Read The Network for Free Online Page B

manoeuvre me into the back of a car, where I lie on my side and the pain in my rib flares up and leaves me gasping. The engine is running.
    ‘Jesus, what have they done to you?’ Through the drunkenness of exhaustion, I recognise the voice.
    ‘I cannot answer that question,’ I mumble.
    ‘Turn that heater up now ,’ says the voice I recognise. It dawns on me it’s H, who gets into the back of the car, props me up and brings a small hip flask to my lips filled with his blessed Glenlivet. ‘Easy does it,’ he says, ‘end-ex, mate. You’ve done it, you bastard.’ He’s taking off his coat and sliding it behind my back and over my shoulders. ‘What d’you say we get you home?’
    I can’t stop shivering, but there’s an electric warmth spreading across my chest, and I’m so relieved I can’t speak, and upset that I can’t speak. I try to wink at H, but my eye’s already closed, and the effort makes me wince instead. I see the Face come to the rear door, and H lets down the window. The Face rests his arms on the door frame and sighs.
    ‘All yours, skipper,’ he says. ‘Not a word. Top notch. If he ever gets bored send him over to us, why don’t you?’ Then Billy appears beside him and passes the ziplock bag with my possessions through the window.
    ‘Give him a fucking fag, then,’ says Billy with a look of outrage. The Face hands Billy a cigarette, who lights it and reaches inside the window to put it in my mouth. The smoke goes straight to my head and makes me dizzy.
    ‘You can’t whistle for shit, Billy,’ I tell him.
    ‘And you’re a stubborn cunt, and all,’ he replies. And Billy is grinning from one side of his face to the other, like a boy who’s made a new friend.
     
    I sleep a whole day and a night, and wake up in the unreal luxury of a clean and warm bed. H has brought the local doctor to me, who doesn’t normally make house calls, but the two of them go back a while by the look of it. It’s not the first time he’s been to the house to look at a minor injury that’s never been properly explained by its owner.
    ‘You have been in the wars,’ says the doctor as he looks me over.
    ‘Only two, actually,’ I say.
    He tells me there’s not much to do for a cracked rib except patience and painkillers, which will also bring down the swelling in my eye and left hand. My eye gets a butterfly suture and a wry suggestion to stay away from doors.
    Hot water feels like a miracle, and the breakfast that H cooks is worth any lottery win. After we eat, H asks if I’m ready for a debrief. He gets out one of his laminated maps and points out the crossroads where I stopped to get petrol, and the place where I began my night-time escape. We find the ridge where I woke up, and we find the village of Shobdon and the airfield where my travels came to an end.
    ‘What I don’t understand is how you knew I was at the airfield,’ I say.
    ‘Clever that,’ he says with a knowing smile. ‘Where’d I put your jacket?’ He retrieves it and goes to work on the stitches of the collar with his penknife, extracting a thin piece of black plastic the size of a large stamp with a six-inch-long tail of fine wire. It dawns on me that I never really had a chance to escape my pursuers after all.
    ‘Tracker,’ he says, tossing it in his palm. ‘A bit sneaky beaky. Used to use these all the time Over The Water. We were going to let you go a lot longer, but we couldn’t have you nick a plane. Nice idea, though.’ He grins. The airfield is where the Regiment has been known to practise what he calls hot exfils, which is Regiment-speak for getting people like H in or out of countries where there isn’t much time to socialise, and involves driving a Range Rover at high speed on or off the ramp of a moving Hercules aircraft, which H calls a Fat Albert. He doesn’t know why Hercs are called Fat Alberts, he says; they just are.
    The place I had my tête-à-tête with the colonel is, as I’ve guessed, an abandoned