Secrets of the Dead

against it. Blood spattered her face, warmer than the rain. Dragovic’s gun swung towards her. He was shouting something, but through the ringing in her ears and the roar behind she couldn’t understand.

This is the way it ends.

And suddenly the gun was gone. Dragovic had turned, was running back to the Range Rover. Before she could wonder, a hand grabbed her throat. One of the guards had his face almost touching hers, screaming words she could barely make out. ‘Did you call the fucking cops? Did your friend?’

A dying memory flickered in her mind, Jessop fiddling with his phone just before they were captured. The cavalry are coming. She hadn’t believed him.

‘I don’t know.’

He pulled her away from the truck, spun her around and yanked her hair so that her face pointed at the sky.

‘What the fuck is that?’

A black helicopter came over the hilltop and raced up the valley towards them. It had a snub nose and a squat body; wheels poked from the undercarriage like talons. It yawed in the wind, and as it banked around Abby saw KFOR stencilled in white on the fuselage.

The men around her scattered. She saw Dragovic diving into the back of his Range Rover, mud spatters up the back of his expensive trousers. Even before the door shut, the car started to move back up the valley. The second Range Rover followed.

The helicopter came right overhead. Abby felt the beat of its rotors like body blows, the draught sucking her off the ground and whipping the rain hard against her. She waited for it to pan out like the movies: for the ziplines to snake down and a platoon of hard-as-nails soldiers to land and take out the bad guys.

The helicopter flew by, following the Range Rovers. One of her captors appeared from around the pick-up and grabbed her arm, manacled behind her back. He was still wearing the blue police uniform he’d had on for the roadblock.

They saw the uniforms from the helicopter, Abby realised. They think the guards are Kosovo Police.

The guard jammed the gun in her ribs and started screaming about killing her there if she didn’t come. Leaving Jessop’s corpse slumped by the truck, he dragged her across the meadow and towards the trees on the far side of the valley. The other policeman followed. The ground had looked flat from the car, but underfoot she found it much more uneven, studded with sudden hummocks and low embankments that bulged under the earth, like toys left under a carpet. With her hands tied behind her back, her wet clothes straitjacketing her and the guard hauling her on faster than she could run, she jerked and flailed like a fish on a line.

The roar, quieter now, changed to a high-pitched whine. She craned her neck around. A few hundred yards up the valley, the helicopter had overtaken Dragovic’s Range Rover and was coming in to land in the middle of the track. The doors slid open as it touched down with a spray of dirt. A dozen soldiers scrambled out, fanning into a rough roadblock. The two Range Rovers swerved off the track and tore across open ground to get to the forest.

She’d slowed down. The guard jerked her forward again, cracking her shin on a half-buried rock. She stumbled forward, kicked through the long wet grass and staggered into the forest. From the safety of the trees, Abby’s captors turned and looked back.

The helicopter was airborne again, following the Range Rovers towards the tree line. Why don’t they shoot? A few rounds would have stopped Dragovic dead – she could see the silhouette of the heavy machine gun sticking out from the Blackhawk’s side. The helicopter hovered overhead, a cat toying with a mouse, but didn’t pounce.

They’re not allowed to, she thought dully. She’d read the mandate; she knew the rules of engagement. Dragovic in their sights, and they couldn’t pull the trigger. All the troops on the ground could do was follow. Some were running after the Range Rovers; the rest were advancing down the valley towards the wrecked pick-up. Had they seen her? Would they catch her in time?

Abby felt cold steel against her wrists. The guard had pulled out his knife. Before she could feel afraid, there was a sudden jerk, and then her hands were free.

‘Now you run faster,’ the guard said. He jabbed his gun into the small of her back and she obeyed. She staggered through the trees, fighting the slope, the wet clothes, the mud and slick leaves – all trying to push her back into the gun.

A shot rang through the forest behind her. Instinct threw her to the ground, but she hadn’t been hit. When she looked back, she saw the Serb crouched on all fours, clutching his leg where blood spilled from it. The other guard ran to his side, loosing an undirected burst of bullets into the trees.

His back was turned. Abby saw her chance and ran.

Time stopped. She was in a world of leaves and mud and lead, of shots and shouts and no horizon beyond the next tree. She ran, weaving wildly. Her legs ached from pushing against the soaked jeans, her lungs were bursting, her shoulder hurt so much she wondered if she’d even feel the bullet if it came.

The trees thinned as she came out in a small clearing where a rock face reared out of the forest floor. A low fissure opened into it, with black mounds of freshly dug earth around it and a strip of tape tied across it. Next to the entrance, a bleached ram’s skull grinned at her from the stick it had been planted on. Somewhere, not far away, she heard running footsteps.

Even in her panic she felt the darkness of the place, the pull of a malevolent gravity willing her into the cave. A breeze stirred the hairs on the back of her neck; the wild part of her mind told her it was Michael’s ghost trying to tell her something. A warning? A blessing? She took in the tape on the door, the cigarette butts trampled into the ground and the foil ration packs scattered among the bushes. This must be the place she’d come for. It had seemed so important. Now she hardly cared.

But the footsteps were getting closer, and she’d run out of options. She ducked into the cave.

The light from outside didn’t reach far. Panicked by the darkness, she patted her pocket and felt Jessop’s lighter. She flicked it on. The flame gleamed off smooth-cut walls, too straight for a cave. A passage, leading into the rock.