cold.
It was two up, both in front. I opened the back door and let Jerry get in first. I got in behind the driver. The cloud of cigarette smoke was as dense as the exhaust fumes outside.
There was no interior light but I could see the driver in the glow from the dash. Short back and sides, moustache, maybe in his forties. The passenger was the long-haired one. Between his legs, its muzzle resting dangerously against his chest, was a G3. I looked down. The plastic butt was the full-size, not foldaway, version. Much more important was what lay next to it in the footwell: our bumbags.
These guys had changed into black-leather jackets and jeans for the trip. Maybe we really were going back to Sarajevo.
The wagon lurched from side to side as we drove down to the chicane, then the six hundred metres beyond it, before turning right on to the forest track. Neither of them said a word. The driver leaned across and flicked the radio on. It was local phone-in stuff.
We worked our way through the trees. Jerry had dropped his hood, but his eyes were still quizzing me.
I ignored him. I needed time to think. I stared down at the pistol grip of the G3. The safety catch was on the left. First click down was single-shot, fully down was automatic, the opposite of the AK. The cocking piece was also on the left, just over half-way up the stock and, like the MP5 and all the Heckler & Kochs of that era, had to be worked with the left hand. The mag was straight, not curved, and held twenty rounds.
There was no way of telling if it was made ready. I had to assume it wasn’t.
Hairy lit two cigarettes and passed one to the driver before offering us one from the packet. I leaned forward a little between their seats.
‘Bags?’ I pointed into the footwell. ‘Can we have our bags now?’
Hairy waved his hand testily towards the windscreen. ‘Sarajevo, Sarajevo.’
The driver muttered something and worked the wheel. We bounced on to the frost-covered road and turned left, back towards the barns and the city. A press statement by Paddy Ashdown kicked off over the speakers: something to do with law and order, bringing evil men to justice, all the normal bluster, before the interpreter faded in over him.
The forestry block glided past on our left. I was going to have to do something soon. I leaned forward again and tapped Hairy on the shoulder. ‘My friend needs a piss.’
He stared at me blankly.
‘Piss?’ I pointed at Jerry and simulated undoing my fly. ‘He wants to go.’
He just waved his hand towards the windscreen again. ‘Sarajevo.’
Fuck it, we were Nuhanovic’s guests. We could give these guys orders. ‘No, we stop! He wants to piss!’ I poked the driver. ‘Stop!’
While the two of them exchanged a few words, I sat back with Jerry. ‘Get out, go down, stay down.’
I leaned forward. ‘You stopping, or what?’
As the wagon pulled in at the side of the road, Jerry got out, unbuttoning himself as he went round the front, past the headlights, and towards the treeline, too modest to take his piss within view.
They looked at each other and rolled their eyes.
96
Jerry had been listening; he seemed to lose his footing, and fell with a shout.
I tapped Hairy and waved my hands urgently. ‘Go help him! Go help him!’
Jerry wasn’t going to get any Oscars for the moaning, but at least he kept doing it. Hairy muttered a curse or two, but opened his door anyway. As he climbed out, he put the G3 back in the footwell, resting it against the seat.
My eyes focused on the barrel. I wouldn’t get a second chance at this.
I grabbed the muzzle with my right hand, yanked it back between the seats towards me and simultaneously pushed back, opened the door with my left and rolled out on to the tarmac.
I felt the butt bounce across the rear seat, and crash on to my chest as I landed.
My left hand grabbed the plastic stock, my right slid down on to the pistol grip. The road surface was hard against my back as I pushed away from the door.
Ignoring the shouts from the front of the wagon, I concentrated on getting my left hand on to the cocking piece, flicking it so it stuck out at right angles to the barrel, then racking it back. A brass round spun out of the ejection chamber as I let the working parts go forward and pick up another. I knew now that the weapon was made ready. The shouts continued as I got to my feet.
Butt in the shoulder, I aimed at Hairy, both eyes wide, needing to see everything.
Jerry lay stock-still on the grass. ‘Jerry, on your feet – get him down, get him down!’
I kicked the driver’s door and moved back at least three arm widths. ‘Out! Out! Out!’ If he didn’t understand English, he got the drift. He came out of the car at warp speed, hands in the air, then sank to his knees and put them behind his head.
By now Hairy was on the floor too. I leaned into the weapon, safety catch off, first pad of the finger on the trigger. ‘Jerry, get them together in the light.’
Jerry did as he was told and they soon lay together face down on the grass verge. I moved round so I faced the tops of their heads. I could get clear shots into them if they started fucking about. ‘Search them. Make sure they’ve got no radios, no weapons.’
Long shadows were cast by the headlights as Jerry patted them down and rummaged in their pockets. Hairy had nothing on him apart from a wallet and cigarettes.
He moved over to the driver. ‘What we going to do with them, Nick?’
‘They stay here. Soon as you’ve finished, get them crawling into the treeline.’
We both followed as they shuffled to the edge of the canopy, their breath snorting out of them like racehorses’. The first line of trees blocked the Vitara’s headlights, casting weird shadows into the first few metres of forest.
‘Tie them up. Use their belts, shoelaces, whatever you can find.’
I kept them both covered as Jerry got them to sit against a tree. Then he had an idea, ran back to the Vitara and returned with the empty bumbags and a set of jump leads. He tied their hands with the leads, then clipped the bumbags round their necks and a tree. They didn’t resist: they wanted to live.
I rested the G3 on the ground and pulled my boots and socks off. The frost-covered grass was freezing, but it was worth it. Fuck knows who might be within earshot, but I didn’t want them spending the night screaming their heads off.
I put the damp boots back on and jammed a sock into each mouth. Then we shoved as much as possible of the bumbags into their mouths and tightened the straps around the tree-trunks so they were holding their heads and gagging them. If you don’t fill the whole mouth void, sound can be produced and projected. With the void filled with a stinking sock, they’d be more worried about breathing and avoiding gagging than making noise.
Now they were sorted, we had to get back to the house. We ran to the Vitara and I grabbed the Thuraya.
‘Do these things have silent alert or vibrate or what?’
Jerry shrugged as he shoved his passport and wallet into his parka.
I laid the G3 on the bonnet and powered it up while I retrieved my own docs. ‘We can’t risk using the wagon.’ I kept my eyes on the phone LED. ‘It’s going to make too much noise on the approach and it might be compromised before we get back to the house. Go and park it in the treeline, take out the rotor arm and we’ll keep it with us. We’ll use it to get the fuck out. Don’t forget the keys.’
I got the Thuraya on to vibrate. There were five bars on the sat signal and five for power. I scrolled down numbers called as Jerry jumped into the wagon. ‘Right, that long fucker, that George’s number?’
I took a couple of deep breaths and pressed Send as he headed towards the trees.
