His total disrespect for the chain of command.
Mick’s consciousness started to shift. He couldn’t focus on the mission. All he could think about was what he’d like to do to that son of a bitch.
A resonant hum seemed to be punching and pulsating through his skull, making his brain vibrate, and sending savage images cascading through his mind. Images that were so real, so foul, so gloriously violent…
A pile of bodies, contorted and soaked in blood. That strange pulsating movement underneath the surface of the skin as the maggots started to do their work. His detached consciousness walked through the carnage, seeing through unfamiliar eyes. A sense of hunger filled him — a five thousand-year-old hunger that demanded to be sated…
He would stand up. He’d walk over to Cox, as silent and as unfeeling as the Sarsen Stones that stood silently on the skyline. He’d stand over him, examining his victim, savouring the rising smell of fear and uncertainty that tainted the air like acrid smoke. He’d reach down, slicing the cloth of Cox’s jacket aside with his knife. Clawing his fingers, he’d force them through the soft, yielding skin, sinking through flesh, pushing aside the other organs — they could be spread at the feet of the stones later for the ravens to dine upon.
He’d ignore the screaming, the frantic and futile grabs by his victim at his wrist as his hand sunk deeper into the man’s chest. He’d feel the pulsating, throbbing heart, pumping furiously, as if it knew it was about to be torn from the warm safety of the body.
His fingers would close around the pump and slowly, agonisingly slowly, he would tear out Cox’s beating heart and hold it up, blood dripping between his fingers, paying no attention to the pathetic bastard’s pleas for mercy and blood-frothed gurgles as he died.
He’d lick the still warm heart, letting the blood and fluid coat his tongue, savouring its deliciousness, He’d take a bite and swallow, letting the hot lump of tissue slide down his throat, the coppery flavour filling his mouth, giving him strength, vigour, power.
Then he would crush what was left of the organ between his fingers, amused by the sheer fragility of the soft muscle tissue as he turned what was the most precious of all organs into a useless mush of bloody pulp.
The images were so real.
Was he actually doing it?
Or was it some kind of horrific, waking nightmare?
No. Not horrific.
Sensual.
Powerful.
God, the rush of power he would feel would be unlike anything he’d ever experienced! He was getting a feeling of sexual arousal as the images in his mind became more and more vile. He could feel a pressure building behind his eyeballs and screwed his lids tight shut, fearful that they’d pop out like a couple of ping-pong balls shot out of a Thai whore’s fanny…
“Movement! On the left!” Jonno let out a hoarse whisper.
Mick’s eyes snapped open and he swivelled around. Cox was still very much alive, his beating heart still firmly ensconced in his chest. Mick battled as hard as he could not to puke like a drunken teenager, swallowing back the mouthful of vomit that threatened to spew out.
What the fuck just happened?
He fought back against his body’s gag reflex and tried desperately to snap himself back into the here and now. Sweat poured down the back of his neck, even though the wind was icy cold and the temperature was nudging the ‘brass monkey’ zone.
Barrack-room banter was instantly forgotten. Any second now a couple of flash-bangs followed by a beating of epic proportions would descend on their heads like a huge, painful pile of SAS-shaped crap. The Hereford crew had a tendency to forget they were on ‘exercise’ and go in hard and fast. Not surprising, really. It’s what they were trained to do. Trouble was, sometimes they forgot that the ordinary squaddies from 2Para were on the same damn side as they were.
Jones and his team took the exercise seriously, but in all honesty, with deployment to the Falklands just a few weeks away now, how relevant was a night exercise on Salisbury Plain to their training? Sure, the Plain had the same kind of unfeeling, unkind and windswept remoteness that the islands of the South Atlantic had, but was there one single penguin within a thirty-mile radius to their present position? Was there fuck.
And why ask Hereford to play the enemy anyway? Bit of a sledgehammer/nut scenario, really. For all the good it would do, you might as well get the bloody Catering Corps to play the bad guys and come at them with spatulas, egg whisks and their notoriously liberal attitude to ‘Best Before’ dates.
Mick scanned the horizon, then cursed himself for being such a FNG. The 22nd wouldn’t stand on the skyline like extras from a dodgy cowboy film. They’d stay low. Hidden. Unlike Bravo Unit, they wouldn’t be wearing MTP cammo. They’d be in their usual ninja black.
“Boo!”
Mick spun around, swinging the SA80 up — and straight into the line of fire of a C8. His gaze travelled away from that snuffling snout, up the barrel and towards a pair of steel-hard eyes peering from behind the slot in a black balaclava. “Oh, bollocks! C’mon!.”
“Bang, bang. You’re dead, fella. Shit, that was too fucking easy.” The owner of the eyes gave a little chuckle, and lowered his gun. “Seriously. We’re what, two hours in? Did you stop off for a Maccy D’s or summat? They did tell you we were coming for ya, right?” The eyes squinted in a frown. “Jesus, fella, you look like absolute hell. You need a medic?”
“Perhaps you literally frightened the crap out of the little gobshite.” A harsh Scottish accent came out of the dark, presumably from one of the other 22nd members.
He looked around to see each member of his Unit in exactly the same position as him, and to a man they were all staring at the business end of a bunch of C8s. When you were playing with these guys, you really, really hoped they’d remembered to put blanks in. The 22nd had done it again. He looked back to his captor, anger boiling up once again — that insatiable, unstoppable anger. He could feel his cheeks burning like someone had chucked napalm in his face. “You were supposed to give us a two hour head start!”
“Oh, boo-fucking-hoo, Shirley Temple! You think the enemy’ll go ‘One, two, miss a few, ninety-nine, a hundred! Coming! Ready or not!’, do you? What are you, five?” The black-clad soldier grabbed Mick by the neck and hauled him to his feet. “Tell you what, princess. Lucky for you, I got sucked off last night by a blonde with the biggest tits you’ve ever seen in your life, so I’m in a relatively jovial mood. Know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna cut you some slack, fella. But so help me God, you tell anyone and I’ll personally bend you over the heel stone in yonder monument and buttfuck you ‘til you scream, got it? You have exactly five minutes to bugger off.” He looked at Mick and leaned in. “Are… you… still fucking here?”
“Move out!” Mick didn’t need telling twice; nor did the other lads in Bravo Unit. They grabbed their kit and yomped out of there like the devil himself was after them. They needed cover, and they needed to be as far away from the mocking laughter of the 22nd as they could.
“Oh, and watch out for the grunt crushers! They’re trundling around due north of here! You can’t miss ‘em, mate, they’re those fuck-off great green things with tracks and a bloody great gun sticking out the front!”
The words and the laugher were finally lost on the wind. Now all Jones could hear was the sound of his team’s ragged breathing as they stumbled over the uneven ground, eyes forward, trying to avoid the plough ruts that would snap a misplaced ankle like a twig. “Keep to the left of the Stones! And stay tight!” He threw the words back over his shoulder, not knowing or even caring if his Unit heard him. He kept running, trying to put as much distance between him and those Hereford nutters as he could. He knew this unexpected second chance would be their only one. After this, there would be no quarter given. But Bravo Unit were Parachute Regiment Pathfinders. It was their job to work as scout units, evade enemy patrols, get as far behind enemy lines as they could, recon, and then — and this was the tough bit — get back again with intel and a way in. Satellite imagery might have made some of their job redundant, but there was nothing that could compare to ‘eyes on the ground’, gut instinct, and an up close and personal approach.