Ian Slater - World in Flames

“Yeah?” said Lewis.

“Yes, Sergeant Major!”

“Yes, Sergeant Major?”

“In this regiment you may hate your mother, you may not pay your taxes, but you are never —I repeat never to be out of reach of your weapon. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Sergeant Major.”

“Carry on.”

Sheepishly Lewis walked over, got his rifle, and returned. For the first time since he’d met him, David Brentwood saw that the Australian was embarrassed — though he wasn’t at a loss for words. “Old fart! I’m never out of reach of my weapon.”

“You were then,” said Thelman.

“I mean my cock, Thelma!”

“Jesus, you’re rude.”

“Okay,” said David. “What size?”

“My cock?” said Lewis. Wilhelm was shaking his head.

“The mortar!” said David. “Can’t be too heavy. Eighty-one-millimeter weighs a hundred pounds, shells around fifteen. Not very effective, Aussie. Most we could carry is six rounds.”

“I meant a light job,” explained Lewis. “Sixty-mill. Fifty-pound barrel. Rounds weigh in at less than ten.”

“You must be joking!” said one of the SAS NCOs wandering among the groups. “Snowing to beat the band and you’re talking about mortars! You’d get moisture in the barrel and— poof! Unless you’re a good infielder, mate, you’ll end up with your family jewels blown across five acres.”

“We’re not that stupid,” said David. “We’d make sure the barrel was—”

“No?” cut in another NCO. “You fire a mortar round and next minute you’d be on their infrared scopes. Big blobs against the snow, you’d be. You blokes might as well hang out a shingle — tell ‘em where you are.”

“Stop screwing around with mortars,” said the British NCO. “Go in fast. Don’t give ‘em time to think China!”

“We have any artillery backup?” asked Thelman.

The British NCO exchanged an incredulous glance with one of the American NCOs. “Pathetic, isn’t it? Absolutely pathetic!” He squatted down next to Thelman. “If we had artillery that close, you ning-nong, we wouldn’t need Special Air Service, right? Christ — what did you blokes have for lunch? Fairy floss, was it?”

Thelman glowered at the British NCO. David quickly cut in. “You’re assuming they’ve got infrared scopes,” he put to the NCOs.

“What we’re assuming,” said the British NCO, “is that you blokes don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground. Artillery! Jesus! Self-reliance, amigos — that’s what it’s all about. No one else there but you.”

As the two NCOs moved on to the next group, Thelman was still steamed. “What the hell’s fairy floss?”

“Candy floss,” said Brentwood.

“Yeah,” said Lewis encouragingly. “Don’t let ‘em get to you, Thelma.”

David snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it!”

The NCOs turned around.

“Tell them to surrender,” David explained. “Give ‘em two minutes. Tell ‘em we’ve got the place completely surrounded. Bluff. It’s worked—”

“Oh,” said the British NCO, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Oh, that’s brilliant i’n’it? Got your Berlitz tape with you, have you, Brentwood?”

“No,” said David steadily, “but one of us would speak the language.”

“My,” said the British NCO. “Would ‘e now?”

“Yes,” chimed in Aussie. “SAS troop of four always has one man who speaks the lingo of the opposing force.”

“And who told you guys that?” asked the American.

“No one,” replied Brentwood. “But Aussie has a point. Seems your recruiting offices placed a lot of emphasis on a second language.”

“Yeah,” said Aussie. “Dave’s right. Your bloke was very interested in knowing I spoke Malay.”

“So,” continued David, “I figure there’s one guy in every troop who—”

“Do you now?” cut in the British NCO.

“Yes.”

The American NCO couldn’t contain a smirk, and his British colleague gave in. “All right, Sherlock Holmes, you’re right. But how do you know what language you’ll be using?”

“You find out that by asking the other three in the troop whether they speak a foreign language.”

“Carry on,” the Brit said, and walked over with the American toward Cheek-Dawson, who was picking the plan of another would-be fire team apart.

“I told you,” said Lewis, looking around triumphantly at the other three in the group. “The bloody rats. We’re being trained for the tropics. My Malay!”

“How about Fritz here?” asked Thelman, indicating Schwarzenegger. He speaks German as well as English. Right, Fritz? Could be we’re going to Germany.”

“Aw, rats!” said Aussie dismissively, not noticing his pun. “Old Freeman’s lot ‘ave gone through Germany like a packet of salts. It’s Malaya. Southeast Asia, boys. Communist insurgency. I can smell it. Hell, that’s where the SAS cut their teeth. Fighting the Commies in Malaysia.”

“I say it’s Germany,” said Thelman. “Rushing out SPETS maybe?”

“No way,” retorted Lewis. “Absolutely no way.”

Brentwood was feeling the blister thawing out, hurting like hell. It told him that he wouldn’t make phase three, and he was struck once again how sometimes such small things could change your destiny. “Look,” he told the others. “Four of us came together by chance. First, only two of us are probably going to make it through the course. They’re the odds. And those two’ll end up in another group of four. So we don’t know where anyone’s going. So let’s drop it.”

Schwarzenegger nodded. “Good point, Brentwood. Ja! Good point.”

“Yeah, Dave,” conceded Lewis. “Guess you’re right. Hell — I don’t think even old Cheek knows.”

But Brentwood’s real reason for not wanting to speculate was that Schwarzenegger’s mention of SPETs reminded him of Lili.

Time to think. It was something that Ray Brentwood, ex-commanding officer of the guided missile frigate USS Blaine, had plenty of time for — ever since that misty early morning in the Sea of Japan, in the very first attack on an American naval ship in the war, when he was engulfed in flame, the Exocet slamming into the Blaine forward of the bridge.

At San Diego’s Veterans Hospital, the so-called “restorative” operations were over, but despite laser “weld” plastic surgery, the tight, polished-skinned ugliness of “burn unit” surgery remained. It was so severe that, upon meeting him, people made a point of chatting with him and looking at him longer than they normally would any other acquaintance in order to prove to him and to themselves that it didn’t really matter — when it did. Beth and the children had been the least of his worries, as it turned out. At first he’d been afraid that John, four, and Jeannie, seven, would, albeit unintentionally, shy away from him. But they, like Beth, adapted faster than Ray thought he had any sight to expect. The worst of it for the children wasn’t the long trip down from Seattle to San Diego Veterans — they welcomed these — but the teasing by other children. The “Frankenwood” jokes. Who was it, Ray wondered, who had said children had become more sensitive in America because of the experiences of so many minorities in the melting pot? It was a lie. Children — no matter what their nationality— all lived in the same country in childhood. It was the world of survival of the fittest, the most natural instinct to pick on the weak.

Even so, for Ray Brentwood, his children’s burden at school, caused by his disfigurement, was not the worst of it for him. Much more damaging for the family as a whole was the undeniable fact that Ray Brentwood, captain, U.S. Navy, had been fished up out of the water by rescue craft while many of his crew had perished aboard the frigate, fighting the fires that had finally been extinguished.