I didn't need to say anything to Sarah. She jumped away from me and my hand reached for the pistol.
The man must have got up, only to fall down again immediately with a grunt as he scrambled to recover.
'Oh, fuck, fuck ...'
On my hands and knees, I moved slowly to the edge of our hide and pushed my face against the branches. It was the American. He was stumbling around in the mud, his clothes soaking, his mustache looking like a drowned rat. He was heading in our general direction, looking as bedraggled as we were. But he wasn't just running, he was looking for ground sign. He was tracking us.
I crawled back to Sarah and whispered in her ear, 'It's your American.
Go bring him in.'
She shook her head.
'It won't work.'
'Make him.'
'He won't fall for it.'
'You're the one that needs his clothes, not me.'
She thought about it, then nodded slowly and took a deep breath. I watched as she turned away from me and crawled out of the hide.
I heard her call, 'Lance! Over here! Lance!'
I moved to the opposite side of the tree, pushing back under the branches, just in case Sarah decided to become Lance's best friend again.
I lay down and brought my pistol up into the aim, the barrel just clearing the branches.
I could hear her talking to him as they got nearer. It was Arabic, but spoken rapidly. She was still gob bing off to him at warp speed as she shuffled backward into the hide. I started to feel vulnerable now. Why was she talking to him like this? I'd already heard him speak English. It could only mean trouble. But fuck it, whatever she was planning was about to happen.
H9
The first things to appear were his hands, the backs of which were covered in hair and looked way too big for his wrists. Then his head and shoulders, face down to avoid the low branches as he pushed his way in. He was nodding and agreeing with whatever it was that Sarah was saying as she followed him in.
e didn't look up until he was right inside the shelter. When he did, he saw me crawling out of the branches opposite him. His eyes widened as he saw the weapon, and he shot a glance back at Sarah, looking for some kind of clarification or reassurance. He looked back at the weapon, then at her again, trying to work it out. After a couple of seconds he gave a deep sigh and lowered his head, rocking it slowly from side to side.
Sarah was level with him now, and jerked her head to indicate for him to crawl forward a bit more; he did as he was told. She ran her hands underneath his jacket. I watched her like a hawk, ready to react if she tried to grab his weapon and draw down on me.
She looked at me and shook her head.
I motioned him to move to the left of the hide and he shuffled over on his hands and knees. I stopped him before he was too close to me, in case he fancied his chances.
The black bomber jacket he was wearing had a Harley Davidson motif on the left-hand side and looked warm. I motioned with the pistol.
'Clothes.'
Still on his knees, bent over with his back parallel to the ground, he started to remove the jacket. His gaze switched between me and Sarah; he didn't say a word, still trying to work it all out. Sarah was sitting against
the tree with her hands in her jacket pockets and her knees against her chest.
I grabbed the American's jacket and started to put it on, making sure I put Sarah's bag back over my shoulders.
'Now the rest of your stuff,' I said.
'One hand.'
He put his left hand on the ground and fiddled with his belt buckle with the other. Sarah was impatient and very cold, and she snapped at him in Arabic. She must have been feeling grim, covered from head to toe with mud, leaves and pine needles, and her legs were wet, dirty and bleeding.
Lance was wearing Nike trainers, and Sarah decided to help him by pulling them off from behind. His Levis were next, and when he'd finished she stretched out on the ground, arched her back and raised her backside to get the big jeans on. She was doing up the belt and he was pulling off his T-shirt when I heard the helicopter again. The two of us looked up, which was pretty fruitless considering the tree's canopy meant we couldn't see anything. Lance's T-shirt was over his head but not his shoulders.
I put my left hand on the back of his neck and rammed his face into the mud, the barrel of my pistol pressing into his neck.
The throbbing of the rotors was virtually overhead. The heli was hovering.
It stayed there for several seconds, the trees flexing under the downwash.
Shape, shine, shadow, silhouette, spacing and movement: those are the telltales that can betray your location. But we were in good cover;
Sarah knew that, too, and continued slowly pulling on the warm clothes.
The heli moved away about fifty meters, hovered again, then moved on.
The sound of its rotor blades disappeared completely. I took the muzzle away from the American's neck and told him to carry on. He finished taking off his T-shirt. Sarah took off the jacket, put on the T-shirt, and replaced the jacket. All that was left were his socks and boxers. It was Lance's turn to shiver, the thick hair on his back plastered flat by the rain.
I could see in his eyes that he was starting to flap. He must have thought he was going to be killed, and started mumbling some sort of prayer to himself. But it wasn't a plea, the tone was more of acceptance.
I said, 'It's OK, Lance, you don't need Allah yet, you're not going to die. Just shut the fuck up.'
Sarah was sorted, kneeling with her hands in her jacket pockets, wearing size eleven trainers and jeans with the gusset hanging halfway down to her knees, with turn ups so big they looked like some sort of fashion statement.
The boy was still mumbling away to himself on his knees, bent forward with his forearms resting on the ground, his hands clasped together in prayer. He was trying his best to be the gray man.
Sarah looked at me.
'What about him?'
I said, 'Let's get moving while the heli's gone. I'll tie him to the tree with my belt. He'll be fucked off, but he'll live.'
She shook her head.
I said, 'No, just leave him. Come on, let's go. We need to make distance.'
She gave a sigh as I took the belt from the bag and kicked Lance over to the tree and began to secure him to it. An hour or two and he would free himself; if not, he deserved to die anyway. He was still muttering to himself, and as I tightened the knot he blurted out some insult to Sarah in Arabic.
He was probably telling her what a bitch she was for fucking him over like this, after all they had been through together and all that shit. She ignored it. I felt like telling him I knew how he felt.
I had a quick look around to check we hadn't left anything, and started to crawl out of the shelter. Sarah followed, or at least I thought she did.
The Arabic mumblings got fainter.
I was still on my hands and knees, my head just emerging from the branches, when the loud report of a weapon came from behind me. Instinct flattened me to the ground. In almost the same instant I realized it wasn't me who'd been shot and slithered out of the way.
My first thought was that he'd somehow got Sarah. I jumped to my feet and ran around the tree to approach him from the other side. I started to crawl in, weapon at the ready. Pushing through the branches on my stomach, I saw him. He was still being held up by his secured hands, but his body was sagging and his legs were splayed, like the crumpled victim of a firing squad. There was no way Lance would be feeling the cold anymore.
Sarah had head-jobbed him with a semiautomatic. She was on her knees, putting the weapon into her jacket
