He protested but his heart and mind weren’t in it. I took off before he could argue further and walked back to the road, checking in both directions for incoming traffic. I hadn’t seen another vehicle for a while and figured most sensible people were staying off the roads until daylight. I walked back away from the trees and checked the layout from the road. We were concealed from the road, especially with the falling darkness, and it looked just like a bunch of trees, not an obvious stopping place.
I walked back to the car and took a drink. Travis was snoring, which was fine by me. He had asked enough questions for the day and needed as much rest as he could get. We still weren’t out of the hot stuff and I had no idea what lay ahead. All I knew was we’d have to be prepared to face anything that came our way.
After a while I felt my head going down. It was a bad sign and I shook myself awake. I could get by on little sleep, but I couldn’t risk Travis by letting myself go. I checked my watch and was surprised to find we’d been there nearly two hours.
I walked back to the road to stretch my legs and get some blood into my veins and brush off the tiredness. Checking your surroundings in a hostile area is always a good way of staying awake. But you have to be wary of seeing shadows where there are none, which is a product of general lack of sleep and battle fatigue. Shooting holes in the darkness might be good for a couple of seconds, but it’s no way to scare off the bogeys.
I got to the road and looked both ways. Nothing. In fact, less than nothing. Total blackness, which suited me fine. This was big country with zero lights and no stars to guide us or light the way. But just for a few moments all that dark was relaxing in a way that daylight would never have been.
It was a reminder that it had been a long time since I’d stood and listened to the dark without wondering if someone was out there coming for me. Smelling the coffee was a modern cliché, but it was easy to lose sight of the fact that there was a world going on around you, and sometimes you had to kick back and look at it.
Then I heard something. Or maybe it was simply an animal thing, of being in the night and using usually dormant instincts. I turned and looked back along the road towards Pavlohrad. Nothing out there that I could see. A long stretch of empty road swallowed by the night.
Then I saw a light.
FORTY-EIGHT
It was just a flicker, there then gone. Like somebody opening a car door. I waited for five long minutes but didn’t see it again. If it had been a vehicle, it was static, and if my judgement was right, it was approximately at the point where I’d seen the pull-in earlier. Whoever they were they must have decided to stop for the night for the same reason we had: to avoid running into trouble.
Or to make sure they didn’t miss us in the dark.
I gave it five minutes to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me, then set off along the road, ready to dive into cover. It was easy going on the metalled surface, but with no lights to guide me also easy enough to wander off course and stumble over the rough grass verge.
I stopped periodically to check my bearings. The trees where I’d left Travis were now invisible, as if they’d never existed, and I was in the dark in more ways than one. But at least I had the road to follow as a guide in both directions.
I hoped nobody else had the same idea.
The first indication I got of other humans present was the smell of cigarette smoke. It was faint, but unmistakable. Then came a short burst of laughter. It was probably no more than a hundred yards away and whoever they were they clearly weren’t expecting company.
I stopped and hunkered down, closing my eyes and slowly absorbing the night sounds and atmosphere and the area around me. If this was Grey Suit and his men they would almost certainly have someone on watch. And the easiest and most logical place to do that was by the side of the road.
I stepped across the grass verge, feeling my way across a shallow ditch on to more solid ground the other side. Then I started walking in a parallel line with where I judged the road to be. It was unscientific and entirely by guesswork, but the only way I could do it.
The best scenario would be to find that I’d stumbled on a lone traveller or a family that had stopped for the night. The alternatives were pretty obvious.
There was a dry clicking sound a few feet away, and it took me a moment before I recognized the noise as a cigarette lighter being used. Then I saw sparks flying off into the dark before the flame caught. I closed my eyes instinctively and froze. But even with the initial spark of light I had an image printed on my retinae of a square block of a vehicle standing nearby, its utilitarian outline instantly recognizable and confirmed by the powerful tang of diesel.
A military UAZ jeep.
I ducked my head and waited for the lighter to go out. I’d seen enough. If it was the same UAZ from before, and I guessed it was, then Grey Suit was here, too, or not far behind. By now he’d have realized the helicopter wasn’t going to work, so he’d closed in as far as he dared and was waiting for daylight to continue the chase.
Just to be sure, I made a wide sweep of the area, keeping the sound of voices within my hearing and stopping when talk ceased in case they heard me moving. By a process of elimination I picked up three different voices. Occasionally I saw the flare of a flashlight and a face would be lit up, then I heard the sound of paper being torn. I guessed they were eating some kind of field rations. The absence of a fire or more obvious lighting meant they were keeping their presence low-profile, which indicated that these men, whoever they were, were not comfortable being this far west.
I backed off and turned to go. I’d already spent enough time out here. Time to get back and check on Travis. But I hadn’t gone more than three paces when I sensed somebody else very close by. A smell of stale sweat and tobacco washed over me, and I started to move to one side, but realized just in time that the man was stepping out from behind a tree to my side and was probably as surprised as me.
I reacted instinctively. There was no use pretending I wasn’t there; it was too late for that. But turning and running wasn’t an option. I’d also picked up on another smell coming off the man, one that I recognized all too well from years of handling weapons.
Gun oil.
I was holding the Grach with the safety on. I saw just a faint hint of movement in front of me, so close I could have touched him. There was a sharp intake of breath as he opened his mouth to yell, so I swept the Grach up and across, and felt the heavy metal connect with the side of his head. He went over without a sound, and I managed to catch him and ease him to the ground gently.
Then I stepped away and retreated. I was a hundred yards away and walking along the roadside towards the trees when I heard someone calling out in the dark. I picked up my pace to a jog. It was time to go.
Travis was awake when I got back, and looked jumpy.
‘Where did you go?’ he asked. ‘I could have sworn I heard voices.’
‘You did. But don’t worry about it. You ready to go?’
‘Anytime. Was it them?’
‘Yes.’
I climbed aboard and turned the ignition. Travis said he’d heard the sound of voices, but I was hoping the drone of our engine would be more difficult for the men in the UAZ to pinpoint. I couldn’t use the lights or the brakes until I was certain we were in dead ground, so I had to drop the window and drive slowly until I heard the faint whine of rubber on solid road. It was risky moving anyway, but we had no choice. If we stayed where we were, come morning I was pretty sure the men in the UAZ would see us as they drove by.