Chapter 48: First Briefing

The next morning I was up before the sun. I took a long relaxing run around the lake to stretch my muscles and work some of the kinks out of my body. It had been a while since I had run, and I knew that the next while would stress me, and while I normally didn't like running, it was neccessary to start getting myself ready.

When I returned to the room, both the girls were up and dressed. I heard their voices coming from the veranda, and when I tried to eavesdrop, was thwarted by the fact that they seemed to be chatting in Russian. I popped into the shower and got rid of the sweat then joined them for a light breakfast.

After breakfast, we walked over the ridge to the training area. I was surprised and pleased to see that we had a number of new faces. Well, old faces actually, some of whom I hadn't seen for a long time. It was clear that the drums were beating. I grabbed a mug of coffee, and joined the crowd standing and chatting in the early morning, greeting those that had arrived overnight and just enjoying the sight of the mist slowly dissipating as the sun slowly heated the air. I waited until the last few stragglers joined us from the lodge, brushing off the few enquiries about what was going on until we had a full compliment.

"Right," I called to get everyone's attention once I was ready, "let's get this show on the road." Everyone took seats on the benches around the tables on the veranda of the barracks-room, and settled down.

"For those of you who don't know me, I'm an old NCO who went across to the dark side, which means that I have both the wits of an NCO and the extra half I got with my commission..." I paused for the expected chuckles and groans, then continued, "This is not an official operation and in fact has no connection with any organisation at all, it is purely a private fight." I could see on at least half of the faces a polite disbelief, but decided to let it go. I would talk to each man individually as things went on to clarify the situation.

"What I have in mind is that we start with some refresher training and conditioning. In addition, there are probably a lot of you who haven't done 'Urban in Durban' so some of what we will do will be completely new. In any event, we need to get everyone operating on the same wavelength. Some of the stuff we'll do will be brand new, even to those of you who have done Urban before. We have some people with great experience both old and new, a lot of the new stuff picked up in Iraq from the Pommies and Yanks, and one old instructor that I think will add some very valuable input. While this is going on, we will wait for some decent INT and then start moving the training up from general stuff to OPS specific. Concerns, Questions, Problems?"

"What's the actual situation. I just heard that there was a possible fight... " asked a voice from the back.

"Thanks for coming anyway Mannie," I greeted, "I'll give you a summary after this of what's been going on. Anything else?"

I waited, but there were no more questions. I guessed that those who had questions decided that they would wait to hear what the situation was. None of the men who were here hadn't been around the block a few times. It took me just under an hour to go over everything that had happened, dealing with a variety of questions for clarity and more detail as I went. When I was finished, there was a period of silence while those who hadn't been involved digested what they had heard. I could see that what I had told them had intrigued some, and I got the feeling that they were caught up in the same feelings of disgust and smoldering anger that I was feeling. After looking around for a few minutes, I decided to get the ball rolling.