Metamorphosis

 
METAMORPHOSIS

Smashwords Edition 

Published by A.G. Claymore

Edited
by B.H. MacFadyen

Copyright 2012 A.G. Claymore

This
is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, Places, Incidents and
Brands are either products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademark status and
trademark owners of any products referenced in this work of fiction
which have been used without permission. The publication/use of
these trademarks is not authorized, associated with or sponsored by
the trademark owners.

Other
Titles By Andrew Glen Claymore:

http://agclaymore.blogspot.ca/p/available-titles.html/

Table of Contents

Spin Buldak

UN Route
Control

Central
London

East London

From the
Author

Kandahar Province –
Afghanistan

May 13, 2016

Liam stared at
the rough wooden door of his room. Something was definitely
different. In the fifteen months since his capture he had rarely
spent more than a few weeks in the same location. Every few days,
his captors would pull a dusty sack over his head and throw him
under a tarp in the back of their quarter-ton truck. Usually the
drive was no more than an hour, but sometimes he would bounce
around the bed of the truck for an entire night, choking on the
dust thrown up from the unpaved roads. Occasionally, he would roll
against another hostage, but he was always gagged so introductions
were problematic.

There was
always a pattern under the chaos; indicators that proved his
continuing value as a prisoner. Every few hours, an unarmed guard
would enter the room to check on his shackles, watched by two stone
faced men with type 56-I assault rifles, a Chinese variation on the
venerable Soviet AK-47. Sometimes they would bring food, other
times they would just kick Liam awake before checking his bindings.
Even after so many months of captivity, they still considered him a
dangerous prisoner.

They had good
reason to.

 Fifteen
months earlier the rocket-propelled grenade had missed the aft
engine of the Chinook but managed to sever the controls for the
massive rear rotor. The huge blades feathered, refusing to hold up
the back end of the hundred-foot-long transport. The engine,
suddenly free of resistance, changed to a high-pitched whine. The
helicopter began a sickening, spiraling dance, its tail swinging
ever faster as the ground blurred past the open tail ramp. Liam’s
C7 assault rifle was torn from between his knees, striking a man
across from him before cartwheeling out the back.

If they had
not been close to landing before the RPG strike, Liam knew he would
never have made it to the ground alive. Of course, if they had not
been landing, the rocket wouldn’t have posed a threat. His captors
had understood when best to use their old Soviet weapon.

The spiral
violently shifted to a new pivot point as the open ramp caught on a
ridge of boulders, spinning the front end around the suddenly
stationary tail. The starboard side of the fuselage slammed into
the rocks with a thundering roar of rending metal and shattering
rotor blades. Liam’s harness held him to the port side of the
aircraft and the deformation of the airframe absorbed much of the
force, leaving him bruised and unconscious. When he came to, his
throat was choked with the soot of burning fuel and rubber seals.
He was hanging in his harness, nine feet above the wreckage and the
wounded.

Not all of
them were wounded soldiers. He noticed several men in local dress
moving among the inert forms on the ground. One man bent over the
loadmaster, assessing his wounds before moving on. Liam understood
what he was seeing – they were looking for prisoners and wouldn’t
waste resources to keep a severely wounded invader alive.

These were the
men who had shot them down.

He slid a hand
up to the quick release on his harness as the man moved over to a
trooper who lay, moaning, almost directly below. Placing his boot
against the remnants of the now vertical floor, Liam hit the
release and pushed off with his foot. He landed on the man’s back
as he stooped over the wounded soldier, driving him forwards and
off to the side. Pulling his knife out, he drove it through the
base of the man’s skull, scrambling his motor control.

The struggle
had drawn attention. Three more men came from behind a section of
the wreckage, AK-47’s held at the ready. Liam knelt rooted to the
ground, frozen in the act of cutting the sling of the Kalashnikov
strapped to the back of his first victim. He was trying to work out
the logistics of getting it into action when the balance of force
shifted back into his favor.

Danraj Rai, a
sergeant in Liam’s own regiment had been in the Chinook. He was
returning from Kandahar after bringing in a high-level enemy
prisoner and Liam had been absurdly pleased at the man’s friendly
greeting on the tarmac. Rai’s reputation was such that many young
officers actively sought his approval, knowing it would carry
weight with the tough, gritty men of the regiment. Such pandering
had always struck Liam as false, and those officers usually ended
up washing out. Liam preferred to simply treat him with the same
respect that he showed to all of his men. He wanted their respect,
but he wanted it to be genuine.

The tough
Nepalese had been a member of the famed Royal Gurkha Rifles until
Her Majesty’s Government announced in 2007 that all members who
signed up after July of that year would qualify for automatic
citizenship. Danraj, who had already served for five years, would
be overlooked by the new legislation and transferred out of his
beloved unit in protest. The Special Air Service had found a
natural recruit in Danraj, and he quickly earned the respect of his
fellow troopers. Even during the week-long endurance evolution at
the Brecon Beacons, he had remained impervious to the
hardships.

Liam knew the
stories about the Gurkha Rifles but he had never thought to see a
demonstration. The SAS trooper still carried his deadly kukri knife
and now he came to his feet behind the hindmost of the three men,
bringing it in from the right, slicing the heavy, curved blade
clear through the man’s neck. He reversed the blade, stepping
forward and backhanding it against the second man, taking the
second head before the first had hit the ground. Liam froze in
shock for a moment.
That’s just the sort of diversion I was
looking for.
Liam sawed at the sling with all his strength.
Feeling the strap part, he cocked the weapon and brought it into
his shoulder with a smooth, practiced motion. The burst of heavy
7.62 mm projectiles stitched across the third man’s torso just as
he was bringing his own weapon to bear on Danraj.

The sergeant
grinned and nodded at his officer as he knelt to take an assault
rifle from one of the dead men. Liam grinned back, struggling to
hold in a racking cough.
The man’s a bloody psychological
weapon
. As the sergeant was cocking the AK-47, a burst of
rounds hit him in the back, punching out the front of his body and
cutting the strap on the right side of his load-bearing web gear.
With a grunt of surprise, Danraj pitched forward onto his face. His
right hand grasped for the hilt of his knife as Liam ran to
him.

Dropping to a
firing crouch, he shouldered his weapon to fire short bursts at the
four men approaching from the same direction as the first three,
but they scattered behind boulders as soon as they saw him appear.
The hairs on the back of his neck suddenly stood on end and he spun
around, throwing himself to the left, a rifle butt narrowly missing
his head. His surprise assailant had been thrown off balance when
his strike missed and Liam wasted no time in putting a three round
burst into his torso as the man staggered to find his footing. He
spun back to the boulders but pulled the trigger on an empty
weapon. He took a magazine from the belt of a dead warrior. He was
just ejecting the empty magazine from his weapon when another man
came over the slope behind him.

Liam dropped
his empty rifle and drew his sidearm, squeezing the trigger of the
Sig Sauer P226 only to find that the round was a dud. Cursing
whatever coalition country had provided the ammunition, he threw
himself at the man, planning to smash the absurd look of relief
from his face.  The man was too stunned from his glimpse of
certain mortality to bring his rifle to bear. Liam heard a
satisfying crunch of bone as he impacted the man.
Was that his
ribs or my own collarbone?
In the rush of adrenaline he
couldn’t tell.

And didn’t
care.

The two men
slid down the slope bringing them into the midst of eight more men.
Seeing he was unarmed, they pulled him to his feet only to find
that he had managed to get the pins out of one of his flash-bangs.
The blast blinded the men and impaired their balance while Liam,
partially conditioned to the effects during his training at
Hereford, began to weave his way back up the hill, knowing that he
had to rearm himself and defend his sergeant. He cursed.
Should
have taken one of their weapons.
The flash-bang had muddled his
thinking.

When he
crested the hill he found himself staring at four armed men plus a
fifth, better dressed and carrying his assault rifle slung over his
shoulder. It was all over. The well-dressed man, obviously the
leader, was holding Danraj’s kukri in his hand as he looked up at
the SAS officer. “One of yours?” he had asked, nodding towards the
sergeant. Liam’s shoulders slumped. He stared dully at the man,
knowing an answer was needed. Finally he simply nodded.

“A Gurkha,”
the warlord said in mingled tones of anger and respect. He looked
back up at Liam. “If men like this follow you,” he said, a
calculating look coming into his eyes, “Then you must be a man
worth a great ransom.”

Am I worth
anything?
thought Liam.
My sister is hardly rich. My wife
has a brother, but he’s more likely to ask
them
for money if they contact him.
As to being a
leader of men, he had never felt easy in command. It was what had
driven him to apply to the SAS. He had wanted to prove himself, to
re-forge himself as the kind of man he had always wanted to be. He
found himself tested on an almost constant basis. His men were the
epitome of initiative and it was all he could do to keep up with
them. Most days, he wasn’t really sure who led whom. He never felt
that he was a bad soldier, but he still wasn’t sure that he was cut
out to lead.