Which suited Reeve just fine.

He knew the first few hundred yards, could have run them blind. He’d been staring at the route for the past twelve or so hours, since switching directions with Jay. They’d changed position so they would stay fresh and alert. Staring at the same spot for too long, you could lose your concentration.

But Reeve had focused his mind on the route, his escape route. He didn’t know what was over the next rise, but the next rise was shelter from gunfire and night sights, and that was his primary objective: shelter. He knew from an earlier compass reading that he was running northeast. If he kept going, he’d reach the coastal road north of Rio Grande. He was taking a risk, since this direction meant he would have to skirt the northern perimeter of the airfield. Well, they wouldn’t be expecting him anywhere near there, would they? More crucial, he had two ob-stacles to cross: a main road and the Rio Grande itself.

He didn’t know why he’d set his sights on the coast, and if Jay was headed for Chile so be it. Jay would wait for him an hour or so at the ERV, then move off. Bloody good luck to him, too.

The bastard.

Reeve went over the rise on all fours, keeping low in case there were any nasty surprises waiting for him. But the Argentine bombing had done him a distinct favor by clearing out all the patrols. He scurried down the other side of the escarpment, sliding over loose rocks and pebbles. It didn’t seem to be man-made. It wasn’t a quarry or a dump for unwanted stone and shale, it was more like the scree Reeve had come across on the glacial slopes of the Scottish mountains. He ended up going down the slope on his arse. Just when he thought there was no end to the drop he found himself on a road and crossed it hurriedly, remembering to turn around first, in case they came hunting him with flashlights. His footprints led back the way he’d just come. The other side of the track, he turned on his heels again, hit another uphill slope at a run, and powered his way to the summit. There was gunfire behind him, gunfire and rockets and grenades. The sky was full of pink smoke, like a fireworks display. Gunpowder was in his nostrils.

That stupid bastard.

There was someone over to his right, about seventy or eighty yards away. It looked like Jay’s silhouette.

“Jay!” Reeve called.

Jay caught his breath. “Keep going!” he said.

So Reeve kept going. And the sky above him turned brilliant white. He couldn’t believe it. Jay had let off a WP grenade. White phos made a good smoke screen, but you didn’t use the stuff when you were already on your way out of a situation. Then Reeve realized what Jay had done, and his stomach did a flip. Jay had tossed the phos in Reeve’s direction, and had headed off the other way. He was using Reeve as his decoy, bringing the Ar-gentine troops over in Reeve’s direction while he made his own escape.

Bastard!

And now Reeve could hear whistling, a human whistle. A tune he recognized.

Row, row, row your boat,

Gently down the stream…

And then silence. Jay was gone. Reeve could have followed him, but that would mean running straight through the smoke into God knew what. Instead, he picked up his pace and kept running the direction he’d been going. He wondered how Jay could have set off one way yet come back around to meet up with Reeve. It was crazy, Jay’s sense of direction wasn’t that bad…

Unless… unless he’d come back on purpose. The enemy had heard only one yelled voice, come under fire from just one rifle, one grenade launcher.

They didn’t know there were two men out here!

Reeve saw it all. The safest way out of this was to lie low and let the enemy catch your partner. But that only worked if your partner was caught. Jay was just making sure. Back at Hereford, it would be one man’s word against the other’s… always supposing they both made it home.

Over the rise the ground seemed to level out, which meant he could move faster, but also that he could be spotted more easily. He thought he could hear rotors behind him: a chopper, maybe more than one, probably with searchlights attached. He had to reach cover. No, he had to keep moving, had to put some distance between himself and his pursuers. Relieved of his rucksack and most of his kit, he felt as though weights had been taken off his ankles. That thought made him think of shackles, and the image of shackles gave him fresh impetus. His ears still seemed blocked; there was still a hissing sound there. He couldn’t hear any vehicles, any commands or gunfire. Just rotors… coming closer.

Much closer.

Reeve flung himself to the ground as the helicopter passed overhead. It was over to his right and moving too quickly to pick him out. This was a general sweep. They’d carry on until they were sure they were at a distance he couldn’t have reached, then they’d come back, moving more slowly, hovering so the searchlight could play over the ground.

He needed cover right now.

But there was no cover. He loaded a grenade into the launcher, got up, and started running again. The rifle was no longer in both hands and held low in front of him: now it was in his right hand, the safety off. It would take him a second to swing the barrel into his other hand, aim, and fire.

He could see the beam of light ahead of him, waving in an arc which would pick him out when the chopper was closer. Reeve dropped to one knee and wiped sweat from his eyes. His knees hurt, they were stiff. The chopper was moving steadily now, marking out a grid pattern. They weren’t rushing things. They were being methodical, the way Reeve would have done in their situation.

When the helicopter was seventy-five yards in front of him Reeve took aim, resting one elbow on his knee to steady himself. As soon as the helicopter went into a hover, Reeve let go with the grenade. He watched the bomb, like an engorged bullet, leave the launcher and head into the sky, but he didn’t wait to see the result. He was running again, dipping to a protective crouch as the sky overhead exploded in a ball of flame, rotor blades crumpling and falling to the ground. Something hot fell onto Reeve’s arm. He checked it wasn’t phos. It wasn’t-just hot metal. It stuck to his arm, and he had to scrape it off against the ground, taking burning flesh with it.

“Jesus Christ!” he gasped. The helicopter had hit the ground behind him. There was another explosion, which almost toppled him. More flying metal and glass hit him. Maybe bits of bodies were hitting him, too. He didn’t bother looking.

His arm wasn’t sore; the adrenaline and fear were taking care of that for the moment, the best anesthetics on the planet.

He’d been scared for a second, though, and what had scared him most was the fear that the heat on his arm had been white phos. The stuff was lethal-it would have burned straight through him, eating as it went.

Well, he thought, if Jay’s smoke screen had hinted I was here, the helicopter was an open fucking invitation.

He heard a motor, revving hard: a Jeep, probably on the track he’d crossed a few minutes back. If it unloaded men, then those men would be that few minutes behind no more. No time to stop, no time to slow. He didn’t have time to pace himself, the way he knew he should so he’d have some idea how far he’d traveled when he got a chance to stop and recce. You did it by counting the number of strides you took and multiplying by length of stride. It was fine in training, fine when they told you about it in a classroom…

But out here, it was just another piece of kit to be discarded.

He had no idea where Jay was. The last he’d seen of him was vanishing behind all that thick white smoke, like a magician doing a disappearing trick. Magicians always had trapdoors, and that’s what Reeve was looking for now-a door he could disappear through. There was a small explosion at his back. Maybe it was the helicopter, maybe Jay launching another grenade, or the enemy redoubling its bombardment.