29

JOE REVVED HARD, taking off to the left of the Skyvan. The shed was static, but its engines were still running, still stirring up a maelstrom of red dust. There were shouts from inside. I could hear the signature of 5.56 being fired.

I ran to the right of the cloud, to get ahead of it, and dropped into a dip, panting, trying to get oxygen into me. My feet told me there were needles in them too.

There were more shots inside the Skyvan. The props began to wind down. One of them coughed to a halt.

BB stumbled out of the front of the storm, M4 in hand. No Stefan. Fuck.

I willed my body deeper into the sand.

BB turned and ran back, then reappeared almost immediately, dragging the boy. He threw him over his left shoulder. Weapon in the right hand, he headed west, his back to the sun, kicking up grit as he went. He knew where he was going. Even in this heat and with the weight of the boy, BB could cover the twenty K to Jilib in short order.

He didn’t look back. He knew there was no need to. He just had to make distance.

A couple more rounds went off as the second prop coughed and died and the cloud began to settle.

I set off behind them, keeping to the right, using the cover of the bush as best I could. The Skyvan soon disappeared behind me.

I pulled off the top of one of the mini-flare sets to expose the penjector. I took it out, screwed it onto a flare, and pulled it out with a gentle pop. I kept on running. It was vital that BB didn’t see me. His M4 was accurate to about three hundred metres. The flares weren’t accurate at all.

BB disappeared into a stretch of scrub and heat haze and didn’t come out again. My feet slipped in the sand as I tried to make ground, still using the cover.

BB might be fronting it. Going to ground, staying concealed. We look for him, we lose him, and at last light he moves off.

It was what his training would be telling him to do. And he would have the bottle for it. He might even know I was behind him, and be waiting for me to move into his weapon sights. What’s the point of running if there are people behind you that you can’t shake off? Stop, take me on, kill me, and then keep going.

This wasn’t a frightened animal I was chasing. It was a highly trained ex-SAS trooper with a score to settle and a big cash prize ahead of him.

I moved right of the point where he had become unsighted.

Slowing down now. Throat burning. Head burning. Relentless heat.

I kept low but fast, not daring to lose ground. Within a few seconds, I came to a dried-up watercourse. It was three metres deep and a couple wide after centuries of angry flash floods. I lay down at the wadi’s edge and scanned its bed, left and right. There was no sign. No sign at all. No one had been along here in any direction. He must still be somewhere down on my left.

Feet first, penjector in hand, I slipped slowly down the bank. When I hit the bottom, my left hand supported my right, as if I was holding my Glock. My body became a firing platform. My legs were shoulder-width apart, left foot forward so I turned forty-five degrees to the direction I was heading. I was balanced forward and back, left and right, as I started to move along the wadi.

Only my trigger thumb was free. It was the only thing I allowed to move as I kept the flare ahead of me, in my field of view.