ARMAGEDDON'S SONG (Volume 3) 'Fight Through' Read Online Free Page B

trembling in unison to the right limb. Removing his right hand
from its hold he eased it between his body and the rock, his fingers unscrewing
the locking carabiner at his waist and releasing the rope. Breathing a sigh of
relief he replaced his hand back into the fracture it had left, and noted with
satisfaction that the tremors were already abating. 
    Corporal Alladay
reached the shadow beneath the overhang and clipped himself onto a runner
before assuming an attitude of absolute stillness. The helicopter was almost
upon them, the beating of its rotors a physical thing that buffeted the senses.
The British and American troops held their breath lest the fog of their
breathing catch the eye of an alert crewman, but on board an aircraft never
equipped with heating the door gunners sat behind closed side doors, peering
disinterestedly through Perspex windows as they shivered in the cold and drafts
of freezing air that streamed through the joints of the side door.
    A clod of snow
struck Richard on the shoulder, loosened by the vibration of the helicopters
passing it fell down the chimney from the mass of wind-blown snow and ice that
overhung the face, a fore runner of the tons that were to follow. He had just
enough time to brace his arms and legs against the side of the chimney,
pressing his back against the opposite side with all his strength before he was
engulfed.
    Garfield was following the helicopter with his eyes,
the beat of the blades drowned out all other sound but a white, fast moving
mass caught the corner of his eye. A falling wall of ice and snow blotted out
the rock face and he shouted an alarm to the men closest to the base of the
canyon wall where the bergens were stashed, but they were watching the PLA
machine and his shout was drowned out by the beating blades. Two men disappeared
before his very eyes, one moment they were there and the next they were buried
under tons of snow and ice.
    During an avalanche or rock fall down a vertical face
the safest place to be is as tight against the rock face as possible. The
falling mass has achieved a degree of forward motion, which will carry most of
it outwards, not in towards the face.
    Lt Shippey-Romhead had no warning at all until a
whiteout replaced the view he had had of the rock face across the canyon they
had descended earlier. Sucking in his stomach and expending the air in his
lungs he made himself as flat as possible but could still feel the wind of the
avalanche against his back. Just millimetres separated him from the down rush
of snow and he clung with desperation to his hand and toeholds. A lump of ice
about the size of a coconut struck the back of his helmet a glancing blow and
his head rebounded off the rock and into the downfall, which dragged his body
from its tentative perch.
     
    Lambeth: London SE5
     
    Situated as it is between Peckham and Brixton, two of the more violent suburbs of the British capital, the
hospital that lay three quarters of the way up Denmark Hill have a staff with
vast experience and expertise in dealing with gunshot wounds and stabbings.
Those skills made Kings College Hospital an obvious choice for dealing with
many of the more serious cases arriving back in the UK from the fighting in
Europe. One such patient arrived under guard; the military policemen of his
escort being exceedingly closed mouthed about their charge.
    That he was a soldier seemed obvious from the remnants
of camouflage cream that still adhered to his skin, clearly missed by the
medical staff in Germany. However, the RMPs would not reveal his identity or
the circumstances of his receiving his injuries.
    A doctor in triage was beginning to get extremely
frustrated with the lack of forthcoming information, such as the date of the
injury, the dimensions of the blade and was it possible that any of the knife
or bayonet’s blade could have been broken off? Whether morphine had been
administered, and if so then how much and when? She couldn’t even get them