Stephen Leather - Breakout

Harper dropped and looked back behind them. He had to look carefully at the mountainside before he spotted a group of figures, darker outlines against the rock, way below them. ‘They’re at absolutely maximum range,’ he said, ‘and I’d be very surprised if they have sniper rifles, so it is going to take a very lucky shot indeed to hit us. So let’s just keep moving upwards, we’re nearly at the ridge and once we’re back among the rocks we’ll be just about impossible for them to spot.’

‘Okay,’ Scouse said, ‘I’ll believe you, but like I told you before, if it hits you, a lucky shot will kill you just as dead as any other kind.’

He let out a yelp and almost lost his footing on the mountainside as a shadow swept over them for a second and a majestic condor appeared over the ridgeline just above them. It banked sharply as it saw them, the wind through its feathers making a curious hissing noise as the condor flashed past them and then began to soar ever higher, circling as it rode the thermals rising up the face of the mountain.

As Scouse teetered, close to overbalancing and falling, Harper grabbed his arm and pulled him into the lee of a large boulder around which the screes were parting like a river of stone. He shot a wary glance back down the mountainside. ‘I don’t know if they’ll try to climb up to catch us,’ he said, ‘but even if they don’t, they know where we are, so they can track us and try to intercept us when we come down off the mountains - and we’ll have to eventually. But whatever happens, let’s put some more ground behind us before we even begin thinking about that. They’ve also got access to aircraft, so it’s not impossible that they could try to use those. They can’t land obviously, but they could try to bomb us with grenades or shoot us up with sub-machine guns.’

‘You’re just a constant source of cheerful thoughts, aren’t you Lex?’ Scouse said, with a world-weary sigh. ‘I don’t know why I put up with you.’

‘Probably because I’m all that’s standing between you and a very unpleasant death of one sort or another,’ Harper said. ‘So come on then, let’s move.’

They moved off again, keeping just below the ridgeline and holding to the same contour as much as possible, though each time they crossed a gully or gorge, or forded one of the streams running down off the ridge, they had to lose some height as they slithered down one side and then were forced to regain it as they clambered up again on the other. They moved as fast as Scouse could manage, with Harper always on hyper-alert, keenly aware of the twin dangers of pursuit from behind and possible ambush from ahead.

The next real danger point was when they would have to come down from the ridge they were following to cross the valley, ford the river in the valley floor and then climb up again on the other side. The peril of that was heightened by the need to also find a way across the road running alongside the river. The terrain was so rugged and the river so fast-flowing that there would be few places where Harper and Scouse could get across it. Knowing that their prey were somewhere on the mountainside and would have to cross both river and road to escape them, the sicarios would certainly be patrolling along the road and also setting sentries or mounting ambushes at natural choke points.

They had been moving fast over the difficult ground for a couple of hours when Harper called a halt. ‘Five minutes breather,’ he said to Scouse, who looked close to exhaustion. ‘We’ve no food, we’ve got water, so drink some of that and get your breath back a bit while I take a look at those maps.’ Scouse drank greedily from a water bottle as Harper studied his maps. ‘Brilliant,’ he said at last. ‘Beyond the ridge on the other side of this valley there’s another rugged and very steep-sided valley, but that one runs due west right through the heart of the Cotopata National Park.’

‘And you think that’s good news?’ Scouse said, casting a baleful glance towards the ridge they would have to cross to reach it.

‘Yep, because although we’ll have to be up at an altitude all the way - and it is never going to be less than two thousand metres and will often be a lot higher than that - there are two very good things about it. One is that the valley extends virtually right the way through the mountains, leaving only a low ridge to cross at the far end before we’re back on the Altiplano again. The second is that there is an ancient, high level Inca trail running in the same direction that we need to be travelling. It’s part of the network that once connected Cusco and Machu Picchu to all parts of the Inca empire, and the Incas were definitely not jerry-builders. So I’m sure it will be solidly constructed, supported by stone walls where needed, and have a decent surface. Best of all, from the map it appears to be pretty much level going, following the contours of the mountainside, just like we’ve been doing. So once we get up on it, we should be able to make a pretty fast pace.’

‘But if it’s a National Park, isn’t there a risk that there’ll be hordes of tourists on the trail?’

‘Not at this time of year,’ said Harper. ‘Even if there are, that’s not necessarily a handicap because the presence of tourists may make the sicarios more cautious.’ He paused. ‘So that’s the good news. The bad news is we have to find a way to cross the river and the road in the bottom of this valley before we can even think about getting over to the next one.’

He looked down at the map again, making sure of his facts. ‘Okay.’ He tapped a spot on the map with his finger. ‘See here, there are two tributary streams feeding into the river along this stretch of it. Both of them must pass under the road through culverts. So we need to get within sight of them so we can evaluate which offers the line of least resistance and the best cover to hide us from the sicarios ’ patrols and look-outs. Then we can crawl along the bed of the stream through the culvert. We’ll get soaked of course, but we’re going to get wet crossing the river anyway. Once through there-’ His finger traced a line on the map. ‘We can move upriver, using both the river-bank and the surrounding vegetation for cover, and then cross the river somewhere about here, either wading or swimming it, depending on how deep it is.’

‘What if it’s too fast-flowing?’

Harper shrugged. ‘From the contour lines on the map, there may very well be some rapids here and here.’ He moved his finger across the map, tracing the river’s course. ‘But on this section the contour lines are much more spread out and the river bed looks broader, so with luck, that’ll give us a chance to cross. All right, silent running from here on in. Any noise or sudden movement could be enough to give us away.’

As they descended from the ridge towards the valley floor, Harper moved much more slowly and every fifty yards or so, he would hold up a hand to signal Scouse to wait and then scanned the next part of their route for any signs of danger. He expected that the sicarios ’ main efforts would be devoted to watching the road, not the river, but it was unwise to put too much trust in assumptions, however well-founded.

Harper made Scouse wait just inside a copse of scrubby pine trees at the foot of the mountain, while he dropped and belly crawled forward until he reached the edge of a bluff that overlooked the river. To his left he could see one of the streams he had spotted, cascading down from the mountain and flowing into a stone-lined culvert under the road. However there was a wide stretch of open ground to either side of it, unbroken by any bush or tree, and it would be in full sight of anyone passing along the road. He frowned, retraced his steps and they moved on, further up river, hoping that the second culvert would be more viable.