Jack Higgins - A Season in Hell

There was a tripwire within fifty yards which he negotiated carefully, another a few feet further on, so close that they’d calculated it would not be expected. Egan stepped over it and moved through the waist-high bracken, soaked with rain.

Getting out wasn’t enough. Staying out was the hard part, an old SAS maxim that rang in his head as the trees on his right exploded. Not a land mine. If it had been he’d be lying in pieces. More likely an alarm charge triggered by an electronic eye beam at ground level. All this was amply confirmed when a hooter echoed mournfully through the trees from the direction of the farmhouse.

He tightened his grip on the AK, holding it across his chest, and raced through the bracken.

He sensed movement on his left and a figure in camouflage battledress came out of the trees, head down, to meet him. As they converged, Egan swerved, dropping to one knee, the other leg stretched out. The man tripped and Egan came up, kicked him in the side of the head and ran.

There was pain in his left knee, but if anything, it sharpened him, and he kept on going, faster as the hillside steepened, the bracken almost jungle-high here. He burst out into a small clearing as three more soldiers came out of the trees on the other side.

He went in on the run, never hesitating, loosing off a burst from the AK; swinging the butt in one man’s face, shouldering another aside, he carried on through the trees, very fast, too fast, losing his balance.

He picked himself up and started forward. The sound of a helicopter was somewhere close at hand, but the weather was on his side and the bird wouldn’t dare to come too low. Through a break in the trees he could see the river, half-obscured by mist and rain.

There was a tightness in his chest and the pain in his left knee was like fire, but he kept on going, sliding farther down the steep bank that brought him at last to the river. As he picked himself up someone leapt from the bracken and drove the butt of a rifle into his kidneys.

Egan arched backwards in pain and the rifle came round in a second, braced against his throat. He dropped his AK and ran the heel of his right boot down the man’s shin. There was a cry and as the pressure of the rifle was released, he jerked his head back hard into the face behind, following this with a short, savage blow with his left elbow.

As he turned, the knee let him down finally, the leg collapsing under him as the soldier, his face a mask of blood from the broken nose, raised his own knee into Egan’s face, throwing him on his back. He moved in, foot raised to stamp. Egan got his hands to it and twisted, hurling the man to one side. As he tried to rise, Egan, already up on his good knee, delivered a devastating blow under the ribs. The soldier groaned and fell back.

The helicopter was not far away now, closer still were the sound of men’s voices and the barking of dogs. Egan picked up the AK and limped to the river’s edge. The mist was heavy here so that it was impossible to see the other side. Water rushed by, brown and flecked with foam, swollen by the rain. The current was fast, too fast for even the strongest swimmer, so cold that survival time would be minimal.

He moved further along the bank. Here, the flood waters had risen several feet and a tree floated, its branches caught in a bush. Recognizing his one chance for survival, he jumped into the water, the voices very close now, and flailed towards the tree. He pushed hard. For a moment, it refused to move and then quite suddenly it was free, torn out by the current. The AK went as he grabbed for the security of the branches. Men on the bank now, dogs barking. A burst of firing and then he was out in mid-channel, cloaked by a curtain of mist and rain.

It was cold, colder than anything he had known in his life before, numbing the senses. It had even taken care of the pain in his knee. The current seemed slacker now and he drifted more slowly, cocooned in the mist. The helicopter made a couple of passes overhead, but not low enough to cause him any trouble. After a while, it moved away.

It was very quiet, only the ripple of the water, the hiss of the falling rain. His final chance, and not long to do it with the cold eating into his bones like acid. He started to kick hard, still hanging on to the tree, pushing for the other side.

It was exhausting work, but he kept at it, aware of his own heavy breathing and then something else. A dull, muted rumbling behind him. As he turned to glance over his shoulder, a motorboat nosed out of the mist and nudged into the branches of the tree.

Half a dozen soldiers were aboard but only one stood out – the officer who leaned over the rail to look down at him. He was in his early thirties, young to be a lieutenant colonel, of medium height with dark, watchful eyes, and black hair that was far too long by any kind of army’s standards. At some time his nose had been broken. Just now, he wore a camouflage jump jacket and a beige beret with the officer’s version of the SAS cap badge, silver wire wings with the regimental motto, Who dares, wins , all outlined in red on a blue background. He reached strong arms into the water to haul Egan out.

‘Colonel Villiers,’ Egan said weakly. ‘Didn’t expect to see you here.’

‘I’m your control officer on this one, Sean,’ Villiers told him.

‘Seems like I’ve cocked it up,’ Egan said.

Villiers smiled with considerable charm. ‘Actually, I think you were bloody marvellous. Now, let’s get you out of here.’

The 22nd Regiment Special Air Service is probably the most élite unit of any army in the world, its members all volunteers. Its selection procedure is so rigorous that it is not uncommon for only ten per cent of applicants to succeed. The ultimate test is the endurance march of forty-five miles in twenty hours, carrying eighty pounds of equipment over the Brecon Beacons in Wales, some of the roughest terrain in Britain, a course which has quite literally killed men attempting it.

Standing at the window of the farmhouse looking out across the trees as rain swept in across the River Wye, Tony Villiers thought of the man who had just come within inches of destruction. ‘My God, it really is a bloody awful place in weather like this.’

The young officer sitting at the desk behind him smiled. The name on his desk said Captain Daniel Warden and he was in charge of the proving ground courses in the Brecons. He and Villiers shared another distinction besides being serving officers in the SAS. Both were also Grenadier Guardsmen.

He opened the file in front of him. ‘I’ve got Egan’s record here from the computer, sir. Really is quite outstanding. Military Medal for gallantry in the field in Ireland, reasons unspecified.’

‘I know about that,’ Villiers told him. ‘He was working with me at the time. Undercover. South Armagh.’

‘Distinguished Conduct Medal in the Falklands. Badly wounded. Eight months’ hospitalization. Left knee plastic and stainless steel or what-have-you. Speaks French, Italian and Irish. That’s a new one.’

‘His father was Irish,’ Villiers said.

‘Another interesting point. He went to quite a reasonable public school,’ Warden added. ‘Dulwich College.’

Like Villiers, he was an Old Etonian and the Colonel said, ‘Don’t be a snob, Daniel. A very good school. Good enough for Raymond Chandler.’

‘Really, sir? I never knew that. Thought he was an American.’

‘He was, you idiot.’ Villiers crossed to the desk, helped himself to tea from a china pot and sat in the window seat. ‘Let me give it to you chapter and verse on Sean Egan, all Group Four information and most of it very definitely not on your computer. A lot of remarkable things about our Sean. To start with, he has a rather unusual uncle. Maybe you’ve heard of him? One Jack Shelley.’