Fog (16 page)

As soon as I settle in my hammock and stare up at the thick greenery and the few silvery stars peeking through, my thoughts drift back to the goodbyes we said. My throat tightens. It feels like it’s half an eternity ago; how we stood in a small circle, clasping each other’s hands and making oaths to respect each one’s last will. I held Kat’s hand. It was warm and softer than I expected. We women all asked for the same thing — that no one should attempt to save us, should we be captured by the BSA. We’ll take care of ourselves. I wondered then, if they, too, had received a toxic implant. Whatever Kat and Yi-Ting have at their disposal, they seem set to use it. Ben just said that he doesn’t want anyone to cry when the BSA shoots him in the head. I almost
did
cry, then. Runner surprised me when he said that he, too, doesn’t want anyone to save him. When he saw my puzzled expression, he explained, ‘Snipers are the most feared and most hated of warriors. When we are captured, we are tortured and raped, no matter the gender.’

When we bade our farewells, neither he nor I offered anyone a hug. Not even Yi-Ting. It would have felt like a forever goodbye and I couldn’t… I just couldn’t.
 

I shut my eyes and recall their faces, the flavours of their names. Ben tastes of brass coated with a thin layer of mountain cranberry. As soon as I think of him as Benjamin, these flavours melt into jelly, and sweeten the space between my palate and nostrils. Kat causes a furry feeling in my mouth, that of the short and soft hair growing on a mouse’s tummy combined with the taste of raw lamb liver. It’s not an unpleasant taste. Lamb liver, when eaten while it’s still warm, is actually quite delicious. Not that I find Kat in any way delicious. And Yi-Ting — how lovely this double name and double flavour!
 

Runner’s cough interrupts my thoughts. I listen to his breathing. It’s not the relaxed and regular rhythm of someone sleeping. It’s that of someone plotting.
 

I think of the time when I was on probation; this one horrible evening when I believed he fucked a thirteen-year-old girl. She sat on his lap, chatting, pecking his cheeks and his mouth. Late that night, when he stomped through the snow toward the yurts of the gypsies where the girl’s home was, I freaked out. I was ready to kill him, chop his balls off at the very least. My rage and disgust quickly changed to shocked embarrassment when I realised I’d bustled into a sex-fest between him and the girl’s mother, and that the girl was, in fact, their daughter.

‘Runner?’ I ask.

‘Mmh?’ he hums from the hollow of his hammock.

‘You know…the night I came storming through the snow, ready to stick a knife between your ribs? I’m ashamed I even thought you were… I don’t even know how you could forgive such a thing so quickly.’ My voice fades. Pale blue and orange shimmer through the trees where the sun will soon crawl over the mountains.

‘There was nothing to forgive. You showed great courage, even though you were terrified, shaken to the bone. You wanted to save my daughter. And you still do.’ He falls silent and I think of that night, and the following morning when he washed my feet to apologise. I still don’t understand what it was he apologised for.

You know,’ he says softly, ‘that was one of the two main reasons I took you as an apprentice.’

‘I can guess the other,’ I answer. That could only have been the days I dragged the Runner-tent-noodle through the snow and we almost didn’t make it.

‘Yeah…,’ he whispers. ‘Sleep now, Micka. The sun is rising.’

‘Good night,’ I mumble, roll into a ball, and pull the blanket over my eyes. I think of Cacho and wonder what insults Kat will slap at him when he calls.
 
But I don’t get far theorising. The gentle wind rocks the trees and my exhausted body to sleep.

Leaves dance in the wind, owls hoot and laugh and screech. Cicadas play their tiny percussions,
click click click
. The forest sings and teems with life. The greys and greens of my night-vision goggles push the musical flavours of the woods into a harsher and colder spectrum. Softly, I smack my lips and blink.
 

My legs work automatically, placing one foot in front of the other, pushing on and farther up the gathering slopes. No need to think much, just keep going, stay on Runner’s heels. He’s grown tired by now — his gait has lost its spring. We’ve been hiking through dense vegetation, climbing rocks and fallen trees the past five hours. We’ve made good headway, though. The target is within our reach.

Within reach
. As if I wanted to go there. With every step, my stomach tightens more. When Runner drops his ruck and unfolds the tarp to make camp, I’m drenched in sweat, my nerves ready to snap.

He tips his head at me, takes in the trembling of my hands, the stiffness of my shoulders. He is about to take a step forward, maybe to offer help with my ruck or to say a few reassuring words. I raise my hands, blocking his approach. He nods acknowledgement and says quietly, ‘All we’ll do the next few days is observe the camp and prepare our hideouts. We’ll fire only in emergencies. Let’s eat, drink, and rest a few minutes. Then, we’ll get to work.’

Get to work.
Why does that sound so wrong?

Although I’m starving, I can barely get my food down. What is it anyway? I look at the bowl. Fruit we picked on the way, chestnuts baked a day ago, a few nuts. No meat. We’re close to the enemy. The enemy. Target. Reconnaissance. Strange, how my vocabulary changes simply by walking in one direction and not in another.
 

Runner extracts the SatPad from a side pocket of his ruck. I know our plan by heart, but going through every single step one more time calms me; it’s like a mantra assuring me that there’ll be no surprises.

His fingers draw a straight line from the crest we’ll reach tomorrow, across the river to the BSA camp on the opposite side of the gorge. The forest behind the camp is where we’re heading now. It dips a few metres below the camp’s highest point of elevation and that makes it hard to observe from the crest. Our plan is to scan this area for guards, hideouts, weapons, and escape routes. We also want to know where we can best dig our own hideouts and plan our own escape routes.

The tip of Runner’s index finger comes to a halt at our current location. It’s my turn now.

‘We hike until we’re a kilometre from the camp and hide our rucks. I’ll cover your back while you approach up to here.’ I point to a location two hundred metres from the camp. ‘When all’s clear, you give the signal and I’ll follow, get in position here, and you’ll be either here or there. Surveillance until nightfall — that’ll be something like twenty hours.’
 

‘Good.’ He nods at me. ‘What if we’re discovered?’

‘Open fire. Bring down the targets. Retreat and meet where we left our rucks.’

‘What if they open fire first?’

‘Er… does that change our plan in any way?’ I ask perplexed.

‘No, it doesn’t. What if one of us is injured? What if they rigged the forest floor and one of us steps on a trigger?’

‘Well…’ I swallow. ‘If there’s anything left of you, I’ll get you out of there, same as last time, but without the tent wrappings.’

Runner chuckles and places a hand on my shoulder. ‘Are you ready?’

Since I have no clue how it feels to be ready for this kind of shit, I can only shrug.

‘Can I trust you, Micka?’ he asks.

‘You can. Do you want me to walk into this without thought?’

He frowns. ‘No, of course not.’

‘How did it feel, your first time?’

He opens his mouth and closes it again, as if he were about to dictate something he’d prepared for this occasion: for a question likely to be asked by people who have never had to kill someone; strangers who might be fascinated by the aura of the predator. He cocks his head as he usually does when he’s digging through his memories.
 

‘I hardly had time to think about it,’ he begins, his gaze directed at a place far behind me. ‘I was in an occupied city. Bullets were zipping past us, the BSA was shelling us and the shit was hitting the fan. There was only one thing I could do. I killed more than twenty men that night. The feelings of shame, guilt, emptiness — those came later, much later, when I was back in my own bunk, surrounded by my own people. When I was safe, it all came down.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I wept.’

‘For the men you shot?’

‘No. For my mother and my sister. Now, I had the power, skills, and knowledge to save them, but I was too late — by years.’

He plops the last chestnut into his mouth and scans me from head to toe. ‘All weapons and ammo on your body? Your rifle loaded?’
 

I nod. Of course, it is. His questions feel like insults.

‘Good. Rub dirt on your face and on the back of your hands. You are too white.’

Now, I do feel like an idiot, but I tell myself he’s just lecturing me because he feels responsible. I do as he directs and darken the patches of skin that have been rubbed clean during the hike. My knees are about to buckle when I hump my pack, but I manage to take a step forward. And another. It gets easier; as if I’m practicing to walk into death.

I fall into step behind Runner until we are only one kilometre from the BSA camp. We hide our rucks under a pile of twigs and leaves, and I climb a tree and scan the area.

‘All clear,’ I whisper.

‘See you soon,’ he answers and moves forward in a low crouch.

Fear creeps in when he’s out of my sight. At the corners of my vision, trees turn into armies, branches into rifles. I blink and focus on the circular view of night-eye and scope.
 

‘All clear. You can come now, Micka. Straight ahead, eight hundred metres,’ he speaks through my earbud.

Awash with contradicting thoughts and emotions — forward is where Runner is, but it’s also where the enemy is — I make my way down and approach the camp copying Runner’s crouch.

‘You just passed me,’ he whispers. ‘Five metres behind you.’

I trace my steps back and find him flat on the ground, scanning the area with his scope. We’re close, very close to the BSA: two hundred metres between my very mortal body and their submachine guns and explosives. I’ve never felt so vulnerable. My heart hammers in my throat when Runner points me up a tree and signs to me that he’ll creep forward and will need cover. The sudden urge to have him by my side overwhelms me.
Don’t go
! I’m about to say. But that wouldn’t serve our purpose at all.

Breathing slow and deep to settle my nerves, I choose a thick branch as my hideout, position my rifle and gaze through the scope. No movements. I scan our surroundings a second and a third time, but see no one. ‘All clear,’ I whisper. And boy, am I glad no one moves. They can stay in their camp and never show up, if I get a say in the matter.

Runner crawls closer to the camp; he looks like a small elevation among the leaves, clumps of grass, and twigs. And then, he vanishes completely.

‘All clear, here,’ he speaks through my earbud. ‘You can come. Eleven o’clock, straight line.’

Silently, I slip down the mighty trunk watching my feet so as not to step on a twig. I watch all shadows, the movements of foliage in the breeze, the flitting-past of a small rodent. My ears are wide open, and now the earbud bothers me, because my right side is muffled and feels half-blind. The blaring birds and crickets serve as some kind of sonar — I map their location and know that right where they produce noise, the place is void of men with guns.

I come to a halt next to Runner and almost explode with pride. ‘Am I that visible?’ he whispers.

‘No, but you are an excellent teacher. Surveillance next?’

‘Yes. Use this tree; I’ll move two hundred metres to your right.’

I nod and scale the trunk. Runner is already gone when I settle on a branch roughly ten metres above the ground. My night-vision goggles show me the surroundings crisp and clear. No movements on either side of me, but there are dim lights ahead where the camp is. My skin begins to itch at the thought of Erik.
 

‘In position,’ I hear Runner say. ‘What do you see?’

‘Give me a minute.’

I push the goggles off my face, lay my cheek against the gun’s stock and gaze through the night-eye. The camp is right ahead; a few of the huts and tents are lit inside — possible oil lamps judging from the colour, the thermal signature, and the size of the light source. The large dark rectangles are still there at the centre of the camp. No noticeable changes since we dropped the camera. No movements. I tell Runner what I see, then again make sure there’s no guard close by and the foliage above me is thick enough. Odd, how quickly one adapts to the constant threat of being seen from space. The small silvery dots moving across the night sky are easy enough to detect — satellites orbiting Earth at high speed. But the human brain doesn’t notice how the sky moves aside slowly, while all geostationary satellites stay where they are, remaining unnoticeable to us. To me, stars have lost their beauty.
 

The hairs on the back of my neck are constantly pricked. My ears are straining for the smallest sound, and the soft crackling from the earbud is almost hurting my brain. Every faint noise from the BSA camp accelerates my heart to a loud pounding; I can even feel the blood surging through my fingertips.