The New Enemy Read online

  ‘What a bloody racket,’ whispered Liam, careful to keep his voice low and quiet as he heaved himself out of his bag to take over Cordner’s position. ‘How are we supposed to avoid detection if they keep on snoring like that? They’ll be heard for miles!’

  Cordner shrugged. ‘I’ve had to keep kicking the dozy bastards to keep it down,’ he said, the words spoken in a soft Irish accent. ‘Reckon you should be tested for snoring before you do this kind of job. Imagine getting slotted because your mates snore! How shite would that be?’

  ‘And they’ve been like that all night?’

  ‘It’s like being in a hole with a fucking whoopee cushion and a properly excited pig trying to hump it to death,’ said Cordner. ‘And the stink coming out of Biggsy’s arse has got to be banned as a chemical weapon under the Geneva Convention. And if it isn’t, it bloody well should be. The filthy bastard.’

  ‘What about the target? Seen anything?’ Liam asked, as Cordner got himself as close to comfortable as was possible.

  ‘Minimal,’ Cordner replied. ‘Just a few sentries and no regular patrols. I’ve recorded the timings, but there seems to be no set routine yet. They’re obviously keeping it random. But in this past hour activity has increased. Something’s up, so keep eyes on whatever it is they’re doing. Could be big. Then again, it could all amount to nothing and we’ll have spent our time freezing our balls off and collecting our own shit for nothing.’

  Liam carefully moved himself up to the edge of the hole and stared down the long-range spotting scope, the kind used by snipers; beside him was a top-spec SLR camera with a seriously capable zoom lens. The OP was situated up on a small tree-covered rise. Below them, and about 800 metres away, was a collection of buildings. It was their job to sit tight, remain undiscovered, and gather as much intelligence – or INT as they called it – as they could about what it was and who was using it. And that meant twenty-four-hour observation, which included sketching out maps, photographing and recording absolutely every detail they could, before pulling out and heading back to base.

  Dawn was smearing the blackness of the night into a dull ocean grey and Liam was now able to get a better view of what they were there to observe. Above him, the roof of their hide was covered in netting threaded with vegetation. Odds were if anyone walked by, the only way they’d find it would be by falling in.

  ‘Burger and beans,’ said Cordner, quickly tucking into his army rations before grabbing some shuteye. ‘My favourite. Want some?’

  Liam quickly followed Cordner’s lead. He was starving, and even though heating the food was out of the question – you don’t go digging a hole to hide in, then announce your location with smoke and steam and the smell of food – he still pushed it into his face with relish.

  Cordner’s hand appeared in front of Liam. It was holding a small red bottle like it was about to explode.

  Liam took the bottle. The label read ‘Tabasco’.

  ‘Gives it a bit more of a kick,’ said Cordner. ‘Never leave home without it. I reckon I’ve become even more addicted to it since giving up smoking a few months ago. But too much Tabasco will give you a serious case of the shits. And that’s not good when you’re on this kind of OP, is it?’

  Liam smiled. He had already learned that everything you took into the OP with you, you took back out. No trace was to be left behind. And that meant, at its most basic, primitive level, crapping into a bag, dropping it into your bergen, and hoping to God it didn’t burst on the way back out. Everyone knew the horror stories of badly tied bags, bags getting holes in, soldiers with the shits.

  Food finished, Cordner got into his sleeping bag.

  ‘Sweet dreams,’ said Liam, his own food now finished, not turning to watch Cordner drift off. He picked up the long-range spotting scope again.

  The rain continued, freefalling out of the dark, the roof doing little to protect any of them from the elements. Liam brought his hands up to his mouth, blowing warm air across them in an attempt to bring them back to life. They were numb, both with the cold and the wet, and from the hours digging the hole, and he could feel nothing. Not even a phosphorous grenade burning for almost a minute at a blistering 5000 degrees Fahrenheit would warm them up, he thought.

  For the next couple of hours, Liam silently observed the target below them. It was a collection of old farm buildings, all overgrown, with sections of roof that had given way to time and the weather. Where farm animals had once lived, soldiers now moved about. They’d been out there on the OP for four days now, thought Liam. Something had to happen soon.

  Armed men in combat gear were patrolling a perimeter. And Cordner had been right, Liam observed. There was no set timing to the patrols, as though they were doing their best to ensure that anyone observing them would never be able to find a clear time when the place could be attacked. That in itself made him uneasy.

  He took regular snapshots with the SLR, slowly filling up its memory card. They had a stack of others with them, so he didn’t need to worry about saving memory space. He also mapped the area on a pad of waterproof paper, marking down the location of the buildings, other objects, both natural and man-made, the distances measured through the gradients on the lens of the spotting scope, the positions and movements of the soldiers.

  At least, that’s what he was supposed to be doing, but Liam was finding it hard to see any correlation between what he was drawing and what was actually going on down below in real time. His artistic skills left a lot to be desired. At school, he’d hated art with a passion. If he was honest, he’d hated all of school with a passion, but art particularly so. He not only wasn’t any good; he also had never had the patience for it. Frustration had bubbled up and out as disruption at school. Here, that simply wasn’t an option.

  It was just as Liam was about to screw up his hand-drawn map in frustration and start again that he noticed a change in the movements below. And it was dramatic. Squeezing his eyes hard to push away the waves of tiredness, he watched as a vehicle swung into the compound. He quickly snapped photographs of its arrival, then of the occupants exiting it and entering one of the buildings. This in itself had been a new development, but the one that followed it was immediately more worrying. Through the scope, Liam watched as a patrol of a dozen soldiers fanned out below them and started to head their way.

  Shit . . .

  Liam kept on with the scope, watching as the men moved slowly away from the farm buildings and up the hill towards their OP. For a moment he thought that perhaps it was just a routine check. They’d seen the soldiers carry out checks of the local area before. But this, Liam soon realized, was different. They weren’t just taking a routine stroll to see if anything was up – they were walking with purpose, looking for something. And he could see that they were focused on what lay further up the hill.

  He switched to the SLR, took some snaps, then was back on with the scope. The men, their fatigues giving no indication of their owner’s loyalties, were clearly now making their way up the slope and showing no signs of changing direction or heading back to their base.

  But why? Liam thought. What the hell had got them spooked enough after all this time to decide to take a stroll up towards them? Had they been compromised? And if so, how? He could think of no way that anything he or the others had done could have drawn attention to their presence.

  Focusing now on getting as much INT as he could, Liam went back to the SLR. Making use of its hugely capable zoom lens, he moved from soldier to soldier, focusing in on their faces and quickly taking a rapid succession of portrait photographs. Their expressions were serious, determined. It was clear to him that they weren’t messing around and were ready for a fight, should one kick off.

  Liam quickly and quietly roused first Sergeant Biggs and then the others.

  ‘What’s up?’ hissed the sergeant. Despite his chirpy West Country lilt, Biggs was solid and scarred, and looked like the only alcohol he ever drank was rocket propellant. With him came a ripe, warm stink and Liam
almost gagged. He nodded to the sergeant to get himself up to the eyepiece of the spotting scope.

  ‘Vehicle arrived fifteen minutes ago,’ he reported. ‘Then about two minutes ago, that—’

  ‘Fuck . . .’

  Cordner was now up, and alongside him was the final member of their four-man squad, a corporal called John Pearce who sounded like Sean Bean but didn’t quite cut it in the looks department.

  ‘Things about to get fruity?’ asked Pearce.

  ‘Looks that way,’ Liam confirmed.

  ‘Agreed,’ said Biggs. ‘And we need to be ready to get the hell out.’

  ‘Any chance I can see the tour operator when we get back?’ said Pearce. ‘This holiday has been total and utter bollocks.’

  ‘Wind your neck in,’ said Biggs, and Pearce fell quiet.

  Liam stared down the SLR. The soldiers were still only a couple of hundred metres or so up from the buildings, but their direction hadn’t changed. Then one of them stopped and dropped to the ground, halting the others in the process.

  The soldier rose, holding out what he had found on the ground.

  Through the SLR the object glared at Liam, almost like it was laughing at him. His breath caught in his throat, but he forced his voice out regardless, croaking as he spoke.

  ‘They’ve found a fucking ration bag!’ he hissed through clenched teeth. ‘They’ve found a fucking ration bag! We’ve been compromised!’

  3

  The last thing Liam saw through the viewfinder of the SLR before he stuffed it into its case was the patrol of soldiers climbing the hill, weapons now up and in the shoulder, and aiming them up the slope in the general direction of their position. They didn’t know where Liam and the others were yet, but they soon would if they kept on moving. What had been a simple go look-see patrol had, on the finding of the empty ration bag, turned on a pin. The soldiers now knew someone was out there in the dark, and it was obvious that their clear intention was to eliminate the threat they posed. Liam knew they meant business.

  Orders were barked and echoed round the trees, the soldiers now moving swiftly and in well-practised formation, using the trees as cover as they advanced in twos. As yet, no shots had been fired, but Liam had no doubt at all that it was only a matter of time.

  ‘Where the fuck did that ration bag come from?’ Pearce snarled, stuffing the last of his kit into his bergen like he was trying to punch a hole in it.

  ‘At this moment, it doesn’t fucking matter,’ growled Biggs, the first of them to be ready for the off. ‘What does, is that we scoot sharpish before those bastards are all over us like the kind of rash you’ve probably grown used to, Pearce. Understood?’

  Liam clipped his own bergen shut, made a last check of his sleeping area and, satisfied that there was nothing left behind, was back to the sergeant and waiting instructions.

  ‘Ready?’

  Three stern voices answered Biggs with a simple ‘Sarge.’

  ‘We extract in two-by-twos,’ said Biggs. ‘Fire and manoeuvre all the way. No messing. No heroics. No fucking Rambo shite either. Understood?’

  There was no answer. There didn’t need to be.

  ‘Scott, you and Cordner are out first. We’ll cover you. As soon as you’re topside, we’ll lob in a few smoke grenades and flash bangs, anything to distract them, then put down some covering fire to keep their heads down.’

  At that, Liam and Cordner edged forward, ready for the off. Liam’s stomach was twisting itself tight as adrenaline coursed through him.

  ‘We’ll wait till you have cover and are slamming some rounds into them,’ continued Biggs. ‘Then we’ll join you. From then on, you know the routine. Fire and manoeuvre all the way to the extraction point. We’ll call it in on the way. Questions?’

  There were none – if there had even been time. For now they all heard the voices. The enemy patrol was edging closer.

  Liam, crouched next to Cordner, readied his weapon.

  Sergeant Biggs lobbed two smoke grenades in quick succession from the rear exit of the OP, adding in a flash bang for good measure. Then, from the spy hole at the front, Pearce kicked off with a barrage of covering fire.

  ‘Move!’

  With Biggs’s voice ringing in his ears, smoke swirling in the dark, and the hellish crack of automatic rifle fire snapping through the trees, Liam was up out of the hole. A few paces on he swung round to where the enemy were advancing, dropped down to one knee and opened fire. Short sharp bursts spat from his SA80, covering Cordner as the Irish man heaved himself up and out of the hole and raced past behind him. A few seconds later, Liam heard Cordner follow his example, giving it some with covering fire and yelling over to him to get moving.

  Liam eased off the trigger, hammered himself up off the cold earth and to his feet, and raced on. And so it continued, each of them providing covering fire as the other moved, until they were both clear of the scrape, and had enough cover from the scrub and trees around them to provide fire support for Biggs and Pearce.

  More smoke grenades took to the air, a couple of flash-bangs, and Liam knew that Biggs and Pearce were on their way.

  The air was thick with the sound of rifle fire mixing with shouts from the enemy soldiers, now desperate to get their quarry before it escaped.

  Biggs and Pearce slid in behind them, faces determined and grim.

  An explosion lit the night sky like a firework display.

  ‘Reckon they’ve found the scrape,’ said Biggs. ‘Must have seriously pissed them off, eh? Let’s move!’

  As Liam and Cordner had been first out of the OP, it was the turn of Biggs and Pearce to take point, slipping off into the darkness as the other two continued with their covering fire. Then Liam and Cordner were on the move once more.

  ‘Ready?’ asked Cordner.

  Liam lowered his weapon and was on his feet. ‘Last one to the bar’s a REMF,’ he said, and he was off. Even if he was the youngest in the squad, if there was one thing he was never going to be, it was a rear echelon motherfucker.

  Major Willis was standing behind his desk, glaring at Liam and the rest of the patrol. On the desk, in plain sight for them all to see, was the evidence from their OP that none of them wanted to take the blame for: the innocent-looking silver-foil food pouch.

  The commanding officer had wasted no time in getting them all in front of him. They’d not even had time to change, and Liam was knackered and in desperate need of a shower.

  ‘Well?’

  Liam and the others remained quiet.

  The major, who though the smallest in the room by noticeable inches had enough force of personality to fill a football stadium, raised his left eyebrow.

  ‘To be frank, gentlemen,’ he began, ‘I am not entirely sure what stinks more: your pathetic, shit-covered carcasses, or that one of you managed to put your entire operation at risk by leaving a trace of your presence for the enemy to discover. Need I remind any of you that you are here because the army, in its apparent wisdom, seems to think that you are among its very finest and best? And that this’ – the major picked up the foil food pouch from his desk and held it out in front of them – ‘well, it’s not exactly showing you at your best in any shape or form now, is it? You are supposed to be in intelligence. You are supposed to be invisible. Recce Platoon is supposed to be the ears and the eyes of the battalion. Good intelligence means the right men and the right weapon system deployed for the situation. Bad or half-baked intelligence means a full-on shit storm. Without accurate, current intelligence a soldier, a platoon, an army is blind. And if you can’t get intelligence without being discovered, you are no good to us.’

  Major Willis was still standing holding the food pouch.

  ‘I am inclined to suggest,’ he said, his voice quiet, ‘that it would be good form on your part if one of you at least stepped forward and took this out of my hands.’

  Biggs was the one to take the pouch, but Liam knew the mistake had not been his. He felt sick. What if it was one of his pouches?
The truth was that he couldn’t be sure it hadn’t come from his bag. He couldn’t remember checking. He’d been so focused on taking pictures and trying to draw maps.

  ‘I will say no more,’ Major Willis said, sitting back in his chair and resting his hands clasped together in his lap, ‘but one of you buggered this up good and proper. Which is a shame because, by all accounts, your subsurface observation exercise was going rather well. The INT collected was top-notch, and even the map drawing wasn’t a total loss, but from here on in this kind of sloppiness never occurs again. Do you understand?’

  Liam joined in with a ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘The Light Reconnaissance Commanders Course is tough. It’s meant to be. If it was easy, any fucker could do it, and what would be the point of that?’

  Liam was only partly listening. What he really wanted to do was hightail it out of there and go through his kit. Why hadn’t he checked and double-checked everything? If the pouch was his, he’d never forgive himself. As for Biggs, Cordner and Pearce, he didn’t dare think what they’d all have to say to him.

  ‘Now bugger off, the lot of you, and for the love of God have a shower before some jobsworth comes in and decides we’ve secretly developed a new kind of biological weapon!’

  Liam stared at his kit, all laid out neatly in front of him on the floor of his room.

  ‘Bollocks . . .’

  He’d now been through every pocket, every fold of cloth, every single nook and cranny in his clothes, webbing and bergen, but the evidence was clear: the food pouch that had screwed them over was his. He was one down, the space where it should be amongst the others glaring at him like an open wound.

  Liam crouched down to check his bergen once again, even though he knew it was pointless, that there was no missing food pouch somehow still hidden inside, waiting to clear him from all accusation and prove his innocence.

  As he dragged the bergen towards him, a pair of boots appeared at the door.