The Hostage (14 page)

Kathryn stood outside Rushcombe infant school, a tidy establishment of some four hundred pupils set in the middle of residential Corfe Mullen. She was watching Helen and Janet walk towards the main entrance, each holding the hand of a teacher. Helen looked back and waved. Kathryn returned the wave and smiled but her smile faded as soon as the girls were out of sight.

The children had been very enthusiastic about the whole idea of a strange new school while they ate breakfast that morning, asking Kathryn endless questions. Kathryn had felt quite the opposite about it, however, and had not been able to sleep much the night before. Now that she was alone she felt even worse. It was as if she were without a purpose. Life, or what there was of it, would begin again when she picked up the children in the afternoon.

As she turned to walk back to her car she heard a woman’s voice calling after her.

‘Mrs Munro? Mrs Munro? . . . Kathryn?’

Kathryn stopped and turned around to see a neat, conservatively dressed woman in her mid-thirties beaming a smile and heading towards her energetically.

‘Sorry to shout. I wasn’t sure it was you at first,’ the woman said. ‘I heard you talking to your children before they went into school. We don’t get too many Americans around here. It is Kathryn, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Kathryn said, quite coldly and without a smile.

‘I’m Joan.’ The woman continued to beam and held out a hand.

Kathryn took it limply. ‘Are you a teacher?’ she asked. ‘Oh, God no. Sorry, I should’ve said. I’m the RSM’s wife - RSM of the SBS.That’s regimental sergeant major to you. Gosh, I don’t know what the US Navy’s equivalent would be. Master Chief I think. Anyway, he’s the boss of all the non-commissioned officers. I arranged your accommodation and also the school for the girls.’

Kathryn nodded.‘I see.Well, thank you,’ she said, wondering how she could get away without being obviously rude. The truth was Kathryn was not an impolite person and much as she had convinced herself she did not like these people she could not bring herself to openly show it.

‘That sort of leaves me doing a kind of equivalent job amongst the wives,’ Joan continued enthusiastically. ‘How’s it been, settling in?’ she asked.

‘Everything’s fine,’ Kathryn said, wanting to get away.

‘I would’ve popped round to see you sooner but I thought I’d give you a couple of weeks to find your feet. I know how it is, moving to a new country. Dave - my husband, that is - and I did two years in Australia with the Australian SAS. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it’ll seem like you’ve been here ages in just a few months.’

Kathryn wanted to say that it felt like a life sentence already.

‘Don’t worry about your girls. They’ll be fine. I’ve instructed the headmistress to call me, as well as you of course, if they have the slightest difficulty settling in.’

‘That’s very kind,’ Kathryn said, looking over at her car. ‘I should be getting on. I’ve still got a pile of things to do.’

‘Of course . . . Any time I can be of help, please let me know,’ Joan said, following her for a few yards. ‘I just wanted to touch base and introduce myself.’Then remembering something she stopped and reached into her pocket. ‘Oh, this is my phone number. If you need anything at all just call, any time. Perhaps we can get together during the week for tea.’

‘Perhaps,’ Kathryn said, taking the note and forcing one last smile before turning away. ‘Bye.’

‘Bye,’ Joan echoed. She found Kathryn’s reluctance to chat curious, but put it down to shyness and walked away in the opposite direction.

Joan was the first of the enemy to break through Kathryn’s defences and have a conversation with her, brief though it was. Kathryn wished Joan had not been so damned pleasant. In the past two weeks Kathryn had succeeded in avoiding several wives who had tried to make contact. She didn’t answer her phone unless she absolutely knew it was Hank or was expecting a call from the States, and never returned any of several messages she had received inviting her to take tea. Kathryn wished she could be much harder and tell them to their faces that she was not interested in socialising. But it was unnatural for her to be hurtful to a stranger who had done nothing to deserve it, even being born English. In fact she was experiencing an internal conflict, part of her wanting to reconcile this national hatred she had been brain-washed with since childhood. She knew there was some truth to Hank’s accusation that her unhappiness had nothing to do with the English and that it was all down to being away from home and her friends.

She opened the car door and immediately cursed herself as she slammed it and walked around to the other side where the steering wheel was. She wondered how long she would keep doing that.

Hank sat in the Land Tactics Training Team office, his feet stretched out in front of him on a desk. He was dressed in his crisp, ironed, green Navy SEAL fatigues, his name stencilled in bold black letters over his left breast. He was reading a lecture pack, one of a pile of manila folders stacked beside his shiny, black leather calf-length boots. To get a better look at the diagram on an overhead projector transparency he raised it up to the crisp, morning sunlight coming in through the large windows that took up nearly the whole of one wall.The other three windowless walls were covered in various maps and collages ranging over a plethora of military subjects, such as land navigation, booby-traps, explosives formulas and survival techniques. The team was responsible for the training of all things to do with Special Boat Service procedures out of water. Seated at the largest of the three desks, writing a report, was Colour Sergeant Doles; Corporal Bob Clemens sat at his desk by the window reading a newspaper and sipping a mug of tea. It was all very quiet and sunny. The diagram Hank was studying showed several star formations - the Plough, Cassiopeia and Orion - and indicated how to use them to locate the North Star.

He placed the transparency back in the folder, put the file on top of the pile he had already looked through, and took the next one from the larger pile he had yet to read. This next pack was well used, the tattered folder barely holding together at the corners. He thumbed through the introduction on the subject of explosive linear cutting charges and turned to a sheet with a list of various mathematical formulas for plastic explosives. Hank sighed. Mathematics was not his best subject.

‘Do I have to memorise all these calculations?’ Hank asked Doles.

‘No.You just have to be able to teach ’em,’ Doles said in his soft Scottish twang without looking up.

‘Just teach ’em, Hanky boy, just teach ’em,’ Clemens echoed loudly in an American accent, also without looking up from his newspaper.

Hank stared at Clemens, a square-jawed, powerfully built rugby enthusiast, wondering if the man disliked him or just specialised in a witless version of the so-called dry British humour. It seemed to Hank that every time Clemens said something to him it was in a condescending Texas accent, and a very bad one at that. And why Texas? Hank wondered. He was from North Carolina, and Clemens from somewhere in south-west England, a ‘janner pig’ as Doles often referred to him.

Hank took a quiet break from the lecture packs and looked through the windows. Autumn had taken a firm grip and the air was moist.The slight breeze had a whiff of rotting sea vegetation that suggested the wind was coming from the south where the beach was only five hundred yards away. The training office, which was quite small considering its responsibilities, the subjects it covered and the various training aides that needed to be stored in it, was situated in a small, mature-conifer wood about two acres in size near the back gate of the camp. Just outside the office, intertwining and connecting over a dozen of the tall pine trees, was a Tarzan course of ropes, wire ladders and cables. It was originally built for the maritime anti-terrorist teams years ago when they were first formed. The men had used it in their daily workout ritual to maintain a high degree of upper body strength and endurance in preparation for the endless training exercises around the world scaling oil platforms and large ships. As the maritime teams grew in size and expertise they moved to a more spacious, purpose-built location. The Tarzan course passed into the hands of the training team, who retained its nickname ‘the pain pines’ and used it to beast the SBS selection courses, and any other military personnel for that matter, foreign or otherwise, who visited the unit to get a taste of how it operated.

The team, just the three of them at the moment due to a shortage of operatives and a quiet period as far as training was concerned, ran together every morning at eight o’clock for several miles and always finished with a round of pull-ups and dips and sometimes a couple of shifts up the thirty-foot ropes. The workouts were generally relaxed affairs with nothing too strenuous, which was the norm for training teams, although on occasion the competitive spirit raised its head and a run ended in a sprint finish. It was up to the individual to maintain his fitness and it was dimly looked upon if a reasonable standard was not maintained. Hank fitted well into the team fitness wise. Over five miles he was faster than Clemens but not as fast as Doles, who was lighter on his feet. Clemens was about equal with Hank on the ropes, where they could both manage five arms-only shifts up the thirty-foot lengths without a rest in between. It was in the swimming pool or the old quarry lake on the heath half a mile away that Hank had them both beat. He was a powerful swimmer and thrashed them easily over any distance including under the water.

Doles was only just past his peak in SBS terms.That meant he could get involved in all aspects of operations except the more strenuous activities such as climbing oil platforms. He was a swimmer-canoeist grade one and qualified to instruct and supervise every aspect of operational training, including diving, climbing, explosives and weapons. Clemens had been in eight years and could be described as reliable with stacks of enthusiasm when focused. He was preparing for his own senior instructor’s course at the end of the year, which would eventually qualify him to run his own team. Hank was disappointed when he learned he was to be on the same course, a comprehensive, intensive four months of lessons and supervisor training. It would no doubt be useful and he’d learn something but he didn’t think it would help his promotion prospects back home; more importantly, it would take a good size chunk out of his time in the UK, which he thought could best be spent in an operational team.

Hank lowered his legs from the desk and flexed his knees. They ached a little and were stiff from the morning run, which he put down to the cold, damp weather he was not used to.

He was feeing bored and wondered when the team was going to start some work. He had done nothing since joining but read lectures and SBS standard operational procedures, go on long drives to get acquainted with the various local training sites, and do a couple of dives in the harbour to keep his diving minutes in date. It was an unusually quiet period according to Doles. The next SBS selection course was not due to start for another two months and the team was waiting to find out what they would be doing until then. Doles suggested Hank lap up the peace and quiet while he had the chance. Once the work started he would have very little down time. Hank didn’t particularly care about having little down time. He was here to work and that’s what he wanted to do.

The door opened and Lieutenant Jardene leaned inside. ‘Sergeant Doles,’ he said in his usual calm, polite manner.

‘Sir,’ Doles replied, looking up from his writing but not standing.

‘Step outside a minute, would you?’ Jardene asked.

Hank liked Jardene. He had one of those toffee-nosed

Brit accents that most of the officers had. Rumour had it he had the education and pedigree to go all the way up. Apparently his father was an army brigadier and his older brother a navy commander. Jardene was fit, fresh faced, direct and intense to talk to, not that Hank had had many conversations with him. Jardene was in overall command of SBS training and therefore Hank’s direct boss. He was the first to welcome Hank to the team with genuine enthusiasm and said how much he hoped Hank would gain as much from his stay as he gave. It made Hank feel even more determined to do well.

Hank watched Jardene and Doles through the window. Jardene was doing most of the talking while Doles nodded with a look of deep concentration.Whatever they were talking about looked important.

The conversation lasted no more than a minute and on completion Jardene headed away. Doles opened the door and leaned in. ‘Bob,’ he said and indicated for Clemens to come outside. Clemens had also sensed something was up and moved quickly. Doles closed the door behind him.

Hank watched Doles talk with the same intensity as Jardene. After a few minutes Clemens walked briskly away. Doles then stepped back into the office and sat back down at his desk.