Andy McNab: Exit wound

Anna revved and pushed Cuckoo through, gouging its beautiful paintwork right down to the bare metal in places. She brushed her fingers lightly across the scars as she made way for me to replace her on the saddle. I knew what she was thinking, but I reckoned both Semyon and Grisha would have thought it was all in a good cause.

We worked our way through the trees and bounced onto a four-metre-wide gravel track that cut through the forestry like a firebreak. Puddles stretched across its rutted and pot-holed surface as far as the eye could see. The Ural bucked and reared and sent up sheets of muddy water, but kept ploughing on just like it was built to do.

I could hear the props of a reconnaissance aircraft taking off a couple of hundred metres to our right.

I just wanted to keep moving forward, try to find something – anything - that might give us a clue as to where we were, and where we should be going. I was working on the assumption that the most secure area, the proving ground, would be in the middle of the site rather than at the edge.

For a moment I was back in Brecon, in the training area where I seemed to have spent half of my squaddie life – a maze of forestry blocks, tracks and firebreaks just like this, and just as wet.

The cloud hung low overhead, and mist filled the gap between it and the treetops. There wasn’t a breath of wind and the drizzle fell in a fine sheet. Give me proper pouring rain every time – but this stuff would do just fine. Low cloud meant no drones.

The little bubble compass was taped onto the speedo lens. The ball inside it pitched and yawed with every pothole, but I could see we were heading roughly north-north-east. I tried to keep the air base to my right. We were moving in more or less the same direction as the runway, towards the centre of the site. We emerged from the firebreak after another two hundred metres. I stopped when the track and the tarmac converged.

Most of the activity seemed to be at least seven or eight hundred away, the other side of the runway. I pulled the Nikon out of my day-sack and scanned what I could see of the air base. I checked the lines of aircraft for drones and the Falcon and found neither.

We carried on until we hit a junction from which five different gravel tracks headed back into the trees.

Numbered arrows in a riot of different colours were nailed to picket stumps. This was good news if you’d just been told to follow the yellow route to the RV point, but not much help otherwise.

Military training areas are plastered with signs and markers because head sheds the world over assume every squaddie is as thick as shit, and needs every message to be delivered as simply as possible. Don’t drive your tank here. Don’t dig your trench there. We don’t want this whole place to be full of flattened buildings and fucking great holes. A training area might look rough and ready, but there are more restrictions than a national park.

I could see another sign a bit further down one of the tracks – a wooden panel on a metal pole, with faded lettering beneath a smaller version of our old mate the skull and crossbones.

The Ural’s valves clattered as I bounced us down to it.

‘What does it say?’

‘Nothing much, Nick. Ranges. Shooting ranges.’

‘How far?’

‘It doesn’t say, just down this road.’

As we headed onwards, another Antonov thundered over-head on its way to fuck about over the North Sea and hassle Scotland.

Anna looked up at me from the sidecar. ‘Why are we going to the ranges?’

‘They’ll be restricted areas. That means there’ll be checkpoints to stop unauthorized traffic moving through them. And where there are checkpoints, there’s a good chance there might be maps or information on their exact positions. We’re going to get ourselves a map.’

‘What about the sentries?’

‘They’ll be the ones with the maps.’

I checked my watch. It was ten thirty-seven. I opened the throttle.

We bumped down the track at 40 k.p.h., only easing off at the bends. I slowed for each one and exited on the outside of the curve to give me more of a view of what lay ahead. I didn’t want to sail round a corner and straight into a checkpoint without warning.

Fir trees towered on both sides of us. The mist cut visibility to a hundred metres. The ranges might have been three minutes away, or three hours.

I drove another couple of K, shut down the engine and listened for the crack of supersonic rounds.

I didn’t hear any gunfire. But I did hear the rumble of wagons coming towards us.

‘Nick, we’ve got to hide.’

‘Where?’

The forestry block was too close and too dense. There were no firebreaks. We had been channelled down the track.

I restarted the engine. ‘Give them a wave. Show confidence. You belong here. We’ll carry on as if nothing’s the matter. No looking back.’

‘But what if-’

‘Fuck it. Let’s see what happens.’

I opened up the throttle. There was no more time for discussion. I wanted us to pass them on the move, not give them an excuse to stop and ask questions.

We were doing a very bouncy 50 k.p.h. as the first set of headlights cut through the gloom. There were four of five of them, closing fast. I had to swerve off to the left to let them keep their momentum.

The trucks were green and canvas-backed. The driver of the first looked as though his face had been carved out of stone. Anna gave him something close to a salute and the lad didn’t even bother acknowledging. The next four rumbled past. I checked in the mirror as I wrestled Cuckoo back on the track and saw soldiers on benches in the rear, leaning forward and resting their heads on their rifles. They looked very wet and very knackered.

That was a good sign. With luck they’d just had an early morning on the range.

We came to another sign at a T-junction a couple of K further on. This time, when I stopped and closed down, I could hear weapons in the distance. Single shots: high-velocity cracks as the rounds came out of the muzzle so fast they broke the sound barrier.

‘Anna, we’re nearly there.’ I leant down towards the sidecar. ‘There will be troops, but just sit tight and do what I say when I say it, OK?’

She nodded slowly. She didn’t like it one bit. ‘Do you have a plan?’

‘Sure.’ I gave her a lopsided smile. ‘My plan is just to get on with it. If we fuck up, we fuck up, and they’ve won – but at least we’ll have tried.’

I fired up the Ural again and we lurched in the direction of the shots.

One K further on a red flag hung limply at the roadside, a big old cotton thing weighed down with rain – a warning that the ranges were active. Even the most rough and ready set-up of this kind has worked out its safety templates. They cater for the rounds going down the range at the target, with a safety margin each side to cover fuck-ups. Templates normally look like big, open fans, at the base of which are the firing positions. Anywhere inside that fan is the danger area.

Another hundred down, we came across a second red flag and, soon afterwards, a red and white barrier across the road, next to a small shed. I really was back in Brecon.

I could see movement inside. Whoever the sentry was, he’d be bored out of his skull spending all day on stag. I knew the feeling. I’d done range-sentry duty a million times.

He came out reluctantly to see what the deal was with this bike and sidecar. The look on his face said he was already getting ready to turn us back or fuck me off onto another route.

He noticed the civvy clothes and all the gear hanging off the Ural, like we were on some kind of eccentric cross-country rally. He didn’t have a weapon, but why should he? He was just a lad on stag. He’d drawn the short straw. Or, in this weather, maybe not. At least he was nice and dry.