Detonator Read Free Page B

trees. The gradient steepened as I went. Thank fuck I hadn’t a clue about my journey down. Was I even conscious? It must have been one hell of a ride.
    I stopped short of the open ground and ducked into cover. I needed to check out the next tactical bound before making it. I knew that. Just like I knew the rules of concealment. Shape, shine, shadow, silhouette, spacing and movement are the shit that give you away. Two more lessons that must have been driven into me so deep they had become second nature.
    I wove my way twenty or thirty paces through the wood, until I found a vantage-point with a clear view of the next three hundred and fifty metres of slope.
    My eyes swept right to left and back again. Outcrops of bare rock, bald baby’s heads, were scattered randomly across the turf. A small furry creature appeared briefly beside one, sniffed the air, then made itself scarce.
    No other bodies, no other sign of life in the territory that separated me from the place the tyre marks seemed to begin. Black-and-white-striped rods, spaced at regular intervals, stood proud of the crest to either side of it.
    I guessed that was where the road must be.
    I waited, listened and looked.
    Still nothing.
    I set off, running at the crouch. My head bounced around on my shoulders, like my neck had turned into a Slinky.
    About fifty up, I doubled over and puked my guts out again. There was hardly anything there, but it seemed to take for ever to come out. Not good in open ground.
    Once I’d stopped retching, I waited for my vision to clear. The splashes of watery puke by my boots were a world away from the multi-coloured explosions you see outside pubs and kebab shops: they were clear and shiny and flecked with brown. I kicked over the traces anyway.
    About a hundred up, I had a clearer picture of my objective. A stretch of retaining wall to my half-left; thickly mortared stone, constructed to stop the tarmac throwing itself downhill. I paralleled the tyre tracks then veered left towards it. As I drew closer, I could see it was waist high, enough to give me cover. I stooped beside it and listened for vehicle engines and the crunch of boots on gravel and allowed my stomach to settle.
    All I could hear was a siren. Somewhere behind me, a few Ks further down the valley. It wasn’t getting any louder.
    I raised my head fractionally above the parapet and scanned beneath the safety barrier. There was no one in my field of vision in either direction. A two-lane blacktop that had been carved out of the rock face which towered above me. I was at the apex of a curve. Fragments of shattered glass glittered in the sunlight on the far side of it.
    I skirted the stonework for a metre or two, then clambered on top of it. To my right, violent skid marks swerved across the white centre line, leading to a point, short of the barrier and beside another clump of trees, where the edge of the metalled surface had crumbled on to the turf.
    This was where my rollercoaster had kicked off.
    A sudden flashback …
    I’m leading a two-car convoy. A shiny black SUV with darkened windows is behind me. I can see it in the rear-view. Then red lights fill the screen inside my head. A big fuck-off flatbed artic slamming on the anchors with zero warning.
    A big fuck-off flatbed artic with a company name on the rear panel and an eagle logo on each mudguard.
    The kind you’d expect to see clutching at a swastika.
    I can hear the screech of tyres, see the smoke pouring out of the wheel arches. I can smell the burning brake fluid and bubbling rubber on the tarmac …
    I could feel the sweat prickle in my armpits and groin and on the gash below my hairline. I could feel my shoulder muscles clench. But I tried to hang on to the image.
    I needed to know what happened next.

4
     
    The artic’s brake-lights faded, bleached by the sunlight. I hadn’t a clue where the SUV had gone.
    But I could see another skid pattern on the tarmac now. Twin sets of parallel tracks – a