Crossfire (38 page)

“Warfare is based on deception . . . When we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away.” When I was in the stable yard searching for my mother, I’d make Warren and Garraway believe I was down near the gates.

“Hold out baits to entice the enemy.” Make the car wait with its lights on to draw them down the hill away from the stables, and away from me.

“Feign disorder, and crush him.” Only time would tell on that one.

I moved slowly and silently to my right, around the closed end of the quadrangle of stables, keeping in the darkest corners under the overhanging roof. Where would my mother be? I felt for all the bolts on the stable doors. They were all firmly closed. I decided, at this stage, not to try to open any, as it would surely make some noise.

Unsurprisingly, no one had mended the pane of glass in the tack-room window that I’d broken to get out. I leaned right in through the opening, closed my eyes tight and listened.

I could hear someone whimpering. My mother was indeed here. The sound was slight but unmistakable, and it came from my left. She was in one of the stalls on the same side of the stables as I had been.

I listened some more. Once or twice I heard her move, but the sound was not close, and other than an occasional muffled cry, I could not hear her breathing. There were ten stalls down each of the long sides of the quadrangle, and I reckoned she must be at least three away from the tack room, probably more. Maybe she was in the same stall in which I had been imprisoned.

I looked again at my watch. Four fifty-nine.

Six minutes until the car arrived—I hoped.

I withdrew my head and shoulders from through the broken window and moved very slowly along the line of stables, counting the doors. I could remember clearly having to climb over five dividing walls to get to the tack room. I counted four stable doors, then I stopped. The stall I had been in was the next one along.

Would there be a sentry? Would anyone be on guard?

I stood very still and made my breathing as silent as I could. I dared not look again at my watch in case the luminosity of the face gave me away.

I waited in the dark, listening and counting the seconds—Mississippi one, Mississippi two, Mississippi three and so on. Just as I had done here before.

I waited and waited, and I began to doubt that Ian was coming. I was well past Mississippi twenty in the third minute when I heard the car horn, a long two-second blast. Good boy.

There was immediate movement from the end of the row of stables not twenty yards from where I was standing. Someone had been sitting there in silence, but now I clearly heard the person walk away, back towards the house, crunching across the gravel turning area. I heard him call out to someone else, asking what the noise was, and there was a murmured reply from farther away that I couldn’t catch.

I went swiftly to the door of the stall and eased back the bolts. They made a slight scrape but nothing that would be heard from around near the house. The door swung open outwards.

“Mum,” I whispered into the darkness.

There was no reply.

I stood and listened, trying hard to control the thump-thump of the heart in my chest.

I heard her whimper again, but it still came from some way to my left. She wasn’t in this stall but in one a bit farther along.

I recognized the need to be as fast as possible, but equally, I had to make my search undetected. I moved as quickly as I dared along the row of stables, carefully sliding back the bolt on the upper half of each door and calling into the space with a whisper.

She was in the second stall from the end, close to where the man had been sitting on guard, and by the time I found her, I was becoming desperate about the time it was taking.

I thought that Ian must surely be about to reverse the car to the road and depart. Five minutes would seem a very long time to someone simply sitting there afraid that something would happen, and hoping that it wouldn’t. Ian must have been so nervous in the car, willing the hands of his watch to move around faster. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d decided to leave early.

When I’d opened the stable door and whispered, my mother had been unable to answer me properly, but she had managed to murmur loudly.

“Shhh,” I said, going towards the sound and down onto my left knee. It was absolutely pitch-black in the stable. I removed one of my black woolen gloves and “saw” by feel, moving my left hand around until I found her.

She had tape stuck over her mouth and had been bound hand and foot with the same plastic garden ties as had been used to secure me. Thankfully, she hadn’t been left hanging from a ring in the wall but was sitting on the hard floor close to the door with her back up against the wooden paneling.

I laid my sword down carefully so it didn’t clatter on the concrete, then I swung the rucksack off my back and opened the flap. Ian’s carving knife sliced easily through the plastic ties holding my mother’s ankles and wrists together.

“Be very, very quiet,” I whispered in her ear, leaning down.“Leave the tape on your mouth. Come on, let’s go.”

I helped her up to her feet and was about to bend down for the rucksack and the sword when she turned and hugged me. She held me so tightly that I could hardly breathe. And she was crying. I couldn’t tell if it was from pain, from fear or in joy, but I could feel her tears on my face.

“Mum, let me go,” I managed to whisper in her ear. “We have to get out of here.”

She eased the pressure but didn’t let go completely, hanging on to my left arm. I prized her away from me and swung the rucksack over my right shoulder. As I reached down again for my sword, she leaned heavily against me and I stumbled slightly, kicking the sword with my unfeeling right foot. It scraped across the floor with a metallic rattle that sounded dreadfully loud in the confines of the stall but probably wouldn’t have been audible at more than ten paces outside.

But had there been anyone outside within ten paces to hear it?

I reached down, grabbed the sword and led my mother to the door.

Ian must have completed his five-minute linger by now, and I hoped he had safely departed back to his flat to sit by the telephone, waiting for my call and ready to summon the cavalry if things went wrong. But where, I wondered, were my enemies? Were they still around at the driveway? Or had they come back?

My mother and I stepped through the stable door and out into the yard, with her hanging on to my left arm as though she would never let it go again.

There were no shouts of discovery, no running feet, just the darkness and the stillness of the night. But my enemies were out there somewhere, watching and waiting, and they outnumbered me. It was time to leave.

“He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day.”

But I never did get to run away.

My mother and I were halfway across the stable yard, taking the shortest route to the muck-heap passageway, when the headlights of a car parked close to the house suddenly came on, catching us full in their beams.

Whoever was in the car couldn’t help but see us.

“Run,” I shouted in my mother’s ear, but running wasn’t really in her exercise repertoire, even when in mortal danger. It was only ten yards or so to the passageway door, but I wasn’t at all sure we would make it. I dragged her along as all hell broke loose behind me.

There were shouts and running footsteps on the gravel near the house.

Then there was a shot, and another.

Shotgun pellets peppered my back, stinging my neck and shoulders, but the rucksack took most of them. The shooter was too far away for the shot to inflict much damage, but he would get closer, especially as my dear mother was so slow.

We reached the passageway door, and I swung it open, pushing her through it ahead of me, both of us nearly falling over the blue plastic drum.

“Mum, please,” I said loudly to her. “Go through the passage and out the back. Then hide.”

But she wouldn’t let go of my arm. She was simply too frightened to move. Conditioning young men not to freeze under fire was a common problem in the army, and one that wasn’t always solved, so I could hardly blame my mother for doing so now.

Another shot rang out, and some of the wood of the door splintered behind us. That was a bit closer, I thought—far too close, in fact. The shooter had now closed to within killing range. Maybe I’d been wrong about them wanting the million dollars returned before they’d kill me. Another shot tore into the wooden roof above our heads.

“Come on,” I said to my mother as calmly as I could. “Let’s get out of here.”

I firmly removed her hand from my arm and then held it in mine as I almost dragged her down the passageway and out into the space behind. I could hear shouts from the stable yard as someone was directing his troops around the end of the building to find us. However, the man who was doing the shouting stayed where he was, in the yard. He obviously didn’t fancy walking into the dark passageway, in case I was in there waiting for him.

I pulled my mother around behind the muck heap. There was a tall, narrow space between the rear retaining wall of the heap and a hay barn beyond.

“Get in there,” I said quietly, in my best voice-of-command. “And lie facedown.”

She didn’t like it, I could tell by the way she kicked at the wet ground, but she couldn’t protest, as the tape was still over her mouth. She hesitated.

“Mum,” I said. “Please. Otherwise, we will die.”

There was just enough light from the stars for me to see the fear in her eyes. Still she clung to me, so I eased up the corner of the tape over her mouth and peeled it away.

“Mum,” I said again. “Please do it now.” I kissed her softly on the forehead, but then I firmly pushed her away from me and into the gap.

“Oh God,” she whispered in despair. “Help me.”

“It’s all right,” I said, trying to reassure her. “Just lie down here for a while and it will all be fine.”

She obviously didn’t want to, but she didn’t say so. She knelt down in the gap and then lay flat on to her tummy, as I’d asked. I pulled some of the old straw down off the muck heap and covered her as best I could. It probably didn’t smell too good, but so what? Fear didn’t smell great, either.

I left her there and went back to the end of the passageway. Whoever had been shooting had still not come through, but I could see that the car was being driven around the end of the stable buildings so that its lights were about to shine down the back, straight towards where I was standing.

I stepped again into the passageway.

The car’s headlights were both a help and a hindrance. They helped in showing me the position of at least one of my enemies, but at the same time, their brightness destroyed my night vision.

Consequently, the passageway appeared darker than ever, but from my previous visits, I could visualize the location of every obstruction on the floor, and I easily stepped silently around them. I pressed my eyes up against the gaps between the door slats and looked out once more into the stable yard beyond.

There was plenty of light from the still-maneuvering car for me to see clearly. Jackson Warren was standing in the center of the yard, talking with Peter Garraway. They were each holding a shotgun in a manner that suggested that they both knew how to use them. What was it that Isabella had said? “The Garraways always come over for the end of the pheasant-shooting season—Peter is a great shot.”

I think I’d have rather not known that, not right now.

As I could see Warren and Garraway in the stable yard, it must be Alex Reece who was driving the car.

“You go round the back,” Jackson was saying to Garraway.“Flush him out. I’ll stay here in case he comes through.”

I could tell from his body language that Peter Garraway really didn’t like taking orders. I also suspected that he didn’t much fancy “going round the back” either, good shot or not. “Why don’t I wait here and you go round the back?” he replied.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Jackson, clearly annoyed. “All right. But keep your eyes fixed on that door and, if he appears, shoot him. But try to hit him in the legs.”

That was slightly encouraging, I thought, but the notion of being captured alive was not. I had already experienced their brand of hospitality in these stables, and I had no desire to do so again.

Jackson Warren walked off towards the car, leaving a nervous-looking Peter Garraway standing alone in the stable yard.

Yet another Sun Tzu quote floated into my head. “In war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak.”

Peter Garraway was weak. I could tell by the way he kept looking towards the car and in the direction that Jackson had gone in the hope of being relieved, rather than towards the door to the passageway, as he’d been told. He obviously didn’t like being left there alone. And shooting pheasants was one thing, but shooting a person would be quite another matter.

Reece had finally managed to get the car around behind the stables, and I could see the glow of its lights at the back end of the passageway. That was not good, I thought, as my position was becoming outflanked and I would soon find myself liable to attack from opposite directions.

I looked at my watch. It was only five-seventeen. Just twelve minutes had elapsed since Ian had sounded the car horn, but it felt like so much longer, and there would still be another hour of darkness.

I took another quick glimpse through the slats at Peter Garraway in the stable yard. He was resting his double-barreled shotgun in the crook of his right arm, as someone might do while waiting for the beaters to drive pheasants into the air from a game crop. It was not the way a soldier would hold a weapon—and it was not ready for immediate action.

I threw open the passageway door and ran right at him with my sword held straight out in front of me, the point aimed directly at his face, like a cavalry officer but without the horse.