The General

by Robert Muchamore

  When he stepped out two minutes later, a heavily tattooed and naked Sarge threw him a towel before stepping in after him. The uniform James put on was still someone else’s, but this time the green T-shirt and sand-coloured trousers were freshly laundered. The only reasonable boots he could find were too big, so he found two pairs of clean socks and gave them a good blast from someone’s deodorant before pulling them on.

  ‘What did you see?’ a woman asked.

  James looked around. His brow shot up as he recognised the female guard from the gate, accompanied by a female officer. They were two bays along, talking to the man with the broken foot. James dived across the aisle towards the shower.

  ‘Company,’ James said anxiously.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘They’re searching. It’s the woman from the front gate.’

  ‘You serious?’ Sarge gasped, bursting through the shower curtain and grabbing James’ damp towel off the end of a bed.

  James took another peek and saw the female guard coming towards them.

  ‘You go,’ Sarge ordered, as he hopped into a pair of trousers. ‘I’ll catch up.’

  But James was spotted as he crossed the centre aisle for his backpack. There was a sharp crack followed by a chalky pink explosion as he dived on to the ground between two beds.

  Dressed only in trousers, Sarge grabbed his rifle and did a double tap: two well aimed rounds fired in quick succession. While Sarge covered, James skidded across the vinyl floor and crawled into the next bay, but three male soldiers were coming through the flaps twenty metres ahead.

  The tent had zipped exits in the leisure areas and some of these were even left open to let in fresh air, but James wouldn’t get to one before the guards. His only hope was the slot where a portable air conditioner protruded through the fabric.

  ‘I bloody know her,’ Sarge gasped, firing shots in both directions as James jumped up on a bed. ‘That woman on the gate: she was at a NATO special forces conference in Malta last year. Must have sussed us after we rushed through.’

  James hit the air conditioner with all his might. The bed grated backwards and the tent fabric billowed. Most importantly, the air conditioner broke away at the point where it was clipped to the tent fabric. James held the fabric taut with one hand and pounded repeatedly on the air conditioner.

  After a dozen painful blows, the air conditioner tilted backwards off its mounting and hit the sand outside with an almighty thunk.

  ‘Nice one,’ Sarge smiled, keeping the approaching guards at bay with more covering shots as James threw his backpack through the square hole in the fabric and hauled himself up off the bed.

  James got his head through, but his shoulders were a tight squeeze and Sarge had to break away from firing to give him a shove. The domed shape of the tent acted like a slide, but James’ palm hurt from pounding on the air conditioner and a hard landing on the sand made it worse.

  ‘Take both packs,’ Sarge yelled, as he threw his pack through the hold.

  James was disorientated and it took him a couple of seconds to realise that Sarge wasn’t coming with him: if his sixteen-year-old body needed a push to get through the hole, Sarge didn’t have a hope in hell.

  ‘I’m dead,’ Sarge shouted, as the shooting inside the tent finally stopped. ‘Use smoke cover and get out of here.’

  Hoping to buy a few seconds, James unhooked a smoke grenade from inside his pack. He pulled the pin and lobbed it through the square hole before starting to run. In basic training cherubs are taught to always be tactically aware, but James realised he’d been relying on Kazakov and Sarge to do everything. Now he had to think for himself.

  The odds were stacked against. James was trapped inside a secure base on a high state of alert and everyone would be looking for him as soon as the guards inside the tent stopped breathing smoke and called out on their radios. The main gate was less than fifty metres away and James’ best and probably only shot at getting out was a surprise assault.

  He ran to the end of the boarded path between tents and ducked out. The gate was now closed and the guard had been doubled to four men, but despite the circumstances they still didn’t look particularly alert.

  James looked back over his shoulder before grabbing his rifle. The spot lamps around the perimeter gave him good light to make a shot. He laid a stun grenade and two smokers in the sand before going down on one knee, bracing the rifle stock against his shoulder and lining up the first guard in his scope.

  From fifty metres, he hit the first guard dead in the centre of the back. A jerk left enabled him to take out the second with a pink explosion.

  ‘Attack,’ the third man shouted, diving for cover as James’ shot sailed over his head.

  James ripped the pin out of the stun grenade and lobbed it towards the gate. He hurled the first smoke grenade into the no man’s land between the tent and the gate and left the second on the ground between his legs. After switching his rifle to automatic firing, James broke cover and started running towards the gate as the flash from the stun grenade turned the sky white.

  The fourth guard’s senses were temporarily blitzed by the stun grenade, but the third man lay on his belly firing randomly into the increasingly dense smoke cover. Other men were coming out of the tents behind and a bullet whizzing past James’ left side made him realise that he hadn’t pulled up his goggles after taking the first shots through the scope.

  The thought of being blinded scared him, but he kept running. The smoke filled his lungs and he could hear men approaching from all directions as he closed to within five metres of the gate.

  A gap in the smoke gave James a clear shot at the last remaining guard. Surging with panic, he missed. The guard took longer to aim and his shot came so close that James felt it go by. The last round in James’ magazine hit the guard in the thigh.

  Wild shots came from all directions, but the smoke gave James excellent cover. He grabbed the gate, realising almost too late that he had to lift a metal peg out of the ground to release it. Two bullets thunked the wire gate as he looked anxiously at the four guards. They’d almost certainly get a roasting from their commanding officer if he broke free, and one of them grabbed his ankle.

  ‘Cheat,’ James shouted, as he lashed out with his boot.

  Almost without knowing it James had got the gate open far enough to make it through. The thick smoke made his eyes stream. His lungs burned and he felt like he had concrete blocks tied to his legs, but somehow he managed to pull up his goggles and sprint away from the compound.

  27. REPLAY

  James ran several hundred metres over the open ground outside the base, with smoke covering his back and randomly aimed paint exploding on the ground close by. Eventually he reached a maze of low-lying huts designed to resemble a shanty town.

  Unlike a real-world shanty made from scrap, the sanitised Fort Reagan version comprised concrete sheds with electricity, water and sewage. The closely packed accommodation didn’t afford much privacy, but in many ways it resembled the college dorms the residents were used to.

  Music blasted from all directions and barefoot girls danced around a bonfire built in the area’s baked earth marketplace. To give a more authentic atmosphere, food in the shanty was sold from market stalls and the engineers’ unit which ran Fort Reagan even released chickens and goats into the streets for the two-week duration of each exercise. Most of them were tame and the college kids fed them corn chips.

  The partying left the back streets deserted. James took several turns before ducking into an alleyway between huts and catching his breath. He looked about suspiciously, but no American troops had followed him into the area.

  He pulled his radio out of his jacket. ‘Kazakov,’ he whispered.

  ‘Loud and clear, James,’ the Ukrainian answered. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘The goods are in place, but we had to fight our way out. Sarge got shot and I’m gonna need some backup out here to make it home.’

  ‘Negative,’ Kaza
kov said. ‘We don’t need you here and you could easily be followed in the dark. It’s best to steer clear of the apartments until daylight.’

  James tutted. ‘So what do you expect me to do? Where am I gonna sleep?’

  ‘Use your initiative; I’ve got enough on my plate. Kazakov out.’

  The way Kazakov said out made it pretty clear that he didn’t want to hear from James before morning.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ James mumbled to himself. ‘After everything I’ve done for that Russian git.’

  While James’ weapons afforded some protection, the combination of youth and badly fitting US army clothing made it impossible to blend in. It was going to be a long night and he had to find somewhere to hide quickly.

  *

  As soon as the drones were disabled, Kazakov radioed his SAS teams. They climbed into preselected rooftop positions with sniper rifles and began taking pot shots at the American soldiers.

  He led Lauren, Bethany, Rat, Gabrielle, Bruce, Jake and Andy on a rapid march away from the airfield and towards the apartments. They were heavily armed and they shot first when they eyed an army checkpoint, taking out three soldiers with bullets and paint grenades and scaring the hell out of half a dozen civilians queuing for a random search.

  The soldiers struggled with conflicting demands. They’d been sent out to make friends with civilians, but suddenly faced bullets whizzing down from rooftops and paint grenades being lobbed at them from balconies.

  Every soldier knew that ten per cent of the population was getting paid extra to support the insurgency and the banter between troops and civilians quickly got replaced by suspicion. It might only be a training exercise, but every soldier had a real-world incentive to do well: a good performance could lead to promotion and the higher wages that came with it, a bad one to a stagnant career or even redeployment to a less prestigious back up unit.

  Within twenty minutes of the attack on the drones, General Shirley had ordered dozens of extra checkpoints to stop insurgents from moving about freely. In the most troubled areas soldiers announced curfews and told everyone to get indoors.

  Many college-age civilians had been drinking and got aggressive because they didn’t want to be shut up inside bland apartments at eight-thirty in the evening. They faced being stopped and searched by angry troops for the second or third time in a matter of hours and even though it wasn’t for real, people got angry having to queue at a checkpoint for ten minutes just so they could walk to the next street to visit a friend or buy groceries.

  Kazakov’s detached house was vulnerable to a surprise raid, so he joined the kids in the comparative anonymity of the apartment block. Sweating and breathless, everyone piled into the girls’ apartment, threw down their equipment packs and sprawled over the furniture.

  ‘How’s my eyes and ears?’ Kazakov asked, as Kevin came out of a back bedroom with binoculars hanging around his neck.

  ‘Good,’ Kevin smiled, although he was still upset that he hadn’t been allowed on the main raid with all the others. ‘A team came into this building searching door to door. I ran down to the third floor and set up a booby trap with the paint grenade like you showed me. Took out all three of them.’

  ‘Nice work,’ Kazakov nodded. ‘And the SAS snipers?’

  ‘Seems to be working out,’ Kevin nodded. ‘They shot up all the soldiers hanging out near the canteen and grenaded the roadblocks until they all pulled out of the area. I haven’t seen any army for over half an hour.’

  Meryl came through from the kitchen holding a plastic tray stacked with steaming pizza slices. ‘Where’s the other two?’ she asked, as the kids all grabbed food.

  ‘Kerry and Sarge are dead. James is hiding out.’

  ‘Shall I save some food for him?’ Meryl asked.

  Kazakov shook his head. ‘I’ve told him to hide out overnight in case he’s being tailed.’

  ‘He sounded really pissed off when Mr Kaz told him,’ Bethany grinned.

  ‘More pizza for us,’ Jake smiled, as he grabbed a second slice.

  ‘What about all this equipment?’ Lauren asked. ‘We’re sitting ducks if the army starts searching this building.’

  ‘We sit tight,’ Kazakov said firmly, as he pulled a small video receiver out of his trouser pocket. ‘We keep all the weapons here. Someone will have to keep lookout on the front and rear exits. If the army shows up for some reason, we should have time to mount an ambush on the staircases before they get close.’

  The apartment had a wall-mounted TV with a protective Perspex screen over it.

  ‘This should be good,’ Kazakov said, grinning like a kid with sherbet as he ran an AV lead from the receiver to the TV. He cursed the remote until he found a button that brought up a grainy colour image. It looked like the edge of a desk and a couple of blurry computer screens set at a slanted angle. A date and timecode scrolled at the bottom of the image.

  ‘Nice camerawork, Spielberg,’ Jake grinned.

  ‘I only had a few seconds to position the device,’ Kazakov said irritably. ‘Shut up and listen.’

  The hard disk in Kazakov’s receiver could store several hundred hours of video. He set the recording to play back from a couple of minutes before they’d blown up the drones. The TV showed a pair of army boots resting on the desktop and what sounded like a game of poker being played by bored admin officers out of shot on the other side of the room.

  The kids gathered around the screen, holding cans of Pepsi and stuffing the last of the pizza as the report of the raid on the aerodrome came in. The picture was fixed on the tabletop and the fuzzy screens, but audio quality was excellent.

  Boots ran in and out. A soldier announced that the shit was about to hit the fan and then General Shirley came running in.

  ‘Gimme status,’ he shouted.

  ‘One of the drone pilots radioed, sir. They’re under attack. The drones are being destroyed by a group of masked teenagers.’

  ‘Pardon me?

  ‘The drones, General. They’re used for—’

  ‘I know what they’re used for, Corporal! Do you think I’m some kind of asshole? Get troops up there now to investigate. If it’s insurgents I want them nailed.’

  ‘Drones ain’t cheap,’ the corporal continued. ‘Haven’t you deployed a security team up at the aerodrome?’

  There was a prolonged silence.

  A new voice: ‘General … What do you want us to do?’

  ‘Goddammit!’ the general raved. ‘They’re supposed to be acting like insurgents! They’re supposed to be on the streets planting paint grenades, not coming through the front door and destroying my aerodrome. What kind of insurgency is this supposed to be?’

  ‘Had a lot of incoming mortar fire on all of our bases when I was in Iraq,’ the corporal noted. ‘Insurgents will attack anything if it’s improperly defended.’

  ‘Corporal, you are dismissed,’ General Shirley shouted. ‘When I want your opinions I’ll ask for them. Kazakov, that son of a bitch! There’s over six million dollars of hardware up there . . .‘

  A phone rang once before a woman answered. ‘General, it’s Sean O’Halloran, the base commander,’ she said. ‘He wants to know if you’re aware that explosions have been heard inside the aerodrome—’

  ‘I’m busy … A head-on assault on my base. That Russian … OK, these are my orders. Checkpoints on every main street. Screw being Mr Nice American. Get every able-bodied soldier out of this base and cracking heads. I want weapons seized and insurgents arrested or shot.‘

  The woman spoke again. ‘The base commander is demanding to speak with you, General. He says you’re personally responsible for any hardware entrusted to your men during this exercise.’

  ‘Hand me that phone,’ the general ordered. ‘Commander, we’re investigating the situation and I’m sure it’s not as serious as it sounds.’

  As the general spoke into the phone, a new voice sounded across the room. ‘General, we’re receiving reports that our troops are coming under sniper
fire throughout the streets of Reaganistan.’

  Kazakov paused the playback and smiled at the kids perched on the furniture around him. ‘I’m not Russian – I’m bloody Ukrainian,’ he shouted, before erupting into a booming laugh. ‘I don’t give out praise often, but you kids were great tonight. This time tomorrow, we’ll be driving a victory parade through General Shirley’s precious base.’

  28. STALK

  James used the darkness, a casual demeanour and his US Army uniform to bluff his way through a checkpoint on the main thoroughfare out of the shanty town while the officer running the show seemed more concerned with grilling a twenty-year-old student about his contraband camera phone than bothering with James’ ID.

  He ended up in a three-storey shell building less than a kilometre from the apartments. James couldn’t turn on the electric lights because they’d be spotted in the darkness, so he navigated to a second-floor room by torchlight. There was a cold water tap on the wall and a toilet with hundreds of dead insects floating inside on the landing.

  There was no furniture, so he sat on the sandy concrete floor as cold desert wind howled through badly fitted doors and windows. He rearranged the contents of his backpack to try and make a pillow, but it was rock hard. In any case he was too tense to sleep.

  Every so often an American Hummer would drive by in the narrow street outside and he’d hear shoot-outs between regular soldiers and SAS snipers, or the dull blast of a paint grenade. Judging by the amount of fighting, the Special Forces teams were also arming insurgent sympathisers.

  However hard James tried there was no way he could doze on bare concrete, and grains of sand down his back and inside his boxers were driving him bananas. He’d filled his canteen from the tap, but he was hungry and he rummaged inside his pack for something to eat. There was no food, but he did find a little hotel gift bag with the pack of cards and the Ultimate Blackjack Manual he’d bought the day before.