The aloneness drove him forward.
There was no more shooting. There were no more flares. The voices faded, the footfalls died.
He tried to remember how far it would be to the next halt position. He tried to recall the map that Crane had shown him before they had moved off. They were now in the sixth hour. Holt had not taken much notice of the map, didn't have to, because he had Crane to lead him.
Alone, Holt resumed his night march.
It might have been five minutes later, it might have been half an hour, he found Crane sitting astride the animal track.
He could have kissed him.
Crane whispered, 'Syrian regular army patrol.'
Holt spoke into Crane's ear. 'Routine?'
'They're not usually out at night. Usually tucked up, holding their peckers.'
'Why would they have been out?'
'You're the educated one, youngster.'
'Were they waiting for us?'
'You went to university.'
Holt hissed, 'Tell me.'
'Just not certain that one kicked stone was it, but waiting.'
'Are we blown?'
Holt saw, in the fragile moonlight, Crane's smile without humour. 'They're behind us, there's only one sensible way to go.'
They moved off.
He was unaware of his shoulder sores and of his heel blister. Holt was aware only of each single, individual footfall.
They bypassed the sleeping village of Aitanit, and the silent village of Bab Maraa, they climbed high to avoid the village of Saghbine where dogs broke the quiet of the night.
Below him to the east was the moon-draped flatness of the floor of the Beqa'a valley. Holt thought of the valley as a noose.
16
In front of him, below him, in brilliant sunshine, lay the valley.
He could see right across to the grey-blue climb of the far wall. In the soft haze it was hard for him to make out clean-cut features in the wall. Behind the rising ground were the jebels that marked the line of the border between Lebanon and Syria. With difficulty, he could make out the far distant bulk of the Hermon range.
Holt and Crane had reached the lying up position in darkness, and Holt had taken the first guard watch, so that he had taken his turn to wrap himself in the lightweight blanket and tried to sleep under the scrim net while the dawn was spreading from the far away hill slopes. Crane must have let him sleep on beyond his hour. They were above the village of Saghbine. Crane had set his LUP in an outcrop of weathered shapeless rock over which the scrim net had been draped. Holt knew that Crane's bible decreed that they should never make a hiding place in isolated, obvious cover, but there was a scalped barrenness about the terrain around them.
The nearest similar outcrop would have been, he estimated, and he found it difficult to make such estimates over this ground, at least a hundred yards from their position. Lying among the rocks, in the filtered shade of the scrim netting, he felt the nakedness of their hiding place. It seemed impossible to him that they should not be seen should an enemy scour the hillside with binoculars. But Crane slept and snored and grunted, like a man for whom danger did not exist. There was mom between these rocks, under the scrim netting, for the two of them only if they were pressed against each other.
Their valley wall, on which jutted the occasional rock outcrop, shelved away to the floor. He could see that the rock of the sides gave way to good soil at the bottom, The fields were neatly laid out, delineated by the differing crops. The valley walls were yellowed, browned, the valley floor was a series of green shades, and Holt could make out the flow of the Litani winding, meandering, in the middle of the valley, and he could see also the straight cut ditches that carried the irrigating life run of water from the river into the fields. He played a game to himself and tried to make out the produce of the handkerchief fields. He could see the posts supporting the vines that were just beginning to show their spring shoots, and the cutback trees of the fruit orchards, and the hoed-between lines of the grain crop, and the more powerful thrusting traces of the marijuana plants, and the white streamers of the plastic tunnels under which the lettuces flourished.
Holt thought that luxury was a warm bath, and a razor, and a tube of toothpaste…
What few trees there were, pine or cypress, were in small clumps on the valley floor. He reckoned the village of Saghbine was about a mile away below them. The village was clear enough through the binoculars, but it was hard for him to make out the individual buildings when he relied only on his eyesight. He was interested in the village because in his imagination he exchanged the village houses for the aerial photograph he had seen of the camp, and he tried to imagine how it would be when they came to lie up a thousand yards from the camp. Terrifyingly open… If the camp had been where Saghbine was… if they had had to manoeuvre to within a thousand yards of Saghbine and rest up through long daylight hours… he couldn't see how it could be done.
And Crane, snoring and nestling against him, just slept, slept like tomorrow was another day, another problem.
The village was a sprawled mess of concrete block homes and older stone buildings with a mosque and minaret tower in the centre. The high pitched chanted summons to prayer from the minaret tower reached him.
'Fancy a brew?'
Crane had an eye open. Snoring one moment, thinking of tea the next. Holt thought that Crane might just turn over and give up the ghost if the crop failed in Assam and Sri Lanka.
'Wouldn't mind.'
'Done the magazines?'
'Done them.'
'What's new?'
'Place is like the grave.'
Crane stretched himself full length. Holt heard his joints crack.
'Then you're a danger to me, youngster.'
'How come?'
'Because, youngster, when you start thinking the Beqa'a is quiet as the grave then that's the time you start to get careless.'
'I just said the place was pretty peaceful, which it is.'
Crane took the binoculars. Tea was going to have to wait. Holt bridled, and Crane didn't give a damn.
Crane started by looking south.
'Pretty peaceful, eh, that what I heard? Back where you kicked the stone last night, where they fired the flares, there's troops out there. Pretty blind if you didn't see them, but they're there…'
His head turned, his gaze moved north.
'… There's a kiddie with some sheep, or didn't you see him? He's a mile back, not much more, he's about four hundred feet below us. He'll be watching for hyena because he's got lambs with him. If he sees anything that adds up to hyena then he'll yell, bet your backside…'
Again the twist of the head. Crane peered down at the village.
'Gang of guys going into the mosque for a knees down, or didn't you see them? They're in fatigues, or didn't you see that? They'll be Hezbollah, or didn't you know that? If the troops find a trail, if that kiddie spots you when you go to scratch your arse, then the God men'll be up here, too damn right.'
'I hear you, Mr Crane.'
'So, don't go giving me crap about it being quiet.'
