‘That’s nice of you,’ Jack said with unguarded sincerity.
‘He’ll love it.’
‘Yeah. He probably will,’ Jack agreed, placing it in his pocket and going back to his binoculars. ‘Thanks.’
Stratton highlighted a list of eight device codes on his data queue with marginally different signal frequencies beside each.
‘Here she comes,’ Jack said, picking up the handset. ‘Alpha one, Mike four zero has the obvious visual,’ he said into the radio.
Stratton looked through his own binoculars and found the train beneath a black trail of smoke issuing from its nose. ‘That’s it,’ he said as he went back to his laptop. ‘Give me a nod at a thousand metres?’
‘Roger that,’ Jack said as he raised the handset to his mouth again. ‘Mike four zero, we’re standby, standby.’
‘Roger, you’re standby,’ the voice repeated.
‘Give me a countdown,’ Stratton said as his fingers played the laptop with surprising agility as he went through a systems check.
‘Will do,’ Jack said, studying the train.
Stratton moved the cursor down the device queue, carrying out a receiver continuity test. When he reached the last code a red marker flashed a warning. He hit the test key again with the same result. ‘Zero one zero … Jack? I’m showing no continuity on your charge.’
‘What?’ Jack exclaimed, horrified, and moved to where he could see the screen.
Stratton ran another test. ‘That’s a negative,’ he said as he grabbed his bag and started to head out through the back of the hide.
‘No,’ Jack said, taking Stratton’s arm. ‘I laid it, I’ll fix it. You need to stay and play the board in case I can’t get back in time.’ Stratton knew that it was the wisest choice and didn’t argue.
‘What a wanker,’ Jack mumbled as he picked up his own demo -litions bag and ducked under the cam net.
‘Don’t rush it,’ Stratton called out. ‘You have time.’
‘I’m still a wanker, though,’ Jack called back as he broke into a trot to the bike, raised it onto its wheels, straddled the seat and after the second crank, gunned the engine to life. He quickly snapped it into gear and shot away across the hard ground, kicking up a thin trail of dust behind him.
Stratton looked through his binoculars to gauge the progress of the train, then moved them to check Jack’s progress. It was a risky move. Jack had to get to the charge, fix it, and get out of there before the train arrived. The engine driver would probably see the bike cross his front and his reaction would depend on how suspicious he was. Jack was wearing desert camouflage fatigues but the dust would make it difficult for anyone on the train to be sure of that until they were practically upon him. Stratton was confident that Jack would succeed but as he watched his friend and the train slowly converge he felt a twinge of fear for him.
Stratton and Jack had first met while on the same SBS selection course as young Marines many years ago. They exchanged hardly a word during the first three months of the course that began with a hundred and thirty- seven men. They only began to get to know each other during the last few weeks when the numbers were down to just twelve.
Their friendship was cemented during the final week-long exercise in Scotland when they partnered a two- man Klepper canoe along with one other pair to carry out a demolition raid against a power plant at the head of a loch. The underside skin of their canoe had been damaged during the final leg of their three-night portage across country to the foot of the loch from where they would paddle to the target. After patching it up as best they could by using a couple of oyster clamps they elected to press on, hoping that they could complete the twenty- kilometre paddle before the craft, an extremely durable wood and canvas construction, became unseaworthy. In truth, they feared the clamps would not hold for long and they put their fates in the hands of the gods simply because it would have been unthinkable not to make an attempt. The selection course was less about achieving the objective and more about tenacity and initiative in the face of extreme odds and exhaustion.
The gods, however, did indeed smile down on Jack and Stratton, for a while at least. They succeeded in planting their explosives on the target but as they made their way across the loch to the landing point where they were supposed to meet up with the other canoe, one of the oyster clamps dramatically failed and water gushed in. With more than a thousand metres to the rendezvous they quickly changed direction and paddled as fast as they could to the nearest shore, which was still two hundred metres away. But within seconds the canoe was completely submerged and although it had built-in flotation tubes, their equipment, which included rifles as well as rations for several more days, was too heavy and they abandoned it as it sank. The water was near-freezing but they were forced to ditch their jackets, boots and trousers in order to stay afloat and not follow their canoe to the bottom which was a good hundred metres below them at that point.
As they briskly swam side by side through the calm black water that had a frozen mist hovering just above it Jack and Stratton were keenly aware of the serious ness of the problem. They were in a severe survival situation that would not necessarily be solved when they reached the shore – if they
The exercise was run as realistically as possible and if they could not make that location they were expected to head for the final emergency escape rendezvous another twenty miles beyond that. Only then, if they did not show up, would the alarm be raised and a search party sent out to trace their route from their last known position. It could be several days on top of that before it was assumed that they had gone down in the loch and God only knew how long before a dive search was organised. In short, if they didn’t make the shore and find an immediate way of getting warm again they were screwed. To add to their problems the area was deserted for miles in every direction apart from the power station. But to seek aid there would mean, as far as the exercise was concerned, giving themselves up.
Ten minutes after bidding farewell to the canoe the pine trees that lined the distant shore seemed as far away as ever. Jack and Stratton were aware that their core temperatures were dropping dangerously low. Their limbs had long since gone numb and though it was getting more difficult to operate their muscles they increased their efforts, as much to generate body heat as to speed up their swim.
Stratton’s hand suddenly hit something which turned out to be a rock and they were instantly rejuv enated: unlike most of the loch’s shoreline that dropped almost vertically where the land met the water they had been heading for a point with a shallow gradient.
A few minutes later they were helping each other stagger up the rocky beach, unable to feel the stones beneath their bare, numb feet. As soon as they hit the shoreline they broke into a hobble, moving as fast as they could up the slope and into the wood where they stopped to take off their T-shirts, their only clothing other than their underpants, squeeze out the water and put them back on, a task that was exceedingly difficult in their condition.
‘What do you think?’ Jack asked, shivering fiercely.
‘We don’t have much choice,’ Stratton said with difficulty, his face and neck numb, the muscles almost rigid.
Stratton was referring to the power station and Jack had to agree. It was out of sight from where they were but finding it would not be difficult since all they had to do was follow the edge of the loch. The problems were the distance and if they would have enough time to get there before they collapsed.
‘There’s a road that follows the loch this side,’ Stratton said. ‘Let’s head west until we strike it.’
They headed uphill and after pushing through the dense pine wood, which was overall easier on their bare feet, they emerged onto a track that, although muddy, was fairly level and, as such, a godsend. They broke into a brisk pace along it. The track met the tarmac road ten minutes later and they pressed on without stopping, keeping to the soft verges to save their tender soles that were already lacerated. The lights of the power station became visible in the distance through the trees.
Half an hour later Jack and Stratton paused at a sharp bend in the road as it veered away to follow a river that fed the loch. The power station was less than half a mile away as the crow flew but the road showed signs of
