage of whoever had walked down there showing darker than the rest. One line was broader than the other, with occasional kinks, as if someone had stepped off the line they were following.
Or he was being dragged.
‘Come on.’ Harry set off, leaving Clare to decide whether she wanted to come or not. He wasn’t sure why the Bosnians had taken Rik with them, but it could only have been as a bargaining tool if they ran into trouble, or to use him as a last throw of the dice before they bugged out. Whatever their reasoning, it was a short-term thing; this could only go on so long before they wouldn’t need him any longer.
‘This isn’t a random route. They’ve come this way for a reason.’ Clare spoke just behind him.
She was right. It was too direct, too purposeful. Nobody in their position would head out into the fields like this on a whim. They’d be drawing him out and making for a back-up vehicle, somewhere not too far away. Deakin and Soran would have provided for that. They would want both men out of the country so they couldn’t talk.
‘We’d better hurry.’ Clare sounded calm and controlled, her breathing steady. Harry reminded himself that she would have been through a tough training course with MI6, including close quarter combat exercises and live firing. Scenarios such as this would have been part of the curriculum, played out with as much reality as they could muster.
But that was training. It was nothing like the real thing.
FIFTY-SIX
They reached a wire fence, sagging in places, the posts canted at odd angles. On the other side was a railway cutting. The disused line Ballatyne had mentioned. The banks were carpeted with wild flowers, overgrown with bushes and brambles, spilling over in a frenzy of free growth all the way to the bottom.
Harry studied the area, noting where someone had slid down through the grass at one point, bending and crushing the stems, the way a man might if his hands were tied and he was unable to keep his balance.
He stepped over the fence and stood for a moment before venturing down the slope. If the Bosnians suspected someone was after them, they would be waiting at the bottom. Although on higher ground, the pursuer would be vulnerable, committed to the long slope with nowhere to hide but soft bushes and nowhere to go but down.
It would be like a turkey shoot.
‘I’ll go first,’ said Clare. She joined him and then stood by his side, staring at the ground below and no doubt thinking the same thing.
It was a trap waiting to be sprung.
‘No,’ he said. ‘We do it together.’ He pointed to where a path had already been flattened, where Rik had lost his balance. ‘I’ll take this, you take a spot further along.’ He set off without waiting, knowing that to argue was to waste time. Rik couldn’t have long left.
He slid down the slope by degrees, waiting for the slightest movement, the merest hint of sound. It might be all they would get. Zubac and Ganic were skilled on terrain like this, and would have trained and fought in open country as well as woodland. They had the skills and the motivation, and too much to lose to play safe. They would kill at first sight.
Harry reached the bottom and studied the terrain. The metal rails and sleepers were long gone, the ground now flatter, but scattered still with stone ballast which made walking uneven. There were signs of regular use, however, and he guessed this was probably part of a hiking route. He fervently hoped nobody was going to come this way today.