Geordie Sharp 04: Tenth Man Down by Chris Ryan

Author:Chris Ryan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-02-17T00:00:00+00:00

TEN

We were away just after 2200, hoping we had nearly two hours’ start, driving our two pinkies and the mother wagon we’d been using for our kit. This, of course, belonged to the Kamangans, but I told myself we’d hand it back to them at some later stage.

What would the Alpha guys do when they found our campsite deserted? Joss had overheard part of my conversation with the Belgian, so he knew we might have our sights on the convent and be heading that way. Almost certainly he’d order a squad to follow us up, and inevitably the tracks of our vehicles would show where we’d gone. But would the blacks have the guts to come after us in the dark? Would they wait around until daylight? Or would they let us go, pull back to the mine and sit there until the relief aircraft arrived?

‘Hundred to one against them doing a follow-up at night,’ I said to Pavarotti as we set out. ‘All the same, we’ll go off at a bit of a tangent. Head due west instead of south-west. As soon as it’s light, we’ll tack back down.’

The track we’d followed from the Kamangans’ camp out to our temporary staging post was so overgrown that even in daylight it had been hard to pick out. Lack of use had allowed saplings and shrubs to spring up all over it, blending it back into the bush. Now in the dark it was untraceable – and in any case, it was no longer heading in the direction we wanted.

We piled up the fire, to make a good marker for the assassins, and slipped away into the night. Driving across country without lights was tricky until the moon climbed higher. Later its bright glare, coming at first from behind us, threw inky shadows across the ground ahead and made it difficult to spot holes. For the first hour the land kept falling away, and apart from a few short climbs out of gullies, we were mostly going downhill. Then the terrain flattened out, and I guessed we were back on a level with the river, which lay somewhere off to our left.

On difficult stretches, where we had to cross numerous small ravines, we had guys ranging ahead on foot, but whenever the going was better we kept the vehicles rolling at seven or eight kilometres an hour. It was a miracle that we had Jason with us: an extra driver, and the best spotter of obstacles anyone could hope for. All the same, with three men driving, three spotting and three tabbing ahead, we were stretched to the limit. Every hour we swapped around, but there was never a chance for anyone to get his head down properly.

One factor in our favour was the heavy dew, which had damped down the dust; without it, the trip would have been a nightmare for the guys at number two and three in the column. As it was, even for those in the rear, the night air felt cool and clean.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.