Street Soldier

by Andy McNab

  A moment later the driver and Malcolm were back in. Sean toppled over as the driver pulled away, and over the noise of the engine he heard the first screams and shouts.

  No one said anything else. Sean didn’t even stop to ask where they were when they pulled over and Malcolm indicated with a jerk of his thumb that this was where he left them. Once he was out in the fresh air, he recognized that he was a five-minute walk from the main gate. Malcolm silently handed him his phone through the window.

  As the van drove off, he dropped to his knees and threw up at the side of the road.

  When he got back to barracks, Sean had hoped for solitude – somewhere he could just collapse and make sense of everything. No such luck. He was in a block of single rooms that all opened into a common area. Ravi Mitra and Curtis West were there, watching a movie.

  Mitra looked up in alarm at Sean’s appearance. ‘Shit, you look bad!’

  Sean grunted and went into his room, wiped – not from exertion; from the battering his emotions and nerves had taken.

  Rich was right – he was trained to kill. He was a soldier. It was what he would be asked to do if necessary, and he would do it well. But what he’d just done had no connection to that. Launching a rocket at a pub on British soil? It was insane. It was unbelievable. There was no way such a thing could ever happen. Except that it had – and he had done it.

  Sean wanted to cry, wanted to scream, wanted to kick the living shit out of anything he could, just to let out his rage and confusion.

  He became aware of raised voices outside. Fists knocking on doors. Then, after a single cursory knock, his door flew open and Sergeant Adams filled the frame.

  ‘Harker,’ he said. He jerked his head towards the common area. ‘Outside.’ He disappeared immediately, going from door to door to deliver the same message.

  Sean slowly got up and went out.

  The others from the platoon were filing out to join the ones already there, all obviously wondering what had happened.

  ‘This everyone?’ Adams asked. ‘Right. There’s been an attack on the Monty. Some kind of explosive. I’m just doing my rounds to check names.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ Mitra exclaimed.

  Sean forced his dry mouth into action. ‘Was anyone hurt?’

  ‘Yes. A few.’

  Sean closed his eyes and felt his guts clench. He wanted to hurl again.

  ‘All minor,’ the sergeant said distinctly. Sean opened his eyes again, not quite believing it. ‘The front bar that got taken out was closed for redecorating. Everyone was in the lounge bar at the back. Lucky, eh?’ He was looking in Sean’s direction, holding his gaze a fraction longer than necessary – long enough for Sean to get it and the others not to notice anything. ‘Minor injuries only. You know. The kind of thing we’re so good at faking for our exercises. Sounds like a real catastrophe was averted.’

  Suddenly Sean had to fight to hold it together. He was nowhere near as good at it as the sergeant. The gush of relief that ran through him was like cool water after a twenty-mile march.

  Mitra had switched the TV to a news channel. It was still too soon for pictures, but the basic facts scrolled across the bottom of the screen as breaking news. They painted a grimmer picture than Adams was describing. Substantial damage . . . Number of casualties unknown . . . Statement expected . . .

  Well, Sean thought, if MI5 were in control of the scene, it stood to reason that they would want to big up the damage as well. Let Rich think it had been a lot more successful than it was.

  ‘Oh, fucking hell!’ Mitra exclaimed. ‘Clark and then this? What’s next?’

  Adams patted him on the shoulder. ‘Don’t fuss yourself, Kama Sutra. The world’s a shit place, end of. They hit at us – it just makes us stronger. Right, lads?’ But he looked at Sean again as he said it.

  ‘Right!’ Sean happily added his voice to the chorus of agreement.

  One by one, or talking together in outrage, the platoon dispersed back to their rooms. Adams half turned to go, then came back. He delved into his pocket. ‘Oh, Harker, I think you dropped this. Take more care – I’m not your nanny.’

  And he handed over the phone. The spooks’ phone, retrieved from the train. They must have tracked its signal.

  ‘Wow. Thanks.’ Sean took it, slipped it into his pocket. ‘I’ve been looking for it everywhere.’

  ‘Now get some kip,’ said the sergeant. ‘You look exhausted.’

  And with that, he was gone.

  Sean went back to his room. Adams was right. He was exhausted, and his relief at the news had simply added to his tiredness. It meant that all the adrenaline that had been keeping him going was no longer needed, so it could just drain away and leave him running on empty.

  He fell onto his bed, and his phone – his own phone – buzzed in his right pocket. It was a text from Heaton:

  I owe you a drink. Pick you up Tuesday evening 1900.

  Sean immediately wanted to be sick again. Trouble was, he had nothing to bring up.

  And he still had a job to do. He pulled out the spooks’ phone, and called up the text menu.

  Chapter 29

  Testing, testing . . .

  Sean wanted to say the words out loud and hear the reassuring confirmation that he was getting through. The glitch with the phone on the train had dented his confidence in MI5’s electronics.

  But he was sitting next to Heaton in the Impreza, crawling slowly at the tail end of the evening rush hour, on the way to a rendezvous with madmen. He was being forced to trust again – trust them to have set up the wire correctly, trust himself to have turned it on right.

  It was a neat device – a gadget the size of a credit card sewn to the inside of his shirt. The microphone was one of his buttons. It meant that if he got searched – if he had to take his shirt off – then it wouldn’t be like the movies where the guy always has trailing leads and an incriminating box taped to his stomach.

  But it was still there – it was still discoverable if he got careless. It seemed appropriate that the gadget lay more or less over his heart. Whenever it brushed against his skin and reminded him of its presence, it felt like a great big target saying Shoot me now.

  Heaton had picked him up as promised, but it hadn’t been for a drink. They had headed straight for the A303 and London. Rich had summoned them again.

  Heaton had headed for the M25 and they had circled London anti-clockwise before coming off. They were now somewhere near Peckham. After numerous stop-start traffic lights and junctions, Heaton turned into an ordinary-looking light industrial estate. It looked pretty new, with nice shiny metal surfaces to all the units. He drove slowly, looking at the numbers painted on the front faces of the units. There was only one with cars parked up outside, and sure enough that was where he stopped. Sean instinctively scanned the vehicles – a top-of-the-range Jaguar XE, a much more modest Mondeo, and a Yamaha motorbike.

  ‘This is it.’ Heaton switched off the engine. ‘Front line of the war!’

  ‘You mean,’ Sean couldn’t help saying, ‘front line to a tidy profit.’

  Heaton grinned and shrugged. ‘Demand’s going to shoot up, mate. Someone’s got to supply it.’

  ‘What’s next, then?’ Sean asked as they got out, for the benefit of the microphone. Making casual conversation with Heaton was almost impossible without wanting to simultaneously throw up and kick the shit out of him. But at least trying to gather intelligence made talking easier, and he could only hope it brought forward the time when MI5 had everything they needed to come in with all guns blazing.

  He pushed his door shut; the Impreza beeped as it locked itself.

  Heaton grinned. ‘The big one, Harker. Exciting times.’

  The unit had a large sliding shutter for vehicles, now closed up, and a smaller door to one side for people. Sean took a deep breath and followed Heaton through this one.

  Inside, the space was occupied by four large, long-wheel-base Transit vans, parked facing the shutter. White, no si
gnage. Beyond them was an office. It shouldn’t have surprised Sean, but still his heart sank at the sight of Malcolm waiting outside. The Doberman indicated with a jerk of his head that they should go through.

  ‘Come in, dear lads, come in!’ As they entered, with Malcolm hot on Sean’s heels, Rich turned away from two other men.

  Sean stopped dead when he saw who the company was. They stood there with big grins on their faces and Sean wanted to kill them both, even while he went into acting mode and shook Rich’s outstretched hand.

  ‘I believe you know these two gentlemen?’

  ‘Copper. Matt,’ Sean said with a nod. He wanted to say more. He wanted to say, What the fuck do you think you’re doing getting involved in this bullshit? and Are you fucking mental? and lots of other stuff too. He wanted to lay into them, beat the crap out of them, kick them out of the unit and all the way back to the petty crime that kept them occupied back on their own turf.

  ‘Surprise, hey, Seany?’ said Copper, and gave him a big-man hug that almost cracked a rib.

  Matt gave him a fist bump. Sean nodded, still fighting the urge to punch their faces for being such tossers.

  ‘If Gaz could see us now, eh?’ Matt murmured with a wink, and Sean had to stuff his fists into his pockets so that the urge to use them didn’t overwhelm him.

  ‘Yeah,’ he managed to say.

  ‘Good, good,’ said Rich. ‘Shall we get on?’

  ‘Sure,’ Sean said. ‘Tell us about the big one.’

  Rich cocked an eyebrow at him and he froze inside, keeping the smile plastered on his face. Oh, shit, had that been too eager? Had he aroused suspicions?

  ‘All in good time.’ Rich waved a hand over to one corner of the unit. There was a screen there, and a pile of DVDs, and some bean bags. ‘For the moment – food will be arriving shortly and there is enough there to keep you gentlemen entertained for the night. You will be sleeping here. Tomorrow is, as Mr Harker puts it, the big one.’

  ‘Yeah, but what is it?’ Matt asked. Now he was the recipient of the cocked eyebrow.

  ‘It is something that will cause terror and chaos stretching far beyond London itself. This will be world news. The media frenzy will be enormous. People will at last realize that they are not safe at home. They will demand changes. I’m not talking about a revolution – nothing so grand. Just sensible laws to protect law-abiding folk and suppress undesirables. A little less democracy and considerably more investment in our armed forces. Soldiers on the streets to protect us.’

  ‘Hey, Sean,’ Matt said, ‘you might get to be a useful member of society after all!’ He and Copper high-fived each other.

  Why? Sean wanted to shake them and scream the question in their faces, though he could already have a go at guessing the answers. Heaton – for the profit and for himself, like he had just said. Copper – because he was messed up and this was messed up, and people who weren’t him would suffer and die. But Matt? Matt had always had a calmer head than Copper. Copper must have recruited him and made him think that there was something in it for the Guyz. In the world that Rich wanted to create, the Guyz could fly high.

  ‘Before we go any further,’ Rich said, ‘I believe Mr Harker has a phone call to make?’

  Suddenly it was like the air conditioning had come on, full blast. Sean felt the blood drain from his face and the moisture from his mouth.

  Fuckity-fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck . . .

  ‘I do?’ he whispered. He barely made any sound, and he had to cough and force volume out of his throat for another try. ‘I do?’

  He was conscious of five pairs of eyes all trained on him like lasers. How did they know about the phone? And if they knew, how was he still alive?

  ‘You will all be spending the night here,’ Rich said, as though explaining something to a child. ‘You can’t just go AWOL from the army – they will ask questions. Corporal Heaton has already booked a day’s leave for tomorrow, on my instructions. But you need to call the adjutant and tell him that your mother has been taken ill, so you need to request emergency leave.’

  The sheer gush of relief made Sean’s heart thump so loudly that he wondered no one could hear it. It was backed up by an equally strong surge of revulsion at the thought of spending the night with these crazies. But there was nothing he could do about it. MI5 wouldn’t pick this lot up until they absolutely knew what was going down. Until that happened, he was still in it.

  ‘Uh. Yeah.’ He smiled faintly. ‘I’ll make the call now.’ He pulled away, stepped out of the office and into the dim interior of the unit. Took two or three deep breaths. The air tasted of plastic and petrol, but it still seemed cleaner than what he’d been breathing.

  He sensed rather than heard a noise behind him. Malcolm stood in the doorway, watching. He silently extended a single finger and pointed to where Sean was standing. It was an obvious message that he was to go no further.

  So Sean pulled out the spooks’ phone and dialled, with a friendly smile at his watcher. It rang twice, and then he heard the unmistakable voice of Sergeant Adams on the other end.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Uh. Hi. This is Private Harker.’ Sean rattled off his army number, and gave Malcolm another smile. ‘I need to speak to the adjutant’s office. It’s an emergency . . .’

  Chapter 30

  It was a long, long night spent on a mat on the warehouse floor. Sleep wouldn’t have been easy even if Sean hadn’t been surrounded by murderers who wouldn’t think twice about offing him if they knew the truth. There was still speculation about what they were doing here – though Sean had twigged one thing. Four vans, four of them. That had to mean something.

  Rich had disappeared before they turned in, and Sean actually found himself wishing he hadn’t. His absence meant that Malcolm was in charge.

  But sleep did come, and it came so deeply that when they were kicked out of bed at 05:30, all Sean really wanted to do was stay in his sleeping bag – sleep in and pretend that none of this was happening.

  Except that he couldn’t. They all stirred blearily and stumbled into life, knocking back coffee and pizza which Malcolm provided. And far too soon they were lining up beside the vans, awaiting instructions. Sean had guessed right – they were drivers.

  Malcolm handed out four plastic envelopes: Sean, then Copper, Matt and Heaton. Each one had a CD in it.

  ‘These are your orders,’ he said. ‘You will each take one of these vans. Your destinations are in the satnavs – just follow directions. Play your CD when you are in your van. Stick to the schedule. Arrive when you’ve been told to arrive, leave by the route you’re given.’

  With nothing left to say, Sean gave a nod to the others, then climbed into one of the waiting vans. He couldn’t see whatever was in the back as it was blocked off from the driving compartment.

  Time to go. Malcolm thumbed a button on the warehouse wall that made the shutter rise up to reveal the early sun of a September morning. Sean fired up his engine and, one by one, the vans began to roll out. Sean was third. He gave the last driver, Heaton, a nod, and put the vehicle into gear.

  The little convoy trundled slowly off the industrial estate, picking up speed until they could pull onto the main road. The van handled slowly and heavily. Whatever was in the back weighed a lot.

  ‘OK,’ Sean said loudly, for the benefit of the wire he was wearing. ‘Playing the CD now.’ He pushed it into the slot on the dashboard and waited. A moment later, an artificial-sounding voice filled the cab. Sean guessed the instructions had been typed into a computer’s voice synthesizer. There was nothing here that would link it to Rich.

  ‘Your satnav is taking you to the southern entrance of the Blackwall Tunnel. Arrive at 06:55. Enter the tunnel. Halfway along, at the deepest point, pull the van over across both lanes to block the traffic flow. Abandon the van and proceed northward on foot. The van will explode at 07:00 hours.’

  Sean’s eyes went wide. There was a bomb in the back? He had been assuming it would be another Monty job. S
uddenly he fancied he could feel its malevolent presence lurking behind the bulkhead. The van hit a slight bump in the road and he stifled a scream.

  And, of course, Sean thought, remembering what MI5 had told him, it would all be pinned on non-existent IS supporters.

  The voice was continuing:

  ‘In the meantime, please note that the device is attached to a GPS tracking mechanism. If this vehicle diverts from the intended route, it will explode. I apologize for this necessary precaution. I look forward to seeing you again, and to thanking you in person.’

  Well, fuck all this – this was right off his pay grade. Adams and MI5 would have heard all that on the wire, but they couldn’t talk back to him. Sean grabbed the spooks’ phone and dialled, then drove single-handed with it pressed to his ear.

  Adams answered almost at once.

  ‘You’d best have a plan, Sergeant,’ Sean said, ‘because I’m all out of ideas.’

  The screen of the satnav showed him the route he was taking. At the moment he was crawling along steadily towards the A2 south circular. ETA at the tunnel now just under forty minutes.

  ‘We’re working on it.’ A pause, with murmured voices in the background. Adams was not alone. Sean tried to imagine him sitting with the spooks, who were channelling all that precious information where it needed to go. ‘Keep going. Please confirm that there was no hint of where the targets for the other vans are.’

  ‘Nope. No idea.’

  ‘OK. Each of you has a drone tracking him from above – pisses off Heathrow no end, but that’s their problem. We’re projecting along the routes the other three are taking for likely targets so we can intercept them. The Bomb Squad are scrambling as we speak.’

  ‘OK, cool. What about me? Just give me directions where I can hand this over to the Bomb Squad and I’ll be fine.’

  More muted conversation.

  ‘You’re not to divert from the given route, Sean. You heard the instructions about the GPS.’