The Reich Legacy: A Jim Slater novel (The Jim Slater series Book 3)

by Stanley Salmons

  *

  At dinner the Captain and I sat with Lieutenant-Colonel Bruce Harrington and a Major Nigel Greenaway. Bruce’s hair was silvering at the temples now, but he looked fit and he was as suave as ever. He didn’t know me, of course, and we had the same sort of strained conversation that any visiting serviceman might expect. Greenaway looked young to be a Major, but there was something steely in his manner that told me he’d seen a bit of action. There were others at the table, and some regarded me curiously but averted their gaze when I looked up. I realized this wasn’t going to be a comfortable posting unless I did something to break the ice. After we’d eaten I got the training schedule from Captain Parry, read it, and went to bed early.

  There was a six o’clock reveille and I was down there with them for the off. A 10-k tab with full pack, followed by the assault course. They were surprised to see a Colonel doing it with them, more surprised still that I could finish it. I’d have been disappointed if I couldn’t. I still trained regularly with the men back at Fort Piper, and it was easier here than in the heat and humidity of North Carolina. I did it the next day, too, and the day after that; everything the men did, I did with them: tabs, assault course, circuit training, firing range, navigation in featureless terrain, the lot. I missed the adrenaline of planning and resourcing actual missions, but the activity helped to take my mind of it.

  Then I had an idea. I found out who was in charge of unarmed combat. It was a Warrant Officer, name of Ed Halloran, and I sought him out.

  He looked me up and down. “And what did you have in mind?”

  “Seems like you’re on your own here. I thought I might give you a hand with the training.”

  His expression was half amused, half incredulous. “You have your kit with you?”

  “No, I travelled light.”

  “Okay, I’ll find you some and we’ll see what you can do.”

  We changed, then went on the mat. We circled a couple of times, then he tried an attack. I knew he was making allowances but that’s not what I wanted so I dumped him on his back. A flash of annoyance crossed his face and he got up.

  “All right, then,” he said, and this time he came in firing on all cylinders.

  That was more like it. There was a flurry of blows, parries, a quick throw, and I stopped the kick an inch short of his Adam’s Apple. When he got up he was grinning all over his face.

  “You’re fast. Where the fuck did you learn to fight like that?”

  I grinned back. “Got it from people like you.”

  More than once: in the British army, again when I joined the SAS, and yet again for the SAF – different instructors, different moves each time. Then after the transplant I did it all over again, and that time I really went for it. When I was reinstated in the SAF I became the instructor and ran courses for the new recruits. I hadn’t yet met the man who could whip me on the mat.

  “All right,” Halloran said. “You could be handy, at that. We can split the class, do demonstrations. Start tomorrow? Attackers with knives – real knives.”

  “One-on-one or more than one-on-one?”

  “Jeezus.” He shook his head. “Just plain ol’ one-on-one to start with.”

  “Okay.” I shook hands, alert in case he tried anything, but he didn’t.

  So I added training in unarmed combat to the portfolio, and folk were getting to know who I was.

  When I needed a break I’d borrow a car from the pool and drive to Hereford or Leominster or Hay-on-Wye, just to stroll round the towns, browse the shops, have a coffee and watch the civilian world go by. We tend to be quite sequestered at Fort Piper so this was something of a novelty to me. A lot of the youngsters were wearing Virtual Reality goggles. Nobody took much notice, but watching them gave me the strange sensation of being in a world that was half under water. They didn’t bump into streetlamps so I assumed that whatever it was they were viewing was superimposed on real life. Other times I’d just go for a spin to enjoy the countryside. Driving on the left was never a problem for me; I’d learned to drive back in England, and since then I’d driven in many countries where it was the norm.

  I knew I was just filling time but I had to be patient. Sooner or later the court case in the States would be resolved, the media would lose interest, and I’d be able to return to my unit.

  Only that’s not the way it turned out.

  12

  Up to now I’d spent a little time with Bruce but I’d seen neither hide nor hair of Scottie. I’d been careful not to show undue interest, because I wasn’t supposed to know him, but on the way back from a navigation exercise in the Brecon Beacons one day I mentioned it casually to the three guys I was with.

  “Pete, I was told there’s a Major Scot Hayward on the base. I haven’t seen him at all. Is he around?”

  Pete’s face darkened and he exchanged glances with the others.

  I looked from one to the other. “Something wrong?”

  He glanced at my cap badge. “Look, I don’t want to be unfriendly, Colonel, but this is an SAS matter.”

  I didn’t like the sound of this. Normally he called me “Jim” – I’d asked him to. “Come on, Pete, right now I’m SAS, like you. If there’s a problem that affects The Regiment, it’s my problem, too.”

  “It’s only a rumour.”

  “Yeah, all right, it’s a rumour. Go on.”

  We began to struggle up a steep grassy slope. The weight of gear we were carrying meant we had to place our feet carefully to avoid sliding, so we focused on that and he said nothing until we reached the top. We paused to get our breath back and take in the view, several miles of open moorland descending to a town, a small cluster of Monopoly houses which was the pickup point we were heading for.

  Pete said, “Scot Hayward was on a posting in Africa. The others have been replaced but he stayed on. He wasn’t supposed to stay on. He’s gone off the radar.”

  I felt a flash of alarm. If someone had been killed or captured, his mates wouldn’t just come home without him. “What do you mean ‘gone off the radar’?”

  “Look, I think it’s best if you ask someone else. Colonel Harrington can fill you in better than we can.”

  “Okay.”

  I didn’t press it further, but at dinner that evening I made a point of sitting down opposite Bruce Harrington. I brought up the subject during a lull in the conversation.

  Bruce cleared his throat, gave me a penetrating look, and said, “What’s your interest in Scot?”

  I thought quickly. “I heard somewhere he’d served in Libya. I was there on operations, too. Thought it would be interesting to compare notes.”

  Bruce’s face tightened. “Scot’s somewhere in northern Nigeria. He’s gone mental.”

  A chill ran through me. “How do you mean?”

  “He was there on a mission. One of his patrols was ambushed – killed, all of them, in various very unpleasant ways. Seems that sent him over the edge. He stole an all-terrain and a shedload of weapons and ammunition.” He paused, running his lower lip through his teeth, then spoke quickly, as if to get it over with. “He’s going from village to village killing everyone he comes across – not just hostiles: men, women, children, every damned living thing.”

  It felt like all the nerves in my body were firing at once. It couldn’t be – not again.

  I remembered those trigger-happy rival militias in Libya, and I knew very well what both of us thought of them. Scottie behaving that way? I was so incredulous I blurted out “Bullshit!”

  I managed to stop myself from going on. I was about to say that I knew Scottie and he’d never do anything like that. Not against non-combatants.

  Bruce was frowning at me, so I did my best to cover up.

  “Sorry, er, what I mean is, that’s totally out of character for an SAS man. Are you sure of these reports?”

  His face recomposed and he sighed, a long, weary sigh. “Afraid so.”

  “Well, we need to get him back. Find out what’s gone wrong.”
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  “You think we haven’t tried? I wanted to go out there myself but Gracey couldn’t spare me.” He leaned over to the group on his right. “Nigel, could you join us for a moment?”

  Major Nigel Greenaway broke off his conversation, said “Sure”, got up and sat down with an amiable smile next to Bruce.

  Without taking his eyes off me, Bruce said, “Jim here is asking about Scot Hayward.”

  The amiable smile vanished. He looked quickly at Bruce and back to me.

  “Bad business,” he said.

  Bruce prompted, “You located him, didn’t you?”

  Nigel gave Bruce another uneasy look and said to me, “He was damned hard to find.”

  “Of course he was,” I said. “He’s trained like the rest of us. He’ll know every trick.”

  “Yeah, well a reconnaissance drone picked up the all-terrain after another of his bloodbaths and we went in. Made contact, tried to reason with him. You know what the answer was?”

  “A lot of high-velocity?”

  “Correct. Accurate, too. We were glad to get out of there alive.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence. I didn’t know how long Nigel had known Scottie but I knew damned well how long Bruce had known him.

  “What’s your take on this, Bruce?”

  He sucked in a deep breath. “No idea. Scottie could be a bit off-the-wall at times, but I never knew him do anything like this.”

  I nearly said, “Me neither.”

  But Bruce rumbled on. Normally stiff and correct, he seemed to have disappeared into a world of his own. “Bloody waste. Finest officer I ever served with – him and a guy named Jim Forbes.”

  The mention of my former name made my heart beat faster and my eyes darted to him, but he seemed to be far away. I detached myself as soon as I decently could and went back to my room.

  It had been a strenuous day and I was tired, but sleep was impossible. I lay on the bed. A shaft of moonlight entered through a gap in the curtains and as time slipped past it moved slowly across the ceiling. I was replaying everything I’d been told about Scottie Hayward, over and over again. Did I believe what was being reported? I had to believe it. Was this behaviour consistent with what I knew of Scottie?

  No way.

  Could I be sure? It was ten years since I last saw him. People can change in that time.

  Crap. People don’t change as much as that.

  Don’t they? Sergeant Bill Archer changed in about ten seconds, not ten years.

  The thought was disturbing. Was it possible I’d stumbled across another case like his? What kind of coincidence was that?

  I tried to relax my mind, but all it did was open the gates for other memories to flood in. Memories of the last job Scottie and I were on, shortly before I was seconded to the SAF.

  The Yemen. Yeah, the Yemen. What a fuck-up that was.

  The Yemen 2046

  The RotoFan flies us in from Saudi. The jihadis in Yemen have good eyes and ears, so we’re following normal practice, ground-hugging and following a wadi to minimize visibility and engine noise. This lot have been a running sore since way before I was born. Now a bunch of them have kidnapped the Saudi Foreign Minister. He’s a member of the royal family and they want him back. We know where they’re holding him at the moment, and we have to act fast before they can move him on.

  There are eight of us on board – which is standard for operations out here – ten if you include the pilot and copilot. Being a Captain, Bruce is in command, but we all know what to do. It’s a routine infil. We’ll rope down at five klicks and tab the rest, coming in west of the target with the sun behind us. It’ll be hot, and we’re toting a lot of gear, but we’ve trained for it, so that won’t be a problem. There will be one problem, though. We never get there.

  As luck would have it, they have a patrol out right under our flight path. One moment the only sound is the drone of our twin engines, the next the air is full of clatters and thuds as incoming hits the metal and fibre-reinforced plastic hull of the RotoFan. The pilot jinks the craft left and right and shoots flares, which is completely pointless because these guys are just using small arms. Then one of the bastards gets lucky. There’s a loud bang and the RotoFan cants over to the right and stays that way. Starboard engine out, no lift that side.

  The pilot’s voice comes through on our comms helmets. He sounds very calm. “Brace for impact. We’re going to ditch.”

  I’m on the port side, so all I can see right now is sky. RotoFans aren’t pretty to fly on one engine. Standing rules for this situation are to fly on as far as you can go, so you have a chance to regroup before the hostiles catch up with you. The pilot is doing his best but he’s lost control; we’re going in steeply – I can see that from the angle of the fuselage. I cover my head, try to make myself small, then there’s an almighty, rending racket which goes on and on, and the whole craft is jerking like mad, this way and that, throwing me hard into my harness. Finally there’s one very large bang and things go quiet.

  I’m looking at the sky again but this time there’s no window in the way. Moving slowly and carefully I look myself over. Two legs, two arms, all present and correct. I get to my feet carefully. The ship has split like a pea pod, and we’re the peas, scattered all over the desert.

  Bruce is sitting up. He’s lost his helmet and he’s blinking hard and holding his head with one hand. Scottie is on his knees, taking it all in. There are bundles of clothes everywhere. Then I realize the bundles of clothes are our guys, strangely inert. Scottie gets to his feet and we go to them, one after another. It looks like all the casualties are on the starboard side, plus Ted and Andy, who’d been up front on the port side. The cockpit is so badly damaged there’s barely any point in looking inside, but we do; sure enough the pilot and co-pilot are dead, too. We find Ryan lying near the wreckage, dazed but alive. He joins us while Bruce is retrieving his helmet.

  “Christ, Jim,” Ryan says to me. “We’re the only ones left. Why the hell did they dump the crate here? We’d have made it if there hadn’t been a rock in the way.”

  I scan around. There are fucking rocks everywhere.

  “Who had the sat link?” I ask him.

  “Ted.”

  We check it out. There are a few dents in it but it looks like it’s in working order.

  Ryan says, “Shall we call in the evac?”

  I look at Bruce. He’s supposed to be taking decisions like this but he’s still holding his helmet in one hand and rubbing his head with the other. I say, “No, that bloody patrol could down that one, too. We need to take them out first.”

  Scottie is on his way back. He’s staring around him like he can’t believe all this has happened. And now he loses it.

  “The bastards!” he says. “The fucking bastards! Look what they’ve done. There’s four of my best mates lying there.” He hefts his multi-rifle. “I’m going after them. They’ve got it coming to them. I’m going to slaughter every last one. I’ll hack their fucking heads off and feed them to the vultures. I’ll—”

  I cut in. “For Christ’s sake, Scottie, will you stop playing silly bastards, shut the fuck up, and listen? We don’t need to go looking for them; they’ll come looking for us. They knew we were going down.”

  Bruce blinks and murmurs, “That’s right.”

  I say, “How far did we fly after we were hit?”

  Ryan says, “Four or five ks. Not more.” He looks at me. “They’re probably in one of those open recce vehicles. They could be here in a few minutes!”

  “No,” I say. “They can’t drive fast in this terrain, and they’ll want to stop at least 2 ks away so we don’t hear the engine. That means we’ve got maybe thirty minutes to prepare for them.” I look around, then point. “They’ll come in on that ridge. It’s the highest point and it’ll give them a good view of the wreckage. If they have half a brain between them they’ll know there were ten on board and they’ll be counting. So let’s make it look convincing. We need four more heaps of c
amo. Find something.”

  Scottie’s face is as red as a beetroot and he looks like he’s going to put up a fight. Instead he goes slack. “Sorry, Jim. Just got to me, that’s all.”

  “’Course it did, you old bugger.” I punch him lightly on the arm. “Come on.”

  The four of us start to search in the debris. In the cabin we find some camo tents, intended for temporary shelter, and we heap them up to look like four more casualties. We separate the two pilots a little from the ruins of the cockpit to make them more visible.

  “Right,” Bruce says, “that’ll do.” He’s still a bit dazed but he’s functioning again.

  “All very well,” Scottie says, “but where’s the cover for us?”

  Ryan looks about him. “Behind the big rock? The one we hit?”

  I shake my head. “No, we’ll be exposed on the other side. They’ll circle round the whole site before they come in.”

  We continue to look, but the answer is staring us in the face and we come up with it together.

  “The wreckage.”

  13

  The Yemen (contd)

  The two largest pieces of wreckage are the cowling from the starboard engine pod and the port half of the cabin, which is lying partly on its side with one or two windows miraculously intact. The curved overhang of the cabin will provide cover from a high viewpoint and some welcome shade from that burning sun. The cowling isn’t quite as good, but it’ll have to do.

  We spend fifteen minutes adjusting the two pieces of wreckage so as to give us a good arc of fire when the insurgents come in to examine the bodies. The cabin’s a bit unstable so we pack small rocks under it to hold it steady. Then we stand back.

  Scottie says, “They’ll see us when they come in.”

  “Not immediately,” Bruce says. “The crash lies north and south. The sun’s bright and we’ll be in shadow.”

  Ryan says, “They’ll see the muzzle flashes when we open up, though.”

  I say, “Our job, Ryan, is to make sure that by then it’s too bloody late.”