shuffling their feet and checking their watches.
He knew this land fairly well by now, and decided to get closer. It would mean a hike of a couple of miles, around to the other side of the encampment where the ground cover was thicker. He set off, crouching low, crawling on his belly when necessary. Another two-man patrol was coming home, and passed within a hundred yards of him. He made himself part of the scenery. They weren’t really concentrating anymore-they were too close to home, not expecting anything. The most dangerous time.
At one point he heard a cry of “Come out, come out!” followed by laughter. The laughter had an embarrassed edge to it. They’d be even more embarrassed if he walked into their camp, his gun trained on them.
He was where he wanted to be now, separated by the vehicles from the campfire and the men. They hadn’t set guards; they hadn’t done anything. Overconfidence. He lay his rucksack on the ground and started to crawl in towards their position. He knew his target. He was going to crawl right under one of the Land Rovers and point his gun up at them as they drank their tea. Then he was going to say hello.
“Hello.”
The voice behind him, over him. A woman’s voice, sounding amused, as well she might. He rolled over onto his back and looked up at her, at the gun she was carrying. In her free hand, she held his rucksack. She was tutting now, shaking her head.
“Traces,” she said. She meant the rucksack. He’d made no attempt to hide it. She glanced at her wristwatch. It was a man’s chronometer with a time-lapse function.
“Thirty-six hours and three minutes,” she said. “You almost didn’t make it.”
They were close enough to the Land Rovers for her voice to carry. The men in their camouflage uniforms came around to the back of the vehicles to see what was happening. He stood up and looked towards them, finding the chocolate-eater.
“Traces,” he said, tossing the ball of silver paper. It landed in the young man’s tin mug and floated in his tea.
They couldn’t head back until everyone had returned to camp. Eventually, the last few stragglers came limping home. One of them, the car dealer, had twisted his ankle and was being supported by his two friends, one of whom-a school PE instructor-had badly blistered feet, the result of wearing the wrong kind of socks with nearly new boots.
“I think I’ve caught pneumonia,” the man with the blisters said. He looked at the man they’d all been trying to catch for the past day and a half. Ten of them against one of him, within an area of six square miles outside which he was not allowed to operate. He was removing his belt-kit, always the last thing he shed. It comprised his survival kit, knife, compass, first-aid kit, water bottle, and chocolate bars. The PE instructor hobbled over and touched his arm, then his chest.
“How come you’re not soaked like the rest of us?” He sounded aggrieved. “There’s not a bit of shelter out there, hardly a bloody tree. You been cheating, Reeve?”
Gordon Reeve stared at the man. “I never need to cheat, Mr. Matthews.” He looked at the other men. “Anyone know how I kept my clothes dry?” Nobody spoke up. “Try some lateral thinking. How can you keep your clothes dry if you’ve nothing to cover them with?” They still didn’t answer. Reeve looked towards his wife. “Tell them, Joan.”
She had placed his rucksack against a Land Rover and was using it as a seat. She smiled towards Reeve. “You take them off,” she said.
Reeve nodded at the men. “You take them off and you stash them in your pack. You let the rain do its stuff, and when it stops you get dry again and you put your nice dry clothes back on. You’ve been cold and wet and miserable for a while, but you’re dry afterwards. One final lesson learned, gentlemen.” He took a mug from the ground and poured a brew into it. “And by the way, you were crap out there. You were absolute crap.”
They drove back to the house for debriefing. The Reeves had turned the stables into an annex that included a shower room with a dozen spray nozzles; a changing room with metal lockers, so each man could store his civvy clothes and all the other paraphernalia of the life they were leaving behind for seventy-two hours; a well-equipped gym; and a small conference room.
The conference room was where Reeve did most of the initial teaching. Not the physical stuff-that was done in the gym, or outside in the courtyard and surrounding countryside-but the other lessons, the show-and-tell. There was a monitor and a video machine; a slide projector; various blackboards, wall maps, and diagrammatic charts; a big oval table and a dozen or so functional chairs. There were no ashtrays; no smoking was allowed indoors. Smoking, as Reeve reminded each new intake, is bad for your health. He wasn’t talking about lung cancer; he was talking about traces.
After showering, the men dressed in their civvies and headed for the conference room. There was a bottle of whiskey on the table, but none of them would sniff a drop until the debriefing-and then there’d be just the single glass apiece, as most of them were driving home after dinner. Joan Reeve was in the kitchen, making sure the oven had done its work. Allan would have laid the table, then made a tactical retreat to his room to play another computer game.
When they were all seated, Gordon Reeve stood up and went to the blackboard. He wrote the letter
They shifted in their seats and offered up a few words. When they got a word right, Reeve chalked it on the board.
“Piss,” he said, writing it down. “Planning… Poor… Proper…” He saw they were struggling, so he turned away from the board. “Proper Planning and Preparation Prevent Piss-Poor Performance. I could add an eighth
They exchanged sad glances; his captives. It was going to be a long time till dinner.
After dinner and good-byes, after seeing them all off in their cars, waving them back to their real lives, Reeve went upstairs to try to convince Allan that it was bedtime.
Allan was eleven and “bookish”-except that in his case the adjective referred to computers, computer games, and videos. Reeve didn’t mind in the least that his son wasn’t the outdoor type. Friends thought maybe Reeve would have preferred a musclebound son who was good at football or rugby. Friends were wrong. Allan was a lovely-looking kid, too, with a strawberry-cream complexion and peach fuzz on his cheeks. He had short fair hair which curled at the nape of his neck, and deep blue eyes. He looked like his mother; everybody said so.
He was in bed, apparently asleep, when Reeve opened the door. The room was still warm from computer- use. Reeve went over and touched the top of the monitor-it was hot. He lifted the plastic cover off the hard drive and found it was still switched on. Smiling, Reeve nudged the mouse and the screen came to life. A game screen was held on pause.
He walked over to the bed, crunching magazines and comics underfoot. The boy didn’t move when Reeve sat down on the bed. His breathing sounded deep and regular; too deep, too regular.
Reeve stood up again. “Okay, partner, but no more games, right?”
He’d opened the door before Allan sat bolt upright, grinning.
Reeve smiled back at him from the doorway. “Get some sleep… or else.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“How are you getting on with that game?”
“I’ll beat it, just you wait. Uncle James always sends me games that’re too hard.”
Uncle James was Reeve’s brother, a journalist. He was working out in the States, and had sent Allan a couple of computer games as a very belated birthday-and-Christmas-combined present. That was typical of James; kids always forgave him his forgetfulness because he made it up to them once a year or so.
“Well, maybe I can help you with it.”
“I’ll do it myself,” Allan said determinedly. “There’s one screen I can’t get past, but after that it’ll be
