Recoil - Andy McNab [110]
Sam and Crucial lifted Tim and his cot into the tent.
I shoved two magazines into my OG map pockets and checked the safety lever was down two clicks. Then I grabbed the jerry-can and gulped as much water down my neck as I could without throwing up.
2
Weapons in the shoulder, we skidded down to the scrapyard where the ANFO had been mixed. The view down here in the stalls was scarier and more claustrophobic than the one we’d had up in the dress circle. It looked like a First World War battlefield, the sort the Germans used to call ‘the place where the Iron Crosses grow’.
Sam hunkered down among the oil drums and we closed in.
‘OK, listen – me and Crucial are going to get the two guns from those sangars. Nick, you get hold of as much link as you can from the stores dugout. We’ve cleaned it out of RPG rounds, but whatever you can find, we need it up top.’
He dug into his chest harness and handed me a cheap plastic version of a mini Maglite. I tried to shove it into my pocket next to the sat nav, but my OGs were so sodden it clung to my hand.
‘Get any link straight up to the trenches. Then come back here and wait. I want some cover down here as well, in case we have a drama on the other side.’
I nodded. ‘Got it. Listen, mate, I want to check the firing cables. That OK?’
Sam thought about it for a second, then nodded. It was going to take precious time, but he knew it would eat away at me if I didn’t find out, one way or another. Who’d fucked up, me or the kit? In my boots, he’d have wanted to do the same.
Sam led off, with Crucial behind him and to the left. I took the right. We moved as fast as we could, safety off, weapon back in the shoulder.
Sam found the cable. I picked it up and started to follow it towards the river. The other two fell in each side of me and covered.
Ahead of me I could see a haphazard arrangement of stepping-stones in the mud. As I got closer, I could see what they were: some adult, some kids, some still with weapons beside them or lying across their bodies. One had fallen face down and was almost fully submerged. His disembodied hands and feet seemed to grow out of the mud.
I got to where I’d anchored the cable, just short of the Nuka hidey-hole. Sam and Crucial knelt, covering the arcs, while I unwound the cable from the rock. I tried to pull the join apart, but the pigtails didn’t give an inch – they hadn’t let me down.
Sam wanted to move on, and I nodded. Job done. I was happy; well, sort of. I untwisted the two strands and let them fall into the mud. I still wanted to test the cable later.
Sam and Crucial aimed for the right side of the valley and I headed back the way we’d come.
When I reached the cover of the drums once more, I undid the torch and turned the bottom battery the right way round again. Old habits died hard for Sam. It saved power, and could also save your life: a torch suddenly coming on if the switch got knocked was an open invitation to any sniper within reach.
I shielded the lens in the palm of my hand. There was a dull red glow through the skin. I turned it off again and kept it in my left hand so that when I gripped the weapon it lay along the stock. When the time came, it would be my searchlight.
I moved off towards the stores dugout, trying to keep low, trying to offer as small a target as I could.
A pace or two from the mouth, it was time to hit the switch. Gripping it against the stock, I shone the beam down the barrel and into the cave.
The marzipan smell embraced me like an old friend, and as I swept the beam I could see the ground was strewn with many more empty wooden crates than last time. Bits of ordnance, the internal box packing for RPG rounds and sweaty slabs of HE covered with grit had been discarded all over the floor. Ahead of me was a stack of boxes.
As I panned the cave, there was a scuffle behind them.
I threw myself against the wall and tensed into a fire position, barrel up, both eyes open, first pressure taken. I didn’t want to give whoever was in here the chance to open up