Grand Alliance (Kirov Series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

eager to be up and about his business again.
He needed to get to Alexandria, but this unit was quite a mystery to him.
    “Just
who do you say you are out here, Sergeant?”
    “Sir?”
    “What
unit are you, man? Are you out from Siwa?”
    “No sir,”
said Dilling politely, answering the second question while ignoring the first.
He had been told to say as little as possible about the business of the brigade,
but he could see that this man was getting up a good head of steam and seemed
restless to be up and about, which would be his problem. Thankfully he was
reinforced by a Major from Brigadier Kinlan’s staff and was able to recede, off
the hook for the moment.
    “Ah,
there you are General,” said Major Isaac. “I have been asked to inquire on your
wellbeing, sir. I trust you managed to get a few hours sleep.”
    “Quite
so,” said O’Connor, “and a better breakfast than I’ve had for a good long
while.”
    “Splendid.
Well, sir, if you would be so good as to accompany me, we’ve arranged for a
local area reconnaissance. Brigadier Kinlan would be very pleased if you would come
along.”
    That
sounded better. Reconnaissance was an art O’Connor strongly believed in, but he
wondered what this was about, and asked as much.
    “Well
sir,” said Major Isaac, “that storm could have masked a host of unpleasantries
out here, and it’s standard procedure to have a good look around before we move
the column out. General Kinlan was most eager to have you along. Then we can
see about getting you to Alexandria. Right this way, sir.”
    At
last, thought O’Connor. Things were starting to feel just a bit more normal
now. For a moment there he had the distinct feeling that he was being treated
like an outsider here, an interloper, and even came to feel he was being
considered a prisoner! The questions that had succumbed to the weariness of the
night were all with him again now. Who were these men? Why were they dressed so
strangely, and by god, where did they get all these odd new vehicles? He had
seen two tanks the other night, but they were gone now, and for a moment he
doubted what he had seen. It must have been the bloody sand storm, a trick of
light and shadow in the wind.
    Yet
what he saw next did little to still his mind. He was politely ushered aboard a
vehicle, where two curious looking soldiers sat with unusual looking rifles,
and the hatch was closed, obscuring everything from view. Yet O’Connor had a
good pair of ears, and he knew the sounds of a military unit waking up in the
desert, shaking off the cold, warming up and getting ready to move soon.
    “You’ve
obviously just come off the boat,” he said to the Major. “Yet I can’t imagine
why, or even how you managed to get the ten or twenty odd vehicles you have
here this far south, and it sounds like there’s a good deal more here. Just what
are you up to out here, Major? A reinforcement sent to Fergusson at Siwa?”
    Like
Dillings, the Major had been told to divulge as little as possible and simply
get the General into a secure vehicle, with no windows, and get him out to the
Russian helicopter. So he fell back on the one thing that he knew might allow
him a brief holding action here, and punted.
    “Well
sir, I haven’t been fully briefed on the situation. Brigadier Kinlan has simply
asked me to convey his invitation, and stated he preferred to brief you in
person.”
    “Good
enough, Major.” That made sense to O’Connor, and so he let the matter go, but
one question after another was waking up in his head again and, when the
vehicle finally stopped and he stepped out into the pre-dawn darkness, he got
yet another surprise to be standing in the shadow of a massive mechanical
beast, a huge metal locust, with long bladed wings.
     
    * * *
     
    Fedorov was there to greet him, along with Brigadier Kinlan, who
saluted. The two men had conferred over how they would handle the matter with
O’Connor. The only question now was whether they could pull