Mad Dog - First Strike Ch. 10

10 - CQB Training:

First thing in the morning and I was in the gym at Beacon Barracks for the CQB course.

"Fancy meeting you here."

The voice came behind me. I turned and found myself facing Nick Stone.

"Are you on the course?" I asked.

"I am," he grinned malevolently, "as in I'm leading it."

"Oh bugger!" I let out a hoarse whisper.

Stone walked off grinning.

"Who was that?" VJ asked.

"You remember when I went to Sennybridge on that course in January?"

"The one where the bloke put an IED under your seat?"

"That's it," I nodded. "Well, he's the guy who planted the bomb."

"Seriously?" Vik looked shocked. "Is he on this course?"

"He's teaching it," I replied glumly.

The rest of the class joined us, there were eight students in total. Three were from the Royal Corps of Signals Electronic Warfare Team. They were based here at Beacon Barracks, and sometimes had to work covertly - as in out of uniform - when they were on ops. Which explained why they were required to do this course.

There was also a trio were guys I recognised from my time with SAS Reserves.

There was one other person with the SAS detachment I recognised; Lee 'Spider' Webb. The last time I'd met Spider was in January, returning from the course in Wales as it happens.

When I bumped into him at Birmingham New Street station, he failed mentioned that he was in the reserves, let alone in the Regiment. It's not the sort of thing that just slips your mind.

We were all dressed in gym kit. The guys from the Signals were in standard army PT gear: grey t-shirts with their regimental badge printed on the left breast and black shorts.

The guys from the regiment wore expensive sports kit - not that they were showing off. But they were.

VJ and I wore t-shirts that was all about our passions. Mine was olive green with a red star, a book and a pistol and the message: "The Clash - know your rights." VJ's was grey with a black and yellow disc and the scales of justice. It read: "In legal trouble? Better call Saul!".

Stone called us together.

"Today, we're going to cover basic unarmed combat," he announced, marching up and down in front of our loose rank. "OK. I want you to imagine that you're on a covert op. The bad guys have pinged you. Someone walks up to you and whips out a pistol then tells you to put your hands up. What do you do?"

He turned to face us, his arms folded across his chest. His hawk-like gaze scanned us.

"Mike, you've worked with me before, come on down," he sounded like a bad host on a TV game show.

I reluctantly shuffled out of the line up. Stone reached into the pocket of his hoodie and pulled out a rubber replica of an automatic pistol. He handed the pistol to me and waved me off until I stood about six feet from him. I knew what to do and assumed the Weaver stance, putting weight on my forward foot, right arm extended straight, left slightly bent, locking the gun arm straight.

"Obviously, if he squeezes the trigger he's going to hit me. Well, at this range even an MoD civil servant can't miss," Stone waited for a polite but restrained titter of laughter to run its course. "But if someone's holding you up like this then they clearly don't intend to execute you on the spot. So that gives you a small window of time in which to do something like this..."

Stone's right hand shot out fast and twisted the pistol away from his chest. At the same time his other hand reached out and raked down my face. I relinquished my hold on the weapon and put my hands to my face.

"Notice that when I grabbed the pistol I gripped the body of the weapon. It's a semi-automatic pistol, so applying downward pressure on the working parts will cause the gun to malfunction and it'll jam after the first shot."

Stone retrieved the rubber dummy pistol and waved me back to the line of students. I stood next to VJ. He glanced sideways at me and gave a pitying shrug.

"Now, pair up and practice this move until you've got it down pat."

VJ and I spent the morning disarming each other. At lunchtime we decamped to the barracks cafeteria.

"Did you have to be quite so forceful?" VJ asked as we took our trays from the serving line. "I thought you were going to tear my shoulder out of joint the first time you disarmed me."

"Right back at you," I said as we found a table and sat down, "I thought you'd broke my nose the first time you hit me."

VJ began to attack his sausage, chips, fried egg and beans with enthusiasm.

"All this hand-to-hand combat makes you hungry," he stuffed his mouth but kept talking, "do you find that?"

I had a baked spud and coleslaw. I envied him his greasy fry up. More than that, I envied the fact that he could live on junk food and still stay skinny as a rake. All my life I've been a chunky monkey. A ll I have to do is look at an advert for KFC on TV to put weight on.

"I said I thought you'd broken my bleeding nose," I touched my finger cautiously to a nostril wadded up with toilet paper and winced, "and I do mean bleeding."

"Yeah, but when you go home you've got a tall, blond, Texan sex goddess to make you feel better," he whined, "what've I got?"

"Internet porn?" I suggested.

"Not funny!" he shovelled fried egg and chips into his gob. "Any news on setting me up on a blind date with one of Mack's university mates?"

"Nah, not yet mate, but she's asking round," I lied.

I hadn't raised the subject with her yet. I wasn't telling VJ that though.

Spider joined me and VJ at our table.

"Well fancy meeting you here Mad Dog," he said cheerfully. "How's life treating you sunshine?"

"It has it's moments."

Spider started in on a plate of chicken Korma and rice. He shovelled food into his mouth like he was stoking a steam train. I waited until he paused to take a drink before I spoke.

"So, how come when I met you a couple of months back you didn't mention that you were in the reserves?" I asked. "I mean, you told me all about being an estate agent, but not a word about being in the Regiment."

Spider paused, his fork half way to his mouth.

"You mean like you never mentioned that you'd already served in the regiment's reserves. Or, for that matter, that you were now the Team Leader of a covert ops unit."

"It's just not something you talk about, yeah?" VJ added his input to the conversation.

We both turned to look at Vik.

"OK, I get it, big boy talk," Vikram muttered and went back to stuffing his face.

"Anyway, I might not be an estate agent much longer," Spider announced.

"Oh."

"Yeah, I've a job interview tomorrow morning," he said, "for your mob."

"Oh yeah," I said warily, "which section?"

"The Covert Action Team."

"The CATs?" VJ said, "that's us. I didn't know we were taking anyone on."

"No, neither did I," I said quietly and I'm the Team Leader.