Ellen had never yet killed, but all of his SAS training led him towards this end; he had no qualms about the task. In fact he was waiting impatiently for the opportunity.
Eight years previously, he had left his Ross school with two low grade Certificates of Education and no other qualifications. He had not been particularly interested in sport, nor shown any special aptitude for a trade. There was little employment in the Ross area at that time, and the general recession in industry had made matters far worse. The first summer after leaving school, he worked as a builder’s labourer; he bought a small motorcycle with the money he earned. He sold the machine during the winter, when he was laid off. It had not occurred to him to join the army until he saw the recruiting posters one Saturday afternoon after a visit to the Hereford Football Association ground at Ledbury.
He signed up for two reasons, boredom and bloody-mindedness; his father, with memories of National Service and wasted hours, had advised him against it.
Ellen signed for nine years with the Gloucesters, did two with the regiment, then completed a parachute training course and in euphoric bravado applied for transfer to the SAS. Selection was notoriously hard and he did not expect to be accepted, but for the next few days his status in the canteen bar was raised. He reported to the SAS barracks in a mood which wandered between apprehension and gloom; in a few days he would be forced to return to the regiment and admit his failure. He had already spent time inventing excuses.
To his amazement he found he enjoyed the tests. He was already very fit, and there was pleasure in being forced to push his body beyond the limits he had believed possible; a masochistic satisfaction in completing the tasks set for his fellow entrants and himself. Maybe he hadn’t always been able to beat the system, but he could certainly try to beat himself and others like him. Lying for hours half-submerged in icy water, or slogging twenty miles across the Brecon Beacons in deep snow, was easily tolerable if you were proving yourself tougher than the men weakening beside you. He passed all the tests and became a member of the unit. He had thought he was already an experienced soldier; the SAS proved him wrong, and began his training again. At the end of a further year he had trebled his number of parachute drops and learnt how to handle a dozen different weapons and explosives. He learnt how to canoe, and slide his way silently across a pebbled beach or through deep undergrowth. He could dive into a darkened room, and hit a man-sized target illuminated for only five seconds with four shots from a Browning pistol. But real action seemed to elude him. His unit was used several times during the next years; there were jobs for the SAS even in peacetime, but he was never chosen. It was the luck of the draw. He was promoted as his expertise increased. Four and a half years of dedicated training had led up to this particular moment. He was determined to enjoy it.
There were five Russian SPGs remaining in the woods. There had been eleven earlier in the day, but six had apparently moved on. Three SAS soldiers would deal with each vehicle. The orders were explicit; quick job and no noise. It was essential the Soviet radio operators should give no warnings.
The two men with Ellen were already in position, one crouched against the turret beside the gun and the second lying flat on his stomach above the driver’s hatch.
The Russian SPG commander Ellen was watching struck a match and lit a cigarette. In the fraction of a second that the match flared, momentarily blinding the man, Ellen was on his feet. As the man dragged on the tobacco, Ellen clamped his hand over cigarette and still-burning match and crushed them against the man’s mouth, at the same time driving the slim blade of his knife upwards beneath the ribs. The Russian struggled but Ellen pulled him off balance backwards, then cut his throat twice just above the stiff collar, using a quick sawing movement of the razor sharp blade. It was almost too easy; he had practiced it many times.
The two remaining crew members of the Russian SPG were already dead. Both killed while they slept. The driver’s back had been within reach of the soldier lying flat along the hull, while the gunner had taken no notice of the man who had silently dropped in through the turret behind him believing, if he had awakened at all, it was his returning commander.
Ellen lowered the Russian’s body to the ground. A non-smoker himself, he could smell the faint coppery scent of the man’s blood; it gave him a sense of elation. His hands were sticky, he wiped them on the dead man’s overalls. He had made his first kill. Never again would he have to stand at a bar and listen enviously to the tales of his colleagues who had been in action. Now he was truly one of them; a fully-fledged member of the elite corps.
Welbeck, who had been the one to tackle the gunner, seemed to be a long time inside the tank. Lance Corporal Ellen should have waited beside the track, but didn’t. He reached the turret just as Welbeck climbed out. Welbeck reacted instinctively to the dark figure that appeared unexpectedly in front of him. His bloodstained knife was still in his hands. He drove it straight into Ellen’s chest.
Ellen felt the blow, realized what had happened but felt no pain. He had time to say quietly: ‘You stupid bugger.’ Then his legs weakened and crumpled. He dropped to his knees and felt the cold of the metal against the palms of his hands… and then nothing. His body dropped backwards from the hull to land on the corpse of the Russian he had killed only a minute earlier.
‘Everything satisfactory, Sergeant?’ Lieutenant Hinton had been waiting beside the bunker’s secondary exit.
‘Yes, sir. The area’s clean. I’ve posted guards. One casualty.’
‘Wounded?’
‘Dead, sir. Lance Corporal Ellen.’
The first of many yet to come, thought Hinton. ‘How?’
‘Bloody carelessness, sir! Disobeyed orders.’
There was no point in delving further at the moment, and Sergeant Welbeck was obviously unwilling to volunteer details. Hinton knew he would learn in time. ‘Thank you Sergeant. Get the doors open will you.’ He gave a thumbs-up sign to Fellows and swung himself into the nearest of the APCs. The sound of the Scimitar’s Jaguar engines made the air of the bunker vibrate.
There was nothing that could be done to disguise the appearance of a FV 107 Scimitar; its sharply angled turret and sloping bow resembled no armoured vehicle used by the Warsaw Pact armies. Protection for the tanks and the SAS APCs was the night itself, their speed and manoeuvrability, and the direction of their travel — westwards towards the battlefront. From a distance, in the poor light, they might be mistaken for reinforcements moving forward in support of the Soviet advance.
Hehlingen was twenty kilometers from the bunker; little mare than fifteen minutes at top speed on a good road. There were no longer any such roads, and a fast direct route was impossible.
Fellows, standing half-out of his hatch, watched the night sky towards the west. Flashes of distant light flickered like summer lightning along the horizon, and the sky itself was coloured as though it reflected the illumination of a vast city. It was almost beautiful, smoke clouds glowing scarlet, violet and a continuous pyrotechnic aurora borealis shimmering above the fields. He was feeling alert, self-confident; it had been far more of a strain on his nerves while they waited cooped up in the bunker. He still found it hard to believe that this was war, though there was plenty of evidence. Every small village or even farmhouse they passed had been destroyed, tumbled and blackened stone, crazily-angled window frames, fallen roofs, deserted… still smoking. Wrecked vehicles, some unidentifiable, others which looked as though they had simply been abandoned, littered open fields. There were bodies, corpses lying awkwardly in the wreckage; a line of uniformed men arrayed beside a hedge, neat and tidy as though ready for inspection, weapons beside them, the night hiding the bloodstains and the wounds. Shell and rocket craters, dark irregular patterns in the fields; shattered tarmac and cobbles, sewer pipes and drains, burnt woodland.