Operation Motherland

by Scott Andrews

"We saved her life," said the general. "You'd better hope she's going to save yours." Then he nodded again, the sack was replaced and Mrs Atkins was led away. As she shuffled away she shouted: "You be strong, love. Don't tell them a thing!" Bless her, but that was the worst thing she could have said, merely confirming in the general's mind that I was hiding big secrets.

  "I have a few things I gotta get done back at Salisbury," he said. "So I'm going to fly back there now and give you a night to sleep on it. But midday tomorrow, my men are going to go to work on your friend there, and you're gonna have a front row seat. So you think carefully, Miss Crowther. You think very carefully. Indeed." He rose to leave.

  "Where's Rowles?" I asked desperately.

  "Who?" he asked as he reached the door.

  "The eleven year-old boy you captured in Salisbury. What, you couldn't even get him to tell you his name?" I laughed. "You need better torturers, General."

  He flashed me a look of warning. I didn't want to push this man too far.

  "He's fine. We got him locked up. Collateral."

  "And the girl?"

  "Girl?"

  I bit my lip. Stupid.

  "I'll get my men to look for a girl. Thank you for the tip."

  "And the others? The soldiers who were based there?"

  But he just shrugged as if to say "what can you do" and walked out.

  It took me a second to believe it, but I knew deep down that he'd killed them. All of them. The British Army had been routed.

  The guard left the room with the general, and I was left alone in the wheelchair. I'd lost Sanders; Rowles and Mrs Atkins were captured; Caroline was missing, and all that faced us was torture and death.

  I tried to rise from my wheelchair, to push myself up, walk to the door, but I was too weak. I couldn't even muster enough strength to turn the wheels and push myself to the bed. And so there I sat, defeated, broken and scared, watching the general's ugly military helicopter rise from the field where the children used to play football.

  As night fell there was a knock on the door. I didn't bother replying, after all I was the prisoner. After a moment, the door was pushed open and I was confronted by a young woman in military fatigues.

  She stood in the doorway holding a tray on which rested a steaming plate and a glass of water. The woman seemed unsure about whether to enter or not.

  "Miss Crowther, may I come in please?" she asked. Her soft accent, Deep South, made her seem polite and diffident.

  "Suit yourself," I muttered.

  The woman came in, placed the tray on the small bedside cabinet and switched on the main lights. The soldiers must have refuelled the generator. The woman then pushed my chair to the bed and lifted me out off it with surprising ease.

  "You're strong," I said as she wrestled me on to the bed.

  "I spend most of my time lifting bodies of one kind or another," she said flatly.

  When I was settled and tucked in, she stood over me and offered her hand. "I'm Susan, Sue." I looked at her hand and snorted contemptuously. She withdrew it then sat beside me and lifted the bowl of soup from the tray. "It's beef. You need to keep your strength up. It's going to be a long recovery."

  I considered spitting it in her face, but what would have been the point? I opened my mouth and gulped down the broth. We sat there not speaking as I ate the food and drank the water. I studied her. By almost anyone's standards she was unattractive. Her figure was short and square, her hair was muddy brown, and she had a flat nose, receding chin and piggy little eyes. She was flat-out ugly, but her brown eyes were kind and her voice was gentle.

  "Is there anything else I can get you?" she asked.

  "A gun," I joked.

  "Small or large."

  I sniffed. But she just sat there, waiting for my response.

  "Small, please."

  "Ammunition?"

  I laughed. "Oh, loads."

  She smiled and nodded. "I'll see what I can do, Miss." Then she stood, collected the tray, and left.

  What an odd little encounter that was, I thought, as I closed my eyes and drifted into a haunted sleep.

  It was still dark when I jolted awake, my heart hammering urgently in my breast. Something had disturbed me. I listened and heard the creak of floorboards outside the door. Someone was creeping about outside. I tried to lift myself, but it was futile; pain ripped through every part of me as I tried to move. All I could do was lie there, waiting to see who it was and what they wanted.

  The door cracked open quietly and a shadowy figure stepped inside, pushing the door closed behind them as softly as they could. Then they walked to the bed and stood over me.

  It seems odd looking back, and I don't know what I planned to achieve by it, but I pretended to be asleep, squinting up at the person, hoping they'd go away. But they leant down and put their hand on my shoulder and gently shook me. No point pretending now, so I opened my eyes.

  "Who...?" I began.

  "It's me, Miss. Sue. Please don't make any noise, there isn't a guard outside your door, but they do patrol and I don't want to take the risk. I have a message for you from someone called Lee. He told me to give you his love and to tell you not to worry."

  In know it's a cliché, but there's no other way of saying it - my heart leapt. I can't remember what I said, it was probably just a mumble of vowels, I was so amazed.

  Sue sat on the edge of my bed and whispered softly. "I was in the courtyard this evening, when I heard someone hissing at me from the bushes. It was a man called Tariq. I knew him when I was stationed in Iraq. It's a long story, but I used to pass messages for him sometimes, to soldiers who weren't happy with the way the general was doing things. My, you could have knocked me down with a feather to see him here!"

  She talked with her hands, like a big camp drama queen, her eyes flashed with mimed shock and her mouth formed an O of surprise. "He told me that he's here with Lee and Lee's daddy. Now, they caused quite a rumpus back in Basra before we left, and it seems they stowed away on a plane or in a tank or something. To be honest that bit confused me. But either way, they're here now and they're coming to rescue you!"

  She flapped her hands and gave a little bounce of excitement as she said that, almost squealing. I had to smile. Her over the top Southern Belle act was so at odds with the way she looked.

  Finally I managed to speak. "Lee's here?" I said in wonder. I'd been so certain I'd never see him again, but he was back. The insane boy had actually flown to Iraq, found his father, taken on the American Army, and made his way home. It beggared belief.

  "You betcha!" she said with a huge smile. "He's a little beat up, poor kid, but he's here. Now, if you're still not willing to co-operate with the general by midday tomorrow, then that's when they start torturing your poor friend."

  "Is the general coming back to join the fun?" I asked.

  "No Miss, I'm told he'll only be returning when you decide to talk. In the meantime, while you're trying to make up your mind, I have the item you requested."

  She reached into the pocket of her jacket and produced a snubby little gun.

  "It's a berretta, Miss. I hope that's to your liking?"

  "Does it go bang?" I asked, amazed.

  "It surely does."

  "Then it's fine with me."

  "Tariq told me to say that the action will begin shortly before midday, for obvious reasons, and that you are to shoot anybody who comes through that door who doesn't say the code phrase first."

  "And the code phrase is...?"

  "Finally, someone with balls."

  I laughed, remembering Mac's final words. "Yes, it would be." I hesitated, but I had to ask.

  "Sue. I must say, you're quite a surprise. You are the last person I would have expected to find in uniform."

  "I'm a nurse, Miss. I just help put people back together. And the army pays good. Well, it used to."

  "But surely you're taking a terrible risk defying the general like this?"

  Sue dipped her head, suddenly ser
ious. "I had a fiancée. He was in supplies and, oh, he was so sweet to me. And so brave. When the general started giving orders to attack the population in Basra my Josh stood up to him. Led a mutiny. But, well, he didn't realise how far the general would go. Josh was ever so smart but he could be naïve."

  "What happened?" I asked softly.

  Sue sighed and inclined her head towards the window. "Like the man on the lawn. Josh was the ringleader and so the general made an example of him. After that most people just fell into line. Some went native, joined the Iraqi resistance, but mostly people were too scared of the general, or they agreed with his methods, or they just couldn't break the habit of obeying orders, even when the orders were so wrong."

  "And you?"

  "I bided my time, made contact with those few remaining soldiers I thought I could trust. Waited for an opportunity. We're not all like the general, Miss. Some of us joined the army because we believed we were doing good, fighting for something right and true. I honestly believe that if we can just remove the general and those closest to him, then things will change for the better."

  I gazed at her in wonder. "Sue," I whispered, "you may just be one of the bravest people I've ever met."

  She put her hand on mine, looked up at me and smiled sadly. "That's sweet of you to say, Miss. I should go now. But you've got your gun and you know the code phrase, so just sit tight and we'll have you free in two shakes of a lamb's tail."

  "Thank you, Sue," I replied, squeezing her huge, strong hand. "See you when the dust settles."

  "I hope so, Miss."

  She rose and left. She was so softly spoken, so physically unprepossessing, but so brave and kind. I had a new ally and I had hope. But then I remembered what had happened to the last two people who'd helped me - Barker and Sanders. The people who got close to me kept dying.

  I just prayed that Sue wouldn't suffer a similar fate.

  Someone else brought me my breakfast, a stoney faced guy who spooned porridge into my mouth without a word. I was strong enough to feed myself now, but I pretended I was still too weak. It might not be much of an advantage, but it was all I could manage.

  I watched the sun climb higher, feeling more and more nervous. At quarter to twelve I heard someone shouting outside and an engine revving, then there was an almighty crash, my bed shook, and someone opened fire.

  I held the berretta tightly and took aim at the door. Moments later it was flung open and the soldier who'd brought me breakfast backed into the room. I squeezed the trigger and let him have it.

  The gun clicked and jammed, a useless chunk of metal. I tried to unjam it, but I wasn't familiar enough with the mechanism to do anything but make an awful grinding noise.

  The soldier, unaware of his lucky escape, kicked the door closed and pulled a huge knife from a sheath in his belt. He ran across to my bed, shoved it away from the wall and got between the bedhead and the wall, leaning over me and placing the knife blade to my throat with one hand as he raised his gun in the other.

  "I'm under orders to kill you if we come under attack," he growled.

  I heard a voice from outside shout, "Finally, someone with balls."

  It was Lee.

  I tried to shout a warning but the soldier clapped his hand across my mouth and took aim at the door. I bit the soldier's fingers but he didn't let go.

  I saw Lee's unmistakeable silhouette through the smoked glass panel on the door as he pushed it open. Then the glass shattered and he flew backwards, out of sight, as the soldier behind me shot him three times in the chest.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Lee

  It was a day's drive back to Groombridge. As Dad drove, the nausea gradually subsided and my sense of balance slowly returned. The pain in my head helped take my mind off the crippling fear that everyone would be dead before we arrived.

  The emergency medikit that Dad had plundered for the injection yielded lots more painkillers, much stronger than anything you used to be able to buy at a chemist's. I began popping Tylenol 3 like it was going out of fashion.

  We stopped to rest for the night in a suburban cul-de-sac outside Tunbridge Wells, breaking into Barrett homes until we found one that wasn't full of corpses. The living room was lined with DVDs and sported an enormous widescreen TV. It looked new but it would never show a picture again.

  Dad carefully unwound my bandages and mopped the blood off my ear with water from the tank in the loft. When he'd cleaned me up he put his hands on my cheeks and rested his forehead against mine. "You're going to be okay, I promise."

  My left ear was still completely silent, but the dead TV tone in my right ear was subsiding, and I found that I could just about hear Dad if he spoke loudly. I hoped the hearing would recover enough to be functional; I didn't think there'd be that many people left who spoke sign language. Being deaf in this world would be pretty fucking lonely. But I refused to give in to self pity. I had the school to worry about and mistakes to make right.

  Dad explained that the Stryker had external fuel tanks which were designed to explode away from the vehicle if ignited. The RPG had hit one of them, hence the unusually big bang, but the defences had held and we'd been able to drive away under heavy fire. Had I been wearing the gunner's helmet my hearing would have been fine; Dad just had a mild ringing in his ears.

  Tariq, who had been on the opposite side of the vehicle to the explosion, could still hear a constant ringing in both ears, but he could hear us through the background noise. He joked that he had Kevlar eardrums.

  We plundered a store of tinned food that we found in the kitchen; obviously the owners had started panic buying when The Cull started. I wondered what had become of them. I spent the night in a child's bedroom, sleeping underneath a Man Utd duvet surrounded by posters of long-dead sports heroes. Knowing that the morning would confront me with God knew what horrors, my sleep was fitful and disturbed.

  We rose with the sun and drove the final leg of our journey in silence. We had prepared all our weapons and I had talked them through the layout of the place as best I could. We left the Stryker in the thick woods north of the grounds and approached the house on foot. We stayed inside the woods, scanning the rear of the building with binoculars. It was still standing, but it was eerily quiet. The gardens are ringed by woods on three sides, so we were able to work our way around, checking the house from all angles. Finally we came around to the front and saw a humvee parked next to Blythe's calling card - an impaled man. The man was wearing British Army gear and I didn't recognise him. So the Yanks had been here, some had stayed, and there'd been a killing. But nothing told me what had happened to Matron and the others. I was frantic with worry.

  Then Tariq gave a start and pointed to a female American soldier who was walking into the courtyard.

  "I know her, she's a friend," he said. Before either Dad or I could stop him he was off, running around the edge of the woods to get closer. We stayed put, watching from a distance as Tariq got the woman's attention and she ducked into the tree line. After a few minutes she walked back out and Tariq rejoined us.

  "They haven't got the kids," was the first thing he said, and I was overwhelmed with relief. "But they have got your matron and another lady. The lady is in the cellar, the matron is on the first floor in the south wing. She has been very ill and is recuperating."

  "How many men?" asked Dad.

  "Five, including Sue, and she says one of the others is not happy with things and would probably side with us if she had a word with him." He smiled. "Good odds, yes?"

  We retreated and made our plans.

  What we didn't know was that our every move was being watched.

  I'd always assumed that one day Dad would teach me to drive, but I thought it would be in a Ford KA or a Mini; I didn't expect my first driving lesson to be in an armoured minesweeper.

  I remembered when he'd taught me how to ride a bike. It had stabilisers on the back but somehow I kept managing to fall off anyway. Dad would pick me up, dust me off, dry
my tears, and ask me if I wanted to give up. I sniffed and shook my head, checked my helmet was secure, and got right back on the saddle. Learning to drive an armoured car was much easier; if I made a mistake, it wasn't my knees that got damaged, it was whatever car, tree or house happened to get in our way. It was more fun getting it wrong and crashing in to stuff, but I forced myself to concentrate; every minute I wasted was another minute Matron spent in captivity.

  "I don't want you out in the open, Lee," Dad had insisted. "You won't hear if I shout you a warning, or if someone's yelling at you to put down your weapon. Going into battle deaf is a surefire way to get yourself killed. I want you in here, safe."

  "I'm not disagreeing with you, Dad. But this isn't your fight. You don't know these people, they're my responsibility."

  He shook his head in wonder. "Listen to you. Son, you're sixteen. The only responsibility you should have is passing your GCSEs. And as for no ties, this is your home now. So it's mine too. If you're willing to risk your life for your friends, then so am I. Okay?"

  "Okay," I said with a smile. "And thank you."

  "Don't mention it. Now, let's get these gear changes sorted."

  My Dad. Cool as fuck.

  So at 11:45 the next day, at the same moment that I knew Dad and Tariq were approaching the house from the West, I strapped myself in, revved the engine, and drove the Stryker as fast as I could across the moat bridge and straight into the front doors of Groombridge Place. As soon as the vehicle ground to a halt, jammed in the doorway, I unbuckled myself, ran back to the gunner's seat and pressed my eye against the periscope. Didn't take long. Two of them came running down the stairs, guns blazing and I took care of them sharpish. Wow, I thought, that was easy. Only one left. Dad and Tariq appeared at the end of the entrance hall, so I grabbed my gun, opened the hatch and climbed out to join them.

  Sue was close behind them with another soldier, a young African-American guy, thick set and jowly.