“Christ! It’s colder’n a fish’s tit!” These were the first words that Aussie Lewis said as he stepped off the C-5 after the long haul from Alaska via Japan to the Never-Skovorodino road. “There a whorehouse ‘round here, Yank?”
The marine assigned to drive the twelve SAS/Delta Force troops to Freeman’s HQ was busy chipping ice from the Humvee track’s windscreen. “Nearest cathouse around here, buddy, is Japan. Thataway!”
“Oh, lovely!” said Aussie. “You hear that, Davey boy? You’re gonna have to play with yourself for the duration.”
“Better than being on Rat,” responded David Brentwood, saluting and shaking hands with the marine colonel who, though senior in rank to David Brentwood, was awed by the presence of a Congressional Medal of Honor winner.
“Take no notice of him, sir,” David told the colonel. “He’s an Aussie. They all talk like that. Good man in a firefight, though.”
The colonel grinned. “Yes, I knew a few in ‘Nam around Da Nan—” The Humvee’s radio crackled loudly in the frigid air. “Incoming! Incoming!”
Aussie Lewis hadn’t heard any heavy artillery. Where were the Russian guns? The Commies didn’t fire any artillery unless they had at least a hundred of them.
“Cruise missiles!” yelled a marine. “Let’s get outta here!”
“Beautiful,” said Aussie, heaving his eighty-pound pack into the back of the Humvee. “Hear that, Choir?” he called out to Williams. “No fucking class, these Sibirs. Can’t wait till a man’s unpacked.” Williams, the last man in, pulled the door shut. “Well, with you yabbering away, Aussie, they’ll have no trouble knowing where we are.”
“Now, don’t get shirty!” said Aussie and, either oblivious to or uncaring of a colonel of marines being present, adopted Choir Williams’s accent, explaining to all in the truck, “He’s a fucking Welshman. Take him out of the Estedford and he gets terrible cranky. He’d rather be singing in chapel you see. Tenor—’Men of Harlech’ and all that shit!”
David Brentwood, in the front with the colonel and driver, turned around. “You pack those Norsheets?” He was anxious that the Norwegian tent segments, which could be used to make various sizes of small tents, had been brought along.
“Planning on using them, are you?” asked Aussie.
“Did you pack them?”
“Yeah. Course I did. But we won’t need ‘em with our cold-weather garb,” he added. Beneath each man’s Gore-Tex parka and overpants there were three other layers: fiber pile, quilted jacket and pants, and polypropylene underwear. “She’ll be right, mate.”
“Thought you were cold?” said Choir good-naturedly.
“Not for long, Choir, not for long. Girls all say that I’m one hot—”
There was a scream of air, an enormous flash of light over the next rise. They saw a Humvee thrown at least forty feet into the air, its doors flying off, the black silhouettes of the marines flung from it.
The colonel and the SAS/Delta troopers felt the sudden jerk of acceleration as the driver put his foot down, and while Aussie might have been one of the toughest of the twelve commandos, he had never been under cruise salvo fire before, and wondered what the hell the driver was doing. But the marine wasn’t listening to advice; his helmet hard up against the windscreen, he peered through a tiny hole in the ice, picking up the infrared headlight beam.
“They land a quarter-mile apart,” explained the marine colonel. “Like running a traffic light. Provided you can—” Suddenly he stopped. Night was day, and they felt a warm wind actually push the Humvee forward as the vehicle hit fifty-five miles an hour on the hard snow road, started to skid, and righted in a rain of dirt, snow, and God knew what else falling on the vehicle’s roof as it continued on to Freeman’s HQ. No one said anything until the vehicle came to a shuddering stop, an MP swearing and jumping out of the way just in time, his weapon raised, momentarily fearing it was some kind of terrorist attack. The driver sat there shaking, the MP bawling him out. The colonel toned everything down, and while the SAS/Delta team moved into Freeman’s HQ to be briefed on what the general called the “game plan,” Choir Williams, tongue in cheek, blithely asked, “You making book on this mission, Aussie?”
Aussie didn’t answer until after the briefing, which lasted a half hour.
“Well?” asked Choir Williams. “What odds are you giving now?”“
Aussie was checking his ammo pack. “Why don’t you take a flying fuck at a doughnut?”
“Oh, how kind,” said Choir, turning to David Brentwood. “You hear that, Captain? Is that any way to talk to a tenor? I ask you now.”
Aussie saw ice was already forming on his magazine pouches, and as he replied to Choir Williams his breath looked like a fiery dragon’s. “Why don’t you take a flying—”
“All right,” cut in Brentwood. “Six hours sleep — then it’s off to the lake resort.”
“Resort? Oh, spare me!” moaned Aussie. “Two fucking comedians. I can’t stand it.”
“Don’t worry, Aussie,” said O’Reilly, one of the four Americans, including David Brentwood, in the team.”Least you don’t have to hoof it.”
“I don’t like those friggin’ Snowcat ‘Arrows,’ “ said Aussie. “Make more noise’n a bloody chopper.”
“Not to worry,” responded Choir. “Snow’ll muffle the sound, Aussie.”
“I’d still rather hike in.”
“Not enough time,” commented David Brentwood. “You heard the general.”
“Too bad,” said Aussie, shifting his attention to his nose, one of the most insidious dangers of a winter campaign being that the flesh could freeze so fast you didn’t even notice it.”Least my prick is still warm.”
“You’re hopeless,” proclaimed Choir. “Get in the truck, you horrible man.”
David Brentwood was glad of the repartee among members of the team. Without high spirits, not even the best equipment in the world would be enough on such a mission as this. As the Humvee drove away, David Brentwood went back in the HQ to see his eldest brother. The briefing of the mission had been so detailed and required so much attention that apart from a handshake they’d not had the opportunity to say much to one another. David felt badly about it, but the fact was he hesitated going in to see his brother. They’d never been that close, the age gap between them much wider than it was between Robert and Ray, the second oldest. Besides, having stayed alive during the war so far without having seen that much of one another, David harbored what he knew was an irrational but powerful conviction that seeing one another now and being on the same mission would be — well, just plain bad luck.
He had no idea that Robert, now opening the door, holding up a fifth of Vodka, felt exactly the same.