This game was getting way too complicated.
I checked the bag Fabien had given me. On the very top was a wrap of cheese sandwiches and a couple of apples with two bottles of water tucked down the side. Field rations. Underneath was a FAMAS F1 assault rifle and three spare clips, a groundsheet, binoculars, a sleeping bag, a survival knife, a coil of tripwire and four stun grenades, aka flashbangs in a canvas bag. I saw the way Fabien’s mind was working. Every convenience required for a fun day in the country.
And he’d thrown in a military crossbow.
I eased it out of the bag. It was small, lightweight, made of a composite injection-moulded body and fibreglass limbs. I’d used one a few times on practice ranges as part of a general weapons-training programme, but never for real. Picture a skeletal rifle stock with a small bow perched across the top and you have a virtually silent and deadly assault weapon. Where they were known to be used they carried a powerful psychological aura unmatched by any gun. Nobody likes the idea of being pierced by something they can’t hear coming and can’t extract.
I replaced everything in the bag and continued driving until I reached the area I’d chosen. It lay in a shallow dip in the ground, with rolling hills running away either side. The trees were extensive, running from halfway down the slope on one side and merging into a stretch of marshland a good mile long and half a mile wide. Glints of water showed a number of ponds dotted here and there, each surrounded by reeds and tall grasses with a winding river bisecting the area and running east to west.
I checked out the approach road carefully through the binoculars. A turning off the road led onto a track which fed down into the trees and marshland, with another line which had to be a track leading up on the far side to the north.
One way in, one out. It wasn’t perfect but for my purposes would do me fine.
I turned onto the track, which looked and felt little-used, with weed-filled ruts in the dried earth on each side and a high line of grass running down the centre which whispered on the underneath of the van like a voice telling me stuff I couldn’t understand. The fields on either side were planted with what looked like sugar beet, leaving a nice open view across the land for some distance. A cloud of dust was billowing up behind me, which was a useful sign. Anyone approaching down here or down the far side would throw up a similar warning visible for some way, hopefully with time enough for me to get ready.
The track took me down to a weathered wooden gate about a hundred yards short of the trees. I got out and checked the lock and chain. The key fitted, although I had to work it a little to get it to turn. It was another indication that nobody had been down here in a while. High above me a couple of skylarks did their musical thing, and a flock of pigeons were poking about in the soil of the fields, too busy to bother looking at this stranger turning up nearby. It was like being in a different world, one I hadn’t experienced enough of.
I got back in the van and drove through the gate, getting out and locking it behind me. There was no sense in making things easy for them. Then I drove down into the trees, the overhead canopy dimming the light and casting a soft shadow over the undergrowth on either side.
The track wound between ponds, each roughly half the size of a football pitch, and reached the river. It was little more than fifteen feet wide and maybe ten deep, the water running clear and smooth with long lines of weeds twisting in the current like ladies’ hair.
A bridge made of weathered railway sleepers provided the only crossing, and I checked it out on foot before driving over. It seemed robust enough, each sleeper bedded down into the soil on either side and held in place by large rust-brown metal spikes. I got back in the van and lowered the windows. If anyone was around I wanted to hear them. I drove across the bridge, the tyres rumbling over the ridges and gaps between the sleepers and making the steering judder.
The trees on the other side of the river were thicker, the undergrowth tangled and untended for probably decades and forming a dense wall of vegetation that blocked out everything on all sides. It was like entering a mini-jungle, the atmosphere at once oppressive because of the absence of air and the high degree of constant humidity from the soil.
There were flies, too, and tiny midges forming clouds in every clearing. With them came the sickly smell of old mud tainted by rotting vegetation. I’d been in places just like it before and felt a shiver across my shoulders in spite of the warmth hanging over me like a cloak. Jungle fighting was a special art, and one I doubted I would ever come to enjoy.
When I reached the far edge of the trees I stopped. A padlocked gate was in front of me, the double of the one I’d just come through. This one opened onto a track continuing up the slope and disappearing at the top. I checked the padlock. Same key.
I drove back into the trees and found an area which formed a natural hideaway. It was big enough for the van to be hidden unless someone stumbled on it by accident. If they did I wouldn’t be in it. Then I spent more than an hour scouting the
