[The following January]

“Come on you laggards. Just because you are effing women does not mean that you can slack off. There is still six miles to go. Then it is only a few more hours then, you can have that hot bubble bath that you females all love so much!”

The owner of the voice was a small hard as nails PI Instructor. Former Regimental Sergeant Major Jock McCall was making sure that Jemma and I passed his apparently slimmed down version of the SAS Selection Test. We needed to do this to prove to ourselves that we were ready for real active duty again. We’d done a similar version when we were first trained. This version seemed a lot harder or was it that this time we were doing it in the first few days of a new year rather than those lazy hazy days you get at the end of summer.

Neither of us took issue with Jock and his language. He was doing a job and a difficult one at that. For us regaining our efficiency as a team was far more important to us than a bit of sexist language. Our lives would more than likely depend on how we worked together.

At the present moment, we were high in the Brecon Beacons and it was freezing cold. Well, it was just after two in the morning on the sixth day of January. Some ‘twelfth night this was’. There was some snow underfoot but ice everywhere. My cold nose told me that the air temperature was about -10C. There would be a heavy air frost before dawn as the wind was from the North East veering towards the East.

We’d been out on what he called his ‘wee test’ since 05:00 on New Years’ day. Five, nearly six long, long days and longer nights out in the cold and wet of the Welsh Mountains. We were dressed in full Army battledress and carrying a fully loaded assault rifle plus around fifty kilos in our Packs. Despite both of us being pretty fit, were finding this new exercise a lot harder than before. During these past few days, we’d both had had many, many thoughts about killing the RSM in the most excruciatingly painful ways known to man, but so far, we’d resisted the temptation to act on those thoughts. Jock laughed when we’d told him.

“That shows that this ‘wee walk in the hills’ as he called it, is working. I’d be more concerned if you didna wanna top me!”

With that, he fished a small flask out of his pack and we each took a small dram as reward. Then it was back to the march our moment of brevity gone like a snowflake in the wind.

---

As we came down from the hills, the light snow turned into steady but freezing cold rain. To me that was worse than the snow. Snow settled. Rain soaked and made an already heavy pack even heavier.

None of us was saying much as we trudged along a farm track in the pitch black. We were all wearing night vision glasses so when a light temporarily blinded me I froze for half a second. Then for some reason, I tore my glasses off and saw a laser tracker light hitting Jemma right on her chest.

“Sniper! Down!” I shouted and grabbed for Jemma as I sank to the ground.

Thankfully both of them collapsed to the floor without question. It wasn’t a moment too soon as we all heard the zip of a bullet followed by a thud as it hit something behind me. Between two and three seconds later I heard the retort of the shot. That meant that the sniper was at least half a mile and probably more like three quarters of a mile away. That also meant that he was shooting something heavy like a .50 calibre. That sort of calibre would have ripped right through the standard issue body-armour that all of us were currently wearing. Only extra duty armour would stop a .50 calibre round but leave you with three or four broken ribs for your trouble. Someone meant business, real business and that business was to kill us.

For a moment, I wondered if this was one of Jock’s little tests but even his warped mind would not go as far as getting someone to fire a .50 cal round in our direction. Even a blank could kill such was the huge amount of energy it expended on impact.

The only conclusion I could come to was that we were in deep shit. No, make that up to our necks in alligator infested swamp. Thankfully a four-foot high dry-stone wall gave us some good cover. It if was a simple hedge then we’d still be very exposed. Anyone with IR glasses or such an attachment to their rifle would be able to see our heat signature through the hedge. Thankfully the stone walls blocked all of that. I gave a small prayer for the legions of men who had built and maintained these dry-stone walls over the years. Their skill had probably saved our lives.

“Did you see where it came from?” asked the RSM.

“Port 20 and up high,” I replied.

I saw a heavily shaded light go on just above a map. We were crouching down behind the stone wall so there was little danger of it giving our position away. The sniper must had been wearing Night Vision glasses so he or she knew where we were anyway.

“They are probably on top or near the top of Ban y Celyn,” said the RSM.

We were supposed to pass almost the top of this hill with summit in our left as we made our way to the pick-up point at Abernant, on the banks of the River Wye but the onset of the snow had made us divert to a lower elevation. Walking east up a hill in the face of a biting east wind and driving snow is no fun. That decision, may have just saved our lives.

“Is this one of your tests?” asked Jemma as she remembered some of the tricks that he’d played on us in the past few days.

“No lassie it is most certainly not one of my tests. I’m sure that that round was meant for you. Thanks to your partner, you are alive to tell the tale or rather we all are still alive thanks to your partner.”

I crawled over to join the RSM.

“Can we get out of this?” I asked pointing at the map.

“Aye lassie, I think we can.”

It had taken me a while for me to accept him calling me ‘Lassie’ but I was getting used to it now.

“We backtrack about one klick and take this path south west. I think we have to assume that our pick-up point has been compromised. We need to make our own way to base.”

Our current ‘Base’ was a barn in a farm near Sennybridge. This was at least fifteen miles away as the crow flies.

I looked at my watch. It read 02:48.

We had about five hours before daylight.

“Aye lassie and we need to be well away from here before dawn,” said the RSM clearly reading my mind.

I crawled over to Jemma. She was still in a state of shock.
“We need to move right now.”

She didn’t react but the tension in her body lessened when she saw me.

I gave her a brief hug. She relaxed a lot more. After some thirty seconds, she said,
“Ok, lets’ get out of here pronto!”

I smiled back at her in the blackness. Jemma was back in the groove for the time being at least.

---

Half an hour later we stood up. We’d crawled at least one klick if not more.

“Now, we trot and walk. One klick each,” commanded the RSM.

We just grunted our acceptance and set off along what was now a very muddy track.

We’d done this version of ‘yomping’ a few days earlier. It was painful then but our packs were a bit lighter now and we were a lot fitter but even so, doing in the total darkness was another thing entirely.

We’d done two cycles of the trot/walk when we hit a tarmacked road. The RSM called a halt. As we crouched down behind a wall to recover and take a drink of water the RSM examined the map.

When he was done, he showed us the map.

“This is the B4520. We are here,” he said pointing to a bend in the road.

“We follow this south until we reach Upper Chapel. According to the map there is a phone box there. I’ll call base.”

I grunted my agreement. We all carried phones but there were switched off and wrapped in foil. They were only to be used to call in medical support. We had to rely on the phone box actually working. The last thing we wanted was anyone tracking us via our phones.

The not being tracked thing was part of the exercise but at that point in time, it may have saved our lives. I for one had learned a useful lesson for the future in this increasingly ‘always connected’ world.

The road was thankfully deserted and just under an hour later we ‘yomped’ into the hamlet of Upper Chapel.

Luckily for us, the phone was working and the RSM was able to make a call to our ‘base’. His conversation was brief and to the point. The RSM gave the coordinates of where we thought the sniper was and then where we were when we were shot at.

With that done he addressed Jemma and myself.

“We have a new rendezvous. Pont Rhyd-y-berry. That’s about six or seven klicks away. We have two hours to get there. It is all along the road so lets’ get going.”

Before either of us could ask questions, he set off into the darkness. We put on our night vision goggles and followed him. As we headed off into the dark, I realised that we were heading in the opposite direction from what we had been. As long as the ‘sniper’ was alone and on foot, there was little chance of him catching up with us. The wind had dropped in the last half hour. In the deadly quiet of a January night, we’d hear anything with an internal combustion engine a mile or more away.

I was still trying to work out who had discovered our route to the previous rendezvous and then zeroed in on our changed route. Apart from the three of us only two other people were supposed to know where it was and neither of them knew which way we were getting to it. The only conclusion I could reach was that we were being tracked and it wasn’t out phones that was leaking our location. Ergo, it had to be something else.

---

Two hours later we reached the bridge where we were to be picked up. I discarded my Bergen and said to the other two.

“I think that must have been tracked. I can only think that the last supplies that we picked up yesterday contained a tracker.”

“I thought about that too Lassie,” agreed the RSM.

“All the things we have left from that supply drop are in my pack,” said Jemma.

“Not quite,” Said the RSM, “I have a few of the energy bars”.

“Whatever it is, we have a mole in the team and I intend to dig them out. They are vermin and need to be exterminated without delay,” said the RSM.

“That sniper meant business. Do you think that he followed us?” asked Jemma.

“He might be following us but doing that is a lot slower than you might think. He probably knows that we are armed so he has to consider in the fact that one of us might sit and wait for him to follow in our footsteps. This isn’t the wild west where posse’s gallop after the bad guys in full view of everyone.”

That seemed to placate Jemma who began to search through her Bergen.

“Here it is,” she proclaimed a few minutes later.

In the palm of her hand was a small but clearly identifiable tracking bug.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

No one had an answer.

Then I had an idea.

“See that discarded Coffee Cup,” I said indicating a place close to the bridge parapet where there was some litter overflowing from a bin.

“Why don’t we put the bug in it and float it downstream? Then whoever is tracking us will see that we are still moving.”

“Lassie, that is a brilliant idea,” said the RSM.

Less than two minutes later the bug was inside the coffee cup and floating downstream. The RSM had produced some gaffer tape from his Bergen which we used to seal up the holes in the lid.

---

Once we were back at the base, we went through a full debrief not only of the incident with the sniper but the whole exercise. The van that had picked us up disappeared into the night. It would be just a few miles away in case it was needed.

Once it had gone, the RSM pronounced that,

“You two have passed. I can certify you fit for duty. I wouldn’t want to be the person who ratted on us when you two get let loose on them.”

“Do you have any idea who it was?”

“Yes, and all three of them should be arriving here within the hour… Unless... one of them has done a runner already. The driver of the van that picked us up sent the mission over message to them a few minutes before he left here.”

“We’d better get prepared for them then,” said Jemma who seemed to have fully recovered from being shot at earlier.

It didn’t take long for Jemma and myself to prepare a welcome for our visitors. The RSM just stood back and admired how we worked together.

We secreted our weapons at various points around the barn. We also made a couple of barricades in case we took fire from our visitors.

Over a ‘brew’ he said,
“You two really seem to know what the other one is doing. Watching that was a real education. Thanks.”

“Thanks. We have had a lot of practice. We have been doing it for years.”

“Eh? I thought that you were supposed to be a new team.”

We looked at each other with a grin on both of our faces. Jemma nodded.

“It is like this,” I said,

“I was once a bloke but I had this encounter with a load of razor wire.”

As I said the last bit, I looked down at my crotch.

The RSM visibly shivered.
“Och! That must have hurt.”

“It did and it has taken us an awful lot of work to get to where we are today.”

The RSM raised his Mug of tea.

“Here’s to the both of you. I’d have you both watching my back in an instant.”

We smiled at each other. Coming from the RSM that was just about the highest compliment possible.

Then my watch pinged.

“It is time to get into position. Our visitors are close by.”

“What just happened?” asked the RSM.

“The Van they are travelling in just passed the ANPR Camera at Penpont. That’s ten klicks away.”

Part of my preparations had been to use my phone to access one of our departments computer systems. All I needed to do was send a text containing the vehicle registration number to the system and it would notify me of where and then it passed an ANPR camera.

The RSM started to say something but stopped. He’d stopped being amazed by this team. He doubted that he could teach them anything that they didn’t already know. Once he’d realised this, he changed the operation from one of breaking in a new team to one of honing their finer skills. Every variation and test he’d set them they not only passed but exceeded his expectations.

---

The Black Transit pulled into the yard about twenty minutes later. I was hiding in a building opposite. The plan was for Jemma and the RSM to emerge from the barn once the occupants of the van had got out. Splitting our forces would make it harder for them to get the drop on us should they choose to do so.

As we suspected, there were only two people in the Van. They made no move to surprise us as they got out of the van.
I joined the four of them in the Barn.

“Where is Johnno?” asked the RSM.

“He told us that he would follow us here but as soon as we reached Brecon, he went a different way,” said one of the two men.

“What was he driving?” I asked.

“A black Audi A3. A ‘12’ plate if I recall correctly,” replied the other person. He’d been in the passenger seat of the Transit.

I saw Jemma rub her left ear. She didn’t think that this two were telling the truth. I was inclined to agree with her.

I tugged on my right ear and less than five seconds later the two men were on the ground with the two of us sitting on top of them.

The RSM came over and not for the first time in the days that he’d been with us, he was smiling.

“I think you might need these,” he said as he held up two pairs of handcuffs.

Once the two men were cuffed we separated them. I took one into a remote corner of the barn where I searched him. I also removed his trousers, boots and socks. Finally, I used some rope and tied him to a wooden post.

“You stay put or next time I won’t be so gentle. Understand?”

The man nodded.

The lack of complaints from him told me almost everything I needed to know.

I returned to Jemma and the RSM.

“He’s not complaining,” I remarked.

“Same here,” said Jemma who’d done the same to the other man.

“You two are something special,” remarked the RSM with a wry smile on his face.

“How did you time your moves like that?”

“We’ve been together for a long time. We have a number of these things in our repertoire. They have been useful to us in the past… Just like now.”

“What can I do?” asked the RSM.

“Find us some grub? I’m sick of that dried stuff. In the meantime, we will question our prisoners. It is probably best that you don't witness that as it might get a bit ugly.”

The RSM chuckled before disappearing into the night.

“Now sunshine,” I said to one of the prisoners.

“Spill the beans and you get to go free. Stay silent and end up in a very cold place for a long, long time. What’s it to be then?”

---

By the time the RSM returned some twenty minutes later with some real hot food, we knew pretty well everything we needed to know.

The three of us then sat down to eat the food.

“How did you know that they were lying?”

Jemma smiled and said,
“The other driver was not driving an Audi but an Astra, a silver Astra.”

Then I added,
“We saw Johnno at the second checkpoint two days ago. He was there with that one. Johnno was driving the Astra. Even a half blind person would notice that the interior of an Astra was different to an Audi.”

I was pointed at one of the two men.

“That’s when he slipped the tracker into Jemma’s pack.”

“I remember now,” replied the RSM shaking his head.

“One of them diverted your attention away from your packs with a ‘brew’. Mind you it was welcome and we didn’t suspect that one of our own would do that to us.”

“All part of their plan I suppose,” replied Jemma.

“Ok, what’s next?” asked the RSM.

“We get the hell out of here but we will leave these two here. They won’t be going far in this weather without any clothes. We can make a call later and get them picked up but we don’t want them with us as they will be baggage.”

“Does that ‘baggage’ include me?” asked the RSM.

“If you don’t mind Sir,” I said, “We’d like to drop you off at Abergavenny Railway Station? We need to be paying someone a visit ASAP now we that know what is going on and more importantly who is pulling the strings of these two goons. The visit is not for people outside the department to witness if you get my drift?”

The RSM looked at me and then at Jemma. Then he smiled.

“That will do fine. I can make my own way back north from there,” confirmed the RSM.

That was the signal for us to load up the Transit and disappear towards the brightening sky that heralded the dawn of a new day.
[to be continued]