Chris Ryan - The One That Got Away - Junior edition

As soon as I could, I swung down to the right, heading for the pumping station. I followed a line of telegraph poles, which made navigation easy. But by then my feet had become really sore, and I had to keep stopping. I forced myself to do 150 metres between rests. Every one of them was a major effort.

According to my map, I was heading for a point at which the telegraph lines crossed a run of pylons. In due course I saw the pylons, coming in on my right. The wadis to my left were getting deeper, the sides steeper. Then I saw that instead of crossing the telegraph line, the pylons were set out parallel with it. The map wasn’t making sense, so I decided to just cut down to the right and head for the river.

I peeled off the high ground and started on another bearing, confident that I’d hit the river sooner or later. As I went down I spotted a square, white building with a flat roof — the pump house. Coming close, I saw that the end facing me was open, and that a lot of pipes ran in and out of it. There was one main pipe, which I guessed was bringing water from the river, and several smaller ones.

By then I seemed to have grown careless. Whether or not it was the result of exhaustion, I don’t know. When you’re that tired, it’s all too easy to sling your weapon over your shoulder instead of carrying it at the ready, and just saunter along. Going from very cautious to careless happens gradually, without you noticing.

In any case, I walked straight into this place, lulled by the fact that it was silent and no machinery was working. I wasn’t crash-banging about, but I didn’t case the building as carefully as I might have. I even got my torch out and shone it around, because I could hear water dripping from a pipe. There it was — a steady drip, glistening in the torch beam.

Then, as I started getting my water bottle out, I looked up and noticed a little glassed-in hatchway on the back wall, with a red glow coming through it. Standing up to peer through, I saw a small electric fire with a bar glowing. Across from it lay an Arab, huddled down in a parka and sleeping bag, asleep on a camp-bed. He was separated from me only by the thickness of the wall.

I cursed myself. What was I doing in this building anyway? I tiptoed out, without any water, and crept away. It took a fright like that to wake me up. Things had started to seem too easy. I was making good progress. The border was only a short distance ahead. Nobody had challenged me for a while, and I’d started to switch off my defence mechanisms.

Getting over the fright, I moved on in a state of maximum alert. I held my weapon at the ready, and moved very slowly, scanning constantly. But I was hardly clear of the pump house when, from high ground to my left, an air-raid siren went off. The noise started low, wound up to a high note, then swung down again. I hit the ground, thinking I had tripped some alarm, and lay there listening. Up and down went the metallic scream, high and low. As I searched through the night-sight, scanning the high ground, I made out anti-aircraft positions with gun barrels showing against the sky. Black figures were running around them. Then I saw tall towers, maybe fifty metres high, with what looked like cables slung between them. They seemed to be part of a communications network, and when I heard a drone start up, I thought the noise was coming from generators. I reckoned I’d walked into some sort of signals base. How had I got in among all this without seeing anything? I certainly hadn’t crossed any fence or other barrier, but somehow I had landed in the middle of the complex.

I knew I wasn’t far from the river. Vegetation started only a couple of hundred metres below me, and I thought that must mark the bank. I lay still until the all-clear went up — a noise like a Second World War siren — and everything quietened down. Whatever had caused the alert, it hadn’t been me. When I reckoned it was safe to move, I got up and set off cautiously towards the river — only to see a group of five men walking towards me. Back on the ground, I lay still until they had passed and disappeared.

Even though I was desperate for water, I decided I had to get out of this thickly populated area. I had seen from the map that the river bent round, and thought I could hit it at another point not far ahead. But now I seemed to be in the middle of numerous scattered positions, and I would have to weave my way through them.

I crept onwards. To my front I saw something sticking up into the sky. Peering through the night-sight, I realized that it was the barrel of an anti-aircraft gun. As I looked down, I saw the rest of the weapon right in front of me.

I pulled back, boxed it and moved on, threading my way forward between buildings which showed up here and there, pale in the moonlight. The place was extremely confusing, as it didn’t seem to be laid out in any regular pattern. The dirt roads were neither straight nor at right-angles to each other, but coming in from all directions. On the ground, insulated land-lines were running all over the place. I thought of cutting them, to put local communications out of action, but knew that it would only draw attention to my presence.

My map was far too large-scale to show details that would have been useful to me, and it no longer bore any relation to the ground. At one point I could see a big cliff coming round in front of me, like the wall of a quarry — but of course there was no sign of that on my sheet.

Then — wonder of wonders — I reached a stream, with vegetation growing beside it. The water looked crystal clear, and the moonlight shone through it onto a white bottom. I thought, I’m in luck here. A spring of clean water, flowing down into the Euphrates . The whole place was so dangerous that I didn’t go down for a drink; I just filled my bottles, popped them into my side-pouches, and moved quickly away.

Just as I left the stream I saw a file of seven men walk across my front, two or three paces apart. They were moving carefully, obviously on patrol. I froze, thinking, If they’ve got a dog, it’s going to pick up my scent now . But no — they disappeared, and I moved out on a bearing, going very slowly.

Again I came across an anti-aircraft position. This time I was so close that I peered over a wall of sandbags and saw three men lying on the ground in sleeping bags. I felt a surge of fear, rising like acid from stomach to throat. The thought flashed into my mind that if I’d had a silenced weapon, I could at least have taken out anyone who spotted me. But nobody had: the men were all asleep, and within a few seconds I was creeping slowly away.

The next thing I hit was a laager point — a circle of vehicles defending some position. Mounds of rock or minerals stood about — it looked like a quarry. As I came creeping round the side, I walked right up to a Russian-made Gaz 80 jeep, only four or five metres away. Again I got a bad fright. I couldn’t see through the vehicle’s windows; for all I knew it could have been full of people. For a few seconds I held my breath, 203 levelled, waiting for it to erupt.

When nothing happened, I turned to go back. I found I’d passed other vehicles and wandered into the middle of this park without seeing it. There were four-ton trucks with the canvas backs off, some with the canvas on, buses and double-deck car transporters. None of them had armour or weapons fitted, but this was a big collection of general transport. How I’d penetrated in among all these without noticing them, I couldn’t explain. With hindsight, I realize that my concentration was coming and going, functioning one moment but not the next. At the time I just felt confused.

No matter how I’d got in there, I had to get out. Ahead of me were houses, with light coming from one window. Silhouetted figures were moving across it, and I could hear voices calling. I pushed off to the right, sometimes walking on tiptoe, often crawling on hands and knees.