“They sent out a force of thirty,” he said in a conspiratorial voice, “last night. They intended to recce the routes to the main roads, look to establish observation posts and the like, but none of them returned. Got the chaps left behind feeling a little jumpy, I think.”
Johnson’s eyes went slightly wider, then narrowed.
“And they didn’t make radio contact? Didn’t go after them?” he asked pointedly.
“It seems not,” Palmer told him, glancing left and right to ensure his words weren’t overheard by a passing trooper, “there’s barely enough of them to man the gate and conduct perimeter patrols.”
Johnson nodded his thanks once and strode away, back to the room he had come from shortly before.
“Corporal Daniels,” he snapped as he walked in, seeing that Mander was already engaged in conversation with an earphone clasped to the left side of his head, “get me assault troop if you will.”
Seconds later, following the brief hail and response ritual, assault troop’s temporary commander, Sergeant Maxwell, spoke to him.
“Foxtrot-Fiver-Zero-Alpha here, go ahead,” Maxwell said,
“It’s Foxtrot-Three-Three-Alpha,” Johnson said, giving the callsign that identified himself. “I need you to debrief the senior RMP on site and send two Spartans back out to follow the route they give you for the rest of their unit. Report back to me directly when you have something.” With that, he stepped away from the controls and walked out, shouting aggressive encouragement for the men to move their arses if they wanted to see their next birthdays.
The rest of the squadron assembled in convoy a little under an hour later under the watchful eye of Squadron Sergeant Major Johnson. The SSM was now adorned with full battle gear and wearing webbing stocked with full magazines for the Sterling submachine gun he hefted, its folding stock locked in the forward position to reduce the size and bulk of the weapon. He looked pointedly at his watch to convey that they were all running the risk of personally disappointing him.
Allowing One Troop to take the lead, he followed in the first of the two Sultan command vehicles behind them which acted as their mobile headquarters. In turn, behind them snaked nine fully-loaded green Bedford trucks which, combined with the light armour ahead of them and the remaining two troops of Fox APCs behind, made a cacophonous noise of loud diesel engines.
Nodding towards Daniels, who was operating the vehicle in his APC, the radio operator spoke the words of command which set them off on their loud, slow journey towards an area they were to defend and consolidate.
Home soil or not, they were going to war.
“Hello, Foxtrot-Three-Three-Alpha, this is Foxtrot-Five-Zero,” came Maxwell’s voice from the radio again.
Making eye contact with Daniels, Johnson nodded and pressed the button to answer on his headset with attached boom microphone.
“We’ve located what we believe was the RMP unit, or at least their transport. Over.”
“Go on. Over,” Johnson said, fearing that the next update might become even less comfortable.
“Sir, we can see signs of a contact; spent casings and some blood, and their Land Rovers are in the ditch. Over,” Maxwell said in a flat tone.
Johnson knew Maxwell to be a trustworthy man who had never failed to control his nerves. He led from the front, and this fostered the respect from his men to follow him, as much as it eliminated any need for them to fear him. Now, however, he was clearly unhappy.
“Extend a search pattern for two hundred metres, then report back to base. Out,” Johnson told him.
Have a look around, then fuck off out of there, he thought to himself before crinkling his brow in confusion. Crashed Land Rovers? Spent casings? How had they driven their vehicles off the road and exchanged fire, evidently taking casualties in the process, and not made it back or called for assistance?
Shaking those thoughts off, Johnson kept his eyes on the limited view forward as his tracked vehicle screeched and ground its way forward in convoy. Twenty minutes later, Maxwell called him up again to report that no casualties or survivors could be found within the radius given, and that ammunition and supplies had been abandoned. Thinking for a second and deciding that the Land Rovers were less useful, given that there were many more available, and that he had far better equipped armoured vehicles on site, he ordered half of his assault troop to retrieve the arms and equipment and return to base for their arrival.
That arrival happened after another hour, as the long, snaking convoy rolled through the gates where Maxwell had arrayed his four Spartan APCs. These were lighter, faster tracked vehicles than his own ride, or the far more heavily equipped Fox cars which comprised the majority of their fighting force. Maxwell had his APCs in formation facing the main gate where their belt-fed 7.62 General Purpose Machine Guns, GPMGs or Gympies, could be brought to bear in overlapping arcs of fire. Johnson had the driver of his Sultan pull in just behind his assault troop, and climbed out and down as he watched the remainder of the convoy roll in. He trusted that Rochefort and Croft would organise that side of things efficiently, allocating the men barracks and finding appropriate space for stores, at the same time as setting up a command post and organising the four troops to rotate on sentry duty.
As much as it pained him to leave the details of his squadron to other people, he forced himself to act as the commander and trust the other NCOs to do what needed to be done. Walking towards the RMP sergeant, he saw the man snap to attention.
That was one of the vagaries of his rank; he was sometimes a ‘Sir’ to the men, a ‘Mister’ to the officers, and to younger enlisted men, he was often seen as something near to God himself.
He knew that wasn’t true, of course, that title was reserved for Regimental Sergeant Majors.
“At ease, Sergeant,” he said, accepting the officer treatment from the man, who seemed young for an RMP sergeant in Johnson’s eyes. He asked him to repeat the information he had already given to Maxwell.
“Sir, Sergeant Swift. I was left in charge of the garrison when Captain Sinclair and Lieutenant Harrison took the rest of the unit out and didn’t return,” he said curtly, betraying the slightest trace of annoyance at having to repeat himself.
“No radio contact?” the man shook his head. “No agreed rendezvous points?” Again, another shake.
Amateurs, Johnson thought unkindly, remembering with a grimace how the regular troops often refused to mix with his reservists, thinking them to be less than real soldiers.
“And you’ve heard what my men found?” he said, his brain sparking with a mix of fear and pride as he referred to the squadron as ‘my men’.
“Yes, Sir,” he said, his face a grimace as he forced the emotion away.
“Very well,” Johnson said, a little more kindly than before, “stand your men down for now, grab a brew, and come find me later.”
With that, he gave the man a gentle slap on the back of one shoulder and watched as he whistled to get the attention of the other red caps, who looked up expectantly as he shouted, “Double in, and I ain’t talking about the place in Ireland.” His small team jogged to him to follow him back to the gatehouse they occupied. Johnson turned his face back to the gate, where Sergeant Maxwell was gesturing at two squads of four men to conduct a dismounted patrol inside the perimeter, walking in opposing directions and folding out the stocks of their sub-machine guns. The remaining half of his troop, the ones who had found the scene where the RMPs had run into some unknown trouble, were arrayed in front of the gates and manning the four big machine guns.
Nodding to himself in satisfaction, Johnson strode back to his APC and rode the short distance to the main administrative building complex.
Inside, Croft and Rochefort had already set up the command post and were issuing orders for supplies to be unloaded and stored safely. No sooner had he been brought up to speed with things than Maxwell called up from the front gate.
“Civilians incoming, Staff,” Mander said to Rochefort, using the working
title for his rank and position. “Sergeant Maxwell is asking for orders.”
Rochefort looked to Johnson, who nodded, giving him permission to use his initiative and make decisions.
“Sergeant Croft?” Rochefort shouted as he left the room, no doubt recruiting the admin troop sergeant to give him men and provisions to assist the expected influx of civilians in need of shelter and management.
“Get Maxwell back,” Johnson told the radio operator, “and tell him to disarm all civilians at the gate. Issue chitties and ask him to keep a record, but no guns inside the wire. Understood?”
“Understood, Sir,” he replied, then called Maxwell’s troop on the radio to relay the orders.
TWELEVE
Running flat out, his backpack bumping uncomfortably up and down and the dog flanking him low to the ground, Peter headed straight back to his house as fast as he could move. The scream had been long and loud and had carried over a mile, but the distance did nothing to remove the pain and terror conveyed in the high-pitched shriek.
He had instinctively known that something was terribly wrong, that the scream wasn’t him being called back for punishment, and that whatever he was about to face, whatever he was soon to discover would not be good.
That realisation, as much as it dropped his heart through his stomach and gave him a speed and lightness of foot that he had never thought he was capable of, did nothing to assuage the terror he felt when he burst through the trees and crossed the back garden to skid to a stop. He froze in horror, looking at a blood-soaked pile of bodies all slumped on the few steps at the side of the patio area. One of those bodies, marked out as unique by the fact that it was the only one to be moving, let out another ear-piercing shriek of rage and fear and other emotions that his young mind could not interpret.
Stepping closer, his feet moving without conscious effort, he began to discern different things from the pile. A woman with grey skin lay to one side of the main event, the back of her head flattened and leaking a dark, thick substance. A fat man, his bloated belly exposed by the shirt which had been torn away, lay atop another man. He also had grey skin, but his had been a darker shade to begin with, and he was wearing the same shirt as the woman, like they both worked in the same place.
The fatter man’s face was upturned, his dark purple gums exposed to show dirty teeth below one eye. The other, he saw in revulsion, was a mess of gore and had been ruined. A deep score mark ran down the side of the face turned towards him, and the man underneath posthumously told him what had happened. The pitchfork, which had always been propped against the wall just a few paces from where he now stood rooted to the spot, was resting with the wooden shaft of the handle pointing upwards, and the tines of the fork embedded in the face of the last corpse, with a tine through each eye socket.
Bizarrely, his mind taking in the most infinitesimally minor details, he saw that the nearest of the four tines of the fork was disfigured at the tip, most likely caused when it had impacted the concrete with enough force to bend the metal.
As for who had thrust the pitchfork downwards, that was a simple question to answer. His mother, usually so scowling and calculating, looked up at him with pleading eyes. Those eyes belonged to a much younger person than the woman he knew, as though in her fear and grief she had revealed herself to him finally, showing someone just as scared and vulnerable as he was.
Just as he was beginning to feel something bordering on sympathy for her, her mouth twisted into a rictus of anger and her eyes narrowed at him.
“Where were you, you little shit?” she snarled, and struggled to get to her feet as she kept her right hand clamped over her left forearm. “Where did you go, eh?”
“I…” Peter began, conditioned never to make the woman ask him something twice unless he wanted to be slapped.
“What?” she said, sticking out her bottom lip in cruel mockery of his own expression. “Did the wittle baby get scared?”
The tears streaming down her face and the uncontrollable quiver of her chin belied her savage and cruel words. She was scared.
Scared, he thought, and from what he saw, hurt too.
She clutched at her left forearm with her right hand, bright red blood pulsing and oozing through her clenched fingers. Her breathing was rapid and shallow, and Peter hesitated a second too long and saw her draw in a breath to snap more insults at him, but instead her breath caught in her throat and she gagged and coughed uncontrollably.
Her eyes looked up at him, half pleading and half in anger which she chose to direct at him for no particular reason other than the fact that he was there. She wriggled out from under the edge of the two dead bodies, which Peter was trying his hardest not to look at, and she struggled to regain her feet. She fell back down twice until she could reach out a steadying hand, allowing the flow of blood to pour out quicker, and Peter earned a snapshot of the wound just above her wrist.
He could see a flash of white globules of almost mustard yellow jelly below the horribly torn skin and missing flesh. Such an array of different colours and textures in that tiny freeze-frame he had seen of the cross-section in her arm both fascinated and horrified him, but seeing her raise herself to her height, which was barely higher than his own, sobered him, forcing an involuntary step backwards to place him out of arm’s reach.
“Help me inside,” she gasped, leaning against the rough brick of the house and closing her eyes momentarily.
Peter had seen injuries before, even some bad ones. Growing up on a farm where dangerous machinery operated every day was bound to draw some blood to see, and he had even seen the results of a man foolish enough to try to dislodge packed grass in a heavy-bladed mower with his boot, and he had witnessed first-hand the shock and pain that such a deep wound could invoke.
This, however, seemed eerily different.
Instead of the pain and the shock causing shouts and screams and strings of foul swear words, as he would expect from experience, she seemed horribly subdued and quiet. For a woman who never missed an opportunity to belittle or berate him, the fact that she seemed so cowed by what was effectively a large cut to her arm worried him.
He did as he was told and helped her the half dozen paces to the rear door to the house, as he still tried not to look at the small pile of dead meat that used to be people. It was an ever-increasingly difficult struggle as she seemed to weaken with each step, but he eventually got her back to her preferred spot, where she could prioritise her affairs.
Struggling to open the lid of the bottle with her blood-slicked hands, she wordlessly thrust it in his direction and watched him expectantly as he used the hem of his t-shirt to clean the sticky, dark red mess from the neck and open it. She snatched it weakly from him and slumped backwards to tip the bottle lazily up to her mouth and close her eyes.
Taking the initiative, he went to the kitchen and pulled out a wooden chair from the table, which he carefully stood on to reach the dusty section above one of the kitchen cabinets to retrieve the battered tin which served as their first aid kit. Blinking away the dust in his eyes as he carefully climbed back down and sifted through the old contents, he selected a paper packet containing a gauze pad and a rolled bandage which had been white at one point in its existence. Returning to her, he saw her right hand fluttering weakly as she tried to open the cigarette packet with one hand by propping it against her thigh. He reached out tentatively, taking the pack from her unresisting hands and carefully took one out to offer it to her, filter first. Her eyes, as dark and glazed-over as they were, still registered a flicker of her dislike for him, but didn’t burn with the intensity she usually seemed to feel.
Taking the cigarette in her lips and keeping her eyes on him, she watched as he picked up the lighter and rolled his thumb over the flint wheel to land on the gas switch. The action was unfamiliar and slightly alien to him, but he managed to spark a flame on his third attempt, and he held it out gingerly towards the tip of the cigarette as it shook visibly to complement her actions. Sucking g
reedily on the small white stick, the tiny flame was pulled towards the end, which glowed orange in sudden response to the contact with the small, man-made fire. Releasing his thumb, Peter blinked suddenly in response to the stream of smoke she blew out straight ahead of her and into his face.
He knelt down and shuffled closer to her, holding out the dressing and bandage, seeking silent permission to come near her. She closed her eyes, giving no indication that he shouldn’t continue, and the only sign that she was alive was a shallow, rhythmic breathing which was interspersed at irregular intervals by her pausing to take long pulls on the cigarette which hung from her dry lips. Reaching out, he carefully placed the gauze pad over the torn flesh on her forearm, then warily wrapped the bandage around it.
“Tighter than that…” she mumbled past her smoke, without opening her eyes.
Her words were barely understandable, but he knew enough not to ignore her commands. Pulling on the slightly stretchy material of the bandage he felt her body stiffen with the increased pain and wrapped the rest around the injury until no blood leaked through.
Unsure if she was still conscious, as she hadn’t moved for a few seconds after he had finished, Peter held his breath until he saw the tip of the cigarette glow red and lift up slightly. Standing up, he paused as a sensation grabbed his attention momentarily. Freezing where he was, he tried to understand what instinct had pricked at him until he realised it was heat; heat from her, radiating outwards like a fire. Reaching for her forehead as he had seen adults do to children who claimed to be feeling ill, he paused, fearful for a brief second that she would take offence at him being close enough to touch her, then decided – hoped - that she wouldn’t be able to hit him in her state.
Her forehead was uncomfortably hot to touch, and her skin felt sweaty in parts and dry in others, as though the moisture leaking through her pores had burned away like drops of water on the concrete slabs of their patio in summer. She writhed slightly, her lower lip shivering in time with her chin as her shallow gasps for breath tried to form words.
Toy Soldiers Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 9