Exit wound

We carried on to the next junction. Anna turned right, out of line-of-sight of the road the trucks had careered down. She found another firebreak and started down it. I stopped her before we’d gone ten paces. We couldn’t risk running into deep mud. We were off the track; that would do.

I jumped off and undid all the gear on the back. I needed the rope. I got the sentry to sit up and looped it round his neck. It was too much for him. His chest heaved and he gave a couple of loud sobs. Tears started to run down his face, to join the rain and the blood. The poor fucker thought I was going to hang him. ‘Anna, tell him to shut up. I’m not going to hurt him – but if he fucks about I will kill him.’

The colour drained from her face. ‘Nick, I-’

‘We don’t have a choice. I have to keep control. I have to let him know who’s boss.’

She gobbed off to him. Her message seemed to be a whole lot longer than mine. I guessed it didn’t really matter, as long as she managed to calm him down.

‘OK, now ask him if he knows where the testing ground is. The restricted area, the proving ground, whatever you want to call it – does he know where it is?’

She gobbed off some more, while I fastened his hands to his ankles and brought the rope back up and around his neck. I tied it off to one of the connecting rods between the bike and the sidecar. I put his helmet back on his head to protect him as we bounced around.

By now he was sobbing big-time.

‘He doesn’t know, Nick. He hasn’t got a clue. Look at him, he’s just a boy. What would he know?’

I tucked the chainsaw down beside him and secured it with another length of rope, then turned my attention to the maps. There were a lot of fan-shaped areas outlined in red but none of them stretched more than a couple of kilometres. They were everyday, bog-standard rifle ranges. They weren’t big fuck-off testing grounds. A couple of much larger, irregular-shaped areas were outlined in blue. One looked big enough to be Wales.

‘What does this say?’ I jabbed my finger at a heap of Cyrillic.

The boy let out another agonized plea from the footwell. I slapped a hand on his back. ‘Shut up, mate. You’re all right.’

It was going to be a nightmare for him. It was something he would remember for the rest of his life. He’d probably have bad dreams about this day – the day he’d thought he was going to die – but he would be alive. He stood more chance of getting shot by his own troops in a compromise than of me doing him any permanent damage.

Anna finished reading. ‘The whole of that area is restricted – it’s got to be the proving ground.’

I held the folding version open in front of me. ‘So we’ve found the haystack. Now where’s the fucking needle?’ I scoured the area. There were bits and bobs of markings, no more than the major tracks. But then I spotted a short, isolated line, too straight to be a track. ‘That’s got to be a runway…’ The board map showed us the shed we’d nicked it from. There was a big red ‘You are here’ blob for the sentry to show people.

I looked back to my folding map. ‘OK, line-of-sight, it’s about a hundred and forty K from here to the proving ground.’

‘You sure that’s it?’

‘Of course I’m not sure. I just don’t know. But neither do you, and he doesn’t either – or he’s not telling. And where else could it be? You’ve got a proving ground, you’ve got a private company coming in – they’re going to use their own airfield. We’ve got a possible – let’s go for it. On the way we might find something we prefer the look of.’

‘And what about him?’

‘He’s coming with – it’ll reduce the temptation to let the world know exactly where we are and where we’re headed. Get on the back.’

I binned the board map and had a last quick look at the folding one before shoving it inside my jacket. I checked the compass and drove back down to the five-way junction.

I took the track that headed north.

109

1457 hrs

I cut my way through yet another chain-link fence. It felt as though I was making progress. It was our third since we’d entered the training area. We’d used the forestry tracks, going cross-country when the ground opened up. We’d got bogged down once. I’d had to get the squaddie out to help. His name was Zar – a great name and an enthusiastic pusher before I tied him up again.

This had to be the proving ground. The other fences hadn’t carried any signs, but this one did. Instead of being red with the usual ‘Fuck off or we’ll shoot you’ warning, this one was yellow. It looked civilian even before Anna translated: ‘Private property – no military allowed without a permit.’

We were in the inner sanctum.