The Wall(24)

Then it was our turn. We sorted out our stuff, got on a lorry and drove off to the other barracks, which, as the guys from their company had said, was around the corner of the river, two watchtowers away. Halfway there we passed their lorry heading in the other direction, and some pleasantries were exchanged: our entire company stood up and gave them the finger, in formation.

The other barracks was the same as every other barracks, except with a few more recreational amenities: table tennis, pool tables, and it even had a gym and a cinema. Of course! The defensive watch had to be on duty all the time, every day, but as attackers, we could pick and choose. We didn’t have to work shifts, we could do whatever we liked, schedule-wise. Well, not quite: we’d do exactly what the Captain told us to do, exactly when he told us to do it. Still, by comparison, where the other shift had been a bit like a holiday, this really was a holiday.

The Captain, it goes without saying, had other ideas. We were given orders an hour after we got to the new site. The meeting was held in the briefing room. He was standing next to Sarge and Yos and I wouldn’t say he was rubbing his hands with eager anticipation while cackling with glee, because he just wasn’t that person, but he was pretty close.

‘The fun part!’ he said. ‘Now, first, a little exercise. Hands up everybody who enjoyed the experience of being overrun by Others, killed and wounded, or surviving only to be put to sea?’

The contrast between what he was saying – naming everyone in the room’s worst fear – and his super-jaunty tone was like a slap. Nobody’s hand went up.

‘Didn’t think so,’ he said. ‘It includes me, by the way. The officer in charge of a company which allows a breach is automatically put to sea.’

I looked around the room. It was clear that most people had forgotten that.

‘The reason this is the fun part is, we get to do to them what they did to us. They get to feel what it’s like. You’re probably wondering how, given that the landscape round here makes the Wall unrealistically easy to defend. They got to ambush us. That was an advantage agreed in advance. In return, we get an advantage, like them, once and once only. A five-minute power cut.’

A shifting and sitting-up took place in the room.

‘That’s right. Total loss of power for five minutes and five minutes only, on a night of our choosing. The idea is that Others or their sympathisers have co-ordinated a spot of sabotage. You might say it’s unlikely, but so was that ambush attack on the first night unlikely. In case you’re wondering, that is the standard training exercise here. These two respective advantages are always given to the two companies training on this site. This is our chance to even the score. Except, I don’t want to even the score. They got five over the Wall. I want to go not one better, not two better, but twenty-five better. I want to get an entire squad over the Wall. That would be a record and it’s a record I want.’

He looked around as if trying to catch someone, anyone, in the act of not wanting the record as much as he did. No takers.

‘So how do we do it? I have my ideas. I want to hear yours.’

Silence. Shuffling. More silence.

‘This is going to be a very long meeting if nobody has anything to contribute.’

Cooper put his hand up.

‘We make it hard for them.’

‘Yes, good. How?’

Fidgeting. I think it wasn’t so much that people were clueless as that we didn’t want to say stupid things in front of the Captain. He had that effect.

Eventually somebody said, ‘Keep them on the go.’

‘Yes!’ said the Captain, almost bouncing. ‘Exactly. Keep them at work. Especially at night. All night, every night. Constant attacks. Some small, some less so. One after another. Make it so that it never stops. Make them tired. And then – the big one.’

So that’s what we did. We made a token attack on the second day but apart from that it was just night work. We split into two shifts, again, but with the welcome difference that we were only on for a few hours each; three or four attacks for the first two nights, both shifts taking turns, sleeping as much of the day as we wanted. It was, as the Captain had said it would be, fun. Getting soaking wet and consequently freezing wasn’t pleasant, of course, but the basic pattern of being active and on the attack was inherently interesting and involving; knowing what you were doing and when made attacking much less anxious than being a Defender. On the first night our shift even managed to attack twice, catching the waiting lorry back to our barracks, changing into wetsuits and being driven back in motorboats for a second go. (Boat in close, swim in using snorkels.) We all got ‘killed’, but so what? I understood why the people we’d ‘shot’ and been shot by in the big assault were in such good humour. I spent more time with Hifa than I ever had before while on duty. I had got to the stage of finding reasons for doing things with or next to her, and was beginning to suspect she was at the same stage too – those little hints you get at the start of something.

Then the last night came, the time for the big assault. In all the time I knew him, I never saw the Captain in a better mood than he was that day. It had all been prep for this: small attacks mainly at the narrow point of the estuary, to misdirect from a single huge attack from the other direction. We had three fast inflatable boats, piloted by members of the Guard. (Not really cheating to use expert pilots: the Others were good sailors, by definition. Any who weren’t would have drowned before they got here.) We were favoured by the conditions, moonless and windy. We’d creep in as close as we could, five hundred metres by the Captain’s estimate, and on the exact moment of the power cut, the Guard would hit the accelerators and we’d race in. That would take ninety seconds. Focus on three attack points, one for every boat. We had grappling equipment and ladders and the Wall had that attacker-friendly ledge. Sixty seconds to get up and over. Then two and a half minutes of dark to kill as many Defenders as possible and get away from the Wall on the inner side. Our eyes would be dark-adapted; the Defenders’ wouldn’t be. They’d hear the boats coming but not be able to see them. They’d be knackered from constant attacks all night for the previous sixty hours, and with luck they’d be thinking the end was in sight and the worst over. Our odds were as good as they could be.