Blood Hunt

Reeve shook Dedman’s hand at the airport and watched him drive off. He didn’t think they’d be expecting him to leave so soon. Kosigin would be waiting for the next call. Reeve walked around the concourse until he found a bulletin board. He scribbled a note on the back of a napkin he’d taken from the coffee shop, then folded the note over, wrote a surname in large capitals, and pinned the napkin to the bulletin board.

Then he checked himself onto the next available flight and made straight for the departure gate. There wasn’t much to do at LAX; it was no Heathrow-which these days was more department store than airport. Reeve ate a pizza and drank a Coke. He bought a magazine, which he didn’t read. There was no duty-free shop, so he sat by the row of public telephones until just before his flight was called.

Then he called Kosigin.

“Yes?” Kosigin said impatiently.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting.”

“I don’t like games, Mr. Reeve.”

“That’s a pity, because we’re deep in the middle of one. Have somebody-Jay preferably-go to LAX. There’s a public bulletin board in the departures hall, near the information kiosk. There’s a note there.”

“Look, why can’t we just-”

Reeve cut the connection. His flight was being called over the loudspeaker.

He had probably got one of the last places on the aircraft. He was seated by the aisle in a middle row of three. Next to him were an Australian couple heading over to Ireland to trace the wife’s ancestors. They showed Reeve some photographs of their children.

“Old photos, they’re all grown now.”

Reeve didn’t mind. He smiled and ordered a whiskey, and watched the sharp blue sky outside. He was just happy to be away from San Diego. He was glad he was going home. When the in-flight movie started, he pushed his cushion down so it was supporting his lumbar, and then he closed his eyes.

Old pictures… He had a lot of those in his head: old pictures he would never forget, pictures he’d once dreamed nightly, the dreams breaking him out in a sweat.

Pictures of fireworks in Argentina.

PART EIGHT. STALWART

TWENTY-ONE

IT WAS THE THIRD NIGHT, and enemy activity was increasing still further. There were constant patrols, firing searing pink-burn flares into the sky. An order would be yelled, and a patrol would spray their designated area with bullets. Reeve and Jay knew the tactic. The Argentine soldiers were trying to rile them, flush them out. They were trying to break them.

Reeve understood the shouted orders and would shake his head at Jay, meaning there was nothing to worry about. But they were both nervous. They’d been kept so low by the patrols that sending any more data to the ship was impossible; it had been that way for the best part of the day. They’d been forced farther inland, away from the air base, so that they could no longer see the runway or any of the buildings, and the planes taking off and landing were droning flies.

In fact, not transmitting was the only thing keeping them alive. The patrols were so close they’d have DF’d the two-man team in seconds. Reeve and Jay maintained complete silence throughout. Reeve couldn’t remember the last time either of them had spoken. Muscles were seizing up from being kept still and rigid for hours at a time. The back of Reeve’s neck ached terribly, and he daren’t crack it. The fingers on his M16 felt arthritic, and he’d already had two bouts of cramp.

Whenever he glanced over towards Jay, Jay would be looking at him. He tried to read the look in those eyes. They seemed to be saying, quite eloquently, “We’re fucked,” and they were probably right. But because Jay thought that, he was getting edgier and edgier, and Reeve suspected he might be on the verge of panicking. It was all about nerve now: if they lost theirs, the only possible outcome was “brassing up,” blasting away at anything and anybody until your ammo ran out or you copped one.

Reeve fingered the two Syrettes of morphine which hung around his neck. They felt like a noose. He hoped he wouldn’t need to use them. He’d rather put a bullet to his head first, though the regiment considered that the coward’s way out. The rule was, you fought to the death, and if the enemy didn’t kill you but captured you instead, then you did your damnedest to escape. Both men had been trained to withstand various interrogation techniques, but maybe the Argentines had a few tricks Hereford hadn’t heard of. Unlikely, but then torture was a broad sub- ject. Reeve reckoned he could withstand quite a bit of physical abuse, and even psychological wearing-down. What he knew he couldn’t cope with-what no one could cope with-were the various chemical forms of torture, the drugs that fucked with your mind.

The name of the game was beating the clock. On the regiment’s memorial clock back in Hereford were written the names of all SAS men killed in action. As a result of the war in the Falklands, there were already a lot of new names to be added to the clock. Reeve didn’t want his to be one of them.

When he looked at Jay again, Jay was still looking at him. Reeve gestured with his head for Jay to return to watch. They were lying side by side, but facing opposite directions, so that Jay’s boots rested an inch or so from Reeve’s left ear. Earlier, Jay had tapped a Morse message with his fingers on Reeve’s boot-“Kill them all”- repeating the message three times. Kill them all.

The ground was cold and damp, and Reeve knew his body temperature was dropping, same as it had done the previous night. A couple more nights like this and they would be in serious trouble, not so much from the enemy as from their own treacherous bodies. They had eaten only chocolate and drunk only water for the past thirty-six hours, and what sleep they’d taken had been fitful and short-lived.

Even when planning their escape route and emergency rendezvous they had not spoken, but had lain head to head with the map on the ground in front of them. Reeve had pointed to a couple of possible routes-if they were forced to withdraw from the OP in the midst of a firefight, chances were they’d be split up-then had tapped the map at the ERV. Jay had then traced a line with his unwashed finger from the ERV to the Chilean border, leaving no doubt what his route would be after the ERV.

Reeve wasn’t so sure. Would the Argentine command expect them to make for the border or for the coast? They were still a lot closer to the coast than the border, so maybe the border was the best plan. Besides, there was no point reaching the coast if no ship had been alerted of your plight. They wouldn’t be able to radio that message in the middle of brassing up, and if forced to retreat they would lighten their load, which meant leaving the rucksack and very probably the transmitter. Reeve had already mentally checked off the contents of his rucksack and had decided he needed nothing out of it but a few more rations. It was because he was thinking along these lines that he knew the mission was at an end. There’d be time later to wonder where and why it had gone wrong, always supposing he was still alive at the end of it all. The coast was closer; Reeve couldn’t get that idea out of his head. He had an emergency beacon with him. If they could find a boat and head out to sea, they could switch on the beacon and then pray someone would pick up the signal. The problem with that was, it was as likely to be an Argentine plane returning to base as anyone else.

The sky turned pink again and started to fizz and crackle as the flare started its gentle parachute-borne descent. Reeve could see a four-man patrol five hundred yards off to his right. Reeve and Jay were lying beneath netting and local foliage, and the patrol would have to get a lot closer to see them, even with the help of the flare. There was a sudden shrill whistle, like one of the old tin-and-pea jobs football referees use.

“Half time,” Jay whispered. He’d broken the code of silence, but he’d also broken the tension. Reeve found himself grinning, stifling laughter which wrenched itself up from his gut. The way Jay’s feet were quivering, he was laughing, too. It became almost uncontrollable. Reeve took a deep breath and expelled it slowly. The patrol was moving away at speed-and there was nothing funny about that.

Then the first rocket thudded into the ground several hundred yards to Reeve’s left. The earth beneath tried to