Recoil - Andy McNab [78]
‘Ice-cream. Free cone at every gas stop.’ I’d stretched out my hand. ‘I’m Nick.’
She shook. ‘Silke.’ I liked her German accent. ‘Under what circumstances would your offer include crushed nuts and syrup?’ And the fact her grammar was better than mine.
And that was pretty much that. She’d slung her surfboard on to the roof of my combi van, and five days later, after a thousand miles of great conversation, four vanillas and a couple of tuttifruttis, we were sharing more than expenses.
Now her smile faded.
‘My mother would stroke my hair. I can still smell her perfume when I think about her, even now.’ She tugged at the leaf. ‘When she died, I ran away. And I kept running, from anything too complicated, or just to avoid it completely. I’d pretend the problem wasn’t there – and if I didn’t think about it, well, it wasn’t.’
I wanted to ask why I couldn’t be the one to listen, but I already knew the answer. I’d never been the listening kind.
She leaned down and touched her swollen ankle. ‘I’m sorry, Nick. I needed to figure stuff out.’
I knelt beside her and stroked her cheek. ‘Well, next time you need to do that,’ I said, ‘make sure you go to Butlins.’
She didn’t get it. Maybe they didn’t have holiday camps in Germany.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. An English joke.’ I hesitated. ‘I guess Tim isn’t a Butlins kind of a guy, eh?’
She held my gaze now, and I could see tears in her eyes. ‘I needed to see him. Not in the way you think. But now I’m here, you know . . . Look at what he is trying to do . . . Can we really just head back to Lugano, or Sydney, or any other damn place and drink cappuccino and feel comfortable about the world?’
I got up slowly, not wanting to carry on this conversation. ‘Wait here. I’m going to check things out.’
I scrambled up towards the higher ground, looking, listening and giving myself a hard time. What I really wanted to do was scream into her face: ‘So you came all the fucking way here to talk to him about us when you could have done that with me over a brew – not in a fucking war zone where I’ve just had to kill another kid!’
I stopped. I couldn’t hear much above the yelling in my head, but I could see movement down by the river, where we’d just been.
I checked the sky and let my prismatic point settle. The sun was directly overhead, but still only a ball of light trying to penetrate the cloud.
I looked north. If we kept on the high ground, we’d eventually get back to the valley – as long as we didn’t trip over any hostiles on the way. Whatever, I wasn’t going to wait until last light.
11
There was nothing scientific about what I’d been doing for the last ninety minutes. Carrying Silky on my back was like humping eight stone of bergen up and down the Brecons. All I had to do was lean forward to take the weight, then get one foot in front of the other as fast as I could.
I’d kept off the top of the high ground, the natural route, moving instead just below it to hide my shape and silhouette. I’d moved in bounds, no more than five metres at a time, using the cover as best I could, stopping after each to look and listen, then plan the next – scanning the ground in front of me for more cover, for a route without too many rocks, bushes or anything else that might send me flying. Silky never left my back. Once I’d got her on, it was easier to keep her there.
I stopped against a tree. I rested both hands on the trunk and leaned forward to balance her and control my breathing. This was taking for ever. I listened and looked between the tree-trunks and bush for any irregularities of shape, shine, shadow, spacing, silhouette or movement.
Sweat dropped from my forehead and chin on to the leaf litter, like water from a melting icicle.
Birds twittered in the trees and the cicadas went for it hammer and tongs. I’d never seen one of the fuckers in all the times I’d spent in jungles, but they always let you know they were out there, ready and in sufficient numbers to take over the world.
She slid off, hobbling on to her good left leg, either to give me or herself a rest. She levered herself down