Soldier M: Invisible Enemy in Kazakhstan

by Peter Cave

  Hailsham laughed. ‘More like a couple of wooden crates labelled “agricultural machinery”. Or maybe “atomic warheads for Iraq” – that should guarantee priority service,’ he added wryly.

  Tweedledum and Tweedledee were already in Hong Kong, having flown in to Kai Tak airport on a charter flight the previous day. Not surprisingly, they had forgone a sightseeing trip of the city they called the ‘New York of Asia’ in favour of a round of its myriad bars and brothels. They sat now in the opulent, over-ornate vestibule of a particularly up-market whorehouse in downtown Kowloon, eyeing the dozen or so beautiful young Chinese girls who were parading coquettishly about in their colourful cheong-sams, giggling and winking as they competed for the two troopers’ custom.

  It was a difficult choice. Tweedledee’s face was rapturous as he ran his eyes over the feast of ripe young bodies, assessing each one like a choice cut of meat in a butcher’s window. A ten-hour diet of beer and wine had put him in an expansive mood.

  ‘Not a bad life, this SAS lark,’ he observed to his soul-mate. ‘Lots of good healthy exercise, foreign travel and the chance to fuck exotic women.’

  Tweedledum grinned drunkenly. He pulled one of his standard-issue condoms from his pocket, ripped open the foil and dangled the limp latex tube under Tweedledee’s nose. ‘And they look after us like a mother hen,’ he said, giggling. ‘We might get shot, blown to fuck, gassed, poisoned or fried, but at least we’ll die with clean dicks.’

  The irony of the statement eluded Tweedledee’s drink-befuddled brain. He merely grinned vacantly and pointed to a pair of girls dressed in identical yellow cheong-sams. They looked like twins.

  ‘How about those two?’

  Tweedledum nodded enthusiastically. ‘I’ll ask the mama-san if she’s got a double room,’ he said, licking his lips in anticipation.

  Tweedledee looked at his companion slightly dubiously, but said nothing. There were times, he felt, when doing things together could be taken a bit too far.

  Across the city, Trooper Barry Naughton was just returning to the room in the Royal Pacific Hotel which he was sharing with Corporal Max Epps. He floated several inches above the floor, for it had been an unbelievably magical evening, and he was in seventh heaven.

  Sung Lu, the girl had said her name was. And she was not a whore, Barry reminded himself – even though she had demanded money after they had made love in her sordid little hotel room. It was, as she had explained in her tiny sing-song voice, merely to convince her sick and elderly mother that she had been a good girl and stayed at her job in the bar on Wing Sing Street, where he had met her.

  And she had told him that no man had ever made love to her so wonderfully before. She had even told him that she loved him. ‘I love you, soldier-boy,’ she had murmured frequently during their brief but frantic embrace. Somehow, it did not seem to matter that she could not actually remember his name, or that she dressed with almost indecent haste after it was all over.

  Barry had made love to a beautiful young Chinese girl, and she had told him that she loved him. He was almost bursting with pride and happiness as he let himself into the hotel room. He had to tell someone, even if it was only the Thinker.

  ‘I’m in love,’ he announced dreamily as he walked in through the door.

  His room-mate looked up from his bed, where he had spent the evening writing a long and thoughtful letter to his wife.

  ‘Ya daft prat,’ the Thinker muttered dismissively, bursting the bubble.

  Chapter 8

  The rendezvous point on the Chinese mainland was the White Swan Hotel in Canton. Major Hailsham and Andrew had flown in direct, having changed planes without ever leaving the confines of Kai Tak airport. Tweedledum and Tweedledee had tagged themselves on to a party of British and German package tourists making a ‘Chinese Highlights’ sightseeing tour, and Cyclops, Jimmy and Barry had taken the train from Hong Kong. The Thinker, different as ever, had opted for a fairly leisurely boat trip up the Pearl River.

  Now, all finally assembled in one of the hotel’s small conference rooms, they waited for their promised Chinese contact. The atmosphere was unusually subdued, even slightly tense. The transition from Hong Kong to ‘foreign’ territory was subtle, but tangible. Although they were still dressed as civilians, there was no longer any doubt that they were really soldiers, or that the mission was for real. Even Tweedledum and Tweedledee, who might normally have been expected to regale the group with lurid and wildly exaggerated accounts of their night in a Hong Kong whorehouse, sat uncharacteristically apart, saying nothing.

  They all sipped weak green tea from delicate porcelain cups, mostly under sufferance. Alcohol was banned now, for the duration of the mission. The next real drink to touch their lips would be consumed in the Paludrine Club either as a celebratory toast to all those who had made it back, or as a homage to the ones who had failed to beat the clock. Even in a regiment which made its own rules and ignored much of the more formal military discipline, there were still unspoken routines, and customs to be observed.

  Hailsham consulted his watch. There were still two minutes to go before the appointed time, and their Chinese contact would be punctual to the second, he knew. As with many Eastern cultures, courtesy and politeness were highly important, even stylized, and it was considered as much of an insult to arrive early as to be late for an appointment.

  At precisely three-fifteen, the conference room door opened and a bellboy ushered in the Chinese delegation. There were three of them: two men and, surprisingly, a woman carrying what appeared to be a medical bag. They were all dressed in civilian clothes.

  Hailsham nodded politely to the obvious leader. He was tall for a Chinese, and with an unusually dark complexion which betrayed an ancestry stretching back to the days when the Mongol-Tartar hordes swept through central and eastern Asia. He reminded the major of pictures he had seen of North American Indians.

  He acknowledged Hailsham’s nod with a polite smile, although he made no attempt at a formal greeting. ‘I am General Chang,’ he announced in flawless English. This is Captain Leng Pui and Dr Su.’ He glanced around the room. ‘Are you all taking part in this mission?’

  Hailsham nodded. ‘What you see is what you get.’

  ‘Good.’

  General Chang motioned to the woman, who stepped forward, laid her bag on the desk and opened it. She withdrew a small membrane-sealed bottle containing a colourless liquid and several disposable syringes.

  ‘Perhaps you and your men would be so good as to roll up your sleeves,’ Chang suggested, looking at Hailsham again. ‘Dr Su will administer a small injection to each of you.’

  A slight frown clouded Hailsham’s features. ‘Injection?’ he queried. ‘We weren’t briefed on this. What is it?’

  Dr Su was carefully loading each syringe and laying them down in a neat row along the table. ‘It is nothing,’ she murmured soothingly. ‘Just a little booster vaccine, that is all. We have no specific knowledge of what biological contaminants you might be exposed to. This will give you some measure of protection against some of the possible viral strains.’

  Hailsham was still not sure. ‘What about aftereffects?’ he asked. ‘My men will need to be in peak condition. We can’t afford anything which might impair their performance in any way.’

  The doctor smiled. ‘There will be none, I assure you. Now, if you would be so good as to line up, I will administer the injections.’

  Hailsham considered the matter for several more seconds. Finally, he shrugged, slipped off his jacket and began to roll up his shirt sleeve, volunteering himself as the guinea pig. A muted babble of conversation broke out as the rest of the men fell into a ragged line behind him.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Thinker, you’ve gone as white as a bloody sheet,’ Jimmy observed.

  The burly Mancunian tried hard to raise a scornful grin, but failed miserably. He chewed at his bottom lip nervously, fighting to control the irrational phobia which had haunted him since childhood and was still one o
f the few things which could reduce him to a quivering jelly. As someone so self-contained, it bothered him greatly that he had a weakness, something he could not control. Some men feared being trapped in confined spaces, others had a morbid fear of snakes, or spiders. The Thinker was terrified of hypodermic needles.

  Jimmy could see the big man’s hands trembling, but he found it hard to accept the evidence of his own eyes. This was the man he had watched single-handedly charge up a rocky hill towards an Argentinian machine-gun nest at Goose Green, the M16 in his hands spitting furiously as a fusillade of 9mm slugs chewed up the ground around his feet. This was the man who could slog on through the roughest, toughest route march, his step sure and solid when others around him were beginning to turn to jelly at the knees. And now here was that same man reduced to a nervous wreck at the sight of a tiny silver needle.

  The Glaswegian was about to turn to the rest of the men and make a joke at the Thinker’s expense, but something stopped him. It was not just the warning, baleful glare in the corporal’s eyes. It was the sudden, somewhat frightening realization that they were all, in one way or another, vulnerable.

  Instead, he nudged the Mancunian gently in the ribs, winking at him. ‘Don’t worry, Thinker,’ he muttered quietly. ‘It’s only a little prick, after all. A bit like Trooper Naughton, really.’

  The Thinker flashed him a sheepish grin, which bore more than a trace of gratitude. ‘I just hate bloody injections,’ he murmured, getting back a little of his self-assurance from the shared joke. Nevertheless, he averted his eyes when it came to his turn, still unable to actually watch the needle sliding into his flesh.

  Typically, Tweedledum found a source of ribald humour in the situation, grinning up at Dr Su with brazen familiarity as she dabbed his arm with an antiseptic wipe. ‘Hope this is good for the clap as well, darlin’. I’ve never been too sure about those standard-issue condoms.’

  The woman’s face was a flat mask of oriental inscrutability as she inserted the needle. Nevertheless, it seemed to Tweedledum that she gave it a quite pronounced and unnecessary jerk as she pulled it out again. He was not grinning quite so broadly when he walked away from the table to rejoin his companions.

  The unexpected medical treatment dispensed with, Dr Su packed her bag again and left the room. General Chang turned to Major Hailsham.

  ‘The first thing I have to tell you is that the mission will be going ahead virtually as we have planned,’ he announced. ‘Transport has been arranged and is waiting outside the hotel to take you all directly to a Chinese Air Force base just outside Wuchow. From there you will be airlifted to Tacheng, where you will pick up your arms and equipment.’

  The man’s delivery was bland, but Hailsham had already picked up on that one little word – ‘virtually’.

  ‘Do I take it there has been a change of plan?’ he asked.

  Chang smiled thinly. ‘You are very astute, Major. I compliment you. Yes, as you so rightly assume, we have had to modify our original plans slightly in the light of some recent developments.’

  Hailsham’s face was grave. He looked at the tall Chinaman darkly, making no attempt to disguise his annoyance. The very essence of all SAS operations was meticulous planning and preparation. Last-minute changes were not only unwelcome – they were dangerous. Nevertheless, he tried to be as polite as possible. ‘Perhaps you would care to explain, General,’ he suggested.

  ‘Our latest intelligence reports tell us that guerrilla activity in the area has increased far more than expected in recent weeks,’ Chang informed him. ‘As a result, official Republican forces have also built up considerably. My superiors now feel that our original plan of inserting you and your men over the border by helicopter is unwise, both from your point of view and from ours. We think it much safer to parachute you in at night, from a transport plane flying at commercial altitude. HALO, I believe you call it, if our understanding of your procedures is correct.’

  ‘You’ve done your homework, General,’ Hailsham muttered, returning the man’s earlier compliment. ‘In which case you should be aware that we use modified parachutes, work with our own RAF Special Forces Flight and drop from an open rear ramp on a Hercules C-130. I take it you have none of these things.’

  General Chang seemed to take this observation as a personal affront. His body stiffened, his Mongoloid eyes narrowing even further. ‘The Chinese People’s Air Force is also highly trained, Major. We have modified Iluyshin bombers with a side-opening door which your men would find more than adequate. Our own special forces seem to have little trouble in utilizing similar techniques to those of your own.’

  Hailsham met the man’s eyes directly, facing the challenge. His gut reaction was to rise to the bait, but he resisted, shaking his head slowly. ‘I’m sorry. General, but I’m not prepared to make that decision without consulting my men. In private, if you don’t mind.’

  Chang’s expression had hardened to obvious rage now, mixed with the faintest trace of incredulity. ‘Consult your men?’ he demanded angrily. ‘Do you not just give them orders? May I remind you, Major Hailsham, that this joint mission was requested and planned at government level?’

  Hailsham remained calm and polite in the face of the implied threat. ‘I’m afraid we do things a little differently in the SAS, General. We call it democracy. Now, if you would be so good as to give me a couple of minutes alone with my men.’

  For a moment, the Chinaman held his ground, muscles working nervously beneath the flattened contours of his face. Then, clenching his fists into tight knots, he turned stiffly and strode towards the door, nodding curtly towards Captain Leng Pui to follow him.

  Hailsham waited until the door had closed behind them before addressing the men. ‘Well, I suppose you all heard that. So, what do we think about it?’

  Andrew threw it straight back at him. ‘What’s your opinion, boss?’

  Hailsham thought for a second. ‘My instinctive reaction is to say scrub the mission,’ he admitted. ‘But perhaps I’m overreacting.’

  ‘It’d certainly scrub your chances of getting on this year’s honours list, boss,’ Cyclops put in. ‘I reckon they’d have you cleaning out the latrines with a toothbrush a week after we got back.’

  ‘Aye, and it’d be your own fucking toothbrush as well,’ Jimmy added, for emphasis.

  Hailsham let the ripple of nervous laughter die away. ‘Seriously, though, we’re not in the business of taking uncalculated risks. And that’s exactly what we’re being asked to do. A night drop, over unknown territory, from an unfamiliar aircraft and with ’chutes of dubious performance. That’s a lot of rogue equations all in one go.’

  ‘On the other hand, we’ve all done side exits,’ Andrew cut in. ‘And we could raise our canopy height a few hundred feet to give us all that extra margin of safety.’

  ‘And we could show that Chinky bastard a thing or two about the finest regiment in the world,’ the Thinker muttered, gingerly rubbing the bruise on his arm, which was still smarting. He was not at all happy about the thought of having gone through his ordeal for nothing.

  Hailsham looked at them all with a sense of pride. ‘So the general concensus is that we go for it?’ he asked, although he already knew the answer.

  Andrew nodded, his ebony face splitting into a grin. ‘Who dares wins, eh, boss?’

  The matter was closed, the decision made. With a final nod of approval, Hailsham strode to the door and opened it to let the two Chinese officers back into the room.

  ‘We’ve decided to go along with your change of plan,’ he announced stiffly. ‘But with one proviso. We do a dummy run over neutral territory to familiarize ourselves with your procedures and equipment.’

  General Chang looked relieved. Perhaps too relieved, Hailsham thought. ‘That can be arranged,’ the Chinaman said, once again stony-faced. ‘Now, if you are ready, I will escort you and your men to the transport.’

  Hailsham fell back slightly, closing in on Andrew as the men filed out of the room and t
hrough the hotel lobby towards the twelve-seater minibus which was parked outside.

  ‘What’s up, boss?’ Andrew asked Hailsham. It was obvious that the major had something on his mind, and wanted to talk.

  Hailsham shook his head uncertainly. ‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing,’ he replied. ‘It’s just that I can’t help wondering if these slitty-eyed little bastards have any more surprises up their sleeves.’

  Chapter 9

  Major Hailsham sat in the training seat of the Shenyang F-9 fighter plane, gazing out through the perspex canopy at the sheer grandeur of the panorama spread out some 20,000 feet below him.

  To his left, the soaring, jagged and snow-capped peaks of the Tien Shan range competed for his attention with the twisted gullies and canyons of the Turfan Depression almost immediately below. Tearing his eyes away to look to the right, he could see the flat, featureless expanse of the Mongolian Plateau and the vast reaches of the Gobi Desert beyond.

  It all looked so barren, so utterly hostile, he thought. Yet the desolate and virtually worthless terrain had been the prize in a history of bloodshed and battle which stretched back over 400 years, the most recent change of ownership coming at the turn of the nineteenth century when the Soviet Union had managed to annex some fifty million square miles of territory from their Chinese neighbours. Right up to the present day, it had remained the scene of countless secret wars and border skirmishes between the two communist giants. No one in the West had the faintest notion of how many lives had been claimed over the years, and it was more than probable that no one really cared, either.

  The plane was safely inside Chinese territory, flying north-eastwards along the line of the Sinkiang-Kazakhstan border towards the roughly triangular confluence with Mongolia. Hailsham had insisted on the reconnaissance flight, even though the practice drop over the lower foothills of the Tien Shan mountains earlier that morning had been an unqualified success. Retrieved almost immediately by helicopter, he and his men had been safely back at the Tacheng airbase in good time for lunch. Despite his earlier misgivings, Hailsham had no complaints so far about Chinese efficiency or their good intentions to make the mission a success.