“There are opportunities to attend officer training following enlistment, even in the Schutzstaffeln, yes?”
“Yes, sir — I tried, but the RSM at my training unit rejected my application. He told me he didn’t need ‘eggheads’ with education in the SS and thought I was a ‘smartarse’, excuse my language, sir.”
“Well, I’d say your potential’s being wasted then, Milo Wisch,” Ritter said directly, staring straight ahead. Changing tack without warning, he asked: “Was that wasted potential able to locate the boy, as I instructed?”
“Yes sir, I believe I’ve found him.”
“You believe you’ve found him?” Ritter locked his eyes with Wisch’s in a narrowed stare, and this time it was the officer’s turn be stopped in his tracks by the conversation.
“Upon searching the house and surrounding area at first light, I was able to discover what appears to be a hiding place against the inside wall of the barn by the farmhouse. It was made up of old boards and a few hay bales jammed in behind an old plough in one corner.”
“The boy was there?”
“I can’t be certain, sir, as I made great pains to act as if I was unaware of the hideout, but I’d be surprised if he’s not there. I’d swear at one point I could hear the sounds of a child crying as I searched the barn. I made no attempt to uncover the boy: I thought that without help I might scare him away and lose him completely.”
“You’re saying he’s still there?”
“I believe that he was half an hour ago: I’ve three privates stationed outside the barn to discourage him from leaving.”
“You’ve informed no one of this… no one at all?”
“Only yourself, sir… my unit commander’s still in the infirmary, and technically-speaking I’ve no one to report to as a result.”
“Well done!” Ritter truly smiled for the first time. Well done, man!” He clapped the NCO on the shoulder. “Come on… let’s see if we can do something to help the young fellow!”
Trooper Evan Lloyd sat at the control console of the BRT and sipped at some strong, black coffee for his mandatory, two-hourly caffeine ‘hit’. Above the galvanised roof of the control tower in which he sat, the bulbous, white shape of a small radome had been installed with the instruments and control systems set up on a cleared space of bench at the rear of the tower’s operations deck. It wasn’t large –a little more than metre or so in diameter — and was a system normally used by battalion-sized units in the field. The Australian SAS unit of which Lloyd was part were, among other things, tasked with operating the BRT and keeping track of any potential air threats. Most usually assumed the acronym stood for ‘battalion radar transmitter’ or some such. When the troopers were feeling bored that was often how they themselves might describe the device, but at other times the men might’ve instead grinned and explained with typical, Australian irreverence that it was also a shortening of the colloquialism ‘Big Round Thing’. The radome was also often known by the nickname ‘The Golf Ball’ for equally obvious reasons.
Lloyd would’ve preferred Coke — the soft drink was his favourite method of taking his daily caffeine requirements — but supplies of those kinds of rationed luxuries in 1940s England were scarce enough as it was, and space within the cavernous hold of the Galaxy had been at a premium. Despite what the advertising companies might like Lloyd’s modern world to believe, Coca-Cola unfortunately hadn’t been deemed a permissible luxury he’d been allowed to bring with him. One luxury he had been allowed was his iPod Classic and small, battery-powered speaker dock. An accomplished guitarist in an amateur band during his high school days, he was a great fan of all contemporary music and was that day in a relatively ‘mellow’ mood. A shuffled compilation of songs by Green Day played softly from the unit’s speakers as he relaxed in his seat and kept his eyes on the empty screens of the radar display.
A tall man of solid and muscular build, Evan Lloyd had spent the last two of his twenty-five years with the Australian Special Air Service Regiment. He had no family (both his parents had died almost two years before in a terrible bushfire), and he’d left no serious romance or barely even a casual relationship or two behind. Trooper Lloyd was an intelligent man despite having struggled to finish his last year of high school, and was an avid if informal student of modern history in what little spare time the SASR allowed him. The board that had initially drawn up a multi-national list of potential members for the embryonic Hindsight Task Force had rated Lloyd high on the list of Australian candidates, and he’d accepted their offer without hesitation.
Lloyd was content with spending his four hour shift on radar duty as innocuously as possible and was more than happy for the screens before him to remain blank for the entire time for a number of reasons. That wasn’t to say he felt all that vulnerable. There were two self-propelled anti-aircraft vehicles out there at each end of the runway that could deal with a substantial number of low-level threats in the event of an air attack, not to mention the relatively heavy concentration of more conventional medium Bofors guns and heavy AA emplacements all over the naval base at Scapa Flow.
Originally of Russian origin, the 2K22M ‘Tunguska’ anti-aircraft vehicle was an advanced weapons system that made use of both guns and missiles to defeat low- and medium-level aerial threats. Known also by the NATO reporting name of SA-19 ‘Grison’, the two units that had disembarked from the cargo bay of the Galaxy the night before were the latest model, carrying the ‘Pantsir-S1’ turret upgrade mounting a dozen guided missiles and a pair of lethal 30mm cannon. Each vehicle carried its own radar, infra-red and optical tracking systems and was also linked to the radar transmitter above Lloyd’s head. Both were more than capable of dealing with any aerial threat that strayed within a range twenty kilometres, up to an altitude of 15,000 metres. Even so, he’d prefer not test them out that afternoon in a real air attack.
Lloyd was however happy of human company, and received the arrival of Squadron Leader Alec Trumbull in the control tower that afternoon with pleasure and some interest — it was his first contact with someone from that era, rather than his own. The squadron leader was in a similar situation to that of Trooper Lloyd, in that so long as everything was proceeding smoothly that day there was absolutely nothing for him to do. He was certainly giving Thorne’s offer serious thought — he’d been able to think of little else — but was also eager to meet with others from Thorne’s time. So far, however, none had made themselves available for a ‘chat’ as it were — much was going on, and that was something Trumbull found a little frustrating, although he could certainly understand.
Lloyd moved to stand as a precursor to coming to attention as Trumbull reached the top of the stairs and opened the door to the tower deck, but the squadron leader would have none of it.
“No, no — keep your seat, trooper,” he insisted with a wave of his hand. “I’m just wandering about — don’t mind me.”
“Don’t mind at all, sir…” Lloyd assured genially, glad of someone to talk to and too experienced a soldier to be put off by a squadron leader’s rank. “Happy to have the company: ‘been a bit boring up here on my own.”