Knife Edge (2004) (14 page)

He remembered Houston’s voice when he had snapped to the liaison officer,
that is my decision.
Before he had taken that last cigarette. One bullet. That was all it took. He heard a volley of shots shattering the stillness, and only then did he turn to look at the sprawled figure on the wet sand.

He had seen a lot of men die, in different circumstances. He thought he was hardened to it. It was not as if he had known Houston well. He heard some one shouting, the lieutenant, he thought. Piggott, who might have died that day on the island, and would have been no loss to anybody.

He looked at the familiar, battered face, frozen at the second of impact, and was deeply moved.

He shouted aloud, “And for
what?
” It was like a private epitaph.

Then he strode up the last stretch of beach, surprised that he could feel so calm again. As if something was already decided. Final.

“Coming,
sir!
”

He found Piggott with some of the others inside the first barrier of trees. In his mind he could picture the remaining section, crouching and tense, weapons covering all likely openings for an attack. He saw Norman staring back at the beach, still unable to grasp the abruptness of death. The Boss had been his friend . . .

Colour Sergeant Brannigan gestured with his submachine-gun.

“Up there, Steve. If the bastard had held his fire, we’d never have spotted him.”

Blackwood peered up the nearest tree, the blood-spattered bark, then a pair of legs dangling from a crude harness, a long-range rifle still tied to the dead man’s wrist. An old ruse: even if you managed to mark down a hidden sniper, the corpse would remain out of sight and give no hint of success or failure, or the possibility of more attacks. Something learned from the Japs during that other war.

Piggott exclaimed, “We must call up the ship. Let them know what’s happened. Get word to Captain Irwin.” He seemed to be faltering, unable to accept what had happened. He swung on the colour sergeant. “What do
you
think?”

Brannigan was staring at the dangling rifle. “How did he know, sir?”

Steve Blackwood said sharply, “If Houston had been stark naked, any one would have picked him out as the leader! That sniper couldn’t resist it, man! And it was his one big mistake, don’t you see that? It’s all we’ve got to act on.”

Piggott stared at him. “Without orders? What the hell are you saying?”

“We got our orders,
sir
. There is nobody else. It’s up to us to close the trap, and finish what we were sent to do.”

Piggott looked toward the beach, still unable to grasp the brutal change of circumstance.

Brannigan said slowly, “That’s true, sir.” His big hands came together. “We’ve got them between our two landing parties, just like the major said.”

Norman stepped closer and held out Houston’s map
case. He did not look at Piggott, but said harshly, “Yours now, sir.”

Piggott looked around, perhaps expecting more shots. Even the trees were still, as if they, too, were listening.

He opened the map case and stared into it.

“Captain Irwin’s men should all be in position now.” He looked up and stared at Blackwood, directly for the first time. “Have
you
anything to say?”

“There’ll be boats of some sort. They’ll have planned an escape route. Probably rendezvous with a local coaster – it’s happened before.”

Piggott licked his lips.

“Yes, of course. You’re the old campaigner.”

Blackwood felt the anger run through him like fire, but saw the look on Brannigan’s face.
No imagination.
He would never let you down, though.

“We can head for the river.” He knew Piggott’s eyes were following his finger across the map. “There’s an old mission there, and Captain Irwin’s section should be on the high ground just above it.”

Piggott closed the map. “Suppose you’re mistaken?”

He glanced at the trees, but only birds broke the heavy stillness.

“Not my decision, sir.”

Piggott called, “Warn the others, Sergeant!” As he went past he reached out and gripped Blackwood’s sleeve. “I’ll not forget your insolence.”

Blackwood loosened the webbing pouch across his shoulder.

“I’m banking on it, sir!”

The other marines were ready to move, Brannigan and his corporals making a last check of weapons and equipment. Glad, relieved even, to be under orders once more.

One final look down the shelving white beach. The
elderly
Vigilant
had already vanished, waiting somewhere to pick up the pieces. The solitary shape near the tide line was still there, surrounded by blood and boot marks, where men had paused to grapple with the curt simplicity of death.

It would be good-bye to the medal which had been proposed.
So what?
He turned on his heel and faced the jungle again. No turning back. Not now.

Ross Blackwood lay flat on his stomach, his chin resting on his forearm. For a moment he had been tempted to shift on to his side, but the pressure of the pistol wedged against his hip jarred him back to reality.

He felt the ground under his fingers, dry now despite rain during the day. It was difficult to gauge the time, or how long it had taken to work their way up and on to the ridge. It was completely dark, without stars; there was nothing to give any hint of their progress. Pitch black, and yet he knew the sea was somewhere down ahead of them. In an hour or so it would be visible. Like the maps, and the discussions . . .

They had caught and shot the murdered marine’s attacker. They had heard other shots as well, that morning, when the second group had been landed on the opposite side of the narrow river, but nothing since. As if the whole place was now deserted. He touched his watch, but did not need it. Pointless now; it was beyond his control.

Captain Irwin was somewhere along the ridge, checking each section, letting them all know he was wide awake. Strange to think of him as a young marine, as young as Davis, the one who had been killed. Out in this same territory when a full-scale guerilla war had been raging. The Royal Marines had been in the thick of it then. The knife edge, one senior officer had called them. When the legendary general Sir Gerald Templer had been in overall
command, a violent man in deed and language to all accounts, feared by politicians of all shades and loved by the men he commanded. As one ex-submariner had described him,
he was not content to be the eye of the periscope. He was the torpedo in person!

Irwin knew all about that. And he had not forgotten the terrorist named Richard Suan, whom many had thought dead, a bloody memory.

He flinched as Sergeant Ted Boyes slithered down beside him.
I should have heard him coming.

“All quiet?” Something to say.

Boyes fumbled with his coat and handed him something. “Have a bit of nutty, sir.”

It was a piece of chocolate, half melted, but the best he had ever tasted.

Boyes said, “Takin’ too long. Be dawn soon, an’ there’s more bloody rain about. I can smell it.”

“Major Houston will want to be sure before . . .”

Boyes repeated, “Too long.”

“What about Davis?”

“Covered ’im as best we could. Nice lad.”

Like a door shutting. Perhaps the only way.

Boyes said, “We’ll not get another chance to catch these buggers if they get past us this time. They’ll know we’re right on top of ’em.” He peered over some dead branches as if he could already see beyond the ridge. “A quick getaway, right up their street!”

An anonymous voice murmured, “Cap’n’s comin’, sir.”

Ross moved again; his body was getting stiff. He could still feel the scar on his back. Remembered her hands, strong, but gentle.

Irwin joined them and sat down with his arms around his knees. It sounded as if he had been running, but his voice was steady.

“Change of plan, Ross.” He spoke to the anonymous voice. “Fetch Sergeant Bolton.” There was a slight sharpness to his tone. “Fast as you like, eh?”

Ross waited, the chocolate still sweet on his tongue.

Irwin said, “Houston’s bought it, I’m afraid. Sniper on the beach when they came ashore. The only casualty.”

Ross stared at his outline, unable to see his face.

“So this is what we’ll do. The old mission is the obvious hiding place, and maybe the only suitable bolt-hole for Richard Suan’s raiders.”

Boyes said, “If it really is ’im, sir.”

Ross tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry. What they had come to do. What they had all expected. From the day when he had heard Houston describing it in the office overlooking Kowloon. Even before that . . .

All he could think of was Houston lying dead somewhere, like the youngster who had lost his face.

Irwin’s eyes were on him; he could feel them.

“So you see, Ross, it’s up to us, right?”

That time in the hotel suite. Houston taking his arm, and gently warning him about Glynis, and the mine field.

“I’m ready, sir.” What he had trained for, lived for, all his adult life. Discipline and trust. But all he could recognize was anger, and the desire for revenge.

“Good.”

Boyes half turned.

“’Ere comes Rimsh – er, Sarn’t Bolton, sir!”

Ross heard himself say, “What about Sergeant Blackwood, sir?” Like the voice of a total stranger, detached, almost casual.

“Coming to that. He’ll be needed down by the river. I’ve sent word. Piggott can cope with his sector.”

Irwin was on his feet again, looking at the sky.

“We are dealing with dedicated and ruthless terrorists. I
want them killed, captured or made harmless. I do not want to lose or throw lives away for no good purpose. Tell your men.”

As the others moved away, he reached out and touched Ross’s arm.

“The Boss is dead. We won’t let him down.”

The words were quietly spoken. But later, as Ross watched the ragged trees taking shape along the lower ridge, they reverberated in his mind like thunder.

Waiting . . . waiting . . . He peered at the nearest trees and wondered if they had become clearer, or if his eyes had grown used to the dark, the overcast sky. He wanted to yawn, but suppressed it by force. The old hands always said that yawning was a first sign of fear.

He heard the sharp clink of metal, followed immediately by an obscene curse. He twisted round and saw one of the marines unfastening an entrenching tool from his belt. He saw Ross looking at him and showed his teeth in a grin, stark against his camouflaged face.

Ross touched his chin and felt the bristles. How long since the last shave? Or until the next?

He stared at his hand, amazed that he had not noticed. The dawn had come upon them. One minute blackness, and now . . .

He said quietly, “Not long, Godwin,” and saw his acknowledgment.
Probably as surprised as I am that I remembered his name.

What must we look like? Stained faces, dirty clothing, red-rimmed eyes. Leeches. Insect bites.
A far cry from the barrack square, the stamp of feet and the terse shouts of command.

He looked around. The ridge here was sparsely covered with trees, an overgrown, bypassed piece of land. Not a place worth dying for. But many had, over the years. He
heard Irwin scramble down beside him. He, more than anybody here today, would be remembering, seeing it as it was. Reliving it.

Irwin said, “We can move up now.” He gazed along the ridge, watching an occasional shadow as the nearest section crawled slowly toward the vague margin between sky and land.

More light now, so that individual slabs of rock and rotting vegetation took shape around them. And so strangely silent, only the sounds of cicada and distant water.

And the smell . . . like a greeting, or a warning. The sea.

He recalled reading an account of the fall of Singapore in the very early years of his service. One fragment had always remained in his mind. A Royal Marine had described his feelings when the garrison had surrendered to the Japanese. The nearest land still unoccupied or uncontrolled by the enemy had been Batavia, about six hundred miles away.
Not another Dunkirk
, he had written,
with the white cliffs just across the English Channel, but six hundred bloody miles.

I just thought, get me to the sea, and somehow I’ll get back with the lads.

He had succeeded.

He heard Irwin exhale softly. “And there it is, Ross. Not much changed, as I recall.”

Ross rested his binoculars on a slab of rock and waited for the image to settle.

The mission was larger than he had expected. Square and solid, more like a fort than a place of worship, a beachhead for some creed. Starkly white in the rapidly growing light, it had become part of a trading estate, then both prison and stronghold for the occupying Japanese army. Fought over repeatedly, while the local people
suffered and endured the ebb and flow of war, and waited for independence and freedom.

He thought of the man called Richard Suan, and others like him, who knew only how to destroy and subvert.

Irwin was saying, “Some of the place is built on piles. Unreliable in the rainy season. Why they made the bridge to give access to the shore. You could hold off a whole bloody army if you had to.”

Ross rubbed his eye with one knuckle. Clearer now, the white walls stained with mildew at closer quarters. The slow-moving river was littered with leaves and fallen debris from the recent storms.

He shifted the glasses away from the water and the open sea. More jungle. You could lose a regiment in there.

He felt Irwin touch his sleeve, but he said nothing.

Ross lowered the glasses and stared at the crude, timbered bridge. A shadow, like part of the structure itself, moved suddenly, only a few paces, the first daylight bringing it to life. A man with some kind of cape draped over his shoulders. The light strengthened. He had a shape now, pale against the muted greens of the jungle. Ross did not need binoculars to recognize the rifle he carried in one hand.

“Richard Suan won’t be short of men. Not when his own skin’s at risk.” Calm, almost matter-of-fact. “We’ll keep them off the bridge when the time comes to blow it.”