Recoil (25 page)

I checked along the opposite bank, following the current to my left, trying to work out where we might end up. I could see downstream for about two hundred and fifty metres, then the river bent and disappeared into dead ground. The opposite bank was two or three feet above water level, with plenty of grab – foliage and tree roots exposed by the current as it carved away the red earth. I had to assume the worst: that there was a massive waterfall just after the bend, which meant we had two hundred and fifty metres in which to make our way across.

She stood, her head buried in her hands. She knew as well as I did that this was the only way out of here.

My chest harness came off and went into the river along with the AK and gollock. The weight would kill me and the gollock could cut me or get caught up on shit and drag me down. The sat nav went into my pocket; it was about to get the ultimate troop trial.

I held out my hand and we waded in together. I wasn’t even thinking about any follow-up. There’d be fuck-all I could do about it anyway. Water sluiced over the top of rocks and there was no way of telling how deep it was.

I fought the current until it was up to my waist and Silky’s chest. Then, with my next step, I was into fast-flowing water, tons of it, tearing at my legs, threatening to throw me off balance. I held her tight, whether to support myself or to help her, I didn’t know, but no sooner had I lifted my other leg than the weight of the current whipped it away from under me and we were swept downstream.

Her hand was torn from mine.

We each had to fight our own battle now.

She stared at me, eyes wide with fear. Both of us kicked and thrashed to keep afloat and make some progress towards the opposite bank, but the surge was dragging me under.

8

I kicked back up to the surface, forcing myself to breathe in through my nose, only to choke as I took down yet more gritty water.

I got a glimpse of her, kicking and trying to keep her head up, but only for a moment, then the water took me under again. As I came up, fighting for air, I heard her somewhere in front of me.

‘Nick!
Nick!
’

I looked, but saw nothing in the torrent.

I was dragged back down and inhaled more river, but this time, as I scrabbled my way to the surface, the current had carried me almost to the far bank. It wasn’t dying, though. The river curved to the left there, and I was on the outside of the bend, where the force of the water was at its fiercest. An eddy caught me and threw me against the bank. I flung out my hands, trying to grasp at anything I could.

I forced my eyes open again but they stung too much. Thrashing around blindly, my left hand connected with something solid. I made a grab, but whatever it was gave way. The next thing I knew, my right arm had hooked into a root. The current swung me round and pressed me against the bank, and my feet touched the riverbed. I clung to the root and took a series of deep breaths. Downstream of me nothing moved except severed branches and debris caught in the flow.

‘Silky!
Silky!
’

I struggled against the weight of water until I could reach out with my free hand and grab another root higher up the bank. I hauled myself up until only my legs were left in the water.

Suddenly I was lying on the bank, chest heaving. As soon as some strength returned to my limbs, I rolled on to all fours, then staggered to my feet.

I followed the bend in the river and more dead ground came into view with each step. Just a hundred metres on from the bend, a massive deadfall from my side of the bank had all but spanned the river.

At the far end of it Silky was clinging to a branch on the downstream side, just metres from safety.

I fought the urge to run straight to her. All she had to do was hang on. I moved back into the canopy, lying down about twenty metres short for one last look. The contact group might have patrolled this far or even used the tree to cross. It would be a natural point for them to check, in case we knew about it too.

It was a new fall, not a dead one, hit by the lightning. The trunk had been split and a metre of it was still sticking out of the ground on my side, its core clean and bright against the scorch-marks of the strike. I would have to swim the first five or so metres.

One last look, then I ran and dived into the water, hoping I’d make the five metres, or that the current would swing me into the trunk.

Arms milling like a lunatic, I kept pushing forward as the water took me. I banged into the trunk at its fracture point and held on, fighting the flood as it tried to take my legs with it. Gulping for air, I heaved myself up and climbed on to the trunk. No time to rest. I crawled as quickly as I could towards the far bank.

I grabbed a branch with both hands and pulled down with all my weight. I twisted and pulled, and finally it snapped away from the trunk. I didn’t bother stripping it.

She didn’t say a word, just stared at me with huge, pleading eyes. This was not a good day out.

I straddled the trunk and pulled off my OGs.

‘Take it with your teeth!’ I had to holler above the roar of the water as I used the branch to pass down the end of one OG leg, knotted to help her grip. I’d knotted the end of the other leg too. ‘Listen to me, OK?’

She shook the water and hair from her face. Her eyes kept flicking towards the OG leg that was her lifeline.

I kept hold of my end as I dangled the other above her head. There was no way she could let go of the deadfall, even with one hand, without being swept away. She had to grip the leg with her teeth first.

I manoeuvred the material within reach and she clenched her teeth on it. I could see from her expression that she wasn’t going to let go.

‘Silky, look at me.’ She had to understand exactly what I wanted her to do. ‘When I say the word, I need you to let go of the tree and grab the knot with both hands. Got it?’

She nodded.

Wrapping the knot round my wrist, I braced myself.

‘Now, Silky.
Now!
’

She let go of the tree and the current grabbed her. There was an almighty jolt, then what felt like a herd of huskies pulling on a leash. I held on to my end like a man possessed.

‘Kick, Silky. Kick.’

The pendulum effect of the current swept her in towards the bank like a hooked fish. She grabbed a branch to stabilize herself; I dropped on to my chest and we linked arms. She didn’t need to be told what to do next. I heaved and rolled and she used my body as a climbing frame. A moment later she was lying beside me on solid ground, coughing and fighting for breath.

I hauled myself to my feet and picked up the OGs. ‘Come on. We’ve got to get in cover.’

She stood for a second, then collapsed. Her right ankle was swollen and red.

I bent down and managed to manoeuvre her on to my back, and her head lolled over my shoulder as I staggered uphill, into the trees. She moved her face close to mine. ‘Thank you, Nick.’

She should have saved her breath. We were back on the wrong side of the river.

9

We moved into cover and I laid her down against a buttress tree. I leaned against it too, my lungs sucking in air greedily as I looked about and listened.

There was no gunfire above the roar of the river, no shouting. Yin and Yang crossed my mind, but not for long.

‘Can you feel your toes? Give them a wiggle, see if you can feel them. Push them up against your boots.’

‘Nick, I’m a doctor, remember?’ She tried anyway, and winced. That was a good thing: if she could feel the pain, there was still circulation in her foot. Her ankle was blowing up like a football.

The heat and humidity hit me with a vengeance. I thought out loud as I dipped into my pocket and pulled out the sat nav: ‘Let’s see if this thing’s waterproof or not.’ I didn’t know whether I was trying to make her feel at ease, or myself.

The display was cracked and water had flooded in. It was fucked. I shoved it back in my pocket. I might be able to take it apart and dry it out, but not until we got back to the airstrip. But even if we took a chance on the tree-trunk and the last five metres of water, the airstrip was too far for me to travel with a body to carry and nothing but an old prismatic compass to show me east.

Silky bent forward, inspecting her boot, as if she had X-ray vision.

I reached out a hand and touched her shoulder. ‘Change of plan.’

10

I checked the kangaroo round my neck. It was just after midday and we still had about six hours of daylight.

I’d have to carry her on my back, and I knew I’d soon be too fucked to talk. ‘Why come here, of all places, to get out of my way? Aren’t there enough nice rivers in Italy for you to play about in?’ I tried to make light of it, but I knew I wasn’t kidding anybody.

Her hair was red with mud, and lay flat against her head.

She tried, but couldn’t look me in the eye. She picked up a leaf and started playing with it. ‘Whatever Stefan told you, it would have been true. I run, Nick. I run from everything. Always have done. That’s why we met, remember?’

At last I got a little eye-contact and a smile I returned. Melbourne – a backpackers’ hostel, opposite Flinders Street station. I’d gone down to the lobby, where she was looking at the message board on which I’d offered a lift to Sydney for a share of the gas.

’You don’t want to go with him.’ I prodded a rival’s note. ‘Rubbish conversation and, besides, he’s an axe murderer. You’d be much better off with this bloke.’ I prodded mine. ‘Much better-looking, and no axes.’

She turned her head. ‘So what’s his weapon of choice?’

‘Ice-cream. Free cone at every gas stop.’ I’d stretched out my hand. ‘I’m Nick.’

She shook. ‘Silke.’ I liked her German accent. ‘Under what circumstances would your offer include crushed nuts and syrup?’ And the fact her grammar was better than mine.

And that was pretty much that. She’d slung her surfboard on to the roof of my combi van, and five days later, after a thousand miles of great conversation, four vanillas and a couple of tuttifruttis, we were sharing more than expenses.

Now her smile faded.

‘My mother would stroke my hair. I can still smell her perfume when I think about her, even now.’ She tugged at the leaf. ‘When she died, I ran away. And I kept running, from anything too complicated, or just to avoid it completely. I’d pretend the problem wasn’t there – and if I didn’t think about it, well, it wasn’t.’

I wanted to ask why I couldn’t be the one to listen, but I already knew the answer. I’d never been the listening kind.

She leaned down and touched her swollen ankle. ‘I’m sorry, Nick. I needed to figure stuff out.’

I knelt beside her and stroked her cheek. ‘Well, next time you need to do that,’ I said, ‘make sure you go to Butlins.’

She didn’t get it. Maybe they didn’t have holiday camps in Germany.

‘What?’

‘Nothing. An English joke.’ I hesitated. ‘I guess Tim isn’t a Butlins kind of a guy, eh?’

She held my gaze now, and I could see tears in her eyes. ‘I needed to see him. Not in the way you think. But now I’m here, you know . . . Look at what he is trying to do . . . Can we really just head back to Lugano, or Sydney, or any other damn place and drink cappuccino and feel comfortable about the world?’

I got up slowly, not wanting to carry on this conversation. ‘Wait here. I’m going to check things out.’

I scrambled up towards the higher ground, looking, listening and giving myself a hard time. What I really wanted to do was scream into her face: ‘So you came all the fucking way here to talk to him about us when you could have done that with me over a brew – not in a fucking war zone where I’ve just had to kill another kid!’

I stopped. I couldn’t hear much above the yelling in my head, but I could see movement down by the river, where we’d just been.

I checked the sky and let my prismatic point settle. The sun was directly overhead, but still only a ball of light trying to penetrate the cloud.

I looked north. If we kept on the high ground, we’d eventually get back to the valley – as long as we didn’t trip over any hostiles on the way. Whatever, I wasn’t going to wait until last light.

11

There was nothing scientific about what I’d been doing for the last ninety minutes. Carrying Silky on my back was like humping eight stone of bergen up and down the Brecons. All I had to do was lean forward to take the weight, then get one foot in front of the other as fast as I could.

I’d kept off the top of the high ground, the natural route, moving instead just below it to hide my shape and silhouette. I’d moved in bounds, no more than five metres at a time, using the cover as best I could, stopping after each to look and listen, then plan the next – scanning the ground in front of me for more cover, for a route without too many rocks, bushes or anything else that might send me flying. Silky never left my back. Once I’d got her on, it was easier to keep her there.

I stopped against a tree. I rested both hands on the trunk and leaned forward to balance her and control my breathing. This was taking for ever. I listened and looked between the tree-trunks and bush for any irregularities of shape, shine, shadow, spacing, silhouette or movement.