Pirate - Duncan Falconer [57]
Stratton looked to the girl to see if she had recognised the hardware.
She was watching them intently. ‘Those could be ours,’ she said.
Stratton followed the men up the slope to a high point among the rocks.
As the sun fully exposed itself, he checked their position once again, in particular the route out. They had two broad escape options: uphill or downhill. If they headed up the plateau into the parched, treeless hills, they had little chance of finding cover. The ideal route out was back the way they had come and down to the river. The thick scrub along the bank would provide cover. At least the Toyotas wouldn’t be able to navigate the riverbank.
The main problem with the location was its exposure to the sun. He didn’t want to spend all day there, especially without water. So once he had formulated a plan, he decided to risk the move back to the first ridge and then down to the river.
The scope of the task to rescue Hopper looked daunting. The camp was large and probably held anywhere between a hundred and three hundred men. Which made any attempt to get closer during the day out of the question. To get inside at night would require a diversion of some kind. Ideally, something that forced the jihadists to evacuate the camp. Like a fire. The fuel storage. A serious explosion such as the weapons arsenal going up would be better. The rockets would make a big enough bang and solve a large part of the problem at the same time. But just how he was going to achieve any of that he did not know.
Stratton glanced at the girl to see how she was doing. She was holding her head in her hands and looking exhausted. He decided to wait a couple more hours and gain more information if possible before making an attempt to get to the river. When darkness fell he would return alone and do what he could to get Hopper.
As he sat thinking about the problem, it occurred to him once again he shouldn’t even be attempting it. The operations room back in Poole would be dead against it. He would be laughed at for even considering it. And if he died trying, he would be labelled a fool. His final epitaph. Someone back home would find out one day. The truth always surfaced eventually. The pair of them should get out of there right there and then, head for the coast and concentrate on getting themselves on to that cargo ship. It was the smart option to be sure.
Stratton reached out and touched the girl’s shoulder. She snapped out of her daze and looked at him. He could see her better in the new light. Her face was bruised, her eyes and lips swollen. Scabs had formed at the sides of her mouth. Welts striped her neck and shoulders. He could only imagine the wounds on the rest of her body.
‘Let’s head to the river,’ he said. ‘Get some rest.’
Her relief at the news was evident. She nodded.
As they began to move a cry went up from within the wooded encampment. A roar of men’s voices answered it.
The cleric shouted again. The faithful responded as one.
The shouting became unstructured, punctuated by angry voices raised as if in demonstration. It sounded like the congregation was moving through the camp. Stratton could make out figures among the parched, stunted bushes and tall spindly pine trees. He saw a large gathering of men, pressed together and moving as a single mass right towards them. The mob emerged from the wood into a level area at the foot of the hillside directly below Stratton and the girl.
There must have been a couple of hundred of them, all bearded, many with headdresses, most with AK-47 assault rifles slung over their shoulders.
Stratton and the girl instinctively pressed themselves further into the ground while watching the gathering through the gaps in the rocks around them.
The mob was close, little more than fifty metres from them. Stratton gripped his rifle in readiness. The girl tensed, her breathing short as fear enveloped her. The edge of the mob mounted the