They headed south for a few miles, hugging the coast before turning inland into what seemed to Holm to be wilderness. In the darkness there was only the intermittent flash of oncoming headlights and the occasional glimmer from a settlement off in the distance.
They drove for several hours, the road surface deteriorating until finally tarmac gave way to gravel. Ahead, the mini convoy continued to forge into the night and Holm was forced to stay well back and drive on dipped headlights. He grudgingly admitted to Javed that they could have done with his tracking device.
Javed nodded while reading a map on his phone. His finger hovered over the screen.
‘Algeria,’ he said. ‘Just a few miles to the border.’
‘Shit.’ Holm glanced down. ‘If they cross then we’re done. This is dangerous enough as it is.’
His worries were ended when a few minutes later the SUV and the van turned off the road and headed up a rough track. Holm slowed the car to a stop and wound down the window. Off to the right, red tail lights were disappearing up a rising escarpment. Some kind of settlement sat on the ridge, silhouetted against a sky burning with a million stars.
Holm got out and after a moment so did Javed. He came round the car, stood next to Holm and peered into the blackness.
‘Before you ask,’ Holm said. ‘I have no bloody idea what Karen Hope is doing up there.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
Silva didn’t sleep much. There was some kind of festival taking place in the town, and car horns sounded throughout the night. There were fireworks too, the first of which brought Itchy scampering into her room, half asleep, almost as if he was suffering from combat stress.
It was still dark when Nasim tapped on the door.
‘OK we go in thirty minutes, yes?’
Silva shouted out an acknowledgement and got up and washed. Nasim had packed breakfast in a basket and they ate as they cruised out of the town and onto a dirt road. The town sat on the edge of a desert plain, and as they left the last house behind the sun slipped over the horizon, illuminating a landscape of reddish-brown rock and low hills, a sea of sand dunes in the distance.
‘One hour.’ Nasim held up a single finger. ‘Then we there.’
Silva recalled Itchy’s words of the previous night: This bloody stinks. He was right. They had no idea where they were going, no idea of the terrain or the distance or anything. All they knew was Hope was supposed to be at their destination. She prayed that part was true and this time she could put an end to it all.
Nasim was as good as his word; at six they edged along a track that rose up the side of a stony hill. He stopped the Land Cruiser before they reached the top, wrenched on the handbrake, turned and nodded. No words were necessary. They were here.
Silva and Itchy climbed out and moved up the track towards the summit where a rocky outcrop cast a long shadow in the low morning sun. Over the crest the ground fell away to a deep ravine and on the far side of the chasm lay something like an oasis: a grove of ancient olive trees surrounding a number of buildings. Beyond the buildings a vast plateau spread into the distance and more olive trees marched in rows to the horizon.
They crouched next to a boulder and Silva noted the sun would swing round to their right, but never get behind them. She looked at the ground nearby where a few pieces of greenery sprouted from dry soil. She could lie there but they might need to rig some kind of camouflage screen. She peered through the low glare to the farm. Several buildings sat together but the biggest was obviously the farmhouse. There was a large white van and a yellow SUV parked on one side of the walled complex. She turned to Itchy.
‘Three fifty.’ Itchy stretched out his hand and raised his thumb. ‘Tops.’
She’d guessed the same. Depending on exactly where Hope appeared, the shot was an easy one.
‘Let’s do it,’ Silva said.
An hour later and they were set. Itchy had the spotting scope out and had ranged the distance to be three hundred and thirty nine metres to the front of the farmhouse. The rifle was lying on a mat and they’d arranged a desert cammo net on a couple of poles in front of their position. Through her binoculars Silva could see a veranda to one side of the house. A couple of tables sat beneath a billowing canvas awning. She pointed it out to Itchy.
‘If Hope goes out there to eat or have something to drink it would be perfect.’
‘Killing al fresco,’ Itchy said, laughing at his own joke. ‘Assassination au naturel.’
Silva winced. The humour wasn’t appreciated. Not right now. She wanted Hope dead, but if it could be accomplished with a snap of her fingers she’d have taken that over having to sight through the scope and squeeze the trigger, wait a second and watch for the spray of blood as the bullet hit Karen Hope in the head.
They took it in turns to sit in the shade of the rocky outcrop while the other one kept watch. Itchy fiddled with a SIG pistol which had been in among the extensive array of equipment, while Nasim hovered near the car, the doors open for a quick getaway. If necessary they’d leave the gear behind; it was unlikely to fall into the hands of the authorities, not out here.
At a little after eight thirty, just when Itchy was beginning to annoy Silva with his constant shifting about, two men came out from the farmhouse, climbed into the white van and headed off down the track to the road. In the centre of the farmyard, previously
