Once a Pilgrim

by James Deegan

  At least he had a decent job lined up – security manager with an oil company in Southern Iraq. Eight hundred quid a day, month on, month off. He might finally buy himself a decent car.

  He’d spent a fair while with Geordie – that round in Dora had shattered the SQMS’s femur, and after three operations and a lot of metalwork he’d been left with a nice limp and a good line in bitter, melodramatic asides. The SAS never medically discharges any man against his will – there’s always a desk job needs doing somewhere – but Skelton had put his own papers in. If he was never going to make sergeant major, and clearly he wasn’t now, then what was the point?

  ‘Probably for the best,’ Carr had said, deadpan, as he sat in his mate’s hospital room. ‘You’d only have ruined the Squadron, anyway.’

  The last thing he’d done in uniform was to attend the funeral of Wayne Rooney. It always upset him to see a flag-draped coffin, adorned with a beige beret, and it was even worse when the guy in question was young.

  Rooney had been just twenty-four, and engaged to his childhood sweetheart.

  But Carr took comfort in the fact that the men who wore that beret accepted the risk that came with it.

  He’d been very glad to know Paul – the dead man’s real Christian name – he told the young man’s mother and fiancée, as the wake got going.

  Glad, too – he didn’t add – that his days of visiting grieving families were over.

  And now here he was, sitting in front of the Commanding Officer in Hereford for his farewell chat.

  It was a bittersweet moment.

  Carr and Mark Topham had been around each other for almost every year of the Scot’s Special Forces career, and they liked and respected each other, despite coming from very different backgrounds.

  Topham had been born into privilege – big house, expensive school, his father a High Court judge – whereas Carr had grown up sharing a bedroom with his brother in a council tenement in Niddrie, the grey, miserable, shitey, arse-end of Edinburgh.

  A welder, his dad, and his mum a school cleaning lady. Hard-working, good and decent people – his mother, in particular, had been a regular at Craigmillar Park Church just across the way – but there’d never been much in the way of luxury. If his dad was scratching around for work, and he often was, then some weeks there’d not been much in the way of food, either.

  Mark Topham’s school friends were all stockbrokers or lawyers or businessmen; off the top of his head, Carr could name half a dozen pals from his own early years who were dead from heroin, or booze, or from looking at the wrong guy in the wrong way in the wrong pub. His best pal from junior school, Kenny Shaw, was currently doing a twenty stretch in Saughton for killing a guy in some stupid gang feud, and Carr knew that he could very easily have ended up alongside him. The very day he’d gone down to the Armed Forces Careers Office in Edinburgh – a fresh-faced teenager, in love with the idea of soldiering – a local ne’er-do-well had collared him outside the chippy and offered him twenty quid to keep a shotgun under his bed for a couple of weeks.

  He’d been tempted, as well: he’d never seen twenty quid in his life. But he’d walked away from it – partly because it just felt wrong, mostly not wanting to upset his mum – and every day he gave thanks for that. The Army had given him discipline and focus, and turned him into a man.

  And now, all those years later, he looked across the desk at Topham, waiting for him to try and twist his arm.

  He wasn’t disappointed.

  ‘You know it’s not too late to change your mind, John,’ he said. ‘What would it take to keep you? Realistically?’

  ‘I’d like to be an operator in a Sabre Squadron again,’ said Carr, knowing he had more chance of levitating. Experience and know-how took you a long way, but there was no substitute for the strength and fitness and aggression that a younger man could bring.

  ‘Yes,’ said Topham, making a church steeple out of his fingers and smiling ruefully. ‘I thought you’d say that. But that’s the one thing we can’t do. Not even for Mad John, I’m sorry to say.’

  Carr smiled despite himself at the nickname, which had followed him round the Regiment for the last fifteen years.

  ‘Of course you cannae,’ he said. ‘But you asked. What else is there? Become an officer? No offence, Mark, but that’s not me.’

  ‘This has been your life for nearly twenty years. Are you sure you want to walk away from it all?’

  Carr looked at the CO for a moment. ‘No, I’m sure I don’t want to. I fucking hate the idea. But it comes to us all, and this is my time. I’m going to walk to the main gate, hand in my pass, and it’s all behind me.’

  ‘I respect that. It’s a shame, but I respect it.’

  Carr smiled. ‘Not to mention, I’ve been offered a job I can’t refuse. Twenty years living in shitholes, getting shot at, blown up, eating compo… It’s time to enjoy life. It disnae last forever. I want the cash.’

  ‘You tight Jock bastard,’ said Topham, shaking his head and grinning.

  Carr laughed. ‘Me, a tight Jock bastard? Here’s you with your stately home, and your polo ponies.’

  ‘Fair one,’ said Topham, with another rueful expression.

  ‘Boss, trust me, I hate it more than you do, but it’s just time to go. At least I can walk out the gate with my head held high, and think about all the guys we knew who didn’t have that option. I beat the clock. Ask young Rooney if he wants to walk out the Camp again. Ask Pete Squire, or Jonny Lawton, or Rick Jones. Ask any of them.’

  ‘True. A lot of good men on that clock.’

  ‘Too many.’

  Mark Topham stared out of the window at a cloudless blue sky. The thump of a helicopter landing on the field outside bounced through the glass.

  ‘Well, you can’t say I didn’t try,’ he said, with a resigned smile. ‘You’ve had a citation submitted for the night in Dora, by the way.’

  Carr raised his eyebrows. ‘Just doing my job,’ he said. ‘It’s not about the medals.’

  ‘Sell it to Ashcroft, then. But joking aside, well done. Richly deserved.’

  ‘Thanks boss. Means a lot.’

  Topham stood up, and Carr followed suit.

  The 22 CO held out a hand. ‘I can honestly say, John, that it has been an enormous pleasure and a singular privilege to serve with you. You’re always welcome here. Godspeed.’

  A slight lump in his throat, and his eyes stinging a little, Carr nodded.

  ‘Aye,’ was all he could manage.

  He strode out of the Commanding Officer’s room into the corridor and towards the exit to the Regimental Headquarters building, where he walked, head down, straight into a tall, slender man in the corridor – a man whose angular appearance belied his considerable tenacity, courage, and intellect.

  Major General Guy de Vere, Director Special Forces, who had arrived a few minutes earlier on the helicopter, for a planning meeting with Mark Topham.

  ‘Christ, John, you nearly took me out,’ said de Vere, when he saw who it was. ‘I understand you’re leaving us?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s me, boss,’ said Carr, shaking the outstretched hand. ‘I’m out the door. Civvie street.’

  ‘Mark couldn’t persuade you?’

  ‘Nah. Sorry.’

  De Vere shook his head. ‘Oh, well,’ he said. ‘Amicitiae nostrae memoriam something-sempi-something fore.’

  ‘I’ll be honest with you, boss,’ said Carr. ‘I havnae a clue what you just said there.’

  ‘Cicero,’ said de Vere. ‘I hope the memory of our friendship lasts forever.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Carr. ‘I’m not dying, you know. I only live down the road.’

  Guy de Vere smiled broadly and clapped Carr on the shoulder.

  ‘Tell you what, John,’ he said, ‘we’ve come a fucking long way since that night in the Clonards, haven’t we?’

  PART TWO

  BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND TWENTY YEARS EARLIER

  3.

  LANCE CORPORAL JOHN
CARR hefted his rifle in his left hand and looked across the vehicle yard at the young officer.

  ‘Jesus,’ murmured Carr. ‘I reckon your missus shaves more often than he does.’

  Next to him, Corporal Mick ‘Scouse’ Parry chuckled. ‘You cheeky bastard,’ he said. ‘Fair one, mind.’

  A thin, pink dawn was just catching the top of the Black Mountain on the edge of west Belfast, but the inside of Fort Whiterock was still lit by orange sodium. In the glare of one of the lights, the second lieutenant – who was very tall and very slender – was struggling to lay out the unwieldy tribal map on the bonnet of his Snatch Land Rover.

  ‘He’s in my wagon, is he?’ said Carr, with a thin smile. ‘I think I’ll stick the lanky streak of piss up on top cover. See what he’s made of. Hopefully he’ll get a pissy nappy in the face.’

  ‘Character-building,’ said Parry, with an approving look.

  The officer finally succeeded in smoothing down the map, and now he made a show of studying it.

  ‘Look at him,’ said Carr, shaking his head. ‘The height of the bastard, he’ll make a fucking good target. Mind you, he’s a thin cunt. They’ll hardly see him if he turns sideways.’

  Scouse Parry chuckled again.

  Off to the left, near the main gate and in the shadow of the base’s massive walls, a group of soldiers – members of 7 Platoon, C Company of the 3rd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment – stood around, stamping their feet against the cold, breath forming clouds, waiting on the order to load their weapons.

  Two Snatch Land Rovers and a grey armoured RUC Hotspur idled in the background, blue diesel exhaust drifting slowly over the white-frosted tarmac.

  Two policemen leaned against their wagon, carbines slung round necks, smoking cigarettes and talking quietly about a young WPC one of them had his eye on.

  Occasional laughter erupted from the soldiers; one started coughing violently and cursed and threw away a butt.

  It was going to be a long day: patrolling and setting up VCPs in Ballymurphy, Andersonstown, and Turf Lodge till long after dark, and finishing with a shift change for the RUC at Springfield Road, before a return to the relative safety of Whiterock.

  All in the shadow of the Provisional IRA’s murderous bombers and gunmen.

  ‘I’ll go over and have a word,’ said Carr. ‘Wind him up a bit.’

  ‘Go easy on him,’ said Parry, with a smile. ‘Five minutes.’

  Carr strolled across the asphalt to where 2Lt Guy de Vere was bent over the map, trying to cram the different areas of the city – shaded orange for the Protestant sectors, green for the Catholic – into his memory.

  ‘You alright there, boss?’ said Carr.

  De Vere turned to look at him. He felt oddly intimidated by the hard-faced Scottish NCO, despite being several years older and senior in rank. He couldn’t decide whether it was down to Carr’s undeniable physical presence – he had a Desperate Dan jaw, broad shoulders and merciless eyes – or his brooding silence. The man had barely said a word to him before now, and what he did say was said in such a thick accent that subtitles would have been useful.

  At least the blokes seemed to understand what he wanted.

  ‘Fine, thanks, corporal,’ he said. ‘I was just having a last minute refresher.’

  Carr’s face was an expressionless mask, his mouth hidden by a drooping, bandito moustache of the sort the men seemed to favour.

  ‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘Mean fucking streets out there.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Guy de Vere, slightly nervously.

  A month earlier, the Paras had lost three A Coy men to a remote-controlled bomb hidden in a ruined cottage down near Mayobridge: the city just beyond the gates was every bit as hostile.

  De Vere was fresh out of the box, new in the battalion, and in the Province, and today’s was his first patrol, on his first tour. He was nominally in charge, but really his role was to watch everything that Scouse Parry and John Carr did and said, and learn.

  Not all that long ago, he’d been enjoying a lucrative career as an investment banker in Hong Kong. But, vaguely unsatisfied with life, he’d chucked all that in to come home and do something more meaningful with his life – a decision which had left his Toms shaking their heads in wonderment when they’d found out about it.

  Half an hour earlier, Carr had seen de Vere take a wander up into one of the sangars overlooking the streets outside, and he tried to imagine what the officer was thinking.

  Probably:

  Last year I was earning six figures and living the dream.

  Now I’m in a shithole where half the population wants to take my bastard head off.

  What the fuck have I done?

  ‘Boss, you’re doing top cover,’ said Carr. ‘It’ll give you a better look around so’s you can understand the Area of Operations.’

  Plus, it’ll do you some fucking good to go through what the lowest, youngest, newest crow in the multiple goes through, he thought.

  De Vere nodded. He didn’t fancy top cover one bit – you spent the whole day exposed, on offer to whoever wanted to have a pop – but he didn’t show it.

  ‘Right you are, lance corporal,’ he said.

  ‘Main thing is, keep your eyes peeled for that RPG cunt down on Kennedy Way,’ said Carr. ‘He’s an ex-French Foreign Legionnaire. Knows what he’s about.’

  De Vere nodded again: he’d had that worrying piece of information stuck into his head a few times in a series of scary briefings.

  ‘If he gets one off and it hits the wagon, that’ll seriously ruin your day,’ said the Scot, with a cheerful grin. ‘You’ll be lucky if it only takes your legs off.’

  De Vere pushed his shoulders back. He thought for a moment about the journey up from Palace Barracks the previous evening. That had been bad enough, and it had been in the back of a Saracen, a purpose-built armoured vehicle with sixteen mil of steel protecting him. Hot, and claustrophobic, but at the end of the day sixteen mil was sixteen fucking mil. The Snatch was a lot more vulnerable.

  ‘I’ll keep my eyes peeled, corporal,’ he said. ‘Don’t you worry about that.’

  ‘Good,’ said Carr. He looked at the second lieutenant more closely. ‘You okay, boss?’ he said. ‘You look a bit white.’

  ‘I’m fine, Lance Corporal Carr.’

  Carr felt for him, momentarily. He remembered his own first time out of the gate: he was a fighter by nature, but even his arse had been going a little.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, leaning in closer and lowering his voice. ‘Everyone shits themselves the first time. The trick is, dinnae let the blokes see.’ He looked over at the Toms. ‘It’ll be fine. The RA have got snipers, but they’re shite. I’ve never heard of anyone being hit in a moving vehicle. And that cunt with the RPG?’ He looked at the young officer’s rifle. ‘You see the fucker, just give him the good news with that.’

  He threw back his head and laughed, and at that de Vere felt a weight lift off his shoulders. He looked at Carr: at a shade over six feet tall, and thick-set and hard-eyed, he held his loaded 6.5kg SA80 rifle like it was a toy, and wore his parachute smock folded back at the sides in a style the men favoured. His helmet was covered in camouflage scrim held in place with a thick black rubber band. All in all, he looked very ‘ally’ – the current Para Reg slang for cool.

  ‘Thanks, Carr,’ he said. ‘Much appreciated.’

  ‘Nae problem, boss. Just another day. It gets a lot easier after this one.’

  ‘John,’ shouted Scouse Parry, from across the yard. ‘Get ready to roll.’

  ‘Aye, Scouse,’ yelled Carr. ‘Two minutes.’ Then he looked at the soldiers. ‘You lot!’ he barked, in his thick Edinburgh growl. ‘Let’s start fucking sparking! First three to the loading bay!’

  Three Toms made their way over and stood pointing their weapons casually into the bay.

  ‘Load!’ said Carr.

  The soldiers went slickly through the drill, checking their safeties, inserting a magazine, securing their po
uches, hands gripping front stocks.

  ‘Make ready!’

  The sound of three SA80s being cocked, racking a live round into the chamber. Three sets of eyes and thumbs re-checking three safety catches.

  ‘Mount up!’

  They stepped away from the loading bay and walked to their vehicle.

  ‘Next group. Come on, get a frigging move on!’ snapped Carr. He looked over at de Vere. ‘Then it’s you and me, boss!’ he shouted, in a voice that almost sounded like an order. ‘Let’s get weaving. No time to think about your girlfriend.’

  ‘I don’t have a girlfriend, lance corporal,’ said de Vere, his voice higher and reedier than normal.

  He realised immediately that he had responded too quickly, too sharply.

  He hadn’t meant it, but stress does funny things to people.

  ‘Boyfriend then, is it, boss?’ said Carr, with a broad grin. ‘I mean, equal opportunities and all that. And you being a public schoolboy.’

  From across the yard, Carr heard Scouse Parry cackle.

  He saw de Vere open his mouth to speak, and then shut it, and force a grin.

  Good boy, he thought. You’re learning.

  A moment later, Carr and de Vere made their own weapons ready, and Parry walked over.

  ‘My vehicle first then, boss,’ said Parry, to de Vere. ‘Then the RUC, then you and Carr. Eyes on stalks, eh?’

  Parry walked off to the front Land Rover, whistling tunelessly, nodding at the RUC and chivvying his driver and Toms aboard.

  Carr watched Guy de Vere bend his tall frame to get up on top and then climbed into his own vehicle.