Soldier M: Invisible Enemy in Kazakhstan

by Peter Cave

  ‘Well, all we have to do now is wait, gentlemen,’ Hailsham said, checking his watch again.

  There was a long, strained silence before Tweedledee finally piped up. ‘You know, boss – you never did get around to telling us that story about the whore and the donkey in Kuwait.’

  Hailsham smiled thinly. ‘Didn’t I?’ he replied with mock surprise. ‘Well, in that case …’

  Despite the luridness of the tale, which Hailsham embellished freely for the occasion, it was a long and agonizing wait for all of them. Everyone had seen the rock face on the way past, and was fully aware of the difficulties it posed. Their watches had rarely been used so much in such a short space of time.

  Just over half an hour had passed when they heard the first, faint echo of a small explosion. It made them all jump, even though they were already on tenterhooks.

  Three pairs of eyes flashed towards Hailsham’s, questioningly.

  ‘He can’t have made it already,’ Andrew murmured, glancing at his watch again for perhaps the twentieth time.

  Hailsham shook his head slowly, looking aside at the Thinker. ‘Looks like your little idea came in useful after all,’ he observed. The sound they had heard had to be one of the detonator caps going off. The firing signature of the Accuracy International was loud, and distinctive. Even from a distance it had a sharp, unique quality.

  They settled back to wait again. The allotted forty minutes passed. Hailsham’s face was taut with strain as he realized a full hour had elapsed since Cyclops’s departure.

  ‘Dammit, he should have made it by now,’ he hissed.

  There was a pregnant pause; nobody seemed to want to voice the obvious. But somebody had to say it.

  ‘Maybe he didn’t make it,’ Andrew said flatly at last, letting them all off the hook.

  There it was, out in the open. There was almost a sense of relief underneath the depression which settled over them like a black cloud.

  ‘Yeah,’ Hailsham grunted, a deep sigh following the single word of resignation. He checked his watch again, his face grim. ‘We’ll give him another five minutes, and then we’ll have to revert to Plan A.’

  They all fell silent again, deliberately avoiding each other’s gaze as the seconds continued to tick inexorably away.

  Finally, reluctantly, Hailsham spoke again. ‘It’s time to make a move,’ he announced gravely. He started to make for the mortar. ‘Move out in your own time as soon as I start plastering that mountain. And good luck,’ he added, trying vainly not to make it sound like a farewell.

  The sudden, sharp report of a heavy-calibre rifle shattered the silence, cracking off the mountains in a series of spitting echoes.

  Relief was not the word for the wave of near-exultation which seemed to sweep through the air of gloom like a storm wind charged with electricity. It hit Hailsham like a blow in the chest, driving air from his lungs up into his throat, where it lodged in a painful lump. Andrew felt like Saul on the road to Damascus, or a kid waking up to his first Christmas stocking. Miracles did happen, there really was magic in the world. The Thinker let out a loud whoop which was totally out of character.

  ‘He made it. The beautiful bastard made it,’ Tweedledee screamed out, the look on his face mirroring the sheer disbelief in his voice.

  They all waited, picturing Cyclops’s actions and counting off the seconds in their heads. A minor adjustment with thumb and forefinger … another squint through the adjusted sights … another cartridge slipped into the breech … loaded and cocked. Finger on the trigger now … taking up the slight pressure of resistance … gently squeezing.

  The second report was the signal for them all. Hailsham’s eyes darted to his watch then back up to Andrew, counting under his breath as the Barbadian tensed himself for action.

  Thirty seconds,’ he barked. ‘Go.’

  Andrew was already crouched and poised under the last safe area of cover. On Hailsham’s command, he exploded from underneath the overhang, emptying the entire thirty-round magazine up into the mountains in less than three seconds. He was already well back in cover and getting ready to slam a new magazine into the SA-80 when the first of half a dozen rifle slugs chewed into the ground and rock face where he had stood. Almost simultaneously came the louder crack of the Accuracy International L96.

  Hailsham dropped to his belly, slithering up to the mortar and sliding the base plate forward until the firing tube pointed clear of the overhang. Four 51mm bombs lay out in a neat line in readiness. Selecting the first, Hailsham cradled it in his hand, waiting for Cyclops’s next four shots.

  They came with remarkable speed – even for Cyclops. Even knowing the man’s legendary skill, Hailsham found it hard to believe that any man could reload, select a target, aim and fire the single shot, bolt-action weapon – so quickly. He could only pray that the shots were as accurate as they were fast. He held the tail fins of the mortar bomb over the open mouth of the firing tube as the last of the five shots cracked out amid the still-reverberating echoes of its predecessor.

  First-shot accuracy with the comparatively cheap and simple British 51mm mortar was never easy, and Hailsham was not even really trying. He dropped the first bomb into the tube, merely raking it down a couple of degrees and reloading as the first missile discharged with a dull whoosh. Firing the second shell, he twisted the base plate the merest faction of an inch and dropped in the third just as the first explosion boomed out from the mountainside above.

  Hailsham notched the firing tube up again, holding the last missile in position. ‘Get going,’ he screamed without looking round. He waited perhaps two seconds until Andrew ran past his prone body and then dropped it into the tube.

  Then the Thinker and Tweedledee were also past him and gone, breaking out from cover and running at full pelt, firing sideways from the hip. The chatter of three weapons, and the echoing rumble of the rest of the exploding mortar shells created a wall of noise through which it was impossible to pick out the sound of individual rifle fire. Hailsham thought that he heard two more shots from Cyclops’s L96, but he could not be sure.

  Then, abruptly, there was silence again. Hailsham sucked in a deep breath. So, this was it, he told himself, pushing himself to his feet and staring out into the open. He had estimated a twenty-second run to the bowl at the foot of the two hills. Once upon a time he might have done it in fifteen. Except he was no longer twenty-five, and they were probably already at an altitude of around 13,000 feet.

  Neither was a factor that he cared to dwell on, even if there had been time to do so. ‘Oh well, shit or bust time, Hailsham,’ he told himself out loud, jumping off the balls of his feet and breaking into a run.

  A single bullet smacked into the rock face in front of him, but Hailsham kept running. Up ahead, two of the SA-80s opened up in unison from inside the cover of a rock fissure with a couple of short bursts. Three or four single shots came from another location nearby. After that there was silence again. There was no more rifle fire.

  Reaching the bowl, Hailsham threw himself into a diving roll and sought the scant cover of a shallow depression. He lay face down, catching his breath for several seconds before glancing up and attempting to get his bearings.

  Andrew’s grinning black face popped up from behind a long, flat rock to his right. ‘Actually, I think we got ’em all, boss – but I’d keeni-meeni over here just to be on the safe side, if I were you.’

  Hailsham took the advice to heart, adopting the slithering, snake-like belly crawl which the poached Swahili phrase suggested. Wriggling over to join Andrew, he heaved himself over the top of the rock and dropped into cover beside him.

  ‘You really think we got the lot?’ he asked.

  Andrew nodded happily. ‘Pretty sure,’ he said confidently. ‘I saw Cyclops take two out as we started running, and Thinker popped one just after we hit the bowl. One of your mortar rounds threw something up in the air that looked remarkably like the bottom two-thirds of a body, and I just hit that last bastard who took a s
hot at you. If your original head count was right, I figure we’re home and dry. He broke off to shrug. ‘Not that it really matters, anyway. If there is anyone left up there, Cyclops can pick ’em off while they’re still squinting down the sights. So, do you want to move out again?’

  Hailsham shook his head. ‘No, we’ll rest up for five or ten minutes. Just in case there are any stragglers left up on that mountain. By that time they’ll have either shown themselves or got the fuck out to safer ground. Don’t forget – they don’t know we’re not coming after them. Besides, we’ve got a long, hard climb ahead of us, and a poor old bastard like me needs all the rest he can get.’

  ‘Jesus, boss, you hared along that ridge like a bloody nineteen-year-old,’ Andrew told him, in what was supposed to be a compliment.

  Hailsham laughed cynically. He could still feel his heart pumping in his chest like an antiquated steamhammer. ‘Yeah, but a nineteen-year-old what?’

  Just as Hailsham’s initial recce of the northern slope had suggested, the climbing was hard enough, but not too difficult. It was more like advanced rock climbing than real mountaineering, and by taking it at a restrained but steady pace they could monitor their own progress almost minute by minute. Less than half an hour after leaving the bowl, they were starting to come more or less in line with the top of the face which Cyclops had taken, and were probably slightly over halfway to the summit.

  Hailsham’s belly was starting to rumble. It was now nearly six hours since their last, meagre meal and they had all burned up a great deal of mental and physical energy. Although he was in no doubt that they could all hold out for a while yet, the need for food would become a priority soon enough, even if the reasonably bearable weather conditions persisted. But if the storms and the icy winds returned, it might be a completely different matter. For nothing drained the body’s reserves as efficiently as bitter and sustained cold. Allied to hunger, it could be an equally efficient killer.

  The route ahead offered at least some slim hopes, Hailsham thought optimistically, recalling his basic research into the topography of the region before the mission had got under way. The high mountain plateaux were invariably used as summer pasture areas by the semi-nomadic tribespeople of the region. It was more than possible that the droppings of grazing animals had enriched the ground over the years to the extent that it had set up its own limited life-chain. Beetles, insects or worms at the lowest and most unpalatable end of the spectrum, and perhaps small mammals at the more optimistic level. Allowing himself to pursue this line of reasoning to its eventual, if somewhat wishful, conclusion, Hailsham dared to imagine that the plateau areas might even be the source of the ground-burrowing marmots which seemed to make up the basic protein source of the locals.

  With this thought in mind, Hailsham suddenly realized that he should have asked Safar for more details about the life-cycle of the creatures and how they were captured. Did they roam free in the winter months, and if so, what was the best way to trap them? Or did they hibernate, and have to be dug up from deep underground burrows? Cursing himself for his oversight, Hailsham reflected that he did not even know if the rodents were diurnal or nocturnal in their habits.

  Forcing himself to snap out of a potential chain of negative thoughts again, Hailsham indulged in the most fanciful imaginings, picturing the plateau region populated by stray or abandoned goats which had somehow managed to establish feral colonies and survive the harsh winters. Fantasizing about a fresh goat steak brought the saliva bubbling to his palate and started his stomach rumbling again with renewed vigour. With a conscious effort, Hailsham pushed all thoughts of food from his mind and concentrated on his climbing once again as the going suddenly got tougher.

  Dragging himself over the crest of a rocky ridge, Hailsham saw that the terrain immediately ahead changed dramatically. Quite abruptly the crags and crannies which had assisted their passage were no longer in evidence. It was as if a giant bulldozer had run amok down the mountainside at a crazy angle, sweeping away all surface features and leaving only a smooth, tilted plate of rock which was too steep to even retain snow. That had all slipped down the face into massive drifts at the left-hand corner, in depths it was impossible even to guess at.

  Hailsham regarded this new obstacle morosely. To attempt a vertical climb of the tilted plane was obviously impractical, since the direct route up represented a gradient of perhaps sixty-five or seventy degrees. The only realistic approach was to traverse it at an obtuse angle, gaining height gradually. The smooth wall of rock stretched ahead for about a mile and a half, actually rising about six hundred feet to the mouth of a rocky gorge which split the next range into two near-vertical faces.

  Skirting round the area of more obvious snowdrifts, Hailsham moved warily, checking each step foward with a cautious probe of his foot. Several times his leg sank almost up to the thigh in the soft, powdery snow before encountering something solid beneath it. Acute awareness of the dangers of plunging into a hidden crevasse at any moment made for agonizingly slow and gut-churning progress, and Hailsham was profoundly relieved when he finally reached the bare rock face and hauled himself up onto it. He sat back, watching the rest of his men as they followed his ploughed-out trail through the drifts.

  Andrew perched himself on the rock beside Hailsham. ‘Where now?’

  Hailsham jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards the gorge. ‘Hobson’s Choice, from the look of things. It won’t be easy,’ he added, rather stating the obvious.

  Andrew took in the daunting traverse across the rock face with a faint nod. ‘I’m beginning to think we sent Cyclops up the easy route,’ he muttered. ‘From here, that looks like a job for Spiderman.’

  Hailsham allowed himself a wry smile. ‘We’re supposed to be supermen – remember? Faster than a speeding bullet … clearing tall buildings at a single bound? Nothing’s impossible for the SAS.’

  Andrew grinned. ‘Oh yes, I forgot. Well, that’s all right, then.’

  ‘However, as handy telephone boxes around here seem somewhat conspicuous by their absence,’ Hailsham went on, ‘I suggest a slightly more mortal approach. We’ll just take it in very easy stages. Let’s call it the Janet and John approach to mountaineering.’ He half-turned, running his eyes along the inclined plane of the face and seeking out features which could be used to their advantage. Although there were no obvious fissures or projections, the seemingly smooth face was not uniformly bland. At varying heights and angles all the way up, the main mass of reddish-brown rock was striated by layers of a darker colour, like a multi-layered sponge cake. It was obviously composed of two compressed, but clearly different rock layers. And where two layers met, there was almost sure to be a slight imperfection caused by differing degrees of erosion, Hailsham knew. It might be no more than a few millimetres, but it would probably be enough for a man to get some sort of a grip on. Preferably a man unburdened by heavy equipment.

  Hailsham extended one finger, tracing along the fault lines. ‘There,’ he said, pointing to one such layer. ‘And there,’ he added, running his finger back, tracing out a zigzag route across and up the face.

  Andrew followed Hailsham’s directions with keen eyes, nodding his approval. ‘Yep, that’s the way to do it,’ he agreed finally. ‘It’s a bloody long way round to gain comparatively little height, but it’s probably our best bet.’.

  ‘My best bet,’ Hailsham corrected him. ‘This one’s best tackled as a solo. I’ll leave my equipment here and take a rope up. Once I reach the mouth of that gully I can secure it and you can all pull yourselves straight up. Then we haul up our gear and we’re on our way again.’

  ‘That’s if there is a way,’ Andrew pointed out. ‘We don’t know what that gully might lead into.’

  ‘Party pooper,’ Hailsham shot back. ‘Let’s face that one when we come to it.’

  He began to strip off his bergen. Andrew’s hand descended on his arm, restraining him. ‘With the greatest respect, boss, have we got the best man for the job here? I’m
younger than you.’

  ‘And heavier,’ Hailsham pointed out.

  Andrew shrugged. ‘Well, if age and weight are going to be the chief criteria here, then what about Tweedledee?’ he asked.

  Hailsham smiled grimly, nodding his head up the wall of rock. ‘One slip up there and there’s only the fast route down. It’s got to be down to you or me, Andrew – and I’ve got the casting vote on this one.’

  It was obvious that Hailsham had made his mind up, Andrew reflected. He was sorry now that he had even mentioned his age. The last thing the man needed at this moment was anything which could sap his confidence. ‘Yeah. You’re probably right,’ he conceded, stepping back as Hailsham finished peeling off his equipment.

  Hailsham coiled a length of nylon rope around his waist and secured it. ‘Tie on extra lengths as you need them,’ he said to Andrew. ‘I’ll give you a clear signal when it’s safe to follow me up. Last man ropes on the excess gear and we can all haul it up together.’

  Andrew nodded. ‘Good luck, boss.’

  Hailsham grinned, exuding more confidence than he really felt. ‘I taught Peter Parker his tricks in the first place.’

  Andrew did not understand. He looked at Hailsham blankly. ‘Peter Parker? Who’s Peter Parker?’

  Hailsham clucked his teeth in a vaguely reproving gesture. ‘Spiderman’s alter ego,’ he reminded the big Barbadian. ‘Good Lord, Andrew, doesn’t anybody read comic books any more?’ He turned away and began to scramble along the sloping side of the rock face with a curious half-slithering, half-hopping motion which made Andrew think of a giant land-crab.

  The sergeant watched him progress along the shallowest part of the incline towards the first strata fault, gaining a few precious inches in height for every few lateral feet. As the gradient increased, Hailsham pressed himself tightly against the face, his hands spread out wide and flat, and his feet splayed out at angles to gain the maximum possible amount of friction between his boots and the smooth rock. Every possible square inch of his body was glued against the unyielding surface, as though Hailsham was consciously willing his entire body to melt into the rock, fuse and become part of it.