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.’ He nodded vigorously.‘When the shit hits the fan, your guys should be able to drop quite a few of the enemy straight away.But after the first couple of minutes the survivors will go to ground in one of the buildings, probably the main one.They’ll barricade themselves in, for sure.Your lads are going to have to winkle them out.’‘RPG into the doors,’ said Joss, laconically.‘Another couple of rockets into the tin walls.That’ll get them jumping.’‘It might torch the place as well.’Joss shrugged.‘If it does, it does.There’s not much to burn inside – looks like it’s all metal.’ He turned to look at me, and said, ‘By the way, I hope you fellows are going to join the party.’‘Well, we hope to.Phil and me are planning to come in behind assault force.We’ll keep in touch and give you whatever back-up we can.Pavarotti will do the same up here with the cover group.The rest of us will remain on standby with the vehicles.How’s that?’‘Fine, fine.No problem.’‘The most important thing is that nobody clocks on to the fact we’re in the area.That means hard routine tonight: no fires or cooking.You need to get an OP on the ferry, too, Joss.We don’t want any little bugger sneaking across in the night to raise the alarm.’‘We’ll do that.’‘And you need to decide what to do if somebody comes this way: grab him, knock him off, or what.’Behind the OP in which we were lying, a gully ran back towards the hill, in dead ground from the mine; this made it easy for us to pull out and hand over to a relief observation team without any risk of being spotted.We were just about to go when Mart surfaced on the radio to say that Fräulein Inge was at last coming round.‘Great!’ I said.‘Tell her I’ll be with her shortly.’‘She’s not that coherent yet,’ he warned.‘Besides, she’s talking German.’‘German!’ snorted Phil.‘What did Whinger fucking tell you!’‘What’s she saying?’ I asked.‘Not too sure.We can’t make much sense of it.She’s hurt her ankle, though.She tried to stand up and went over on it.I see now it’s pretty swollen.She must have sprained it in the crash.’‘Keep her comfortable.We’ll be with you in twenty minutes.’Walking back up the hill, Phil, Pav and I drew off to a distance on our own.‘Listen,’ said Pav.‘That’s not for real, is it? You going in with them?’‘Well.’ I began.‘For fuck’s sake!’ he snorted.‘Let the silveries shoot hell out of each other.Leave them to it.’‘We don’t want this first contact to go wrong,’ I said.‘If we lose touch with Joss, he could blow it.Then we’d all be in the shit.’‘Give him a radio,’ said Pav.‘Keep in touch that way.Don’t get involved.’‘We’re not planning on getting involved,’ said Phil, stubbornly.‘That’s the point.We’re going to keep well back.’‘Bollocks,’ went Pav.‘Once you get down on those mounds, you’ll be in the thick of it.’The argument continued till we were back in camp.Looking back, I realise it was Phil who was driving things.In spite of what he said, he was hell-bent on getting into a good fire-fight.I should have put my foot down and vetoed the idea, but because I was tired I went along with his claim that our best chance of retaining control was to be on the ground with the assault force.As we came in, Mart drew me aside until we were out of earshot of the trucks.‘She needs watching,’ he said.‘What d’you mean?’‘I think she’s bluffing.When she came round, the first thing she asked, was, “Wo bin ich?” Perfectly clear.’‘What did you tell her?’‘Nothing.I told her not to worry and that she was safe.’‘In English?’‘Of course.But after that, she went to gibberish.’‘She knows we’re Brits, then.Maybe that’s what turned her off.Make certain nobody says anything operational in her hearing.Nothing about where we are or what we’re doing.Okay?’‘Sure.’‘How’s her ankle?’‘Definitely sprained.’‘At least she can’t do a runner, then.’‘Oh, no.The injury’s genuine enough.She can only hobble.She must have caught it under the seats in the aircraft and wrenched it when the thing came down.’‘More important, how’s old Whinge?’‘He’s got a fever.That’s only to be expected.I cleaned up his burns again as best I could, but there’s always the risk a bit of shit has got in.I just hope the antibiotics’ll keep him under control [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]