The Exit Club: Book 5: Old Comrades

by Shaun Clarke

  The breaking dawn, however, revealed a landscape devastated by war, with streams of mist drifting over black shell holes and enemy sangars filled with corpses buried in debris. Luckier, though hardly happy, were the hundreds of weary, humiliated Argentinian prisoners who were being marched at gunpoint to makeshift camps of barbed wire and canvas, where they would be held until the reconquest of Port Stanley, then almost certainly shipped back to Argentina.

  Yomping over the rocky, frost-covered hills around Port Stanley, still out front on point, Marty saw battleweary but jubilant Royal Marines, Commandos, Paratroopers, Scots Guardsmen, Welsh Guards, Gurkhas, REMEs, and even forward observers from 148 Commando Battery, Royal Artillery. Port Stanley was now visible from the heights, though covered in a pall of smoke from the naval bombardment and being criss-crossed by the casevac helos that were picking up the wounded and flying them to the various Forward Dressing Stations.

  The end for Marty’s friends came abruptly. Making their way downhill towards Port Stanley, circling around a rocky hillock, they emerged unexpectedly to another farmhouse. Even before they saw the radio antenna on its roof and the Argentinian troop truck parked outside it, a machine gun roared from one of its windows and bullets ricocheted off the rocks around them.

  TT cried out and was punched backwards to the ground. Marty and the others had already dived for cover and were opening fire from behind rock outcroppings as TT quivered epileptically on the ground, was peppered

  Argentinian machine

  by another burst from the gun, shuddered violently, screaming in agony, then coughed blood and was still.

  Cursing, not thinking, Alan Pearson dived out from behind his rock, dropped belly down on the ground, and reached out to grab TT and haul him back, dead or alive, away from the line of fire. Even as Marty and Captain Peters were giving covering fire with their SLRs, and as the cool-headed Taff was unslinging his Stinger SAM system from his Bergen, the Argentinian machine-gunner fired another sustained burst that made the ground spit around TT and Pearson, turning the latter into a convulsion of flapping limbs and shredded clothing soaked in blood, until he fell face first over TT, groaning and twitching.

  Shocked and enraged by that sight, Marty kept firing his SLR at the windows of the farmhouse while Taff, seemingly unmoved, took aim with his Stinger SAM system, then fired a fragmentation warhead with deadly accuracy through the window where the machine-gunner was firing. The explosion blew out the window frame and part of the wall, with pieces of the machine gun sailing out of billowing smoke and the gunner disappearing into the vivid flames filling the room. When the front door burst open and some Argentinian soldiers ran out, trying to escape from the flames and firing from the hip, Marty and Captain Peters cut them down with their SLRs. Taff, meanwhile, had reloaded the Stinger SAM system and now fired another fragmentation warhead into the farmhouse. This time, the explosion blew out most of the front wall and made the roof collapse, with those not killed instantly buried in the rubble, screaming or groaning as clouds of white dust billowed skyward. ‘Advance!’ Peters bawled.

  They did so cautiously, crouched low, weaving left and right, stepping over the dead Argentinians on the ground to enter the ruined house. The rubble was piled high, still smouldering, wreathed in dust, and the men who had been screaming were now moaning and gradually dying, practically buried alive.

  Marty was just about to bend down and push the rubble off one of the groaning men when he heard the sound of running feet and looked up to see an Argentinian soldier racing around the side of the house and back towards the rocks where Alan Pearson was sprawled over TT, still groaning and twitching. Reaching them, the Argentinian fired a fusillade from his submachine gun into the back of Pearson’s head, making it burst open like a bloody pomegranate, then he hurried around a low hillock and disappeared.

  ‘Bastard!’ Captain Peters bawled.

  Suddenly, the harsh snapping of small arms came from lower down the hill and bullets ricocheted off the ruined walls of the farmhouse. Glancing down the hill, Marty saw a troop of Argentinian soldiers making their way uphill, firing on the move.

  ‘More Argies!’ Marty shouted. ‘Let’s get out of here!’

  Without a second’s hesitation, he and Taff jumped over the broken wall to their right and started running down the hill at the other side, out of sight of the advancing Argentinians. Captain Peters followed them, but then he hesitated, glanced over his shoulder, and called out, ‘What about TT and Pearson? They might still be alive!’

  Marty and Taff stopped running and turned to look back up the hill, where Peters was framed by the ruined farmhouse and the snow falling out of a grim sky.

  ‘They’re dead!’ Marty shouted back ‘If they’re not, they soon will be! And so will we if we go back up this hill. Come on, Captain, let’s go!’

  ‘No!’ Peters shouted, trying to make himself heard above the harsh chatter of the Argentinian small arms and the ricocheting of their bullets. ‘I have to go back and check!’

  Ignoring their protestations, he turned away and went back up the hill, cutting across at an angle to reach the hillock fifty metres from the farmhouse. Shocked, Marty hurried after him and saw, as he hurried up the hill, Argentinian soldiers approaching the ruined farmhouse and seeing Captain Peters near the hillock.

  Even as Taff, who had remained lower down the hill, opened fire with his SLR, giving cover to Marty, the Argentinians opened fire on Captain Peters. Their combined firepower tore him to shreds, making him jerk wildly, then punched him back to the ground where he shuddered spasmodically, bloodily, in a convulsion of spitting snow and soil.

  ‘Shit!’ Marty exclaimed, turning automatically to fire a short burst at the Argentinians, making them dive for cover, before he bolted down the hill, weaving left and right, dodging the bullets of the Argentinians, not stopping until he and Taff were out of range and, finally, out of sight. They slowed down at that point, but kept marching, not speaking, and eventually came to one of the hills that loomed over Port Stanley.

  Still not speaking, they hiked up the hill until they reached the summit, where they were offered a panoramic view of the town and its port. The town was wreathed in smoke, as were the port and surrounding hills. The ships of the British fleet were spread out across the sea and British aircraft were now controlling the wintry skies, flying this way and that.

  Shocked by the death of his friends, Marty marched with Taff down the hill until they reached the recaptured port. Side by side, they made their way past damaged British ships still smouldering in the docks, 42 Commando Marines, the Red Berets of 2 Para, and dejected Argentinian prisoners huddled around open fires beside discarded weapons and helmets. They also marched past traffic jams of troop trucks, Land Rovers, Mercedes jeeps and Panhard armoured cars, under a dark sky filled with Chinook, Lynx, Scout, Sea King and Wessex helicopters, as well as Sea Harrier jets and Vulcan bombers.

  Eventually they passed wooden-framed houses, miraculously untouched, and finally entered the Upland Goose pub. Though the pub was filled with celebrating soldiers, sailors, pilots and Red Cross personnel, Marty and Taff fought their way to the counter and stared straight at the barman.

  ‘A pint of best bitter,’ Taff ordered.

  ‘The same for me,’ Marty said.

  They drank to old comrades.

  Chapter Eleven

  Marty became a wealthy man within months of his retirement from the regiment. He bid his old comrades farewell during a party at Bradbury Lines, five months after the war in the Falklands had ended, and then went on to a new life as a civilian, making more money than he had ever imagined possible.

  It had happened to quickly th at he still couldn’t quite grasp it, but he knew exactly when it had all started, which was when his SAS career had reached its natural conclusion and he was faced with the retirement he dreaded.

  The war in the Falklands was his last and when it ended, on 14 June 1982, it ended a lot of other things for him. With the deaths of Captai
n Peters, Alan Pearson and, in particular, Tommy ‘TT’ Taylor, he realized that his only real friends still alive were Taff Hughes and Paddy Kearney, though both friendships were based on shared experiences going back a long way, rather than on affection or lasting trust.

  In Taff’s case, given his nature, his unbreakable reticence and oddly inhuman remove, this seemed perfectly natural and did not bother Marty one way or the other. He had long since accepted that any friendship with the quiet killer was bound to be strictly limited and could not run too deeply. Paddy, on the other hand, was a very special case whose friendship Marty had valued above all others, so the breaking of that relationship was something that still hurt him profoundly.

  Nevertheless, given the limitations of those two remaining friendships, he understood that those men were the only real friends he had left. Most of his past was now gone and buried, and his future was narrowing.

  He realized this, in particular, during the party he threw on the day of his retirement from the regiment. It took place during an open day to which family, selected friends and serving SAS members were invited. Also invited were his former wife, Lesley, and their two children, John and Kay. Lesley was now plump, greyhaired and heavily lined, while John and Kay were mature adults whom Marty could scarcely recall as children. Indeed, his pleasure at seeing them was balanced uneasily by how old their maturity made him feel. Even Ian, his son by Ann Lim, had he not died in that car crash, would have been twenty-two years old this year. It was hard to believe.

  ‘You look wonderful,’ he said, lying, to Lesley. ‘Still the charmer,’ she responded. ‘The word “wonderful” hardly applies, but I could have been worse. So how are you, Marty?’

  ‘How do I look?’

  ‘As fit as someone your age can possibly be. There are certain things to be said in favour of being a soldier and you sum them up. You look surprisingly good, in fact.’

  ‘I’m not as good as I look. I don’t think I’m suited to retirement. I’m already starting to feel old.’

  ‘That’s unavoidable, Marty.’

  ‘Well, it’s nice to have you and the kids here. It makes me feel less guilty.’

  ‘Guilty about what?’

  ‘About not always being a good husband and attentive father.’

  Lesley smiled. ‘You weren’t good, that’s for sure. I mean, even when you were home, you weren’t really there– you always had that glazed look in your eyes. You weren’t that bad, though. Always good with the kids. You didn’t see them that much, they never quite received your full attention, but at least you had a good sense of humour and always managed to make them smile. Kids will forgive an awful lot for that, so John and Kay think you’re okay. In fact, they think you’ve been a pretty good dad and I can’t argue with that. You were just a soldier, that’s all.’

  ‘A goodsoldier,’ Marty corrected her, grinning. ‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said.

  Paddy also attended. He had lost a fair bit of weight since Marty had last seen him, only a few months ago, just before the start of the Falklands war, and he was losing his good looks at last. His skin was lined and slack on a surprisingly gaunt face, his eyes had lost their glitter, and his formerly thick, dark hair was grey and thinning with bald patches showing. Marty knew that, though he was younger than Paddy, he would soon look the same. It was not a comforting thought.

  Clearly, given his coolness when he and Marty talked, he had turned up at the party only out of loyalty or for appearances’ sake. Though this knowledge hurt Marty, it did not unduly surprise him. He had gone off to the Falklands war already knowing that the friendship, if not entirely over, would certainly never be the same again.

  It had definitely changed for the worse when Paddy confronted him about the assassination of the arms dealer, Sir Charles Alfred Seagrove, demanding to know if he, or his Association, was responsible for it. Though Marty had resolutely denied having anything to do with it, Paddy had not believed him and insisted that if he had any reason to suspect him, or any other member of the Association, in the future regarding a similar incident, he would cut them out of his company, Vigilance International, and his personal friendship with Marty would end.

  ‘This isn’t an idle threat,’ he had insisted. ‘I mean just what I say. I believe that you or someone known to you – another member of the Association – put paid to Seagrove. If I’m correct – and I happen to think I am – then you’re a bloody disgrace to the regiment and I don’t want to know you. I hope and pray that I’m wrong, but my instincts tell me otherwise. I’ll be watching you, Marty.’

  Though shocked by the vehemence of Paddy’s response, Marty still felt no guilt. While it was true that he had personally undertaken the assassination when in a state of shock and rage over Diane’s suicide – for which he held Seagrove personally responsible– he surprised himself after the event with the gradual realization that he felt little remorse for what he had done.

  Quite the opposite, indeed. Pleased with the relative simplicity of the operation, even more gratified with its success, he had confided in Taff that the Association could now undertake similar ‘cleansing operations’ as discussed so frequently between them. Taff had agreed.

  Thus encouraged, Marty decided to raise the motion at the next meeting of the Association, but the Falklands war then intervened. When it was over, Captain Peters, Tommy ‘TT’ Taylor and Alan Pearson were dead and Marty’s retirement from the regiment came on the agenda. Marty decided to put the matter aside until a more appropriate time.

  ‘There’s too much euphoria over the Falklands victory,’ he told Taff. ‘I think it’s best to wait until all that’s died away and the boredom of peacetime has returned. Our kind are the kind who can’t stand too much inactivity, so that’s when we should talk to the other members. We can offer them a new form of excitement and I think they’ll go for it.’

  ‘Iwill,’ Taff said. ‘Believe me, I’ll be there. You just point me in the direction you want and I’ll squeeze the trigger. You can count on it, mate.’

  ‘I already do,’ Marty said.

  For days after the retirement party, when he had moved into his new apartment in Belsize Park in London and was trying to adjust to the fact that he would never again wear his beige beret and badge or fight a war overseas, he suffered bouts of severe depression and found himself poring repeatedly over old memories, from his early, relatively innocent days with the LRDG in North Africa to the disillusioning dirty-tricks campaigns of Northern Ireland. In particular, he found himself repeatedly recalling the few days he had spent in Port Stanley after the British flag was raised again over Government House. Even though he had just lost three of his good friends and comrades, he was convinced that those few days may well have been the last truly exciting days of his life.

  On the other hand, though undeniably exciting, that war, like the conflict in Northern Ireland, had caused him to feel deeply disillusioned about where his world was heading. He had long been convinced that the old, traditional values were being destroyed and that even the British government, of which he had once been so proud, was becoming more immoral and oppressive.

  Many of these beliefs had developed over the years as his SAS activities, particularly in Northern Ireland, had shown him how pragmatic those in positions of authority could be when it came to the use of dirty tricks to gain what they wanted. Any doubts he had about this had been cancelled out by the gradual breakdown and eventual suicide of Diane. Now, more than ever, he was convinced that Diane had been right all along and that there were those in the government who would stop at nothing to protect their own interests.

  In a more general sense, the unprecedented ‘blanket’ censorship imposed by Margaret Thatcher over the reporting of the Falklands war had reminded him that even his own government was becoming ever more secretive. This in turn had convinced him that his Association must British and other closed doors, particularly when it came to the increasingly widespread suppression of individual freedoms, the growing sale of
arms to repressive regimes for purely mercenary reasons, the broadening military support for ‘secret science’ to be used mostly to aid oppression, and, more personally, the enforced use of the SAS for tasks that were, to say the least, unsavoury, including thinly disguised police work and the training of security forces in communist or undemocratic, blatantly corrupt, countries. Finally, when he heard on the grapevine that a few specially selected SAS officers and NCOs had been sent to Cambodia to ‘advise’ the disgraced Khmer Rouge, he decided that enough was enough and that something had to be done.

  ‘We can’t let the regiment be degraded that way,’ he told Taff, ‘and we can’t stand by while scum like weapons manufacturers and arms dealers, or like those IRA bastards who pretend to be politicians, turn the streets of our cities into battlegrounds. So if we have to neutralize a few of the swine, then I say let’s do it.’

  ‘Damned right,’ Taff said.

  With Taff’s encouragement, he called together certain members of the Association, those who had previously expressed sympathy with his cause, to confess that he had been personally responsible for the assassination of Seagrove and felt that the Association should now engage in similar ‘cleansing’ operations. Though most of the men present had previously agreed with him in principle while expressing doubts about the morality of taking the law into their own hands, the knowledge that Marty had already carried out the first keep a close watch on what the governments were doing behind ‘cleansing’ operation finally swayed them in his favour. They were also swayed by his use of the words ‘cleansing’ or ‘neutralizing’ instead of ‘assassination’ or ‘murder’. Indeed, the last named two words had never been mentioned in any conversation relating to the subject. The words ‘cleansing’ and ‘neutralizing’, with their positive connotations, would enable them to feel that they still had clean hands.