by Chris Ryan
That was the nearest I’d ever heard Tom come to shouting. Then he calmed down a bit and said, ‘Don’t worry. We’re going. You’re not under arrest. But what the hell have you done?’
‘Nothing. I haven’t killed anybody. I haven’t threatened anybody. I haven’t damaged any property. Nothing.’
‘What’s the problem, then?’
‘I’ll tell you when we get out of here. There’s one thing, though.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The bastards here have entered me in their records. I saw them doing it. We’ll need to get the entry erased.’
‘Don’t worry. That’s in hand. This has gone right to the head-shed in Hereford.’
‘Already?’
‘Yep. They’re closing everything down in double time. If any mention of it gets out, you’ll really be in it. Meanwhile, I’ve got to take responsibility for you. Let’s get you out of those fucking pyjamas, for a start.’
Tom banged on the door until someone opened it, then called for my kit to be returned. While I was dressing he went out to deal with the chief superintendent. I don’t know what arrangement he made, but somehow he got things well enough squared away to take me with him. The hire-car was still on my mind; I felt in the pocket of my windproof, and found that the keys had gone. I had visions of the Datsun sitting in the wood for weeks, and a phenomenal bill from the hire company winging in my direction. But when I mentioned the problem to the custody sergeant, he said the same thing as before: the car had been dealt with.
Tom had brought two vehicles, for mutual back-up, but as I rode back across the city in his company we couldn’t talk, because the driver was from the pool and possibly insecure. Only when we reached the ops room was it possible to open up.
By then it was eleven o’clock. The boss had come in, or stayed up, specially to see me. He sat at a desk, with me in front of him and Tom beside me, together with a clerk to take notes and work the tape recorder. I was relieved to find the atmosphere reasonably sympathetic; everybody was puzzled and worried, but not too hostile.
‘You look knackered, Geordie,’ the boss began. ‘Have you had anything to eat?’
‘Not since lunch.’
‘What about a cup of tea?’
‘Great.’
‘And a sandwich? Yes.’ He called through the open door, ‘Get us a sandwich and a cup of tea, will you?’
As somebody went off to the canteen, he said, ‘By rights I should be sending you down to Lisburn, but there’s something big on there and they can’t deal with you. I can’t deal with you either, but I’ve been told to take down a preliminary statement. So — what happened?’
I told them everything — that I’d found out that Farrell was behind the bomb that killed Kath, and that I’d tracked him down and stalked him. When the boss asked how I’d got my information, I just said, ‘From the RUC.’ Then Tom asked where the Luger had come from, and I had to admit that I’d nicked it after the car hit. Everything I said seemed to sound flat and ordinary. There was nothing impressive about my performance, and I finished up lamely by saying, ‘I suppose I got a bit obsessed.’
‘You can say that again.’ Tom scratched his grizzled head. ‘You went off your bloody rocker.’
Somebody brought the sandwich and mug of tea, and I got them down me. I felt curiously calm, as if everything was now over and done with. I said, ‘Can I ask something?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘How was it I got lifted?’
The boss gave a wry smile. ‘I checked with the Det, and it appears you weren’t the only person chasing that target. People have been watching him for a couple of months. You’re right that he’s one of the leading players, and now he’s getting into drugs. Apparently our little plans are maturing nicely — so the last thing they wanted was to have Farrell topped just as he was about to lead them on to something hot. When you came on the scene, they weren’t very pleased.’
I sat silent as this information sank in, remembering how, on my first CTR, Farrell and his two companions had staggered from the Mercedes to the barn with those heavy cases. I thought, Should I mention that now? Then I decided not to, as I didn’t want to start being cross-examined by RUC agents. The boss jolted me back to the present by saying, ‘Well, I don’t know what’s going to happen. All I can say is that you’re off back to Hereford first thing in the morning.’
I looked at Tom, as if to question the ruling, but he only said, ‘That’s you finished in Northern Ireland, right enough. You’d better shift your arse and get packed, because the chopper’s coming in at nine o’clock.’
* * *
It felt extraordinary to be back in camp so suddenly, so far ahead of expectations. People I knew were surprised to see me, and asked what was up. I took refuge in simple evasions — ‘Just back for a few days,’ and so on. In theory I could have been on leave, as guys from the troop got a week’s leave every month. But if I was on leave, why was I hanging around the Lines?
By the end of my first day back I’d had bollockings aplenty. But on the whole the mood was sombre rather than angry; there was no screaming and shouting, more puzzlement. When I went in on CO’s orders, I was sat down and told how stupid I’d been. ‘Surely you realize by now that we do things in small teams,’ the colonel said. ‘That’s the whole basis of the Regiment.’ He had very clear, pale blue eyes that penetrated like lasers, and now I was getting the full glare.
‘What we do not do is bugger off and try to carry out idiotic missions on our own. For all you knew — for all the checking you’d done — we could have been running an operation of our own against Farrell. You could have ended up shooting some of your own mates, or vice versa. It’s bad enough to have fallen foul of the HMSU. It makes us look a load of pricks. An own-goal would have been that much worse.’
I nodded. There was nothing I could say.
The CO leafed through some papers on his desk. ‘The pity of it is, you were doing very well until then. I’ve got some positive reports here. You were making an excellent comeback after your various problems. Now you’ve gone and blown it.’
He put his thumbs to his cheekbones and his fingers to his temples, staring down at the desk-top as though his head was aching. ‘If I RTU’d you, you wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. Would you?’
I shook my head.
‘By rights, you should be RTU’d. If a thing like this got out it could do tremendous damage to the Regiment. But in view of what you went through in the Gulf, and losing your wife, we’re prepared to give you another chance. At the same time, to show I’m not condoning what you did, I’m putting you on a three months’ warning. As you know, any slip-ups during that period, and you’ll be out.
‘Also, I’m going to fine you heavily. I’ve discussed your case with the Director in London, and he’s instructed me to fine you £2,500. I’ve got no alternative. Is there anything you want to say?’
Again I shook my head. The fine was fearsome — a whole month’s pay, which I knew would be stopped at source. That month, there’d simply be nothing coming into my account.
‘You’re to take a week off, while things settle down,’ the CO was saying. ‘You live out, don’t you? Well, keep out of camp for that time. The most important thing is that nobody else should know what has happened. If you have to say anything, say there was a personality clash, as a result of which you had to come home. If what you did leaks out, that’ll constitute an offence under your three months’ warning. Understood?’
‘Fair enough.’
‘Don’t forget: the bottom line is that you’ve got to pull yourself together properly. From now on you’re really going to be watched. If you want to survive, you’ll have to get your finger out.’
* * *
By the time all that was over, it was early afternoon. I reckoned Tracy would already be back at Keeper’s Cottage, so I phoned her there. She was amazed to hear that I was in Hereford. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked. ‘Come over for a day?’
‘Why didn’t you phone last night?’
‘I couldn’t. Tell you in a minute.’
It seemed incredible that I’d said goodbye to her at Belfast City Airport less than twenty-four hours earlier. Half my life seemed to have gone by since then.
I was going to call for a taxi. Then I thought about my fine and changed my mind. After a while I managed to press one of the cooks into making a diversion on his way home and giving me a lift. I even made him stop at a flower shop while I ran in. There I had to curb my natural extravagance again, and forgo the big bouquet that I fancied most. Hounded by the thought of my empty bank balance, I settled for six red roses.
The first thing Tracy said to me was, ‘You went back after him, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you got lifted.’
‘How on earth d’you know that?’
‘It’s written all over your face.’
‘It’d better not be. I’ve been sworn to silence about what happened.’
‘You can tell me, anyway.’
I told her. The hardest thing was to admit that I’d deliberately deceived her about my intentions, that I’d been planning to go back on the attack even before she and Tim had left. Although I didn’t say it, I felt it was nearly as bad as if I’d gone off and screwed some other woman the second she was out of my sight. All I could do was apologize, and promise that that was the end of deception between us.
Tracy was fantastically forgiving — even if there was a touch of the schoolmarm in her when she said, ‘Well, that’ll teach you to mess about.’ Then she took me to see Tim, who was playing in the sitting room. ‘Look!’ she called out cheerfully. ‘Here’s your dad come home. Isn’t that lovely!’
TEN
All through the next week I was way up and way down. Part of the time I felt incredible relief at being clear of Northern Ireland, at having escaped from that cesspool of hatred and fear. It felt great to be away from the dark, horrible, underhand warfare practised by the scumbags of the PIRA.
At other times I was desolate at having let my mates down. I kept thinking of Pat, stuck over the water for another nine months, and Mike, no longer pink or punk, but still bearing the scars of Farrell’s Rotty on his right shoulder.
The fact that the head-shed had been lenient with me didn’t lessen my feeling of shame and degradation. Privately, I reckoned the mainspring of their attitude was fear that, if they did get rid of me, I would start mouthing off about the Regiment to outsiders. They’d calculated that it would be safer all round to keep me where I was.
The last thing I wanted was to go back to my parent unit, the Parachute Regiment. For a couple of days I seriously considered leaving the army altogether, and to test the water about civilian jobs I phoned two guys who’d got out the year before. Neither was particularly encouraging. Both had gone into forms of BG work — bodyguarding — but both said that, although the jobs were ‘well paid, they were also boring as hell.
One was retained by an Arab sheikh, and although he spent most of his time twiddling his thumbs, he had to be prepared to take off for any corner of the globe the instant the phone rang. The other had signed up with a crazy Dutch family of millionaires who lived in mortal fear of having their two boys kidnapped. Father and mother were both nutty as fruitcakes, constantly feuding with each other, but it sounded as if the kids needed a shrink even worse than the parents. They refused to do what they were told, couldn’t sleep in the dark, ate junk food at all hours of the day and night, and did nothing but lie around watching videos, the more violent the better. The idea of working for people like that turned me right off, and as I had no other ideas about what I could do, I decided I’d better stay put.
More than that, I realized how much the Regiment meant to me — how hard it had been to get in, how much I had put into the years of training, how much I’d lose if I left. Before I’d gone off the rails my prospects had been excellent — and now I became determined to do my best for myself, as well as repay the trust the Regiment had put in me. That meant ditching all thoughts of becoming a rogue warrior and consigning my idea of revenge to the past. Besides, what would I achieve if I did drop Farrell? I’d have a murder on my hands — and it wouldn’t bring Kath back.
Two people in particular made me determined to soldier on. One was Tracy, who was emerging as more and more of a star with every day that passed. On the surface she carried on as if nothing had happened — going in to work at the Med Centre, taking Tim to the camp playschool, cooking for us in the evening — but underneath the surface she was giving me phenomenal moral support. I know it sounds stupid, but I was amazed that someone of such slender physique and sunny personality could have such resources of strength inside her. It made me feel humble, first that I had made such a boob myself, and second that I had underrated her.
My other saviour was Tony. As I’d predicted, he had sailed through selection, and was now a fully-fledged member of D Squadron. He immediately heard on the grapevine that I’d come back, and blew into the cottage for coffee on Sunday morning. There was no way I could conceal what had happened from him, so we went for a hike through the woods around one of my jogging circuits, and I told him the story.
His reaction was positive, to say the least. Far from criticizing what I’d done, he lamented the fact that I hadn’t quite succeeded. ‘Maybe I could go get him for you,’ he suggested, when I described the layout of the forest, the OP in the gorse, the perimeter fence and the house. ‘Now we know exactly where he is, maybe I should line up a deer-hunting trip over there. You said there are deer in those woods? OK. I get a hunting permit and go over. Then I have the right weapon to take him out from up the hill, without going near the house. What about that?’
But we agreed to let the idea of a hunting trip ride, meanwhile, and we resorted to the age-old SAS formula for sorting out personal troubles: we drove out to Talybont, parked in the lay-by, and tabbed it as hard as we could to the summit of Pen-y-Fan. No matter that it was a miserable day, with rainstorms sweeping across the bare mountains; the physical challenge and the grandeur of the hills wrought their usual magic, and I came home with my confidence at least partially restored. Of course I would carry on with the Regiment.
* * *
On the Monday morning when I went back to work, things took a turn for the better. At Morning Prayers in the Squadron Interest Room the sergeant major asked me to see him in his office immediately afterwards, and when I went in there he said, ‘Geordie, I’m glad to say you’re in luck. You don’t fucking deserve it, but there’s a slot come up for you. Geoff Hunt, who’s been on the SP team, fell off a pissy little wall on Friday and broke his ankle. That means we need a guy to take his place. You’re a trained assaulter, so in you go.’
‘Fine,’ I replied. ‘How long will it be for?’
‘There’s six weeks of the squadron’s tour left. After that, we’ll find you something else.’
‘Great!’
My enthusiasm wasn’t just for show. I’d been dreading the possibility that they were going to make me ops sergeant — the worst job around, as it amounted to sitting on your backside in the ops room and being little more than tea-boy for the head-shed, with endless paperwork. I was genuinely glad to go back into the Special Projects (or Counter-Terrorist) Team for a spell. I’d already done one tour with them and enjoyed it, so it was no trouble to slip back into harness.
The task of the unit was to respond instantaneously to any terrorist attack, such as the hijack of an aircraft or seizure of a building. Of the two teams, Red and Blue, one was always at thirty minutes’ readiness, with vehicles loaded, ready to roll, and the other at three hours. In fact the first team was often capable of taking off within ten minutes of an alert.
Life on the SP team could be quite exciting. If a callout came, you could never be sure whether it was an exercise or a genu
ine emergency. One of the Regiment’s greatest ever hits — the siege at the Iranian Embassy in London in 1980 — began with just such uncertainty. On the morning of 30 May, a former member of the Regiment, Dusty Gray, phoned the head-shed from Heathrow Airport and tipped them off that all the Metropolitan Police’s terrorist dogs had suddenly been whipped away to London.
It so happened that at that moment a major exercise was getting under way. According to the scenario, there’d been a hijack attempt at an airfield in the northeast, and the SP team was about to deploy in response. Then in came this call from Dusty Gray. At first the CO thought it was someone trying to take the piss and screw up the start of the exercise by feeding him duff information, but then he decided it was for real. Before any official notification came in, he said, ‘Bugger the exercise,’ and deployed the SP team to a holding location on the way to London. The result was that when the media later came and camped outside the gates to watch for warriors departing, they saw fuck-all — until six days later, when every television screen in the country showed our guys abseiling down from the Embassy roof in their black kit and taking the villains out. Twelve years on from that historic event, the terrorist threat remained much the same, and the head-shed often sprang an exercise without any warning to keep the guys on their toes.
In between, we were ceaselessly training. The thirty-minute team had to stay within easy range of camp and train locally, but the rest were free to go up country and do things like practise aircraft-entry and visit prominent buildings that might become targets for terrorist take-over.
Being on the team meant that I could carry on living at home, because my address was easily within the thirty-minute limit. At night, when the roads were clear, I could be inside the warehouse within eleven minutes. Like everyone else, I carried a bleeper wherever I went. If all the numbers appearing on its screen were one, I knew it was a practice call-out; what we wanted was all the nines — the real thing.
There were sixteen of us assaulters on the Blue Team, and for me it was a bit of a comedown to be merely one of the pack. On my earlier tour I’d been Sniper Team Commander — in effect the third in command of the whole outfit, under the boss (a captain) and a staff sergeant. But any active employment was better than being stuck behind the desk in the ops room.