This is based vaguely on a mission I played with my squad, but I had to rely on artistic license to spice it up and take the rough edges off. If any of the lads from VCB are reading this, apologies if I got your sections wrong, I've been intermittently drunk and hungover while writing this.
I'll post the other chapters if people like it.
Prologue
One hand after the other. I paused for a second and pressed my body tight against the rock face. The cold and damp was more of a shock than a relief to my sweaty, itchy body as I gingerly wiped at my forehead the best I could before beginning to climb again. I don’t like heights. That is, I don’t like climbing heights. I love aircraft and all that sort of thing, but give me a ladder and a house and I’ll be shitting myself on the third rung. Give me mercenaries, give me drug-fuelled militias, give me stints in the jungle with all sorts of creepy crawlies scuttling over my face while I’m crawling through the mud and filth. Just don’t make me climb any fucking cliff faces.
So there I was, climbing a cliff. In the dark. With a gale threatening to test my faith in the safety line. And rain. Rain like you’d not believe. Horizontal rain. I kid you not. It was almost as bad as hailstones.
I was climbing this cliff on the southeastern of some godforsaken island somewhere in the North Sea. At the top of the cliff was (indeed, is) a sheltered little copse. This was the RV point. 2 Section were due to meet us there at 0300 after doing a little bit of a spring-clean of enemy vehicle crews in a laager three miles west. I was quite aggrieved to have missed out on that, creeping about in the dark with Heckler and Koch and fighting knives.
3 and 4 Section were standing off some ten miles from the coast in a Royal Marine Sea King, ready to hammer in to back us up. 1 Section, the gang I was attached to, were scuttling up the cliff face south of the town of Attonnes, having infiltrated by Rigid Raider. We all had our own little objectives, but the gist of the operation was to bring the enemy to their knees before the invasion. 1st Platoon, 1 and 2 Section, we were tasked with the elimination of Major Gregov Katarovic and his staff, who would be tucked up nice and snug in their HQ in the town by now. 2nd Platoon, 3 and 4 Section, were there to assault the small docks some six miles up the east coast.
First things first.
One hand after the other. Another few inches.
One
I finally reached the top of the bastard cliff, throwing my arms out and grabbing clumps of grass, digging my hands into the dirt. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth and hauled my sorry arse, beltkit, my patrol pack and my weapon over the edge. A hand grabbed me roughly by the back of my assault vest and dragged me up. Horizontal at last, I rolled onto my back and looked up to see a familiar face.
“Alright cunto?†Lance Corporal Hogg whispered with a flash of teeth. “Sorry, Sarnt Major Cunto,†he added with another grin.
“Ey up lancejack†I replied, gasping a bit.
Hogg, or “Bam†to everyone in Echo Company, was a foul-mouthed bastard. He got his nickname from his less-than-diplomatic approach to most problems. There was a rumour he ended up in with us after sticking the head on his old lot’s CO. Probably untrue, but credible all the same.
“Woofer and Lilty are having a shufty at the town about 100m that way†he whispered, pointing off into the dark. I nodded, having released myself of the safety line and got my trusty LSW in my hands. Woofer was ex-infantry, solid bloke, especially behind a gimpy. Lilty likewise, but with a comedy Welsh accent. Bam carried on. “Shadders and Couga are stagged out.â€
Shadders and Couga were quite new to the battalion, the latter having joined us straight from the Swedish armed forces. Not enough fighting for his liking, or so he said.
I nodded again for good measure and heard a slight grunt behind us. Sergeant Ash, my 2iC, was just reaching the top. Myself and Bam grabbed him by the arms and dragged him up. Ash was a spot-on bloke, hailing from Liverpool. He scratched his moustache and sorted his shit out while Bam gave him the same spiel as he’d given me, but with “scouse bastard†in place of “cunto.â€
With all present and correct from 1 Section and 1st Platoon HQ, Ash got his Clansman out and sent a message to the ops room on board HMS Ocean. Quite why they’d sent us in over the Royal Marines I still don’t know. Maybe green berets don’t look as good on news reports as khaki ones, who knows? But we’d been sent in to do the job and that was all that mattered.
At the same time, Bam was on the net to let the rest of the company know that we were at the RV. We got our acknowledgements, two under the din of rotor blades, one in the form of two bursts of squelch. 2 Section must’ve been getting rather close to the enemy.
Woofer and Lilty crept back into the copse and shuffled over, taking their NVGs off and squinting in the dark.
“The town’s not as well defended as I’d have thought†Woofer said in a particularly nonchalant tone. Here we were, a kilometre away from the enemy HQ, deep behind enemy lines, outnumbered, probably outgunned, and with no chance of a retreat if we were compromised, and he was talking about it like he was passing the time of day at the checkout in Sainsbury’s. “We’ve got a single armoured vehicle, a BMD-3, parked by the church on the southern outskirts. Crew were nowhere to be seen, probably in the tent next door to it.†Lilty was evidently disappointed. He’d lugged a LAW80 up the cliff and had obviously wanted a more challenging target. “We saw at most three four-man patrols, two going clockwise around the perimeter, the other in the town itself. There’s one VCP on the road that leaves the town to the east. Six men on that, two sandbag bunkers either side of the road, one with an HMG and the other with a 23mm triple-A gun. Sentries scattered about. They all look a bit lax, swanning about with their weapons slung and with fags hanging out of their mouths.â€
“Did you see the HQ building Woof?†I prompted, whilst trying to imagine these features on the aerial photos we’d seen aboard the Ocean.
“Yep, big three-storey, town-hall type building.â€
“A few sixty-sixes and a few rounds of UGL through the windows…†Ash started, before Woofer shook his head.
“There are civilians in the town still. They’ve not been moved out, contrary to what our intelligence said. I suppose they’re guarding against an airstrike,†Lilty explained.
“Looks like we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way then,†I grumbled.
2 Section, a motley little gang led by Tim, a baby-faced lancejack and comprising of Jack, Rappy and Al, were meanwhile killing the enemy QRF troops as they slept at a vehicle laager a few miles west. They’d silently killed the sentries using HK MP5SD6s, and were now moving from tent to tent with their commando daggers. It took them no longer than a couple of minute from the first shot to the final wipe-down of blades, according to Tim. I had no reason not to believe him. He got on the net and let us know they were on their way.
