Dark Resurrection by F.G. Cottam

Author:F.G. Cottam [Cottam, F. G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Agora Books

Chapter Thirteen

The swell had been gentle, the wind light, the sky clear and the forecast good. So they’d been able to get to the island aboard a rigid inflatable. It was the same spec and model as the one the RNLI used; practically unsinkable and extremely difficult to capsize even in the hands of an inexperienced idiot. Napier wasn’t an idiot, he didn’t think, most of the time. And he wasn’t inexperienced. He’d reached combat zones aboard similar craft many times in the Parachute Regiment. They did far more amphibious assaults these days than they did drops out of aircraft. Not that he’d ever have admitted as much to a Royal Marine.

The visibility was excellent and of course, he knew the island’s topography well enough to scale-model it accurate to a few feet. There’d been a lot of patrolling the last time he’d been there and precious little relaxation.

He was able to select a nice flat run of beach with almost no surf in these conditions and a gentle incline of packed sand and about 20 feet offshore had simply flipped the outboard up, cutting its motor and letting their momentum glide them up beyond the tide line.

‘That was neatly done,’ Lucy said. Her tone was neutral. He smiled without looking at her. He’d take the compliment anyway. Precious few of them came his way these days. His passengers clambered out and onto Scottish soil. Not that there was much actual soil on New Hope, which tended to be peat bog where it wasn’t granite and scrub. Birds were the only wildlife the island supported; the only natural wildlife, at least. There were other kinds. He remembered those from his last visit.

After Edith and Lucy had got out, he hauled the R.I. further up to where the scrub would largely conceal it. Then he collected sufficient substantial rocks to weigh it too heavily for all but a hurricane to shift. Once he’d got this stony cargo aboard, the three of them set off with their heavy packs of gear on their backs for the compound built for the New Hope expedition six years earlier.

He’d actually met Lucy before that. She’d been embedded in Afghanistan. She’d been the very model of the gutsy, hard-living woman war correspondent back then. Embedded in Afghanistan, bedded on New Hope, he thought, which was actually true. Fear and uncertainty had forced them to seek refuge in each other’s arms and something precious had been born from that back then that had since perished entirely.

In Helmand he’d been assigned to keep an eye on her; not to censor her, but to keep her alive. Then she’d left and he’d taken part in the action that won him his medal and after that the breakdown had come and the end of his military career and when they’d met again on New Hope he’d been wearing the lowly, ubiquitous blue of a private security firm.

She’d wanted him despite his decline. Now she trudged beside him, chatting to Edie

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