by Andy McNab
‘You sound surprised, Fusilier …’ Levene shot Sean a look. ‘Let me guess – you thought that with so much military bullshit flying around, you might still end up covered in it? No. You had every reason to believe that your lives, and the lives of others, were in danger. That automatically clears you to take action. From what I hear, you were all a credit to the regiment – and to the taxpayers who have paid so much to get you where you are.’
And this was on the record. One major way the army kicked the civilian world’s arse was that when a higher-up said they had your back, they really did. Sean felt the pilot light of pride that burns inside every soldier whoomph up a little.
But he kept his face still. That same pride meant you didn’t show it. You didn’t grin all over your face like you’d just got a gold star in class for sucking up to teacher.
Especially as there was still nothing to be glad about. Bright was still dead. That was all.
‘Thank you, sir,’ he said again.
Levene’s face clouded. ‘The fact that one of our own lads lost his life … Taking any kind of action is a non-science and always subject to shit happening. How do you feel about Fusilier Bright?’
Sean’s first reaction was Mind your own business, but you don’t say that to superior officers, and they do need to know the capability of the men beneath them. So he took a moment to think.
After Toni Clark got blown to pieces by a bomb hidden in her car, he had very nearly lost everything that counted. The whole point of joining the army had been to get out of the gangs, but the desire to avenge Clark had driven him into the arms of the very people who had killed her. And it had almost destroyed him. He had let his two worlds, army and gang, overlap to a point where you couldn’t tell them apart. He had put his mum in danger and he had betrayed his new friends in the army.
This time …
It wasn’t the same. Maybe it was because Clark had been murdered out of the blue, while Bright went down fighting, in a combat situation, giving as good as he got. And if Sean hadn’t got Clarkson, who did it, he had still seriously upset his plans.
And there was also the simple fact that he had grown up. He was a year older than when Clark had died; he had spent one year more in the army. He’d seen and understood more. He had a better grip on how the world worked.
‘He was a good mate, sir,’ he said. ‘We were pals from day one.’ He shrugged. ‘Going to miss him.’
There wasn’t much more to say. Bright wasn’t coming back. Every day now would be a day Sean woke up in a world without him. On the one hand, he just had to live with that. On the other, it left a hole so big he would have to put a lot of effort into filling it.
‘Of course, of course. You do know the chaplain is always available to talk to, and there is counselling …’
Sean couldn’t help giving a kind of face-wiggle that showed exactly what he thought of talking to the chaplain or getting counselling.
The colonel’s lips pursed in a kind of flat smile. ‘I understand. Just remember: no one is ever so big and tough that they don’t need to talk about it sometimes.’ He looked down at his notes and tapped the end of his pen on the table. ‘One more thing. How would you rate Corporal Wolston’s actions? Frankly?’
Sean hesitated, but the man had asked. So he looked the colonel straight in the eye. ‘If he doesn’t get a third tape for this, sir, there’s no justice.’
Levene’s eyebrow went up. ‘Go on …’
Sean had already thought long and hard about Joe Wolston. It all came out. ‘Like you said, sir, shit happens … Well, Corporal Wolston saw the shit coming and he got us through it. He gave us the strategy. He gave us the code names for our targets and assigned us. He put his fuc—’ Sean remembered just in time who he was talking to. There was permission to speak frankly, and there was pushing your luck. ‘He put his life on the line, sir, when he stood up and confronted Clarkson to kick things off – and he held things together even when things went south.’
‘As plans generally do,’ Levene agreed, ‘when it turns out the enemy haven’t attended the same briefing and haven’t been informed of how they’re supposed to behave.’
Sean remembered shuffling into the baggage hall at gunpoint: Wolston had seemed to go blank, and for a moment Sean had seriously thought the guy had lost it. He now realized it must have been his mind revving overtime, trying to piece a plan together.
Then a totally unwelcome memory burrowed its way into his head – that abort command back in Lagos, when the scooter kid opened fire. Sean remembered Adams’s fury – so he hadn’t been the only one to find it weird. But Adams had also accepted Wolston’s reasoning. Your hot seat, your call. Maybe any position of command was like that. You had a thousand different inputs that no one else had, and you had to make the best of them.
Someone with courage issues might have given the same abort command. Someone with courage issues might have gone blank when faced with masked gunmen. But one thing Sean did know was that Wolston had no issues there at all. The guy had come out of Afghanistan with an MC and a glowing record. That was the kind of thing you couldn’t fake. He had been through the toughest kind of shit, and lived to tell the tale. And today they had all seen what he was made of.
‘Well, yes, sir,’ he said. ‘We’re alive because of him.’ He met Levene’s appraising gaze, and the colonel nodded.
‘You’re dismissed, Fusilier. Please send in’ – he checked his list – ‘Fusilier West.’
‘To Shitey!’
Seven pint glasses clanked together in the front saloon of the Monty, the discerning squaddie’s pub of choice. Wolston had cemented Sean’s opinion of his leadership qualities by buying for the section.
‘May his anal emissions for ever be blowing the angels off their clouds,’ Mitra added.
‘Christ, Kama Sutra, that silver tongue of yours’ll get you into trouble one day,’ West said, pretending to wipe away a tear.
The section had all been debriefed, and now they were reunited for a pint and the first decent nosh since hitting UK soil again. The Monty’s fish and chips were legendary and had been much missed for six long months in Nigeria …
Sean gave himself a mental kick. Stop thinking like that. Because the lad who had gone on about the fish and chips most was the one who wasn’t here. And never would be again.
He looked around the pub. Red and orange airport-lounge-style carpet, slightly sticky. Flashy jukebox. Taps for five different types of lager. Large flatscreen tuned permanently to sport, with scrolling news headlines which – of course – were all about the airport situation, but saying nothing new.
Nothing had changed and everything seemed different. It felt bizarre that this place had still existed, quietly normal, while he was wading through a Nigerian swamp. Risking his life at the airport. Taking down May, and losing Bright.
Over in one corner was a couple – civvies: you could tell at a glance. Their body language said they really wished the lads weren’t there – they were obviously trying to ignore the noise. Sorry, mate – you go into a squaddie pub in a garrison town, this is what you get. They were here to give Bright the send-off he deserved. Leave might have been cancelled, but they weren’t on duty. As long as they didn’t actually do anything like throw up in the corridors of barracks or assault an officer, they could get as pissed as they liked.
‘There’s a little way my old sergeant taught me to honour a fallen mate,’ Wolston said once the pints were down past the halfway mark. Everyone was all ears. ‘You go to the ranges, you get the biggest fucking guns you can find and you seriously dent the defence budget by letting them off. Who’s with me?’
As a plan of battle it received a classification of fucking A, which was the highest form of approval there was for seven male squaddies looking to let off anger and adrenalin. It meant putting the getting pissed on hold for a while, because the army tutted when people rolled up at the ranges reeking of booze and unable to walk in a straight line, so everyone headed back
to barracks for a clean-up and to get changed into proper No. 8. They arranged to RV at seventeen hundred.
Sean lived in Single Living Accommodation, in one of a collection of en-suite rooms based around a common area. He kept his eyes firmly ahead as he walked past Bright’s room. Soon that room would be stripped. Bright’s family might reclaim stuff, other kit might be auctioned off for charity. And then a new lad would be installed.
And that lad would be just as much part of the platoon as Bright had been. He would be made to feel just as welcome. Because that was how it went.
Sean went on back to his room for the ritual of shit, shower and shave, plus the daily anti-malarial pill that he hadn’t got round to taking yet, what with the other distractions. After that it was time to get down to some serious kit maintenance. Everything that had come out of his kitbag, battered and crumpled from its time in the aeroplane hold, needed to be folded or scrubbed or polished until it was up to proper standard. After a year in the army he wasn’t going to just turn up in gear that he hadn’t personally brought up to scratch.
At sixteen forty-five there was a knock on Sean’s door.
‘Uh, Stenders?’ It was Chewie West’s voice. ‘Someone here to see you …’
So Sean stepped out of his room, straight into the arms of a pair of Redcaps. Military police, immaculate in khaki, and the signature red barnet. West waited just behind them.
‘Uh … Hi?’
He couldn’t believe they were there for him, but there was no one else about and they stood side by side in a way that blocked off the only exit.
‘Fusilier Harker?’ Redcaps weren’t known for their broad smiles and wacky personalities, and these two were a credit to the team. ‘Come with us, please.’
Sean shot West a look. He returned it, equally baffled, and shrugged.
So Sean did the only thing he could – and followed them.
It wasn’t quite an arrest. He had seen people being arrested and frogmarched to the guardroom at double-quick time. At least these guys let him walk normally through the camp – but with one of them on either side there was still no question that they were the ones in charge.
What the fuck was this?
His mind whirled. Every action of the last few days he could think of, in either Nigeria or England, and in international airspace, got held up under the microscope and studied. Nope. His conscience was clear of any recent criminal activity, though this didn’t stop him from frantically searching through it.
Was it because he’d taken unauthorized action back at the airport? This seemed an overreaction, and anyway, Levene had assured him he was in the clear.
But the guardroom loomed ahead, and the fact was, he was under arrest.
And when they took him into a back room, and he clocked the two people waiting for him, he knew he was really screwed. He recognized them immediately for what they were – even though he still had no idea what they wanted, and he had never set eyes upon them in his life.
Chapter 11
Wednesday 2 August, 17:00 BST
‘Fusilier Harker. Sit down.’
There were two men – one probably in his forties, one quite a bit younger, maybe not even thirty yet, with dark hair. And even though they were in civvies, they gave off a vibe that Sean had encountered only once before in his life. And he had vowed, Never again.
The last time Sean had been interviewed by two members of the Security Service – or, as it was generally known to everyone except the spooks, MI5 – it had been a man and a woman. They had looked totally unremarkable, not people you would ever look at twice – but when they had him in the interrogation room, on the ropes, nowhere to turn, they had been something else. Invulnerable, untouchable. They twitched their little fingers and you went to jail, or you did as you were told.
And that was exactly what Sean got off these two. If they weren’t also MI5 spooks, then he was Okwute.
But they were also technically civilians, and they weren’t going to get to him that easily. He didn’t owe them any respect. So he took his time sitting down, and when he did, he slouched. He wasn’t going to treat them like superior officers. He put his hands in his pockets and waited for them to speak.
They looked at him. He looked back. He waited.
The ‘waiting’ bit didn’t come from his past experience with spooks. It came from an earlier, darker time in his life. Nowadays he could draw on all kinds of anti-interrogation training – how to cope with starvation, sleep deprivation, psychological meddling – but his basic education had started when he was just a boy, facing the cops across the table. You said nothing and you let them break the silence.
The older man spoke first. In fact, he did all the talking while the younger one just watched him.
‘We’ve assessed your debriefing reports on the airport action.’ The guy placed a folder neatly on the table top and squared it up with his fingertips. ‘Very impressive. You showed a lot of initiative.’
They’d read the report already? Sean thought. Quick work. But he said nothing.
The man’s tone changed abruptly.
‘You didn’t get off to the best start in the army, did you, Fusilier? Stealing weapons to equip terrorists. Basically just continuing the trend you’d already begun as a delinquent minor. Not what you’d call a fresh start, putting the past behind you.’
That stung – enough to jerk Sean out of his natural defensiveness. Because they were exactly right. He’d joined up with the best of intentions, and fucked up most royally.
‘I was a prat,’ he said. And he meant it. Maybe he should have kept quiet – but it wasn’t like he was digging himself into a hole, was it? They already knew it.
‘That’s one way of looking at it.’ The man’s tone grew sharper. ‘Your actions were borderline treason. Do you have a problem with this country, Fusilier?’
With this country? No. With some of the people who work for this country …
But Sean was already regretting saying anything, so he kept quiet.
The man went on. ‘It’s not as if the country did a lot for you when you were growing up. It’s understandable if you felt pissed off with life. If you developed a sense of injustice, and a desire, along with it, to put things right.’
Sean’s fists clenched in his pockets, out of sight, as he remembered Bright, and May, and the two fuckers who had got away. What part of a year of blameless conduct since his last brush with MI5, and then personally icing a terrorist, did these pricks not understand?
‘I did put things right. At the airport.’
‘Of course.’ The man nodded, the way you might if you were agreeing with a small kid. Was he trying to get a rise out of Sean? ‘Very nicely too. Or perhaps, very nicely planned?’
He cocked an eyebrow at Sean. Sean reverted to just looking back – what he should have done from the start. The man put his hand flat on the folder and abruptly switched to businesslike.
‘When did you last see Zara Mann? Or Emma Booth?’
At last, a proper question. Sean gave a proper answer, which was also one hundred per cent truthful.
‘I have no idea who you’re talking about.’
The man looked sceptical. ‘I think you can do better than that, Fusilier.’
Sean hid a smile – of triumph, not of pleasure. He could handle this. Now he had got over the surprise of the spook’s line of questioning, he realized that on the scale of the day’s general shittiness so far, this interrogation barely registered. The guy could rile him, drop heavy hints that Sean was lying through his arse, and it wouldn’t make the slightest difference.
‘I expect you do.’
‘You were at school with them, for a start.’
Sean snorted. That didn’t narrow it down. ‘Which one?’
‘Markwell Secondary.’
‘There’s your answer, then. I might have seen them for about five minutes, five years ago. I don’t remember those names. I don’t know who they are.’
He tried to work
out why they were dragging up names from his past, but the names still meant fuck all to him. He had no clue where this was going.
Markwell was the second of the three schools Sean had been dumped on between age eleven and getting nicked. He was reasonably sure he had even attended some lessons there, but couldn’t for the life of him remember much about it. There was nothing he wanted to remember. He’d never got on with schools. His education, what there was of it back in those days, had happened out on the street with the Guyz. He had learned about cars (maintenance and nicking of), and fighting, and other things that had seemed far more useful for life.
‘They also both live on Littern Mills.’
Sean frowned. He had no reason not to believe the man. But then, a lot of people lived on Littern Mills – the Walthamstow estate where he had grown up. And a lot of them came and went. His mum was still there, but there were new families and new gangs moving in all the time.
‘In case you missed the bulletin, I joined up nearly two years ago,’ he said. ‘And I spent the last six months in Nigeria.’
‘You’ve still been back home? Before Nigeria?’
‘Sure.’ Sean shrugged. ‘I keep an eye on my mum.’
Not often, but he had been back every couple of months since all the crap blew up a year ago. Looking out for her had been one of the reasons he got involved in the first place.
‘You don’t look up old friends when you go?’
‘Nope.’
Sean’s closest friends from the old days were either in jail or dead. As for the rest, if he never saw them again it would be a million years too soon.
The man finally opened his folder and pulled out two photos. They were both close-ups of faces. From the elevated angle, Sean guessed they were from CCTV.
‘We know for a fact that you saw Mann and Booth recently. At the airport.’
‘Yeah?’
Now he was interested despite himself. Sean sat forward to study them. Both pictures showed fit-looking white girls. One had dark shoulder-length hair; the other’s head was wrapped in a scarf and you couldn’t make the hair out. She also wore clear glasses. Now he came to think of it, he did recognize them. They had been sitting next to Chewie on the flight, and they had been in the crowd of hostages scooped up by the gunmen.