by Peter Cave
Hailsham digested this, glancing up at the body on the ledge again. ‘The unknown soldier,’ he murmured finally, an edge of savage irony in his voice. He looked up into the empty sky again, as if to completely reassure himself that the helicopters were gone.
‘Think they’ll be back?’ Andrew asked, reading his thoughts.
‘Christ knows,’ Hailsham answered with a shrug. ‘But I don’t think it’s a good idea to wait around here to find out. Let’s get moving.’
He moved into point position again, ready to lead them all back up the ledge on their original course. There seemed to be little point in reminding the men about staying on their guard again. They were all as totally primed for action as a she-cat on heat. They passed Naughton’s body, leaving it where it lay on the bare ledge. There were not even enough loose rocks around to build a cairn. If scavengers had not already taken it, they would remove the body for proper burial on the way back, Hailsham thought. That was if they got back.
They reached the point where the ledge cut round the side of the mountain into unknown territory. It sliced deeper into the rock face here, creating a sloping overhang of rock above their heads. Rather than walk upright on the outer edge, Hailsham led them deeper into the V-shaped gash – a manoeuvre which necessitated crouching over like a tribe of primitive ape-men. Rounding the bend, Hailsham was slightly dismayed to see that the ledge had largely crumbled away for about twenty feet, leaving only a thin shelf of rock no wider than a man’s boot. However, the fissure in the rock face continued, although it now dropped in height to no more than a horizontal slit. There was no real choice but to drop down and slither through the next section on their bellies, pushing their bergens ahead of them.
‘I suppose this ain’t the best time to tell you about my claustrophobia, is it, boss?’ the Thinker said deadpan, immediately behind Hailsham. Nevertheless, he followed the major’s lead in hitting the deck, although he preferred to progress on his back rather than his stomach.
Hailsham edged his way forwards until the fissure began to open up again. Ahead of him, he could now see that they had come round the edge of the mountain and would shortly be, as he had fully expected, totally exposed to any one of half a dozen vantage points from the other surrounding peaks. He stopped, craning his head around to hiss back to the men behind him.
‘We go out singly, at twenty-second intervals. First sign of trouble, you get your heads back under cover, ASAP. Understood?’ Raising himself onto his hands and knees, Hailsham crawled forward another few yards until he was able to climb to his feet again. He shrugged into his bergen and checked his SA-80. Now comes the nasty bit, he thought.
Squinting against the sudden shock of stepping out into full daylight again, Hailsham took a breath and moved out from beneath the cover of the overhang. He took in the immediate terrain quickly with practised and wary eyes. The ledge widened and flattened out in front of him, forming an open bowl at the foot of two steep and rocky slopes to his left and right. Both climbed for several hundred feet, at roughly the same sort of gradient, but it was the one on the right which immediately seemed to offer the most promise. Slightly broader than its companion, it faced north-east and so was constantly exposed to both the warmth of the daytime sun and the icy blasts of Arctic winds. Generations of sudden and dramatic temperature change, added to the ferocity of wind, storm and blizzard, had split and eroded the rock face into broken and channelled ridges and fissures which provided an almost stair-like ascent. Climbing it would present little difficulty, Hailsham thought with deep satisfaction. He took another few steps forward, clearing the way for the Thinker to come out behind him.
The sudden, sharp crack of a rifle shot and a small spurt of chipped rock and dust from the ground in front of him made Hailsham react with lightning speed. Without pausing to even consider from which direction the shot had been fired, he threw himself to the ground, scrabbling backwards to regain the cover of the overhang. The Thinker, who had just been climbing to his feet, had no chance to get out of the way as Hailsham backed hurriedly into his legs. Thrown off balance, the corporal stumbled and fell forwards, ending up hunched over his CO’s back like a dog mounting a bitch.
‘Jesus Christ, boss – we can’t go on meeting like this,’ he muttered, struggling to pull himself off into a more dignified position. Regaining his hands and knees, he crawled up to Hailsham’s side. ‘Looks like we’ve got a problem,’ he said with typical understatement.
Hailsham nodded. ‘I had a bad feeling about this all along. Don’t you just hate it when you’re always right?’ He twisted his body round, curling into a near-foetal position so that he could call back to the rest of the men still making their way along the fissure. ‘Everybody freeze where they are for the moment – only get ready to back off fast if I give the word.’
Andrew’s voice echoed up to him. ‘You got cover, boss?’ There was genuine concern in his voice.
Hailsham looked upwards at the comforting solidity of the rock overhanging his head. They were protected well enough for the present, he reckoned. There was no way anyone outside could have a direct line of fire. In the longer term, however, their safety largely depended on the position, strength and fire-power of their unknown enemy. If they were in a position to get closer, and had a grenade launcher at their disposal, then Hailsham and the rest of his men could be in deep shit.
Hailsham neglected to make this particular point to Andrew as he called back his answer. ‘We’re OK here, but I need to get out there again to take a look-see at what we’re up against.’ He glanced aside at the Thinker. ‘Reckon you can squeeze up close enough to give me covering fire without shooting me up the backside?’
The Thinker grinned. ‘I can try,’ he said. ‘It largely depends on whether you can keep your arse and your head down at the same time.’
‘Point taken,’ Hailsham muttered, returning the grin. ‘So let’s do it.’ He crawled forward until he could raise to a crouch and poised himself on the balls of his feet. ‘Cover on my left,’ he hissed at the Thinker. ‘My gut tells me that’s where they are.’
‘You got it, boss.’ Completely serious now, the big man cradled the bullpup in his arms and moved into position behind Hailsham.
‘Now,’ Hailsham hissed. He threw himself into the open, firing a short burst into the air.
Behind him, and to his left, the Thinker began a longer, raking burst along the top of the eastern ridge, counting off three seconds in his head before pulling back again to make room for Hailsham. Two individual rifle shots cracked out before Hailsham was safely back under the protection of the overhang.
‘See anything?’ the Thinker asked.
Hailsham nodded. ‘I was right. They’re up on the left sure enough. The arrogant bastards are so confident they’ve got us completely pinned down that they’re standing right out in the open.’
The Thinker flashed him an apologetic smile. ‘They could be right, boss.’
‘Yeah,’ Hailsham grunted. ‘Anyway, go again. I need to get an accurate head count. Give me another three seconds, and concentrate your fire about eleven o’clock. Ready?’
‘I’m with you.’
The two men poised themselves to repeat the first manoeuvre. This time, the Thinker saw a couple of figures as he opened fire, and had the brief satisfaction of seeing one of them topple sideways before he ducked back into cover.
‘And then there were five,’ Hailsham murmured as he retreated under the overhang. ‘Nice one, Thinker.’
The Mancunian smiled proudly. ‘We aim to please, boss. Reckon that’s all of ’em?’
Hailsham considered for a few seconds, finally nodding. ‘Sounds about right,’ he said. ‘Six up there, plus the two we encountered earlier. These guerrilla groups rarely operate much into double figures.’ He allowed himself a thin smile. ‘Encouraging, don’t you think? If you look at it from the right perspective, we’ve already accounted for a third of the buggers.’
The Thinker was not impressed with the
philosophical school of thought which said that a half-empty glass of beer was half full. ‘You look at it that way if you like,’ he said. ‘Personally, I’m a half-empty man.’ He gave Hailsham a quizzical look. ‘So, what do we do now?’
‘I think it’s time to call a Chinese parliament,’ Hailsham said.
Chapter 20
Hailsham outlined their position as simply and as quickly as possible. ‘So, gentlemen, that’s the situation,’ he finished off. ‘Please consider yourselves free to make any suggestions.’
‘There’s the obvious, of course,’ the Thinker said. ‘We just shoot and scoot.’
‘Yes, there’s always that possibility,’ Hailsham agreed with a nod. ‘But that doesn’t offer us very good odds. There’s just about room for two men at a time out there, and damn-all cover. You were lucky the last time, picking one of them off while they were still out in the open. They’ll have learned a lesson from that and taken up good defensive positions. It means we’d be out there, completely exposed and with no targets to shoot at. Sitting ducks. Even at a conservative estimate, I’d reckon our losses would be sixty per cent.’
‘Suppose we loaded those odds a bit more in our favour,’ Cyclops suggested. ‘We could break out a mortar and one man could operate it from under the cover of the overhang. A nice pattern of shells laid down on that mountainside would give the bastards something to think about while the rest made a run for it.’
It was a sensible suggestion, which Hailsham thought about. ‘OK, that’s a good contender,’ he admitted at last. ‘The main drawback as far as I can see is that whoever is on the mortar is on a hiding to nothing. Sooner or later, he’s going to have to run the gauntlet all on his own.’
‘I’d thought about that, boss,’ Cyclops said. ‘Perhaps I didn’t make it clear that I was volunteering for the job.’
‘Noted and commended, Corporal,’ Hailsham replied. ‘But I’m still looking for the main chance which is going to get us all out of here in one piece.’
‘Look, we don’t really want to get into a fight at all, unless we have to,’ Andrew pointed out. ‘Like someone said before we started out on this crazy mission: this ain’t our war. So, isn’t it at least possible that these guys might feel the same way?’
‘What are you suggesting, boss?’ asked Tweedledee. ‘We surrender to ’em?’
Andrew ignored the facetious comment, directing his attention to Hailsham. ‘Well? Seriously, don’t you think we ought to offer them the chance of a truce? What have we got to lose?’
It sounded like an eminently sensible suggestion, Hailsham thought, although he held out faint hopes of it succeeding. Experience so far had shown the guerrilla forces on both sides to be both nervous and trigger-happy. Fortunately for them in the latter case, Hailsham thought gratefully. If the over-eager rifleman had not loosed off that first, erratic shot, they might all now be dead. If the guerrillas had been a bit smarter, they would have waited for the entire patrol to get out into the open, and then picked them all off in one fell swoop.
Hailsham detached the white hood from his Arctic suit and draped it over the barrel of his SA-80. Think this will do for a white flag?’ he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he moved out towards the lip of the overhang, holding the gun out at arm’s length.
A fusillade of shots gave him the answer he had feared. Returning to the rest of the men, he smiled ruefully. ‘Well, it was a nice idea, anyway,’ he said to Andrew. ‘Pity everyone doesn’t share your pacifist inclinations.’ He was silent for a few seconds. ‘Well, has anyone else got any bright ideas?’
‘Suppose we bug out and try to find another way up?’ the Thinker put in. ‘Maybe even a completely different route.’
There was a long silence during which it became clear that no more suggestions were forthcoming. Rather than let time waste any more, Hailsham decided to sum up the options for them.
‘So, basically, we go out all gung-ho like the Light Brigade or we sneak back with our tails between our legs.’ He paused for a second, the trace of a sparkle in his eyes. ‘Or we go for a combination of the ideas we’ve already discussed.’
Hailsham had some sort of a plan, Andrew could tell. ‘What are you thinking, boss?’
Hailsham did not answer him, turning to Cyclops instead. ‘How’s your climbing, Corporal? Ever manage to get past the giant-spider phase in the school playground?’
Cyclops shrugged. ‘I managed the tree at the bottom of the garden once. Why do you ask?’
The face at the bottom of this pass,’ Hailsham said. ‘It’s nasty, but not impossible.’
Cyclops looked at him doubtfully. ‘Christ, boss, we’d never make that loaded with all our equipment.’
‘True,’ Hailsham allowed. ‘But one man, carrying only a rifle, might stand a bloody good chance.’ For the moment, he said no more.
He had no need to, for Cyclops was already ahead of him. ‘And if that just happened to be a sniping rifle, and the guy carrying it knew how to use it … we could be talking about a whole new game plan,’ he finished off for Hailsham.
The major looked him squarely in the eyes. ‘That man would have to volunteer, of course,’ he murmured. ‘He’d also have to be something of a prat to even consider such a hazardous mission.’
Cyclops grinned good-naturedly. ‘The sort of prat who would offer to sit out in the open with a mortar, for instance?’
Hailsham nodded. ‘Yes, someone like that might do quite nicely. Then, if another prat like myself were to operate the mortar …’
He did not bother to finish. It was, after all, a Chinese parliament. The rest of the men had to make their own decisions. Hailsham sat quietly, eyeing them all in turn as they digested the scheme he had outlined.
‘It could work,’ the Thinker muttered eventually. ‘Dammit, boss, it could bloody well work.’
‘It will work,’ Cyclops said quietly. ‘I could probably pick off two or even three of those bastards before they even knew what was happening. And once the whole mountainside under their feet starts going up like Guy Fawkes Night, they’ll be too bloody busy running like fucking rabbits to worry about you guys.’
‘But just in case, you’ll be in position to cover the boss when he makes his run,’ Andrew put in, his tone reflecting the general air of enthusiasm. ‘I like it.’
Perhaps they were all getting a bit too carried away, Hailsham reflected. His face more serious, he looked at Cyclops again. ‘Seriously, though, the whole thing hangs on you being able to get up that rock face. Can you make it, do you think?’
It was Cyclops’s turn to review the whole scheme in the harsh light of reality. There was no point in making rash promises. ‘I won’t know until I try,’ he said with complete honesty. He turned to Andrew. ‘How much proper climbing equipment are we carrying?’
The sergeant’s face suddenly fell as a terrible thought struck him. In the temporary euphoria, it was something they had all overlooked. ‘It ain’t good,’ he said grimly. ‘This whole jaunt was basically underequipped from the start, as you well know. Cutting weight seemed like a good idea at the time.’ He paused for a moment, as if unwilling to release the really bad news. ‘The trouble is, most of the gear was in Jimmy’s bergen. He was our climbing expert.’ He paused again, racking his memory for a complete inventory of the limited equipment he had requisitioned. ‘We’ve still got ropes, of course, and there should be a few pitons and perhaps half a dozen spikes in your own pack. That’s about it, I’m afraid.’
Cyclops accepted the news with a philosophical shrug. ‘Well, I suppose it will have to do,’ he said. Stripping off his bergen, he began to rummage through it for the items in question.
‘I just had an idea that might help,’ the Thinker blurted out suddenly. He began to rummage through his own equipment, finally pulling out a small handful of time fuses and detonator caps. Andrew and Hailsham looked at him with puzzled expressions on their faces. The Thinker grinned back sheepishly. ‘Well, they do tell us to improvise,’ he
said quietly. ‘So this is my contribution.’ He held out the detonators to Cyclops. ‘If you really got stuck, one of these might blast out just enough rock to give you a hand or toe hold in an emergency,’ he suggested. ‘Only don’t blow your own fucking head off, that’s all.’
Cyclops accepted the detonators gratefully. The Thinker was right. At a pinch, they might just work. It was worth taking them along, anyway. Every little helped. He unpacked the L96A1 sniper rifle, stroking the green plastic stock with the caress of a lover. He even whispered words of endearment to the sleek killing machine: ‘It’s just going to be me and you, my beauty. You won’t let me down, will you?’
After assembling, carefully cleaning and checking the weapon, Cyclops packed a dozen of the heavy 7.62mm slugs into his escape belt and glanced up at Hailsham. ‘Right, I’m ready,’ he announced flatly.
Hailsham nodded, glancing at his watch. ‘It should take you about twelve minutes to get back down to the face,’ he said quietly. ‘And hopefully no more than twenty to make the ascent. How long to set up once you reach a decent firing position?’
Cyclops thought over Hailsham’s projected timings carefully. They seemed reasonable enough. ‘Give me another five minutes on top,’ he suggested eventually. ‘I’ll need a couple of ranging shots to recalibrate the sights after humping this baby up a mountain. No point in blasting off blind if you’re not going to hit what you’re aiming at.’
Hailsham ran the figures through his head again. ‘OK, so forty minutes tops,’ he said. ‘We’ll set up for action well before that, but wait for your first two shots. Exactly thirty seconds after your second shot we’ll fire a few bursts up the mountain to bring them out into the open. Then it’s down to you. We’ll give you exactly five clear shots before we open up with the mortar and make our break for it. If everything goes well, we’ll RV with you up on the plateau Safar spoke about.’
For a makeshift plan, it all seemed pretty tight. ‘You got it, boss,’ Cyclops said, and prepared to move off. It took a certain amount of intricate shuffling and manoeuvring in the narrowest part of the fissure to let him through, but eventually he was clear and on his way. The Thinker and Tweedledee took advantage of the extra room to crowd up into the cover of the overhang, taking it upon themselves to set up the mortar.