Spake studied her face for a moment, and she blushed again under the scrutiny.
He shook his head. ‘We don’t know. Nobody does… except possibly Mr Putin.’ It did not go unnoticed that he made no mention of President Medvedev.
‘But your best guess?’
He studied the map and reached out his hand. It hovered for a moment on the mountain region of South Ossetia… then stabbed down further south.
Much further.
‘Best guess? At least Gori… but possibly the capital, Tbilisi. And anywhere in between. God help anyone who shouldn’t be there.’
And George Paulton, watching where the finger finally came to rest, felt his guts turn to ice.
TWENTY-ONE
Sixty miles to the north of Tbilisi, in the foothills of the Caucasus, a late breeze was sliding off the mountains, bringing a cold snap from the peaks. It was a welcome relief from the unusually warm lull that had been hanging around the lower plains during the day, and the man on watch shivered slightly under his camouflage smock. Winter was making its first move, far to the north and east.
He moved with care, scanning the lake three hundred metres away. The lightweight thermal infrared monocular was good to go in any light, and the long range optics could pick up any heat source or movement.
At any other time and place, he reflected, such as his native Michigan, it would have been a joy to sit and drink in the utter stillness and beauty of nature. A few birds were swinging slowly over the water, occasionally dipping to gather insects or some drops of moisture, then soaring upwards like elegant kites, feeding off the remaining thermals. A bunch of crows called among a stretch of conifers over to the right, their haunting sounds echoing across the lake, and a fox poked its nose out of the bushes and made its way down to the water’s edge, where it drank in brief bursts, before slinking back into the shadows.
The watcher, whose name was Jordan Conway, glanced at his watch. The dulled case and face reflected nothing, both treated with light-absorbing film. For out here, even the smallest movement, the tiniest glimmer, could betray a man’s position in an instant. As if to test the theory, he stared beyond the trees to the right of the lake, where he knew Bronson and Capel were dug in, watching their flank. There was no sign that they were there. He hoped it stayed that way.
‘How’s it going?’ The whisper came from a few feet to his rear. The speaker was Doug Rausing, the leader and fourth member of the Delta team and a ten-year veteran of covert operations on behalf of the Pentagon and the White House. He came from Tennessee, although none of his colleagues held that against him. Surfacing from a brief sleep, he was inching forward to take over from Conway as soon as the light dropped.
‘No signs,’ said Conway. ‘Just the birds.’ He wished he could move and scratch the itch on his upper right arm, which was driving him crazy. He was sure he could feel the tiny electronic biscuit under his skin, although they’d told him he wouldn’t; that it was buried too deep. But they’d also said the alien object wouldn’t trouble him after the first couple of days. Darned fool scientists, what the hell did they know? Did they ever come out here in the field and test this stuff for themselves?
Behind him, Rausing was also fingering his upper arm and wondering how the others were coping.
Two hundred miles west of Conway’s position, three members of the British Special Reconnaissance Regiment were in their initial observation post, rotating to watch the northern approaches. Shrouded in a makeshift basha, they had eaten their rations and were waiting for the light to fall before moving forward to take up a better position on the lower slopes. This would place them at the neck of a narrow pass leading through the foothills. It was a two-mile hike, but would be easy meat, and a necessary move. Intelligence briefs had told them this was a likely line of approach by motorised forces. Such was the lie of the land, even a squirrel would find it difficult to move without being seen.
The leader of the three-man team, a stocky Para Regiment veteran named Mike Wilson, lowered his binoculars and rubbed his eyes. Then he eased himself backwards a few inches off the brow of the hollow towards Jocko Wardle and ‘Hunt’ Wallis, his two colleagues, who were asleep. He nudged them awake with his foot without taking his eyes off the landscape before him, and waited while they stirred and opened their eyes, moving only to reach for their weapons.
‘Ten minutes to go,’ he told them quietly. ‘Clean up.’ It was something none of them needed telling, to check the ground where they had been lying, but repeated procedure was the way to do things right. Even the tiniest scrap of personal litter — a wrapping, a piece of foil, a button — would reveal their passage and tell anyone looking that they had been here. And in this relatively barren landscape, if that happened, they would be unlikely to survive for long.
Wilson checked his own kit. When he was satisfied everything was in its place and tied down tight, he slid to the front of the O.P. and began scanning the terrain in front of him for signs of movement.
There was nothing. But he felt uneasy all the same. It was too quiet.
He paused only to scratch at an itch in the top of his arm.
TWENTY-TWO
‘ We’ve got another job.’ Clare Jardine was waiting in the office next morning, nursing a cup of tea. She was dressed in what Harry thought of as her Lara Croft look, and looked as friendly as a pit-bull.
‘Oh, goody,’ he said dryly. ‘Another pick-up?’
She ignored his sarcasm. ‘We’re going to eyeball a convoy moving north. It looks like part of a much larger force. The satellite images are inconclusive, and London wants us to ID the unit and report back on numbers and density.’ Jardine meant seeing if the vehicles in the convoy were full or empty. Unless the convoy was obliging enough to reveal its load just as the satellite passed overhead, there was no way of telling, save for sending in someone on the ground to take a look.
Harry was surprised Mace hadn’t mentioned it, or that he hadn’t been brought in on the transmission from London. In a place this small, all hands should be aware of the general nature of things, in case someone dropped out through illness or accident. He wondered what else he wasn’t being told about.
They took the same Land Cruiser as before, this time with Jardine at the wheel. She drove with skill, using the right amount of aggression to compete with the local trucks and cars, and said nothing for twenty minutes until they were clear of the town. When they reached the fork in the road, she took the right one this time, the suspension protesting at the rougher surface. Harry noticed that theirs was the only vehicle.
‘This leads north into the hills,’ she explained. ‘Nothing much to see up here, so why bother with a decent road?’
Harry nodded. It was clearly not her first time on this road, so he sank back against the door pillar and closed his eyes. He’d had another restless night, haunted by images of Parrish charging along the bank of the inlet and the man in dreadlocks calmly shooting him with a wooden pole. The young couple had been standing in the glare of the Land Rover’s headlights, clothes torn and bloodied by gunshots, applauding the outcome. He had woken in a confusion of sweat and shivering, trying to figure out how the couple had penetrated the secure cordon without being seen.
‘Mace told you about me,’ Jardine interrupted his thoughts. It wasn’t a question.
Harry shook off the images from his dreams and shrugged. ‘Only that you’re with Six.’
‘Liar. Mace couldn’t keep a secret if his balls were on fire.’ There was no heat to her words, which made him even more certain that Mace had told her and the others why he was here.
‘You know him better than I do.’
‘Damn right.’
‘OK, so what brought you to this lovely spot?’
‘That’s none of your business. I didn’t stick to their stupid rulebook; let’s leave it at that.’
