No wonder this place was unused and fenced off. What lay in the ground beneath me was a cocktail of death that even after all this time was likely to explode if moved. And any one item could easily set off any other ordnance around it like giant firecrackers, razing this wood to the ground with every living being inside it.
I eased my weight off the shell, gently feeling my way across a surface soil I couldn’t see clearly, and over a subsoil harbouring who knew how many similar deadly objects. In the clammy heat among the trees, where no trace of fresh air was able to penetrate, I found a sheen of perspiration on my skin, running into my eyes and making them sting and causing my clothes to stick to my body.
I’d gone perhaps no more than fifty feet, confident that I was clear of the worst of the ammunition dump when I saw a shape moving among the trees ahead of me. A man with a rifle.
I thought I’d got away without being seen but something about me must have jarred with the vegetation around me. Swinging his weapon towards me he opened fire on full auto.
The sound of the volley echoed over the marsh, snapping through the branches of the trees above my head like spiteful hornets. Luckily for me he’d been in too much of a hurry and the shots went wide. But he’d effectively nailed my position to his colleagues and more shots came my way from other directions.
I rolled to my knees behind a tree and saw another man off to my side moving in my direction, eager to come in for the kill. I fired two shots from the Famas before ducking down again and rolling.
This time I felt a sucking sensation beneath me and realized I’d moved too close to a stretch of boggy ground bordering a small pond. The dark mud was interspersed with the silvery-copper glint of stale surface water, its smell rising around me like an invisible mist.
A whistle came from my left, and I backed away in the direction of the bridge. So far these men hadn’t shown much evidence of working as a team, but as three individuals. Maybe they were finally getting it together. If I allowed them to coordinate their moves I’d be sunk. In their thinking the centre of the mission was located at the bridge itself, so I was counting on them assuming I’d be moving in the opposite direction, away from their guns.
I wasn’t going to do that.
I saw a glint of light reflecting off the SUV’s bodywork and ducked. The bridge itself was a no-go area; it was too open, an obvious focal point which they would be sure to be watching, even if one man stayed close by while the others scouted the woods. But there was nothing to stop me fording the river further along. I slipped across the track and into the denser undergrowth, the back of my neck itching from the imagined dangers I could not see.
I counted to twenty to see if anything moved, then crept over to the river and waited again.
Nothing moving, nobody waiting. Holding the rifle and the Sig in the air I eased down the bank, watching the trees on the opposite side. Sliding my feet into the water and feeling its cool grip on my skin, I pushed down and adjusted by balance until I was able to stand up.
As I’d seen during my recce earlier, the water was only a few feet deep here, with an accumulation of silt, rotten vegetation and weeds forming a high point on the river bed.
I didn’t dare splash because it was a sound that would carry a long way in this silence. The current, steady and insistent, drew the hair-like strands of weed around my legs in a caress, and I kept moving, wary of getting tangled in their grip. My shoes were sinking into the soft mud with every step, but I’d done this kind of thing before and kept going, taking step after step before the mud could increase its grip on me.
On the other side I dragged myself up the bank and eased over the top into a tangle of low-lying bushes, then held my position while I scanned the area around me. Getting my bearings I saw a familiar fallen tree trunk and moved towards it. In a hollow beneath the trunk was the crossbow wrapped in a blanket I’d found in the back of the van and placed there earlier.
I set one of the six bolts Fabien had provided in the bed of the bow and placed it to one side on a bed of leaves. Each bolt was about a foot long. I also made sure the Famas was good and ready and checked the Sig.
A voice close by made me freeze.
A man was walking along the track from the north. He was carrying an assault rifle and using a cellphone held across his mouth. I couldn’t hear or understand what he was saying but he had the sound of a man in charge who was fast losing patience. That was good for me; if they were on a clock that was running down fast it would make them all the more careless and rushed to get things done. A crackly voice came back in reply and he barked an order and clicked off. He sounded testy.
He was also careless. The one thing you don’t do in a close combat situation like this is give away your position by leaving your comms open. It’s the kind of thing that can get you killed.
I felt around for a large stone and turned to face the river, which was about twenty yards away. Lying on my side I did an overhand grenade lob, and saw the stone curve through the air before
