Chapter Eighteen

‘You were quiet so I told them to leave you.’

Jones opened his eyes and looked up at Never, squatting beside him. He took the canteen of water Never held out, pouring its contents over his head and into his mouth. He rubbed one hand across his face and over the stubble along his jaw.

‘Thanks.’ He got up stiffly, picked up his camera bags and walked away, conscious of Never’s gaze on his back.

The early morning air was heavy with the scent of stale tobacco and rancid fat. Someone was whistling ‘Stenka Razin’ but he had no urge to join in today. On the edge of the camp a line of men stood pissing into the air. Grigory Grishov’s high laugh echoed off the trees,

‘Look Pyotr! Mine goes the furthest.’

‘Not surprising lad, with a cock like that.’

‘Wasted on the young bastard.’

‘Know what to do with that great big thing Grigory?’

Grishov's ears were crimson with embarrassment and triumph. ‘Course I do. Your sister showed me!’

Jones walked unsmiling through the roars of laughter, past out-thrust hips and flexed knees and wondered what was happening to him. His hands shook this morning and he didn’t know why. Or rather, he didn’t know why they should shake this morning particularly. Somewhere behind his forehead was an empty space just waiting to be filled with the stuff of his nightmares; stuff that, when things got really bad, began finding its way into his waking hours. It had been a while since he’d felt that space and knowing it was still there, terrified him. Worst of all, he didn’t know how to start fixing any of it even if it could be fixed. Logically, being on assignment in the middle of nowhere in the company of an armed psychopath made this an unsuitable place to have a break-down. He walked unseeing through trees, anger and fear pulling at him. Anger at Never, who had triggered it all with his fucking mind-torture last night. He should have followed his instincts and walked away from the nosey bastard. The guy was using him as entertainment and for some reason, probably the vodka, he’d let him. He sighed. Let’s offload the easy stuff he thought and walked into the forest to find a place to shit in peace.

Walking back to the clearing, he heard low voices and moved quietly up behind two men locked head to crotch against a tree. An involuntary politeness made him turn away, but rapidly replaying the scene he looked back again.

Eyes closed and mouth hanging open the man with his back to the tree slowly buckled as the other pulled a needle out of a vein in his groin. The man’s mouth moved, ‘Ah,’ it said, ‘ah, God.’

Jones swallowed hard on the fluttering excitement in his stomach as the kneeling man, one of Krasin’s medics, produced a small ampoule and shot half of it into his own left arm. Jones turned away, muscles tense with remembered longing. The urge to walk forward, dollars in hand, was stronger than he would have believed possible, having been clean for so long. But not here, he told himself, not with these men.

He almost ran back to his sleeping space. Five minutes later he was checking his cameras when the medic appeared beside a truck and taking a small bundle from his pocket pushed it quickly into a medi-kit stored under the driver’s seat.

Across the clearing, Jones saw two senior officers deep in talk with Krasin, a second Sergeant and a comms engineer. Never hovered on the edge of the group, looking awkward. The discussion appeared acrimonious, the comms man standing rigid and defensive as both officers gestured angrily to a large OS type map pinned around a tree. Krasin looked as though he were enjoying himself, arms crossed, legs braced against some anticipated assault. The man wore his fatigues like skin, but watching him closely Jones decided that under the military bluster was a profound insubordination, as if Krasin had made it a matter of pride to despise the officers whose orders he occasionally obeyed.

Ten minutes later Jones joined Never as the major in command addressed the officers and NCOs. The units would split up, cross into Georgian territory via the Military Highways, then rendezvous in Abkhazia to take up their peacekeeping roles.

‘We are going into Georgia to engage as peacekeepers in the Zone of Conflict.’ the major concluded, ‘Experience teaches us that we may not be welcome. Last night we lost three men on recon, three good men who should be here with us now. Be wary at all times. We move in twenty minutes. That’s all.’

‘What was the argument about?’ Jones asked as Never checked the men’s equipment and packing.

‘Something about a radio signal that arrived overnight. Ivanov get that strap fixed now and Grishov, stop yacking … I want to see your pack over there in one minute. It’s like looking after fucking children.’ He turned to Jones who grinned unsympathetically.

‘What about the radio signal?’

‘Information about covert movement on one of the roads ahead. Naturally, it’s unclear which road. That’s why they’re splitting us up, so only half of us will drive into a fucking trap.’

‘You’re joking. How can the comms guys not know which road?’

‘I thought you realised there’s no point asking logical questions, it only makes you sound stupid.’ Never paused, colour rising up his neck and jaw. ‘I’m sorry, Michael, it’s just all so fucked up. You and I know why this is happening and I could probably make a pretty good guess at where an attack might come, but who can I tell?’ He smiled, wanly. ‘Now you know what ‘Russian Roulette’ means, for real. Good title for a piece, no?’ He points two fingers at his temple. ‘You can take a picture of me – bang!’

Jones watched Never’s retreating back, the shoulders more hunched than usual. The Lieutenant spoke angrily to a man struggling to pull on a pair of ragged boots, then squatted down and helped him patch the holes with a piece of ration carton.

From the back of the open truck the view was of dark evergreens and a square of sky. An hour earlier, half of the trucks that had bivouacked together last night split off to drive into Abkhazia by a different route. He knew they were close to the Mamisonsky Pass, but that was un-navigable by vehicle, so this must be some other route; one that he hoped was as far from last night’s horrors as possible.

There were fewer than one hundred men in ten trucks on this steeply, winding road and for the first time since leaving the base, Jones thought how vulnerable the whole operation seemed and re-considered the Russians’ tales of kidnapped peacekeepers and drunken murders. His ears popped and the trucks engines roared and strained as the road rose ever more steeply upwards.

He pulled out a small spiral bound notebook and started writing, brief notes on distances and times, but his hand was unsteady from the movement of the truck. Seeing a pair of eagles appear sweeping the treetops many hundreds of feet below he stopped writing and put the book away. Jones loved the way raptors moved, circling on currents, indifferent to all but food and flight. Eagles dreamt of blood and death, he thought, and woke smiling. He stared into the sky long after the birds vanished.

He checked his camera, then wound the strap around his wrist and as he did so noticed that every hand in the vehicle held a weapon, except his own. He used to think of his camera almost literally as a weapon, until he saw a young French photographer in Kossovo point one at a Serb soldier who’d fired a shotgun back and taken the guys head off.

Jones watched Grishov’s hands smooth the barrel of his automatic rifle, caressing it like a pet. The man last seen with a needle in his groin swayed gently with the motion of the truck and smiled , fingers plucking at the grenades hanging from his belt.

‘Should I have offered you one?’. Never held up the assault rifle in his hand.

Jones shook his head mouthing, ‘Wouldn’t know what to do with it.’

‘You defend yourself,’ Never shouted, handing the weapon to Jones. ‘It’s so inanimate yet has such …’ his words disappeared into the groaning of the engine, ‘… when you pull the trigger. It’s like watching ripples in a pool.’ He pointed to the camera in Jones’ other hand. ‘But that,’ he shouted, ‘saves lives, stops wars.’ He smiled, ‘You’re brave, Michael, with your camera.’

Jones shook his head and passed the rifle back without meeting Never’s eye. His fingers strayed over the camera’s metallic surface, its corners and curves. It did have some of the qualities of a gun, this small piece of technology, this creator of paradox. He could capture still and moving images at will, freeze motion or keep it going, kill what came after the first frame, or allow it life. With enough drink in him he could discourse for hours on the cultural significance of film and photography, but he was aware of loathing and admiring his own skill with a camera and probably despised his own profession.

He glanced at Never, who was explaining to Grishov how the safety catch on his rifle worked. Suddenly angry, Jones wanted to shout at Never that he was wrong, that it wasn’t brave to carry a camera; that he hid behind it and always had. ‘How else can I watch,’ he wanted to shout, ‘without taking part?’ But he said nothing and close to tears wondered what he detested most: the pictures he took, or the man who took them.

‘Georgia,’ Never said to no one in particular. Jones wondered how he knew just from a patch of sky; the colours and shapes of the roadside hadn’t changed in more than twenty minutes.

‘We’re going down,’ Never said, ‘can’t you feel it?’

The sky was shrinking. Sweeping firs and pines, Jones wasn’t sure which was which, over-arched the road creating a dim half-light beneath. Branches brushed the passing vehicles. Reaching out a hand Jones captured the green, resinous scent on his fingers and carried it to his nose.

The route wound back and back on itself, coiling down the mountain. Trees closed in suddenly, squeezing the vehicles into a glade, then, just as suddenly pushed them out again into the sharp light and a ledge of road above a precipice. He hardly noticed the jolting of the truck, lulled as he was by its motion and the repeating dark to light and back to dark again. The artificial nights and days made him happy; for an hour or two he was outside the movement of the Earth. Once, far below, he saw outcrops of rock rising above skirts of forest and clusters of what looked like stone towers, but surely couldn’t be. He blinked and they were gone, replaced again by the ever-present forest.

After nearly an hour they were on almost flat ground. Jones was trying to write again when the first explosion sent a ripple through the truck. Their driver braked and swerved to a stop. No one moved.

Then Never leapt up yelling, ‘Out! Out! Get out! Now!’

Followed by Grishov’s earnest, plaintive voice asking, ‘What is it Sir, what’s happening?’

Jones laid one hand on the tailgate and in the moment before he jumped saw half the last truck in the convoy up a tree, in flames. Thinking of burning date palms he leapt, camera in hand, two seconds before his own vehicle shuddered and split apart. The blast deafened him and altered his trajectory. Tumbling through boiling air he felt the camera strap unwind from his wrist. Something hot and hard struck his left thigh then he hit the ground and there was darkness.