Ian Slater - World in Flames

“Ah, piss off!”

David Brentwood didn’t join in the ribbing. The full realization of his awesome responsibility was now upon him like a backpack twice the weight of the 110-pound load he’d take with him out of the aircraft. And now, too, he was confronted by the memories of how he had lain petrified in the shelled moonscape during the botched-up drop of the airborne outside Stadthagen: how he had been unable to move, too afraid to move, until the SPETS bayonet appeared before his face and he’d surrendered. Oh, he’d escaped from Stadthagen, all right, but that, like the actions of so many others, had been motivated more by fear of what would happen to him if he didn’t escape. Physically he felt fit and ready enough for “Operation Merlin,” but that had all been training. Now it would be the real thing— again.

Cheek-Dawson was taking the roof off the model of the Council of Ministers, indicating to the sappers the points of the building where charges would exert most stress with the least resistance. The man in Laylor’s group passing out the list of Russian-English phrases to be memorized and practiced by morning wondered aloud what the word “Kremlin” actually meant.

“Fortress,” Cheek-Dawson answered, without looking up.

“Oh, lovely,” said Aussie, “Does that tell you something, fellas?”

“Yeah, long way from Korea, Aussie,” commented a cockney, who, turning to his mate, continued, “Poor bugger’ll owe over three hundred quid, I reckon.”

“Less than that,” said the Welshman they called “Choir” Williams.

“How come?”

“Work it out, lad. Fortress an’ all. How many you think’ll make it in? More to the point, how many of us’ll get out?”

“You’re a cheery one,” said the first cockney.

“Just facing facts, ducky.”

Lewis, listening in, depressed by the ribbing directed his way, was suddenly seized with an inspiration. As if in a vision, he rose, took out his ever-ready purple indelible pencil, knowing its imprint on paper wouldn’t run in either snow or rain, and, licking it, he wandered about the hall, making bets on how many would make it back. If any.

For David Brentwood, the worst of it was that Thelman, Schwarzenegger, and the Australian, Lewis, along with the other sixteen men of his troop, thoroughly approved of his selection as leader of B Troop. His experience on Freeman’s Pyongyang raid now made him feel as he had once at college when, unexpectedly having achieved high grades in several subjects, he was automatically expected to continue to lead the field. Adding to his apprehension was Rye’s mention of Freeman in the past tense, as former C in C.

Approaching Cheek-Dawson with a nonchalance, the very pretense so unlike him, it only further fueled his anxiety, he asked casually whether the general had “bought it.”

Cheek-Dawson didn’t glance up from the model of the Kremlin. Like Gulliver, he was still peering down at the Lilliputian world, making notes on precisely where the charges would have to be placed. “Suspect so, old boy,” he answered. “Apparently the general went MIA somewhere up near the Yalu. Chaps at Brussels HQ say it was typical, though. I mean, doing his own reconnaissance. From all accounts, he was some general.”

“Yes,” said Brentwood with a heartfelt sincerity he doubted anyone else in the room, except perhaps Thelman, who’d also served directly under Freeman, could fully comprehend. “Yes—” David stopped, unsure as to whether he should say, “He was,” or “He is.” Somehow he had always thought of the general as invincible.

The regimental sergeant major was on the hailer before they were due to leave for lunch and then on to the “house” for the dry run-through with live ammunition and full pack. The RSM was holding an “extra roll” above his head, which he explained would have to be put atop the 110-pound pack that would be carried by each man into the drop zone. There was a collective groan.

“Steady on, girls,” he responded breezily. “No need to get your knickers in a knot. You’ll like this one.” The roll of white plastic was no larger than a tightly compressed hand towel, and, he assured them, no heavier. “This little charmer’ll go atop your main pack.” With deliberate flourish, he unraveled the plastic along the floor. It was a white plastic overlay, the shape of a boiler suit, elasticized at the waist, a fly running all the way up from the crotch to the neck, where two white cord drawstrings were attached to the hood, its design quite different in its hip and shoulder cut from the NATO winter overlay the men had used on all the HALO exercises.

“We’ve already got overlays,” said Lewis.

“That’s for the attack, Aussie. This is standard SPETS overlay issue. Compliments of Captain Cheek-Dawson.”

Momentarily Brentwood felt better. It was simple yet quite brilliant. During the withdrawal, it would be pitch darkness because of Moscow’s air raid curfews — but there would be SPETS everywhere after the attack. Identification of SAS, if they were dressed as SPETS, would be difficult and might buy valuable time, aiding escape.

“How ‘bout me?” It was Thelman, the white overlay a stark contrast to his black skin.

“Yer own bloody fault, Thelma!” shouted Aussie. “Told you blokes to quit suntannin’!”

“Fuck you!” replied Thelman.

“Not to worry, mate,” rejoined Aussie. “Put cold cream on. That’ll do the trick.”

“Smell like a whore,” countered Thelman in the same easy, yet slightly forced, banter.

Lewis turned to Schwarzenegger. “Hey, Fritz. Five to two Thelma doesn’t make it back?”

“Verriickt!” said Schwarzenegger.

“What the hell’s that mean?”

“It means you are sick in the head,” said Schwarzenegger.

“All right, all right. Eight to two, but that’s it!”

Unbeknownst to any of the troops, including Laylor, Brentwood, and Cheek-Dawson, when the troops filed out for lunch, the sergeant major, with the assist of the other HQ NCOs, moved through the weapons racks with pliers, here and there slightly crimping in the magazines. This would cause those weapons to jam during the dry runs, the troopers monitored via the television cameras. It was a random check to make sure every trooper could clear a jam and, as required by SAS, change magazines on the roll. Not only their lives but the entire mission — and in this case, the entire war — might depend on it.

The tinkling noise Freeman had heard was that of water at the bottom of a well shaft that formed one of the tunnel’s exits — the exit hole in the wall of the well shaft six feet in diameter and a good eight feet above the water line. The exit ladder was a series of deep-set iron handholds.

Moving with extreme caution, he discovered that about thirty feet in from the exit whence he had come, there was another branch of the tunnel leading off to the left, to a large twelve-by-twelve-by-six-foot-high storage room, which, using his flashlight, he saw was packed high to its roof with everything from binary shells, binary mortars, heavy eighty-one-millimeter mortars, AK-47s, stick, HE, and phosphorus grenades, dozens of boxes of belt and magazine.76-millimeter and.50-millimeter ammunition. As well, there was a pile of ingeniously built assault ladders which were made of bamboo and which, with canvas strips for cross struts, collapsed like the supports of Chinese tripod clotheslines into one long, light, and easily portable shaft.

Beside the ladders there was a pile of worn brass bugles and a clutch of starter whistles. Then he discovered the room was connected to others of the same size, several of them bisected by timber supports, seven rooms in all, which seemed to radiate out from the well shaft in a spoke pattern, and which had the smell of acrid cordite that came from wooden casks of gunpowder, refilling jacks, and reloading stampers.