Silencer (41 page)

‘Where the fuck
are
you?’

‘Here … here. I’m sorry …’ She groaned. ‘I thought I’d been hit. It must have been rock splinters.’

‘Get up and keep close, like I told you. They aren’t firing at us. They’re firing blind. You’ll know if you’re hit.’

She might have nodded, then realized I couldn’t see her, because it was a while before I got an answer.

‘I’m good.’

‘Pick up that bag and stay close.’

Several million candle-power lit up the darkness around us. Miguel’s lads loosed off a couple of bursts along it. I felt a thump as a round rammed into the ground far too close to us. The spotlight blazed left and right, searching for targets, creating shadows as it passed through the scrub.

‘Katya,
move your arse
.’

We’d reached dead ground but it had taken far too long to get there. You have to move at the speed of the slowest; that’s just how it is if you want to keep together, and she wasn’t used to carrying a load.

Katya shuffled up alongside me and I gave her thirty seconds before we moved on. The good news was that the pain in my arse from the polo mallet had now melted away. Also, with the stars out, and a quarter-moon, it was easier to see. I felt good about that, even though it meant it was easier for them, too, to see us if they got close enough.

I still led the way, breaking the trail, then stopping but no longer turning to allow Katya to catch up. When I heard her move up behind me I’d go on a few more steps.

It took me a while to grasp that she was lagging further and further behind. I’d been so determined to make distance that I hadn’t noticed how much she was slowing down.

There was still a good chance she might lose me in the dark and I didn’t want to have to run around calling for her. I pulled my
belt from my jeans, made one end into a noose and pulled it tight round her wrist. I gripped the other end along with the bag handle cutting into my shoulder.

I stood still, knees bent, waiting to regain my breath. I could see Katya’s face in the ambient light. She was in a bad way: her hair was sticking up all over the place; she was covered with dust and blood.

‘Katya, look at me.’ I needed her to be in no doubt about what I expected of her. When people flap, they nod and agree to everything without really understanding what’s being said. ‘We’ve
got
to stay together.’ I looked into her eyes for a sign of acknowledgement. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not far.’

That wasn’t true but, fuck it, there’s a time and a place …

I set off again, lengthening my stride, tugging on the belt, trying to keep upright on the slippery ground as I urged her on. Her gasps and cries told me that her bare flesh was getting zapped left and right by the thorn bushes. I knew she was suffering, but all I could do was grip her and plunge on. At least I knew she was breathing.

I tripped and went down, letting go of the belt so I didn’t take her with me. My two loose top bags fell into the dirt. My knees hit rock and felt like they were on fire, but I stayed where I was, screwing up my face as I waited for it to die down. There was nothing more I could do. I just hoped I hadn’t smashed a kneecap. My chest heaved as I tried to catch my breath.

‘Nick?’

I grabbed her hand. ‘Give me a minute.’

I shrugged the straps off my shoulders and let the third bag fall. It was as if I was floating on air.

Katya dropped her bags next to me as another burst of fire kicked off on the higher ground. Her brain was probably telling her to get moving, but her body was begging her to stay where she was. This time her body was going to win.

‘I’ve got to get my backpack. It’s a bit further uphill. You stay here with the bags. Don’t move, don’t make any noise. I’ll be ten minutes max. If there’s a drama, you’ll hear it. And you’ll know if you have to get moving without me. Take what you can carry
and try to get to Dino.’ I explained the pick-up details to her. ‘If you don’t make it to the road on time, you’re on your own.’

I didn’t wait for an answer because I didn’t need one. I turned towards the
casa
and headed uphill. My throat was parched; fuck knew what Katya’s was like.

I crawled to the edge of the scrub on my stomach. There was still plenty of commotion in the distance; screaming and hollering punctuated by automatic fire. Somebody – maybe Miguel – was having a ballistic fit.

The technical was still burning, about five hundred metres away by the
casa
. To my right, about four hundred along the scrub-line, at the point where we had entered it, there was another of the fuckers, its power beam jerking left and right across the vegetation. The gunner reacted to the shadows with another long burst.

Fuck ’em. I was here to work out where I was in relation to my passport. No way was I leaving that in a hole in the ground. I wanted to get back to Moscow ASAP. I didn’t want to spend days at the consulate trying to get a replacement using some bullshit ‘I’ve been mugged’ story.

I checked my position in relation to the hangar and knew I had to move twenty metres left before going back into the scrub.

I could see headlights approaching the
casa
– a line of vehicles coming up the tarmac road, red and blue flashes glimmering through the irrigation haze. I wasn’t that worried about them right now.
Vigilantes
, local police – I didn’t give a shit who they were. In the dark they’d do no more than contain the area or mince around in the scrub shooting at each other. Concealment was my best weapon.

At first light, however, it would be a different story.

We covered seven hard Ks, stopping every hundred or so paces and resting without taking the bags off, then every hour for ten minutes with them all at our feet. Katya didn’t complain. She must have guessed what they contained.

I crested a rise and moved downhill with her coughing and panting behind me. Her lungs were heaving. If I was feeling bad, she must have been in all kinds of shit.

My CamelBak was safely in the bag on my shoulders now that we had shared what was left in the reservoir. Maybe I was too busy congratulating myself on getting that bit right, because my boot landed awkwardly on a rock and I tumbled. I knew not to resist: it would cause me even more injury and we still had a long way to go. Katya fought to break free and save herself, but it was too late. She and her bags came down on top of me.

She tried to wriggle out of her straps as I just lay there, her hair in my face, unable to do anything until she’d sorted herself.

‘My ankle, Nick …’

As soon as she’d managed to roll off me I slid the straps off my shoulders and crawled over to her.

‘Which one?’

‘Left. I felt it go.’

I could see the shape of her calf in the moonlight and ran my fingers gently over the injury.

‘Where does it hurt most? Over the horizontal anterior
talofibular ligament?’ You don’t often get the chance to ask a girl that sort of shit. I hoped for a yes. It would indicate less damage than a tear in the major calcaneofibular ligament. Even a mild sprain might also involve other bones and ligaments, but I didn’t have an X-ray unit immediately to hand. Not that it made much difference: no matter what condition they were in, she still needed to get one foot in front of the other.

‘It’s definitely the horizontal anterior talofibular.’

‘So it could be worse.’

She didn’t ask me why I assumed my medical knowledge trumped hers.

I pulled off my shirt and ripped away the sleeves. I strapped up her ankle as tightly as I possibly could. It would loosen as she walked, but any support was better than none.

‘I’m afraid you’ve still got to move on it. Not far, though – maybe three Ks.’

She stood, pushing down on my shoulder as she tried to put some weight on it. ‘Give me a minute.’

I could see the glimmer of first light beyond the horizon. ‘Time’s up.’

I shouldered my first bag again and piled on the other two. She struggled to lift even one. I picked up her two, then had second thoughts. I hoisted one onto my right shoulder and left the other in the dust. We wouldn’t have a dog’s chance of finding it again, but maybe a deserving local would stumble across a nice Christmas bonus.

She didn’t say anything; she didn’t need to.

‘And I’ll still move faster than you.’

She started to laugh, but I was too busy gulping in oxygen to join her as I waddled towards the dawn.

We kept going for about forty minutes. I had to stop every twenty paces or so to catch my breath and ease the pain in my back, thighs and arms.

Katya had started to shiver uncontrollably. Her hair was wet with sweat and flat against her head. Her blouse was drenched. Dried blood ringed her nostrils; blood was also seeping from cuts on her legs where they weren’t already smothered in dirt and leaf litter. But she was still with me and we were nearly there.

‘I … I’ve had it, Nick …’ She faltered. ‘Everything’s spinning … Please … We have to stop …’

‘No time. We have to keep going. You understand that, don’t you? We’re fucked if we don’t.’

The only reaction I got from her was a low moan.

‘Katya, look at me!’ I cupped her chin in my hand. ‘We
must
go on. We don’t have any choice. You must help me, OK?’ I tried to get eye-to-eye. ‘There’s nothing more I can do to help you here. You’ve got to dig deep …’

We moved on, painfully slowly.

‘Not far now …’

Her shoulders jerked as she fought to contain the sobs. She was slipping beyond exhaustion. ‘We’re going to be … OK … aren’t we?’

I nodded. ‘It’s a fucker. But it’s not going to kill us.’ It was my hundredth lie of the night.

She didn’t reply. She had almost no strength left now. Neither did I, but we had to crack on.

Dino was so close now I could almost smell the disinfectant.

8 September 2011

The sun was trying its hardest to break cover from the high ground and join the clear sky above us. We’d been lying in the shit and the dust for less than an hour. Half the landscape was stuck to our sweat-soaked clothes, but when you’re fucked and static your head tells you you’re in a five-star spa.

My feet throbbed. Two big fuck-off blisters had joined the party: one felt like it covered the whole of my left heel; the other was swilling around on the ball of my right foot. I hadn’t bothered checking out the damage; I didn’t want to take my boots off again because I didn’t want the pain of putting them back on. The right one had burst; the left hadn’t joined it yet, but I knew it would – the grit that had found its way into my boots during the night would see to that.

They weren’t as bad as Katya’s ankle, though. It looked like an over-inflated football. Her lips were also swollen and badly split, but I knew she’d have accepted any amount of pain if it meant getting a drink. We were both gagging for water.

We lay several metres back from the road, still in the cover of the scrub. I could see what I needed of the tarmac, past the piles
of discarded and sun-faded bottles and cans. A couple of crows did their stuff in the distance.

I’d got to check out the bottom half of a rusty pick-up heading towards the coast; otherwise there had been no movement, no sound in the last hour, apart from Katya still trying to catch her breath.

I pulled her wrist towards me to check her watch again. It was 07.28. She looked like she’d be prepared to lie there for ever.

‘Nick …’

She went silent again, for so long that I had to reassure myself that she was still breathing. Her dust-caked face made her look like a heavily made-up punch dummy.

‘How … did you find me?’

‘It doesn’t matter, does it? I did, and we’re here.’ I gave her a smile and got my eyes back on the road. ‘So it’s all good.’

‘You didn’t trust me, did you?’

‘That was my mistake. I didn’t know what the fuck you were up to, right from that moment in your flat.’

She rested her hand on my wrist. ‘I don’t blame you. I should have said … something … I didn’t know you could … help.’

‘This sort of shit is all I’m really good for.’

‘I saw you … I saw you … with
her
… outside, yesterday. She told me … to watch from the house. She knew you were coming … She even showed me … where they were going to keep you …’

She gently rubbed my arm.

‘He was going to kill you … but Liseth stopped him. She wanted … to deal with you at the party … To encourage the others … He told me … he was going to slit your throat on the grass … and pull your tongue through it … Then he was going to shoot you.’

I put a hand on hers to comfort her but kept my eyes on the road.

‘Listen, thanks for what you did back there. You did good …’

It didn’t have the effect I was hoping for: she started to well up.

‘He – he raped me, Nick … over and over. He had to be in control … He wanted me in a harness … down there … I couldn’t … wouldn’t … do it. I lashed out … with the first thing I could lay my hands on … I wasn’t even thinking … what I was
doing … what I was going to do next … I just wanted him
dead
… Then all I could think of was getting to you … And when I saw Liseth … I just wanted to kill her too.’

‘We’re safe now.’ I squeezed her hand. ‘Dino will be here soon.’ She tried to make herself more comfortable, resting her head against one of the dust-laden bags.

‘What’s going to happen … to all this?’

‘I’ll explain when we’re in the wagon. You’ll like Dino. He’s a bit of a miserable fucker, but you’ll like him. Let’s do this later – in the wagon.’

She fell silent.

I kept my eyes, ears and head totally focused on the road.

‘I’m so sorry … you and Anna … getting dragged into this … But they couldn’t find Roman …’

‘Your brother?’ I turned back to her.

She nodded, and the tears welled up again. There were going to be a lot more of them once we were in the wagon. Relief can do that after a drama.

My eyes swivelled back to the road.

This really wasn’t the time for a sob-fest and a big in-depth chat, but she was clearly in the mood. ‘Where is he? You tucked him away?’