by Andy McNab
The Three Amigos had made their dead mate a promise at Kajaki: however long it took, they would avenge him. They sent out a signal via the few guys they could trust in the Afghan National Army: they needed to know who had been responsible for skinning Chris Matlock alive.
A handful of days later, word came back. Razaq, one of the Taliban players they’d been trying to lift, had given the order to two warriors from his compound. His compound in Koshtay.
Then he had supervised what happened next.
The crucifixion. The flaying. These things were never simple. They couldn’t be rushed. Razaq had taken care of the unbeliever’s face – and his eyelids – personally.
‘We knew immediately what we had to do. I don’t think any of us questioned it. It wasn’t legal. We didn’t kid ourselves about that. But it was just.
‘Guy tells the boss we’ve had a tip-off about one of the players, tells him we’re going to check it out. No drama. Only the three of us, on a CTR. If there’s any truth in it, we’ll come back mob-handed.
‘We take a Jackal. Scott drives. Guy’s in the passenger seat. I man the GPMG. We somehow dodge the IEDs and get within reach of the compound at last light. We lie up behind the treeline, on some high ground. Not Kajaki-type high ground, just high enough to give us a vantage-point, to get eyes on the enemy through our NVGs.
‘We know we’re outnumbered, but we have the advantage of surprise.’
He saw the look on my face.
‘And, yes, at that moment, as long as we kill those fuckers, none of us really cares if we come out alive.’
They’d pinged seven occupants in the compound, all male, all carrying. Ammunition belts slung across their chests, AK-47s either on their shoulders or close to hand. The Amigos reckoned they were preparing to move out.
‘We don’t need to take a vote. It’s now or never. Immediate Action. We advance through the trees, across a small stretch of open ground. Razaq’s place is surrounded by a baked-mud wall, but it’s barely above chest height. We vault it and take down three of the enemy with our first burst. They’ve no idea we’re there. Two more appear in the doorway to the living quarters, and we take them down as well.
‘Guy’s in the lead. It had become a habit of his, since school, probably. Leading was important to him, but winning was everything. That’s why he felt he couldn’t share the blame …’
He was finding it difficult to swallow.
‘His blood’s up, you see? He disappears inside the building, firing as he goes. Then there’s silence.
‘Scott and I push back the curtain hanging across the entrance. There are two rooms, lit by candles. The whitewashed wall directly ahead of us is covered with blood. Razaq has been thrown back against it by the force of Guy’s blast. The seventh Taliban warrior lies inside the archway to the sleeping area.
‘Guy’s kneeling beside the body. He raises his head as we follow him in. He’s cradling something in his arms. All he can say is “God forgive me …” over and over again.
‘That’s when we realize what he’s done.’
The seventh body was that of a young, pregnant woman. And the eighth was a child’s. Four years old, maybe. Five, max. It was difficult to tell. She’d caught a round that had taken away part of her jaw.
God never did forgive him. Or that’s what he thought. Guy Chastain couldn’t forgive himself either. By killing the woman and the child, he believed he had become no better than the men who had tortured his friend to death.
8
‘It’s a thin line, isn’t it, Nick? The line that separates the things you can justify to yourself, and the things you can’t. And once you’ve crossed it, there’s no going back. I’ve had plenty of time to think about that, lately. Too much time.’
A small part of me envied his idealism. The rest wondered how he’d got this far without realizing that justice and truth were luxuries most of us couldn’t afford. We just did our best to keep ourselves and our mates from sinking too deep into the shit. This boy needed a session or two with Father Mart.
‘How much does DSF know about this?’
He raised his hands, palms upwards. ‘When we came back from the compound we were so strung out that the slightest glance bored into us. The most routine exchange seemed loaded. And after Guy’s citation went public, every single one of Steele’s speeches about regimental pride and the need to honour the medal and its traditions sounded like a dire warning.’
‘Ella said that Scott was unravelling well before Christmas. She seemed to think the VC ceremony didn’t help.’
‘That’s the understatement of the century. It was mid-November. We were sitting in one of those huge rooms at the Palace, surrounded by Who’s Who in the military, and Scott started crying like a baby. I managed to shepherd him out to a toilet. I didn’t think anyone heard him break down, but I couldn’t be sure. It was a total nightmare.’
‘DSF there?’
‘Sure. The place was heaving with uniforms. That was when I really started shitting myself that the whole Koshtay thing would come out into the open. I knew they’d do pretty much anything to keep the lid on it.
‘The last time a VC had to be handed back was in 1908. You can imagine the headlines … And you know how the Head Shed have been since Abu Ghraib and Baha Mousa. Like cats on a hot tin roof.’
He wasn’t wrong. One minute they awarded a colonel in the Royal Lancashires the DSO for leading from the front during the Basra gangfuck and putting himself in harm’s way. The next, they were so badly rattled by an innocent Iraqi being killed in custody by men under his command that they charged him with presiding over war crimes.
‘When Scott went into meltdown again at the Green Dragon, I saw the expression on Jack Grant’s face. I knew he and the general were close. I don’t know who gave the order for Scott to take a round in the head in the CQB Rooms, but when it happened, I figured there was nothing to stop me being next.
‘It’s why I thought this place would be my safest option, until I had the chance to blow the whistle in the courtroom. But now I’ve got to get out of here.’
His eyes were burning as brightly as his dad’s had when he saw Koureh’s happy snap.
I shook my head. ‘Staying here is still your safest option, mate. The people behind this might have been able to send in a grey man, but that looks like it’s as far as they can go. You haven’t been found hanging from your belt strap. You haven’t even slipped on a bar of soap. You’re still here to tell the tale.’
He bunched his fists so tightly his knuckles whitened. I’d definitely made the right decision. Even if I could get him out of there, the last thing I needed was another member of the Callard family trying to club people to death with a tree branch.
‘What about Ella?’
I gave him full eye to eye. ‘You’re going to have to leave Ella to me.’
9
The rain had eased by the time I went back through the barrier, but it still wasn’t the kind of night you wanted to mince around in an overcoat, blazer and chinos. I took a couple of back doubles through the residential area at the northern edge of the camp. The tarmac glistened under the street lamps and TV screens flickered through curtained windows.
When I was confident I had no one on my tail, I headed east into the darkness. I still wanted to stay in cover as I approached the end of the berm where I’d left my weapon.
I crossed the road and pictured the smile on Al’s face again as I felt the mud on the tank track ooze over the top of my left deck shoe. I wiped it on a baby’s head and moved into the trees. This wasn’t great overcoat, blazer and chinos territory either, but at least the canopy kept the rain off.
I reclaimed my package from behind the bush three strides behind the line of targets, and slid the Browning into my waistband, the spare mag into the left pocket of the coat. It wouldn’t flick back quite as well as the bomber if I had to draw down, but it’d be better than nothing.
I retraced the route I’d taken earlier, and che
cked the parking area for movement. There wasn’t any. I tucked the slipcase under my arm, gripped the car keys in my left hand, leaving my right free, and crossed the stretch of pitted tarmac. When I had the wagon door half open, three torch beams sparked up at ten-metre intervals along the curve of the treeline and caught me in their glare.
I ducked beneath the cover of the vehicle and spun in the direction of the range. A fourth beam advanced towards me from the covered firing position. It dipped for long enough to show me the pistol in its owner’s right hand, then a heavily accented voice instructed me to turn around, put my hands on the roof of my vehicle and spread my legs.
10
I did as I was told. The metal of the Skoda’s lid was cold to the touch. Maybe I’d be able to save my weapon for later. If I went for it now the story could have only one ending.
I was facing the wrong way to ping the lad who’d done the talking, but as his three mates got closer, I could see it was just like old times. These guys had all come off the same production line. Zastava EZ9 shorts, jeans, leather jackets, cropped hair and, on the neck of the one I could see most clearly in the torchlight, a rose-coloured tattoo.
The lad who’d come up from the range was now behind me, far enough out of reach to make sure he could put a round in me before I got anywhere near him. The others joined him in a semicircle, facing the car. Shooting each other wasn’t something they wanted to risk.
‘Tell your friend to come out now.’
I kept looking straight ahead. The rain was starting to fall more heavily again, and peppered the roof between my fingers. ‘I don’t have any friends.’
There was a burst of Serbian waffle. This was obviously a bit of a turn-up for them. ‘Do not lie to us.’
‘I tell you what. Why don’t we all come back here tomorrow night? I’ll see what I can do for you then.’
That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He took three steps forward and ground the muzzle of his pistol into the back of my head. I guessed it was more out of frustration than anything else. I didn’t think he expected my ‘friend’ to materialize on the strength of it. But the fact that he knew lifting Sam was on the cards told me all I needed to know.
I’d been set up for the Barford mission since my Bermondsey trip. That was why they’d chased me around a lot, but never put a round in me when they’d got the chance. If I’d done my job tonight, these lads would have left our bodies somewhere on the ranges. I’d have taken the blame for springing a plainly guilty man, the court martial would have been avoided, and Sam’s secret would have died with him.
The pistol was removed, and as I heard the boss of the Crvena Davo team step back, I realized I’d set myself up for a fall years ago, when I hadn’t bothered to become a member of the Good Lads Club.
There’d have been a few questions asked when our bodies were found. But not many. The Head Shed wouldn’t broadcast a break-out from the Military Court Centre. And while they might be a bit sad about a heroic young sergeant sliding off the rails, they wouldn’t mourn me.
There was another staccato exchange. I could guess what it was about. I hadn’t brought them the goods. Maybe they should kill me anyway. Look at the damage I’d done. One of their mates had got a crampon in the head in the Black Mountains. Another had taken a nosedive into a car park on the Tabard Gardens Estate. It was time to stop fucking about.
Two of the team stepped forward and grabbed my wrists. I didn’t make it easy for them, so they didn’t make it easy for me. They plasticuffed them together so fiercely behind my back that my hands started to throb. One frisked me, top to toe, lifted Sam’s Browning and the spare mag, and chucked them into the foliage at the edge of the parking area.
‘Come.’ The boss barked the instruction. I turned to see him walk back along the path towards the range.
His mates bundled me after him. Their dark hair and stubble shone like crude oil and their skin glistened. They weren’t wearing their happy faces, and it wasn’t just because the rain had started again. Everything about their body language, the expressions on their faces and the none-too-gentle way they kept me moving said that this wasn’t a good day out. I was going to pay for fucking them up. I was going to pay big-time.
I ran through my options. It didn’t take more than a nanosecond. All I could do was choose the best moment to leg it and hope for the best – which meant waiting until I was as close as possible to the cover of the treeline before I made my move.
A coil of rope, punctuated at intervals with red and white striped plastic pennants, was looped over a wooden pin on the side of the covered position furthest from the targets. It would have been strung across the entrance when live firing was in progress, but these boys had something else in mind.
The fourth member of the team grabbed it as we passed and began to fashion the trailing end into a noose. He glanced at my neck from time to time, like a tailor gauging his customer’s collar size.
An image flashed onto the screen inside my head: maggot-ridden bodies twisting in the wind beneath trees and lamp posts at the Bosnian roadside.
The boss stood in the shadow of a big old beech on the far side of the range. He’d found what he was looking for: a missile-sized branch launching itself out of the trunk about five metres above the ground. It took them a couple of throws to get the tail of the rope over the top of it and a couple of tugs to get the business end at the right height. Then they shoved me forward and raised the noose.
I dipped my head and shoulder-charged the main man, aiming a fraction above his belt buckle. I wasn’t wildly optimistic about doing him any serious damage – I just needed a moment of confusion to help get me out of this shit.
I didn’t even manage to wing him. He stepped aside as I came through and gave me the good news with his fist on the back of my head. It wasn’t a killer blow, but it was enough to make my deck shoes lose their grip on the leaf mould and take me down.
They dragged me to my feet again, forced the noose around my throat and pulled the slip knot so tight it made my eyes water. The boss watched carefully throughout the process. He didn’t want me to be in any doubt that they had a few scores to settle, and now was the perfect time to do it. He gave the noose an extra tug, to let me have a taste of what I had in store. Then the three grunts gripped the other end of the rope and began to try to separate my head from my shoulders. I wasn’t far from blacking out when the arc lamps at each corner of the range sparked up. As night turned into blindingly bright day, ten lads in combats and cam cream converged on us from all sides, through the trees and across the open ground, SIGs in the aim. One of them barked a set of instructions in warp-speed Serbian.
I was no more fluent now than I had been at the Belgrade Fortress, but I knew Boris’s voice when I heard it.
11
It didn’t take long for Boris’s boys to give the guys in matching leather jackets a set of matching cuffs, and a Mastiff steamed in from the camp to take them off for a sleepover in the detention facility.
I fished the Browning and spare mag out of the undergrowth, then sat and watched from the comfort of Father Gerard’s driving seat, trying to get my breath back. I couldn’t tell whether the Invisible Man was on the squad. If so, he was in good company.
When the business of the evening was completed, Boris came over and joined me. His hair looked like a freshly forked haystack.
‘You’re making a bit of a habit of this, Stone.’
I nodded. ‘So are you. And I’ve finally got my head around why.’
Boris seemed quite pleased about that. ‘DSF never believed that Sam Callard pulled the trigger in the CQB Rooms. When you bounced into view, he thought you might give us the best chance of finding out what that whole nightmare was all about. Fuck knows why.’ He grinned. ‘I gather you were never the sharpest knife in the drawer.’
I told him I’d give the general a full report over tea and biscuits when I’d tidied up a few loose ends.
‘I’ll let him know that.’ His eyes g
linted as he treated me to a level stare. ‘Just try not to take too long.’
He stood back and let me shut my door, then leaned in through the window, like he’d done outside the Belgrade Zoo. ‘And sort your shit out, eh? What do you think you look like?’
PART THIRTEEN
1
Allerdale, Cumbria
Monday, 13 February
16.50 hrs
I took Boris’s advice about my fancy-dress outfit as soon as I got back to the Premier Inn. It was now in the boot of Father Gerard’s Skoda.
The drive from Andover to Bassenthwaite was a good seven hours, but I didn’t want to be there until last light, so there was no need to rush it. I treated myself to a couple of caffeine and calorie breaks and beat myself up about the things that should have pointed me towards Chastain instead of the Head Shed while I was playing detective.
They both had a fuck of a lot to lose if the Koshtay incident went public, but I now knew the colonel was staring down the barrel of the bigger gun: the destruction of his son’s and his family’s very shiny reputation.
I knew he’d served in Bosnia, and Ken Marabula had confirmed it. The Leathermen were on his payroll, not Steele’s. They must have tracked me from Blackwood’s chambers using the Nokia that I should have chucked into the river after I’d called Astra HQ that morning. I hadn’t been spotted by one of DSF’s helis.
Even when Boris and the Invisible Man had done their Seventh Cavalry trick at the Belgrade Fortress, I’d assumed that Chastain was busy being my fairy godfather.
I suddenly remembered the colonel’s Bermondsey reference during our cosy chat in Guy’s boathouse. At the time I’d just assumed he’d pulled it from the depths of his own mental data base – he’d always taken the piss out of my South London accent when I served with him. Now I realized what had brought it to the surface. And that was when he’d seeded the idea of me lifting Sam from Barford.