Then the engine noise ceased.
I moved slower, wary of branches and brambles, anything that would betray my presence. The muffled sounds of three doors closing gave me a fix on their position. If they were close enough to the river to have spotted the bridge they were probably wary of putting the SUV’s considerable weight on the wooden sleepers, and would go for a look first.
What the hell? A movement from the corner of my eye. But instead of being anywhere near the bridge and the SUV, it was way off to one side, in the wrong place. I froze, hardly daring to breathe, and waited to see if the figure would notice me. I had no idea where he had come from, as if he’d materialized out of the earth.
He moved again and I saw him clearly this time. He was about fifty yards away from me and dressed in old camo clothing and a woolly cap. He moved slowly, with the gait of someone old rather than with deliberate caution, and I guessed he was in his sixties at least. He had a greasy looking canvas bag hanging from one skinny shoulder and carried an old-style military water bottle in one hand. He was heavily bearded and what little skin I could see was deeply tanned. But there was no sign of a weapon.
A homeless guy.
He must have heard the SUV and was following it to take a closer look, hoping for a handout. I was guessing he’d come into the trees across the fields after I’d done my recce, otherwise I would have seen him.
I went to move towards him, to intercept him and warn him off. But I was too late. There was a crack as he stepped on a branch, and he went still.
I heard a shout from over by the bridge and hit the ground, sensing what was coming next. The silence was shattered by a sustained volley of gunfire, ripping apart tree trunks and foliage, each contact between lead and wood a relentless snapping noise as the men from the SUV hosed down the area with no target in sight.
I dropped to the ground and waited. When it came, the silence was complete. And there was no sign of the homeless guy.
I waited, the Famas at the ready. The three men were jumpy. I guess they’d heard what had happened to the previous teams and weren’t taking any chances. Better to use a heavy-duty approach on a target than taking the trouble to use tactics to flush it out.
More shouts and a whistle, followed by a rustle of undergrowth, then all went quiet. I slid forward towards the fallen man, barely moving the grass around me and ready to open fire at the first sign of a threat.
Then I saw him.
He was dead. He lay on his side, his head thrown back and his throat bare, the skin beneath his chin starkly pale in contrast to the rest of his face. There was blood on his chest and more had seeped out from the ancient combat jacket bearing badges from an unknown regiment in a forgotten war. His shoulder bag had taken hits, too, the fabric torn apart revealing an old aluminium flask with a plastic screw-top, a fold of faded blue cloth that might have been a shirt, and a red toothbrush, the bristles soft and worn down with use.
I moved away. There was nothing I could do for him and if I stayed here the men would eventually come looking to see if they had bagged their intended target.
I stayed low, my thigh muscles protesting at the unaccustomed effort, and came to a long dip in the ground between three large trees. I eased into it, feeling the give of soft earth beneath me and the cool kiss of moisture seeping into my clothing. I ignored it. This was a deadly game of hide-and-seek and a bit of wet was the least of my worries.
Then, as I rolled to get a better view of the area I’d just left, I felt something hard and sharp dig into my ribs.
FORTY-THREE
The last thing I needed right now was a distraction; checking the trees surrounding me was essential for survival. If the men made a concerted effort to scour the area they’d be certain to spot me in the end. But I had to see what was digging into me. I turned my head and looked down.
And stopped breathing.
I was lying on top of a large artillery shell. Undoubtedly a relic of the First World War that had ravaged this area of France over a hundred years ago, it was now only half-buried in the grass and damp soil of the marsh. It must have worked its way to the surface as the layers of mud and rotting vegetation had shifted over the years. The locals, who regularly came across many such dangers in the fields, referred to them as ‘the deadly harvest’ and the description couldn’t have been more apt.
I started breathing again and studied the ground around me, not daring to move. Most of what I could see was short, coarse grass and moss, interspersed with dark soil verging on mud. It was the soil I was looking at.
That was when I saw another shape a couple of feet away. Covered in a skin of dirt and rust it was too regular and smooth to be a log. Smaller than the one beneath me it looked just as sinister, every bit as lethal. Alongside it lay a clutch of smaller shells barely held together by the remains of a belt-feed from a heavy machine-gun.
Suddenly the three men looking for me were no longer the only danger I was facing. The more I saw the more I realized that I was lying on the site of an old ammunition dump. A nest of discarded explosives, probably unmapped and now overgrown by nature, known if at all
