Peter Cave - Invisible Enemy in Kazakhstan

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.