Jonathan Maberry - SNAFU - An Anthology of Military Horror

Jones and his team took the exercise seriously, but in all honesty, with deployment to the Falklands just a few weeks away now, how relevant was a night exercise on Salisbury Plain to their training? Sure, the Plain had the same kind of unfeeling, unkind and windswept remoteness that the islands of the South Atlantic had, but was there one single penguin within a thirty-mile radius to their present position? Was there fuck.

And why ask Hereford to play the enemy anyway? Bit of a sledgehammer/nut scenario, really. For all the good it would do, you might as well get the bloody Catering Corps to play the bad guys and come at them with spatulas, egg whisks and their notoriously liberal attitude to ‘Best Before’ dates.

Mick scanned the horizon, then cursed himself for being such a FNG. The 22 ndwouldn’t stand on the skyline like extras from a dodgy cowboy film. They’d stay low. Hidden. Unlike Bravo Unit, they wouldn’t be wearing MTP cammo. They’d be in their usual ninja black.

“Boo!”

Mick spun around, swinging the SA80 up — and straight into the line of fire of a C8. His gaze travelled away from that snuffling snout, up the barrel and towards a pair of steel-hard eyes peering from behind the slot in a black balaclava. “Oh, bollocks! C’mon! .”

“Bang, bang. You’re dead, fella. Shit, that was too fucking easy.” The owner of the eyes gave a little chuckle, and lowered his gun. “Seriously. We’re what, two hours in? Did you stop off for a Maccy D’s or summat? They did tell you we were coming for ya, right?” The eyes squinted in a frown. “Jesus, fella, you look like absolute hell. You need a medic?”

“Perhaps you literally frightened the crap out of the little gobshite.” A harsh Scottish accent came out of the dark, presumably from one of the other 22 ndmembers.

He looked around to see each member of his Unit in exactly the same position as him, and to a man they were all staring at the business end of a bunch of C8s. When you were playing with these guys, you really, really hoped they’d remembered to put blanks in. The 22 ndhad done it again. He looked back to his captor, anger boiling up once again — that insatiable, unstoppable anger. He could feel his cheeks burning like someone had chucked napalm in his face. “You were supposed to give us a two hour head start!”

“Oh, boo-fucking-hoo, Shirley Temple! You think the enemy’ll go ‘One, two, miss a few, ninety-nine, a hundred! Coming! Ready or not!’, do you? What are you, five?” The black-clad soldier grabbed Mick by the neck and hauled him to his feet. “Tell you what, princess. Lucky for you, I got sucked off last night by a blonde with the biggest tits you’ve ever seen in your life, so I’m in a relatively jovial mood. Know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna cut you some slack, fella. But so help me God, you tell anyone and I’ll personally bend you over the heel stone in yonder monument and buttfuck you ‘til you scream, got it? You have exactly five minutes to bugger off.” He looked at Mick and leaned in. “Are… you… still fucking here ?”

“ Move out! ” Mick didn’t need telling twice; nor did the other lads in Bravo Unit. They grabbed their kit and yomped out of there like the devil himself was after them. They needed cover, and they needed to be as far away from the mocking laughter of the 22 ndas they could.

“Oh, and watch out for the grunt crushers! They’re trundling around due north of here! You can’t miss ‘em, mate, they’re those fuck-off great green things with tracks and a bloody great gun sticking out the front!”

The words and the laugher were finally lost on the wind. Now all Jones could hear was the sound of his team’s ragged breathing as they stumbled over the uneven ground, eyes forward, trying to avoid the plough ruts that would snap a misplaced ankle like a twig. “Keep to the left of the Stones! And stay tight!” He threw the words back over his shoulder, not knowing or even caring if his Unit heard him. He kept running, trying to put as much distance between him and those Hereford nutters as he could. He knew this unexpected second chance would be their only one. After this, there would be no quarter given. But Bravo Unit were Parachute Regiment Pathfinders. It was their job to work as scout units, evade enemy patrols, get as far behind enemy lines as they could, recon, and then — and this was the tough bit — get back again with intel and a way in. Satellite imagery might have made some of their job redundant, but there was nothing that could compare to ‘eyes on the ground’, gut instinct, and an up close and personal approach.

What Jones and the rest of his unit didn’t want right now was another up close and personal interaction with the black-clothed bastards behind them. They didn’t have five minutes. He knew the 22 ndwould be on their heels within seconds.

The sound of laboured breathing made him glance sideways. Keeping pace but struggling under the weight of a 30lb kit bag and an extra few kilos of SA80 was Cox. The newbie glanced back, meeting Jones’ eyes. The cocky, self-assured personality of before had evaporated. Yeah. Staring down the barrel of a C8 will do that to a man.

The two men stumbled forward over the uneven ground, making painfully slow progress towards the Stones. It felt like running through treacle. Jones suddenly wished that some of his civilian mates could do this. Try running over a ploughed, muddy field carrying a shit-load of kit in the pitch black with a bunch of insane SF bastards baying for your blood sometime, and then fucking tell me that life in the modern army is piss easy, he thought viciously to himself.

“Sarge, where’re we headed?” Cox’s words came in between gasps. The going was, in horseracing terms, soft to shitty.

“There’re some old bunkers close to the Stones. We can hold a position there.

“You serious? There’s only one way in! We’d be cornered!

“We’d have a defensive position, you prick! And they’d be walking straight into a shitstorm of our making for a change! Now pick up the fucking pace!” Jones shoved Cox in the small of the back, sending him stumbling forward.

“I’m just sayin’…”

“Fuck me, are you seriously questioning my order when we’ve got the 22 ndclimbing up our arses? Move !” The shove this time was a damn sight harder and Cox measured his length into what looked like a soft pile of mud, but had a distinctively musky odour that suggested to Jones that it wasn’t.

“Cunt!”

“On your feet , soldier!” Jones ignored the insubordination, grabbed the webbing strap on Cox’s backpack and hauled him to his feet again. “ Run !” Another shove and Cox jogged forward, muttering darkly and spitting out globules of ‘mud’.

Jones stumbled forward another dozen steps. It was rough going that sucked the energy out of your legs in seconds, making them feel like they were turning into lead. Every step became harder. Jesus, I’m getting too old for this shit! Without warning the ground gave way beneath his feet. He tumbled head-first into a void, closely followed by the yodelling Cox. ” Bollocks! ”

He tumbled and spun, crashing painfully into unyielding walls and finally landing in a grunting heap on a hard, uneven and slimy floor. For a few seconds he lay motionless, trying to get his bearings and to quell the sense of panic that falling any great height without a packet of silk and a ripcord attached to your back generates in a member of Airborne.

Finally, Cox let out a string of expletives. “What the actual fuck …”

“Bunker, Cox. We’ve dropped into a bunker, that’s all. Stay calm.” Jones shoved the prone newbie off him and stood, switching his head-torch on.