Peter Cave - Invisible Enemy in Kazakhstan

‘In that sort of mountainous terrain?’ Davies shook his head. ‘No, we’d probably never find it. And if we put it in with a homing beacon there’s every chance someone else would get to it before we did. No, we’d have to go in on a self-sustaining basis. What’s the local wildlife situation?’

Piggy shrugged. ‘Sparse – particularly at this time of year. Probably a few rabbits or even wild deer in the foothills, but not much else. Your best bet would probably be airborne. Carrion crow, the odd golden eagle – probably not much different to turkey if you eat ’em with your eyes shut.’

‘Sorry, but you two gentlemen seem to have lost me,’ the Foreign Secretary put in. ‘I thought we were discussing a military operation, not a gourmet’s picnic’

The politician went up an immediate notch in Davies’s estimation. The man had a sense of humour.

‘It’s a question of weight and distance ratio,’ Davies hastened to explain. ‘With a round trip of 700 miles, my men are going to be limited in the amount of food and supplies they can carry in their bergens. They’re already going to have to be wearing heavy thermal protection gear and, from the sound of it, Noddy suits as well.’

‘Noddy suits?’ the Foreign Secretary queried.

The SAS man smiled. ‘Sorry, sir. I mean nuclear, chemical and biological warfare protection. Cumbersome, uncomfortable, and all additional weight. Quite simply, it’s going to be physically impossible to carry all the gear they will need for an operation of this size and complexity. So we cut non-essential supplies such as food. Troopers are trained to live off the land where necessary.’

‘They could, of course, take in a couple of goats with them,’ Piggy suggested. It was not intended to be a facetious remark, but Davies glared at him all the same.

‘I’m concerned about keeping them alive – not their bloody sex lives,’ he said dismissively. ‘And in that respect, where do we get kitted up, if we’re going in as civvies?’

‘No problem,’ Piggy assured him. ‘We can arrange for anything you ask for to be ready and waiting for you when you arrive at your Chinese base.’

The Foreign Secretary was standing up and gathering his papers together. ‘So I can leave you two to sort out the details?’ he asked, beginning to feel slightly uncomfortable and superfluous. ‘How soon do you think you might be able to come up with a reasonable plan of operations?’

Davies shrugged. ‘Six, seven weeks maybe. There’s a lot of groundwork to be done.’

‘Ah.’ The Foreign Secretary frowned. ‘I’m afraid we don’t have the luxury of that sort of timescale,’ he said. ‘There is another problem.’

‘Which is?’ Davies wanted to know.

Murchison answered for the Foreign Secretary. ‘It’s a question of climate and temperature,’ he explained. ‘If there has been a biological leak, our experts seem to think that the extreme cold might well keep any widespread contagion in check for a while at least. Come the spring, and warmer weather, it could be a different picture altogether. We had been thinking in terms of getting something off the ground in three weeks maximum.’

Davies sucked in a deep breath and blew it out slowly over his bottom lip. It was a tall order, even for the SAS. He looked at the Foreign Secretary with a faint shrug. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said quietly, unwilling to make any firmer promise at that stage.

The Foreign Secretary nodded understandingly. ‘I’m sure you will do everything you can, Lieutenant-Colonel.’ He glanced almost nervously around the table before directing his attention back to Davies. ‘You understand, of course, that if anything goes wrong, this meeting never took place?’

Davies grinned. It was a story he had often heard before. ‘Of course,’ he muttered. ‘They never do, do they?’

The two men exchanged a last brief, knowing glance which established that they were both fully aware of the rules of the game. Then the Foreign Secretary picked up his papers, nodded to his two ministers and led the way out of the conference room.

Left alone, Davies crossed over to Piggy and slapped him on the back. ‘Well, I think you and I need to go and sink a few jars somewhere,’ he suggested.

‘So, what’s your gut feeling on this one?’ Davies asked Piggy after he had helped install his electric wheelchair in the lift down to the high-security underground car park.

Piggy let out a short, explosive sound halfway between a grunt and a cynical laugh. ‘You know my views on anything to do with the fucking Russians,’ he replied. ‘And I’m not too sure about the bloody Chinks, either. Personally, I’m inclined to the view that every takeaway in London is part of a plot to poison us all with monosodium glutamate.’

Davies grinned. ‘You’re a bloody xenophobe.’

Piggy shook his head, a mock expression of indignation on his face. ‘That’s a vicious rumour put about by those jealous bastards at Stirling Lines. I take my sex straight.’ He paused to flash Davies a rueful grin. ‘At least, I do when Pam hasn’t got a bloody headache these days.’

Davies smiled back. ‘Christ, are you two still at it? You dirty old man.’

‘ Lucky old man,’ Piggy corrected him. ‘Actually, I think it’s just the delayed effect of all those hormones I was taking for forty years.’

Davies’s eyes strayed briefy to the wheelchair, and Piggy’s truncated torso. ‘You never had any problems, then?’ he asked, a little awkwardly.

Piggy grinned again. ‘No, the old Spitfire still flies. They may have shot the undercarriage to hell, but there was nothing wrong with the fuselage. The hormone treatment did the rest.’ His face suddenly became serious again, almost sad. ‘No kids, of course – that’s the only part that still hurts.’

Children were a sore point with Davies as well. ‘Count yourself lucky,’ he muttered. ‘Mine hardly ever bother to even talk to me these days. Now they’ve got a new dad and a new baby-sister, I’m just a relic from the past.’

‘You never bothered to remarry, then?’

Davies laughed ironically. ‘Like the old cliché – I married the job,’ he said. ‘And the SAS can be a jealous bitch. Besides, there aren’t that many understanding women like your Pam around these days.’

They had reached the car park level. Piggy looked up into Davies’s eyes as the lift doors hissed open, a wry smile on his face. ‘We’re still doing it, aren’t we?’ he murmured.

‘Doing what?’ Davies didn’t quite understand.

‘The bullshit,’ Piggy said, referring to the casual banter which virtually all SAS men exchanged before operations.

Davies gave no reply. He helped steer the wheelchair through the doors into the underground car park. Instinctively, he began to walk towards his own BMW, suddenly pausing in mid-stride and looking back at Piggy somewhat awkwardly.

‘Look, I’ve only just realized that my car isn’t equipped to take that chariot of yours,’ he muttered in embarrassment.

Piggy smiled easily. ‘No problem, I do have my own transport, you know.’

‘Yes, of course.’ Davies relaxed, feeling a bit better about his near-gaffe. ‘So, where would you like to go for a drink? I’m afraid I’m not really up on London pubs these days.’

Piggy looked at him with a faint look of surprise. ‘Who said anything about a London pub? There’s only one place for a pair of old troopers like us to have a drink – and we both know exactly where that is.’

It was Davies’s turn to look a little bemused. ‘The Paludrine Club?’ he said, referring to the Regiment’s exclusive little watering-hole back at Stirling Lines in Hereford.