The depot was signalled by a couple of lamp posts dug into the ground, thirty feet apart. A track ran between them with a sign with the number thirteen strung above. They killed the lights. Mac handed off to Sawtell, who ordered Hard-on and Spikey to run a point. Then Sawtell got out of the Patrol and took a stance behind the rear fender; Limo did the same thing behind the front hood. Mac sat in the back seat with the Beretta on his lap, yawning, dreaming of some nosebag.
They waited for the all-clear and Mac asked Sawtell if Enduring Freedom was a success yet.
‘Ha!’ Sawtell snorted.
‘I take that as a no,’ said Mac.
‘Holy shit! Oh man!’ Sawtell seemed genuinely amused. So did Limo, who smiled his way.
‘It’s the wrong mission, in the wrong part of the world, for the wrong reasons with the wrong tactics,’ drawled Sawtell. ‘Oh, and the wrong leadership – political and brass.’
‘We got Sabaya, didn’t we?’ asked Mac.
Sawtell was out of view, behind the Patrol. He didn’t answer.
Half an hour later, Hard-on fl ashed three times through the trees in the dawn gloom. Limo drove the Patrol through the gates, Sawtell walked behind on the verge of the track. They drove like that for fi ve minutes and came out into a clearing. There were six or seven mid-sized wooden buildings that looked like they’d been built a decade ago and then abandoned. Hard-on put his fi nger to his lips and beckoned Mac and Limo out of the vehicle. They walked behind him, guns ready, heading between two of the buildings and coming into another clearing, a courtyard with three accommodation-style buildings around it. It was a barracks of sorts. The place looked deserted, except for the white LandCruiser that dominated the courtyard.
Sawtell looked at Hard-on, who said, ‘All clear, sir, far as we can tell.’
Sawtell looked around. Pointed at the LandCruiser. Hard-on shook his head. ‘Haven’t checked it. Waiting for you, sir.’
Sawtell nodded. Hard-on went to work on debugging the LandCruiser. Spikey jogged back into the courtyard to give him a hand.
Sawtell was distracted. He looked off into the distance and looked around very, very slowly, his face completely impassive. Mac had seen career soldiers do this before, and it usually meant the shit was on the doorstep. They just knew something was up.
Mac realised they were standing in the middle of a natural ambush.
Surrounded by buildings, surrounded by jungle.
Sawtell slowly put his fi nger in the air. ‘Hear that?’
‘Helo,’ said Limo.
They looked at each other and tried to fi nd the source. Mac couldn’t hear a thing.
‘Ain’t military,’ mumbled Limo. ‘That Euro piece of shit?’
One of the fi rst things special forces soldiers learned to do was identify aircraft and vehicles by their sound. Much of what they did they did in the dark, without fl ashlights or open comms. The tales of tired soldiers piling onto the enemy’s helo or onto the bad guys’ boat were as legion as they were apocryphal. But the lesson was the same: know your hardware.
Sawtell indicated its position with his fi nger. Then shook his head. ‘Gone.’
‘Probably a logging scout,’ said Mac.
They ignored him.
Hard-on and Spikey cleared the LandCruiser of booby traps.
Mac found a map in the glove box, and more Bartook Special Mint wrappers. Torn thin.
The map was in relief, of the highlands. It showed broken lines in red, which meant dirt roads. And it had another series of thin blue lines, which Mac assumed were horse tracks, or whatever they used up here.
It wasn’t that much use. Mac threw it back in the LandCruiser, slammed the door, moved to the rear. Then he had another idea. In the Royal Marines there had been an absolute ban on touching any map with a pen or a pencil. Anything that could possibly mark it. You put a map in a plastic sleeve, you pointed at it, you used bearings and you used coordinates so that everyone knew what everyone else was talking about. But if you marked a map in the British military someone was going to get in your face and accuse you of defacing Her Majesty’s personal property. It was a ‘back to base’ offence.
Mac went back to the front seat, unfolded the map and had a good look. If these guys did not have that basic training, they might have absent-mindedly drawn on the thing. Even just touched it. Which was the universal human instinct.
He found what he was looking for on one of the central panels. A defi nite depression with a blue ballpoint at the end of one of the blue lines. A slight blue squiggle a couple of centimetres away – someone trying to navigate with the thing on his lap.
He called Sawtell over, showed him. Sawtell picked up the map and, without hesitating, turned due north, pointed into thick jungle and said, ‘That way, nine or ten clicks.’
They tooled up. Sawtell was serious about this one, just like Mac had seen him in the Sibuco take-down; a bit nervy and controlling it with glacial calm. The lads sensed it. They checked guns and cammed their faces without saying a thing. When the Old Man went like that, it was time to get serious.
The boys took US Army fatigues out of Cordura bags. The guns were M4s – short, black assault rifl es favoured by the US Army Special Forces.
They pilfered the rat packs and the stashed fruit. Ate up large.
Then they headed into the jungle, Hard-on walking point.
The heat came up fast. The noise of the forest was thunderous and screeching at the same time, crowding in on the senses, enveloping the party with humidity, bugs and noise. They tabbed for an hour.
The horse track they were on was a steep climb. It was agony.
Mac made a mental note: more running to balance the gym and boxing fi tness.
Sawtell was a conservative campaigner. Mac wanted to stride out, get some blood going. But Sawtell stopped, peered, backtracked and did all the special forces hand-signal stuff. He was the jungle version of how Mac moved around a city: with total paranoia.
They maintained silence and walked Mac in the middle of their set-up. The tension was heavy. Every time Mac looked at Sawtell, he saw more concern. Concern that the American would not share. John Sawtell may have been a bleeding-heart boy scout but he kept it tight when the shit was hovering. There was a maelstrom of worry and contingency-mongering going on in that square head, but Mac knew he wouldn’t spook his boys. Not a squeak.
Five clicks into the hike, they took a rest in a clearing. Limo produced water bottles from his pack. Mac checked a moss-covered log for snakes and spiders, and lowered himself.
There was a crack, a soft warm feeling in his head.
Then it all went black.
CHAPTER 10
Mac came to with the kind of head pain he’d experienced once during a bout of malaria. A sensation so powerful that you hit your head against a wall to make it go away.
He could hear something. People’s voices. Then something else, humming like a machine. He took his time opening his eyes, let his right eyelid go up slightly. The rush of light was like an explosion in his brain. He groaned. His mouth was dry, tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He could barely think straight. Was he drugged? Drunk?
More voices. He tried again to crack an eyelid but the light shut him down just as quick. Sparklers behind his eyes. The noise got louder and he felt hands under his armpits. Hands on his feet. Then he was going up, like when he was a kid and his dad picked him up off the sofa where he’d fallen asleep watching television.
The noise got louder. It thromped and whacked and whined.
It was fucking with his mind.
Mac thought: a helo.
Then he blacked out.
The patch was wet. Very wet. Mac shifted his head slightly and felt it cold and damp on his cheek. He must have been dribbling something chronic.
He opened his eyes. No pain in the eyeballs but a ton of it behind his right ear. He was lying on his side. There was a white sheet on him. A white pillow, white mosquito net over him that smelled of pyrethrum. He was naked except for his red briefs. He rolled over so he was looking at the white ceiling, fan turning.