trouble, but one or other of them seemed to be there whenever I turned around.
Todd, O’Neill and Figgis were all waiting for us on the gravel when we went back outside, but for once they didn’t give us a hard time for being late. It wasn’t hard to understand why.
Pulled up just about where the Major’s new car had been delivered was another transporter, but this held a very different load.
The remains of Blakemore’s FireBlade had been retrieved from the site of the accident and had been brought to Einsbaden Manor. For what purpose I can only guess. I don’t know how the police work in Germany, but I would have expected them to want to hang on to the wreckage of the bike to examine it for evidence of another vehicle’s involvement in the crash. Looks like the Major had managed to successfully fudge the verdict to suit his own purposes.
We watched in silence as the driver dragged out the ramps and removed the webbing straps that had held the bike’s carcass onto the load bed. Not that it was going anywhere. The buckled front wheel was bent right back into the radiator, the forks twisted well out of true.
Gilby appeared at this point, rapping out sharp commands in German that the driver should drop his load off in the car park at the rear of the building. With a sigh the driver lifted the ramps again, muttering that the bike would not even push, he’d had to winch it on to the truck, and he would need a hand to unload it.
The Major hesitated, as though he realised that using any of the students for such a task wasn’t in the best possible taste, but he had little choice. He commandeered Hofmann and Craddock, the biggest of the lads, to help the instructors assist the driver.
We didn’t need to, but the rest of us followed round to the rear parking area to watch the process. The driver had been right about the immobility of the bike. The clutch and gear levers were gone, snapped away, so there was no way to free up the transmission which was locking the rear wheel tight.
The men had to practically carry the dead Blade off the truck and over into the corner with the damaged Audis. Todd even tucked a corner of the tarpaulin over it, like a shroud. He turned away, wiping his hands, and caught sight of me.
“So, d’you still think those bastard machines are better than a car then, Charlie?” he demanded with surprising bitterness.
I shrugged, aware I had the attention of the others, but pride was at stake. I’d ridden bikes for enough years to know the risks. Blakemore would have known them, too, but that wasn’t what had killed him.
“Well, everybody’s birth certificate expires sometime,” I said.
Todd shook his head in disgust and came stalking past me. “You’re one hard-faced bitch,” he said under his breath. “That attitude’s going to win you no friends here.”
The instructors had been expecting us to be spending the morning in a nice warm classroom and they hadn’t looked too happy about the change of plans. Maybe that partly accounted for Todd’s sour mood. What the hell, he’d never liked me anyway.
By way of retribution they fast jogged us the half-kilometre or so through the forest to the assault course location. It turned out to be not far from the CQB range, out of sight of the Manor house itself.
We were split into four teams of four, which accounted for all the survivors of the course so far. I remembered the number who’d started out, and wondered how many more we were destined to lose before the full fortnight was up. Only a few days to go now. I’d found out plenty of answers in the time I’d been here, but I realised I just wasn’t sure I knew what the questions were.
Todd split the three women up between the teams. I ended up with Craddock, Romundstad, and Declan. Hofmann was in the one team without a female constituent and looked smug at the prospect of not being lumbered with such a weak link. That self-satisfied air didn’t last long, though, when Todd explained the purpose of the exercise.
“You will designate one team member as your injured principal,” he announced. “They are unconscious and must be carried to safety over the assault course.” He grinned nastily at our consternation. “Preferably without causing them any further injury. If we spot any of them lending a helping hand, or generally not behaving like dead weights, you go back to the beginning and start again.”
Three pairs of eyes swivelled in my direction.
“Now hang on a moment, lads,” I protested, backing away. “Declan’s skinny. Why can’t we carry him?”
Craddock smiled and swept me up easily off the ground. He didn’t even grunt with the effort, which was kind of flattering, I suppose. “He is,” he agreed, “but he’s not nearly so much fun.”
“OK,” I muttered as he set me down again, “but I warn you now, boys, if I feel anybody’s hands where they shouldn’t be, you’ll get them back minus a few fingers, all right?”
Todd was setting the teams off at two-minute intervals. We watched Jan’s lot go first, getting themselves well knotted up in the climbing net. They bundled her over the six-foot wall like she was a sack of potatoes. For an unconscious VIP her language was loud and colourful. Then Elsa’s team was away.
By dint of the fact that Elsa was what might politely be termed statuesque, a smaller bloke had been designated as the principal. Even so, they were struggling by the time they reached the rope swing.
Hofmann’s mob made a better job of the net. He was clearly the powerhouse of the team and even though his principal was much bigger than the others, he seemed to be managing to carry him without immediate danger of herniating himself. Or maybe he was and it was just taking a long time for the message to fight its way through the muscle to his brain.
An image of Kirk sprang to mind. He’d had been blessed with that same casual strength. It had made him inclined towards bravado. He’d had a tendency to show off, carrying more and more weight in his bergen for cross- country runs, completing high numbers of one-handed or even one-fingered press-ups. Stupid stuff that had made us all laugh.
“If you’re
I reached down his back and grabbed hold of a fistful of the elasticated waistband of his jogging trousers, then pulled up, twisting hard.
“Let’s not hurt each other here,” I hissed.
The Welshman’s hand immediately dropped six inches further down my leg and I let go cautiously.
“OK, go!” Todd shouted, clicking his stopwatch, and we were off.
Being carried over someone’s shoulder in a fireman’s lift is not only extremely undignified, I discovered quickly, but it’s also bloody uncomfortable, particularly when they’re running. Fortunately, Craddock had big shoulders, coated with slabs of muscle, but even so it wasn’t long before the pressure set up a dull ache in my sternum, making it difficult for me to catch my breath.
I didn’t have to feign helplessness as Craddock bundled me over the net and rolled me down the far side where Romundstad and Declan were waiting to slow my descent.
As we progressed further round the course, over the six-foot wall and across the rope swing, the pain in my chest increased. I bit down on it, forced myself not to make any sound of complaint. We were catching up the people ahead of us. The rest of my team would not have appreciated any request to slow down or take things easier. Besides, the end was in sight.
I nearly made it, too.
It was the final obstacle that was my undoing. A single-piece rope bridge stretched between two sections of scaffold, nearly four metres off the ground. How to get a supposedly unconscious principal across this gap had caused discussion and disagreement between the other teams. Nobody had come up with the definitive answer.
If you left it to the strongest member to simply carry them across, he couldn’t hold on to both the principal and the guide ropes at either side. It was a precarious operation, and it seemed much further down from up there than it had from the safety of the ground.
Jan’s team only managed to hold onto her by the skin of their teeth. By the time they reached the other side she was dangling precariously by her wrists and cursing her team’s cack-handed technique.
Hofmann went for the brute force approach, hoisting his principal and muscling his way across, leaving his two team-mates to struggle after him. He made it about halfway before his grip and his balance both failed him. I
