Dagger Strike: A Cairo Sloane Short Story

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In the front, Sergeant Eddie “Mack” Donald slowed to cross Third Avenue and then Cairo felt herself pushed back into her seat when the chunky Scotsman hit the throttle again.

“Couldn’t pass me one of those things, could you Cairo?” he said in his heavy Glaswegian accent.

As a lieutenant, Cairo was an officer and several rungs above Mack on the army ladder, but she didn’t flinch when he called her by her nickname. This was the SAS, and that meant life was very different from before. In normal regiments he would have called her “Ma’am” and she would have called Captain Hudson “Sir”, but out in the field the SAS overlooked such formalities. Their job was too hard and their bond had to be greater.

“Sure,” she said, and tossed a cigarette into his lap.

“Thank you kindly, lass.”

Hudson sighed. “Great, now I’m stuck in here with two sodding chimneys.”

Cairo smiled but said nothing. As the smoke drifted through her teeth in a thick plume her eyes crawled over the parks either side of Fifth Avenue. This was her first serious mission with the regiment and she knew she would be under observation the whole time. A major screw-up could see her ‘returned to regiment’ and that, as they said, would be that.

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