by Geoff Wolak
‘No reaction from around you, no patrols out?’
‘Well, Boss, it's raining here and they's all inside snug and warm, least they was till the power went. No patrols outside.’
‘Move away, and see what you can see. And tell your team that we're all now in Mauritania, in the warm sunshine.’ I cut the call, smiling.
The following afternoon the French brought in two bodies, local men shot by 2 Squadron, and I was cursing Bob in my mind as the bodies were laid out with their rifles, the men sporting long white beards, robes and threadbare sandals.
Moran asked, ‘Are those .303 rifles, World War Two?’
‘Bullets still kill, and the .303 is good to a mile,’ Haines told him.
‘Tighten up on the wire,’ I told Haines. ‘Might get some old guy from the First World War coming at us.’
I stepped away and called Bob. ‘You fricking knobhead!'
‘What? What did I do?’
‘The men on the wire here, they were both sixty years old, but way younger than the rifles they were using – from 1937!' I hissed.
‘Ah. Yes. I see. Well it's a threat on the wire I suppose.’
‘Do you think you could get someone from this century?’
‘I'll make a call, leave it with me. But I was aiming at cannon fodder.’
‘Literally, since these men trained on cannons with powder and flints!'
The base commander was concerned, till he saw the bodies and the rifles, then he was insulted.
I warned all teams to be careful on exercise, just in case they were attacked by an old guy on a camel, and the duty teams were updated.
The next evening, teams walking back in, two American Wolves hit the dirt, readied weapons and shot dead two men sneaking in. The French recovered the bodies, the duty teams dispersed and placed on the wire, some up on the roof.
These two men were younger, but fat, they stank of alcohol and carried two old FN SLRs, each with six rounds of ammo, the base commander shouting at the insult of whoever sent these men, and that their wives would make a better job of it.
David Finch called. ‘You're under attack?’
‘Yes, a deadly attack. Two old guys, seventy years old, came at us with .303 rifles, then two fat old drunks came at us with old FN SLRs with six rounds of ammo each, so drunk they never felt the bullets that killed them. And we only have two hundred of the world’s best soldiers here to defend this place, so please send help.’
‘I say we keep the detail from the Press.’
‘No shit. I'm waiting for the camels to storm our gate. And if my lot could stop laughing long enough they might hit the camel riders.’
‘Post extra guards, just in case, they could be a distraction.’
‘We have plenty of men on the wire, don't worry, and which self-respecting group of terrorists would send such men as a distraction? Even they would be embarrassed!'
‘The whole point of a distraction is -'
‘Is that it's totally unbelievable as a distraction?’
‘Well, no, not usually. Keep your powder and flints dry, oil in the lamps ready.’
‘I'll inspect our flintlocks before supper.’
I called Bob. ‘You knobhead!'
‘Ah. So they didn't send some good boys, I'm guessing.’
‘Two fat old drunks who never felt the rounds killing them, both armed with FN SLRs from 1960, six rounds of ammo each!'
‘I'm ... going to have my contact killed. And slowly.’ He cut the call.
At the bar that night the jokes were plentiful, but 2 Squadron and the Wolves were wary, and that was what I wanted. The duty teams were on patrol and wary, so at least they had something to do.
In the morning two USAF Hercules arrived. I had chatted to Colonel Mathews before we left the UK, and these two aircraft would assist in the Wolf training. They came complete with para instructors and American HALO chutes.
Not long after they arrived a second C-160 landed, with a great many French HALO chutes, and I wanted the Wolves familiar with both styles.
We soon had a loud apron, everyone amongst the ground staff kept busy, a great many chutes seen opening over the scrub to the east of the airfield. As for my four new superstars, I had them static line as a team of four plus two, a map issued, a long walk back but timed. Problem was a mean pilot, who dropped them over a hundred miles out.
Sambo and Mouri had dropped with them, but were not allowed to say anything, just to observe.
They arrived back two days later with barely any water left, all dusty and tired having walked fifty miles a day and slept little.
‘Dropped us in the wrong spot,’ Muscles complained.
‘RAF pilots, always getting lost in the desert,’ I told them. I faced Mouri. ‘How'd they do?’
‘After they get over the shock of realising just where the heck they landed they made a plan, Skipper, rationed water and food and we put one foot in front of the other, no complaining. They avoided local people and roads, slept in the heat – four hours, walking the rest of the time. I need a cold beer, and some water on my damn feet.’
‘Get cleaned up, some food, then rest.’
A second team walked in an hour later, led by Stickler. Behind him trailed a dusty Parker and Monster, Doc Willy and Ginger.
Monster asked, ‘What's wrong with these fucking RAF pilots? They all blind?’
‘Most are, yes,’ I agreed. ‘Time taken to walk back?’
‘Forty hours, sir,’ Stickler reported.
‘About what I expected. Ginger, how'd Stickler do?’
‘He can read a map, and he can walk all day, so there's hope for him.’
‘Get some food, a shower, a cold beer, but not necessarily in that order,’ I told them.
‘Cold beer first,’ Doc Willy threatened.
Doc Morten led his patrol of eight in at 9pm, all dusty as hell, and all complaining. ‘They dropped us in the wrong place,’ he noted with a scowl. ‘Your doing I suspect.’
‘Nothing wrong with your suspicious mind. Time taken to walk back?’
‘Thirty-one hours.’
‘Not too lame, for a bunch of pussy medics.’
To some colourful language they were dismissed, one cold beer coming up.
Morten turned up with wet hair half an hour later, a sandwich and a beer grabbed.
‘They toughening up?’ I asked him as Doc Willy joined us.
‘They all get plenty of foot work with 2 Squadron during the week, and assault course work. We get more people applying these days, so we can pick and choose, and we have a selection programme.’
‘Army medics are jealous,’ Doc Willy put in. ‘They have their own team now, hoping to get some action. They've been out to Sierra Leone and Liberia.’
‘More the better,’ I told them. ‘And are you now more soldier than medic?’
‘More in terms of hours applied to the subject, yes. But of a cold evening I have my books, and I removed a bunch of nails and stitched a few men, just that in the UK we're not supposed to – has to be a proper medical facility.’
Morten nodded. ‘Had a 2 Squadron lad with a gash back in the UK, but we closed it and got him an ambulance, save any hassle down the line with the paperwork. But the old rules say that a UK army medic can function on a base, just that they assume that a UK hospital has to sign off the patient. So as far as we know … we do first aid not stitches, surgery or after care, till the hospital signs it off. Catterick military hospital is a different case.’
Doc Willy put in, ‘In Kenya we did the full works, not trusting the local hospital. Even took an appendix out. Colonel signed it off. And if there was a conflict somewhere and we have a field hospital we're authorised for everything bar open heart surgery.’
He faced me. ‘Saw your list of injuries in Bosnia, and that was a medical miracle – you should have been stone cold dead ten times over.’
‘Just luck.’
‘And your testicle?’
‘It had lost most of the feeling, so I tied
it off to cut the blood supply – thing was big and black. I cut it open and the puss burst out, the smell bad enough to almost knock me out. I knew I had to get the puss out, and it was painless, just odd to be operating on yourself.’
Doc Morten turned his head to Doc Willy. ‘In Northern Ireland he stuffed a tampon into a leg wound. When they took it out the blood hit the ceiling, so they jammed it back in.’
‘Applicator tampons,’ I enthused. ‘Great for bullet wounds. Still have two in my webbing.’
Morten smiled. ‘On a job, one of my nurses was short of them, took them off your men, a few jokes flying about, about how useful Echo men are to a girl on her period. Oh look, Wilco's men: that reminds me, I must buy tampons.’
I laughed. ‘It's good that my men are useful for something more than just shooting people. The American and British Wolves all carry two, if your ladies need some.’
A lady RAF officer walked in, clean combats, and got a pint at the bar, soon joining us. And she was very pretty.
Morten introduced her. ‘This is Flying Officer Markham. New with us.’
I told her, ‘I avoid good-looking lady medics.’
She cocked an eyebrow. ‘I've heard otherwise, sir. They say that when you make a mistake with a lady you like to really drag it out.’
Morten coughed up some of his beer as Doc Willy hid his grin.
‘Do they?’ I asked with a peeved look. ‘Well, I was a sperm donor, after being a guinea pig, but we stay in touch. And rumours of other lady officers could not be proven in a court of law.’
‘And this Israeli major..?’ she teased.
‘Likes to walk around naked in front of me, but I have not been tempted yet. She is … difficult.’
‘Now there's an understatement,’ Doc Willy put in.
‘And are you developing muscles?’ I asked her.
‘I played football as a teenager, was good at it, a real tomboy – but not in a lesbian way.’ Doc Willy bit his lip. ‘I can run twenty miles.’
‘That's more than me,’ I told her.
‘Do you expect to regain full fitness, sir?’
‘It doesn't matter if I don't, I'll still run the show. Even from a wheelchair. And you can drop the sir in here.’
‘You look like that actor in the movie, Camel Toe Base.’
‘Never met him, never got a commission, was never consulted. But I do have two body doubles.’
‘You do?’
‘One is working with us, one is … working for the bad boys and has not been heard of for a while. The British one, he had surgery to look like me. But to tell us apart … he's been circumcised and I haven't.’
She cocked an eyebrow, a crooked smile etched into a cheek.
Doc Willy put in, ‘When walking back from the pub, the MPs shout: halt, get your dick out, sir!'
She laughed as I shot Doc Willy a look. Facing him, she noted, ‘Doc Willy, yes?’
‘Yes, I sound like a practitioner of venereal diseases. One of the French soldiers wondered if I was, and could I look at his cock.’
I said hello to Sambo as he walked past.
‘Sambo?’ she whispered, the men laughing.
‘Sambonville, shortened to Sambo,’ I explained.
‘And one is called Rizzo, the one with the silly moustache...’
‘Monster also has a silly moustache, and Rocko. What do they call you?’
‘We don't have nick names, apart from the squadron leader.’
Morten frowned. ‘What do they call him?’
‘Broom handle.’
‘Ah. As in a broom handle up his arse. He is a bit straight.’
Haines joined us.
‘How's married life?’ I asked.
‘We eat, we chat, and we watch TV as she curses your name.’
They tried to hide their grins.
‘What did I do?’ I complained.
‘You keep appearing on the news. Like every day. I had to assure her that I would never drop onto a ship at sea, nor go near anything radioactive.’
I pointed at the nice lady doctor. ‘Does she have a nickname?’
‘With the men, yes,’ Haines noted.
We waited.
‘Well?’ I pressed.
He glanced at her. ‘A-cup.’
‘A-cup? I'm a B-cup. Tell the perverts to update my nickname. And I wear a sports bar on duty to flatten them down, since we're not in a bar!'
Doc Willy asked, ‘Can we stop talking about boobs, we're in the desert.’
Haines noted, ‘More bromide for this man, and extra guard duty.’
Salome walked past, a green t-shirt hiding nothing.
‘C-cup,’ Doc Willy noted with a sigh.
Our nice lady medic watched Salome saunter past. ‘She likes the attention.’
‘A good observation,’ I told her.
Salome joined us, a glance at A-cup.
I told her, ‘Doc Willy thinks you're a C-cup in bra sizes.’
‘Well, he's a doctor, so if he doesn't know he needs more training.’
Morten noted, ‘We don't have manuals on bras sizes, but we do learn how to test for cancer lumps.’
‘I have a lump.’
I was worried. ‘You do?’
She took Doc Morten's hand and he had a feel.
‘That's not a tumour or cancer, that's muscle.’
She explained, ‘I was hit there, and after the muscle was like a ball.’
A-Cup explained, ‘That puts you at higher risk of cancer, due to the restricted blood flow. Have it looked at.’
‘If I live,’ Salome dismissively answered. ‘Might be dead next week.’
Morten told her, ‘You're starting to sound like Wilco.’
A-Cup focused on me. ‘Sir, how do you cope so well with all the attacks, you seem level-headed after it all?’
‘I get angry, not introspective; I want to strike back at them not sit and stew and dwell on it. If a rape victim could get hold of her attacker and beat him to a pulp she wouldn't be so depressed about it.’
‘Your nurse was attacked,’ Morten noted.
I nodded. ‘She told us. She slammed the man's face into metal railings, twenty times.’
‘She doesn't lose any sleep over it,’ he noted.
‘And that girl, Tiny?’ Doc Willy asked.
‘Would take us all down, throats slit, and not lose any sleep over it. She'll be laughing and joking after just killing two men with a knife … and thinking about lunch.’
‘A good operator,’ Salome noted. She faced A-Cup. ‘And what about you?’
A-Cup seemed offended. ‘What about me? I'm a doctor, and I haven't shot anyone, and I hope to keep it that way.’
I faced Morten. ‘Have any of your team killed anyone?’
‘I have, I think two have, shots fired. We don't keep a scorecard.’
I told A-Cup, ‘If you're on a helicopter that goes down behind the lines, they will gang rape you and slit your throat.’
‘I know the risks, and in that case I would shoot, yes. I volunteered for the combat medics, but mostly to get out to Africa and do some village medicine. I had a six month placement in Kenya, and there I got some hands-on village work, delivering babies.’
‘Making a difference,’ I noted. ‘You have a better understanding of what motivates me. I also like to help the villagers, by keeping the bad boys away from them. In Sierra Lone, our first job, we came across a village wiped out, women, kids and babies all shot or hacked up.
‘Catching up with the men who did it was my motivation expressed physically, and it still is, and it's the reason I sleep well at night.’
‘I'm getting used to it,’ Haines put in. ‘Never thought I would, but I can handle the bodies now, and the smell. And the first time I had a good look at a man I had shot I was almost sick. A Valmet will make a hell of a mess of someone, and this chap had half his head missing, bones sticking out his body.
‘And when we bagged up men hit by your snipers with Elephant Guns we were
all shocked, a section of a man's spine nine inches long was on the ground behind him, a hole big enough to put a football in.’
I nodded. ‘In Bosnia I was in a hole in the ground for about 24hrs, a hole made from an artillery shell, and I killed a few men just yards from the hole, and they remained there, and stank, and then mortars came in and hit some of the bodies, and I had to live in that hole surrounded by the mess, entrails hanging from a tree.’
I told A-Cup, ‘Bosnia changed me. It was like dying fifty times over and being brought back; I got used to it. I got hit, fell down, got up and patched myself up and kept fighting. The crack of a round passing my head meant nothing after a while because there were so many, and so many bodies, and I shot so many men.
‘That was my training ground, and I learnt to ignore the dangers, and that's why I'm not certifiable. Yet. And soldiers have stress when they're thinking about seeing their families again instead of focussing on the job. To my men, Echo is family, and they don't worry about wives and kids, not least because most don't have wives and kids.’
‘I'm surprised,’ she responded. ‘I thought Rizzo was the family type.’
Everyone laughed.
‘OK, let's not use Rizzo as an example of what my men are like.’
‘The one called Monster..?’
‘OK, not him either,’ I told her as they laughed.
‘Tomo?’ she pressed.
‘You won't win,’ Doc Morten told me.
I sighed. ‘Nicholson isn't here at the moment.’
‘He's almost sane,’ Doc Willy approved with a nod.
Tomo walked past. ‘Boss, you're hogging all the pretty girls.’
Salome did not react, but A-Cup turned to him. ‘I'm an officer, and you're one step away from losing your front teeth, mister.’
He withdrew sharpish.
I told her, ‘If you're stuck in a trench for a week with someone like that, you'll need to chill out a bit, shit in a bag in front of them and throw it.’
Salome grinned. ‘In Panama, Monster threw his at Rizzo but missed, so Parker lit his and threw it, landed on Rizzo as he slept, so Dicky patted it out with a hand.’
The men laughed, A-Cup shaking her head.
Salome continued, ‘Dicky never told Rizzo, and Rizzo went a day before he noticed the smell.’
I waved over Rizzo and Monster as they headed to the bar. To A-Cup I asked, ‘Which is Rizzo and which is Monster?’
