“The parade ground round back is deserted and they can’t see anyone, so it’s probably just the man under the car and the one in the pillbox. The Colonel and his men are going to take up firing positions in the main building, on the top floor left. Our job is to take out the guy under the car without drawing the attention of the pillbox. He said that’s your job, sir.”
But Mac was already moving. He’d pulled a vicious looking knife from his backpack, placed it between his teeth, and was crawling away on his belly.
“Cover me, Keegan,” he whispered as he slithered out of the woods and began inching his way towards the car, which sat about fifty metres away and down a slope. The long grass provided good cover.
I took up position at the tree-line, nestled the rifle into my shoulder and scanned the area for nasty surprises. The place was as quiet as the grave.
And then, just as he made his final approach to the car, Mac burst out of the grass and ran as fast as he could back towards the trees, blowing our cover completely. I thought he’d lost the plot until the car exploded in a sudden blossom of flame and smoke, flinging Mac forward onto his face. He staggered upright again and continued running. No-one opened fire, and he made it back into cover safely. He sat next to me panting hard.
“Fucking tripwire,” he gasped. “There wasn’t a man under the car at all. Just a fucking leg, attached to a piece of wire that some bastard was tugging. Lured me in and I didn’t see the booby trap ’til I crawled right into it. Fucking amateur!” He threw his knife in fury. It thudded into a tree, thrumming with force.
“Where’s the puppeteer then?” I asked.
“The wire leads off to the left, so anywhere between the car and the main gate I reckon. But we’re blown now. There could be any number of hostiles in there and they know we’re here. We need a rethink.”
At that moment there was a crackle of static and an ancient tannoy system hissed into life. A man’s voice echoed tinnily around the buildings.
“This facility is the property of His Majesty’s Armed Forces and is defended. In accordance with emergency measures, and standing orders relating to Operation Motherland, any attempt to infiltrate this facility is an act of treason. Any further incursions will be met with deadly force. This is your first and last warning.”
The speakers fell silent, as did we.
“What the sweet holy Christ,” said Mac eventually, “is Operation Motherland?”
He bit his lip and surveyed the complex nervously.
“Right. That place is full of ordnance and I’m bloody well having it, standing orders or not.”
“We could wait ’til after dark, sir,” offered Green.
“And if they’ve got night goggles we hand them a major advantage, numbnuts. Nah, we need to do this quickly.” He pulled out the binoculars again.
“Two wires we need to trace. The tannoy ones and the puppet one. Let’s see where they go.”
As he tried to trace the tannoy wires back to the mic I caught a glimpse of a flash from the top floor of the main windows. I looked closer and there it was again. I tapped Mac on the shoulder and pointed it out. He took a look.
“It’s Bates,” he said. Not ‘the Colonel’ I noticed. Interesting. “Signalling us with a mirror. Bloody idiot, keep your head down.” But it was too late. A burst of machine gun fire raked across the face of the building, splintering the window frame and spraying the remaining shards of glass inward at Bates and the others. The pillbox was manned.
“I think someone’s hit, can’t see who,” said Mac. “Fuck, this is a shambles. Right, enough of this.” He handed the binoculars to me. “Green.”
“Sir?”
“The tannoy wires go to the pillbox and the puppet wire leads down to the main gate. I think there’s a man in cover there, probably a sniper in camouflage. You could probably walk right up to him and not see him, if he knows his job. But I want you to keep in the trees and move down to cover the area. He won’t risk a shot until he sees a target the pillbox can’t deal with, so I need you, Keegan, to draw his fire.”
“Sir?” I asked, trying not to sound incredulous.
Mac grinned. “I know you’re the better shot, Keegan, but Green’s not going to be doing the 100-metre sprint anytime soon, are you, Green?”
“No, sir,” he said, abjectly.
“And you can shoot that damn thing, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well then. You’re the bait, Keegan, and Green shoots the shooter. Sorted.”
“And what will you be doing while I’m being shot at, sir?” I asked.
He opened his backpack, pulled out a stick of dynamite and waved it in my face. “Passed a quarry on my way back to Castle, didn’t I? I’m going to blow that fucking pillbox wide open.”
“And the Colonel?”
“Fuck him, if he’s not been shot already he deserves to be. We’re dealing with this. With me?”
“Yes, sir!” yelped gung-ho Green.
Oh, yeah, this was going to end well.
WE SYNCHRONISED OUR watches and then, always staying in the trees, Green and I went left, while Mac went right, towards the pillbox. Green took up position covering the long grass near the main gate and I kept going. I travelled some way past the complex, out of any possible sniper’s line of sight, and scurried across the road leading to the gate. I made it safely into the trees on the other side and started to move back towards the fence. It didn’t take long to find a breach and I snaked under the chain link and crawled through the grass until I was behind the first outbuilding on the opposite side of the road to Green.
Even higher on my list of Things-I-Never-Want-To-Do than ‘shoot somebody’ was ‘be shot by somebody else’. So I wasn’t entirely comfortable with Mac’s plan that I should run up and down in plain view of a sniper, presenting a nice juicy target for a thumb-sized piece of supersonic, superheated lead that could push my brains out through my face.
I lay there for a minute, breathing deeply, calming myself, considering. Should I leg it? Just cut my losses and run? Go it alone? Did I need to remain at the school, taking orders from nutters and idiots, getting involved in unnecessary gunfights and risking my life… for what? For the school? For Matron?
But where else could I go? And if I left, how would Dad find me?
No, there was no choice. I’d made my decision to return to the school and I was stuck with it. I just had to stay alive long enough for Dad to come get me, and then I could split and leave Mac and Bates to their stupid army games. Until then I had to play along. After all, there was supposed to be safety in numbers, wasn’t there?
I checked my watch. Time to go. I walked forward slowly. The gap between this outbuilding and the next was about ten metres. I had to cover that distance slowly enough to allow the sniper to notice me, sight, and fire, but sufficiently quickly that he didn’t quite have time to take aim accurately enough to kill me. I’m sure an experienced SAS man would be able to do some calculation based on distance, running speed and firing time and tell you, to the second, how long he should be visible for. I was just going to have to guess using my vast experience of watching DVDs of 24.
Fuck it.
I ran.
Three steps, that’s all it took. Three bloody steps and I was flat on my face unsure what had hit me, and where. My mouth was full of grass before I even heard the shot.
And then, as I tried to work out if I was bleeding to death, a burst of machine gun fire and a huge explosion from up ahead. Shards of pillbox brick impacted all around me.
And then, before the dust had settled, a series of sharp reports off to my right, as the sniper and Green exchanged fire.