by Chris Ryan
Woody looked surprised. ‘He didn’t tell you why you’re here?’
‘He didn’t tell me anything.’
‘Oh.’ Woody cocked his head again. ‘Maybe he doesn’t like you after all. Oh well. Never mind. Come with me.’
Woody strode briskly towards the Nissen huts. More confused than he’d ever been, Max trotted behind him. The peaks of the mountains surrounding them were covered by cloud. To his left, Max saw two more grounded helicopters.
Woody noticed him looking at them. ‘They’re the only way to get in and out of this valley,’ he explained. ‘It’s inaccessible by road or foot. We’re in a remote part of Scotland. Weather’s improving,’ he added without a hint of sarcasm as they passed the Nissen huts and walked across an area of cracked tarmac.
As they approached the house, Max heard – and saw – the Chinook pass overhead and head off into the distance. To the left of the secure metal front door, a plaque read ‘Valley House’. Woody pressed his finger to a sensor on the right-hand side of the door. It clicked open and they entered. They were in a musty-smelling hallway. Along one wall was a line of black-and-white photographs showing military men and women. Max had little time to examine them, but one of them caught his eye. It was of a young soldier sitting by a small fire in the jungle. It was the soldier’s face that caught Max’s attention. It looked familiar. It could have been his double, he realised. He felt an uncomfortable sensation in the pit of his stomach, as though he had recognised someone in real life whom he’d long thought to be dead.
‘Come on,’ Woody called, snapping Max back to reality. He led Max up a staircase, along a dim corridor and into a room filled with sofas and armchairs, shabby but not uncomfortable-looking. Along the far wall was a series of floor-to-ceiling windows framed by thick velvet curtains. Woody walked up to the windows. He turned and made a ‘come here’ gesture to Max.
Max joined him. He looked out of the window.
The geography of the area immediately became clearer. The house was at the floor of a long valley with steep, rocky mountain slopes on either side. The valley itself disappeared into the sleet haze, but the area behind the house was very clear. It was a puddle-strewn parade ground, populated by thirty or forty teenagers, none of them older than Max. They all wore similar camouflage gear to Woody, and beige berets. They were muddy, bedraggled and obviously exhausted. Some were bent double. Others were on their knees. A couple were retching on the edge of the parade ground.
To one side of the parade ground stood a woman in her twenties. She had fiery red hair pulled into a tight ponytail. She held a wicker basket. Some of the teenagers were queuing up in front of her, their berets in their hands.
Max stared at this peculiar scene for a full thirty seconds without saying anything. Then he turned to his sandy-haired companion with a questioning expression.
‘Welcome to the Special Forces Cadets selection camp,’ said Woody. ‘I’ve got a feeling you’re going to fit right in.’
4
The Watchers
‘The what?’ Max said.
‘The Special Forces Cadets selection camp.’ Woody smiled at him again and looked back out of the window. ‘Looks like we’re losing a few already,’ he said.
Max blinked at him. ‘Can we just back up a moment?’ he said. ‘What are the Special Forces Cadets?’
‘You know what cadets are, right?’
‘Young soldiers.’
‘And you know what special forces are?’
‘Highly trained soldiers.’
‘Well, there you go. Highly trained young soldiers. Couldn’t have put it better myself.’ Woody frowned. He seemed to be looking at the line of teenagers clutching their berets. One by one they placed them in the wicker basket the young woman held. ‘We don’t normally lose that many on the first day. Probably the weather.’ He turned to Max. His face softened slightly at Max’s obvious confusion. ‘The Special Forces Cadets are a secret team of young military personnel,’ he said. ‘Everybody here has been identified as a potential recruit by a team of army scouts. I’m one. Hector’s another. We’re known as the Watchers. We watch over you, you see.’ He pointed at the woman with the wicker basket. ‘That’s Angel. She’s a Watcher too.’
‘You’ve been spying on me?’
Woody looked a little offended. ‘Spying is such an ugly word, Max. We’ve just been taking an interest in you, is all. You tick the boxes.’
‘What boxes?’
‘Physical. Psychological. We’re looking for young people who are fit and strong. Smart people. Determined people. People with endurance and …’ He hesitated. ‘Bravery, I guess. And, of course, we need people that nobody would miss.’ He looked out of the window again. ‘Most of the kids down there are orphans, or come from backgrounds where not a single person would mind or even notice if they disappeared.’
Max felt a pang of loneliness. He didn’t much like that last description, but he had to admit that it did apply to him.
‘I guess not many people tick those boxes,’ he said quietly.
‘Oh, you’d be surprised. We cast our net pretty wide. We look for teenagers all over the world. There’s kids down there from South America, Australia, Afghanistan … you name it.’
‘But how do you find them?’
‘I told you,’ Woody said, his face suddenly a little more serious. ‘We’re the Watchers.’
The cadets had all handed Angel their berets. They were trudging, looking dejected, back towards the house.
‘There’s a four-day selection process,’ Woody said. ‘Any of the cadets can quit at any time, if they haven’t been failed already. They just need to hand Angel their berets. That lot will be heading home first thing in the morning, along with the ones that we decide aren’t up to scratch.’ He grinned. ‘A bit like X-Factor. Less singing, of course. And more puking …’ He frowned at the two kids who were still retching by the parade ground. ‘They’re not in a good way, are they?’
‘How many make it through?’ Max asked.
‘Only five,’ Woody said. ‘The Special Forces Cadet team is always a five-person unit. Chances of making it are pretty slim.’
Max shook his head. ‘I still don’t get it,’ he said. ‘Why do you even need this team? What can a team of teenagers do that a team of adults can’t?’
‘You’d be surprised, Max. Young people like you – you’re practically invisible.’
‘Thanks very much.’
‘Don’t take it so personally. Imagine you’re, I don’t know, a terrorist. You’ll be on the lookout for military or police personnel. You won’t even notice a bunch of kids. In some instances, our cadet teams can get closer to the bad guys than anyone else.’
‘Teams? There’s more than one?’
‘Kids grow up, Max. We have to refresh the personnel every two or three years. That’s what’s happening today. Valley House needs some new occupants.’
‘And what happens to the ones who don’t make it? If it’s so top-secret, surely they all go back to wherever they’ve come from and tell everyone where they’ve been?’
‘Oh, sure,’ Woody agreed. ‘Some of them do. Not many though. I mean, people don’t really show off about things they fail at, right? Those who do, tell their friends that they’ve been to a top-secret training camp in the middle of nowhere to be assessed for an elite group of military personnel. Then their friends laugh at them and tell them not to be so stupid. They don’t tend to mention it again after that.’
Max looked out of the window. The remaining cadets were walking away from the parade ground. He assumed they were heading back to the Nissen huts.
‘I still don’t see where I come in,’ Max said. ‘There’s nothing amazing about me. And I’ve missed the first day of selection, haven’t I?’
Woody nodded slowly. ‘I’m not going to lie, Max. It is a weird one. You’ve been on our radar for a while. No family. Acing all your CCF activities at school. Pretty good brain, by all accounts. You were definitely
on my shortlist and I know Angel felt the same. We even went so far as to start concocting a story for the care home about why you had to leave. We were going to tell them you’d been caught robbing an old lady’s house and were going to be sent to a young offenders’ unit.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome! It was Hector who went the full Simon Cowell. Said you weren’t up to it. Said you didn’t make the grade. Since we all have to agree who gets invited on selection, I’m afraid that meant you were out. But then you went all heroic on us.’
Max was so overwhelmed that for a moment he didn’t understand what Woody meant.
‘Striding Edge, Max?’ Woody prompted.
‘Oh,’ Max said. ‘That.’
‘Yeah. That. I heard you abseiled all the way down the northern slope.’
‘This guy went over. He had our sat phone.’
‘Nice. What abseil did you use?’
‘Dülfersitz.’
‘Ah. Would have been better to –’
‘Yeah, I know,’ Max said waspishly. ‘South African.’
‘Right!’ Woody said brightly. ‘Listen, we Watchers don’t get the last word. We have superiors. When you made that emergency call, it triggered certain alerts. Hector got his instructions to fetch you.’
‘They moved pretty fast.’
‘That’s what we do, Max. We move pretty fast.’ Woody wrinkled his misshapen nose. ‘This has all happened very quickly for you,’ he said. ‘We’ve lifted you out of a world you know and put you into a world you don’t. This isn’t something you have to do. The others were all given the opportunity to pull out before selection started – and some of them did. You have that opportunity too. Why don’t you sleep on it? Let us know in the morning if you want to carry on, or if you want to go back home.’
Max looked out of the window again, considering Woody’s words. Go back home? To what? Back to the care home, and the school where nobody wanted to be seen in the same corridor as him? Back to having no friends and zero life? No way.
‘I’m in,’ he said quietly.
‘That’s what I thought!’ Woody said with a grin. ‘If you pass, we can teach you the South African abseil in no time at all!’ He frowned. ‘It’s all rather unusual though. I’ve never seen anyone miss the first day of selection before. Looks like our bosses are happy to make an exception for you.’
‘How kind of them,’ Max said. The last of the cadets had traipsed dejectedly from the parade ground.
‘Too damn kind, if you ask me.’ Max and Woody turned to see Hector standing in the doorway. If anything, he looked grumpier than before. ‘Sliding down a rock face because some hippy student got the weather wrong isn’t the same as passing selection. Being good at CCF isn’t the same as what some of these kids have been through. We didn’t call you up in the first place because you’re not the right fit. There’s plenty of kids out there who’re smarter and stronger than you. But I don’t think we’ll need to kick you out. If you don’t throw your hat in by the end of day four, I’ll eat mine.’
Hector turned and left. The sound of his footsteps faded away as he strode down the corridor.
‘You still think he likes me?’ Max said.
‘That’s Hector for you. His bark’s worse than his bite. He’ll come round.’ Woody frowned again. ‘Probably. Come on, I’ll take you to your hut.’
But Hector had made Max feel a bit uncertain. He didn’t move. Instead, he looked anxiously out of the window again.
Woody gave him a steady look. ‘You’re not really going to say no because some old soldier like Hector gave you a few hard words, are you?’
Max tried to withstand that stare. He couldn’t. After a few seconds he lowered his head.
‘Thought not,’ Woody said brightly. ‘Let’s get moving. You’ll want a decent night’s sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be … well, kind of brutal. You’ll enjoy it!’
He walked to the door and left the room. Max felt he had no option but to follow.
5
The Rules
‘There are some rules you need to know,’ Woody said as they crossed the open ground between the house and the Nissen huts. ‘You’ll be bunking down with five other boys. You can tell them your first name and they can tell you theirs. But that’s it. No background information. Nothing about where you come from or what school you go to.’
‘Why?’ Max said.
‘Because your presence here is a state secret. Most of you will never see each other again, but we can’t risk any of you revealing the identities of those cadets who make it through selection. Special Forces Cadets need to work anonymously. Everyone has been told this. They all understand that if they reveal their own personal information, or ask anybody else theirs, they’re out of here.’
‘How will you know?’
Woody stopped and gave Max another intense look. ‘We’ll know,’ he said. He smiled broadly again and pointed towards one of the Nissen huts. ‘Come on, this is yours.’
The hut had a metal door. Woody knocked three times but didn’t wait for an answer before entering. Max followed. The inside was spartan. There were three beds along each wall. At the end were two doors: one with a toilet sign, one with a shower sign. Each bed had a locker on one side, and three bare bulbs hung from the ceiling. There was a gentle drumming of sleet on the corrugated iron roof.
Five other boys were in the hut. Each of them was sitting on the edge of their bed, plainly exhausted. Four still wore their muddy camouflage gear. One, a black boy with short dreadlocks, had removed his top. He was muscular. His arms were covered in tattoos. He was chewing gum and, like the other four, stared silently at Max as Woody led him in. There wasn’t much friendliness in his stare.
‘OK, lads,’ Woody announced brightly, ‘we’ve got a new boy. This is Max. Make him feel at home, won’t you? Max, why don’t you bunk down here next to Lukas?’ He indicated the bed next to the black boy. Lukas made no attempt to greet him. He just stared as Max dumped his soggy rucksack on the bed.
‘You’ll find clean clothes in the locker,’ Woody told him. ‘Make yourself at home. Dinner in the house in fifteen minutes.’
Woody turned and left the hut.
Max looked around. On the bed next to Lukas was a tall thin boy with floppy blond hair. On the beds along the opposite wall were two thickset boys with brown hair who looked almost as if they could be twins. Next to them was a very slight young man with short black hair, brown eyes and slightly dark skin. He didn’t quite look Middle Eastern, but he didn’t look British either. He looked a lot less physically strong than the others and his camouflage gear seemed too big for him. There was something about his face, though, that made Max look twice. Although he was young, his eyes seemed older than his years. Max had the impression that he had seen many things, not all of them good.
They were all still staring at him. Max raised an awkward hand. ‘Hi,’ he said. When nobody replied he added: ‘Er, good to meet you.’
‘Just stay out of my space,’ Lukas said. Max noticed that he had an American accent. Lukas didn’t wait for an answer. He lay back on his bed and closed his eyes.
‘Right,’ Max breathed. ‘Thanks for the welcome.’ He looked round at the others. The blond boy and the two thickset boys were going about their business. One of them walked to the shower. The others started removing their camouflage jackets. Only the smaller guy was still staring at Max. More than anyone else, he seemed out of place here.
Max turned towards his locker. He saw that the floor between his bed and Lukas’s was littered with chewing-gum wrappers. Lukas was chewing gum as he lay on the bed. Max could smell spearmint. He opened his locker. His camouflage gear was neatly squared away inside. Was now a good time to put it on? He was still in the dirty gear he’d been wearing since morning. He realised he probably didn’t smell too fresh. He decided to get changed.
The camo gear was just the right size for him. Rough material, but warm and dry. He folded up his mountain gear and plac
ed it in his locker. When he turned again, he saw that the small guy was standing at the end of his bed. He was still staring at Max. It was kind of freaking him out.
‘Er, hi,’ Max said.
‘Hi,’ said the boy.
‘I’m Max,’ Max said, even though Woody had already introduced him.
‘I’m Sami.’ Sami had an accent that Max couldn’t place.
They shook hands. Sami’s grip was not very strong.
‘Where are you from?’ Max asked.
‘Hey!’ Lukas sat up. ‘You know the rules. Names only.’
Max looked around. There were no Watchers to overhear them. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I just thought –’
‘Don’t go ruining this for the rest of us.’ Lukas took an empty chewing-gum wrapper from his pocket. He spat his gum into it, wrapped it up and threw it to the floor. He took a fresh piece of gum from his pocket and curled it into his mouth. ‘How come you’ve rocked up a day late, anyway?’
Max gave him a steady look. ‘You know the rules,’ he said. ‘Names only.’
Lukas’s lip curled. ‘Yeah, well. You won’t be staying long. Nor will he.’ He pointed at Sami who looked, for a moment, like he might cry.
‘He got through the first day, didn’t he? That’s more than some people did.’
Lukas scowled. ‘More than you did too.’
‘Yeah, well … I’ve been kind of busy.’
The shower door opened. The thickset boy emerged. Lukas grabbed a towel from his locker and stormed off to the shower.
‘He always like that?’ Max asked Sami.
‘Since yesterday, when we all met,’ Sami said quietly. ‘He told me this morning that I would never pass.’ He bowed his head, a timid gesture, and returned to his bed. It crossed Max’s mind that Sami did look very slender. If selection was as difficult as Hector and Woody said, there was probably a chance that he’d struggle.
‘What did you have to do today?’ Max asked. It was clear to him that the blond boy and the two thickset boys weren’t going to talk, so he addressed his question to Sami. ‘For selection, I mean.’