Читать книгу Invisible Enemy in Kazakhstan - Peter Cave, Peter Cave - Страница 10

To an outsider, it would have been inconceivable that the apparently ill-assorted bunch of men assembled in the briefing room in the ‘Kremlin’ could function as the most cohesive and effective fighting unit in the world. But they knew, and that was what counted. They knew themselves as few men ever do; and they knew each other, and each other’s capabilities.

Major Mike Hailsham glanced around the room at the small gathering with almost paternal affection. Not that any of them really needed fathering, he reflected. Used strictly as a term of endearment, the word ‘bastards’ fitted them all rather neatly as individuals. But collectively, that was a different matter entirely, and it was from this standpoint that Hailsham’s sense of pride emanated.

Considering the short notice, he had done rather well, Hailsham told himself. Davies’s brief had been nothing if not explicit. ‘Imagine the shittiest, toughest assignment you can and get me two teams by the day after tomorrow.’ The names of Sergeant Andrew Winston and Corporal Billy Clements had already been dropped into the hat. The rest were his own personal choice, only arrived at after a great deal of thought. Given a brief like that, a man picked his companions very carefully indeed.

Piggy sat directly beneath the large stuffed water-buffalo head which decorated one wall of the briefing room. A memento of the Regiment’s days in Malaya, it was also a symbol of unity, of exclusivity – the totem of a closed and quasi-secret brotherhood. For the SAS was indeed a brotherhood, and Stirling Lines was their highly exclusive lodge.

Piggy also reviewed the assembled men, but from a slightly different perspective. Most were strangers to him, and yet he felt that he knew them all as intimately as he knew his own family. Personal acquaintance did not really enter the equation, and time meant nothing. There were blood ties. These unfamiliar faces were direct descendants, the inheritors of a strict line of succession which stretched unbroken from the summer of 1941 to the present day. A quietly spoken Scots Guards lieutenant named David Stirling had conceived a crazy idea, and the idea had spawned a legend.

Yes, they were all brothers under the skin, Piggy thought – and it helped to fill the void of knowing that his own direct family line would end with his death.

Davies respected them all, but he envied them too. They would go, and he would stay behind. Ahead of them, these men faced danger, incredible hardship and conditions that a man would not want to inflict on his worst enemy. But to them it was life, Davies knew. A life that they had chosen to live, sucking out every precious moment and savouring it until it ran dry of juice and the clock stopped ticking. With his own safe, desk-bound job and retirement looming up, Davies might be seen by others to be one of the lucky ones, a man who had survived the odds and finally beaten the clock. Yet he feared the day as it drew inexorably closer. The end of his service career might not be a death, Davies thought bitterly, but it would be an amputation. His eyes strayed briefly to Piggy’s mutilated body in the wheelchair, and he drew uncomfortable comparisons. With a conscious effort, he pushed away his thoughts and tried to concentrate on the job in hand.

Cyclops was bemoaning to Andrew Winston the fact that he had been recalled from leave.

‘The trouble with this bloody job is that you never know where you are,’ he complained bitterly. ‘One minute I’m romping around in a king-sized waterbed with a pair of nympho sisters and the next I’m kipping down in the spider with a bunch of smelly bastards with tattooed arses.’

Andrew’s black face broke open into a dismissive grin, revealing a double keyboard of gleaming white teeth. ‘You’d never manage to fuck two sisters, you lying bastard,’ he teased. ‘Everyone in the Regiment knows you’ve got a prick like a rifle. Too long, too thin, and only one shot up the spout before you have to reload.’

Cyclops was not going to be put down so easily. ‘Try a Franchi SPAS pump shotgun and you’re a bit nearer the mark,’ he countered. ‘Fat, fast and ferocious, and enough charge to spray an entire room with one shot.’

‘Dream on, man,’ Andrew said, laughing. He turned away, moving across the room to talk to Troopers McVitie and Naughton, both only twenty-one but chosen by Major Hailsham on Andrew’s personal recommendation. Neither seemed particularly grateful for this singular honour.

‘Well, what have you got us into this time, you black bastard?’ Jimmy McVitie demanded in his gruff Glasgow accent.

‘Whatever it is, I hope we can knock it out in a couple of days,’ Barry Naughton added optimistically. ‘I’m due for leave in just over a week’s time.’

Andrew grinned benignly. ‘In answer to your two kind enquiries, A, we’re going on a nice little trip to China, and B, you could both have grey hairs on your goolies before we get home again.’

Barry chose to see the bright side. His eyes flashed with eager anticipation.

‘Great, I’ve always wanted to screw a Chinese bird,’ he said, enthusiastically.

Jimmy regarded him with a serious expression on his face. ‘Ye ken a Chinese woman’s cunt runs the other way, do ye not?’ he said. ‘Straight across, like a little yellow letterbox.’

His companion’s face creased into a sceptical smile. ‘That’s bullshit,’ he muttered, but there was just the faintest suggestion of doubt in his voice. He looked up at Andrew, seeking a second opinion. ‘It’s not true, is it, boss?’

The sergeant’s face was grave. ‘Oh, it’s true enough,’ he confirmed. ‘That’s why you never see Chinese women sliding down banisters.’

Barry looked at them both blankly, now totally confused. As if at some secret signal, Andrew and Jimmy both raised their forefingers to their mouths at the same time, rubbing them rapidly up and down over their lips. Blubba-dubba-dubba-dubba-dubba-dubba.

They both collapsed into silent laughter as Barry’s face told them that he had been well and truly suckered. The young trooper glared at them both without malice. ‘You pair of prats,’ he spluttered, then fell silent as a faint flush of embarrassment began to spread over his face. He slunk away, looking for someone to take his revenge on.

Finding himself heading in the general direction of Corporal Max Epps, Barry paused for a moment. The tall, burly Mancunian was not known for his sense of humour, nor for his ability to engage in witty repartee. The man was essentially a loner – a trait which had given birth to his nickname, ‘the Thinker’. Under normal circumstances, he was quite happy with his own company, and those who knew him respected that as they respected the man himself. What counted was his contribution to the team when circumstances were not normal. For under fire, or when the going got tough, Epps’s character was a mirror-image of his physical presence. Sturdy, dependable, rock-solid. With twenty-six years of intensive soldiering under his belt, he was a comforting man to have around.

But he was definitely not a man to wind up, Barry decided. He veered away across the briefing room, homing in on Tweedledum and Tweedledee, who were, as ever, looking like a pair of Siamese twins who had been separated against their will.

Terry Marks and Tony Tofield had got used to the smutty, but basically good-natured jokes about the closeness of their friendship. Both young, both Londoners and both only recently badged, they accepted the ribaldry of their fellow SAS men because they knew that no one seriously thought that there was anything unnatural about their liking for each other’s company, or had any doubts about their sexual orientation. So Terry and Tony had become a natural pair, soon shortened to ‘T One’ and ‘T Two’ because it rolled off the tongue better, and finally Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

The pair exchanged a knowing glance as Barry sauntered towards them. Even to a couple of comparative newcomers, the young trooper’s gullibility was well known. Baiting him was already a regimental sport.

Innocent as ever, Barry walked right into the trap. ‘Hey, you guys. Have you heard? We’re going to China,’ he announced briskly. ‘I suppose you’ve heard the story about Chinese women’s fannies?’ He paused expectantly, waiting for a feed-in line. None came. Instead, Tweedledee just nodded knowingly. ‘What, about them being so small?’ he asked.

Barry was thrown. ‘How do you mean?’ he asked uncertainly.

Tweedledee held his thumb and forefinger an inch or so apart. ‘They’re only about this big – about an inch long,’ he said in a matter-of-fact way.

He was not going to get caught again, Barry decided. But it was already too late. The trap had been sprung.

‘In fact, they’re hardly what you’d call a crack at all,’ Tweedledee continued, then glanced aside at his companion with a big grin on his face.

‘No, more of a little chink, really,’ Tweedledum finished for him. It was a pretty pathetic joke, but they both laughed uproariously.

‘Bastards!’ Barry exploded. More irritable than ever, he turned away and went to sulk in a corner.

It was time to cut the bullshit and get down to business, Davies decided. Picking up a wall pointer, he rapped it a couple of times on the table. ‘Gentlemen, can I have your attention,’ he demanded loudly.

All at once the buzz of conversation ceased and smiles faded from faces. The atmosphere of casual conviviality in the room was instantly replaced by an air of earnest anticipation.

‘Thank you,’ Davies said. He gestured over to Piggy, who had taken up position under the wall display and large-scale maps of the Kazakhstan region. ‘For those of you who don’t know, this is Captain Baker, ex-SAS and ex-OPI. He will give you an initial briefing on our theatre of operations and a rough idea of what you can expect. Afterwards, I shall hand over to Major Hailsham and we’ll be holding a Chinese parliament, so you can all have your say.’

The ‘Chinese parliament’ represented the essence of SAS philosophy, in minimizing the importance of mere rank in favour of military experience. It was an informal discussion held by the CO of an operation at which each man, regardless of rank, was free to offer advice and criticism and suggest his own alternatives. Valuable in its own right, the system also reinforced the Regiment’s classless and truly democratic outlook and the belief that every man had his own valued and important contribution to make.

There was a long silence after Piggy finished his briefing on the geography and climatic conditions of the target area. News that they might also be facing a threat from unknown chemical or bacteriological agents merely extended it.

It was inevitable that the silence would be broken with a joke. Both Davies and Major Hailsham had been fully expecting the typical response of men facing up to a life or death challenge. It was a mantra against the terrors of the unknown.

Surprisingly, it came from a totally unexpected source.

‘Well, I’ll be all right,’ the Thinker intoned in a rich, deep baritone. ‘My old dad kept his Mickey Mouse gas mask from the Second World War in the garage for years. I’ll just nip home and get it.’

‘You’re not talking about one of those things with two flaps of rubber over the nose-piece and a flexible tube on the mouth, are you?’ Cyclops jeered. ‘That wasn’t a gas mask, you plonker. Everybody knows those things were standard Army-issue condoms. The idea was to make sex so fucking boring that all the men couldn’t wait to get back to barracks.’

‘Yeah, only they didn’t work too well,’ Jimmy put in. ‘That’s probably why you were born, Thinker. We’ve often wondered.’

A loud chorus of cathartic laughter rippled around the briefing room. Major Hailsham let it die away naturally before addressing the men.

‘On a more serious note, gentlemen, you will all, of course, have to report for a three-day refresher course in anti-chemical warfare protection. After that, we’ll all be taking a nice week’s holiday in the country.’

‘A bit of mountain scenery, perhaps?’ Jimmy asked, sensing what was coming.

Hailsham smiled. ‘Good guess, Trooper. Yes, we’ll all be tripping off to the Brecon Beacons for some climbing practice. Two or three runs up Pen-y-Fan with a bergen full of bricks on our backs should soon have us all leaping about like a bunch of mountain goats.’

This news was greeted by a loud chorus of groans, none of them louder than those from the younger troopers like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, for whom the harsh basic training in the Welsh mountains was still a comparatively recent ordeal. Yet they all realized its importance and value. Even the biting gale-force winds and icy blizzards of a Welsh winter would seem benign compared with the conditions they could expect on the mission.

‘So, your suggestions, gentlemen,’ Hailsham said, throwing the briefing open. ‘And if anyone says, “Let’s go to Majorca instead”, I’ll personally kick his arse round the Clock Tower.’

‘What’s the latest intelligence on guerrilla activity in the region, boss?’ Andrew asked.

‘Good question,’ Davies commented, taking over. He consulted the notes which Major Grieves had handed him the previous evening. ‘Basically, our latest information is that things are hotting up fast. The Uzbek Popular Front, the Birlik, appears to be gaining a lot of ground recently, and the principal Muslim brotherhoods are beginning to splinter into different Sunni and Shiite factions. Without putting too fine a point on it, Kazakhstan is rapidly shaping up as another Yugoslavia. What’s more important from our point of view is that any one of these guerrilla groups is likely to regard us as a strictly hostile presence. And you can forget any notions of a bunch of simple peasant farmers armed with pitchforks and the odd shotgun. Many of these groups are exceedingly well armed with Kalashnikovs, mortars and grenade-launchers. And what they might lack in training is compensated for by the fact that this is their home patch. As a result, they know how to use the terrain to their advantage. They know instinctively where to hide, where to launch an ambush and how to disappear after they’ve hit. It’s a formidable technique, gentlemen, and one which the Russians found out to their cost in Afghanistan.’

‘And what’s our brief if we get bumped by one of these outfits?’ Cyclops asked. ‘Shoot ’em in the legs and let ’em limp away?’

Davies looked at them all gravely. ‘I don’t need to remind you that this is not our war,’ he said simply. ‘Obviously you will be expected to avoid direct confrontation if at all possible. If not, your lives, and the integrity of this mission, become your number one priorities. You’ll have to make up your own minds if and when the occasion arises.’ He paused, looking around the room. ‘Now, are there any more questions?’

There was a long pause, broken by a few odd mutterings but nothing spoken publicly. Hailsham looked round one more time before finally nodding. ‘Then go out and have a good time tonight, lads. As of tomorrow you’ll all be confined to barracks until this mission is completed. We expect to go in two weeks.’

Davies walked over to Piggy as Hailsham followed his men out of the briefing room. ‘Do you think they have any real idea what could be in store for them?’ he asked.

Piggy shrugged. ‘I doubt it,’ he said, honestly.