The Network - Jason Elliot [40]
Those who survived the gruelling Fan dance – up Pen-y-Fan and back three times – the night-time navigation to control points at memorised grid references, the heavily laden cross-country marches and mock interrogations, would end up on a month’s continuation training in the jungle. Brunei was the chosen location. H calls it ‘good jungle’. I don’t know what bad jungle is. He says it’s the jungle that really sorts people out, and where the real selection takes place.
‘Everything’s wet the whole time and there’s beasties all over the place. A lot of guys who did well on selection couldn’t handle the jungle,’ he says. I ask him how he’d fared on his own jungle training.
‘Me? Loved it,’ he says, beaming as the rain cascades over his eyebrows. ‘Happy as a pig in shit.’
We enter the cloud and feel its coldness. A purplish scar of track leads upwards. Beyond a dozen yards, every feature of the landscape is absorbed into the whiteness. H walks behind me and gives directions where the route looks uncertain. Higher up, a slippery outcrop of stone resembling a ruined wall marks the steepest portion of the ascent. The summit of Pen-y-Fan lies several hundred yards to the north-east. We reach it at the end of a narrow ridge where the flanks descend with spectacular steepness into deep glacial valleys on either side. But we can see nothing of the views.
It’s too cold to stop for more than a few moments. Using the corner of his compass, H points out our position on the map as the raindrops roll across its laminated surface, and we check our bearing for the long descent into Cwm Llwch. Beyond the valley at its base, we reach Cwm Gwdi, the remnants of the Parachute Regiment battle camp and the deserted road beyond. It loops west towards the shorter steeper ridge leading back up to the Obelisk.
Now I understand why H has chosen the route. It embraces a series of rewards and punishments – upward and downward gradients of varying degrees, from the painfully acute to the luxuriously gentle. You reap the pleasure of the gentle slopes to fight the steep ones. On a long tab there are strong arguments for stopping and others for going forward, and both spin out silently in your head. Bad weather magnifies the pleasures and the pains. The longer the route, the less seriously you take the clamour of these voices, which settle down into a kind of background grumble, while you drag your mind repeatedly back to something more concrete: the rhythm of your pace or breath.
On the final portion of the return climb, just before we re-emerge on the ridge by the Obelisk, I can feel my thigh muscles wobble in protest. The big blisters on my heels are now at the final stage of fattening up before bursting. But we’ve kept up a decent pace. Six hours later we’re back at the car. I’m freezing and tired. H asks how I’m feeling.
‘Never better.’
‘Good man.’
I throw the soaking Bergen into the back of the car, and H retrieves a Thermos of deliciously hot coffee. We drive back to his house, change into dry clothes, and H fries up a late lunch. I light a fire at his request from a neat pile of logs stacked by the fireplace. We eat as we warm our feet by the flames. As dusk falls, H pours two generous whiskies, and we talk over the scope of the operation ahead of us, wondering when we’ll get the go-ahead from London.
‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ says H. ‘We get sent to Afghanistan to train them how to use our kit, and then get sent back ten years later to tell them they can’t have it any more.’
‘Blowback,’ I say. ‘That’s what the CIA call it.’
‘Blow job, more like. Anyway. Best not to talk about any of this from now on.’ Then he leaves the room and returns a minute later with a boyish look of mischief on his face.
‘When was the last time you saw one of these?’
His right arm swings up, and with it the barrel of an AK-47 assault rifle. This is an unaccustomed