away and picking up work where there's something finite at the end? Is it a decent job?'
Markham looked into the American's old eyes and saw the light flash in them.
'That tells me you're thinking of bugging out… It's not for me to offer persuasion either way, but I don't think you're the sort to drop out. I've been through the bad times when it's just filing paper and getting a cold ass in a surveillance stake-out, and there's no big picture to tell me it's worthwhile. I've done that. I hung on in there. I got a grip and I hauled myself up, and I thought whining was poor sport. I believe in what I do. I think I serve my country's interests. There's plenty of places back where I come from that have banks and real-estate offices and insurance companies where I could have gotten work and I think it would have been slow death. But I'm a selfish man and I love what I do, and I aim to keep doing it… If they threw me out tomorrow I might just go find a veterinary surgeon and ask him to put me down. I can't think, Mr. Markham, of a better thing that a man can do than to serve his country and not have it bother him that no one knows his name and no one will ever learn what he did.'
Littelbaum had reached for the door-handle.
Markham said, 'Thank you.
'I've met your principal. I was at the meetings that evaluated the information he gave. He's a tough, proud, able man. Don't make a judgement on me because I'm not modern and emotionally incontinent. I hope, sincerely, he makes it through this. But, I'm honest with you, my country's interests are paramount to me. You can't go soft on this. I have to tell you, I have very little respect for quitters.'
Only later were they able to put together the sequence of events.
They were all trained men, but their memories were hazy and fuddled. On one thing, they were all agreed, Dave Paget, Joe Rankin, Leo Blake and Bill Davies, the speed with which it happened, so fucking fast.
Dave Paget and Joe Rankin sat in the Wendy house, the door shut tight against the cold. It was fifteen minutes to the end of the twelve-hour shift. They were both, wouldn't have admitted it, knackered. When they cared to look at it, the television screen alternated between the view of the back garden and the view of the front approach to the house; on the console, the lights indicating the state of the sensor beams were steady on green. Joe Paget was finishing the last of the sandwiches, and muttering about where they would go to eat, where they'd find a new pub because last night's meal had been a bloody disaster. Dave Rankin flipped the pages of two magazines simultaneously, survival kit and holidays, talking to himself about thermal socks and about which month had the best weather in Bournemouth and Eastbourne, was engaged in a mindless interior dialogue. A red light on the console bleeped, indicating that a sensor beam was broken at the bottom end of the garden. Joe Paget said it was that bloody fox again, and Dave Rankin said that Bournemouth was as good as Eastbourne if it was out of season. Something moved, on the screen, at the far end of the garden… Leo Blake tried to slip quietly past the sitting-room door of the B and B but was ambushed by Mrs. Fairbrother. How long were they intending to stay? They were not the sort of trade she was used to. Did he realize how inconvenient it was to have him sleeping in their house through the day? She had a shrill, moneyed voice, and the bark hadn't been lost with the change in fortunes. He said that he didn't know, ducked past her and hurried out to his car… Bill Davies was reading his newspaper in the dining room, the radio and the Heckler amp; Koch resting on the blanket covering the table. He was warm, had an electric fire on two bars, and clean. Meryl had ironed his shirt, his underwear and his socks, and had attempted to press the creases out of his suit. Only his shoes were still damp and they were filled with the sports section of his newspaper. He had his feet up on the table. The television was on next door, in the living room, and they were all there. He glanced down at his watch; Blake would be relieving him in five or six minutes. His radio crackled to life, jolting him from the newspaper… Dave Paget and Joe Rankin were both numbed into silence. The first call out to the house was the warning, now they stared at the screen and were checking for the confirmation. Paget was very pale, Rankin was sweating. Their machine-guns were hooked over their necks and shoulders. Red lights began to replace green lights on the console. Twice the camera caught a movement, and twice lost it somewhere down at the bottom of the garden, where the shrubs were and the greenhouse. It wasn't like Hogan's Alley and it had fuck-all, sweet fucking nothing, to do with the shooting range. What the hell should they do? Quit the Wendy house? Crab towards the end of the garden where the beams were broken and the movement showed? Shout? Activate the bloody floodlights? Run for the house? There was no flicking instructor to tell them what to do. They saw him on the screen. He was coming up the side of the garden, a blurred white figure. They saw the rifle, outlined against a grey furred background, then it was gone. Paget swore, and Rankin gave the confirmation into the radio.
It might have been the rain, and the maintenance on the pool cars was worse than last year when it had been worse than the year before, but it took Leo Blake an age to start the damned engine. He sat in his car and revved, long enough for the curtain behind him to part, and he saw Mrs. Fairbrother scowling at him. Bloody car, and he'd have some bloody words for the maintenance people… Bill Davies burst the door open into the living room. The advertisements were playing between the soaps. The machine-gun dangled free on its strap and thudded against his body. He was shouting. They sat frozen. Perry was in his chair holding his coffee mug, Meryl had her needlework on her lap, Stephen was on the floor with his computer game. He was shouting, and they did not respond, and he was shouting louder. He grabbed his principal and hauled him up from the chair and the coffee flew in the air and down to the carpet. He was dragging his principal, helpless, like a sack of sand, out into the hall. The radio was blasting in his earpiece, and she hadn't come and neither had the kid. He snatched open the door of the cupboard under the staircase and pitched his principal inside. Perry cannoned against the vacuum cleaner, the brooms, the boots, the kid's old push chair and the junk. He went back, shouldn't have done, for her and the kid, broke the drill they practised. The principal should have been his only priority. He caught her arm and the kid's wrist she was screaming, and the kid and he threw them in the cupboard against his principal. He crouched by the door. God, if they would just stop screaming… Joe Paget stayed at the console and watched the screen. Dave Rankin ducked out of the Wendy house, launched himself on to the lawn, rolled, then crawled towards the kitchen door and the cover of the water-butt. Each had the selector off safety, had gone to single-shot, each had one in the breach, each had the finger on the trigger guard. Joe Paget told Dave Rankin, face microphone to earpiece, that the Tango was out of the beams, off camera. Where was the bastard? Where the fuck was he?… Leo Blake was going down the drive when he switched on the radio. He heard the chaos on the net, and the gravel spewed out from under his… Bill Davies had his principal buried deep in the cupboard and the kid was in there behind him. But the woman was still screaming. He held her, he had to. With one hand he aimed his machine-gun at the front door, with the other hand he clutched her to him. He held her against his chest to stifle the screaming, and she sobbed hopelessly… Joe Paget said that the Tango had gone up the side of the house, would be on the neighbour's patch, and the front was not covered. Dave Rankin swore, said he'd try to cover the front. His breath was heaving and, to Joe Paget, he was damn bloody close to going incoherent. Coming across him and Dave Rankin was Bill Davies crying out for cover at the front, and the woman's sobs were across everything. And the unmarked car at the main road was playing bolshie and saying they weren't supposed to move off station, and the unmarked car that was cruising was more than two minutes… Leo Blake came round the corner by the village hall and, with the green ahead of him, had to swerve to miss an old man with a terrier. Bill Davies heard the shoulder hammer into the front door where there was a new lock and an old bolt, and held his hand over her mouth and tried to muffle the sobbing that would pinpoint for the Tango where they were. The door sagged… (.. Dave Rankin fell into the cold frame at the side of the house, crashed through the glass, sprawled and lost the momentum of his charge… Leo Blake drove straight across the grass of the green, wheels spinning, skidding, hit a young tree and flattened it with its post. He swung his wheel and had the front of the house in his full lights, and saw him… Bill Davies heard the door splintering… For a flickering moment, Joe Paget saw him again, white against grey, then lost him as the car's lights blacked out his screen… Leo Blake had the Tango in his lights. He could see the man's camouflage combat gear, his mud-smeared face, and the assault rifle. The man, as if it was his final desperate effort, threw his weight against the door. Blake shared the Heckler amp; Koch with Davies, and now only had the Glock in a shoulder holster. He'd forgotten it, its presence there was clean out of his mind. He dazzled the Tango with his lights. The Tango had the rifle up, aiming towards the car, but couldn't see through the lights. Blake knew the rifle, had fired the same weapon on the range, knew its killing power. He thought his last best chance was to charge the man with the lights on full beam. The Tango thrust an arm over his blinded eyes, then ran. The man sprinted, full stride, along the track in front of the houses. There was a moment when the back of the Tango was in front of the car, and then the man tried to sidestep towards the cover of a hedge. Clutching the wheel, Leo Blake felt the jolt as he clipped the Tango, and he was past him. The car surged on, spun, turned the full circle. Leo Blake saw, lying on the grass, the Kalashnikov. He switched off the engine. He tried to be calm, to report what he had done, what he had seen..
