Crisis Four

by Andy McNab

Genres: Thrillers; Spy Thrillers

Synopsis

Ex-SAS trooper Nick Stone is extremely highly trained. Clever, ruthless and very effective, it is no surprise that he is hired by British Intelligence. On deniable operations - one of the most dangerous lines of work.

Sarah Greenwood is beautiful, intelligent and cunning - and the only woman Stone has ever truly opened up to. But now he has been ordered to hunt her down.

Hotly pursued through the American wilderness, Stone finds himself at the centre of a deadly game of cat and mouse. He must get to the heart of a terrifying conspiracy theory to which only Sarah holds the key. But will he manage to before the tension reaches boiling point?

Release date: January 26, 2021

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 560

Sample

1



Friday 24 April 1998



‘Three gallons a day, that’s your lot,’ the bosun barked. ‘But two gallons have to go to the cook, so there’s one gallon – I’ll tell ye again, just one gallon – left over for drinking, washing and anything else ye need it for. Anyone caught taking more will be flogged. So will gamblers, cheats and malingerers. We don’t like malingerers in Her Majesty’s Navy!’

We were lined up on either side of the deck, listening to the bosun gobbing off about our water ration. I was trying not to catch Josh’s eye; I knew I’d burst into a fit of laughter which Kelly wouldn’t find amusing.

There were about twenty of us ‘new crew’, mostly kids, all dressed in the standard-issue sixteenth-century sailors’ kit: a hessian jerkin and shirt, with trousers that stopped about a foot short of the trainers we’d been instructed to bring with us. We were aboard the Golden Hind, a full-sized reconstruction of the ship in which Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe between 1577 and 1580. This version, too, had sailed round the world, and film companies had used it as a location so often it had had more makeovers than Joan Collins. And now it was in permanent dock serving, as Kelly called it in her very American way, as an ‘edutainment’ attraction. She was standing to my right, very excited about her birthday treat, even if it was a few days late. She was now nine, going on twenty-four.

‘See, I told you this would be good!’ I beamed.

She didn’t reply, but kept her eyes fixed on the bosun. He was dressed the same as us, but was allowed to wear a hat – on account of all the extra responsibility, I supposed.

‘Ye slimey lot have been hand-picked for a voyage with Sir Francis Drake, aboard this, the finest ship in the fleet, the Golden Hind!’ His eyes fixed on those of each child as he passed them on the other line. He reminded me of my very first drill sergeant when I was a boy soldier.

I looked over at Josh and his gang, who were on the receiving end of his tirade. Joshua G. D’Souza was thirty-eightish, five feet six inches, and, thanks to being into weights, about fourteen stones of muscle. Even his head looked like a bicep; he was 99 per cent bald, and a razor blade and moisturiser had taken care of the other 1 per cent. His round, gold-rimmed glasses made him look somehow more menacing than intellectual.

Josh was half-black, half-Puerto Rican, though he’d been born in Dakota. I couldn’t really work that one out, but nor could I be bothered to ask.

Joining up as a teenager, he’d done a few years in the 82nd Airborne and then Special Forces. In his late twenties he’d joined the US Treasury

Department as a member of their Secret Service, in time working on the vice-presidential protection team in Washington. He lived near Kelly’s dad’s place, and he and Kev had met, not through work, but because their kids had gone to the same school.

Josh had his three standing next to him, working hard at understanding the bosun’s accent. They were on their last leg of a whistlestop tour of Europe during their Easter vacation. Kelly and I had collected them off the Paris Eurostar just the day before; they were going to spend a few days seeing the sights with us before heading back to DC, and Kelly was really hyper. I was pleased about that; it was the first time she’d seen them since ‘what happened’ – as we called it – over a year ago. All things considered, she was pretty well at the moment and getting on with her life.

The bosun had turned back and was moving up our line. ‘Ye will be learning gun drills, ye will be learning how to set sail and repel boarders. But best of all, ye’ll be hunting for treasure and singing sailors’ shanties!’ The crew was encouraged to respond with their best sailor-type cries.

All of a sudden, competition for the loudest noise came from the siren of a tourist boat passing on the river, and the bark of its tannoy, as the first sailing of the day ‘did’ London Bridge.

I glanced down at Kelly. She was quivering with excitement. I was enjoying myself, too, but I felt just a bit weird standing there in fancy dress in full public view, aboard a ship docked on the south side of London Bridge. At this time of the morning, there were still office workers walking along the narrow cobblestoned road that paralleled the Thames, dodging the delivery vans and taxis on their way to work. The trains that had got them this far were slowly trundling along the elevated tracks about 200 metres away, making their way towards the river.

The pub next to the ship, the Olde Thameside Inn, was one of those places that supposedly dates from Shakespeare’s day but which, in fact, was built maybe ten years earlier on one of the converted wharves that line the river. The office crowd, plastic cups and cigarettes in hand, were making the most of the morning sun on the terrace overlooking the water, having picked up their late breakfast from the coffee shop.

I was hauled back to the sixteenth century. The bosun had stopped and was glaring theatrically at Kelly. ‘Are you a malingerer?’

‘No sir, no sir!’ She pushed herself into my side a bit more for protection. She was still a bit anxious about strangers, especially adult men.

The bosun grinned. ‘Well, seeing as you’re a special crew, and I know you’re going to work hard, I’m going to let you have your rations.

You’ll be getting some special sailors’ nuggets and Coke.’ He spun round, his hands in the air.

‘What do you say?’

The kids went bonkers: ‘Aye aye, sir!’

‘That’s not good enough!’ he bellowed. ‘What do you say?’

‘AYE AYE, SIR!’

The kids were shepherded by the bosun and the rest of the permanent crew towards the tables of food. ‘Small sailors first,’ he ordered. ‘The tall sailors who brought you here can wait their turn.’

Kelly ran over to Josh’s three – two girls, Dakota and Kimberly, aged eleven and nine, and a boy, Tyce, who was eight. Their skin was lighter than Josh’s – their mother was white – but they looked just like their dad, except they still had all their hair. Which was a good thing, I thought.

Josh and I turned and looked out over the deck towards the Thames. Josh waved back at some tourists who were waving from the boat, either at us or at the coffee morning still going strong to our left.

‘How is she coping?’ he asked.

‘Getting better, mate, but the shrink says it’ll take time. It’s affected her schooling big time, she’s way behind. The last lot of grades were shit. She’s an intelligent girl, but she’s like a big bucket with holes, all the information’s going in, but it just drips out again.’

‘You think about what she’s been through, man, for sure it’s going to take some time.’

We turned to see all four of the kids throwing chicken nuggets down their necks. It was a strange choice for breakfast, but then again, I liked choc ice and chips first thing in the morning when I was a kid. The elder daughter wasn’t getting on with Tyce today and Josh had to do a dad thing. ‘Hey, Kimberly, chill! Let Tyce have his Coke – now!’

Kimberly didn’t look too happy but obeyed.

Josh turned back towards the river, took off his gold-rimmed glasses and gave them a wipe. ‘She looks happy enough, that’s a good sign.’

‘It’s the best she’s been for ages. She’s slightly nervous around adults, but with her friends she’s OK. It means so much for her to see your lot. Besides, it gives her a rest from me.’ I couldn’t bring myself to say that I found it wonderful to see him as well. I hoped he knew anyway.

We both looked out over the river with not a lot to say. He broke the silence. ‘How’s the job? Are you on permanent cadre yet?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t think it will ever happen. They know I was involved in a lot more of the Washington stuff than I let on.’ It pissed me off, because I needed a regular income these days.

I had the money I’d rescued from last year’s gang-fuck, but that wouldn’t last for ever. I grinned. ‘Maybe I could turn to crime. Couldn’t be worse than the shit I do now.’

He frowned, not sure if I was being serious or not, and tilted his head in the direction of the huddle of small sailors, as if to remind me of my responsibilities. He put his specs back on and focused on a black guy in an old, shiny blue tracksuit who had set up shop at the corner of the pub, selling the Big Issue and chatting up the women walking past.

‘It’s OK for you,’ I said. ‘We don’t have a training wing where I can go and put my feet up and still get paid.’ I thought Josh was going to give me a lecture, so I put my hands up. ‘OK, I surrender. I will sort my shit out – one day.’

In a way, I had sorted myself – a bit. With the money I’d diverted from the Washington job, £300,000 once the dollars were converted, I’d bought myself a house up on the Norfolk coast in the middle of nowhere. The village had a Co-op on the corner and that was about it; a traffic jam was when the three fishing boats came into the harbour and their vans arrived at the same time to take the catch away. Otherwise, the busiest it got was when the postman rang his bell as he was going round the corner. I didn’t know anyone; they didn’t know me. If anything, they all had me down as an international drug dealer or some weirdo. I kept myself to myself, and that suited everybody just fine.

I’d bought a motorbike, too. At last I had the Ducati I’d always promised myself, and I even had a garage to put it in. But what was left – about £150,000 – wasn’t enough to retire on, so I still had to work – and I only knew one trade.

Maybe that was why Josh and I got on; he was much the same as me, running his life like a conjurer, trying to keep all the plates spinning on top of their poles. His plates weren’t spinning so well at the moment. Now that Geri had gone, one income wasn’t enough, and he’d had to put the house up for sale.

Josh had had a fucker of a year. First his wife had got into yoga and all that mind-body-spirit stuff, then she’d ended up going to Canada to hug trees – or, more precisely, to hug the yoga teacher. Josh and the kids were shattered.

Something had to give. He could no longer travel away from home with the vice-presidential crew, so he became one of the training team out in Laurel, Maryland. It was a very grand-sounding outfit – Special Operations Training Section – but a shit job for a man who was used to being in the thick of things. Then, two months after his wife left him, his friends Kev, Marsha and their other child, Aida, were hosed down, and he found he was an executor of the will – along with some dickhead Brit he’d never heard of called Nick Stone.

Between us we looked after Kelly’s trust fund, and we’d been having some problems selling the family home. When it came down to it, who was going to buy a house where a whole family had been butchered? The property company was trying to pull a sleazy deal so it could get the land back. The insurance companies had been trying to give Kelly a lump sum instead of making regular payments, because it was cheaper for them. The only people getting any money were the lawyers. There was something about it all that reminded me of my divorce.

I turned to him. ‘It is good to see you, mate.’

He looked back and smiled. ‘Same here, mate.’

His piss-taking accent sounded more Australian than English. Maybe they got Neighbours in his part of Virginia, too.

There was really nothing more to be said. I liked Josh and we had a fuck of a lot in common, but it wasn’t as if we were going to be sharing toothbrushes or anything like that. I’d decided after Euan turned me over to bin any idea of friendship with anyone else ever again, and to restrict myself to acquaintances – but this did feel different.

‘Talking of shit,’ I said, ‘how’s the quilt shaping up? The kids sounded really ecstatic about it last night.’

His eyes looked up at the sky. ‘Fuck, man, it’s been a nightmare. Two months of hoo-ha and the kids getting so high they might as well be on drugs.’

I had to laugh. I’d been following the build-up to this from Josh over the phone, but no-one was going to stop him honking about it a bit more now. ‘I’ve been to meetings, meetings about meetings, sewing classes, discussion groups, you name it; that’s been my life for the last two fucking months.’

There was going to be a summit between the Israelis and Palestinians in Washington DC. Clinton was out to look the big-time statesman, brokering the peace deal, and somebody had come up with the bright idea of making the world’s biggest peace quilt to commemorate the occasion. Kids from all over had been sewing like crazy in preparation for the world’s biggest photo opportunity on the White House lawn.

Josh said, ‘I mean, do you have any idea how many stitches it takes to sew on just one fucking little shape?’

‘Don’t worry about it, mate,’ I said. ‘They’ll turn it into a TV commercial for Coke and then you’ll all be rich.’

The bosun wanted us. ‘Oi, you two! Come down and get your rations or ye’ll swing from the yardarm!’

‘Aye aye, sir!’

‘I can’t hear you. What did you say?’

Josh got into 82nd Airborne mode, snapped to attention and screamed, ‘SIR! – AYE AYE – SIR!’

The old boy flogging the Big Issue started to cheer and clap, though I wasn’t too sure whether the bosun liked the competition. Josh collected his food and sat down amongst the kids, trying to pinch some of their breakfast.

I got my ration of authentic Elizabethan nuggets, doughnuts and pirate cola. A train from London Bridge station rattled along the elevated railway line behind us, the bells of Southwark Cathedral just fifty metres away fired off a salvo, telling us it was 10.30 a.m., and here I was wondering for the millionth time how I’d landed myself with all this. Josh told me he’d always loved the idea of being with the kids, but had never realized the stress of looking after them all the time until his wife left. Me, I loved it when I was with Kelly, but hated the idea of it. The responsibility filled me with dread. When it came to the world of emotions I was a beginner.

My birthday girl was holding court, telling Josh’s kids about her boarding school. ‘I got a twenty pence fine because I didn’t wear my slippers to the shower room last week.’ She loved the idea of being the same as the other girls; the fact that she had been fined meant she was one of the crowd.

‘Yes, and who has to pay the fine?’ I said.

She laughed. ‘My manager.’

Her school had been fantastic about everything, even though they knew only the bare bones of what had happened. I agreed with Josh that it was the best thing to do, taking her right away from the US and an environment that would bring back memories and screw her up even more. She never brought up the subject of what had happened the day her parents and sister died, but she had no problem talking about them if things came up in daily life to remind us of them. Only once had I made a direct reference, and she’d just said, ‘Nick, that was a long time ago.’

She began telling everyone about the week’s plans. ‘Nick couldn’t see me on my birthday and had to leave me with Granny and Grandad the day before. But this week we’re going to see the Bloody Tower.’

‘What?’ Josh’s mouth dropped open. He might be ex-Airborne at work, but within earshot of his kids not even the mildest cuss would pass his lips.

‘She means the Tower of London,’ I said. ‘There’s a place called the Bloody Tower; it’s where the Crown Jewels are kept, I think. Something like that.’ History had never been my strong point.

Kelly’s face lit up at the thought of seeing all those jewels. As a child, I’d never known that sort of joy. My mother and stepfather never took me anywhere; all they ever gave me was promises.

When I was about eight, HMS Belfast docked by Tower Bridge and became a museum. All the kids on the estate went, but not me – all I got for weeks was IOUs. At last I was told I was going with my Auntie Pauline. I spent hours trailing round the local shops behind her, asking when we were going. ‘In a minute, son, not long now.’ The bitch was lying, just like my parents. The whole thing had been a ploy to get me off their hands while they went out on the piss. After that I didn’t even bother to ask. Fuck ’em. I had another eight years before I could leave home; I’d treat it like a waiting room.

‘. . . then we’re going to have a sleepover at the place where all the mummies are. There’s a museum where you can spend the . . .’

She was interrupted by the bosun, who’d maybe guessed that the tall sailors needed a rest.

‘It’s time for some seafaring tales while ye have your feed. So listen in, all ye crew, small and tall!’

It was while we were sitting there listening to the sea tales, and I was digging a chicken nugget into my red sauce, that I felt my pager go off. I liked the fact that people needed me to do things they couldn’t do themselves, but I always kept it on vibrate because I hated the noise it made; it always spelled trouble, like an alarm clock that wakes you on a morning you’re dreading.

I took it out of its little carrying case, which was attached to the drawcord of my trousers, and checked the screen. It was displaying only a phone number. I was aware that Josh was looking at me. He knew exactly what it was. The other kids were too busy listening to stories of doom and gloom on the high seas to notice, but Kelly never missed a trick. She shot me a concerned glance, which I ignored.

Pager networks cover a larger area than mobile phones, which was why the Intelligence Service used them. I preferred them anyway, because it gave me time to adjust mentally before someone bollocked me – or even worse, gave me the job from hell. I’d only had the pager for about six months. I wasn’t too sure if it was a promotion to be given one, or if it meant I was considered a sad fuck and always available, locked away like a guard dog until needed, then once done, given a bone and sent back into the kennel.

Josh raised an eyebrow. ‘Dramas?’

I shrugged. ‘Dunno, I’m gonna have to phone. Can you hold the fort?’

He nodded. ‘See you in a few.’

The stories were still going on and the rest of the crew were producing tubs of ice cream for the spellbound kids. I slipped away and went down the stairs to one of the lower decks, where we were going to be sleeping that night. Mattresses were spread out on the floor, and we’d had to bring our own fluffy sleeping bags, just like sixteenth-century sailors did, ho ho. I rummaged in my holdall for some small change, and went upstairs and tried to sneak off the boat without Kelly seeing me.

I should have known better. She must have been watching me like a hawk; as I looked round and saw her, I put my hand up and mouthed, ‘Be back in a minute,’ pointing at the pub. She looked puzzled, and more than a bit anxious. Josh was still with them, nodding and grimacing and generally joining in with the tales of seafaring derring-do. The cathedral bell rang out to tell me it was now eleven o’clock.

I found a payphone in the pub hallway. The Olde Thameside Inn had its first customers of the day: traders from the fruit market drinking pints, rubbing shoulders with the City dealers and their bottled beer. As I stood with my finger in my ear trying to listen for the dialling code, I found myself looking at racks of tourist flyers, rows and rows of the things telling me how great the Tower of London was, all of them seeming to point the finger at the scurvy mutineer who might be jumping ship.

I pushed a couple of coins into the slot and dialled the number, putting my finger back into my other ear to cut out Oasis on the juke box.

After just one ring a very crisp, efficient female voice said, ‘Hello?’

‘It’s Nick, returning the page.’

‘Where are you?’

She knew exactly where I was. Every call to the Firm is logged on a digital display. They put as much effort into spying on each other as they do against the enemy. It was pointless tapping in 141 before the number, and saying, ‘I’m in Glasgow and can’t get back,’ because whatever I did the display would still tell her I was at a payphone in Southwark.

I said, ‘London.’

‘Please wait.’

She pressed the cut-out button. Two minutes later she came back. ‘You need to be at Gatwick at three thirty this afternoon.’

My heart sank, but I already knew I was going to be there. ‘How long for?’ Not that it mattered much, I was already a couple of jumps ahead, thinking about how I was going to make excuses to a recently turned nine-year-old.

She said, ‘I don’t have that information.’

Once she’d finished with the details of the RV, I put the phone down, expecting a refund of my unused coin, but I got nothing. The phone box in the pub was one of those private ones where you can charge whatever you want. For a pound I got all of sixty seconds.

I walked back, making my way around the crowd outside which had moved with the sun towards the ship. I was racking my brains thinking of what I was going to say. Not to Josh – that wouldn’t be a problem – but to Kelly.

I saw Josh looking for me. It was only about twenty or thirty metres to the gangplank, and I was looking up at him and slowly shaking my head, getting some of the message across in advance. He knew exactly what was happening; he’d been there himself.

I went up the gangplank, pretty certain I would be in the shit, and no doubt starting to look suit-ably guilty. This was the first occasion Kelly and I had had any decent time together since she’d been in the UK; it was like a newly-wed leaving his honeymoon to go back to the office.

As I got on deck she and a few other kids were helping to clear up the plates under the bosun’s instructions. For a horrible second or two I had a flashback of her in her house just before her family were killed, laying the table for her mother in the kitchen. It made me feel even more guilty, but I told myself we’d both get over it. She would be upset but I could make it up to her when I came back.

Besides, she’d seen Josh and the kids, and we’d had a whale of a time. She’d understand. Plus, she could see her grandparents now.

Josh knew what was on the cards. He bent down to his kids. ‘Yo!’ He clapped his hands together as they waited for the instruction. ‘OK, kids, let’s get all these plates back to the bosun,’ and he dragged them away.

I said, ‘Kelly?’

‘Mmm?’ She didn’t look up, just carried on being too busy picking up plates. She wasn’t going to make it easy for me to give her the news.

‘That was my boss on the phone. He wants me to go away.’

She still didn’t look me in the eye as she put the plates in a bin. She said, ‘Why?’

‘They’ve got a job for me. I told them that I was going to be with you for the week and I didn’t want to go in, but they said I must. There’s nothing I can do.’

I was kind of hoping she’d buy the line that they were to blame, not me. She stopped what she was doing and spun round. Her face told me everything I didn’t need to know. ‘Nick, you promised.’

‘I know, I can’t help it. I’ve just been bleeped—’

‘No,’ she stopped me. ‘It’s beeped!’ She was always giving me a bollocking for getting it wrong.

Her face had gone bright red. Tears were starting to well up in her eyes.

‘Listen, Kelly, we can always do this again some other time. Just think, Josh and his children have to leave for home in a few days and won’t have a chance to see all these places, but we can come back.’

‘But you said . . . you promised me, Nick . . . you said you wanted to have a holiday with me . . .’ The words tumbled out, punctuated by angry gasps for air. ‘You said you’d make up for not seeing me on my birthday. You promised me then, Nick . . . you promised.’

She didn’t just have her hand on my heart-strings, she’d braided them into ropes for extra purchase and was pulling on them big time. I said, ‘I know I did, but that was last time. This time it will be different, I really mean it.’

Her bottom lip was starting to go and her eyes were leaking down her face. ‘But, Nick, you promised . . .’

I stroked her hair. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help it. I’ve got to go to work. Oh, come on, Kelly, cheer up.’

What the fuck was I saying? I always hated this. I didn’t know what to do or say, and to make things worse I reckoned I was starting to sound like my Auntie Pauline.

The cry had become heart-rending sobs. ‘But I don’t want you to go . . . I want to stay here and be a sailor . . . I want you to stay here . . . I don’t want to sleep on this boat without you.’

‘Ah,’ I said, and the way I said it was sufficiently ominous to make her look up. ‘You won’t be sleeping on the ship. I’m going to take you to see Granny and Grandad. Listen, I promise, I really do promise, I’ll make this up to you.’

She stared at me long and hard, then slowly shook her head from side to side, deeply wounded. She’d been sold down the river, and she knew it. I wondered if she’d ever trust me again.

There was nothing I could say, because actually she was right. Just to make sure I avoided the issue, I walked across to the bosun. ‘We’ve got to go,’ I said. ‘Family problem.’

He nodded; who gives a fuck, he just gets paid to wear the hat and growl.

Josh came back. His kids were halfway through a lesson on how to hoist the sails. I said, ‘We’ve got to go, mate.’

I tried to pat Kelly’s head, but she flinched away from my hand. I said, ‘Do you want to go downstairs and change? You can say goodbye in a minute. Go on, off you go.’

As she disappeared I looked at Josh and shrugged. ‘What can I say, I’ve got to go to work.’

And then, before he had the chance to come up with all sorts of different ways that he could help, I said, ‘I’m going to take her down to her grandmother’s now, then I’m off. I’m really sorry about this, mate.’

‘Hey, chill, it doesn’t matter. These things happen. It was just really good to see you.’

He was right. It had been really good to see him, too. ‘Same here. Have a good flight back. I’ll give you a call as soon as I’ve finished this job, and we’ll come to you next time.’

‘Like I told you, the beds are always made up. The coffee, white and flat, is always hot.’

It took me a moment to understand the white and flat bit. ‘Is that some kind of Airborne saying?’

‘Kinda.’

I said goodbye to his kids and they got back to pulling ropes and getting bollocked by the bosun.

Then I went down below and changed.



10



Very slowly and deliberately, trying not to take laboured breaths and make noise, I started to lift the rest of the stuff I’d be needing out of the bergen. I would normally keep everything there, but being so close to the target, I wanted to cut down movement. I placed the pizzas and the rest of the food into the side of the bush and covered them with the sandy soil to try and hide the smell from animals and insects, and to prevent the clingfilm from reflecting shine – not that there was likely to be too much of that tomorrow if this weather continued. The phone, the 3C, the passport and any other essentials would go in my pockets if I had to run; it was just like being a soldier again and keeping belt kit on. Finally, I pushed the bergen inside the OP.

I carefully put on the Gore-Tex, then got on my knees and felt around on the ground with my hands, both to check there was nothing left lying exposed, and to smooth out any sign I had made. The final check was that my pockets were done up and the kit was secure inside them. Only then did I crawl into the hide, and start pulling in behind me the bouquet of branches that made up the bung. I was now sealed in.

For two or three minutes I lay still, listening and tuning in to my new surroundings. There was no noise from either of the houses, and the light was off in the target house; all I could hear was the lapping of water. The turtles seemed to have gone to bed. I waited for another couple of minutes, and then it was time to sort myself out, to make sure everything was in place, and make minor adjustments. Moving more stones and damp sand from under me, I built it up around my sides, slowly digging a shallow grave to conceal myself even more. Once past the first couple of wet inches, the ground was quite easy to move.

I got my wrist in front of my face and had a look at Baby-G. It was just after 2 a.m., which meant I had about three hours until first light.

Whenever there’s a lull in the battle, you should eat or sleep, because you never know when you’ll next have a chance for either. I decided to get my head down; the light would wake me up, and so would any movement. After all, I could hear them flush the toilet from here; if I was any closer I’d be able to wipe their arses for them.

I lay on my front and closed my eyes, but it wasn’t working. The only stone I hadn’t moved seemed to be against my hip. I shifted it, only for another one to rise to the surface and replace it. I got reasonably snug inside the Gore-Tex, which was acting as a kind of sleeping bag, but the ground at this time of the morning feels like ice and you find yourself thinking, What the fuck am I doing here? And even if the weather isn’t ba