Free Nucflash by Keith Douglass

started crying. God, how she wanted to forget the sight of Sharon’s ruined face.
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    0425 hours
Barracks, 23 SAS Training Center
Dorset, England
    Someone was shaking Roselli by the shoulder. When he opened his eyes, a flashlight was glaring in his eyes. “What the fuck?”
    â€œSorry, mate,” a Britisher’s voice said from the blackness behind the light. “Rise and shine. We got a hot flash in a few minutes ago. Briefing in thirty, and you Yanks are invited.”
    Roselli groped in the darkness for his watch on the tiny nightstand next to his rack and peeled back the Velcro cover. When he squinted at them hard, the luminous digits told him what he already knew . . . that it was zero-dark-thirty in military parlance and entirely too early for civilized people to be up and about.
    SEALs, however, never thought of themselves as civilized, and neither, evidently, did their SAS hosts. As he swung his legs over the side of the rack and set them on the cold linoleum deck, his tormenter straightened to shake Magic Brown, occupying the upper rack above Roselli’s head.
    â€œWhat’s up, Razor?” Jaybird asked from across the aisle that divided the barracks into two long lines of double-decker bunks. He was already half dressed, pulling his fatigues from the seabag hanging at the head of his rack.
    â€œHaven’t the foggiest,” Roselli replied, mimicking the Brits. “I suppose that’s why God invented briefings.”
    â€œIf this is another exercise,” “Professor” Higgins said from his bunk, “I’m going to vote that we declare war on England without delay.”
    The briefing room was tucked away in one corner of the Dorset HQ complex, not far from the barracks, a wood-floored room half filled with folding metal chairs. Roselli, Higgins, Brown, and Sterling had arrived to find several SAS officers and noncoms already present, including Major Roger Dowling-Smythe and Sergeant Major Dunn, both of whom had supervised the CQB exercise, now impeccable in neatly pressed and creased fatigues. SAS Colonel Howard Wentworth was there as well, as was a rather plain man in civilian clothes, who had the look that Roselli had come to associate with intelligence people worldwide.
    On a tripod at Wentworth’s back was a corkboard to which several photographs had been attached. Roselli recognized them as photos he’d seen a few days ago . . . security shots from Heathrow Airport of a couple of possible North Korean agents. The L-T had flown over to Wiesbaden to talk to the Germans about those two.
    â€œGentlemen,” Wentworth said, standing, a few moments after the Americans had found places for themselves and sat down. “This morning, about three hours ago, the Middlebrough police picked up a girl fleeing from a row house on the west end of the city. Shots were fired from the building.
    â€œNormally, this would be a matter for the local police to handle, but it happens that the young woman in question was able to identify both O’Malley, late of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, and these two Koreans, Major Pak and Captain Chun . . . though according to their passports, they seem to be calling themselves Mr. and Mrs. Kim these days.
    â€œThis is something of a major break for our side. You see, it seems that Pak, his girlfriend, and O’Malley, who was his primary contact in this country, all gave our security people the slip two days ago.” He glanced at the intelligence man, who looked away, clearly discomfited. “We still don’t know what happened, but I gather that some highly placed ministers were quietly contemplating hara-kiri with the knowledge that two potentially dangerous enemy agents were wandering loose around the countryside, presumably in the company of some equally dangerous people from across the Irish Sea.”
    A murmur of low-voiced conversation rose in the room as the SAS troopers passed comments