The Wall(25)
I was sitting next to Hughes during the briefing. The Captain was drawing a diagram of fire patterns once we’d got onto the Wall.
‘The Captain’s good at this, isn’t he?’ he whispered.
‘You’d almost think he used to be an Other,’ I whispered back, and immediately felt bad. That wasn’t a thing we joked about; it went too deep. What the Captain had lived through before he got here, what he had seen and done, were subjects you felt in his being, rather than topics for gossip. Having said that, when you saw him designing an attack like this, it was possible to understand how he had got over the Wall.
It went more or less exactly as planned. That’s rare for anything military. At the debrief, we all agreed the weather had been a big help. The night really was black. There was so much wind the inflatables had to stop further away than we had intended, because the choppy wind-whipped wavelets were pushing us towards the shore. Somebody dropped a rifle against something metal, one of the boat fittings, and it felt as if the noise would carry for ten kilometres, let alone the few hundred metres to the Defenders waiting on the Wall. It didn’t, though, or if it did nobody noticed. We counted down, looking at our watches, and the lights cut exactly when they were supposed to; the Guards floored it, or hit it, or whatever the verb is for maximum acceleration in a boat. That feeling, the light boat sprinting and bouncing through the total dark, spray all over us, one hand on the rope handrail, the other grabbing our guns, was as pure a feeling of exhilaration as I’ve ever had.
Splash the last couple of feet. Grapple for security, ladder in place, swarm up, start shooting. The expression ‘they didn’t know what hit them’ is exactly wrong: they knew perfectly well. It’s just that they couldn’t do anything to stop it. We were ready, we could see, they weren’t and couldn’t. It was almost unfair, though still not as unfair as the advantage they’d had on the first night. We hit the two Defenders nearest our breach, then eight of our shift got over the Wall and started to get away. I’d agreed to stay and set up a rearguard, and so had Shoona. (In real combat I wouldn’t have volunteered, I hope it goes without saying. The soldier’s most fundamental rule, never volunteer. But on this exercise I thought staying behind and shooting would be more fun.) They got a counter-attack going with about thirty seconds of darkness to spare. Shoona and I got a few of them, then as the lights came on, we went over and slid down the inner side of the Wall. The Defenders shot at us; according to the assessors, afterwards, Shoona got away but I didn’t. So what? Our shift alone got eight people over. The others got eleven between them. Nineteen over the Wall was an all-time record. The next best was fourteen. From the moment the lights went out to the moment the assessors said the fight was over was seven minutes. Combat is like that, an undanceable rhythm: slow, slow, slower, sudden pandemonium.
When we got back to barracks, the Captain, unlike the rest of us, wasn’t elated. He just went calmly round and shook everyone’s hand individually, the only time he ever did.
12
The other squad came over and we had a few drinks. No alcohol on the Wall, but this wasn’t the real Wall. Somebody put some music on and there was dancing. There was karaoke, and people took turns, then one of their squad, a woman, had such an amazing voice we stopped taking turns and listened to her sing soul classics for a while. Then a few more drinks. And a few more after that. Like I said, a holiday. Their squad was supposed to go home to their barracks but it emerged that their lorry drivers had got into conversation with our lorry drivers, and had opened some cans, and then further cans, etc., and they had ended up as hammered as everyone else so there was nobody sober to drive the lorries. They ended up crashing in our barracks, using spare beds, sofas, chairs, even the pool tables. Only a drunk Defender can think a pool table makes an adequate bed.
The next morning we were due to go back to our real posts. That would involve about five hours in the lorry, ash-mouthed, suet-faced, smelling of recent disinterment. The other squad had it even worse: they were going back to north Wales. Hifa, who I’d last seen dancing with the woman with the amazing voice, was wearing a beanie, the same one she’d worn in her indeterminate-sex phase when I first met her, and her small features were peeking out from beneath it, scowling with hangover. If I’d been less hungover myself it would have been funny. My day began with an increasingly panicky fifteen-minute search for my glasses, which ended when I realised I’d never taken them off. Before our journey of horror, in the briefing room, a lecture. Or rather a ‘little talk’ from a member of the elite, some politician or government official, a short shiny young man with a mop of blond hair in an also shiny suit. He came into the overlit room and stood at the podium. We stand up for officers, but he wasn’t an officer, so we stayed put. He looked a little surprised at the state of us. Sixty dishevelled and severely hungover Defenders, unimpressed and unimpressive: not the world’s easiest audience.
‘Well done!’ he said, brightly. They always start by praising you. ‘The world’s best home defence force, participating in the world’s best training programme!’
Both parts of that were news to us, but whatever.
‘I’ve been hearing from your commanding officers. Remarkable!’
I looked across at Hifa, who was sitting next to me. At this close range I could see she was very slightly swaying. Her eyes weren’t closed, but on the other hand they weren’t fully open either. I gave her a nudge, which was a mistake, because she turned towards me and exhaled. Not only could I smell the alcohol, I could actually tell that she’d been drinking spiced rum. Her eyes were bloodshot, which didn’t stop her rolling them at the politician.