The Walking Dead

by The Walking Dead (epub)

  He was interrupted: 'We were told about a duty of care…and I was told by the man who approached me of "long arms" and "long memories". Don't we get looked after?'

  Banks grinned, sardonic, and was finally enjoying himself–couldn't remember when he had last talked freely outside the corral of the Delta team. 'Don't hold your breath, Mr Wright. It'll all be about the budget that's been allocated. When the coffers are dry you'll be dumped. You'll be given an in-house alarm and a few telephone numbers. You'll be up the creek and no paddle. Of course, if you were a politician the coffers don't go dry.'

  'Is that-the party line, Mr Banks?' The smile spread.

  'Think about it. We rely on people like you to pedal the justice system forward, but don't expect thanks for your efforts.'

  'But you–you as well, Mr Banks–you're a man of substance.'

  'Am I? Haven't heard anybody say so.'

  'Stands to reason, you have to be.'

  'I doubt it.'

  'Wrong…Wrong because of what's on your belt. Wrong because of that oil smear on your shirt. That's trust, isn't it? Is it loaded?'

  Banks hesitated. He sensed they were off territory. The way he sat, the tip of the holster dug into the flesh of his upper thigh. He saw mischief dance in the eyes in front of him. Could have retreated, should have backed off…He shrugged. 'Not much point in having the thing if it goes to Condition Black, but you have to hold up your hand. "Can we please have a break while I go to the car and load up?" It's loaded, and I carry replacement magazines. Each morning, though, I clear the bullets out and reload them. If you don't, if you leave them there for a few days, a week, you can get a jam. Condition Black is an imminent and real threat, and I just have to flick the safety. That's all.'

  'When would you do it–shoot?' More of the mischief, more of the sparkle, and Wright had pushed away his plate and was hunched forward, as if the talk was their conspiracy and not to be shared.

  'If my life was in danger.'

  'That's good–your life. Brilliant, I'm so reassured.'

  Banks said, 'I don't remember if I said it to you–if I didn't I should have. We aren't bullet-catchers. We don't stand in front of Principals and make heroic sacrifices and end up a bloody paraplegic with a thirty-eight-calibre slug lodged in the spine. We do realistic assessments of threat and we evaluate our resources, and we have as our Bible the theory that the bad guy cannot get close enough. It's about as far as it goes.'

  Maybe he was mocked. 'You're telling me that it's not John Wayne, life ebbing, in the dirt of Dodge City, the lady's arms cushioning his head, violins going on full scrape, and the smallholders saved from the wicked rancher–not that?'

  He grimaced. They were areas he had never discussed before with a Principal. Should have closed his mouth, should have stood up and walked away.

  'I've never fired for real. No one I've worked with has ever fired for real. You have a microsecond to decide what to do, that's the training…but it's only training. If you shoot, your life will be destroyed, and I don't mean if you've taken the wrong option. I met an officer on an exercise, and he'd done it, had fired and slotted a gangster, and that gangster had a firearm in his hand and had already used it. Double tap and the gangster's down, dead, but it took two years for the process of investigation formally to clear the officer so he could go armed again. Two bloody years of his life and he was entirely justified in what he'd done. And if he hadn't been justified he would have faced a charge of murder. There's a post-shooting incident procedure, the inquest into what's happened, and the officer will get no sympathy, no support, from his seniors, and every moment of the confrontation leading up to the weapon discharge will be picked over, vultures at carrion, by Complaints and Discipline. Does that answer you?'

  'Tells me what to expect.' Wright chuckled. 'Tells me to stay in bed tomorrow morning.'

  'You'll be all right.' He pulled the wry look. 'It never happens. We pretend it's going to, and simulate it, but it doesn't.'

  'Could you? It's not to disable, is it, it's to kill? Mr Banks, could you shoot?'

  'When it happens I'll answer you–hasn't this gone far enough?'

  'Am I keeping you? Come on. It can't just be training, it has to be in the mind. Wouldn't be in mine. Look into a man's face, over the sights, might be a pleasant face, or a scared face, even if he's a threat, then do judge and executioner. Not me. Don't have the certainty or the guts.'

  'You're being trumpeted as the hero, Mr Wright.'

  'Probably you didn't do Shakespeare's Othello at school. A very bizarre line, "I am not what I am," whatever it means. My question was, could you earn your corn, could you shoot to kill?'

  'I don't know.'

  'That's not a very good answer.'

  'Try this one. There are some who say I couldn't,' Banks blurted. 'It's what was said. A team said it.'

  No more mischief, and the sparkle was gone. A frown cut Wright's forehead. 'Is that the truth? Your own people said it? Said you couldn't shoot to kill? But that's your bloody job…means they think you're useless.'

  'Why I'm here, why I drew this fucking straw, the short one.'

  He stood up. Should have done so a quarter-hour before, and could have.

  Banks said, 'My apologies if I've destroyed your confidence in me, Mr Wright. It's about someone I never met, never knew…about somewhere I've never been…It is why lam categorized as useless, and about why I could be spared from a state of alert in London–reckoned not able to do it–and be here with you. Goodnight.'

  The notebook flapped in his pocket. He walked briskly–having made an idiot of epic proportions of himself–across the room. He passed a rubbish bin as he threw open the door. Should have, could have, dumped the notebook.

  12 November 1937

  We are in the second line, not the forward line. A blizzard is blowing again, again. The 'bunker' lam in, dear Enid, is an old shell-hole over which there are two wood doors that we liberated from a farmhouse. It was a big decision, last week, whether we could spare the two doors and use them as roofing, or whether we should burn them. Anything we can burn, other than the two doors, has now been used for warmth. The cold is awful. A local man told us two days ago that this was the worst winter in his memory, and he was an old man. The snow is thick over the forward line and our line, and we have not been brought food from the rear today or yesterday. The cold is so bitter and there is no more wood to heat us…In this cold we cannot fight–nor can the enemy. Their artillery guns are quiet and their aircraft cannot fly. The new enemy is the cold, the snow and the ice.

  It is not only nature that is cold, but also God's heart.

  Ten days ago my friend, my best friend, Ralph, was taken out of the line on a litter: dire sickness had weakened him. He could not stand. Even the commissar accepted he was no longer fit enough to stand sentry.

  Today I heard from a medical orderly that Ralph had died.

  It was told me so casually. Ralph had died in afield hospital. The cause of death was pleurisy. By now he will have been buried, but the orderly did not know where and could not tell me what service, if any, was held at his grave. I feel an emptiness. Ralph has abandoned me, God has deserted me.

  I do not believe I will ever have another friend.

  I am alone. It is not possible to leave. If I could I would. All our papers are taken from us, and without documentation, a man, a foreign volunteer, cannot pass through the checkpoints of the SIM–that is, dear Enid, the Servicio de Investigacion Militar–because I would be arrested and shot: I will die here properly, with any dignity I can find, not as a trussed chicken at a post and blindfolded…and I cannot leave, with the fight not done, my friends behind in unmarked graves. I stay close to Daniel and Ralph.

  The candle I write by is near finished.

  I have only the darkness, the cold and the despair.

  All that is left me is my pride–and the memory of my folly. But I cling to that pride because nothing else is left for me but the Psalm's words:

&nb
sp; By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept When we remembered Zion…

  How can we sing the songs of the Lord

  While in a foreign land?

  Goodnight, dear Enid.

  'Of course, it's different when you're operating abroad, far away, on foreign territory. No Queensberry rules there. No monitors watching over you, and no human-rights pinkos. You do your job…You go in after your target, fair means or foul, and all that matters is that the target is captured and handed over, or it's his hand or head that gets brought back…Has to be something, or you won't get the bounty payment. Did I ever tell you what the rates were for bounty on a Taliban guy in Ghazni Province?'

  He was perched on his stool at the left end of the bar, and his surgical sticks were propped between his legs. George Marriot's audience migrated between the bar and the dartboard. The golf team was back after victory on a sodden course, and the darts team were throwing. The crush at the bar suited him well.

  'Didn't I? Well, for an Ali Baba–that's a thief, operating on the road, turning over aid convoys–there might only be a thousand dollars in it. Hardly worth the effort. I'd a team of more than a dozen to keep sniffing and interested after the Tora Bora. Did I tell you about the Tora Bora? Don't remember. Well, another time…I've this team to keep happy, damn good trackers and the best fighters anywhere, and the way to keep them happiest was to go up into the foothills of Ghazni Province, maybe up into the mountains, and go after the Taliban. Hard bastards, but I respected them–they'd have had my head off my shoulders soon as spit at me, if they'd had the chance. Yes, I respected them as quality opposition. For a big Taliban man, one of the old regime who'd been close to Mullah Omar, I was looking at a bounty–alive or for a head, ears and fingers for taking the prints off–at twenty-five thousand minimum. The Yanks, fair play to them, weren't cheapskates and they paid on the nail. They weren't easy to get, the big Taliban men, took days of tracking, weeks of hunting through the caves, and when they were cornered they fought like rats in a sack…Did I ever tell you how I got that grenade stuff in my leg, Russian made HE-42 with a hundred and eighteen grams of high explosive, did I?'

  How many times had the story been told? One day–God, it would not be a pretty sight–the landlord swore he'd tell GG to drop his trousers, right there in the bar, and show the damn scars. One day…No, no, it would be cruel–no scars there to show. They listened politely and tolerantly, carried their pints away from the bar counter, left the story for the next customers, and talked their golf and darts, their business and families.

  'Myself, I'd never ask a man under my command to do something, go somewhere that I wasn't prepared to do or go. I led into this cave. Knew it was used because the earth at the front was all scuffed. Went in with my torch, and the beam caught his eyes, like a damn cat's, and my finger was off the guard and on to the trigger bar but the grenade came bouncing at me. I stayed those seconds too long, gave him the whole magazine, thirty rounds of ball, then chucked myself down, but not fast enough and not far enough away. My boys, they carried me back down but not before they'd taken off his head, his ears and his fingers. The man I'd killed was a big man, a proper Taliban field commander. He was a man like me, a true fighter, not one of those who'd get some daft kid–a suicide-bomber–to do the work for him, hide behind a kid. He'd have heard me and the boys come to the cave, and wouldn't have thought of surrender, knew he was going to die but tried damn hard to take me with him. Have to respect that sort of man…The Yanks did, gave me thirty-two thousand five hundred dollars for his head and his bits. But I was finished, too bloody wrecked to go back up the mountains after the hospital.'

  He was asked, a snigger from an accountant who queued for service, whether he'd worn the same shirt when he was in Afghanistan. Frayed cuffs and collar, the colour gone from it. He heard the laughter ripple round him. He was told that the shirt, it might be clean on that evening, looked worn enough to have done time on his back in Ghazni Province. Did he know that a sale–with bargains at giveaway prices–was staged that weekend in the town down the road? Another piped up, said he should have left the shirt up the mountain. The ripple of laughter was a gale. Had his sister sewn up the shrapnel holes in the shirt and washed out the bloodstains? He should treat himself to a new shirt, not leave thirty-two thousand five hundred dollars untouched in a biscuit tin under his bed.

  George Marriot sensed, and it was new to him, that gentle mocking had gone nasty was ridicule. His hand came off his glass and his fingers touched his collar, felt the loose, worn cotton, and he saw the threads that hung apart at his cuffs. He let his sticks take his weight, left his unfinished drink on the counter, dropped his head and pushed forward towards the door. He heard a protest it was only a joke.

  He elbowed the door open.

  'Safe home, GG, see you next week,' the landlord called to his back…then, quieter, 'Shouldn't take the piss, just because he's soft in the head.'

  The door swung shut behind him.

  The two men ran heavily towards the helicopter's open side hatch, their heads ducked below the thrash of the rotor blades. Each carried small cheap bags of clothing, but between them they shared the weight of the Bergen rucksack in which their work kit was stowed.

  The hand of the loadmaster reached down and helped up Xavier Boniface, then Donald Clydesdale.

  Old thrills surged in each of them, and old habits came naturally. The loadmaster was waved away. They dropped into the bucket seats, slotted the shoulder harnesses across their bodies, fastened the clamps.

  'You all right, Xavier?'

  'Fine, Donald.'

  'It'll be good to see Mr Naylor.'

  'A gentleman. It'll be fine to see him.'

  The helicopter lifted and yawed in the face of the wind. The engine pitch strove for power and suffocated their voices, then each closed his eyes and they were oblivious to the tossed and thudding flight as they climbed.

  They were veterans of campaigns from the end of empire. As young lads in the marines, 45 Commando, they had been assigned in the Protectorate of Aden–forty years before–to guard the life of an officer in the RAF's Special Investigation Branch. They had taken him, Sterling submachine-guns loaded and cocked, most days from his Khormaksar billet across the causeway to Sheikh Othman, then past the roundabout where the concrete block and sandbagged Mansoura picket tower stood, and they had huddled with him between them in a Saracen armoured personnel carrier for the run to the fort where prisoners were held. At first, the initial couple of weeks, they had lounged around the fort's yard, and the officer had been inside the interrogation cells with captured men from the National Liberation Front. Each evening he had emerged in a state of growing frustration: he couldn't get the time of day from his prisoners, and most certainly no intelligence.

  Now, inside the helicopter, bucking in the wind and leaving the island's coast behind them, neither could have said which had made the suggestion to the officer, but made it had been: 'With respect, sir, why are you pussyfooting around? There's lives at stake, right? Don't you think, sir, it's time to take the gloves off?' Perhaps it was both of them who had made the offer. They had gone with their officer into the cells the next morning. At first it had been fists and boots, then they had learned a little more of the trade, and water buckets, lights and noise had been employed. Intelligence had been extracted from choking throats, from mouths without teeth. Only the intelligence produced by pain had been written down by the officer–where a safe-house was, where an ambush site was planned, where an 81mm mortar was hidden or a blindicide rocket, where an arms cache was buried. They'd left on the same evacuation flight, one of the last from Khormaksar, as their officer. After touchdown–and he'd kept his new wife waiting a half-hour beyond the arrival doors–he'd taken them to the bar and bought them two doubles each, might have been three, and had promised to be in touch if the need for their skills arose again. The officer, of course, had been Mr Naylor. That had been the start.

  When the helicopter's nose dipped and
it lost height, both woke. Awaiting them at Glasgow airport was an executive jet, in RAF colours, fuelled and ready to fly them south.

  They lived in dangerous times, and such times, they knew, demanded 'taking the gloves off'. Neither Xavier Boniface nor Donald Clydesdale would have said that this call from Mr Naylor would be the last.

  He lay beside her, the scent of the ageing hay bales in his nose. The cottage was only five hundred paces away, but fifteen minutes' walk with the load they had brought across two fields.

  The boy slept, breathing heavily, on a bed of fodder they had made for him on the far side of a low wall of bales.

  Only the three of them remained. When the house had been cleaned, and the bedding bagged, he had sent away the lightweights–the driver to his mini-cab company in west London, the watcher to his family's fast-food outlet in the north of the capital. The recce man would still be travelling to reach his father's cloth shop in the West Midlands. They all believed his target was Birmingham–as did the kid who had fled. It had been a precaution of Muhammad Ajaq, the Scorpion of a faraway war where the strength of his sting was a legend, to deceive them with a lie, but his survival had always depended on precautions. The barn where he lay beside the girl, on damp, musty hay, was set back from the lane into the village. In an hour, before dawn came, he would make a fire at the back of the barn and burn their bags of bedding.

  He manipulated her mind. His hand was under the coat she wore, the sweater and the T-shirt. His fingers played on the skin of her stomach. His nails made gentle patterns on the smoothness, softness of her navel. He did not work his hand up towards her breasts or down to her groin. She had not moved his hand.