Sharpe's Sergeant

Chapter 12 Adrenaline Rush


Adrenaline. That was the drug that drove Camden. It was what kept her doing what she did best. And, it was emergency response missions that provided the biggest rush. Whenever Camden had such a mission to carry out she went into overdrive, running like a well-oiled machine. It was what had brought her into EOD in the first place. She lived for it. In an earlier age it would have resulted in honor and glory as men marched into battle; in this age, it meant the world was being made a safer place in spite of the men who marched into battle. As a side benefit, she got to order men around and blow things up. What could be better than that? It was adrenaline that made decision-making easy for her, which kept her issuing the orders that drove her soldiers on. It made her feel alive, every nerve firing on automatic. Hell, it was better than sex. Well, almost.

She had just begun the mission brief when she saw Smitty arrive with Sean. Orry had already called to inform her that there would be an ‘official observer’ along on this one. Sean’s arrival at this specific time could only mean that he had managed to pull some strings behind her back. Okay, I’ll play his game. He’s going to get the chance to show me what he is made of. This isn’t some movie or TV show. This is real. Understanding what I do will help him understand me.

The helicopter ride to Dresden was mercifully over in thirty minutes. Sean found that it wasn’t the flight itself that made the trip as horrifying as he thought it was going to be; what really made him sweat were the ten cases of C4 military plastic explosives covering the floor of the aircraft. They completely distracted him from the fact that he was on a helicopter. He was quite used to the small powder charges used by the special effects people in films, but this was another thing altogether. Even more unnerving was how everyone else on board the aircraft appeared as if this was a perfectly normal thing while he bit his lip and sweated profusely. The big Blackhawk helicopter dwarfed the small commercial helicopters he had experienced when he was in New Zealand for Lord of the Rings. The flight helmet and headset that he was given helped to mask the noise and made him feel halfway safe. By the time they touched down, he was actually able to admit to himself that, explosives aside; it really hadn’t been all that bad and he was feeling rather proud of himself. He had come to the realization that in order to get close to Camden, he had to understand the world she lived in, and if that meant taking a helicopter flight, then he just had to suck it up. He just couldn’t help but hope that Camden couldn’t see just how nervous he was.

He knew he would never forget Camden’s cool detachment in her voice over the helicopter’s intercom on the flight up as she educated Sean on what he was about to experience first hand. She sounded cold and hard while the cool azure of her eyes deepened to a gun metal blue. They glared with an intensity that spoke of wanton desire, the same desire that he had seen in his room just hours earlier, the same as in London, and it made him shiver.

“Do you remember back in the late 60’s, early 70’s watching a BBC television series called ‘Danger UXB?” Camden asked, continuing without waiting for an answer, “It was so popular in Britain that PBS picked it up and showed it in the States. It was all about the first bomb disposal teams during WWII. Most people had no idea how historically accurate that show was. Just like the men in that show, we are about to clean up after the Nazis also. It is the one thing that makes duty in Germany so incredibly unique for EOD personnel.”

“You mean you’re goin’ ta’ mess about with WWII bombs?” Sean ventured.

“Give the man a prize, Smitty,” Camden tossed out casually, a devilish grin coming over her, “We, Mr. Bean, we, since you decided you wanted to come along. We are going to going to do just that and you are going to have a front row seat.”

Camden was silent for the remainder of the flight, giving no indication that further conversation was even remotely welcome. She was a completely different person. Once on the ground in Dresden, Sean was pretty much anonymous under a flack jacket and a Kevlar helmet. The most amazing thing to him was how professional Camden was; how she handled law enforcement, her team, the fire department, the air crew, and the German construction workers who had unearthed a system of WWII bunkers on the outskirts of the city. She looked right at home in that environment and was definitely the center of attention, everyone looking to her for direction.

A reconnaissance of the bunker system uncovered caches of old rusting weapons and small arms ammunition, cases of hand grenades and mortar rounds and some ancient decomposing dynamite. Decayed equipment, human skeletons and the traces of the daily lives of the soldiers who had occupied the bunkers during the firebombing of Dresden during WWII were just sad reminders of that terrible conflict. Sean couldn’t help but feel the same haunting sense of history that Camden and her team were feeling. There was a respectful silence as they worked to set up the explosives that would obliterate the concrete bunkers and the interconnecting tunnel network and lay the skeletons to rest in the soil where they had fallen.

It was late in the day by the time the last demolition charge had been set. Everyone had pulled back to a safe area and was standing behind an embankment about a mile away from the bunker system. When everyone and everything was ready and the all clear to fire signal was given, Camden quietly passed the radio detonator to Sean.

“Anytime you’re ready, Mr. Bean,” Camden advised matter-of-factly, “The honor’s all yours. You’ll hear a siren sound for a minute, then just shout out loudly three times ‘fire in the hole’ and press the big red button.”

At first, Sean wasn’t sure that it had worked, that he had actually pressed the button. But then, a bright line of brilliant orange and yellow fire erupted all along the top of the bunker location. A few seconds later, a horrendous crack and thundering boom came rolling towards him and the fireball began to turn black and ugly, smoke, dust and dirt roiling as it surged upwards. The noise was so deafening it was as if lightning and thunder had struck right over his head. On the heels of the sound waves came the overpressure that was caused by the sudden outflow of the rapidly expanding fireball. Moments after that, came the sudden rushing of air back towards the origin of the detonation as the void began to refill. Sean stood there and stared with his mouth open in amazement until Smitty pulled on his elbow, motioning him to duck down as the dirt and debris began falling on the other side of the embankment and the monstrous noise began to echo away.

“Better than sex!” shouted Smitty with a grin the size of Texas, “Well, almost better than sex!”

“Blood-eh fuckin’ ‘ell yes!” Sean managed through his laugh, “I near-leh pissed meself!”