Bradley remained silent, his stomach cramping at the thought of food. He was in constant pain, the hunger and thirst only making matters worse. There was a terrible smell emanating from him, he was sure. His jumper had been removed, but he still wore his No. 2 shirt. It was soiled and slightly damp, as were his green trousers.
Bradley lifted his head up as he heard a clink. The major was stirring his coffee after adding three teaspoons of sugar.
“I don’t know how you English can drink tea. It has no bite to it. Would you like a cup of coffee, Herr Bradley? Of course not. You have been trained to keep a stiff upper lip.” He laughed to himself.
“All I want to know is how many other spies there are in the vicinity of Berlin? And beyond, of course. How many teams do you have out there? Well?”
Bradley remained silent. He knew that he and Jacko were the only Intelligence acquisition team out on the circuit, but there were at least two operatives from the security section. They had a very different task to perform within the confines of the city of East Berlin itself. Bradley had taken two across, individually, over two days, hidden under a blanket in the back of the Range Rover. It hadn’t been the first time he’d done that. He and his section worked closely with their sister unit, photographing buildings of potential significance, completing Close Target Reconnaissance on their behalf; hunting for installations that the Soviets and East Germans tried to keep hidden.
Bradley thought back to the day they had discovered a secret hospital in the middle of the forest of Wernsdorf, surrounded by high walls, topped with barbed wire, and with watchtowers at each corner. The response from the occupants had been aggressive. Within minutes, two Ural-375 trucks had appeared, loaded with MfS troops. Before they could surround the Range Rover, Jacko manoeuvred the vehicle between the trees, pursued by soldiers on foot, one of the Ural-375s crashing through the trees behind them. Just as Jacko and Bradley thought they had made it, a UAZ-469, a Soviet jeep, cut across their front. Jacko twisted the steering wheel, driving the vehicle through a gap in the trees, pressed hard on the accelerator and, with a spray of debris from the rear wheels, extracted them from the trap, but it left them with two of the tyres punctured. The two right-hand side wheels bumbled over the ground as the air escaped. But they kept moving until they could hold up somewhere and review their position. Accessing an abandoned forestry compound, they pulled up behind a small hut and waited. Once they believed themselves to be safe, they assessed the damage: two tyres were shredded, and both of the wheels badly damaged. Another team would have to come out and bring replacements.
“What about a drink?” the major asked as he slid a small glass of water across the desk until it rested in front of Bradley.
Bradley looked at the glass, and then into the eyes of his interrogator, because that’s what he was, then back to the glass. He had been taught to take food and water at every opportunity. His lips and throat were dry, his tongue swollen. He reached out with shaking hands, one badly bruised and swollen after being stepped on by a studded boot. Gripping the glass as best he could, he lifted it to his lips, the glass rattling against his teeth. He closed his eyes and savoured the tepid water, an elixir. His spirits rose slightly and he replaced the empty glass on the table.
“See, there is no need for all this unpleasantness. So, tell me about your friends.”
“24388749, Bradley Reynolds, Sergeant, Royal Corps of Transport.”
Chapter 5
The Corps Patrol Unit was currently positioned in a deep ditch close to a water feature northwest of Heisede, about a kilometre from the east bank of the River Leine. Wilf had chosen their location due to the patchy water catchment areas surrounding the water feature, an unfriendly area for vehicles, and particularly armoured ones. As a consequence of Wilf’s choice of location, they were damp, and Badger’s gripes about it being gopping were fairly frequent, unsurprisingly.
The CPU, on receiving new orders from headquarters back at 1 BR Corps, had moved from Lehrte to their current location on the banks of the River Leine, which they now planned to cross. After the aborted reconnaissance of the 12th Guards Tank Division headquarters, their planned return to their Mexe-hide was suspended and they were ordered west. They had moved as far as possible in the early hours of the 8th but, with a heavy Soviet presence and troops crossing the River Leine to reinforce the rapidly growing bridgehead, they had finally been forced to go to ground. That gave the soldiers an opportunity to rest up before moving out again during dusk of the same day. Before the light of day finally died, as they headed towards Sarstedt, they witnessed more of the carnage of the fierce battles that had been fought by the British and West German forces to hold up the pressing Soviet advance. Once they had extracted themselves from the forward headquarters of 12th Guards Tank Division, the team’s next mission was to report on Soviet units crossing the River Leine, looking particularly for reinforcements following on in support of GSFG’s main thrust south of Hanover and Gronau. Following that, a particularly important mission had been assigned to them. It had been a long tab, travelling in the dark for cover but constantly on the alert for enemy forces that were either consolidating in the area or passing through. On occasion, what they took to be campfires of Soviet military units often turned out to be still burning tanks and armoured personnel carriers. Some hulks had been doused and would no doubt be recovered by the Soviet engineers at some point. Up until now, the four SAS soldiers had only seen enemy equipment and soldiers, other than RAF or other NATO countries’ ground-attack aircraft harassing the Soviet forces’ rapid advance. One shock they did encounter though was coming across a burnt-out Challenger tank, with its crew still on board, which brought home to them that they were well and truly behind enemy lines and were becoming more and more isolated from their own forces as every day passed by. The team had considered rummaging through the bodies in order to get hold of their dog tags. But the bodies were so badly burnt, the crew’s clothing practically none existent that, even the hardened soldiers that they were, they couldn’t bring themselves to rummage around the human debris to search for the articles in question. Apart from that, they still had a mission to perform. The Challenger was far from being the only hulk on the battlefield. They came across two more of these latest model British tanks, but the open ground was also strewn with T-80s, BMPs, SA9s, ZSUs and the odd Jeep or box-bodied vehicle. The Soviets had plainly paid a heavy price to take the ground that was now theirs.
As darkness had closed in, all Wilf’s team could see of the still smoking hulks was the occasional flicker of flame or glowing metal. It wouldn’t be long before the Soviet engineers started to recover their own damaged vehicles with a view to repairing those they could and quickly putting them back into the battle.
It had taken the CPU nearly six hours to get to their current location, prepare their kit, and move closer to the riverbank. Their route had been through a golf club, then some wetlands, an area scattered with close-lying mini lakes of water. They made their way down to the riverbank, keeping their movements as quiet as possible. This was difficult when their kit was wet, and they couldn’t help but squelch as they picked their way through the sodden earth. Wilf had chosen this way deliberately. He looked about him, smelling the damp earth and grass around them. Thick clumps of coarse vegetation provided them with good cover. But soon they would have to leave it and make their way across the river and west. While they were heading deeper and deeper into what was now enemy territory, there was a comfort in the fact that they were moving closer to their homeland. All four crouched next to the water, watching and listening. Tag, their strongest swimmer, would go across first and check out the far bank. Wilf had chosen a level stretch of water, with a light-coloured sandbank downstream on the opposite side.