by Phil Cocker
The Colonel took a deep breath. He'd prefer to explain it all fully, but time was of the essence.
“And how do you know?”
Gordon watched as the pen the other person held was carefully placed at the side of the paperwork, perpendicular to the person who now seemed very interested in what he was being told. Gordon looked at how ordered everything was, in perfect right angles to everything else in the room, from the items on the desk to the chairs in the background, lining the far wall. The display cabinet had order within it, all neat, all regimented, all very militarised. The line of model figurines rose in height from the World War I soldiers in his tin hat, Enfield rifle at the side, climbing up through various stages in military dress, up to a General astride a horse, his sword raised to lead a charge into battle.
All these details told Gordon that the Brigadier he was talking to was a stickler for the chain of command, for the correct process to be followed. He would not work from a hunch, and he would never give an order based upon a request from a lower ranking officer, as Gordon had done on several occasions. Gordon and the Brigadier were two very different types of soldiers, and Gordon wondered if that was the reason the man facing him was his superior, even though he was at least 10 years his junior.
“One of my top men is watching him closely.”
“I need a report, not just a request. I am still your commanding officer, even if you do let things slide a little more up there in the foothills to the Lake District.” The Brigadier raised one eyebrow knowingly.
Colonel Kelsall glanced up from his screen and looked out of the very large window of his office located at the top of a formerly disused quarry near Nether Kellett in Lancashire. What looked like a series of basic portakabins on the outside housed the administration the quarters for a secret Military Intelligence section called MI9. Colonel Gordon Kelsall was the commanding officer of the camp, even though his rank would have been usually positioned him within the administration buildings of the Brigadiers and Generals. Gordon had been a seasoned Lieutenant Colonel for many years, looking after 650 soldiers within the ranks of the British Army. He'd been the senior officer for a while in Iraq and Afghanistan, and before that rising through the ranks on the former Cold War Russian / German border. He'd been given the rank of a full Colonel to run the new Military intelligence unit and he had the best office that had the best view, overlooking Morecambe Bay and the mountains of the Lake District in the distance. He'd walked 79 of the famed 214 Wainwright peaks in his lifetime, and sometimes longed for the freedom of retirement that would allow him to complete the rest. Each was a challenge in many different ways, from boggy commons to loose scree and narrow ridges, but today he faced a different challenge; to save a boys life. “Sorry Brigadier Roberts, but I need the Go command as soon as possible.”
“And five minutes explaining all of this to me won't do any harm.” The Brigadier glared out of his screen. “Will it?”
Gordon knew he wasn't allowed to refuse an order, even if it had been hidden within some nice words. “No Sir.” He admitted finally.
The ranking officer nodded, knowing he'd won the mini battle, purely from the position of rank. For him, that was all it needed. If a Brigadier told a Colonel, then they did what was asked. The same would be if a Major General told a Brigadier. The British Army was built on discipline and a chain of command. Each position was respected fully from the ones below, and if a higher ranked soldier gave an order, then you followed it; it was that simple.
Gordon took in a deep breath, letting it out slowly before giving a full report on all that had occurred in the past few days. At the end he once again asked the question, “Do I have the Go command?”
“Let me think about it for 24 hours or so.” The Brigadier smiled.
“Sir.” Gordon replied through gritted teeth, tapped the close button on the discussion and sat back in his chair. He ran his fingers through his greying, curly locks and let out a low growl of despair and anger.
Olhos d‘Agua
Eric finished his homework as quickly as possible, which as it was maths and his favourite subject, was relatively easy. He glanced outside at the still very warm early evening. The sky was relatively clear, apart from a few fluffy white clouds, the sort you could make shapes out of. All afternoon he'd been thinking about the violent thunderstorm they’d experienced whilst in class. Something had been very different about it,. He didn't know what that was, but he needed to research it some more. He opened a new window on his laptop and typed in freak lightning thunderstorms news Europe in the search field. There were too many hits, as usual with such a basic question, but he scanned the most recent to look for something unusual. This wasn’t easy as there were thunderstorms all over Europe at this time of year, but one story on a news website from two weeks earlier caught his eye.
“Freak lightning strike kills teenager in Olhos d‘Agua, Portugal.”
Intrigued, he read on, quickly finding the paragraph that made him stop.
“A teenage boy died in a freak accident when lightning hit his parent’s house on the outskirts of Olhos d‘Agua in Portugal. He was rushed to the nearby hospital in Vilamoura where he was stabilised and spent 4 days and nights on a ventilator before he died. Even though had no physical signs of being hit by the immense jolt of electricity, the post postmortem declared that was what had killed him.”
Eric’s senses tingled as he suddenly realised that he and his mother had been near there only a couple of weeks before when they were on holiday at the Sheraton Algarve. He continued with the story seeing that there was a small piece of video from an eye witness. Eric moved the mouse and clicked on the short video, reading the line underneath which stated that Mr.J.Thomson on Middleton, Manchester – eyewitness account. The video started with a little jump from a static shot of a couple looking a little gum to just the man being quite animated and excited about his moment on the camera. He was in his forties, a little overweight, his hair was thinning on top and it had been cut to a no.1 all over.
He wore no shirt, and had deep red, severely blistered shoulders. “Yeah, well I was just coming back from the bar over there.” He swung his left arm round to a packed British-style pub on the main street behind him, everyone waving frantically at the camera. “Cus I’m on holiday in the Ree-oo up at the top.” His arm moved skyward, pointing out of sight of the following camera.
Eric remembered Olhos d‘Agua; a former quiet fishing village that was swelling at an alarming rate, mainly with holiday makers. The beach sloped sharply into the waiting mouth of the Mediterranean, although the crashing waves argued that the sea was still dominated by the Atlantic. A wealth of two-man fishing boats, nothing bigger than dinghy, rested peacefully on the beach. Nearby posts and walls were adorned in multi-coloured nets, knotted by hand, all drying in the warm sun, waiting for the next catch. Sat atop the cliffs, at the head of the village sat the imposing Riu hotel, it’s peach coloured walls and large pool overflowing with a wealth of other European holidaymakers. A single track road meandered lazily down through the newly built and being built villas and apartments until it arrived at what would have been the original peaceful heart.
Set around a small square, the old cottages had been transformed for the new economy of the village. Eric remembered the British-style bar Mr. Thomson was standing outside. He could see the large billboards on the side of the pavement, showing photographs of the meals available, the main hoardings along the front, and the umbrellas above the plastic chairs and tables covered in signs displaying well known English and Irish beers. Eric and his mum always tried to enjoy the delights of the local cuisines of a country they visited, but had been known to also partake in a good old fashioned cooked breakfast, once in a while. The square wasn’t that big, and the prime locations were held by a few trinket shops, a couple selling beach items of body boards, hats, mats and sun cream, and two places to enjoy a drink or a meal. One was the British bar, the other was the
one Eric and his mum had eaten at, which created typically Portuguese fayre.
“Anyway,” Mr. Thomson continued on the video. “One second it was 36 degrees and really bright and sunny, and then seconds later there was a huge black cloud above those apartments.” Mr. Thomson’s arm flailed once more, turning left and aiming at a point about 200 metres away, halfway up the hill. The camera followed the directions, losing focus for a second as it zoomed in for a closer shot of a house. The roof had wisps of smoke and steam rising, along with 3 fire fighters, hacking away to ensure that the heat was not going to build up and create a problem once more. The camera wobbled slightly, knocking the focus off once more.
Eric continued to watch, enthralled by the story and and amazed that he knew the relatively unknown tiny holiday destination.
The video footage stayed on the white building, the camera had close-ups of the scorched and blackened marks adorning the walls like a live painting. Out of shot, Mr. Thomson continued the tale in his nasally Mancunian accent. “I thought it was funny that it had gone so dark so quickly, as I said to Karen, that it had come out of nowhere, didn’t I babe?”
Eric presumed