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Petra and Jamie entered Reid’s office to find Geshenko filling five small glasses with a clear liquid from an unmarked bottle.
"Colonel Geshenko, I need to know what exactly it is your government has sent. I think..."
"Major, please. Indulge me for a few more minutes." The Russian Officer handed each of the group a glass. "I propose a toast. To the end of this war, to victory and to new friends." The group clinked glasses in turn. Reid muttered, "Cheers." Monroe simply eyed the Russian with distrust and Jamie sniffed at the innocent looking liquid. Geshenko put his glass to his lips as Petra downed her drink in one and slammed the glass, open end down on the wooden table. Geshenko, glass at his mouth, but not tasted, looked at Petra with a new interest, the interest of someone who had found a rare flower in a bed of weeds.
"Good vodka," Petra said, staring right back at Geshenko.
Geshenko slowly grinned.
As if in answer to an unspoken question, Petra said, "My Grandmother was Russian."
Geshenko’s smile broadened and then he downed his drink in one and slammed the glass to the table as Petra had done.
Jamie and Reid only managed to swallow a sip before convulsing in fits of coughing. Monroe, on the other hand, drank down the liquid in one, slowly, but placed the glass on the table, gently and with open end up.
Silence filled the room. Geshenko eyed Monroe and Monroe simply stared back. The other three waited. A roar of laughter from Geshenko broke the silence as he grabbed the stunned American in a Russian bear hug.
"I like you, my Yankee friend," roared Geshenko, and despite himself, Monroe managed a small smile.
"I’m not a Yankee," Monroe managed to squeeze out in between trying to gasp for air. "My family are from Texas."
"The Alamo," Geshenko shouted, at the same time dropping Monroe to the floor. "I read this story once. Davy Crocket, King of the Wild frontier!"
"Don't believe all you read Crocket was also a shrewd politician."
Geshenko smiled.
Monroe composed himself and turned to Major Reid. "If gifts are what you're wanting, then I too have a gift. You should have received a small trunk addressed to me a couple of days back."
Reid nodded. "Yes, it is in our stores. Do you want me to have it brought here?"
"Not here. Have you any solid metal you don't need?"
"Yes, there's a Panzer out back that's just a pile of junk really."
"OK, have the trunk brought around I have something to show you."
Out back was a euphemism for junkyard. There were two Panzers, various half-tracks and trucks as well as a small mobile gun. It was getting late in the afternoon, and the sun was watery but low in the sky. The alpine air was sweet pine, tinged with machine oil.
Monroe was assembling a device that looked like it was straight out of an American 1930s Science Fiction movie.
Geshenko was standing close by and nodding his approval. "Da, I have seen this weapon. Anti-tank, Da?"
As the group watched, Monroe had put together a strange array of tubes, almost looking like an old gatling gun, affixed to two caterpillar tracks. Beneath the device, there was a solid white box with multiple hoses fixed to one end of the tubes. The box hissed and steamed in an alarming manner.
"Is that ice there?" whispered Petra, almost frightened to talk in case something exploded. "It doesn't look safe to me."
Monroe, kneeling next to the hissing device stood and stretched his back. "Very hush-hush, little lady. I am not allowed to say what it is, but I'll be happy to show you all what it does. The device is very experimental but where we are going, we may well need all the help we can get."
"And where exactly is it, you think we're going and what on earth would this, this thing be used for?" Major Reid was not amused. First the Russian and now this American had taken over his command without a by your leave and God knows what they were up to. He felt his grasp on his command slowly slipping away.
Monroe smiled at the Major. "See the tank? What would you say, twenty feet away?"
"Seven metres, Da. Anti-tank. I told you, I know this weapon," Geshenko said, smiling his perpetual smile.
Monroe turned to the Russian. "I doubt that, but yes, it could be used as an anti-tank weapon, but it is true worth is for getting into places where there is no entrance. Do you see the tank's gun barrel? Now watch."
Monroe was holding a small device that had a switch, two rubber paddles and a red button. He flicked the switch and immediately the gun lurched, hissed and then settled down again. Monroe pushed the left paddle forward, and the small machine began trundling around in a left hand circle. As the machines 'gun' drew level with the barrel of the distant tank, Monroe pushed the right-hand paddle forward and the 'gun' moved toward the tank. At fifteen feet distance from the tank, Monroe brought his machine to a standstill.
"Aiming is slightly hit and miss, but then for our purposes we don't need to aim really, but this is a demonstration and the barrel will do fine." As he finished speaking, Monroe pressed the red button, and then pushed the two paddles forward once more. The machine lurched forward, but nothing else seemed to happen. Then Jamie gasped.
"Look at the barrel," said Monroe calmly.
Then they all saw what Jamie saw. As Monroe’s small 'gun' moved forward, the thick metal gun barrel on the tank was spluttering white-hot. Something was cutting into the barrel, but with no noise or any visual sign apart from the white-hot metal and acrid smoke. The barrel was simply being cut in half.
"What the hell is it?" Jamie McDonald was standing where the cut half of the barrel had fallen with a heavy thud unto the cold hard soil beneath.
"All I can say is that it has its own power source, it is radio controlled, and it cuts through metal like a hot knife through butter." Monroe was smiling broadly for the first time since his arrival in the British camp. He was happy. "It uses light to create a laser beam. That beam is what does the cutting. The beam is not invisible, but it is hard to see in daylight. Better to be seen in the dark or better still if there's a little smoke or mist around."
Major Reid was crouched at the smoking end of the fallen barrel. "So, I'll repeat my earlier question Colonel Monroe. What exactly is it you think we will need your laser for?"
"I would have thought that obvious, major."
"OK, this has gone far enough. First, we have the good Colonel Geshenko arriving with..." Reid whirled around searching for the Russian, "...where the devil has he gone?"
As Reid turned toward the rear of the building, he used as an office, he heard an engine starting beyond the building, then another, followed by another and then yet another. The noise the engines were making was bad enough but those sounds were slowly being supplanted by an altogether different sound. There was now a slow whooshing, which was growing, louder and faster all the time.
The group looked at each other and then as one, they stared at the sky as slowly, but surely, the air was filled flying debris, followed by a sight no one, except the big Russian and his team had seen before. Four huge machines were rising from beyond Reid's office building and filling the air with a noise so loud that they had to cover their ears. The air around the group was a maelstrom of flying debris. The clothes on their bodies were being dragged and whipped, this way and that. Reid tried to shout something to Jamie, but the words were ripped from his mouth. As the group watched in awe the flying machines, each dipped forward and to the left and flew off, very low, over the British camp and headed north.