‘I’m keeping the sun behind my left shoulder as much as possible,’ he said, ‘then…’. The bike suddenly lurched down into a hole and slewed sideways. Gerry tumbled clear and rolled over until her back thudded against a tree trunk driving the air from her lungs and for a moment she struggled to catch her breath. She turned round when she heard Dan gasping with pain and saw him struggling to lift the motor bike from on top of his trapped leg. She jumped to her feet and managed to tug it upright for long enough for him to scramble clear.
‘Ok how bad is it?’ she asked kneeling beside him.
Slowly and carefully he twisted his foot around, gasped and lay back on the ground breathing deeply. ‘Not broken, I don’t think. I’ll take my boot off and take a peek.’
‘Better not,’ said Gerry. ‘If it swells up you might not get it back on. Here, let me have a look.’ She carefully moved his ankle joint through a full range of movement and then pressed against the ligaments. He gasped a little as she pressed on his outer ankle bone.
‘It’s definitely not broken, nor even badly sprained. I think you’ve just bruised the outside of the joint badly. You might even have cracked the bone a little. I’ll ride the bike now.’
‘No chance; look at the front.’ The front tyre had burst and slewed off the wheel.
‘Oh crap,’ said Gerry. ‘Well to coin a phrase, on your feet soldier!’ She smiled and held out a hand and he carefully stood up and took a few careful paces. ‘Hey that’s not too bad. How are you though?’
‘My back hurts where I hit the tree. The rucksack absorbed most of the impact.’
‘The bottles did anyway. Water’s dripping out.’
She took off the pack and extracted two split plastic bottles. She suddenly shivered at the memory of being trapped on the life raft with nothing but a couple of water bottles and she began to tremble violently and she suddenly grabbed hold of Dan and clung on to him in desperate fear. Then to her intense embarrassment she suddenly started to weep uncontrollably.
‘Hey, we’re alright,’ he said soothingly and gave her a hug, inadvertently pressing on her bruised back.
‘Ow, you clumsy ox!’ She writhed and pushed him away. He looked at her with an expression of bewilderment, which quickly gave way to resentment. Damn it! Time to soothe his bruised male ego.
‘I’m sorry Dan; my back’s hurt more badly than I thought. Maybe you could take a look at it.’ She quickly took off her jacket and handed it to him and then tugged her shirt over her head. She stood in front of him for a moment in her bra before turning round. A moment later he felt his fingers gently touching her back. ‘You’ve a big bruise over your ribs; try taking some deep breaths to check nothing’s broken.’
She had already done that but still she turned to face him and took huge breaths that lifted her breasts and she saw him glance down quickly and then take care to look her in the eyes.
‘How does that feel?’
‘I’m ok.’ She pulled her shirt on and when he held out her jacket she stepped forward and kissed him quickly on the cheek. ‘Come on; let’s get back to the road. We need a ride. I think we should drive up to Billings in Montana, and then continue up to Saskatchewan. We’ll need a good off-roader; we don’t want to use a border crossing point.’
Dan looked at her, somewhat resentful of her assumption of command. Suddenly she grinned at him. ‘It’ll be like old times,’ she said.
His mind swept back years to the two of them crossing the border into Fujairah. ‘Yuh, sounds like a plan,’ he smiled and shrugged. ‘Well I expect all the crossing points will be closed to us, so we’ve no choice.’ He paused. ‘But I guess my passport’s going to ring alarm bells even across the border, so how are we going to get a flight out of Canada?’
‘We’ll make contact with my boss Cornwall,’ Gerry replied. ‘He can send a UK passport for you by FedEx or something, and then we’ll get back to London. After that we’ll make our way to Baghdad and find this Gilgamesh document.’
‘Hell, Gerry, you’re making it sound easy,’ Dan protested.
‘It’s straightforward,’ Gerry replied, ‘but it might not be easy. First of all we need a car.’
‘My guess is that they’ll head north to the Canadian border sir,’ Neil Samms said to General Robert Bruckner.
‘Your guess?’ Bruckner sneered.
‘My analysis, sir. We found their motor bike abandoned in the woods. The front tyre split.’
‘I would agree with that,’ said Jasper White. He turned round and stared at Samms for a moment who tried to avoid looking grateful. ‘Tate knows that you can order a full ports and airports in the States, but you can’t do the same in Canada. What we need to do is try and work out their intentions and plan to pick them up wherever they’re heading.’
‘Ok Jasper, so we nearly had the two of them,’ said Bruckner. ‘Now let’s see if you can find them for us again. Where’s Parker?’
‘He’s at the hospital, having his fingers stitched up.’
‘Bloody idiot. Is he ok?’
‘His little finger’s not working; damaged tendon, but otherwise he’s good to go.’
‘Post-traumatic stress disorder, triggered by the motorcycle crash,’ Gerry said to herself in self-analysis of her emotional outburst in the forest as she sat in the passenger seat while Dan drove towards Billings in Montana.
After walking slowly down to the roadside she had flagged down a four door pick-up. The owners had willingly stopped and given them a ride to the nearest big camp site when they explained that one of their trail bikes had broken down and as they were only single seaters they had decided to leave them hidden in the woods and get a ride. After saying goodbye to the couple they had begun to search for a suitable vehicle and found an unlocked GMC Sierra in which the owners had carelessly left the key ill-concealed on top of the sun visor.
Sharing the driving had enabled them to cover the eight hundred odd miles to Saskatoon, capital of the province of Saskatchewan, in twenty hours. After crossing the border they had abandoned the Sierra in the town of Swift Current and continued their journey in an old Toyota Corolla stolen from the airport car park. On the outskirts of the city they checked into one of the chain hotels used by the less well financed business travellers adjacent to a shopping mall.
‘Not too put too fine a point on it, we could both do with a shower and some new clothes,’ Gerry declared when they were alone in the hotel elevator. ‘We’d better go shopping.’
‘Have you got any cash?’ Dan asked. ‘I’ve got about seven hundred dollars left.’
‘I’ve got about a thousand,’ said Gerry. ‘I suggest we each buy a cheap wheelie bag, the size that they let you take on as hand baggage and a pre-paid cell phone. There’s a laundromat in the hotel basement, so we can wash what we’re wearing. Shall we meet in the lobby in half an hour?’
‘Are you sure your guy Cornwall will come through with the passports and more money?’ Dan asked.
‘Well if he doesn’t, then we’re screwed,’ Gerry replied. ‘That reminds me, first thing tomorrow morning I need to go downtown to the main post office and lease a post office box.’
Two hours later the two of them were sitting in the food court eating variations on the theme of diced chicken in oriental sauce with vegetables, rice and noodles. They had promised each other during the car journey that they would go to a decent restaurant, but having spent a fair proportion of their funds on the essentials, they decided that some economy was needed.
‘Right, I’m going back to get some sleep,’ Gerry announced after they had finished. ‘The prospect of a comfortable bed is too enticing to be put off any longer. I’m going to leave early tomorrow and set up that post office box.’