4am. Friday, 10th November
The signs hammered to the wooden fence posts spelled it out. All lands within the marked boundaries were property of the National Defence Force (Inc.). New Army exercises were taking place and live artillery firing on-going. Red flag. Danger. Access Strictly Prohibited. Prosecution or Death guaranteed in the event of any and all trespass. North tapped the Glock Stella had given him for luck. He wouldn’t need a lawyer.
The woodland beyond the signs was scrubby and hard to walk through, but it had the advantage of discretion. Out on the Northumberland moorland, he’d be exposed. Even in the dark among the trees, with his face and hands muddied, he felt like a marked and hunted animal. This was the Army. The New Army admittedly. But still the Army. They had infra-red, night-vision equipment and a great deal of brand new weaponry which they liked to use. And that’s if his instinct about the disappeared people was right. There was a chance he had it wrong, and he was about to get himself shot or blown up for no good reason. Which would, he decided, be annoying.
Scanning the ground between the trees in front of him for stray incendiary devices or mortar shells, he trod with caution. There was still the best part of four miles to cross over rough terrain before he reached the barracks. His belly throbbed. Stella had done a good job, but despite the neat stitching, the yomp had opened up the wound. He gritted his teeth aware of the lips of the wound gaping, blood wet against his top. Pain was a state of mind. It wasn’t going to kill him. He glanced down at the compass he “salvaged” alongside binoculars, from an Army surplus store when he left the bar, the tip of the needle oscillating on the pivot, and checked the Ordnance Survey map. It felt strange, as if the years were rolling backwards and he was a soldier again. This time though he was on his own and if any other soldiers spotted him, they would undoubtedly shoot him.
Clouds covered what was left of the moon. Without it the sky was dark – unspoiled by pollution from houses and roads and cars and people. He liked it that way. There were those who closed their curtains against the darkness and huddled together round the hearth to tell stories and to keep safe. But that was never him. As he stepped out from the woods, a bat on leathery wings swept towards and past him, and he caught his breath, reaching up to ward it off but it disappeared back into the night as quickly as it came. He stood still. Was he making too much noise? So much noise that they would hear him across the miles and come for him? Enough that they would find him? A barn owl shrieked across the distance and the wind moved through the copse of scrubby pine behind him. A birdwatcher. He had binoculars. He could tell them he was a birdwatcher.
But they wouldn’t believe him.
According to his watch, it was another two hours before first light. He forced himself to take a step. Another. Crushing and snapping the stalks of grass. Plunging into and out of the mud. He had to believe there was enough noise to cover him, providing they didn’t have eyes on the ground. He had seen no cameras, no drones. The New Army’s protection lay in isolation, wire fencing, large wooden noticeboards with maps and skulls and crossbones and warnings of death and disaster for the foolish and rambling. “I didn’t take you for a rambler, North,” Honor said to him from her hospital bed. No, he wasn’t a fool and he wasn’t a rambler. Yet here he was.
It took less than two hours. It took one hour and fifty-four minutes which was as well because dawn came early. He spread himself flat behind a rising clump of grassland and to the left of yellow-blooming gorse, both legs wide to keep his profile close to the ground and the Glock within easy reaching distance. The position wouldn’t provide much cover if anyone looked hard enough, but he trusted they wouldn’t. He trusted that the guards at the barracks were concentrating on keeping people in, rather than keeping people out.
The guardhouse stood back from the 20-foot steel and mesh gate. Judging by the churn back and forth, the camp operated in a state of high alert. He counted four men in the guardhouse itself with eight more patrolling the perimeter fencing which was topped with barbed wire coils. North had no eye-line to the rear gate though he knew there was one, and he guessed there’d be the same number of guards there. From Fang’s research he also knew that the steep-roofed huts of the barracks could accommodate up to 400 troops on field training exercises. He kept his sights focused on the three huts to the left. Close by, the perimeter fencing ran in parallel lines – a few yards of broken earth between the neighbouring wires. Anyone on the inside wanting to make it to the outside would have to break through the first mesh fence then cross the no-man’s land before negotiating a second set of fencing with its own concrete posts and barbed wire topping. The enclosure would be the perfect place to hold prisoners.
It took another 20 minutes to distinguish between the patrolling soldiers by their walk, by the chink of the largest who carried loose change in his pocket, the low chat between them as they scanned the horizon with glazed-over eyes. It wouldn’t be long before the day shift came on – even from a distance he could sense the fatigue, the longing to be off their feet, hungry for a hot meal and a warm bed.
The ear habituates itself to the rhythm of the countryside, the movement of the grass, the roll of the wind. Across the moorland, the occasional bleat of scattered sheep waking to another dawn, a curlew here then gone again. But the child’s voice cut through it all – wailing as if he was awakened too early and someplace he didn’t want to be. A soldier glanced across and grimaced at the noise.
The binoculars were heavy, the optics adjustable to each eye – Royal Navy issue from the Second World War, ancient but effective. Behind the diamond mesh, a tide of people spilled out of huts, their slow progress towards the cookhouse, steam pouring out of a tall tin chimney. Seven o’clock breakfast. Soldiers stood to one side, at ease, with weapons cradled in their arms. They weren’t worried about being rushed, or overpowered. The hungry people they guarded were civilians – more women than men, along with a smattering of children. The pounding of North’s heart felt as if it came up from the core of the earth. The crying boy with the shock of dark hair held his pregnant mother’s hand, a toy lamb clutched in the other, his feet scuffing the ground, dragging at her. As if the child sensed him, he turned towards the moorlands beyond the wire, at the wide pale blue and soft pink sky, the washed-out gold of the rising sun, and pointed as if in warning.
The sound was unmistakeable. Behind North a gun cocked. Then another. The thick grip of the Glock so close, but not close enough. He laid down the binoculars, raised his hands slow, wrapped them around the back of his head interlacing cold, stiff fingers. There was an etiquette at times of surrender. He hoped it included not shooting him. He moved sideways a fraction, enough to give him a chance of the Glock. But his captors were ahead of him. A wrenching, blinding pain as a boot drove itself into the fork between his legs, up the stem of him and into every neuron in his body as the Glock was kicked away. The boot that came in for his ribs seconds later was a welcome diversion.