A Line in the Sand (63 page)

"Mr. and Mrs. Blackmore are unhurt. They won't leave what remains of

their house and they're staying put."

Grimly he turned away and disappeared among the shadows of men whose names Frank Perry hadn't been told. Perry closed his eyes, but knew he

d not sleep.

woul

He could hear Davies on the telephone. It would

be

any of them had criticized him.

easier if

dier took the call, which woke him from a light sleep on

The briga

the

camp-bed in his office. The voice was very faint. The brigadier

shouted his questions, but the answers were vague and there was

on the line.

break-up

In his frustration he shouted louder and his

voice rippled from the office room, down the deserted corridors and into empty, darkened rooms... He heard the muffled voice of the man d trusted like a son and barked out questions. Had he

whom he ha

succeeded? Was he clear?

on the

Could he make the rendezvous point

Channel beach? How many hours would it be before dawn? What was

his

420

location? Had he succeeded?

The call was terminated. The pad of paper, on which he would have written the answers to his questions, was blank. He played back the tape and heard the insisting shout of his questions and the indistinct answers. In the background, competing with the answers he could not understand, was the splash of water. The cold of the night was around him. He thought of a beach in the black night where the sea's waves rippled on the shingle-stone shore, where Vahid Hossein was hurt and

.

waiting

In his mind was the death that would follow his failure.

He

options of survival, his own survival.

weighed the

The hush of the

night was around him, and moths flew,

ted,

distrac

at the ceiling light

above him. He rang the night-duty officer at the offices of the

National Iranian Tanker Corporation across the city, and he spoke

the

coded message. Twice, in the minutes that followed, the brigadier the number of the mobile digital telephone and there was no

called

response. He was alone, surrounded by darkness.

Frank Perry heard the approach of the lorry, and then its engine was cut. He heard the voices and, the clatter of iron bars being thrown down, as if dropped from the lorry's flat bed. He was thankful, a ercy, that the child slept and did not criticize him.

small m

e of the village slept, with guilt and with self

The peopl

justification

doubts and with resentment, or stared at their dark ceilings.

with

There were few who had not walked up the road and along the lanes

and

gone to look at the cottage home when it was floodlit by the

s.

generator

Most had seen the wide hole where a window had been and

the torn curtains that fringed it, and some, even, the long bag of lastic carried away to the closed van, and the

zipped black p

uncomprehending eyes of a child escorted from the building by the

n in their vests and carrying their guns.

policeme

No one believed

the

d explanation of a gas explosion. None had cared to examine

blan

their

part in what they had seen, heard, with their friends and their

s.

familie

They had gone home when the show was over, and they had

e

darkened the village, made it silent, switched off their hous

lights,

crept to their beds. In a few short hours it would be the start of another day, and there were not many for whom their lives would be the

421

same. The rain, over the village, had gone as fast as it had come, leaving the moon to pour bright white light into the homes where they lay.

"What's that? What the hell's happening?"

Frank Perry was careful not to wake Stephen. He eased himself into a

half-sitting position but did not shift his arm, against which the child slept. There was the noise of sledgehammers beating against metal at the front of the house and the back.

Davies was cold, without emotion.

"You said you were staying."

"That's what I said."

"So, it's because you're staying."

"What is it? What is it that's happening?"

"We call it a blindicide screen. It's old Army talk. In Aden, thirty

years back, the opposition had a Swedish-made anti-tank rocket that was

used against fixed positions. It detonates the boring charge

early."

"Why?"

"You should sleep. It'll keep till the morning."

"You know what? The bastard let me sleep. Joe bloody Paget let me sleep, didn't wake me to tell me. I bloody knew, but there wasn't a

body and there wasn't any blood, and the bastard said I'd missed,

Joe

t you are?

bloody Paget... You're a miserable sod, Joe you know wha

Not

just a miserable sod, a mean fucker."

Perry, half listening, dozed, with Stephen's warmth against him.

"Letting me sleep when you bloody knew I'd hit him, that's below the bloody belt. How long have you known, you bastard, that I got the 422

shite?"

He could feel Stephen's slight spare bones. For a moment he had

he

thought

lay against Meryl's warmth. He shuddered. The morning's

light seeped into the house through drawn curtains and reached into the

safe area between

the mattresses and the sandbags. Rankin was cocky,

bouncing. Paget was behind him with a slow grin spreading. The

assembled company didn't see him. He thought he did not matter to them

any more.

He heard the lorry drive away.

"I mean, telling me I'd missed when I knew I'd hit, that is a nal slur, Joe. If I say so myself, forty metres minimum

professio

and

no light, a moving target, that is one hell of a shot. What is it, Joe? Come on, I want to hear you bloody well say it..."

They were all laughing. Blake and Davies had been up all night, but Rankin had dossed down on the kitchen floor to catch a few

Paget and

hours' sleep.

Perry asked quietly, "If he was hit, why do we need the blindicide screen?"

rupted them. They turned to look down at him and the

He had inter

sleeping child. They were the only friends he had and none of them r him, they were strangers.

cared a damn fo

said, "His name is Vahid Hossein.

Davies

He fired a single grenade

from the launcher. There's a flash at the front and a flame signature ack.

at the b

Mr. Paget and Mr. Rankin were going off their duty

shift. They engaged him. He ran into the churchyard. Mr. Rankin was

presented with a difficult shooting opportunity. He took it, fired twice, but with a handgun at the limit of its effective range. There was no blood and nobody. Mr. Paget assumed that Mr. Rankin had

his target, that's phase one.

missed

Later, a woman walking her dogs

on the common starts bawling about "Black Toby". God knows what she's

doing out with dogs in the middle of a deluge. She says she saw a woman and a black-faced man on the ground.

lifeless

She's going on

e that happened two hundred years ago. Police

about some nonsens

officers went to the scene and found a young woman raped and dead, 423

but

no man. The young woman was a Muslim convert, and the eyes, ears, fetcher and carrier for Vahid Hossein. She was covered in blood but it

wasn't hers. The man who raped her, while he strangled her, bled

on

her from his gunshot wound. Mr. Paget and Mr. Rankin use

soft-nose

bullets in the Glock, and that is phase two. Phase three is

incomplete. He is wounded, Mr. Perry, but he is not dead.

Although

he'd lost considerable quantities of blood, he was strong enough to leave the murder scene. He is out there, in pain, and still in

possession of the RPG-7 launcher. The rain in the night has washed away the chances of tracker dogs finding him. He did not take the convert's car. We do not believe he has tried to leave. An hour

ago,

an inflatable was launched from an Iranian tanker in the Channel and came to a rendezvous on a beach. He was not there to be lifted out.

We

had it under surveillance, but took no action. Thus we believe he's still here. The military are beginning a search for him. Now, we classify Vahid Hossein as more dangerous than at any time. You, Mr.

Perry, are the cause of his pain, his suffering. If he has the

strength, in our assessment, he will make a last attack on your home.

That, Mr. Perry, is the reason for puffing up the screen around the house that will prematurely detonate we hope an armour-piercing

grenade."

"And is that why you were laughing?"

The wind swept the cloud away, leaving the sun balanced precariously on

the sea's horizon.

Geoff Markham thought the young man tolerated his presence on the

bench

overlooking Southmarsh.

They had dossed down in the car. He had woken at the first smear

of

light, but Chalmers had slept on, curled in the back seat with his by's peace on his face. Only when he'd woken had the

dogs, a ba

sourness replaced the peace. Once it had been light enough to see the

424

village, the expanse of the green and the high iron poles in front of

the house with the close wire mesh netting hanging from them, he had f the car.

eased out o

hadn't spoken, hadn't given any explanation, but had called

Chalmers

for his dogs and emptied out the last of the biscuits from his pocket hem.

for t

He hadn't said where he was going, or what he intended,

but

lked away with the dogs scampering at his feet.

he had wa

rkham, not knowing what else he could do, had heaved himself

Geoff Ma

out of the seat, locked the car, had stretched, coughed, scratched, t after him.

then wen

hed with water, his socks were wringing wet, and his

His shoes slos

shirt and coat had not dried out in the night. The letter was damp in

his pocket. The wind was sharp off the sea, raw on his face. A

al cargo ship nestled on the sea's horizon line.

coast

The birds were

up over the beach and over the marsh. He was cold, damp, and his

ch growled for food. Where did the arrogance come from, the

stoma

at his small efforts had changed the movement of events?

belief th

He

wanted to be in bed, warmed, close to Vicky, and ordinary, without ibility, free from the consequences of his actions. If he

respons

ngs he thought he

posted the letter he would have none of the thi

nted.

wa

He slogged on. It would be the supreme moment of conceit

if

the letter, it would be the statement of his belief that

he posted

he

changed events.

He found Chalmers sitting, very still, on the bench, and the dogs

were

beside him. Chalmers, never looking at the sea, wouldn't have seen the

cargo ship; he was watching the Southmarsh.

coastal

What disturbed

m was that the young man seemed merely to

Markham most about hi

tolerate

him and feel no need for his company.

The bench was where Geoff Markham had met Dominic Evans, the

shopkeeper. It was set high enough for him to overlook the sea, the beach, the sea wall and the marshland where the reed-tips whipped

in

425

the wind. The sun, throwing low light shafts, made it pretty. His uld have liked it there, and his father would have taken

mother wo

a

graph.

photo

ght of them materialized, in single file, along the path behind

Ei

the

nch where Markham and Chalmers sat in silence.

be

d

Burie

under the weight of their equipment they marched past the bench

and briskly down towards the trees that shielded the shore-line of the

marsh from his view. It would have been settled after the death of Meryl Perry. The secretary of state would have bowed to irresistible pressures and taken the control out of poor old Fenton's hands. The y would have stepped eagerly into the void he knew the men,

militar

or

at least the unit, from Ireland. He knew the kit they carried and the

weapons. He had seen the troopers from the Regiment slip away at

dusk

from Bessbrook Mill and the fortress at Crossmaglen, seen them run towards the threshing blades of the helicopters on the pads in the barracks at Dungannon and Newtown Hamilton. They were the quiet men spoke, who waited and nursed their mugs of tea and rolled

who seldom

their smokes and moved when the darkness came or the helicopters

started up the rotors.

Markham watched the column snake down the path towards the

rsh

Southrna

ater where the wildfowl bobbed in the low sun's light.

and the black w

o carried the Parker Hale sniper rifles. One had the snub 66mm

Tw

gun

anti-armour launcher, another cradled a general-purpose machine-

d

an

orso, one had the radio,

was swathed with belt ammunition across his t