by Stuart Woods
As he neared the ground he seemed to be going faster and faster as it rose to meet him, then his feet struck the ground and he fell, rolling over. The chute settled over him, blocking his view of everything.
“Get out of there!” someone shouted and pulled at the nylon. Stone got to his feet and figured out how to release the harness, then he was standing and, amazingly, alive. A man was gathering up his parachute.
Another man tugged at his sleeve and pointed up. Stone looked to see several chutes floating down. “That’s your luggage,” the man said. Stone was surprised that he wasn’t shouting, but speaking fairly normally. “It will be taken by truck to your quarters.”
“How do I get there?” Stone asked.
“You run,” the man said. “Follow the others, and don’t get lost or you might never be seen again.” He pointed Stone in the right direction and gave him a shove. Stone was wearing a pair of high-topped, thick-soled walking shoes that he used on pavement, and they worked fairly well. He began jogging along, unbuttoning his jacket as he warmed up.
* * *
—
A half hour later the group pulled up at a gate in a high chain-link fence with coils of razor wire at the top. Stone wondered if that was meant to keep people out or, perhaps, in. He was pleased to see that he wasn’t breathing any harder than the other men in the party. They were herded through the gate and into a Quonset hut, with its semicircular roofline. There were folding chairs inside the hut; people were getting out of their warmer clothing and mopping their brows. Stone followed the line, just as he had done since they jumped, making him the last to sit down.
A man wearing a military sweater with epaulets came into the hut and walked to the front of the room. “Listen up,” he said. “I am Captain Moffat. You no longer have names; you are designated”—he pointed at Stone, then down the line—“Alpha, Beta, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel. While you are at Station Two you will not tell anyone your former name, nor anything about yourself. Does anyone not understand that?” He waited for a moment and was met by silence. “Your luggage has been placed in your quarters, and your designation will be on the door. Clothing conforming to your height, weight, and measurements will also have been placed in your quarters. Wear only what you are issued.”
He switched on a light, illuminating a screen on which there was a drawing. “This is a map of Station Two: memorize it. If you are slow and stupid, you will be given a map. Would anyone like a map?” No one spoke.
Stone started memorizing the map, which wasn’t complicated: headquarters, living quarters, dining hall, gymnasium and workout facilities, supply, clinic, armory, motor pool.
“The weapons carried by staff and guards are loaded with live ammunition. Try very hard not to give anyone a reason to shoot at you. Now, get up and follow the sergeant to the dining hall. Eat. Go to your quarters and remain there until you are awakened at dawn. Upon your awakening, at six AM, you have thirty minutes to shower, dress, and get to the dining hall. You will have thirty minutes to eat. After that, it gets easier: all you have to do is exactly what you are told. Get out.”
They got out.
3
Stone slept soundly, dreamlessly, until a loud bell rang for about thirty seconds. By the time it had stopped he was half dressed. He carried his overcoat, gloves, and a knitted cap as he went to the dining room. Once there he was handed a tray containing a plate of fried eggs, boiled potatoes, and buttered toast, along with a glass of orange juice and a mug of black coffee.
He found a seat at a table with others, and everyone ate hurriedly and silently. Finally, a man in battle dress with sergeant’s stripes stood up and yelled, “Follow me for our morning run.”
Everyone got into their outer gear and into line, shuffling toward a door where the sergeant waited. Then they were running, faster than a jog. Stone reckoned they ran a mile, slowing to a five-minute walk at the halfway point, before finishing fast. Then they found themselves at a shooting range, with a row of tables waiting for them. Each table held a semiautomatic pistol and an assault rifle, plus magazines and ammunition for each weapon. The sergeant spent a couple of minutes demonstrating how each weapon was to be loaded, cocked, and placed on safety. Then he ordered them to fire the weapons—first the rifle, then the pistol—on his command from various positions: prone, kneeling, and standing. Another sergeant walked behind them, offering advice. No one said anything to Stone.
After they had fired from each position, their targets were lowered into a pit, where patches were placed over the holes they had made. Stone’s sergeant stepped behind him. “Alpha,” he said, “you are an excellent shot with the rifle and a poor shot with the pistol. You will need extra pistol training.” The sergeant yelled out for another run, and everyone but Stone and one other trainee ran off. The two of them then got another half hour of training with the pistol, and Stone’s marksmanship with the handgun improved markedly. He was glad to be firing, instead of running.
“Now,” the sergeant said, “follow the corporal for your run.”
Stone sighed and did as he was told.
* * *
—
They finished up in a gymnasium with a thickly matted floor, where another sergeant gave them knife training, pointing out that the knives employed were neither rubber nor wood, but steel, and that they should try not to kill each other, as there was a lot of paperwork involved if that should occur.
* * *
—
Then another run, and back to the gym for unarmed defense training. The NYPD police academy had given Stone a grounding in this, and he was told that he excelled. Then a man shouted at him, “Heads up! Knife attack!” Stone looked up to see a middle-aged but fit-looking man walking toward him with a knife. “I don’t have a knife,” Stone said.
“Never mind,” the sergeant said. “All you have to do is stop him from killing you.” His assailant was already starting to wave the knife around. Stone managed to avoid a lunge at his throat, but the tip of the blade drew lightly across his neck as it passed, so Stone redoubled his efforts to not be killed. During another pass, he managed to get hold of his assailant’s wrist and twisted the knife from his grasp. The man fought back, but Stone managed to get him onto the mat with his arm twisted behind him.
“Alpha,” the sergeant said, pulling him to his feet by his collar. “See the soldier at the end—the one with the medical kit—for treatment.”
The bleeding had been stopped in short order, a topical antibiotic was applied, and his slight wound was bandaged. “He missed your jugular by a quarter of an inch,” the medic said.
They had a lunch of beef sandwiches and beer, then started training again. By the time Stone reached his quarters late in the day, all he could do was throw himself onto his bed and sleep, fully clothed, until the dinner bell rang. Then he pulled himself together, got a quick shower, and made it to the dining hall before the spaghetti and meatballs ran out.
* * *
—
The rest of the week was filled with more training, physical and mental, combative at times. By the end of six days, Stone felt the way he wished he’d felt upon his arrival.
* * *
—
On the morning after his last day of training, Stone was packing his things and getting into civilian clothes when the sergeant came into his room and tossed him some keys. “Alpha, yours is the Aston Martin, I believe.”
“Right, Sergeant.” Stone put the keys into his pocket.
“Why don’t we give you a bit of a time trial?” he said.
“In the car, I hope?”
“Don’t worry, mate, you’ve had your last run.” He took a map from his pocket and explained the route, which was mostly a perimeter road around the camp. “Leave your gear here. We’ll pick it up later.” The sergeant led the way out of the building to a parking lot Stone had not seen before. The Aston was
waiting for him, looking as if it had just been hosed down. He got in and started the engine while the sergeant walked to the road and beckoned for him to follow. Stone drove up to him and waited for instructions.
“Got your route memorized?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Try and get it done in under three minutes. I’ll be here.” He held up a stopwatch. “Ready, set, go!”
Stone already had the car in gear and accelerated like a rocket up the road. He tracked the turns, hitting every apex, and reckoned he was halfway around the perimeter when he saw a landmark, a bridge over a roaring river, with a turn just before it. He shifted down for the turn, then accelerated, then something went wrong: there was a noise, the car drifted right and struck the embankment beside the river, then it left the ground, still turning. The car struck the river upside down.
It took Stone, hanging by his seat belt, a moment to reorient. It wasn’t hard, because the top of his head was wet, and water was pouring in from the broken passenger window. “I’ve got to get out of here,” he said aloud to himself, but his brain wasn’t fully working yet, and it took a face full of water to get him moving. He tried and tried to escape the cabin, but nothing electrical was working, and the car’s roof had been smashed down on him. And the windows were too small for him to get through. He was having to hold his breath and grab more air in the moments the car was rocked by the current.
Stone began to flag, and there was no one to help.
4
Upside down and still not entirely conscious, Stone felt that the water creeping up from his scalp would be over his nose very soon. As if to confirm his judgment, he began to drink through his nose, but he couldn’t keep up.
He blew the air out of his nose. Then he shut off that passageway internally, but his mouth was next and that wouldn’t do. He took hold of the seat belt, tight across his chest, and began following it with his hand to its end on his left side. He found it and felt for the release button, which, under load, did not cooperate. He mustered all the strength he could into his thumb and forefinger and tried again. This time the button began to move and, finally, to his great relief, released the metal hook.
His relief was premature, though, because his face was now underwater, and he was still upside down. He pressed against the steering wheel with both hands and found his feet trapped in the footwell of the car. No good. He tried shifting his ass into the passenger seat, and that freed his legs, and he managed to get his head above water and suck in a few deep breaths.
The water was still rising, though, and he realized that he had to get out of the car. He drew his knees up to his chest and tried to kick out the windscreen, and for his trouble, his left ankle sent a stab of pain all the way to his brain. He tried to kick again, using only his right foot, and failed. He tried opening both doors, but they were jammed. Then he noticed that there were lights burning on the dashboard, indicating that the car still had battery power. He groped for the electric window switch on the passenger side. To his amazement, the window began to retract. Water poured through the window, and then it stopped retracting.
He got another gulp of air, then tried the driver’s-side window switch. This time the window slid all the way down, but the flow of water into the car increased to a torrent. He held on to his final breath and tried to wait patiently for the car to fill up. It took longer than he had hoped, but when it was full, the pressure of the incoming water equalized, and he was able to get his legs through the open window. That was as far as he could go, because his feet now rested against a large rock.
In desperation, he tried again to kick out the windscreen and failed again. Air began to leak from his nose, and he knew he was done.
Then there was a loud noise—metal against metal, he thought—followed by whining and scraping sounds and the movement of the car. The water now reversed itself and began to flow out the windows, but it was too late for him. He slipped into unconsciousness. There was no tunnel and no light at the end of it; instead, a kind of peace as he gave way to inevitability.
He woke up again, freezing and coughing up water. He lay on a roadway—no, a bridge—next to a large military vehicle, the front bumper of which contained a winch and a cable; beyond that lay the crumpled car. Oh, Christ, he said to himself, I’ve totaled Felicity’s Aston Martin. Then he fainted.
* * *
—
He woke again—this time from a sleep. He was in a hospital bed, partially cranked to a sitting position. A nurse, he thought, there has to be a beautiful nurse in this place. Instead, an angry face filled his vision. It rested atop a Royal Marines uniform, which wore a colonel’s insignia of rank: a crown and two pips.
The face screamed at him, “What the fuck do you think you are doing, Barrington?”
Stone did not like people screaming into his face. He groped for the bed control, found it, and moved the frame until it was fully upright, all the time pushing the angry face away from him. “I’m recuperating!” he shouted back. “And I don’t need you yelling at me!”
“Do you know what rank you are shouting at?” the colonel demanded.
“Certainly,” Stone shouted again, “and I outrank you! I’m a civilian!”
The colonel, taken aback, took a step away. “Calm yourself,” he ordered, “and tell me what happened to Dame Felicity’s car.”
“I believe it found itself upside down in a river,” Stone replied, more calmly now. With his new perspective he pointed at a white lump at the foot of his bed. “What is that?” he asked.
“It’s a boot,” someone to his left said. This one wore a white coat over his uniform, but Stone couldn’t see the insignia.
“I’ve got a broken foot?”
“No, you’ve got a badly sprained ankle,” the man replied. “That’s the worst you can claim. You have to stay off it for a while, and the boot will help remind you of that.”
“Take it off,” Stone said sullenly.
“No,” the doctor replied, then turned on his heel and marched away.
Then a beautiful nurse appeared. “The doctor is right, you know,” she said, suppressing a laugh. “He’s a pain in the arse, but he is right. You’re on crutches for the duration.”
“The duration of what?” Stone asked.
“Your pain and inability to walk without crutches. At least a week, maybe a month.”
The colonel, whom Stone had been ignoring, stepped back into the picture. “As to rank,” he said, “you are a trainee in my company, and as such, you will take orders from me and do it respectfully.”
“Colonel,” Stone replied, as gently as he could. “I graduated from your torture chamber this morning—or was it yesterday? That fact puts me outside your command and back into the rank of citizen, though not of this country.”
“Good God!” the colonel thundered. “If you weren’t a cripple, I’d drag you down to the gym and thrash you to within an inch of your life!”
“Threats are unbecoming in an officer of your rank,” Stone replied evenly.
The nurse covered her mouth with a hand, stifling another laugh.
“You will report to me instantly when you are ambulatory,” the colonel said, seething.
“I will not report to you in any circumstance,” Stone said, “ambulatory or not.”
The colonel executed a quick about-face and marched out of the ward.
A ward was what he was in, Stone reflected. There were a half dozen beds, with only one other occupied, by a marine with a leg in a cast, elevated. “That’s givin’ it to the old bastard,” the man said to Stone, admiringly.
“Thank you, sir,” Stone said, then turned back to the nurse. “Now you,” he said. “May I ask your name?”
“I am Rose McGill,” she replied.
“And I am Stone Barrington.”
“I’m aware of that,” she said, pointing at his char
t.
“Tell me, Ms. McGill . . .”
“Lieutenant McGill,” she replied.
“Of course. Is there a decent restaurant in the vicinity of this facility?”
“There is, a very good one, just down the road a mile or so.”
“Would you do me the honor of dining there with me this evening?” Stone asked.
“My, you are recovering, aren’t you.”
“I certainly am.”
“Love to,” she said.
5
They sat before a cheerful fire in the cozy dining room of the local inn, Stone with his game ankle resting on a third chair at their table.
“That’s right,” Lieutenant McGill said, “keep it elevated.” A glass of single malt scotch whisky sat before each of them. The Scottish proprietor would not admit to ever having heard of bourbon whiskey.
“May I call you Rose?” he asked.
“Of course, Mr. Barrington, as long as we’re not on the ward.”
“Good, and I’m Stone.”
“Stone you shall be.”
Stone took a breath to speak, but she held up a restraining hand. “Before you start interrogating me, I have questions for you,” she said.
“Fire away,” Stone replied.
“There are all sorts of rumors about you and why you were training here.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. Who are you, and why were you training here?”
“Do we have enough whisky, or should we order more? This is going to take a while.”