37
They were on their way. At last. Eddie counted the miles taking them closer to the target and worried about the suicidal rescue attempt, while Danny and Elena sat in the back, packing Elena's purchases into a day sack.
They were animated, excited. Elena's arrival seemed to have given Danny fresh confidence and assurance. Eddie drove in silence, partly cursing himself for his own cowardice and partly thinking that he should just head straight for London without stopping. But he knew it would be pointless. Danny was so set on trying to rescue his grandfather, he would probably fling open the door and leap from the car.
Danny had given Elena a long shopping list which included two hand-sized blocks of wood, a hammer and some five-inch nails.
He took one of the blocks and started hammering a nail into it as Elena watched, and Eddie looked in his rear-view mirror to see what was going on.
'I didn't ask why when you said you wanted this stuff,' said Elena over the sound of hammering, 'but, er . . . why?'
'Shit!' said Danny, as he missed the nail and hit his thumb with the hammer. 'I'm making climbing dumars. My granddad told me how to do it.'
'Climbing? Danny, you may not have noticed, but this is Norfolk. There's no mountains.'
Danny ignored her and hammered a nail into the second block of wood. When both nails were all the way into the blocks, with their heads flat against one side, he took out his Leatherman knife and pulled out the pliers attachment. He bent over the ends of the two nails to form hooks, leaving a straight section of nail between hook and wood block.
Next he took two orange nylon straps, the sort normally used for securing things to roof racks, from his day sack. He wrapped one end of each strap around the straight part of each nail. Then he formed one-metre loops and wound the other end of the straps around the nails and secured them with the buckles. The dumars were finished.
'I think that's right,' said Danny, as he packed them carefully into the day sack.
'If they don't work you could always hit someone with them,' said Elena. 'They look lethal.'
Just outside Thetford they pulled into a filling station. Danny told Eddie to park off the forecourt because of the security cameras and then went into the garage shop in search of Landranger Map 144.
'Can't you get him to give up on this stupid idea?' said Eddie to Elena as they waited in the car.
Elena laughed. 'When Danny wants to do something, he does it. Doesn't matter what anyone else says. Don't worry about us, vicar, we'll be all right.'
The reporter turned in his seat, glaring angrily at Elena. 'You think this is all a laugh, don't you, like a game! It's not. You could get killed! Killed! Can't you get that into your head!'
Elena looked away and stared out through a side window. 'I know it's no game,' she said quietly.
They sat in silence until Danny returned to the car. 'Last one they had,' he said as he opened up the map and found the six-figure reference Eddie had written in his notebook.
'There's nothing there,' said Elena, looking up from the map. 'It's just forest.' She pointed at two words printed in the target area. 'See that?'
The two words read: DANGER AREA.
'It's an army training area,' said Danny. 'They put that to warn the public off.'
Eddie started up the car. 'Yeah? Well, it's working on me.'
'You're sure you wrote down exactly what the woman said?'
'I'm a reporter, that's what I do.' Eddie made one last attempt at warning them off the rescue attempt. 'Look, it's dark, it's late, and you've got no idea what you're up against. Come back to London with me. I can probably get this on the television news tonight and in the papers tomorrow. They won't do anything to Fergus then.'
'We're wasting time, Eddie,' said Danny, refolding the map. 'Just get us as close as you can to the map reference.'
Eddie crunched the gears as he shoved the Sierra into first gear and pulled away.
They parked in a firebreak in the forest, just past the track leading into the army training area. Danny used his Maglite to read the map. 'This is it; we walk from here.' He grabbed the day sack and reached for the door handle. 'Thanks, Eddie. Write the whole story, and get the facts right.'
'Wait,' said Eddie. He hadn't spoken since they'd driven away from the filling station, but he had been thinking. 'Look, I'll come with you, just to see what's there. Then if you still want to go through with this crazy plan, you're on your own. OK?'
Danny simply nodded. They got out of the car, crossed the road and walked back to the MoD track. It was the closest manmade feature to the map reference so it made sense to think it might lead towards wherever Fergus was being held.
'We'll make the ERV five metres into the forest and twenty metres up the road from here,' said Danny, pointing in the direction he meant.
'The what?' asked Elena.
'Emergency rendezvous. If anything goes wrong, go to the—'
'Danny, I've told you,' said Eddie interrupting. 'I'm coming to find out what's there, that's all. If it all goes wrong you won't see my arse for dust, so there's no point in telling me about ERVs or ETAs or even ETs. I'm a coward, remember?'
There were fresh tyre marks in the mud where the track met the road. But as they moved into the darkness along the left-hand side of the track, the ground got harder and they lost sight of the tyre marks and almost everything else.
The black night engulfed them. Danny and Elena walked on either side of Eddie, clutching at the reporter as he stumbled with almost every step. 'Use your torch, Danny, I can't see a thing.'
'Stand still for a while and wait for your night vision to kick in. You stay with him, Elena.'
Before Eddie or Elena had the chance to stop him, Danny moved on. He stopped after twenty metres, then crouched down and listened. His own night vision was working now; he could make out individual trees on the other side of the track. As he tuned in to the area and heard the light breeze shifting the treetops, Eddie and Elena came hurrying up.
'I'm not here just to look after him,' complained Elena without looking at Eddie. 'Don't go wandering off like that.'
Beads of sweat were standing out on Eddie's forehead. He already looked ready to give up and turn back. But Danny wanted to hang onto the reporter now, realizing that if they did manage to rescue Fergus, Eddie was the one with a vehicle.
'I need your help, Eddie,' he said. 'Count your paces and tell me when you reach twelve hundred.'
'Twelve hundred? That'll take—'
'You too, Elena,' said Danny. 'So we're certain it's right.'
'But why?'
'We need to know how far we're travelling. One hundred and twenty paces is about a hundred metres, so twelve hundred is around a kilometre.'
'How do you know that?'
'Army RGB,' said Danny as he moved on. 'At least I got something useful from it.'
Eddie followed. 'One, two, three . . .'
The first twelve hundred paces took an hour. They moved in bounds, just as Fergus had taught Danny. The second kilometre took even longer. When Eddie breathlessly blurted out, 'Twelve hundred,' Danny saw that he looked totally exhausted.
'You're doing great, Eddie, we're nearly—'
He stopped mid sentence as he spotted vehicle lights on the track behind them. They were closing. Quickly. 'Vehicle. Off the track, quick!'
He pushed them both into the forest. Branches scratched at their faces and snagged on their clothes as the vehicle's headlights bounced off the trees and came closer. Danny fell into the leaf litter, pulling Eddie and Elena down with him.
The vehicle passed their hiding place and the trees around them turned an eerie red as the driver hit the brakes and turned left onto a smaller track. Danny lifted his head and watched the small car bounce away and then disappear.
'He's showing us the way. Must be going somewhere, Eddie. Less than a kilometre, I reckon.'
'A kilometre!'
'Oh, stop moaning!' said Elena as she stood up and brushed the leaf litter from her clothes. 'Just walk!'