Stephen Leather - Breakout

He watched and waited as they moved towards him, still tracking the footprints in the dirt. If they failed to see him, they would have to pass within fifteen metres of where he lay, and at that range even Scouse couldn’t have missed. He waited as the first sicario approached, a squat figure dressed in army-style camouflage fatigues but with the hair and facial colouring of an Aymara tribesman. He paused almost level with him, glancing from side to side, and his gaze must have passed right over Harper, but he evidently failed to detect anything unusual about the loose rocks and the clump of grasses that concealed him, as he then moved on. His body now filled Harper’s sights, but he still held his fire. Only when the first man had passed and the second was in his sights, would it be the moment to fire.

The second sicario was now almost level with him. As he looked to his right, a gust of wind parted the grasses Harper had used to hide himself and blew a few of the stems away downwind. In that instant Harper saw the sicario’s face change and his mouth began to open in a warning cry as his gun barrel swung towards Harper’s hiding place. Harper pulled the trigger and the Colt barked. Still travelling at close to muzzle velocity, the round smashed into the centre of the man’s chest, hurling him backwards as if he had been hit by a sledgehammer, and tearing a hole in his back as it exited, through which blasted a spray of blood and lung tissue.

The first sicario swung around but froze for a crucial instant at the sight of the other one sprawled across the rocks. He had barely had time to register that a second figure was lying on the ground a few yards from his dying comrade when Harper squeezed the trigger again. The Colt bucked twice more, the first round smashing into the sicario’s solar plexus, the next punching a hole a few inches higher as he began to topple backwards, tearing away most of his heart. Harper switched back to his original target and put a final round through his head - a coup de grace that might not have been necessary, but Harper had been in enough gunfights to never assume anyone was dead until you had made absolutely certain of it.

He tucked the two dead sicarios ’ pistols in his belt, and picked up one of their Armalites. He swung the other rifle above his head and then launched it out over the ridge and it disappeared from sight, bouncing away down the mountainside. He threw the Colt after it, then filled his pockets with the ammunition that they had been carrying. He crawled to the edge of the ridge and spent ten minutes raking the slopes below him with his gaze, making absolutely sure that there was not another party of sicarios following behind the first. Then he climbed down to a few yards below the ridgeline and made his way back to where Scouse lay.

Two condors were already circling overhead, drawn by the fresh carrion they had spotted as they circled on the thermals high above the ridge. He dragged the body right up to the back of the boulder that had been shielding him. He spent another five minutes finding all the rocks he could carry and piling them up over Scouse’s body in a rough cairn that would have to serve as his mausoleum. He saluted the grave, muttered ‘Farewell mate. I’ll see you one day on the other side - if there is one.’ And then he turned and hurried away, keeping on the same contour with the setting sun always in his face.

After sunset, he found a little shelter in the lee of some rocks, and lay up there for a while dozing and drifting into a troubled sleep, but the cold bit into his bones, and when the moon came up, he moved off again at once, picking his way among the rocks.

Dawn found him west of La Paz, which lay some miles to the south of him, and already emerging from the last ridges of the mountains, back on to the Altiplano that ran from there all the way to the Peruvian border.

The eastern arm of the Andes rose behind him and the snowy peaks of the western arm spanned the far horizon but he was now moving across a flat grassland plain. Without Scouse to slow him down, he could cover the miles far more rapidly and was now taking a direct lower level route, making for the shore of Lake Titicaca, though it was still a long forced march ahead of him. He didn’t know if the cartel bosses had called off the hunt or still had their sicarios scouring the area, but the faster he moved, the greater his chances of escaping.

He hadn’t eaten now for more than four days and a gnawing hunger griped at his guts, but he forced himself to ignore it. He had lost some weight already, burning first what little body fat he’d had and then his solid flesh and muscle, but he would survive that and could soon put the weight back on once he had reached a safe haven. Trying to find or buy food could only increase the risk that he would not reach safety at all.

Occasional dirt roads ran from north to south across his track, but the land ahead of him was punctuated by very few buildings and even fewer trees. He kept well clear of any towns or villages and held to a course roughly parallel to, but about a mile from the Ruta Nacional. He was far enough from it to be invisible to the naked eye, but if any sicarios were patrolling it and using binoculars, Harper would have been easily spotted so wherever possible he used the undulations of the terrain and the occasional low hills to shield himself from view.

There were some isolated farms near his route but most were sited closer to the main road and when he did see one in his path ahead he gave it a very wide berth. Farm dogs sometimes barked in the distance as he passed and occasionally he disturbed small groups of vicuna and guanaco, the wild relatives of the domesticated llama and alpaca that had been kept by the indigenous farmers since Inca times and were still used both as beasts of burden and for their wool and meat. However he saw no trace of anyone appearing in answer to the noise of the dogs or the movement of the animals as he kept on steadily to the west.

There were two possible ways to reach the Peruvian border. One was to turn more to the south-west, aiming to cross close to Ruta Nacional 1 , which ran pretty much due west from La Paz and along the southern shore of Lake Titicaca all the way to the border at Desaguadero, by repute a dirty and lawless frontier town. The other way was to continue on his present course, reaching the eastern shore of the lake near the town of Huarina, and then carry on parallel to the course of Ruta Nacional 2 , which hugged the shore before turning to run down the peninsula that led to San Pablo de Tiquina.

The problem with that route was that the road ended there, at the point where Lake Titicaca narrowed to a strait less than one kilometre across, connecting the lower and upper halves of the lake, Lago Pequeño - the little lake - and Lago Grande . The strait also separated San Pablo de Tiquina and the rest of Bolivia from its sister town of San Pedro de Tiquina at the end of the peninsula facing it on the other side of the strait. The eastern half of that peninsula was still Bolivian territory but the border with Peru ran right across the middle of it. That was the route Harper had decided to take.

He carried on to the north-west, tracking the road. Lake Titicaca came into view as he moved on, its beautiful waters reflecting the azure blue of the sky and shimmering like silver as a gentle breeze ruffled the surface. As it reached the start of the peninsula that jutted out into the lake, the Ruta Nacional turned to the south, and began the run down towards the tip. The terrain of the peninsula was much hillier than the plain Harper had been traversing and the road ran through cuttings for parts of the way. That suited Harper fine, helping to keep him out of sight of the road as he trekked onwards. He was further aided by the rough, rocky ground, studded with eucalyptus trees, which offered much better cover than the flat lands of the Altiplano. He was still moving parallel to the road, but kept working his way through the dry, stony heights above it.