Recoil - Andy McNab [70]
Sam spun round. ‘Why so long? The kids down there yet?’
I nodded and jerked my thumb down the valley towards the ragtag bunch of villagers and Mercy Flight stragglers. ‘Standish won’t like it. Coffee shop for the stupid . . .’
Sam handed over his sat nav. ‘He’s got more to worry about right now. The patrol’s completely down, apart from him, Bateman and two others, and one of them has gunshot wounds.’
‘Tooley get dropped?’
Sam nodded. ‘At least now we’ll be able to tell them apart.’
Suddenly I understood why he was moving the sangars around. There weren’t going to be enough bayonets to fill them. He had to change the arcs of fire and spread the guys even more thinly across the ground.
‘Have you heard the fire out there? It’s getting nearer, mate.’
Sam looked down the valley and into the trees. ‘Aye. Could be probing patrols, to see if we’ve got anything out there, could be a few lads heading north, stupid enough not to know where they are, or so ghatted out of their skulls they don’t care.’ He turned back to me. ‘Whatever, it’s nothing compared to what’s coming our way.’
I could see the tension in his face.
‘Where’s the girlfriend?’
‘Silky’s down there, in that re-entrant they’re all heading for.’ I gestured in the direction of the two Chinese guys. ‘Surveyors?’
He nodded.
A black plastic jerry-can sat outside the furthest tent.
The water was brackish with chlorine but I gulped it down, careful not to let any pour down the side of my mouth. Wasting this stuff is a worse sin in the field than dumping in front of someone while they’re eating.
I lowered the jerry-can and took a breath. ‘Fuck this for a game of soldiers.’
He gave me a tight smile. ‘Listen, you’d better get yourself in gear. The bridge is still open until Standish turns up.’
I took a last couple of gulps onboard, then moved across to a blackened aluminium cooking pot sitting on a bunch of stones above a smoky fire. I lifted the lid to discover a thick, lumpy sludge of brown rice. I picked up one of the old tin cans lying beside it and helped myself to a scoop.
‘Get them back to the strip, Nick, and sort your girlfriend out. But promise me you’ll think about the offer. It’s important to me.’ He pointed to the kid. ‘And believe me, it’ll matter to him and his mates. His name’s Sunday, by the way.’
I chewed another mouthful of the gritty brown stuff from the pot and looked out over the hive of activity in the valley. ‘You reckon you’re going to be all right here?’
‘We’ve got good positions. I guess we’ll have to fight and see. I’m not leaving the kids to those animals, and I’m certainly not leaving them to Standish, so it’s all quite simple, really. We win or die. You go do your job – but think about what I said. We’d make a great team . . .’
He beckoned the two Chinese guys and they came out of the tent, both clutching their carryons. I scooped another canful of gloop out of the pot and pointed at their hand luggage. ‘No – get rid of it.’
They looked at me and each other, then at Sam.
‘They don’t understand,’ Sam said. ‘Just point and shout a lot like they do.’
I put the lid back on the pot, then pulled a bag away from one of them and shoved it on the ground. ‘No bags.’ I turned to Sam. ‘Let’s hope we’re not all history by the morning, yeah?’
‘Too right, son.’ He did his best to produce a grin. ‘If we are, someone up there has quite a lot of explaining to do.’
You don’t shake hands and hug at times like this. You save that sort of shit for reunions, weddings and funerals.
I started down the hill. After a few paces I checked behind me. Sam was back doing what he did best, soldiering, and Yin and Yang were waffling away as they unzipped their bags. By the time I’d reached the valley floor they were sliding down the hill behind me, pockets bulging.
3
I carried on down the valley with Yin and Yang stumbling behind. I caught sight of Crucial up on the high ground to my left, inside one of the sangars. He was pushing a long thin branch into the ground; it looked like it had just been gollocked off a tree. A soldier stood alongside, a