The darkness was around him and the nearest lights were through the trees circling the Hougoumont farm down the winding track, and then more were across the shallow valley and up by the buildings of La Belle Alliance where Napoleon himself had been during the battle, now a night-club and noisy. But close to him was the quiet and the peace and the misery that followed combat. That night, when one army had fled the field and another was in pursuit, only the dead and wounded 50,000, estimated, would have been among the crushed maize fields, but coming towards them would have been village women with bags in which to drop booty, and some military wives would have been out and abroad with hurricane lamps to search for their men . . . There was light rain, not incessant but he had his umbrella opened.
He had been home, taken there by the car that the office had organised.
‘Hello, go all right?’ His wife had greeted him.
‘Went all right, yes, all things considered.’
‘Don’t mind me saying it, but you look a bit of a mess.’
‘Suppose I do . . . took a bit of a soaking.’
‘Just off to open the shop. If you get out of those things, I’ll drop them off at the cleaners.’
‘That would be grand, thank you.’
He had stood in the hall and had taken off his coat and his suit jacket and waistcoat, and she had emptied the pockets, and then he had dropped his trousers and underwear, and peeled off the sodden socks and the Narva’s water was still in his shoes. Gloria would not quiz him, but stuffed yesterday’s newspaper in the shoes and bundled the suit into a plastic bag. Did he want some breakfast? No, was going to VBX. And then? Well, he had rather missed the battlefield, but he’d be home the next evening. She’d gone to work, via the dry cleaner, and he had put on fresh clothing and dry shoes, and had hurried out, locked the door behind him, gone briskly to the waiting car. A pretty average English morning, not too cold, a damn sight warmer than beside that wretched and unforgiving river.
There was traffic on the main road that ran north to Brussels. He loved to be there . . . Some in the office tittered behind their hands at his obsession with the history of this place. He thought he benefited as a protagonist in the intelligence war from what he saw and learned – probably from the stoicism of the fighting man, his nobility. Sometimes he imagined he heard the voices of commanders, and more often and after the darkness had come, he heard the soft cries of the injured. He thought it a good place to be.
The car had dropped him at the building’s entrance and he would have sworn that the armed men at the gate had given him ‘the eye’, as if they had known something. He had nodded curtly to them and might have heard a faint growl of congratulation. A very satisfactory picture was on the wall of his office, and he had kissed the Maid’s cheeks in gratitude, and Daff was already there still damp from a shower, fresh clothes, and a half of the first bottle already lowered between the women, and the Big Boss had come in, and the second bottle had been started.
‘It was first class, Boot, and I think it worked really rather well.’ The Big Boss had raised a glass to him.
‘He’s a good man that we sent, and I venture that I’d use him again. No hostage to fortune left behind to face interrogation. Sad about the local increments, but they played a part. I never met them . . . What we do now is drop a few words to selected bloggers. One in Lisbon and one in Chennai, and there’s a useful outlet in Vientiane, and we feed reports of gang warfare among the hacker groups, jealousies, corruption inside FSB. It’s the virus we can shift into their system and it should lead to an uncertainty among their prime players, a slow-down in offensive operations. Not easy to quantify, but as a strike back it will have been effective.’
‘At what sort of cost? Their side?’
‘Hard to estimate, inexact areas. We took down some leading Black Hats, can’t say for sure how many. Had a good bang for the buck. I don’t have a figure for their wastage. But, enough, and I very much believe we’ll see vacancies in their recruitment prospects.’
‘Cost to us? How do we come out of it?’
‘Well, I think . . . the increments were the only downside. Financially, it was excellent value. The explosive we use does not come cheap, but everything else was well within budget . . . I believe they’ll squirm . . . Look, we wanted to send a message, indirect and obtuse, and we did. There was an opportunity, it was taken advantage of.’
‘And the man we sent, where does he put his feet up?’
‘Where he’s comfortable . . .’
‘I’d like to have met him, Boot . . . Why didn’t you bring him up?’
‘He wanted to move on. The way he is, has his own agenda.’ Boot had done his little smile, and the conversation was closed. They finished the bottle, but even the good stuff could not, quite, get the taste of the river out of his mouth. He’d gone, a little wave at the door to the Maid and Daff, had hurried away.
At the farmhouse they would have left a plate of cold meats and a salad for him, and a beer, and he’d stay longer on the stool and listen to the patter of rain falling on the umbrella. He wondered how many of the men who had come through the day on the fields around him, ploughed and muddy, would have said to themselves, in the privacy of their thoughts, that enough was enough, time was called. Perhaps the majority, but a few would not have escaped from the addiction, the narcotic, of it . . . He remembered as he had told it to Daff, of a child who would not come in through the open window of the nursery . . . Thank God for it, because when there was business about, damned serious business in the Duke’s words, there was always need of such men.
The cross-winds at Erbil International were fierce, and Merc was jolted hard in his seat when the flight out of Istanbul touched down. He barely noticed the juddering landing and his hands were loose on the arm rest.
Had planned it. Merc knew what he would say. Not a good man with words and he had worked on the few that he reckoned would be necessary, and had included two short sentences in her language, had tried them out – with shyness – to an elderly woman in the adjacent seat and she had chirruped in laughter and then had squeezed his hand, had congratulated him. There was sunshine and the apron glistened with its warmth after overnight rain. He felt as if he had come home, was where he wanted to be . . .
Daff had driven him to an apartment near to the big church in Narva, had chucked clean clothing at him, had allowed him the luxury of a shower in tepid water, had knelt beside him and had massaged – fierce, strong hands – over his legs and stomach, then his chest and arms, had worked hard enough at it to warm his body, had let him dress, then had pushed him towards the car. ‘Was the girl anything special, Merc?’ He’d shaken his head, then had said, ‘The device worked because the kid stayed with it. Where I work that’s called martyrdom. I said I’d take her out. It was the deal. Go carefully with her, please.’ Daff had shrugged. ‘Carefully, yes.’ A flight into Frankfurt from Tallinn, another down to Istanbul, and now the last leg into Erbil International. He remembered her, that damned haughty, obstinate face and had expensive chocolates from the German duty free that might soften it, and said again the two sentences in her language, and grinned, and felt like a kid, and grinned some more. He came off the aircraft.
Merc had a spring in his step.
They were inside the terminal, before he had cleared anything. He nodded. Two impassive faces. He hugged Brad first, then Rob. There was a local behind them and the guy led them away. Never did get to show his passport and never did get to declare his chocolates to the Customs people. They walked out into the sunlight, crisp shirt-sleeve weather, and when they reached the jeep, Rob dropped his hands into his backpack and retrieved a Glock in a holster and a couple of magazines.
Merc put the holster on, a shoulder job, and felt a bit naked because they were in uniform and he was in the civilians that Daff had given him. Brad drove, and Rob had an Armalite across his lap, and Merc was in the back and the wind blustered him. Rob asked him if it had been ‘good’, and Merc said it had been ‘
all right’. Then Rob asked him if he’d achieved what he went away for, and Merc said that the people in charge seemed content.
‘Anything fruity?’ Rob asked him.
‘Nothing as you’d have noticed,’ Merc answered.
Brad turned, eyes off the road and punched his arm lightly, and there should have been happiness there, a mucker come back home but there was cold in his eyes, and that might have been when Merc knew.
And knew more when they came to one of the roundabouts on the way towards the city, and it was about which turning they took and which side of the citadel they’d be going. It was bad traffic and the usual mixture of horns and shouting, and the stall-holders going at full volume, and a bit more of the confirmation came when they drove by a flower stall, one that had a sea of buckets of big bright blooms and they had not slowed and he hadn’t requested they stop. Merc scratched his head.
Didn’t feel like saying anything and let them drive, and the silence had sunk over them as if talk was inappropriate.
It was a big cemetery. There was a sector, over on the west side, that was reserved for casualties from the defence forces. They took that way.
Out of the jeep and they all walked, and Merc brought his box of Swiss chocolates. The first part of the sector had stones set above flat graves. Farther on there were wooden posts and the earth mounds had sunk. Merc kept on walking. It was at the end of the line in the farthest row and they had not yet got round to putting a post in at the head, and the earth was fresh and recently turned and still high because it had not yet had time to settle. Rob and Brad dropped back.
He went on walking and the tiredness seemed to gather again, and the pleasures of his return were draining, and he saw the lively colour of the flowers. They were what he had asked for, what Daff would have sent, and he imagined that Brad and Rob might just have taken a day off soldiering, fighting the war, to scour the florists of Erbil for a bunch of chrysanthemums that had the ‘merlot’ colour. He thought she might have died two days ago or three, and thought she might have been buried yesterday or the day before. Where might he have been, when she’d died in the hospital, presumably rampant infection and sepsis? Might have been in a car-park, waiting for a roof to lift off and a young man to kill himself which would serve the government that paid into Merc’s account in Stoke Poges, and she might have been buried as he had settled down on the hay and fodder in a barn with a girl clinging to him and both fumbling at their clothing. Merc could not remember when the drivers and escorts riding shotgun duty on Route Irish or the Jalalabad highway had done a good and reverential send-off for a friend. Useless at hymns and useless at prayers, but sometimes – not often – wet faces. He remembered her, and the shape of her, and the spirit of her glowering face, and her ability to change a belt for a DsHK .50 calibre, and remembered how he had cursed her for exposing herself at the parapet. He crouched down and laid the chocolate box, coated in cellophane, in front of the flowers, paused there, felt the stiffness in his joints, said something but was not sure what, then stood, paused again, turned, and walked. He reached the boys.
A query in the glance Brad gave him and Merc said where he’d like to be taken.
He thought they had an idea of the schedule back at the barracks. A new section had been put together in the Fire Force Unit, and they had left for the Forward Operating Base around a quarter of an hour earlier. Nothing said, nothing needing to be said. At the armoury Merc drew weapons, grenades, medical stuff, and a protective vest, and a uniform . . . Might have been the same as he had handed in just a week earlier that would have been put aside for him by the quartermaster.
They went fast out of the city and swung to the west and the desert opened up, and he could hear the distant sounds of war, artillery and mortar explosions, and a long way off was an airstrike with high smoke plumes and the rumble of fast jets. He knew the road well, and welcomed the thought of a return to Hill 425, and might have said to a friend – if he could have named one – that it was the best home he had. Brad said that the sector had been quiet. Rob said that the opposition were thought to have regrouped and would be back and hitting. They waved to him, drove off, went with a spit of dirt. The section seemed to be waiting for him, were parked up in a forward revetment and it was as far as vehicles went.
Merc saw their faces. Maybe they had not been told he was coming, perhaps it had not been certain that he would return to fight with them. They were all new, none of them had been brought back by him after holding the position. Huge smiles and a resurgence of confidence and a glow in the eyes as if he offered inspiration. Eight guys and four girls and all young and all raw and all exchanging nerves for courage because he would be with them. He could have said, ‘Steady, friends, I am nothing special, and all I can offer you is a bit of organisation and basic discipline, and you will have my best effort, only that.’ He said nothing. They lined up. He inspected the kit, made some modifications, gave them all a cuff on the shoulders – the guys and the girls. Their trust would be the burden he carried.
He led them up the communications trench, towards the flag that flew over Hill 425, where he knew and reckoned he belonged.
Have you read…
In a moment of nerve-shredding suspense that will affect many thousands of lives, a handful of men and women converge on a barren stretch of Yemeni desert.
The mission is to take down a high-value player in the war against Al-Qaeda.
It is the brainchild of an old, fat fool called Jericho. In his striped cricket blazer, never without a G&T, he is a sweating figure of fun among the ex-pats across the border in Muscat.
Yet perhaps he is not quite as old, or foolish, or even fat as he appears.
Nor as harmless.
Welcome to Jericho's War: its weaponry is state-of-the-art, its brutality as timeless as the desert.
Out now in paperback and ebook.
A Damned Serious Business Page 51