Between Ghosts

by Garrett Leigh

  Nat shrugged. Slinking in and out of Baghdad to eliminate a renegade Sunni cell that had been wreaking havoc on the city had proved eventful, but his report had been thorough, completed on the bumpy Chinook flight back to Turkey. “Reckon I covered it all. We’re running short on kit, though, sir. We’ve only got three vests between us.”

  The OC hummed and made a note, but Nat knew his complaint would fall on deaf ears. Equipment shortages had been a reality they’d learned to live with since operations in Iraq began. Who cared if they were facing the biggest terrorist uprising in recent history with no body armour, boots that melted in the desert heat, and rifles that jammed every other round? No one, apparently. “It ain’t the jihadis that’ll kill us, Nat. It’s the bloody penny pinchers.”

  Nat let Pogo have that one.

  “Anyway . . .” The OC shuffled some papers. “I have a task for you.”

  “Already?”

  “Yes. I know you’ve just got back, but this is a little different. Take a seat.”

  Nat sat and accepted the coffee pushed his way. He had a feeling he was about to be hit with something fucking ridiculous, and sure enough, by the time the OC had finished, he could hardly believe what he was hearing. “You want us to take a journalist out in the field?”

  “Yes.” The OC eyed him steadily. “You’re going to Basra to help coordinate the security situation. We need to get a grip on the militias down there, and I want you to take this bloke with you. Show him what we do when we’re not up to our necks in crap: the aid parcels, the schools. Give him some soft shit for his column.”

  “Soft shit, sir? How does that fit in with chasing militias?”

  “From what I hear, you’ll have to find the bloody militias first.” The OC stood and tapped the large map pinned to his office wall. “You’ll get a better picture when you touch base with the major on the ground, but I reckon you’re going to have your work cut out tracking these fuckers down. In the meantime, show this journo how you conduct an aid drop. How you mingle with the natives and do your best to not kill them. Anything. I don’t bloody care. Just give him what he came for and get rid of him.”

  “Great.” Seriously? A fucking tabloid hack?

  The OC sighed. “Listen, Nat, I know its bollocks, but the MOD let him in because of the fucking mess the boneheads at the prison made, so we have to play ball. Just behave yourselves for a few weeks while you get a feel for the place, then send him home with something clean to write about. After that, you can get back to business.”

  Back to business. Right. Nat left the OC, with his mind racing, all thoughts of supper and sleep forgotten. He’d known before Baghdad that they’d eventually end up trying to square away the melting pot of chaos Basra had become, but with a civilian in tow? A journalist civilian? All beige chinos and well-meant bloody ignorance?

  Fuck that shit.

  Nat left it until dawn to seek out the hack. He figured he’d find him asleep in a corner somewhere, clutching a Dictaphone, a pair of geek glasses stuck to his face. So he was surprised when Dib directed him to a lone figure jogging around the perimeter fence.

  At least he’s fit. He’ll bloody need to be. Nat hadn’t had much contact with the swarms of war reporters who’d flooded Iraq when the war had begun, but the few he hadn’t managed to dodge had left him little hope for this bloke’s ability to keep up with his crew.

  Nat waited by the exercise yard for the hack to finish his lap. It was part of the job to scrutinise strangers, so he lit a smoke and studied the man. From a distance, with his strong shoulders, tanned skin, and a week of dark scruff on his face, he didn’t look much different to any other bloke on the base. As Nat got closer, he took in his close-cropped brown hair and keen dark eyes . . . dark eyes that were distracted enough for Nat to walk right up to the hack before he got a reaction.

  “Regan?”

  The man blinked. “Jesus. You’re the third person to sneak up on me since I got here.”

  “I didn’t sneak up on you,” Nat retorted. “Maybe you should pay more attention.”

  “If you say so. Who are you?”

  “Nathan Thompson. D Squadron. Been sent to babysit you for the next few weeks. You ready to be briefed?”

  “Briefed?” The man raised an eyebrow. “Thought the OC was doing that?”

  “Nope. He’s busy. Just as well, really, though, ’cause I reckon as I’m in charge of keeping you alive, my rules take priority.”

  “Fair enough. I’m Connor Regan, by the way, from the Guardian.”

  “I know.” Nat shook Regan’s proffered hand, though he hadn’t known his Christian name. Connor. Yeah, it suited him and his rakish half grin. Shame the bloke was a hack. He would’ve looked good with a Minimi and gun grease smeared up those strong forearms—

  “Bloody hell, Natty. Stop ogling me. I know I dance like a stripper, but I gotta missus back home, ya know . . .”

  Nat stifled a chuckle that made his chest ache and recalled his reply to Pogo, growled so long ago he could hardly picture where they’d been at the time. “In your fucking dreams, mate. Stop fucking prancing about and get your shit done. Besides, your only missus is your ma.”

  “Nathan?”

  “What?”

  Connor grinned that damn grin again. “Where we doing this? Out here? Or have you got an office?”

  “An office?” This time Nat couldn’t suppress his amusement. “Yeah, okay. Let me show you my office. And by the way—”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s Nat, not Nathan. Only my nan calls me that.”

  “You’d better call me Connor, then. Regan reminds me of my cunt of a stepfather.”

  The crude insult sounded wrong wrapped up in Regan’s—Connor’s—gentle Mancunian accent. Nat waited for him to elaborate, absorbing the new hardness in his dark gaze, but Connor looked past him to the main hangar, so Nat led the way inside to a quiet corner of the munitions store.

  “So,” he said when Connor had taken a seat on a box containing enough explosives to blow the whole building apart. “I don’t know what they told you before they let you out here, but if you’re running with my crew, there’s going to be rules.”

  “Rules?”

  “Fuck yeah. I’m not having you bumbling about on patrol and getting yourself killed, or worse, getting one of my men slotted.”

  Connor nodded. “‘Slotted’ means killed, right?”

  “Right.” Nat stopped, once again distracted by Connor’s smile. Get a grip, dickhead. “Anyway . . . we’ll do whatever we need to keep you safe, but before we get to that we’ve got to be clear on what you can write about in that column of yours.”

  “I signed a waiver back in Hereford. Nothing goes to my editor without clearance from the MOD.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Nat had heard that shit before, only to see a comrade’s name and photo printed in the fecking Daily Mail. “I don’t give a fuck what bollocks you were fed in Hereford. You’ve got to use your noggin. No names or descriptions, even shit you think is innocuous. And no bloody cameras, either, video or otherwise. No photos, no voice recorders, nothing.”

  “Got it,” Connor said. “Soldier A, Soldier B, and I’ll write everything shorthand with pen and paper.”

  “Pencil, mate. They don’t run out and you can sharpen both ends.”

  Connor frowned. The crease in his forehead made him seem older, and Nat wondered how old he actually was. Didn’t look much over thirty, but he had one of those faces that had likely been the same since he’d turned twenty-five, and would remain so until he hit fifty.

  Connor cleared his throat. “Anything else?”

  Nat thought on it a moment. “Yeah, fuck the shorthand. I can’t read that shit and nothing leaves here without my say so.”

  “Veto power. Got it.” Connor rubbed his face. “Reckon we’ll figure it out. I knew there’d be a lot of things I couldn’t write about, even before I got word I’d be shadowing an SAS team.”

  “And there’s your first lesso
n,” Nat said. “There is no SAS here, especially in the field.”

  “But you are SAS, though, aren’t you?”

  “Am I?”

  Connor attempted to stare Nat down for a moment, then shrugged. “Point taken. What about access in the field? The OC back in Hereford said it would be up to whoever had command on the ground. I’m guessing that’s you.”

  “It will be when we get out there. How fit are you?”

  “Fit enough,” Connor said. “I run marathons.”

  Nat smirked. “With full kit under the desert sun? If you’re coming with us, you might as well make yourself useful and carry some gear.”

  Connor met Nat’s smirk with a grin of his own. “Think I can manage that. I did winter selection with the ARs last year. Froze my nuts off in the mountains. Jumped out of a plane and all the rest of it.”

  “The reserves aren’t the same as us,” Nat retorted, though in truth, the selection course for the Regiment’s civilian unit was tough for any man.

  “Us? Thought there was no such thing out here. You’re slipping, Nat.”

  Something about the way Connor uttered his name set Nat’s skin alight, though he couldn’t quite figure out if he liked it or not. He shivered. Must be the generator. “If you say so. Anyway, while you’ve got your running legs on, let’s get back out there, see what you can really do. No offence, but I’m not taking your bloody word for it.”

  If Connor was offended, he didn’t show it. He slid off the box of explosives with a sinuous grace, and left Nat to ponder a heady mix of the looming mission and the perfect shape of Connor Regan’s calves.

  Three

  Connor hobbled back to his bunk. True to his word, Nat Thompson had put him through his paces. “You ain’t no good to us if you can’t keep up . . .” Connor stripped off his sweat-drenched Ramones T-shirt. Nat’s slight cockney twang gave his voice a gruff bite that Connor had found even more exciting than the prospect of hitting the ground with the crew—Charlie-3—who he’d yet to meet.

  Not that he had let it show. Ha. Fat chance. He’d been too busy trying not to fall on his arse as he’d lapped the exercise yard with a fully loaded bergen strapped to his back. Because it turned out training with the reserves hadn’t quite equipped him to keep up with Nat Thompson. Jesus, the kit weighed a bloody ton. The pack had been so heavy Connor had thought Nat was pulling his leg.

  He doubted it, though. Nat didn’t seem the type. Connor had spent two hours with him and could count his rare half smiles on one hand. Maybe chronic poker face was an SAS thing. James had smiled a lot less in the last few years of his life.

  Connor gathered his wash kit and searched out the shower block. Once there, he rinsed the morning’s sweat and grime away and pondered his new surroundings. With its tall fences and utilitarian vibe, the air base felt a little like a prison to him. Perhaps it felt like that for others, too, when they were on long deployments.

  Was that why Nat seemed so humourless? Connor turned it over in his mind. He’d got the impression Nat hadn’t been home for a while. He might be missing his wife . . . or girlfriend. Connor hadn’t noticed a ring, but he hadn’t spent much time looking at Nat’s hands. How could he when the bloke had been jogging beside him in a tight-fitting T-shirt, stretched around lean, sinewy muscles, and dampened with just the right amount of sweat?

  Connor killed the thought before it could take hold. Nat Thompson was bloody gorgeous—fair hair, steely blue eyes, scruffy jaw—but Connor wasn’t here to check out the scenery, and he could imagine the consequences if he got caught with a boner in the showers on his first day. James hadn’t given a toss about Connor’s sexuality, but he’d told horror stories of what happened to young gay squaddies that had made Connor’s balls retract like scared rabbits.

  He finished washing, got dressed in his spare set of clothes, and made his way back to where he’d left Nat. Nat was nowhere to be seen, so Connor settled for sitting close to a group of British dudes and doing his best to eavesdrop without getting caught.

  Thirty minutes had passed when a dry chuckle made him jump out of his skin.

  “Do you think they don’t know you’re watching them?”

  Connor turned to find Nat behind him, smirking the weary smirk that made him look older. “I’m not watching them.”

  “Bollocks,” Nat said. “And do you know how I can tell they know? Because they haven’t mentioned robbing someone the whole time I’ve been standing here, and that’s all Wedge ever talks about when we’re stuck on this stupid bloody base.”

  “Wedge?”

  “Yep, come on. Might as well get to know the knobbers who’ll be babysitting you.”

  Nat stomped away before Connor could reply, so he closed the short distance to the group who, up until that moment, had been discussing the football leagues back home.

  “Wedge and Bobs.” Nat pointed at a couple of bearded men who looked more like lumberjacks than soldiers. “And these reprobates are Chris and Marc. Marc is the team medic if you pick up syphilis or some shit, and Chris is the scaley. The other two are just grunts.”

  Scaley. If Connor remembered his Bravo Two Zero glossary correctly, that meant Chris was in charge of communications: the radio, and the codes. He filed that away along with Marc’s role to record in his notebook later. “Grunts, eh?” He shook Wedge’s proffered hand. “Didn’t think there was room for such a thing out here.”

  “There isn’t,” Wedge said. “Nat’s just being a dick. I’m his second, and Bobs looks after our weapons. If you need any C-4, he’s your man. Hoards it in his pants.”

  Bobs rolled his eyes. “Don’t listen to that cunt. Wedge’s our navigator, which ain’t a good thing, ’cause last time we were looking for a Taliban supply route, we ended up at bloody Asda.”

  The group laughed, and Connor laughed along with them. “So you’ve served in Afghanistan too?”

  “I’ve dipped in and out,” Wedge said. “Shut down a bunch of opium plants and chased my tail in the mountains a few times. Reckon we’ll end up back there when this shit is over.”

  “Yeah? Why’s that?” Connor felt Nat’s gaze on him, but didn’t dare look his way. He’d absorbed each and every rule Nat had set out, but there had been no mention of what he could and couldn’t ask the blokes on the ground.

  “Makes sense,” Wedge said. “The Yanks don’t want to stay, and the Taliban are much stronger than the plonkers up top give ’em credit for. Gonna take years to flush them all out if the politicians don’t get bored first.”

  It was a theory Connor had heard many times over, even before he’d switched his journalistic focus from the arts. He wanted to ask Wedge to elaborate, but pushed his curiosity aside. This wasn’t Afghanistan. “It must be frustrating to know more than the people pulling the strings. Ever get fed up with it?”

  “Course we do,” Wedge said. “Don’t do us much good, though. It ain’t our place to think. We just get it done.”

  “Have you served in Mosul?”

  Connor addressed the whole group, but after a pause so brief Connor was almost sure he’d imagined it, Chris answered. “Between us, we’ve been all over, but there’s always a new place to get your head blown off.”

  This time, Connor couldn’t miss the loaded silence, but perhaps the nonanswer was just as well. He hadn’t come here to literally retrace James’s steps, had he? “Erm, so how long do you usually spend on bases like these before you go back to the field?”

  “Depends,” Bobs said. “Could be hours, days, or weeks before we get orders again. Don’t think it’ll be long this time, though. Nat looks antsy, which is never a good sign.”

  Nat glared. “I’m not antsy.”

  “Fucking are.” Bobs pulled a face that had the others laughing up a storm. “You didn’t come to bed last night.”

  Nat lunged at him and gripped him in a headlock, squeezing until Bobs turned red and begged for mercy.

  “See what I mean?” Bobs said when he’d caught his breath. “Fucker
’s always tetchy when he’s hiding something. Don’t get too comfortable here, mate. We’ll be hitting the road before you know it.”

  Bobs’s prophecy turned out to be true. After a relatively lazy day spent observing the team rip each other to shreds and pilfer supplies from the much better equipped Americans, Connor watched as Nat and Wedge were called away. They returned three hours later with the news that the team had been ordered to move out to a forward operating base—FOB—in Kuwait, just like Dibs had prophesised, and despite a building thrum of nerves, Connor couldn’t wait.

  “Heli leaves at four,” Nat said tersely. “Get your shit together and be ready at 0300.”

  Connor took Nat at his word. He sought out the supply store for a set of mess tins, then accompanied Wedge, Bobs, and Chris to the mess tent for an early dinner. Conversation was thin as they scarfed down a basic meal of bangers and beans. The others seemed lost in thought—perhaps preparing themselves for whatever operation was ahead of them—so Connor let them be and mentally noted his first impression of their dynamics.

  Outspoken and coarse, Wedge was the group clown. Connor wondered if his belligerence ever clashed with Nat’s quiet, gruff leadership. He couldn’t help liking him, though. His jokes were brutal and borderline cruel, but Connor had spent enough time with military men in recent months to know there were moments when such dark humour became the only thing that kept a team going. In a way—a bigger way than he cared to admit—Connor was jealous of their obvious bonds. He’d never shared that closeness with anyone, not even James. Especially not James, if he was truly honest.

  Regret lanced Connor’s heart.

  Focus.

  He turned his attention to Bobs, who seemed more laid-back than Wedge, content to let others hold court, but his easy grin didn’t mask his sharp gaze, and Connor got the feeling he was a man who missed nothing.

  Chris was harder to figure out. He said little and spent most of the meal humming to himself and staring into space. Connor made a few attempts to engage him, but to no avail. Chris, it seemed, was destined to remain an enigma, for the time being, at least.