The sound of a helicopter making its way up the narrow valley brought an end to Hogg's silent breakfast. Tossing the half-eaten biscuit so that it came to rest inches in front of his prisoner's eyes, Hogg stood up and turned to face the approaching aircraft. Pulling a smoke grenade from his kit, he gave the pin a solid tug and let the safety spoon fly away. No longer held in place by the flat of the spoon, the cocked hammer was free to swing over and smash into the grenade's primer. But the SAS officer didn't throw the grenade when he heard the snap. Rather, he waited patiently, holding the grenade at arm's length, until the dense yellow smoke began to spew forth from either end of the grenade. Only then did Hogg casually toss it so that both he and his prisoner would be upwind from the billowing yellow cloud.
With an ease that came from countless hours of flying, the pilot sergeant of the helicopter came right up to where Hogg stood and, at the last second, flared out and lightly touched down so that the SAS captain had but a few yards to drag his prisoner to the waiting aircraft. This Hogg did without ceremony, without any apparent regard for the hapless candidate that he had managed to bring to bay.
At the door of the helicopter, Hogg was greeted by a smiling face. "And a fine cheerful morning to you, Captain," the red-haired senior sergeant sitting in the open door shouted above the noise of the chopper's engines.
Hogg gave Sergeant Kenneth McPherson a dirty look. "You know what you can do with your bloody Highland weather," Hogg shouted back as he took Jones and literally heaved the former candidate onto the floor of the helicopter next to McPherson's prisoner.
"I've been to Ireland, you know," McPherson countered. "I've seen that gloom you Paddies pass off as weather. I'm here to tell you, it isn't anything a sane person would be proud of."
For the first time, Hogg smiled as he climbed in and plopped down next to McPherson. "Now there you go, Sergeant," Hogg gloated, "confusing Irishmen with sane people. Next, you'll be telling me that Scottish lads coming of age can differentiate between the sheep they tend and the lasses."
While Hogg gave the pilot the signal to pull pitch, McPherson groaned as he poured Hogg a cup of hot tea the pilot had brought along for the instructors. "You're lucky you're an officer and I'm a proper and respectful noncommissioned officer," he shouted as he handed over the cup. "Otherwise, Captain, I'd be telling you a thing or two."
Hogg looked at the burly Highland sergeant with a genuine affection, one that he felt for all of his cadre. He enjoyed the casualness of the relationships shared by those in the Special Air Service, where rank meant nothing. Patrick Hogg had started, like most of the men in the SAS, in a regular unit. But life as a line officer in the Queen's Own Irish Hussars had been oppressive and confining for him. He needed something more from the Army than the routine of training, maintenance, and administrative duties that consumed an officer's life in peacetime. He had been born to be a member of the SAS. "That, Sergeant McPherson," Hogg finally replied after taking a sip of the wonderfully warm tea, "won't take too long, seeing that your intellectual capacity can handle but two."
"With all due respect, sir," McPherson stated with mock indignation, "bugger off."
The light-hearted banter between sergeant and officer had put Hogg in a better frame of mind by the time they reached the rally point where lorries waited for both candidates and cadre alike. Some lorries would take candidates who had completed the course to their next ordeal, a twenty-four-hour interrogation that was as brutal as military law would permit. Other trucks wailed for those like Jones. He would be taken back to his barracks, where he would be given enough time to pack his kit and clear out before his triumphant companions returned to celebrate the completion of the selection process with a hot shower and a well-deserved sleep.
The usual assorted lot of support personnel was mixed in with the SAS cadre. The truck drivers congregated around the front of their vehicles, finishing off their morning coffee. The mess personnel stood ready behind steaming food pans, doing their best to look as miserable as they felt while spooning out hard-boiled eggs to cadre and support personnel as they wandered in. The medics, as medics do around the world, sat in the cab of their field ambulance, looking bored and praying that nothing happened to break that boredom.
Besides these assorted support personnel, Patrick Hogg noticed his superior when he and Kenneth McPherson hopped off the helicopter. Standing at the end of the mess line, Major Thomas Shields was chatting with several of Hogg's cadre. McPherson, busy giving an SAS sergeant major a hand hauling out the former SAS candidates, didn't notice Shields at first. When he did, he grunted. "God, I hope he's not out here to give us another one of his rousing speeches on the need to maintain the standards of the regiment."
Hogg, who had been looking at Shields and sipping tea from a battered mess cup, shook his head. "I don't think so."
When McPherson noted the circumspect exchange between the two officers, he guessed that there was something up between them. "Captain," McPherson stated in a tone that NCO's use when they are trying to tell an officer what to do, "why don't you run along and tend to business like a good officer and let me sort out these lads."
Taking one last look at Jones, Hogg felt his first pang of sympathy for the corporal of the Welsh Guard. That poor soul, who was returning Hogg's stare with one that could kill, would be going back to rejoin his regiment at best. He'd be humbled by this experience. More than likely, the Welshman would be broken in spirit to the point to where a once-promising career was now all but impossible. While it was a shame that a good soldier such as Jones would be regarded as a failure because he hadn't measured up to the grueling demands the SAS held onto, Hogg knew there was nothing he could do about that. It was his job to sort out those who were merely good and those who had what it took. Without another thought, Patrick Hogg turned his back on the still gagged and bound Welshman and headed over to see what had brought the major out on a morning like this.
When he saw Hogg approaching, Shields excused himself, grabbed another cup of tea, and met Hogg halfway. "If you're after a bit of sun to add some color to your cheeks, you picked a hell of a day to do so," Hogg ventured, with a casual salute.
Shields smiled as he returned the salute and handed the second cup of tea he was carrying to Hogg. "If I was looking for the sun," the major countered, "this is the last place on earth I'd come."
The two men chuckled over this tete-a-tete, sipped their tea, and looked around at the comings and goings of the soldiers entrusted to them for several minutes. Hogg noted that the major kept looking over to where Sergeant McPherson was in the process of untying Jones and the candidate McPherson had run to ground. Hogg could see by the major's expression that he was displeased with Hogg's handling of Jones. But the major would say nothing. As long as life and limb were not too recklessly endangered, the commander of this portion of the SAS's selection cycle pretty much left the techniques used by his people up to them.