Ice Force by Matt Lynn

Author:Matt Lynn [Lynn, Matt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780755371754
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2012-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty

BRUCE KNEW ABOUT SOLDIERS LOSING their spirit. He’d seen it before, both in the Regiment itself and in the private military corporations. Shoulders would sag, the pace of a march would slow to a crawl, and the banter amongst the men would start to dry up. The better trained a military force was, the better looked after, and the better led, the less chance there was of its spirit breaking, but even in the SAS it happened sometimes. Morale was hard to sustain in the face of impossible odds, stupid decisions and terrible suffering. And right now, thought Bruce, we are dealing with all three.

It was just after one in the morning, and they had been trudging through the dispiriting darkness for hours now. They couldn’t see anything that was more than a few yards away, the cold was brutal, and the storm rough. They were swapping the sledge around from man to man every hour, but it was still a lot of extra weight to carry, and both Ian and Bruce had already realised they weren’t in good enough physical shape to venture out into the Arctic in the middle of winter. The search for the plane was proving far harder than any of them had realised, they hadn’t brought the right kit with them, and the terrain was far harsher than any of them had allowed for. It was a bad plan, poorly executed, and Bruce was already feeling pissed off with himself for allowing the unit to be thrown into such a brutal mission.

I should have said no in the nightclub, he reflected bitterly as he climbed wearily up the side of yet another steep ridge of ice. Some jobs just aren’t worth it. And this is turning into one of them.

‘I expected to go to hell one day,’ said Ian. ‘I’ve made my peace with the idea. A man can’t have done the kind of things I’ve done and expect any other outcome. But I was expecting to at least have the pleasure of sodding well dying before I got there.’

‘Are you a believer then?’ asked Dan.

Ian glanced up at the sky. The snow was falling steadily from the thick, low clouds, and getting blown straight across the plateau at them like a swarm of angry insects.

‘It’s hard to believe in a god out here,’ he said. ‘But I grew up in Belfast. A good Catholic family.’

‘I thought you came from a long line of Provos,’ said Bruce.

‘My father and my grandfather, and I’m feckin’ proud of it as well,’ said Ian. ‘There’s nothing in the Bible that says you can’t blow up English fuckers.’

‘He’s right there,’ said Dan. ‘I reckon the good Lord takes a very relaxed view of taking down the Poms.’

Both men chuckled to themselves, and marched steadily forward. They weren’t making much speed. The ground was too tough for that. But they were managing to cover half a mile an hour, which in these conditions Bruce reckoned wasn’t too bad.

‘Another square mile, lads, that’s all,’ said Bruce.

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