by Chris Ryan
There were flags marking the way every two hundred metres. Max started to count them, but soon lost track. He was concentrating too hard on his breathing and his pace. They were all that mattered.
Ten minutes passed. Twenty. The shooting range slid past in his peripheral vision. The mountain slopes were a blur on either side. Max found himself in something like a trance. He kept a strict rhythm to his footsteps and his breathing. He tried to put all thoughts from his mind, apart from the thought of carrying on.
The terrain had been flat and sparse. Now he was heading slightly uphill. The extra exertion made his lungs burn. He was forced to slow down. His pace was little more than a fast walk. He felt a moment of panic. At this speed, he would never make it to the finish line in time. He forced himself to move faster. A minute later, he reached the brow of the incline and saw, a couple of hundred metres up ahead, the forest Hector had mentioned. The terrain ran downhill from there. That meant he could increase his speed. But not too much. Woody’s advice still held. He had limited energy, which he had to conserve.
How far had he come? Five kilometres? Ten? He found it impossible to judge. Which meant he had no idea how much further there was to go. He hit the treeline of the forest and immediately realised he had a new obstacle. The ground was bumpy and knotty. He had to take care to keep his footing. He looked straight ahead. The forest was dense but the next flag was just visible, about fifty metres through the trees. Suddenly he felt overcome with exhaustion. Just focus on the flag, he told himself. If he could break the remainder of the exercise into small sections in his head, he had a much better chance of completing it in time.
Focus on the flag.
He gritted his teeth and kept his eyes level with the top of the flag. Distance: thirty metres.
Twenty.
Ten.
He reached it. Scanning ahead, he saw a flash of red: the next flag, half hidden in the trees.
Focus on the flag.
Breathing deeply, treading carefully, he ran towards it. He felt good. Breaking the forced march into little sections like this was doing the job. The flash of red grew closer …
Closer …
He was almost at the flag when it happened. Something caught his right foot. He stumbled and fell heavily. His face slammed hard against the ground. The weight of the full backpack winded him. But it was his left ankle that hurt the most. As he pushed himself up painfully, he realised he must have weakened it more than he thought.
He swore under his breath. How could he have been so stupid as to lose his footing? He looked down at the ground, trying to identify what had tripped him.
He saw it quickly enough.
He was standing between two trees. Running from one to the other, ten centimetres from the ground, was a length of rope. No, Max thought as he bent down to touch it. Not ordinary rope. Paracord.
He felt bile rising in his throat. Someone had tried to trip him.
Tried. And succeeded.
His eyes followed the length of the paracord from one tree to another. He saw a chewing-gum wrapper. It was lying on the ground near the cord. On closer inspection, Max saw that it was Lukas’s brand.
Max felt hot with anger. Lukas had been weird with him ever since he’d arrived. It was obvious that winning meant everything to him. To the extent that he was willing to do this …
For a moment, Max considered untying the paracord and taking it, along with the gum wrapper, as evidence that Lukas had sabotaged him. But he shook his head. That wasn’t his style. He’d grown up learning to deal with his own problems. And since he was the last recruit, leaving it wouldn’t compromise any of the others. So he turned his back on the clumsy booby trap and tried to continue running.
He winced. His left ankle was agony. He limped as he ran, and could only manage half his previous speed. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to carry on.
The going was slow and painful. The flags that marked his way seemed to take an age to reach and pass. He was sweating twice as badly now, and his breath came in short gasps. It took another twenty minutes to clear the forest. Only then did he see the finish line up ahead.
The others had all made it. They were standing in a little group slightly apart from Hector and Angel, next to the white minibus. Most of them were bent double, hands on knees, as they tried to get their breath back. Not Lukas. He was standing straight, looking back towards Max. As Max limped up to them, he saw that Lukas had a satisfied smile on his face.
‘Good of you to join us,’ Hector said. He clicked a stopwatch and recorded Max’s time in a notebook. Angel looked on sympathetically.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
Max glanced at Lukas. ‘I tripped,’ he muttered. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘We’ll get Martha to look at your ankle.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Max repeated more forcefully.
‘Everyone into the minibus,’ Hector shouted. ‘Move. Now.’
They bundled in. Max, limping, was last. He sat next to Abby and opposite Sami. As the minibus trundled back to the house, Sami looked at Max with an expression of sympathetic understanding. For the first time, Max felt irritated with his friend. He didn’t need anybody’s sympathy. He felt his face burning and he stared at the floor of the vehicle. Nobody spoke.
The journey back took fifteen silent minutes. Max’s ankle throbbed. His anger failed to subside. He was still fuming as they disembarked at the parade ground and lined up at Hector’s instruction. The Watcher looked at them all in turn. ‘You’ve done well,’ he said. ‘Most of you, at least. Does anybody want to hand in their beret?’ His eyes lingered briefly on Max. Max thought about doing it. Better to resign than to undergo the humiliation of being failed. But something stopped him. If there was just the smallest chance of success … Hector cleared his throat. ‘All right. Those of you who’ve made it will be badged as Special Forces Cadets. Those of you who haven’t will be going home.’
Max looked along the line. Lukas, Abby, Sami, Jack, Ash and him. Six recruits. They’d been told that only five would make it. One of them was about to receive bad news. Max had a pretty good idea who that would be.
‘Lukas,’ Hector said. ‘You’ve impressed. Strength and endurance are good. Weapon handling skills are excellent. You think quickly and well. You’re through.’
Lukas exhaled heavily. His shoulders seemed to relax.
‘Sami. You fire a weapon better than I do, and that’s saying something. You think on your feet, and you’re stronger and fitter than you look. You’re in.’
Sami smiled broadly. Then he looked sideways at Max and the smile fell away.
‘Abby, good work. We’d have liked more girls. You were the only one who made the standard. You’re joining us.’
Abby clenched her fist triumphantly and muttered something under her breath. Angel smiled at her.
‘Jack, I’m not going to lie. For you it was touch and go. Your performance today dragged you over the line, but you’re going to have to work hard. Welcome to the Special Forces Cadets.’
Jack had clearly only heard the good, not the bad. A self-satisfied expression spread over his face.
The four successful cadets had stepped back from the line. It was just Ash and Max left. Two recruits. One place left. Hector avoided their eyes as he consulted his notebook.
‘Ash,’ he said.
Max felt his stomach twist.
Hector continued to stare at his notebook for a moment, then he looked up. ‘I’m sorry, mate,’ he said. For the briefest moment, the older man looked regretful, even human. ‘You were too slow today. Your weapons handling was so-so and you’ve been in the middle of the pack all along. We have to send you home.’
Ash hung his head. He looked genuinely crestfallen. Max felt for him. But he also felt a moment of elation. Because if Ash was out …
Hector turned to him. Max remembered what Hector had said on his first day here. If you don’t throw your hat in by the end of day four, I’ll eat mi
ne. Well, Max hadn’t thrown his hat in. He felt proud of that.
Hector looked him up and down. ‘What happened today?’ he said.
‘I tripped,’ Max said. He was on the verge of mentioning the paracord and the chewing-gum wrapper. But he kept that to himself. ‘I think I twisted my ankle.’
‘If you trip and twist your ankle on operations, you don’t just compromise yourself, you compromise everyone on your team.’ Hector’s stare seemed to drill into Max.
‘I understand,’ Max said in a level voice. ‘It won’t happen again.’
‘You’re right there. It won’t happen again. Your time was too slow today. You’re not up to the level we require in the Special Forces Cadets. You need to forget all about what you’ve seen here. You’re going home too.’
Max blinked at him. ‘But … you said you needed five of us.’
‘We need five cadets up to the correct standard. If we can’t find them, we make do with fewer. There’s no way we can keep you on the team. You’d just bring everyone else down with you.’
‘But –’
‘No buts. A helicopter will arrive at 10:30 tomorrow morning to take you and Ash back home. I’m sorry.’
Max stared dumbly at him. He couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘The rest of you, don’t imagine this is the end. It’s just the beginning. There will be a badging ceremony at 11:00 to officially confirm you as Special Forces Cadets. Then the work really begins. Continuation training starts as soon as these two have left. Get a good night’s sleep. You’re going to need it.’
Hector turned his back on them and marched towards the house. Woody and Angel exchanged a glance. They looked stunned. But they were evidently in no position to say anything. ‘Come on, you lot,’ Woody said quietly. ‘Let’s get you back to your huts.’
The others followed them across the parade ground. Max stood, motionless, watching them go.
And as he watched, he wondered. What had he expected? That he was going to be lifted from his ordinary, friendless, family-free life and parachuted into something more exciting and meaningful?
Of course not. Stuff like that didn’t happen to people like him. He felt stupid for even believing that might happen.
He was going home.
He had failed.
10
Green Thunder
It had been a long evening, and was turning into an even longer night.
Sami had been kind. As Max returned to the Nissen hut, his friend had come up to him and put one hand on his shoulder. ‘Maybe they’ll let you apply again,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ Max replied. ‘Maybe.’ He knew they wouldn’t. He knew he’d blown it.
At dinner, the four successful recruits had sat together at the end of one long table. Max and Ash sat opposite each other, slightly apart from them. They weren’t completely ignored. Sami kept trying to catch Max’s eye. Abby made a pretence of not wanting her stew and offered it to Max. He declined. She wasn’t fooling anyone.
He was still limping slightly as he left the dining room. ‘You want me to strap that up?’ Martha said, without much feeling, when she saw him.
‘It’s fine,’ Max told her. She shrugged and walked away.
Back in the hut, Lukas refused, at first, to catch his eye. But that was impossible to maintain for long. Eventually, he surprised Max by offering his hand. ‘No hard feelings, bro,’ he muttered. Max looked at his hand but couldn’t bring himself to shake it. Lukas shrugged and removed a piece of gum from his mouth. He wrapped it up and threw it on the floor. Then he went back to being his surly, uncommunicative self. Sami, who had been watching, looked like he wanted to intervene but thought better of it.
In the end, they all went to bed early. Max couldn’t sleep. He was sure the same was true for the others, though nobody spoke. He simply lay there, staring into the darkness. His ankle throbbed, but that wasn’t what kept him awake. He couldn’t believe that he’d been given a chance to break out of his humdrum life and he’d messed it up. The three days of selection had been so busy that he hadn’t realised how much he wanted this. Only now that it had been taken away was it clear to him what he had lost.
He’d lost everything.
He wanted to jump out of bed, storm across to the house and find Hector. Tell him about the paracord. Tell him that he’d been set up to fail. But he knew it would do no good. Hector had been against him since the beginning. He wasn’t going to change his mind now. This was the result the grizzled Watcher had wanted all along. Max’s failure was his success.
What would Max do now? That was the question that he kept coming back to. Sit it out at school until he could apply to join the army? Would they have him? he wondered. Would his failure here keep him out of the military for ever? He didn’t know.
The night passed slowly. It was almost dawn when he started, finally, to nod off. He drifted in and out of sleep, reliving moments of the past few days. The abseil on Striding Edge. The battle through the snow. The gun work on the range. The heavy march through the forest. In his half-dreams he heard panicked shouting. The howling of the wind. The crack of firearms. And above it all, the constant thrum of a helicopter’s rotor blades. Mechanical. Repetitive.
Nearby.
Max sat up, eyes wide. The hut had no windows, so it was dark inside, but he could see a faint grey outline around the door which told him it was morning. He could see the outlines of Lukas and Sami sitting up too. He frowned. Had the helicopter arrived already to take him and Ash back home? He checked his watch. It was eight thirty. Hector had definitely said ten thirty. Maybe the helicopter had just arrived early …
It sounded like it was hovering directly above them, and very low. The noise was thunderous. It seemed to make the whole hut shake.
‘What’s going on?’ Sami shouted.
As if in reply, the door burst open. Light flooded in, and with it came Hector, followed by Woody and Angel. The older man’s face was as thunderous as the noise above. ‘Get out of bed!’ he screamed. ‘All of you! Get out of bed. Now!’
Sami almost fell out of bed. Lukas threw back the covers and stood up promptly, the muscles in his tattooed arm twitching.
Max didn’t move. He felt rebellious. Why should he get out of bed? What authority did Hector have over him any more? Give it a couple of hours and Max would probably never see the guy again. He stayed put.
If anything, the din of the helicopter grew even louder. It seemed to be inside Max’s head as well as outside. Hector strode up to him. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he yelled.
‘Taking my time,’ Max said.
Hector grabbed him by the arm and yanked him out of bed.
‘Hey …’ Max complained, but his complaint was drowned out by Hector screaming at him, his face close to Max’s.
‘Spare me your stupid teenage lip!’ he bellowed. ‘People are going to die!’
‘Well, what’s that got to do with me?’ Max retorted.
‘Did you hear what I said? People are going to die. Maybe they already have. Get dressed! Get out of here! Right now!’
‘Mate, you’ve got to move,’ Woody said. He was standing at Hector’s shoulder. ‘Trust me on this. We’ll explain in a minute.’
Max stared at him. He felt himself blush. Hector stormed back to the open door but Woody stayed where he was. His face, usually so open and friendly, was severe and urgent. It was that, more than anything, that made Max swing his legs over the side of the bed and start pulling on his camouflage gear. A minute later, he, Sami and Lukas were hurrying out of the Nissen hut. Abby was waiting for them. She was more dishevelled than usual and was nervously fiddling with the cartilage piercings in her left ear. Jack and Ash, bleary-eyed, were hurrying from another Nissen hut. Woody and Angel were carrying a large black flight case between them out of a third hut.
Hector was marshalling the helicopter on to the ground between the house and the huts. It was a Chinook, with the distinctive double rotors. Max wondered i
f it was the same aircraft that had brought him here from the Lake District. He certainly couldn’t discern any difference. The downdraught from the rotors was strong. Sami shouted something at Max, but Max couldn’t hear him. The noise was too great.
The Chinook touched down. Almost immediately, the tailgate lowered. Without hesitation, Woody and Angel ran their flight case up into the dark belly of the helicopter. Hector turned to the recruits and pointed after them. His lips mouthed the words, ‘Get in!’
They looked at each other, nervous and confused. Lukas was the first to move. He sprinted up into the Chinook. Abby went next, then Sami and Jack. Max and Ash exchanged a long look. Max wondered if they were both thinking the same thing. What did this have to do with them? They were supposed to be going home …
Angel appeared at the top of the tailgate. She made an urgent ‘get in’ gesture to them. And then Hector was behind them, screaming. Max and Ash moved in unison, running up the tailgate and into the aircraft with Hector on their heel.
The others were sitting on low benches along the sides of the Chinook. There were two men in military gear that Max didn’t recognise, both wearing chunky headsets. Max took a seat next to Woody as the tailgate started to close. He strapped himself in. There were headsets on the side of the chopper, each with a boom microphone. As the daylight diminished, Woody indicated to everyone that they should put them on. As Max did so, he felt the chopper leave the ground.
The headset was heavily cushioned so it softened some of the noise of the Chinook as it rose into the air. Max immediately heard voices.
– This is Special Forces flight Green Thunder. We have our payload. Repeat, we have our payload.
– Receiving you, Green Thunder, you are cleared for flight.
A pause, then the first voice came again.
– Ladies and gentlemen, we have a flight time of approximately two hours. If we can shave anything off that, we will. Hector, you’re patched into comms. It’s all yours. Tell them what they need to know.