THE HEART OF DANGER (40 page)

away

or throw himself to the edge of the light, but the fear was in him

and

with the fear was blindness. The old woman had been behind him. She had been in the pit behind him when he had turned away. With the

shouts, with the click of the safety catches, there was a sudden

stifled scream, a man's hoarse pain. The light never left Penn. It was what he himself would have done, or what his instructors from

far

back would have told him to do. "Put the light down, sonny boy. Be close to the light but not on it, sonny boy. "Cause if they're going to put suppressive fire down, sonny boy, it'll be the light they go

for

.. ." That is what an instructor would have said, and he realized

the

angle of the light was low, as if it was on the ground. There was

a

hammer of shots behind him, semi-automatic on a rifle, and after the

shots and the scream there was the sound, briefly, of ripping cloth.

Penn did not dare to turn to see whether Katica Dubelj, old woman

gone

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animal, old woman gone eighty years of her life, old woman who had

never been on a surveillance or an evasion course, old woman not

strong

enough to go cross country, had made it clear through the thorn and

wire in the hedge beyond the pit. There was a loaded pistol weighting

the pocket of his coat. There were four grenades in his backpack.

Penn did not dare to reach for either. Very slowly, so carefully

that

the movement should not be misunderstood, he stretched out his arms,

kept his hands open, raised his arms.

He thought he was the prize. He heard behind him, after the bullet

volley, nothing of pursuit. Fear seemed to numb the movement of his

legs so that they were rigid scarecrow stilts, and to loosen the hold

of his guts so that he wanted to piss, crap. The fear trembled the

movement of his arms, up high and into surrender. His eyes bunked,

uncontrolled, and the water from his eyes distorted the glare of the

cone of light.

There was still shouting, but coming closer to him, moving closer

and

slowly because they could not know the fear that shackled him, as

if he

was still dangerous to them.

Only his mind was not frozen. In his mind the thoughts raced .. .

Ham hadn't talked of escape and evasion. The fat-faced little

bastard

hadn't talked about what to do ... He had once been at a Territorial

Army depot in Warrington, a marksman's rifle gone missing, a

suspicion

that it might have been sold to Protestant para militaries from Ulster

which was enough to bring in Security Service involvement, and an

Escape and Evasion pamphlet picked up off a book shelf. He had been

waiting for them to wheel in the armourer, and he had flicked the

pamphlet's pages, just from interest. He had read .. . the first

moments of capture offered the maximum opportunity of escape, also

offered the maximum opportunity of getting the old head blown off

because of the high state of adrenaline of the captors .. . He had

read

that it took real guts, big bravery, to antagonize captors by going

runabout. His hands were high above his head.

In his mind the thoughts cavorted , ..

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He was shit scared, frightened, and Dorrie Mowat had been here.

Dorrie

Mowat, the horrid young woman, had kicked one man in the privates,

punched one man in the eyes, spat at the whole goddamn lot of them.

Dorrie, the one that all who had touched had loved, had sat in the

wet

grass where he now stood in surrender, and her arms had been round

the

wounded man that she had chosen, and she had sat and waited while

the

bull dozer dug out the pit. She hadn't had the fear. A shape loomed at the edge of the cone of light.

In his mind the thoughts raced .. .

Jane in the small room, little Tom on her lap, with the television

on:

"And what's the point of you going there, what's anyone to gain from it?" Failed her. Mary in the kitchen and making the coffee: "I think

she took a pleasure in hurting me .. . and, Mr. Penn, she was my

daughter .. . and, Mr. Penn, her throat was slit and her skull was

bludgeoned and she was finished off with a close-range shot.. . and,

Mr. Penn, not even a rabid dog should be put to death with the cruelty

shown to my Dorrie." Failed her. Basil holding court to Jim and

Henry

in the darts bar of the pub round the corner from the launderette:

"You

know what you are, Penn? You are a jam my bastard." Failed them.

The

old American Professor of Pathology: "Build a case, stack the

evidence'

.. . Maria who was a refugee: "She was an angel in her courage' ..

.

Alija who needed the operation to her eyes: "She could not protect

herself because she had the wounded fighters to help' .. . Sylvia

who

was cloaked in the nervous collapse: "Does anybody care what happened to them, who did it, anybody?" .. . Failed them.

The blow was at the back of the neck.

Failed them all ... The blow was with the stock of a rifle, short

swing.

And failed Jovic who had interpreted for him, and Ulrike who had

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touched his arm to make a talisman for him, and Ham who had given

him

the map .. . And failed himself.

He was pitched forward by the blow. They were all around him and

the

shadows of their bodies masked the cone of white light. He wondered

if

they would shoot him there, or whether they would take him some place

else to kill him, and felt he did not have Dome's courage. He tried

to

cry out, beg mercy of them, but his voice was suffocated. The fear

consumed him. When they had hit him some more times, when he had

seen

the grinning of cold faces, when he had smelled the foul close breath

of them, then they searched him and found the pistol and they skewered

his arms back and pulled the backpack off him, then they hit him with

the rifle stocks some more.

Penn was pulled to his feet. He could hear the music from across

the

stream.

Penn (William), Five reject, failure ... He was held tight and dragged

towards the pin lights of the village across the stream.

They were through Glina.

The convoy was belting. It was not usual for the convoy manager in

his

Land-Rover to let the fifteen Seddys behind him sniff the wind and

belt, but they were all pissed off and Benny who was driving three

from

the back supposed that the wound on the convoy manager's face had

lost

its numbness and would now hurt like hell.

Benny wasn't fussed. It did not matter to him that they had been

off

the main roads, into the ditches, up bloody awful rutted lanes. He'd

done the runs into northern Iraq out of Turkey to resupply the Kurds

in

winter, grinding in low gear down tracks that had never seen a loaded

Seddon Atkinson before. He made it his business to know the land,

read

up on his guidebooks and he wrote twice every week to his wife, Becky,

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to tell her where he had been and what he had seen. There wouldn't

be

much to write to Becky about Glina because they had belted through

the

pretty little town, but he'd think of something to say. He only wrote

to Becky about the towns being pretty, never about the people being

shit. It was not his way to frighten her, to tell her that most days

he wore a pisspot on his head and a flak jacket of kevlar plates front

and back across his body, and he didn't tell her that the doors of

the

cab were armour-reinforced, nor that he had sandbags under his seat

as

protection from mine blasts. On the main road and belting, perhaps

forty-five minutes if they weren't messed again from the Turanj

crossing, and the voice crackled on the radio in his cab.

"Guys, there's usually a roadblock between Glina and Vrgin-most. I don't want to spend half the night yammering with some defective on

a

roadblock. There's a right a few miles ahead, up to a village called

Salika, I reckon we can get round the block, then back onto the main

heave .. . OK, guys?"

They didn't have call signs, the drivers didn't like to play at

military games. If they'd had call signs then all of them would have

been Foxtrot Something, all F-word stuff. Call signs were for kids

playing soldiers .. . The answers tripped over each other, and not

many

of them polite. And Benny's next letter to Becky would not tell her

that his nerves were hacked jagged by driving in darkness on stone

tracks through these shit awful villages, through these shit awful

people.

Bad news that there would be another shit block to divert round ..

.

He flicked the 'speak' switch. It was important to get a laugh

because

the nerves of all the drivers and the convoy manager would be as hacked

jagged as his own.

"You know what Lily Tomlin said: "Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse" .. ."

They brought him down to the bridge.

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They had tied his wrists together, cutting hard, behind his back,

and

his ankles so that the bones chafed each other, and they had to drag

him.

They came down to the bridge and they pitched him onto the planks

and

he fell onto his stomach and was trying to twist his head away so

that

his nose did not take the force of his fall. There was a rusted old

hurricane lamp on the bridge that threw a good light from beside the

sandbag position of the guards. It was then he saw for the first

time

the three men who had taken him. The one was thin and big, another

had

a heavy body and was taller, the last was slight and shallow in his

build. They'd thrown him down, dropped him like the dead roebuck

that

a stalker and the keeper had shot in the long copse behind the tied

cottage, and they had the same excitement of the stalker and the

keeper, and all three had the weathered faces of the country, aged,

and

Penn knew the country was cruel ... He was a specimen to be boasted

of,

and he heard words that were similar to "English' and to 'spy', and the

old bastards were showing the young guards of the bridge his passport

and the Browning 9mm automatic pistol and the spare magazines and

the

grenades. He did not see any more at the bridge. Penn tried to tuck down his head when the young guards at the bridge took their turn.

She hadn't flinched from the kicking ... Dorrie had faced up ... She

had kicked them back, punched them back, shouted back .. . She had

kept

her pride, her goddamn courage. Dorrie Mowat, a horrid young woman,

hadn't let them see her fear. He forced his eyes open. He looked

into

their faces as she had looked into their faces, into their boots,

into

their eyes. He didn't see Jane, he didn't see Mary ... He saw Dorrie

Mowat. He wondered if she watched him and laughed at him, wondered

if

she knew the love .. . God, and he had failed her. They picked him

up

with rough hands under his armpits, and they dragged him on over the

237

bridge, and he heard the beat sound of the music from among the pin

lights of the village. The sergeant came to her with his thermos

of

coffee. A good hour gone now since the sergeant had last tried to

play

the kind uncle, and get Ulrike on her way. She took the coffee,

thanked him. She sipped the warmth of the coffee. The sergeant was defeated, knew it and did not seem to care. She was not moving. She was staying until the aid convoy came through. The convoy was eight

hours late .. . She did not believe the sweet talk of the Liaison

Officer who was long gone. Sweet talk seldom convinced Ulrike

Schmidt.

Sweet talk of happiness and friendship had lured her to the job with

the organizing committee for her city's Olympic Games. Nineteen

years

old, waiting to go to university, taking the job of helping to get

out

the results for the swimming and the judo and the archery, joining

the

weeping girls with her own tears when the shadow stain of violence

cut

down the Israeli athletes. Sweet talk of progress in ending human

misery had trapped her into United Nations work, the university

discarded, and service in Lebanon and Cambodia, becoming a part of

the

cynical company that realized nothing changed through their efforts,

little was made better. Sweet talk of love and marriage had brought

her to the bed of an Australian army major in Phnom Penh, and there

was

the letter left casually on the dressing table of his quarters, and

the

photograph of the major's wife and four children in the drawer, under

his uniform shirts.

Sweet talk in Geneva had told her that the refugees from Bosnia would