‘But if you know all this why aren’t you putting a stop to it?’ she screamed.
‘What do you think I’m doing here?’
‘No! Not you! The United Nations!’
‘Because it takes information. Organisation. Money. Commitment. Political will. Publicity! Because the guy from Gary, Indiana — or wherever they do all those US political surveys — and the man on the Clapham omnibus, they have to be made to see, to know, to care. They’ve got to tell the politicians that they care, and the president and the prime minister and all the other premiers and politicians have to get up and get organised. They have to do it before it’s all too late! That’s what it’s all about. That’s why you’re here. Christ, look what happened when that little girl in Bosnia hit the news! Think what we could do with a ravaged village and a T-80 main battle tank!’ He beat the dashboard in front of him with an uncontrollable overflow of passion.
‘Harry,’ he said, ‘just get us to the airstrip as fast as ever you can and we’ll have those photos on every newsdesk within the next two days, I promise!’
His words struck Ann with powerful force. She sat back then and began to search through the wreckage of her belongings, checking for those tiny, irreplaceable spools of film while Harry took them far faster than was safe back westwards along the trackways towards the little bush landing strip, trusting on the one remaining headlight to warn him of obstacles and potholes and to warn any animals up ahead to clear out of the way. She couldn’t remember exactly how many pictures she had taken or how many times she had reloaded, but she found six films in all, four exposed, two still wrapped, and had to be satisfied with that. In the last of the moonlight, she stowed five of them safely in her camera bag and ripped open one of the still unused ones. She had no idea how many frames were left on the film still in the camera, but she rewound it and changed it for a new one anyway. She had come across some batteries for the motor, so she changed those as well.
By the time she had finished, the moon was setting behind the hills in the north, so when she looked between the men’s shoulders dead ahead, she thought the glow in the sky must be dawn.
But no.
‘This looks bad,’ rumbled Robert.
‘Very bad indeed,’ Harry agreed quietly.
A spike of ice suddenly thrust down from the pit of Ann’s throat into the very depths of her stomach.
They drove on in silence as the glow intensified and crept inexorably up the western sky.
‘Do we need to look any closer?’ Robert asked at last.
‘Better to be sure. What have we got to lose?’
‘Don’t ask!’ Ann intruded herself into the conversation on as light a note as she could manage. ‘If they were laying a trap for us,’ she continued, ‘they wouldn’t be advertising their presence, would they?’
‘True,’ said Harry. ‘But there’s still short odds we could meet them by chance.’
‘Dancing round the bonfire,’ she said.
‘It’s a bit early for Guy Fawkes,’ Harry observed.
‘Or trick or treat,’ she agreed.
‘It’d be a bit dangerous to dance round that much aviation fuel anyway,’ said Robert wearily. ‘And your place is probably next on the list. No fires over that way. Yet.’
‘But they mightn’t have torched everything,’ persisted Harry. ‘There might be some petrol left in the second hut. Enough to give Rover here a bit of a drink. I took the last of the petrol at my place this afternoon. There’s nothing else there that I need now.’
‘We have to risk a closer look at the landing strip, then. We have to check there,’ said Robert.
‘That we do, that we do,’ said Harry. He switched off the lights and the engine and they coasted to a halt in an invisible cloud of coarse dust which would have been kept out by the canvas cover if they hadn’t lost it to the tank. The fall of silent dust emphasised to Ann just how exposed she was now, and she looked around the star-bright bush to check for the presence of dangerous animals. The moon had set now, but there was still light enough to see the nearest rolls of grassland quite clearly. Their upper slopes were painted garishly, almost gruesomely, by a combination of bright fire and red dust. The hollows between were relatively shadowed, but even here the stars gave enough light for her to be sure there was nothing large nearby.
While she was looking round, the men had begun a quiet conversation. ‘I’ll go in first,’ Harry was saying. ‘I’ve got the bush craft to get close enough for a detailed recce before anyone sees me. And I know where to look.’
‘Yeah. I see that.’
‘So, you cover me from the ridge with the Remington. If the coast’s clear, I’ll signal and you can bring Rover down.’
‘Makes good sense.’
Harry turned to her. ‘Ann, the Remington doesn’t have a decent telescopic sight. Does your camera have a big lens?’
‘Well, yes. I guess it does…’
‘Fine. I’d like you to put it on and use it to spot for Robert, please. The Remington will kill at a kilometre but only if the person firing it knows there’s a target there. You use your longest lens like a telescope and you watch my back in the biggest close-up you can manage. OK?’
‘OK,’ she said.
‘And if I do anything really heroic,’ added the dapper little Englishman, ‘then you will get an excellent photograph of it.’
They all laughed, and the men climbed down. Ann took an instant longer screwing the biggest of her camera’s lenses in place, and then she followed. They left their doors open. So did she.
By the time they were approaching the crest of the low hill overlooking the airstrip, she had caught up with the men. They slowed down and fell into a crouch. Harry motioned her to keep down too and, feeling faintly ridiculous, like an adult caught up in a childish game, she crouched like them, lower and lower until she was lying flat out beside them on the very crest, only just peeping over the top.
‘Right,’ whispered Harry, his voice little more than a breath, ‘you check it out, Ann, and I’ll be off on your all-clear.’
‘OK.’ She began to move, but his hand fell on her arm.
‘Just before I go, I want you to take this,’ he said. He held up one of his automatic pistols. ‘Seven shots. Automatic. Flick this switch at the back and you’ll get a red dot up on whatever you’re aiming at. Bullet goes where the red dot is. Understand?’
He sensed rather than saw her hesitation. ‘Self-defence only,’ he whispered. ‘Remember what we’re dealing with. I don’t see you lying back and thinking of England, so you’ll have to do some fighting. Get one back for the girls in the village.’
She agreed. Pacifism, she suddenly realised, could be taken too far. She took the gun. It seemed to be made of moulded plastic and it was heavy. It fitted in her palm as though it had always been there. ‘Bullets go where the red dot is,’ he reminded her, his voice as light as dust sliding over silk, only just audible over the sullen rumble of the fire. She shoved it into the back of her shorts until the barrel rested snugly in the cleft at the top of her buttocks. Then she edged up to the crest and looked over.