We ran across the track and eventually reached the line of border posts. I couldn’t be certain in the dark, but I figured we were close to the point where I’d killed the sentry. I gave it another ten minutes of hard walking, then called a halt. Although we were in Kenyan territory, we weren’t in the clear by a long margin. Musa’s men wouldn’t be in any mood to acknowledge the border, and there was the added danger of running into a unit of the KDF on border patrol or an anti-poaching team. They would be armed and ready to fight, and not about to ask questions of a bunch of people sneaking about in the middle of the night.
‘We’ll rest up here,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to make a call.’
Tober was standing next to me. I sensed him looking at me, but he didn’t ask questions. Instead he said, ‘I’ll go and check our back-trail. Won’t be long.’ With that he was gone, melting into the dark.
I didn’t argue; he had some excess steam to work off after being cooped up in the basement, and focussing on doing what he knew best was his way of dealing with it.
‘Where’s he going?’ Pryce asked. She was breathing heavily and sounded as if she wanted to be sick. After what she had been through I wasn’t surprised.
‘Checking we aren’t being followed.’ I wondered if she was put out at not being consulted. Tober was, after all, her colleague, not mine, and we hadn’t exactly had time to establish any boundaries. ‘Don’t worry — he knows what he’s doing.’
‘Like you, you mean? Did Moresby send you?’ Her tone was calm and her voice steady enough, in spite of being out of breath, and she undoubtedly wanted to know who the hell I was. It was a natural question but not one I wanted to get into. In any case, having to answer the same questions from Tober later would be doubling up.
I said, ‘I’ll explain in good time. For now we have to get you out of here.’
I got out my sat phone to call Piet. Dawn wasn’t far off, and I was surprised at how quickly time had passed. I needed to get him in here to make the pickup.
Just as I was about to dial his number, I heard a pop-pop in the distance behind us, followed by a burst of automatic fire.
Then silence.
Fifty-One
‘Move,’ I said, and urged the others to follow me. Madar was ready to go but Pryce wanted to argue. She grabbed my arm and held on.
‘We should wait for Doug. He could be in trouble.’
I shook off her hand. ‘If he is, there’s nothing we can do to help him. If he’s in the clear he’ll find us. If we stay here and they get past him, they’ll be all over us inside thirty minutes.’
I didn’t wait for her to agree, but set off after Madar. Pryce followed, but she wasn’t a happy trooper.
We covered about half a click, heading over a rise in the terrain and through a clump of bushes and rocks. It was a natural fault in the landscape, and had thrown up debris like giant molehills. Madar had eyes like a cat and avoided the worst of them, so I told Pryce to follow him closely while I dropped back a few metres to cover our backs.
We eventually reached another line of trees where I called another halt. I was worried about Tober. If he’d been caught, we were a good man down and vulnerable. I couldn’t see Musa giving up too easily on his plans, and if he thought we were close enough to catch he’d come after us for as long as it took. There was a lot of empty space here, and he probably knew that the chances of his men being compromised in Kenyan territory were fairly low, especially with the army stretched thin chasing down al-Shabaab fighters.
I dialled Piet’s number and heard it buzzing at the other end. Four times, six times, then he answered.
‘What did you do, man — start that war?’ He sounded remarkably cheerful, letting go of a chuckle through an early-morning throat. ‘Where are you?’
It had been clear since hearing of Musa’s planned execution that the one person to get out of here was Angela Pryce. She was his most valued trophy, whereas Tober was a soldier, a victim of his job. And Piet could only carry one passenger at a time. I told him where we were and he replied that he was ten minutes away, where he’d been camping out waiting for a call.
‘What about you?’ he queried. ‘And the muscle. Is he there, too?’
‘He’s coming up behind, plus one other — a boy. He helped us out.’
‘Christ, man, you should’ve warned me — I’d have arranged a combi and a picnic basket.’ He coughed and said, ‘Sunrise is about twenty minutes off. I can’t take off in the dark, but once I’m up, I’ll spot you if you’re out in the open. Just try not to draw too much of a welcome party, right?’
He cut the connection and I put the phone away and checked my weapon. Pryce was doing the same, closely watched by Madar. I don’t think he’d ever seen a white woman up close before — and certainly not one who knew how to handle an AK-47.
I left them to it. The more Pryce was occupied, the less time she’d have to dwell on what had happened or to pepper me with questions I was in no position to answer.
I hadn’t gone into it much with Vale about what to do if I did come face to face with his two people. The plan was to stay remote and unseen, and come out of the shadows only if they got into trouble. This part had been unforeseen, and was something I would have to ask him.
A few minutes later I heard a brief whistle coming out of the gloom.
Tober.
I told Pryce to stay put. ‘Piet’s on his way in. If I’m not back by the time he arrives, don’t wait. Get on board and tell Madar to make his way back to the coast and find a boat out. He’ll know what to do.’ I wasn’t going far, but if this turned out to be Musa’s men playing cute, I had to intercept them before they got too close.
I worked my way back until I reached a spread of open ground, and stopped on the near side, checking out the lay of the land. It wasn’t clear enough to see far, but anyone stepping across it would show up. Then I caught a movement directly in front of me, about a hundred metres out.
It was Tober. He was walking easily enough, his rifle slung over his shoulder as if he was on a Sunday afternoon stroll.
I whistled and he raised a hand and broke into a trot to join me.
‘They coming?’ I asked him.
He grinned. ‘They were. I discouraged them.’ He hefted the AK and said, ‘These things may look like shit but they work fine. Ironic, giving them back their own ammunition.’
I nodded and we set off to join Pryce and Madar.
As soon as we arrived back at their position and Pryce had made sure Tober was OK, she was all over me with questions. I batted away each query with vague responses until Tober sensed I wasn’t going to play ball and chipped in with the only question really worth asking.
‘What’s the plan?’ He’d been scanning the horizon as dawn filtered through the sparse trees. Like me, he’d come to the same conclusion based on long experience: it wasn’t much in the way of cover, but the one advantage we had was that we could see anyone coming from a long way off. ‘Do we have backup on the way?’
I nodded towards the west. ‘He’s on his way in now.’
He did a double take. ‘He? One man?’
‘It’s all I could arrange at short notice.’ I went on to explain that the transport was a microlight and if things got sticky he, Madar and I would have to find another way out. His eyebrows went walkabout, but I could see he understood.
Pryce wasn’t so easy to convince.
‘That’s crazy. I’m not leaving Doug here. We came in together and that’s how we’ll leave. Anyway, you could call the embassy in Mombasa on your phone. The SIS liaison there will arrange a pickup.’