Chapter Text
Credenhill, Herefordshire, South West England.
The room was hot. Major Armstrong had a brisk voice but the weekly update had already run an hour overtime. Even the keenest soldiers in the squadron had long stopped taking notes in order to repeatedly pinch themselves awake. Finally, the Major moved on from another reminder to not prop open fire doors to something a little more exciting. As he lay out the issue, the men perked up, coming awake with interest like prairie dogs.
‘Alright lads, we’ve got an infiltrator somewhere in the ranks, he could be anyone. All we know is that he was trained in the U.S. by a terrorist group called C.H.U.D., most likely an American native who replaced someone during or just after selection, so look out for American accents slipping out and keep tight on opsec.’
In the audience of seated men, the American radical C.H.U.D. agent, Braxton Hicks, currently known as Charlie Smith raised a hand to his face to hide a wicked smirk. They didn’t know! He had been picked for his flawless imitation of a British accent learned during his earliest years when his family had been stationed here. He thought now of his family’s horror, should they find out about his radicalisation at the hands of Al Qatala via C.H.U.D. but his family’s faith in the individual had always been weak. The history of real change was written in blood.
The Major at the front shut down his power point and someone at the back turned on the lights. Ah, the update appeared to be ending. After only 45 minutes more of further memos they were allowed to leave.
His standing orders were to infiltrate the team hunting down C.H.U.D. cells, which he’d discovered was the 141, so he caught up to its nearest member through the stream of departing men, Sergeant MacTavish, and brought out the charm.
“Hey Buddy! How you doing?”
Mactavish almost seemed to cringe away at the friendly greeting but responded amiably enough. ‘Yeah, alright Sergeant.. err.. , not bad. You?’ Maybe he had been surprised by the greeting, real ADHD behaviour, and to think, these foolish imperialists trusted this man with explosives.
“It’s Smith. Oh I’m just great. Except for the food. Am I right? Ha ha! I’ve not had anything that bad since grade school. Although I was hoping to ask a favour, my captain says my mission reports are lacking, could I look at a few of your old ones to get an idea of where to improve?” Might as well multitask, any information could be useful, although it was a shame to lie about his mission reports after all the work he put in to them.
By this point they had walked outside into the rain. Why was it always raining here? He hoped that the drowned puppy look might make the sergeant more receptive but MacTavish was already shaking his head. As MacTavish opened his mouth to reply, he was interrupted by one of his COs calling. The giant. Clearly an ex-theatre kid with the way he wore that mask. What a drama queen. Broad with showy muscle, all shoulders and ass. Braxton’s lip twitched in a sneer. Looking like that with those blonde eyelashes and that trim waist. Real queer stuff. Slutty. Hicks did his best to keep his face in check. Friendly. Polite. Greeter at Walmart sort of thing.
“Well, I’ll let you get back to your lieutenant. My pants are getting soaked anyway, the rain just bounces right off the sidewalk.”
So saying, he walked away, congratulating himself on remembering to pronounce lieutenant incorrectly. Lef-ten-ant, Leftenant, wouldn’t do to forget that. He could find some other way to get friendly with the team.
When he looked back, the two men had their heads close as though they were discussing something private, the giant glanced his way. Probably jealous that someone dared approach his little friend. Hey now there was an idea, catch them fraternising, or just make it look like they were somehow. Shouldn’t be too hard, he’d heard one of them ask the other for a fag the other day.
Later that afternoon Sergeant MacTavish caught up to him in the mess, waving a pile of paper forms covered in blocky handwriting. Hicks gestured to the seat opposite on the long table and shifted his tray to make room.
‘Ey, Smith. I spoke to your captain, sorry, just had to confirm, but he says your mission reports are proper wank’. He couldn’t help but wince. Rude. Fuck Captain Briggs anyway, the C.H.U.D.s were always happy with his reports; effusive, even. ‘Have a flick through mate and I’ll meet you at seven in the East barracks rec room. We can re-write one of yours together.
Hicks thanked him and did as he was told, already skimming the reports right there at the table. Something caught his eye, a line had been redacted, covered with corrective fluid. It was related to the intel the mission had been sent to retrieve, suggesting the date and location of the next target in the chain of missions, one which was just about to occur. All he had to do was scratch it off to read it, but only if it could be concealed again, he’d have to ask around for some White-out.
At 18.45 Hicks made his way to the rec room, MacTavish was already there, seated in one of the kitchenette chairs. The rest of the 141 was also there, occupying the couches, a soccer match playing quietly on the TV. The friendly sergeant teased him ‘thought you’d never turn up’.
“Ah, it’s still a quarter ‘til seven” Hicks replied.
‘Hmmm’ said MacTavish, eyebrow raised. Hicks caught the edge of the conversation on the couch as Captain Price turned to the Lieutenant and said ‘I see what you mean.’
“Well, anyway, here’s a couple paragraphs I did already, and here’s your reports back” he placed the mission reports down on the table (copies already hidden under his bunk, although people had looked at him funny when he’d asked to xerox them).
MacTavish took the form, the other eyebrow joining the raised one ‘Ignore that lot, got nothing better to do than lounge around on uncomfortable sofas. This is more than a couple of paragraphs. How did you have time for this? And why is it all in the present tense? Jesus’ His eyes traced down the page rapidly. ‘Heh, you don’t have to copy my handwriting as well’
“Oh I didn’t, I just never learned cursive.” Hicks chuckled. Who had time for that nowadays? He looked around at the others in the room who all blinked at him with wide eyes. Ok, obviously these guys.
As they worked on the report together, Hicks asked friendly questions of the get-to-know-you type. He found he liked John, or Soap as he requested to be called and was surprised to find out that despite being Scottish he didn’t speak a word of Gaelic.
‘Oh aye, no one does, the bastard colonial English wiped that out.’ Soap said, to groans from the couches. There really was something likeable about him. ‘There’re people trying to keep it alive but it’s less than two percent that know even a little. We did German in school. Five years of German and I canna speak a lick past Ich bin auf Coatbridge in der ner von Glasgow.’
Hmm, maybe the initial assessment of imperialist idiot was closer to the mark. Hicks had gone to a terrible school and done Spanish as a second language. Even with Sr. Roberto who had shown up drunk nine times out of ten and taught them all that the best way to address a lady was Puta madre (como mi exesposa zorra), Hicks was reasonably fluent, if somewhat slurry. These guys though, Soap said he’d left school at sixteen but had somehow managed to spend some time at college, he must have been some sort of idiot-savant. The opinion was confirmed when Hicks asked what Soap had majored in and received nothing but a blank stare in response.
The rest of the session went well. At one point the African American soldier – ‘Call me Gaz, mate’ – had offered to make everyone tea. Hicks had only had iced tea before and wracked his brains for the correct thing to ask for. After a tiny pause, he requested his with lemon, or failing that, honey. There had been quite some delay as Gaz poked around the little kitchen for one or the other, eventually admitting defeat. Instead he was given “builder’s tea” stewed with a few teaspoonfuls of sugar and enough milk to turn it beige. It was oddly refreshing, he’d have to check at the grocery for it.
Hicks even managed to squeeze a little more information out of Soap. The taskforce were scheduled to deploy again soon, it must be to take care of that whited out mission. This time next week they’d be in the field, making observations, preparing to arrest some hard working freedom fighters in a farmhouse just outside of Winchester. What’s more, Price was apparently toying with the idea of bringing along an extra man on these short jobs, just to get an idea of the local resources.
‘That’ll probably be you, now that we’ve half debriefed you anyway’ Soap added.
Amazing, this was the perfect opportunity. Hicks couldn’t wait to get back to the secret cell phone he kept hidden under his bed to write up his real report.
By the time the practise report was complete, he’d managed to ingratiate himself fully. He’d hit the jackpot by asking about soccer teams, Lieutenant Riley had strong opinions about Manchester City football club’s poor line up this year and the others mocked him cruelly for his support. Soap was a Celtics fan, which apparently was something to do with religion and couldn’t be changed but if he could have picked any other team it would be Man. United. There was another round of jeering laughter for some reason and the Lieutenant threw a book at Soap’s head.
Sensing that the conversation was veering into the unknown, Hicks took his leave to write his real report in private. The C.H.U.D.s must be informed that their secret operation would be attacked on the seventh of June, to be sure he remembered correctly, he had written the date surreptitiously on his hand – 06.07.25.
Over the next few days Hicks continued to run drills and participate in training with the rest of his squad. He had in fact passed selection on his own merits. The real Charlie Smith had been chosen and kidnapped for his lack of connections (dead parents, no siblings) prior to the intensely competitive selection process. After which, Hicks had avoided contact with Smith’s old team by faking a variety of illnesses, mostly food poisoning.
That was something actually; he’d have to come up with a different excuse, nobody else ever seemed to get food poisoning. Maybe the British army knocked out anyone without a strong stomach, or maybe food packaging, processing, additive and pesticide standards were significantly higher here than in the U.S. What a ridiculous way to create a country of weaklings, and it was so expensive! Takeaway food cost even more than fresh fruit and veg. What a crazy backward country. People were certainly different about illnesses, he’d tried telling Captain Briggs that he was staying in bed with a cold and Briggs had laughed! And, worse than that, they hadn’t even given him any antibiotics for it when he’d gone to the first aid station. Even when he’d complained and threatened to tell their superiors.
At least painkillers were dirt cheap. If all else failed he could at the last minute grind up a hundred packs of “Paracetamol” into the mess hall’s cottage pie[1].
Soap’s prediction proved correct. Hicks, or rather Smith was indeed chosen to accompany the taskforce on the mission to Winchester. As one of the new intake that year Hicks had been looking forward to the cyclical training that his squad went through. Old hat for them, but new to him; today would have been the classroom part of Cold Survival Training with a trip to the artic circle scheduled in a few days which he might have to go on without the training. A mental image struck him, of his future self struggling to keep up with his squad as his toes and fingers turned black and fell off. He sure hoped this mission ran long.
Hicks briefly wondered why Captain Briggs didn’t mind him missing it but was distracted by the urgent need to tell the C.H.UD. leadership that he would be in the firing line. Hopefully they had no plans to simply leave the site and boobytrap it.
The day came. Hicks nearly mustered at the wrong point, expecting to take a flight to the other city but made it - only just in time - to the canvas sided truck which was to transport them all instead. He sat next to Gaz who was talking about some fancy clothes he’d just bought. Gaz turned to him, including him in the conversation.
‘The correct term for them is actually knickerbockers’ he said very casually, lip twitching at though he was trying not to smile[2]. Why were the Brits so bad at controlling their faces? Hicks must have joined too late to hear the joke so he just nodded along. Gaz continued ‘you know, those smart trousers, the ones cut tighter at the lower leg. Back in the twenties you did sports like golf in a suit, the trousers were called knickerbockers, well they evolved into the suit trousers you see today, but also the tracksuit bottoms you see everywhere, and that’s why everyone calls both types of trousers “knickers”.
“Ooooh, so it’s also a type of sweatpants?” said Hicks, that made a lot of sense, he’d once heard his own lieutenant telling another soldier sleeping off a hangover to “Get yer knickers on and get to the canteen before they stop serving breakfast”. He’d have to remember to do a search/replace on his mission reports to swap out “pants” for “knickers”. He tried to fight down a smirk but had to cover it by pretending to scratch his nose. His enemy didn’t even know that they were helping him to hide, to flawlessly integrate. The mission was going perfectly.
[1] HAHAHAHAHA https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67e69e9e085277e9961b201b/Best_practice_guidance_on_the_sale_of_medicines_2025.pdf
[2] https://giphy.com/gifs/SkyTV-game-of-thrones-got-littlefinger-55vKevVF7T07l0jst5