| �This isn�t one of your jokes is it?� queried the worried voice on the other end. Gary recognized the perturbed voice of his crew mate Daz, they had been through training together and Gary had never understood how he had been beaten by his mate .Daz had the concentration of a fish. �Sorry mate�, he replied, secretly wishing he�d been a fly on the wall in that house when the postman had been. �Looks like the jokers at HQ want to get their moneys worth.� Daz swore. �Guess I�ll see you up there then mate, reckon this�ll be a tenner at least.� Gary laughed, they always graded their exercises in Mars Bars, a oner would mean one mars bar per hour, a scale they had worked out one long cold February exercise in Thetford forest. They had only ever pushed it up to a fiver before and that was a real killer, the rain had almost been horizontal and everything that could�ve gone wrong had. Gary was a member of 589 Royal Signals troop, based at Norwich. The main task of the troop was to provide battlefield trunk communications, not for nothing were they referred to as the British Telecom of the Army. They were equipped with four Triffids, radio relay trucks so called because of the resemblance of the antennae to the plants in the 60�s horror film of the same name, the equipment had been designed in the late �70�s and was beginning to show its age. But like the troops who ran it the reliability was second to none, various upgrades to the hardware had been issued but it was essentially the same truck that had rolled out before some of the operators were born. The planners at headquarters loved to use it because of the dependability it offered the troops on the other hand loved it because it was essentially a mobile home and therefore shelter from the elements. He switched the television off, it had been glaring away in the corner soundlessly since the postman dropped his bombshell, all that was on was news reports anyway. Faceless experts, who had never been heard of before, were now jostling for a slot on the morning chat shows, squeezing in between the manic chefs and ingratiating anchor men. They all seemed to be experts on this conflict, even though it had barely begun, when the only experience they had was from Aden or six months at Sandhurst, before they had to leave amongst excuses of torn cartilage or terminal piles. �Everyone�s a chuffin expert,� remarked Gary, half to himself. �Bet they can�t find an expert to guarantee our jobs when we get back!� He picked up his cold coffee mug and went through to the kitchen, wondering if his wife would calm down soon and come home, before he had to disappear. There wasn�t time to make amends for all the unkind things he�d said both said, to each other but they had to try. He leant against the kitchen cabinet, staring at the wall opposite, taking in the pencil marks where he was meant to be fixing a shelf for some cookery books, the patches of different coloured paint in the corners that were supposed to be patched up by now. Gary knew that not only was he asking a lot of his boss at work, but he was also asking more of his wife, they would both have to get on without him until he returned. Assuming he made it back of course, nothing was written in stone anymore least of all his immortality, turning he opened the cupboard on the wall behind him, extracting his medical tags from the mass of papers and letters that threatened to obey gravity. Outside the sky was a startling clear blue, only broken by the feathery contrails of airliners still carrying oblivious holidaymakers to over priced Spanish destinations. Life for them was still carrying on, as it was for thousands others, ignorant of the suffering and hardship of their fellow man, or at least choosing to ignore it. Gary wondered if the same airliners would soon be flying over the battle area and if the few lucky refugees to make it out of their homes alive would be staring up at them, wishing that they too could be a million miles away. He doubted it very much, more than likely they would be staring up in terror as hostile jets wheeled high above them, reaping thunder from the muted sky and sowing the seeds of the so called �Ethnic Cleansing�. Zipping his jacket up as protection against the freezing February wind Gary pulled the door shut and started what could be the longest journey of his life. |