Soldier M: Invisible Enemy in Kazakhstan

by Peter Cave

  Andrew nodded. ‘Pretty well, I should think. But there’s a lot of “ifs” in there, boss.’

  Hailsham sucked at his teeth. ‘On the other hand, they could have been two stragglers trying to reach a rendezvous point when the storm broke. If so, then the question is: were they going up – or coming down?’

  ‘There is one other possibility,’ Andrew put in, just in case Hailsham had overlooked it. ‘They could have been loners – either survivors from a group which had been attacked, or a couple of deserters who’d had enough and were going home to their families.’

  Hailsham let out a little snort. ‘Now who’s creating a lot of “ifs” he replied, a faintly sardonic smile playing about the corners of his mouth.

  The entire discussion was basically pointless, Andrew suddenly realized, grinning ruefully. Hailsham was right, of course. In the final analysis, they simply had no choice. No matter what lay ahead of them, or what might possibly happen, there was only one way forward and they had to take it.

  The two men looked at each other with sheepish grins on their faces, both suddenly aware of the futility of their conversation.

  ‘You realize that we’ve just wasted a good five minutes,’ Andrew pointed out, rather superfluously.

  Hailsham nodded. ‘The thought had occurred,’ he said, falling back on the phrase which had triggered the discussion in the first place.

  They had made good time, covering a good three miles in just over a couple of hours. The men were in good spirits, encouraged by the reasonable ease of the climb and the weather, which could only be described as benign compared with what they had experienced previously. The temperature remained comfortably above zero, keeping the thick blanket of snow on the ground soft and light. Even where it had piled up into drifts which came up to their knees, they had little trouble ploughing through it, the leading man creating a path for the others to follow. Just to spread the strain even more, Hailsham had ordered a change in the marching order every half a mile or so. The last of the heavy cloud cover had melted away now, leaving a high and light mist of cirrus which occasionally allowed the pale, watery sun to shine through for several minutes at a time. Despite the fact that the wind had freshened slightly again, and was blowing against them along the side of the hog’s back, it was a pleasant enough day for healthy outdoor activity, and the trek was bracing without being too strenuous. In another time and place, Hailsham might have considered it a jaunt rather than a mission.

  Viewed at close quarters, the cliff-like rock face looked even more formidable than Hailsham had supposed. Viewed through the binoculars, which had a slightly foreshortening effect, it had appeared to be vertical, but he saw now that this was not the case. In fact, it actually cantilevered at an angle of about 110 degrees for the first twenty or thirty feet, before returning to the vertical. Great sheets and rivulets of ice festooned various parts of the face, glistening in the weak sunlight. Even the most experienced climber, armed with specialist equipment, would have found it challenging in the extreme. On the plus side, the ledge he had noticed was considerably wider than he had assumed, quickly becoming an open pathway which curved around the side of the mountain.

  Hailsham focused his eyes on the spot where the pass disappeared from his line of vision, then scanned the surrounding area. The fears of an ambush he had shared with Andrew now resurfaced. If one was to come at all, that would be the place, he realized, for that particular spot was in a direct line of fire from any one of a dozen locations higher up the surrounding peaks. He found the prospect sufficiently worrying to bring the party to a halt. Outlining the situation in a few well-chosen words, he prepared the men for a heightened state of alert.

  ‘Until we reach the plateau, you’re all to consider yourselves under full battle order,’ he told them. ‘And that means aggressive fire, by the way. These jokers have already shown us how trigger-happy they are, so I don’t want anyone playing Mr Nice Guy. If you see anything, shoot first and worry about evasive action afterwards. Is that understood?’

  The question was largely rhetorical, but a rattle of cocked and primed weapons gave Hailsham any answer he might have needed. He turned his attention to Safar, who was standing immediately behind him. ‘This might be a good place for you to turn back,’ he murmured in a gentle but oddly insistent tone. ‘You have done more than enough, and we all thank you for it. But now it might be advisable for you to return to your people.’

  Hailsham saw the sense of rejection which temporarily clouded the young man’s swarthy face and felt slightly guilty. The little Uzbek had understood him on a level which went far beyond the mere translation of another language. For without wanting to spell it out, Hailsham knew that Safar’s continued presence was no longer needed, and might even start to become a dangerous liability. The men had taken to him almost like a favourite pet, or a mascot. In a crisis situation any one of them might act instinctively rather than rationally to protect him, thus endangering their own lives and that of the others. It was not a risk Hailsham cared to take.

  There was another factor, of course. Clad in his colourful swathing of blankets, Safar made a rather tempting target. If, as with many Arabic cultures, the pattern of those blankets carried some clue to ethnic identity, then parading Safar in their midst would be like a red rag to a bull. Hailsham had already seen enough evidence of the blind and instinctive hatred between the Uzbeks and the Kazakhs to know that Safar’s presence was inviting attack. Without him, the possibility that the Kazakh forces would choose to leave them alone was increased.

  With the instinctive racial knowledge of one whose people had been spurned and despised for generations, Safar could tell all this from Hailsham’s apologetic eyes. There was no attempt at argument. With a brief, deferential nod of his head, the little Uzbek complied meekly.

  ‘I will leave you now,’ he murmured simply. ‘Just follow this path.’

  He turned away without another word and began to walk past the file of men, who looked at him with fond, almost sorrowful expressions on their faces. The Thinker stepped out into the little Uzbek’s path, holding out the AK-47 which he had picked up from the dead Kazakh in the cave, and thrust it into his hands. ‘You might find this will come in useful,’ he said quietly, even though Safar could not understand the words. It hardly mattered. It was a gesture which was universal. Safar grasped the weapon, cradling it against his chest with a thin smile on his face. Between friends of any culture, the traditional parting gift was recognized and appreciated.

  The men stood in silence and watched him walk away for several seconds. He never turned to look back at them. Finally, their last respects paid, Hailsham called them all back to attention.

  ‘Right, let’s get moving,’ he said brusquely. ‘And keep your bloody eyes open.’

  Weapons at the ready, and their senses on full alert, the column of men moved forward onto the ledge and began the gradual ascent to the narrow pass. Each footstep was more cautious now, carrying a new sense of urgency. Hailsham’s fears had been communicated all too clearly. Fears which were totally justified, as it was shortly to turn out. For carried on the wind, and echoing through the valleys and ridges between the mountains, the sound of helicopter engines was about to reach their ears.

  Chapter 19

  Tweedledee, in the Tail-end Charlie position and strung out some fifteen yards behind the main party, heard the sound first. He froze in his tracks, hissing ahead to Andrew, who was next in line.

  ‘Psst. We got company, boss.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Andrew spat out, his concern tinged with more than a hint of indignation, as though he took the unwelcome intrusion as a personal affront. ‘That’s all we bloody need right now.’ He shouted a warning ahead to Hailsham, at the front. ‘Incoming bandits.’

  Hailsham had detected the faint sound of the choppers, and was already considering a suitable reaction. Not that there was much choice, he thought bitterly. Their position could hardly have been worse. Strung out along the ledge, with
absolutely no cover at all, they might as well be waving welcome banners. He craned his neck upwards, his eyes sweeping the skies above. There was no visual sign yet, but the sound was definitely growing louder by the second. The helicopters – at least two of them, Hailsham reckoned – were headed in their direction sure enough, and with a particularly irksome sense of timing.

  There was a Jewish expression which summed up their position rather succinctly, Hailsham reflected with a sense of irony: ‘Caught between a rock and a hard place.’ It could have been specially commissioned for this very situation. Basically there were two choices – either make a break forward for the limited cover offered by the pass ahead or stay where they were. Both options were fraught with dangers. To rush forward blindly could be to run straight into an ambush, in which case they would probably be cut to shreds. To remain exposed invited the same fate. Hailsham’s sense of frustration was almost like a physical pain inside his head. Indecision tore at him like a terrible guilt.

  Then, suddenly, there was no decision to make any more. The matter was taken out of his hands as the two Hind-A choppers cleared a long ridge of hills to the east and came into view. Wheeling in the sky like a pair of scout bees performing a food dance, they homed in inexorably towards the troopers’ position. Hailsham studied them stoically, a strange sense of calm creeping through his body like an anaesthetic. His only identifiable feeling was one of mild surprise, he realized. For some obscure reason, he had always expected to die in a hot climate.

  These thoughts were not those of a defeatist, but of a realist. Hailsham was a born fighter, and would take a brave stand against whatever odds fate threw at him. But cold logic told him that six lightly armed troopers pinned against a bare rock face stood absolutely no chance of survival against two combat helicopters hell-bent on destroying them. It was as certain as night follows day.

  Equally as certain was his duty. Hailsham dropped to one knee on the rocky floor of the ledge, bringing his SA-80 up to his shoulder. He barked what he expected to be his last orders to the rest of the men.

  ‘Fire at will when you think you’ve got a chance of hitting something worthwhile.’

  There was little point in spelling it out any more plainly. Hailsham knew only too well that his men were as aware as he was of the awesome armour-plating specifications of the MIL Mi-24 series of helicopters. They were all tough – but the Hind-A assault version was perhaps the toughest of all. It had few vulnerable points, and it would take a very skilful or a very lucky shot at close range to bring one down.

  Trooper Barry Naughton also reflected on the probability of death – but without the equanimity of his commanding officer. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, a little voice screamed inside his head. Not so cold, so impersonal … so mechanical. All those hours spent in the ‘killing house’ at Hereford, pitting his brain and physical reflexes against recognizably human enemies, even if they were only cardboard pop-ups. All the months of training, of shared challenges and hardship, inherited foes and adopted friends. Comradeship, both group and individual pride, even the banter and the piss-taking. Everything the Army, and the SAS, had had led Barry to believe that an Army death would be like Army life. A matter of men pitted against men, an intense, close, and essentially living thing, somehow. Not hopelessly confronting two hunks of cold, grey metal in a cold, grey sky.

  For the first time in his life, Barry wished that he could be more articulate, if only in his own mind. He would have liked to explain his own thoughts to himself more clearly, sift through his own confusion and make sense of it. Disappointment, tinged with more than a hint of bitterness, crowded in on him. He only knew that this moment was wrong, and perhaps everything else had been wrong, too. Even his very reasons for choosing the Army as a career. Now, too late, he had begun to understand something about himself and his needs, realizing for the first time that the Army could never, and would never, satisfy them.

  Barry glanced sideways at his companions in turn, the bitterness spilling out of him as helpless anger.

  ‘Fuck you,’ he screamed. ‘Fuck you all.’ His hand dropped to his hip, drawing his Browning. Raising the handgun to his temple, he shot himself through the head.

  Hailsham registered the noise of the single shot, and the sight of the trooper’s head exploding sideways in a spray of blood and white bone fragments, almost as subliminal images. They were not real – they were just snatches of somebody else’s nightmare.

  Reality was the two helicopters hovering like a pair of malevolent dragonflies waiting to close in on their prey. Only they were not closing in, Hailsham suddenly realized with a shock. Both craft had assumed and were holding a position immediately above the steeper side of the hog’s back the troopers had traversed earlier. Watching and waiting. Hailsham shivered slightly, the sense of quiet menace was so acute.

  Seconds ticked away into a minute, and then two. To the men crouched on the exposed ledge, the tension was almost unbearable. Each of them knew that both of the choppers carried at least four 57mm rockets, and were well within range to launch them. Yet they did not fire. What the hell were they waiting for? Hailsham asked himself.

  Andrew posed the question out loud. ‘What the fuck are they playing at?’ he exploded.

  Hailsham could only shrug. ‘Maybe they’re just toying with us,’ he suggested. ‘Maybe they’ve radioed back to base and are waiting for specific orders. Who knows?’

  ‘Or maybe they’re scared of us,’ the Thinker put in, with characteristic sarcasm. It was intended to be a joke, but it gave Hailsham food for serious thought.

  ‘Actually, you might not be too far from the truth,’ he muttered eventually, having analysed the situation and made possible sense of it. ‘Neither of those pilots has any way of knowing we don’t have the Stinger any more. To them, this could seem like a stand-off situation.’

  ‘Which would explain why they’re holding a position over that ridge,’ Andrew agreed, following Hailsham’s chain of thought. ‘At the first sign of a missile launch, they can simply drop down behind it like a couple of concrete skylarks.’

  At another time, Hailsham might have enjoyed Andrew’s colourful imagery, even found it worthy of a smile. But the tension of the situation, and the horror of Naughton’s death, had numbed everything except that which had been programmed into his subconscious by a lifetime of training. Several minutes had now passed, and expected death had not materialized. It was time to consider survival again.

  ‘Someone’s got to make a move to break this deadlock,’ Hailsham said firmly. It might as well be us. I suggest we start to make a slow and very cautious bug-out back to the rocks at the base of the cliff. If the bastards let us get that far, we can at least break up and seek individual cover. That is, of course, unless anyone else has a better idea.’

  The Thinker spoke for them all. ‘Sounds pretty good to me, boss.’

  Andrew also nodded his assent. Hailsham rose to his feet, stepping sideways over the dead trooper. Never taking his eyes from the two hovering helicopters, he executed the first of a series of slow, crab-like steps back down the slope of the ledge.

  As though they were linked in some strange and invisible way, these small movements were picked up and copied by the two helicopters. Both craft rose perhaps thirty to forty feet higher in the sky, drifting to the left side of the hog’s back as though carried on the wind. Hailsham froze; the choppers ceased their lateral movement and dropped back to the ridge again.

  ‘This is fucking crazy,’ Hailsham muttered. Galvanizing himself into movement once more, he took another dozen steps.

  The two helicopters started to rise again, but this time they did not stop. Hardly daring to believe his own eyes, Hailsham watched the two craft climb steadily to a height of around two hundred feet above the ridge, then peel off and wheel away back in the direction they had come from. In a matter of minutes they had dwindled to gnat-like insignificance in the sky and then out of sight altogether behind the mountains. The chatter of th
eir engines faded to a dim and distant echo, then fell below an audible level. They were gone.

  Sheer relief, and a sense of incredulity, hit them all like a punch in the guts.

  ‘Well what the hell do you make of that?’ Cyclops asked finally, of no one in particular. He was not really expecting an answer, and was not surprised when none was offered. Now that the immediate threat of the helicopters was past, the men’s thoughts were free to dwell on Barry again. They all looked back up the incline to where he lay as he had fallen, his shattered head surrounded by the dark stain of blood already congealing in the cold.

  Andrew pulled Hailsham slightly to one side, sighing deeply. ‘What a fucking waste,’ he murmured. ‘What the hell was he thinking?’

  Hailsham shrugged helplessly, his face drawn and grim. ‘Christ, we think we’re so bloody clever, don’t we?’ he said bitterly. ‘We kid ourselves that our selection and training techniques are foolproof – but they’re not. Every now and again, some poor bastard like Naughton slips through the net somehow.’ He looked at Andrew, his eyes heavy with unjustified guilt. ‘Goddammit, Andrew, someone should have picked up that he was likely to crack like a rotten egg under the first crisis situation. The pathetic little bastard should never have been badged.’

  Andrew attempted to reassure him. ‘That was nothing to do with you, Mike,’ he pointed out. ‘It’s not your fault.’

  But Hailsham was not going to be consoled easily. He shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘But I picked him for this mission, Andrew. I’m responsible for that.’

  ‘You chose him from a shortlist because he had Arctic training under his belt and he was a good back-up sniper in case anything happened to Cyclops,’ Andrew reminded him forcefully. ‘On paper he was the right man for the job. Fuck it, Mike – if you want to start apportioning blame, then we all ought to collect our share. Nobody ever really talked to the kid, for Chrissake, apart from the bullshit and the piss-taking. Maybe that was the trouble – none of us ever really knew him.’