(2005) Rat Run Read Online Free PDF Page B

lightweight door said: knock - then Wait to be admitted. But every room in Battalion Headquarters was part of the fiefdom of Fergal. As adjutant he had free run. He pushed open the door. There was no electricity from the main supply that day because 'bad guys'
    had dropped a pylon, and the stand-by generators were barely able to match HQ's requirements. No air-conditioning was permitted and the wall of heat hit him.
    Inside, he could detect the scent used sparingly by the sergeant, pretty little plump Cherie, and, stronger, the body smell of the new man.

    'Morning, Cherie - and morning to you, Mal. How's things in Spooksville?' Fergal had a drawl to his voice, knew it made him sound as if he was perpetually taking the piss - and didn't care, because an adjutant cared damn all for anything other than the welfare of his colonel, codeword Sunray. 'Not too bombarded, I hope, with this GFH's problems. Sorry, Mai, I was forgetting you were new with us - GFH, God Forsaken Hole.'
    He leered at the sergeant. In the officers' mess, there was a sweepstake on when she would first get herself shagged; it was held by a lieutenant who ran the battalion's transport and he'd decreed that her probably outsize knickers, as a minimum, would be required as proof- the prize now stood at thirty-nine pounds sterling. The way she looked, with the glow on her cheeks and the sweat stains on her tunic blouse, Fergal didn't think it would be long before there was a claimant... A girl always looked good with a damn great Browning 9mm hanging in a holster on her hips. But his business was with the captain, her companion, who was not that new - had been with them for four months.
    'Yes, Mai, Sunray would like you up at Bravo.'
    'If you didn't know it, I've actually a fair bit to be getting on with right here.'
    'Are you not hearing me too well?' He heard Cherie's snigger. 'I said that Sunray wanted you up at Bravo. It's not for discussion, it's what he'd like.'
    The battalion in which Fergal was adjutant recruited other ranks from the tenements of Glasgow and the housing estates of Cumbernauld. The fathers or uncles of many had served two decades earlier. The officers, those with good prospects of advancement, came from the landed estates of the west Highlands. They were a family, a brotherhood. The feeling of being part of a clan, with a regimental history of skirmishes, bloody defences, heroic advances and battles, stretched back for three centuries. Their museum was packed with trophies from the campaigns of Marlborough, the epic of Waterloo, colonial garrisoning, the foothills between Jalalabad and Peshawar on the North West Frontier, the kops of South Africa, the fields of Passchendaele and the hedgerows of Normandy, then Palestine, Malaya, Kenya, the Aden Protectorate, and endless dreary little towns in Northern Ireland. Soon, when the booty had been crated up, museum space would have to be found for souvenirs of the Iraqi desert. The battalion had heritage and tradition, and its family strength recognized the danger of allowing strangers to infiltrate its ranks.
    Outsiders were not wanted.
    'If you're not too busy, Mal...' the sneer was rich in Fergal's voice '.. . Sunray would like you up at Bravo tomorrow.'
    Alongside the battalion's headquarters building, separated by its sandbag blast walls and its coils of razor wire, was the Portakabin occupied by the Intelligence Corps personnel assigned to them - the sergeant, Cherie, and the captain, Mai, as he was called in the mess. Put bluntly, and it was Fergal's right as adjutant to be direct, the Intelligence Corps captain was a cuckoo. He didn't fit, was not part of the family or a member of the brotherhood. The battalion had its own intelligence officer, Rory, a good man. They did not need the stranger, who knew nothing of the history, tradition, heritage that would see them through - if God was kind - the six-month posting to Iraq. The man didn't mix well, didn't share their culture.
    'We've a