Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead - Andrew Cartmel [50]
I’m just twenty‐two and I don’t mind dying.
* * *
The moon was up when they launched the dinghy. The black rubber shape slapped the water as they lowered it over the side, settling then riding the swell. Ace was the second person aboard, sitting in the front beside Dfewar. She had a flat metal can of black dubbin she used for waterproofing her DMs. Now she thumbed the can open and applied the dark grease to her cheeks as the men behind her paddled. Dfewar studied her blackened face and nodded with approval. He borrowed the can and then passed it back to his men. When the blades of the paddles touched sand they slid over the side of the dinghy and pushed it in through the last metre of shallow water to the shore.
The Kurds were professionals. They dispersed in silence, the only sound the water on the beach and the faint hydraulic punching of the gasoline generator near the encampment. Dfewar touched Ace on the elbow and she moved off with him, up the hillside, away from the sound of the generator.
* * *
When the moon emerged from the film of clouds you could see the sentry quite clearly. He was moving along the skyline, holding some kind of automatic weapon with a jutting magazine. The weeds were stinging Ace’s eyes. She moved her face back out of the clump of long stems. The sentry was looking away from her now. She slithered silently back down the slope. Dfewar moved with her, taking a parallel course through the dirt and dry grass. They stopped, crouching among some large shattered stones, and waited while Dfewar listened and studied his wristwatch. They could hear the sentry and, when they peered over the rim of the stones, see him following his route.
They watched for a long time, watching until the pattern was definite. He was patrolling a measured interval, walking away on the hill crest until he reached a patch of heat‐stunted trees, then turning and walking back towards the ring of stones where Ace and Dfewar were waiting.
Dfewar had drawn a knife from a sheath on his webbed belt. The blade was dim, blue steel, chemically dulled so it wouldn’t reflect light and betray his position. The blade was an unusual slim shape, tapering symmetrically to an acute point, like a thin flattened spike. No sawing or carving teeth on either side of the blade. There was really only one thing you could use a knife like that for. Ace moved away from it when Dfewar set the knife on the ground between them.
Dfewar rolled over on his back and lay looking up at the night sky. Particulate pollution drifting across from the mainland made the stars look faint and blunt. Dfewar didn’t move or check his knife again. He was relaxing, preparing himself. He wouldn’t need to move until the sentry turned and came back. He just lay there on the hillside staring upwards as though he could see the constellations. He didn’t look at Ace again.
* * *
Guthrie patrolled the hillside, walking just fast enough to keep his body heat up. He remembered the photographs of Turkey they’d studied when they were planning the operation. They showed the hot blues of sky and water. Nobody mentioned how cold the nights would get.
From where he stood now Guthrie could see the encampment, the three tents, two for personnel and one, a smaller lean‐to, for the generator. In the minute or so he spent watching no one moved between the tents. He could see lights on in two of them, a soft glow through thin orange canvas, and the bare bulb burning beside the generator.
At the other end of his hilltop patrol he had a good view of the best natural harbour on the island. If trouble came it would come from that direction. Perhaps a landing on a night like this. Guthrie felt a prickling of anticipation. He would watch for boats coming in. In a moment he would turn back and walk that way. But now he paused among the stand of dwarfed and twisted trees. He was supposed to maintain a steady sweep of the hilltop until three o’clock, when Sean would come and take over the watch. He should be starting back to survey the other end of the