Killing for the Company

by Chris Ryan

  Luke checked his vital signs again.

  Shit. He’s stopped breathing.

  He knelt to one side of Chet’s body, put the heel of his right hand on his ribcage and laid his left hand over it. He pressed down sharply on the ribcage so that it sank five centimetres, then let it rise again without taking his hands away. He performed another twenty-nine chest compressions before placing his mouth on Chet’s and administering two rescue breaths. Blood from his mate’s face smeared his lips.

  Thirty chest compressions, two rescue breaths.

  Luke repeated the CPR routine that had been drilled into him countless times. Once he’d done five sequences, he checked Chet’s vitals for a third time.

  He was breathing.

  Luke turned his attention to Chet’s leg. Jesus, what a mess. Amazingly, the bleeding wasn’t too bad, but he grabbed a bandage anyway from the med pack and quickly applied a makeshift tourniquet to the top of his thigh, tying it as tight as possible to constrict the blood flow. He started to wind a second bandage around the damaged leg. Chet groaned when the material touched the wound. Clearly it hurt like hell, but that wasn’t such a bad thing. At least it meant he was sentient.

  Luke was panting heavily by now. He tried to clear his mind, to think through his medical training and work out if there was anything else he could do. There was nothing. Monitor his vital signs, perform CPR if necessary and wait. He pictured the map of Serbia in his mind and tried to estimate the distance between here and the FOB. A hundred miles perhaps. In normal conditions a QRF chopper should be able to cover that distance in forty-five minutes. But in this kind of snow, it was impossible to say.

  He relived the moment Chet had kicked the grenade away. The wounded man lying here on the ground had saved his life that night, no question, and the chances were high that he’d pay for it with his own. Luke felt a surge of anger at the Serbian bastard lying in the cellar with him. It was all he could do to stop himself from slotting him now.

  Chet muttered something. It was gibberish. ‘Hold on, buddy,’ Luke said through gritted teeth. ‘We’re going to get you out of here soon.’

  Luke didn’t know how long it was before he heard the noise. It crept up on him gradually: the faint but steady beating of rotor blades. He ran up the steps and outside.

  Two Pumas were coming in to land. They appeared to wobble in the air as they tried to set down, their lights glowing through the white-out of snow that surrounded them as they touched down. Luke knew that it was no picnic for the RAF pilots, flying a heli in this kind of weather. If it wasn’t life and death, they wouldn’t have ventured out at all.

  The moment after the first Puma touched down, seven men jumped out, all carrying bright torches. They wore DPMs and hard hats and Luke instantly recognised the maroon flash of 1 Para on the arms of six of them. The seventh man had no hard hat and a regular uniform: Chris Andersen, OC B Squadron, and a man who had just gone up several notches in Luke’s estimation for making the journey out here.

  ‘Follow me!’ Luke roared at the Para QRF over the noise of the helicopters, and he sprinted back into the house.

  There were two medics among the Paras. One look at Chet and their faces turned grim. But they were in charge now, and Luke knew to leave them to it.

  The OC walked down the stairs. ‘Ivanovic?’ he asked.

  Luke pointed at the Serb lying on the floor. ‘All yours, boss,’ he said. And then: ‘Sean and Marty are dead.’

  A dark look crossed Andersen’s face, and Luke could tell he was feeling equally murderous. They had their orders, though. Ivanovic was to stay alive. The Hague wanted their trophy conviction, no matter what had happened here tonight.

  Minutes later Luke was back outside in the snow. He watched Chet being stretchered into one of the waiting Pumas, then stood with a frown as the Paras carried the two bodies up into the chopper.

  Ivanovic came next, held under the arms by a couple of Paras who made no attempt to spare him any of the agony caused by dragging his splintered shins across the ground. Amid his shouts of pain, he took a second to cast a hateful look at Luke, who returned it. The bastard didn’t know how lucky he was Luke hadn’t given him one behind the ear.

  And then Andersen was there again. ‘Let’s go,’ he ordered, and the two of them boarded the Puma that was carrying Chet and their fallen comrades.

  As the heli lifted up into the air, Luke crouched down by Chet’s stretcher, steadying himself by gripping the webbing that covered the inside of the aircraft. His mate’s face was covered with an oxygen mask and he had a new drip in each arm. A blood pressure and pulse monitor beeped next to him. His face looked as white as death.

  Luke stared at the man who’d saved his life.

  Suddenly Chet’s eyes flickered open.

  ‘Fuck me, buddy,’ Luke burst out. ‘What does it take to put you down?’

  ‘Don’t . . . bullshit . . . me . . .’ Chet could barely get the words out, and Luke struggled to hear them over the roar of the chopper. ‘Am I going to make it?’

  Luke looked him up and down. He saw the damaged leg and the tubes sticking out of his body. He saw the medics, their faces severe.

  He fixed his expression in what he hoped looked like reassurance.

  ‘Course you are, mate,’ he said, as he felt the Puma struggling against the elements. ‘Course you are. That’s a promise.’

  He turned away so that Chet couldn’t see his face any more.

  Luke Mercer wasn’t a religious man, but as the Puma struggled through the blizzard and the dark night of Eastern Europe, he found himself muttering a silent prayer – to God and all the fucking angels on high – that this was a promise he’d be able to keep.

  PART TWO

  January 2003, two months before the coalition invasion of Iraq.

  FOUR

  London.

  ‘It’s six o’clock on Monday, 7 January. This is the news.’

  In a small ground-floor flat just off Seven Sisters Road, a man stared at his reflection in the mirror while the radio babbled in the background.

  ‘UN weapons inspectors have reported that there is no indication that Iraq is in possession of weapons of mass destruction. The chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, however, has stated that, while Iraq has cooperated on a practical level, it has not demonstrated a genuine acceptance of the need to disarm unilaterally. This follows claims by the United States that Saddam Hussein has ordered the death of any scientist who speaks to the inspectors in private, and it is expected that . . .’

  The man switched off the radio and went back to staring in the mirror. It wasn’t a pretty sight. His right eye was hooded, the result of an old injury. Just below his left eye there was a two-inch scar, bright pink and crooked. When he smiled the scar made his face look more damaged. Not that he smiled much these days. Today – his birthday, as it happened – he was more than usually aware of how fucked up he looked. He scowled and glanced around the tiny bathroom. Thirty-four years old, and this piece-of-shit flat in one of the scummiest bits of London was all he had to show for his life so far.

  Chet Freeman looked down to see the prosthetic limb strapped to the stump of his right leg. It always hurt – especially when he put pressure on it, which he did every time he stood up. The remnants of his shattered knee bone were forever breaking down; his skin was often bleeding and sore. When people saw an amputee, they only ever saw the prosthetic limb, never the damaged flesh that sat in it. The limb itself was hi-tech and well cushioned, but the flesh was human and it ached 24/7.

  Yet in a weird way his prosthesis reminded him how lucky he was. For Chet, life was divided into ‘before Serbia’ and ‘after Serbia’. When things started to get him down, he just reminded himself that the ‘after Serbia’ bit could easily never have happened.

  He had no memory of the blast. No memory of the evacuation or amputation. One minute he was in a room with Luke, a kid’s cot and a hobby horse; the next he was back in the UK at Selly Oak Hospital, his home for a ye
ar. He lost count of the times the doctors sliced wafers of skin from his back to graft over his wounds, all the while telling him that by rights he should be dead. Then he’d been moved into rehab at Headley Court.

  At Headley they taught him to walk again – a long, slow process. Nothing like a stint in that place to make you count your blessings, though. Chet’s amputation was below the knee. That at least gave him the movement of the knee joint. In rehab he met several double above-the-knee amputees, and even one basket case – a quadruple amputee whose life seemed to Chet to be barely worth living, though the guy seemed remarkably positive given his circumstances.

  The Regiment had offered Chet a desk job back in Hereford, but he wasn’t the desk-job type and quit the military. His pay-off had been just enough to buy this tiny flat, and there was a small army pension; but it was barely enough to live on, and anyway he needed something to get him out of bed in the morning. To sit and brood would have been the death of him.

  By the time he was dressed, Chet just looked like a regular guy. Some of the amputees he knew didn’t mind their prosthetic limbs being on show. Not him. He liked to cover up his leg – not out of shame, but because he didn’t want people treating him differently. His trousers successfully hid the limb. A specially made shoe hid the foot. There were the scars on his face, sure, but that was no different to any of the ex-army winos who staggered up and down Seven Sisters Road. At least he looked better than them. Just.

  He limped into the kitchen just as the phone rang. Chet let the answering machine on the work surface click in. ‘This is me. Leave a message.’

  ‘Chet, mate, it’s Doug . . .’ Doug Hodgson, a leg amputee like himself thanks to an anti-personnel landmine in Kosovo. They’d gone through rehab together. He was a good lad, but his prosthesis wasn’t his only war wound. The poor guy was riddled with PTSD. He hid it well, but Chet knew it filled his nights with dreams and woke him early every morning. Hence the six a.m. call. ‘Happy birthday, yeah? So if you haven’t got plans to get your chin buttered tonight, how about meeting up for a few jars? Call me, right?’

  Chet frowned. Doug had this image of Chet as a ladies’ man, but with one leg and a scarred face he was hardly catch of the day. A glance at the state of the kitchen showed that the place lacked a woman’s touch: peeling yellow wallpaper, a filthy hob, the only decoration a Blutacked poster of the London skyline that had come with the flat but Chet had never bothered to change.

  The remnants of last night’s booze were still visible in the kitchen: half a bottle of Bell’s, a couple of empty tins of Asda’s strongest lager. The first thing the occupational therapists had told him at Headley Court had been to lay off the sauce, but they weren’t the ones who had to put up with the discomfort, or the embarrassment, or the frustration. Still, he didn’t like to be reminded the morning after of how much he’d knocked back, so he pressed the empty cans into the already overflowing bin and stowed the whisky bottle in a cupboard, before taking a loaf of bread from its packet and hacking off a hunk with the only sharp knife in the kitchen. As he ate the dry bread, he picked up a piece of paper from the side, stained with a ring from the bottom of a coffee mug.

  It was a letter, written on expensive vellum paper and emblazoned with an elaborate letterhead: an ornate G, printed in gold foil, with the words ‘The Grosvenor Group’ in copperplate underneath it. They sent Chet one of these notes every time he did a bit of work for them, short and businesslike, the wording always the same:

  Dear Mr Freeman

  Please take this letter as confirmation that we will expect you at 7.30 a.m. at 132 Whitehall on 7 January 2003. As usual, the details of this engagement are subject to the non-disclosure agreement in force between ourselves.

  Chet looked at the clock on the greasy oven. 06.28. Time to get going. Today might be his birthday, but a job was a job, and he needed it. He grabbed his rucksack full of gear and left the house.

  It felt bitterly cold as he stepped outside. His old black Mondeo – automatic transmission so he could drive it with one foot – was parked outside, a dent in one side, three key scrapes along the other. Back in the Hereford days he’d gone everywhere on a Yamaha R1. Those days were gone and so was the motorbike.

  Leaves swirled in the wind, but the sky was crisp and blue. He could have driven, or waited for a bus to take him to the tube station, but Chet was stubborn. His leg hurt as he walked as briskly as he could along the road, but he was damned if he was going to live his life any differently because of that. At Headley Court they’d suggested he got himself a wheelchair for occasional use. He would rather die.

  Jobs for amputees that didn’t involve sitting behind a desk were hard to come by. The usual bodyguarding gigs that most Regiment personnel fell into on leaving the army weren’t open to Chet, but he still had certain skills that people and organisations were willing to pay for. The Grosvenor Group was one of them. They were a big American firm manned by brash men in expensive suits. They clearly made a great deal of money in ways Chet didn’t really understand, and with money came paranoia. Almost weekly the company called Chet in to sweep offices where they were holding meetings. Different locations every time, but always the same request: check for bugs, check for surveillance. What the hell went on in these meetings, Chet had no idea.

  The tube was busy and sweaty. Chet was glad to emerge at Piccadilly Circus, just another face in the crowd as he made his way down to Whitehall, stopping about thirty metres before he reached the familiar MoD offices.

  Number 132 was a tall building with wide stone steps and a tinted-glass revolving door. Inside was all marble and mirrors. Chet entered and headed straight for the security desk in the middle of the cavernous atrium. A friendly-looking, Brylcreemed man, in his sixties and wearing a grey suit, smiled up at him.

  ‘Good morning, sir. Can I help?’

  Chet nodded. ‘I’m expected.’

  ‘Your name, please, sir?’

  ‘Chet Freeman.’

  The man consulted his computer. ‘Sixth floor, sir. I will need to check your bag before you go up.’

  Chet shook his head and a brief look of alarm crossed the man’s face. ‘It’s security regulations, sir. I’m sure you’ll . . .’

  ‘Call up,’ Chet interrupted him. ‘They’ll clear it with you.’ He turned and wandered away from the desk.

  A minute later the security guard gestured him back. ‘Please go up, sir. Everything’s fine. You’ll just need to sign in.’

  Chet nodded again, waited while the security guard issued him with a plastic ID card to clip on his shirt, then headed for the lift.

  He got out at the sixth floor to see a wide, open-planned office on his left, all carpet tiles, pot plants and water coolers. There were perhaps twenty people working there, mostly female. The air was filled with the sound of phones ringing softly; each call was answered immediately.

  The person who emerged from the huddle of desks to greet him was male, early twenties, with dishevelled hair. He looked at Chet like he was looking at dog shit. ‘Have you been here before?’ he asked, his voice dripping with public school.

  ‘Where are the rooms, pal?’ Chet asked curtly.

  ‘Up here, on the right. They’ve set two aside for us, next to each other. We’ll choose which one to use at the last min . . .’

  ‘Thanks. I know the drill. So who is it today?’ The kid shrugged just as they stopped beside a grey door.

  ‘This it?’ asked Chet.

  The kid nodded.

  ‘Why don’t you run along then?’ Chet winked at him. ‘You must be very busy.’

  The kid got the message and left him to it.

  Chet entered the room. It was entirely unremarkable. A beech-coloured meeting table with twenty or so chairs around it took up most of the space. There was a whiteboard at one end with an overhead projector, and three large tinted windows looking out over Whitehall and from which, if you looked up, you could just see the roofs of the buildings opposite.

  He got
to work. From his rucksack he pulled a set of screwdrivers, a torch, two bulky Nokia mobile phones and a radio-frequency bug detector. He started with the plug sockets – unscrewing each one, directing the torch into the cavity and searching for bugs or any sign of tampering – before climbing awkwardly on to the board table and investigating the light fittings.

  Once he was satisfied that the sockets and lights were clean, he started calibrating the RF detector. He laid it on the table and turned the dial fully on. The detector started beeping rapidly, so Chet gradually turned the dial down until it stopped. He picked up one of the mobiles and used it to call the other. The radio signal from the phones caused the detector to start beeping again.

  Holding the phones, he stepped back three metres, towards the windows. The rate of the detector’s beeping decreased, but not by enough. He adjusted the dial, then stepped back again. This time the beeping was right. He disconnected the phones and the detector went silent. Now he could start to sweep.

  He ran the detector along the blinds above the windows and carefully checked the OHP. He swept under the table and chairs and examined each of the carpet tiles for signs of tampering, before carefully sweeping all the walls and the ceiling. It took half an hour before he was satisfied that everything was clear, at which point he packed up his gear, left the room and, now that he’d swept it, tacked a red cordon over the door so nobody could enter. Then he moved to the adjoining office – which was identical in every way – and started to repeat the operation.

  Chet was just unscrewing the first socket when the door opened. He looked over his shoulder to see a woman. A couple of years younger than Chet, which would put her in her early thirties. And cute. Definitely cute. She was carrying a small vacuum cleaner and wore a blue and white checked uniform that identified her as one of the office’s cleaning ladies, but a lot easier on the eye than most. She had long red hair, pale, clear skin, green eyes. Her nose turned up attractively at the end and there was a tiny silver stud through the left nostril.