Mad Dog - No More Heroes Ch. 02

Chapter 2 - Refresher Course

The Sennybridge Training Area is thirty-one thousand acres of Ministry of Defence owned land. I know the place well. Too bloody well.

It's largely unpopulated. There is a village on the estate. It looks as if somebody has scooped up a small hamlet from deepest Bavaria and dumped it in the middle of Wales. The bullet holes in the walls are a clue to its use as a Fighting In Built Up Areas range.

At the beginning of World War II the War Office urgently needed extra land and facilities for training purposes. One particular requirement was for an area at least three miles long that could be used for artillery practice. A small mountain and valley in mid-Wales was selected.

The general idea was that the land was being lent to the British Government for the duration of the war, and would be returned to the original land owner at the end of hostilities. Somehow the War Office, and its successor the Ministry of Defence, forgot to hand it back.

Now it was used as a training area by a wide range of military units. Currently it was being used for a two-day refresher course in Improvised Explosive Device awareness - how to recognise a terrorist bomb. I was one of the students.

The course was held in another leftover from World War Two; a Nissen hut. The long arched structure, made from rust corrugated metal sheets, had seen better days. It was dusty, damp and draughty.

Two days in early January in a Welsh Nissen hut. What were the odds that I wouldn't end up catching my death of flu?

At the front of the room was a battered-looking metal desk. Facing it were rows of stacking chairs. Each chair had a Post-it note with a name on it. The door at the back of the room opened suddenly.

A tall man, early fifties, military in bearing marched in. He stood at the front of the classroom and glared at us, daring the class to speak, cough or do anything other than pay rapt attention to him.

"Good morning gentlemen," he paused for a moment before adding, "and ladies too, of course."

He stepped behind the desk. I noticed for the first time that there was a red metal fire bucket on it.

"I'm Nick Stone and I'll be taking you through this course in how to recognise and deal with things that go boom in the night. Right! Let's begin, is Michael Madog here?" Stone scanned his small class. Until I hesitantly raised my hand. "Which do you prefer, Mike or Michael?"

"Mike," I admitted.

"OK Mike, stand up please."

I was more than a little surprised to be called out. I stood. Slowly. Reluctantly. My mind ran amok trying to work out how the hell I'd screwed things up before the course even started.

"Right, if you look under your seat I think you'll find a bomb's been planted there."

'A bomb?' I croaked nervously.

"Yes," Stone nodded. "A real one. Small but quite capable of blowing your untrained balls off."

I slowly turned and cautiously crouched to look beneath my chair. Stuck under it with a length of duct tape was short length plastic pipe wired to a digital watch.

"Oh, and there's one thing I forgot to mention, it's on a timer." Stone looked at his own watch, "it's 9.05 now and due to detonate at 9.10."

I took my Swiss Army Knife keyring from my pocket and cut the tape. As I stood up I noticed that everyone else had cleared out to the back of the classroom.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence guys," I rasped nervously, "remind me to do the same for you some day."

"It is safe to pick it up," he gave me a sly smile, "but of course you didn't know that, did you?"

"Actually, since I sat my two hundred pound carcass on the chair with a bit of a thud a few minutes ago," I gave him my own version of his smile, "and it didn't blow off my - untrained balls I think you called them - I reckon it's safe to remove the device."

"Procedure?" Stone demanded.

"Ah... clear the room?" I felt less than confident about my decision.

"There's a heavily armed angry mob outside the building so, obviously, the doors are barricaded. Oh, and the lifts are out of action too." Stone looked at his watch again, "and you now have four minutes and thirty-six seconds before detonation."

"Disarm it?" I suggested hesitantly.

"Do you know how?"

I shook my head.

'He could throw himself on it,' someone suggested anonymously from the back of the hut.

The rest of the class laughed. It's good that they could keep their sense of humour. I was having difficulty regaining mine.

"NOT FUNNY!" Stone snapped. "Would you like the names of those who've had to do just that?"

Silence descended again.

I handed Stone the bomb. He pushed it into the sand-filled fire bucket and then ducked under the table grabbing something that looked like body armour but flattened out to form a blanket. He draped it over the top of the bucket.

"OK Mike sit down."

I regained my seat and sat, waiting breathlessly for the boom.

The bomb finally exploded with a dull thud. The ballistic blanket jumped slightly, but that was it. It was a bit of an anticlimax really.

Stone checked his watch.

"Must have been made in Britain," he smiled warmly for the first time that morning, "it clocked off early."