Stephen Leather - Breakout

Moving in small stages, with long pauses both to watch for danger ahead and to allow Scouse some recovery time, it took another two hours to reach the ridgeline, by which time the sun was already well past its zenith. They moved west again, along the line of the ridge, but as they did so, Harper was acutely aware of the steadily narrowing gap between the ridge they were following and the floor of the plateau. They were close to the western edge of the mountains now, and the dizzy heights of the great peaks behind them were receding, beginning to give way to the foothills, with the flatlands of the Altiplano just visible in the distance ahead.

He had still not spotted any sign of the sicarios that the German hiker had seen, but he didn’t relax his vigilance for a second. If they were in camouflage gear - or at the least, drab clothing - and were remaining motionless, he could pass within fifty yards of them without necessarily being able to see them. In such circumstances, only movement, a wrong colour or shape, or some intangible, instinctive sense of a thing out of place would give them away.

As he was pondering this, Scouse had moved on, slightly ahead of him and when he glanced up, Harper saw that Scouse’s outline was now breaking the skyline. Trying to raise his voice enough for him to hear, but not so loud that it would carry far down the mountain, he called out, ‘Scouse, for fuck’s sake get your head down. I could see you from miles away. You might as well paint a target on your chest.’

Scouse turned towards him, a smart-arse reply beginning to form on his lips, but the next moment he was hurled backwards, his arms out-thrown as he fell. A heartbeat later, Harper heard the diminishing echo of the gunshot that had hit him rolling around the bowl of the mountains.

Flattening himself in the dirt and keeping as low to the ground as possible, Harper crawled up the slope, flesh creeping as he waited for the impact of a bullet. He heard the whip-crack of another shot, but it went high and wide of him, striking sparks off a granite boulder. Before the sicarios could fire again, Harper had grabbed Scouse by the ankles and dragged him into the cover of some rocks.

He felt sick as he saw the dark red stain that was slowly spreading across Scouse’s chest. He tore open Scouse’s jacket and saw a dark hole just above his breastbone that was spurting bright, arterial blood. He had no field dressings or any medical kit with him, and all he could do was press his hands against the wound.

Scouse stared down at his chest, watching the blood still bubbling out from under Harper’s fingers, and then looked up and locked eyes with him. ‘Don’t waste your energy, mate. If you stay here to try to help me, you’ll just slow yourself down and let those bastards get you too.’ He shook his head as Harper opened his mouth to argue. ‘You know I’m done. Just like I always told you, even a lucky shot can kill you.’ He choked on the last word as his mouth filled with blood and moments later his eyelids flickered and closed, and with a last sighing breath, his body twitched and then lay still.

Harper pressed his bloody fingers against Scouse’s neck but he already knew that he would feel no pulse there. He hesitated a moment longer, then crawled a few yards to the cover of another boulder and slowly peered around the edge of it, trying to spot the sicarios who had killed Scouse. In the split second he was exposed, he heard a crack and the whine of a ricochet as a bullet struck the boulder. Needle-sharp splinters of rock flew around him, and one embedded itself in his cheek. He pulled it out between his forefinger and thumb and roughly wiped away the blood trickling from it.

In the instant he had been looking around the rock before the bullet struck it, he had caught the movement of figures, dangerously close below him, no more than a hundred yards away. It was well within range of the rifles they were carrying, but too far for a killing shot with the Colt that he still carried, tucked in his belt. He needed them within twenty metres or so before he could be certain of taking them out.

He spent a few more precious seconds scanning the slope around him, plotting a course he could take, using every inch of cover that the boulders, loose rocks and scree could provide. Then he showed himself for an instant at the left hand side of the boulder, dived back into cover as another bullet struck it and then belly-crawled away from the other side, worming his way to the next patch of cover he had identified. Each time he crossed a patch of open ground, his flesh crawled, expecting at any second the impact of a bullet, but although the sicarios kept firing whenever they caught a glimpse of him, and rounds were peppering the hillside around him, he remained unscathed.

After a five-minute eternity spent crawling across the slope, he reached the fissure he had noticed, a boulder-strewn stream bed that had cut a notch into the ridge. Clinging to the near side of it, to make maximum use of the cover it afforded him, Harper crawled his way up, flattening himself against the ground as he reached the top, minimising his exposure to the sicarios as he crossed the ridgeline and then wormed forward a few more yards. There was a narrow ribbon of land along the summit of the ridge, a gentle downslope of weathered rocks and gritty sand before the plunge began down the other side of the ridge. Once Harper had worked himself away from the ridgeline behind him, he could crouch and then stand, unobserved by the sicarios until they had climbed up to the ridge themselves.

He knew he had no more than two or three minutes respite before they would reach the ridgeline and, keeping low, he ran flat out, due west into the now setting sun, counting down from fifty as he did so. Then he dived behind an outcrop of rocks and looked back. The imprint of his boots had left a clear trail in the loose gritty sand back along the plateau. He ran another twenty yards at right angles to his previous course, then worked his way back, looping his track and going to ground again behind a low rock at right angles to the line of his footprints and about fifteen metres from it. He arranged some smaller rocks in front of his hiding place, then pulled up a couple of handfuls of dry mountain grasses and pushed the stems roughly into his hair - as good a camouflage as he could manage in the short time available. He eased the Colt from his waistband, flicked off the safety catch and sighted along its barrel, pointing along the line of the footprints he had made. Then he settled back to wait.

His thoughts were all of Scouse, a mixture of bitter, agonising regret at the death of his childhood mate, after going through so much to try and save him, but also blind fury at Scouse’s stupidity in breaking one of the cardinal rules of soldiering. Not breaking the skyline was one of the first things you learned as a raw recruit, but despite his years as a Para and then associating with SAS men, and even pretending to be one, it was one of the many things that Scouse had either forgotten or, more likely, Harper thought bitterly, had never bothered to learn.

He pushed the dark thoughts away. Scouse was gone and there was no point in wasting time and energy on anger, regrets or thoughts of what might have been. Harper was in extreme danger himself and the only way to get out of it was to eliminate the sicarios who had been tracking them and who had already killed Scouse.

He waited as the shadows cast by the low sun lengthened and at last he heard a faint noise and saw a movement at the periphery of his vision. He remained absolutely motionless as two figures peered cautiously over the ridgeline, then climbed up and stood still, the barrels of their Armalite AR-15 assault rifles following their gaze as they scanned the summit plateau in both directions. Harper saw one nudge the other and point at the ground. Both heads then turned in his direction and they began to move slowly along the ridge, following the trail of his footprints, one moving while the other remained still, covering him.