“Maybe it’s meant as a message,” Wilkes said eagerly.
“And maybe he lost it accidentally,” Banks replied. “Let’s not be jumping to any conclusions here. All we can say at the moment is that it came from upstream.”
“I got a couple of minutes of video off the phone’s card,” McCally said when he called them through to the office 10 minutes later. “I’ve hooked up the laptop, so gather round. But I warn you, it’s weird shite.”
They all gathered close as McCally started the recording running,
The video started up in darkness, then a face came into focus, lit only by whatever feeble light was coming from the camera screen, throwing pitch-black shadow around nostrils and eye sockets and giving the face the look of a bone-white skull.
“Is that Buller?” Banks said.
“Yep, that’s him,” Wilkes replied. “But what the hell is he playing at?”
McCally had the sound turned up to full volume, but even then they needed to bend in even closer to hear as the man spoke, barely more than a whisper. Terror was plain though, in every word of the Scotsman’s speech.
“I don’t know how long I’ve got, and I can only thank fuck I had a sample pouch in my pocket, so I’m going to send this out the window in a minute or so, and hope it gets to somebody that can do something about it.”
The man was clearly nervous, his eyes wide, blinking rapidly. The phone shook in his hand, and Banks was immediately reminded of a terrible shaky-cam horror movie that Wiggins and McCally made him sit through on a night off in Inverness.
Is this some kind of candid-camera con? If it’s somebody’s idea of a joke, they’re going to get a bullet up their arse.
Banks turned his attention fully to the screen as Buller continued.
“I have no idea where the fuck I am or how the fuck I got here. I went to sleep in my bed; and the dreams were delirious, fucked-up nonsense, so I assume I was drugged. I woke up here, feeling like a badger has shat in my mouth and with my head birling. ‘Here’ is somewhere high up; the air is fresh, cooler than down on the river, and I hear running water, a cascade, like a waterfall. I’m in some old stone building, Mayan at a guess, and as far as I can tell, I’m facing south. Now you know as much as I do. Just fucking come and get me. Please?”
The frightened face looked away from the screen, then back again.
“Shite, somebody’s coming.”
The view swung wildly, the soundtrack cracking and rustling, and then the picture went slightly opaque, as if being seen through smoke. Banks realized that the phone had now been placed inside the zip-lock bag. The voice started up again, even more muffled than previously.
“Here goes nothing. Out the window with you, and I hope to fuck you get somewhere. Come and get me. Please?”
At the last second, before the screen went dark and quiet, they caught a glimpse back into the room from which the phone had been thrown. McCally used the mouse to quickly stop the video, and clicked twice through the frames until they had the one with the best view of the room. They clearly saw the man who’d thrown the phone, standing at a tall open window in a stone wall. Behind him, deep in shadow and coming through a doorway, was — something — it didn’t look human, although the shadows were such that it was hard to tell much of anything. If Banks had to bet on it, he’d have said it was a snake, but given the size of the room and the distance from the camera, it was a snake that had a head more than a foot wide between the eyes.
Everyone around the laptop fell quiet, trying to take in what they’d seen. McCally showed no sign of moving the mouse to control the video, which was stuck showing that last frame.
“Is that it?” Banks asked the corporal.
“That’s all the video I could find,” McCally said. “But the phone’s a smart wee fucker. There’s a built-in GPS that’s been saving data on where the phone has been when it’s switched on. It’s not always had a signal, and it’s patchy at best, but there’s two points on the map that are clear enough, each being saved half a dozen times at least.” He went over to the large map and pointed. “One’s here, on the river where we are now. The other’s here.”
Banks went over to check the spot that McCally’s finger now covered. It was a high area of ground, in the highlands to the north, the same area that Wilkes had pointed out to him earlier.
The job had now definitely become a rescue mission.
- 4 -
“We cannae get the canoes all the way up there, Cap,” Hynd said. “Not all in one trip anyway. We were knackered after less than half an hour earlier, and yon’s a good four hours of paddling at least. We’d be fit for fuck all by the time we got there, if we got there at all.”
Banks agreed, but they had no idea how long their guide might take to return, and the thought of their mission, now a possible hostage retraction, worried at him. The squad retired to the mess for Wilkes’ stew and then a smoke break, but Banks sat at the laptop, playing the snippet of video over and over, hoping to see some fresh clue that might have eluded him. Then, when no inspiration came, and he knew he couldn’t put it off any longer, he called in on the sat-phone, making his first report to the colonel back in Lossiemouth.
“S1, checking in,” he said when the call was answered. He heard the usual whirrs and clicks as the call was scrambled and put through to his superior’s desk. He realized, too late, that it was going to be very late evening back in Scotland, but the colonel answered immediately at the other end.
“Are we ready to bring the package home?” he asked.
From there on, it went about as well as Banks could have expected. His superior officer listened, went quiet for several breaths, then spoke, his crisp tones coming through more than clear enough to be understood.
“Buller is the mission,” he said. “Everybody else is either hostile or expendable, but bring Buller home however you can. Understood?”
“Understood, sir,” Banks replied.
“Check back in 24 hours from this mark,” the colonel said. “I expect good news.”
Hynd came in as Banks finished the call, and put a bowl of stew and a cold beer on the table.
“Eat up, Cap,” the sergeant said, “before Cally and Wiggo polish it off between them.”
The fish stew was strangely spiced and tasted faintly of the muck of the riverbed, but with the help of the beer, it went down well enough. It did a lot to get back some of the strength that had been sapped by the heat and the effort of paddling earlier.
“Orders, Cap?” Hynd asked.
“We go after Buller,” Banks said, “and we’ve got a day to get him out of here — the boss was feeling generous.”
“The lads will take to the paddling, if you ask them,” Hynd said.
“I know,” Banks said. “But I’m of a mind to wait for Giraldo and some power to get us upriver. Keep the lads off the booze for a couple of hours until the boat’s back here. Wilkes too. We might need to know something that he knows, so make sure he’s sober.
Hynd saluted, then nodded toward the screen, where Banks had stopped it again on that final, inexplicable image.
“What are we up against here, Cap?”
“I’ve not got a clue,” Banks replied. “Some daft bugger in a rubber suit, or a real big fucking snake, it hardly matters either way. We’ve got our orders, and we’ll find out soon enough one way or the other.”
Giraldo returned right about when Banks expected him to. He was alone in the boat when they met it at the rear dock.
“I left my boy with the others,” the guide said as he tied up the boat. “There is no sense in us both being in danger. Can we go now?”