8

Every instinct told me to run out of the house and drive up to the Forest, where I’d seen the parachute fall below the tree line. I forced myself to slow down.

I pulled out my map and fumbled for a pencil and ruler. I’d watched the bomber come in over the fields. I could plot its route, up the river, across the woods, over my house. I marked those points on the map, using the ruler to continue the line up to the Forest. One minute from clearing the house to releasing the parachute. If it flew at three hundred miles an hour, the drop would be five miles away. I used my pencil to roughly line up the distance on the scale, and translated that to the line of flight. I marked the predicted landing site with a cross, folded the map and stuffed it in my pocket. Of course, any one of my calculations could have been wrong, but better to try for accuracy than to give up on it entirely.

‘All clear!’ I shouted down to the cellar, standing at the top of the stairs and hoping Frankie didn’t have his finger too tightly on the trigger.

*

Every second of the drive dragged for a minute. I pushed the old delivery van to its limits, hurtling along the narrow country lanes, praying there would be no oncoming traffic. I forced myself to slow down at the worst of the blind -corners, opening it up on the straights. Five miles that the bomber covered in a minute took me closer to ten, and felt like fifty.

The road took me past Palehouse Lane, up onto the Forest, the roadside transitioning from trees to heath, and suddenly I was out in the open, touching the sky. At the top, I pulled in at a dog-walkers’ layby.

I climbed out of the van and stood, looking out across the expanse, letting my eyes adjust to the dark.

I checked the map. If my rough calculations were correct, the parachute had been dropped to the left of the road, down a long and gradual slope of grass, heather and gorse that stretched away in front of me.

I kept the road squarely behind me, and headed downhill, towards the likely drop site.

My boots crunched on dry heather and scuffed up white sand. It had been a hot, dry spring and the Forest was an arid place at the best of times. The War Ag wanted to put it into useful production, but I didn’t see it working in the short term. Sheep would improve the soil eventually with the nutrients from their manure, but it would take years. Perhaps the War Ag were thinking long-term. Perhaps they knew something the rest of us didn’t.

The slope started out gently, but got steeper the further I got from the road. When I looked back towards the car, it was out of sight, a big expanse of dark sky, filled with stars.

I should have brought a gun. I’d run from the house without thinking. Still caught in the trap of confusing the comforts of home for the security of being far from the fighting.

I saw the man before I saw the parachute. He was scrabbling around, searching the heather. Above him, the parachute hung lifeless on one of the few tall trees, a skinny birch that had somehow got a foothold in the sandy soil. He was panicking, looking about without much of a method, going over the same spots again and again.

I froze, looking for cover, but there was none. I was exposed, surrounded by heather, glowing white in the moonlight.

He turned towards me. I put my hand in my pocket, where I would have had a gun if I’d had any foresight. I hoped he’d assume I was better prepared than I was.

He would run or he would attack. If he was hoping to maintain secrecy he would be unlikely to shoot me. If I were him I’d use a knife. Rush your opponent and put the blade across his throat. Let him fall and bleed out, get back to the task at hand. I readied myself for the attack. Assuming this was his first combat mission, he’d be inexperienced. His heart would be pounding. He’d overdo it, come at me too fast, overblown gestures. I’ve fought a lot of men who were in their first fight to the death. And their last.

He didn’t run, and he didn’t attack. He peered at me, and took a hesitant step closer.

‘Who’s there?’ he called out.

‘Who are you?’ I shouted.

The moment of truth.