by Shaun Clarke
He decided to stop. He wanted to stop. He would stop when the most recent, the most important, job of all, the final cleansing operation, was completed and he could call it a day. He would stop at that point and call Paddy and say, ‘It’s all over.’ He would shake Paddy’s hand and then embrace him and beg his forgiveness. They would be friends again.
Marty left his big house in St. John’s Wood. He wanted to go out for a walk. He was feeling tired these days and he couldn’t walk too far, but he would walk along the pavement for a bit and then turned back again. He would breathe the fresh air.
He walked past his Rolls Royce, past his bodyguards, to the gate, and saw a grey-haired old man in a pinstripe suit, emerging from a parked Mercedes Benz and advancing upon him. Marty recognized that face. It took him back through all the years. The old man, who had once been a wickedly charming young man, had green eyes that were losing their lustre but not their intelligence. He smiled tightly as he approached and that smile said it all. Marty recognized his friend and stepped forward and then he saw the weapon.
It was a Browning 9mm High Power handgun and it was pointing straight at him.
Marty knew, on the instant, that it was over, and it seemed right and fitting. He went back through all the years, seeing them flash before his eyes: his honeymoon night with Lesley in the Savoy hotel, inexpertly making love as the bombs fell on London; the exotic streets of wartime Cairo, the cherry brandy bints, Tiger Lil’s and a night in the Union Jack club and then out to the desert. Those innocent early years in the clean sands of North Africa, first with the LRDG, then with L Detachment, learning how to survive and fight an enemy that deserved your respect. Then the POW camps, escape and recapture, then back to Blighty and the Territorial Army and, finally, 22 SAS. Malaya and Borneo and Oman, taking pride in the work; then marrying Ann Lim, losing her and baby Ian, learning what it was to suffer pain and cracking up for the first time.
After that, it could not get worse. It could only be not so bad. Losing Ann Lim and Ian, he lost himself and never quite found his way back. Then Aden and the Yemen, where national pride was replaced with shame; then Northern Ireland and a final disillusionment with those in authority.
It had all changed then. It was not what it had been. Innocent enthusiasm became soured professionalism and then rage and despair. The old order was crumbling. The world he wanted was disappearing. The values he had fought for had been lost and would never come back.
Diane had taught him that. What she feared had come to pass. The clean wars had been replaced with counter-revolutionary warfare and the dirty tricks of counter-terrorist work – the moral lines were all blurred there. Terrorists and hostages: who could tell the differences these days? The ‘undiplomatic’ receptions on the lawn of a foreign embassy were surely a sign of the times: the victims trussed up like chickens.
Diane had seen the changes coming. What she saw had then changed her. She went mad, as he, Marty, had gone mad, and, just like him, she paid the price. He went to the Falklands, broke the rules in order to fight, fought his piece and felt the brief resurrection of the pride he had lost.
After that, it was all over. His real life ended with retirement. He had tried to get it back through moral outrage and vengeance, the cleansing operations conducted by the Association, but that was no more than an escape from his feelings of loss. The loss of his childhood, his parents, his first wife; the loss of faith and pride; the loss of friends like Tone Williams and Bulldog Bellamy and TT; and, last but not least, the loss of the affection of Paddy Kearney, his hero and mentor: the best friend of all.
Paddy… Now standing right there in front of him, his face gaunt and wrinkled, his hair grey and thinning, his hands trembling as he raised the 9-Milly in a single, quick movement to do what he had to do.
Marty knew, on the instant, that it was over, and it seemed right and fitting. He stepped forward, smiling, knowing what real friends were for, and automatically raised his right hand to shake Paddy’s hand.
‘Why not?’ he said.
There were worse ways to die.
Chapter Twelve
Paddy understood death. He knew all about it in its many manifestations and now that it was coming to himself he decided to help it along. He had known that it was coming, felt it growing in his soul, though in truth the tumour was growing in his head and gradually taking command of him.
You always thought you could beat it, but in the end you never could. Even pain, which he had endured with such pride in the past, when he had been with the SAS, in the desert and in the jungle, finally became too much and overwhelmed you. When it did that, when you knew that it wouldn’t stop, it was time to get out.
Paddy was going to join the SAS Exit Club, taking his own life, making sure it didn’t drag out, thus saving himself misery and increasing humiliation, preventing his family from having to watch him suffer, making it better for everyone. He was dying and nothing would stop the process and that was enough to know.
He would take his own life in the cleanest way he knew, but not before he had completed his final task by putting a stop to the rot. There was no turning back from this anymore– and there was no going forward. It had to end here and now.
He had begun the process with the shooting of Taff Hughes and even now he was struck by the realization that Taff had died as he had always lived, without fear or doubt.
Taff had seen Paddy coming at him, the 9-Milly raised, and he had smiled and reached under his coat for his own hidden handgun, though he did it too late. When Paddy shot him, when the bullets pierced his heart, he died on the instant, his baby-blue eyes, beneath the shock of blond hair, wide open and blind. He appeared to be still smiling, perhaps in mockery, when Paddy walked away from him. He lived and died as a mystery.
Don’t we all? Paddy wondered.
Sitting in his gleaming Mercedes Benz, in a street in St. John’s Woo d, he studied that big house across the road, secured with armed guards and CCTV, marvelling that his pupil, that impulsive young man, had come so far only to lose his way and end up in the wrong place. He did not belong in that big house, even though he could afford it. That big house was not the place for a working-class lad who had lived his life by a code that placed honour above material success, achievement above its rewards, courage above all else.
The road to wisdom was rocky and not without suffering, but that young man, gaining wisdom through suffering, had then thrown it away. He had done so because everything he valued had been taken from him. The world had changed and he could not accept the changes and that had destroyed him. In retirement, faced with long, lonely days, bitter about his past and fearful for his future, he had turned his own values inside out to become someone else. The old Marty, that honourable young man, was still there inside him, but anxious, retreating. The new Marty, the puritanical avenger, had taken him over.
Paddy had to stop him. He could not let this continue. Though Marty had denied everything, Paddy knew that the assassinations of the past year had all been his doing – if not personally, then certainly through his Association, using old friends like Taff.
It was truly bizarre, Paddy thought. Marty had his sense of honour, his unshakeable belief in justice, but he was too puritanical for his own good and in the end it had poisoned him. He believed he was doing right, cutting down those who were wrong, but in taking the law into his own hands, he had placed himself beyond the pale, reinterpreting what he had learned through the regiment and then perverting its values.
There was a thin borderline between the soldier and the criminal. Marty had stepped over that line and could never turn back. Now he could only go forward and so he had to be stopped. Paddy, who had taught Marty most of what he knew, who had been his friend and mentor, now felt obliged to stop him once and for all, just as he had recently stopped Taff Hughes with two bullets through the heart.
A final double tap, he thought. It seems right and fitting.
He knew that Marty was planning something really bi
g and he thought he knew what it was.
‘She’s the worst of all,’ Marty had told him just before their disagreement. ‘She presides over the most repressive government in British history and she’s becoming worse every bloody month. The Falklands war is a good example. It was practically blanket censorship. Only one or two journalists were given access – the ones toeing the party line. She also backed that bastard, Seagrove, had him knighted, sang his praises, ensure that him and other swine like him had a nice, easy ride. She won’t tolerate criticism, surrounds herself with yes-men, and grows more arrogant with every passing year, more and more like a despot. Even worse, she’s had the SAS training the Khmer Rouge, so God knows what she’ll dream up for the regiment next. Of all the people I’d really love to neutralize, she’s first on my list. I just wish I could do it.’
‘You can’t, Marty. Forget it.’
‘Some day,’ Marty had said.
That was a long time ago, before the cleansings began, and although the Iron Lady hadn’t been the first in line, almost certainly she was still on his hit list. Sooner or later, if not this year, then the next, he might even go for it. Paddy thought this was possible.
Glancing across the leafy street at that big house with its CCTV and armed guards, its long black Rolls Royce with tinted-glass windows, he tried to imagine Marty inside, all alone, planning retribution for all the world’s wrongs, either real or imagined. He had never once admitted his involvement, but Paddy knew it was him.
Sighing, checking his wristwatch, he wondered when Marty might appear and help him put an end to it.
Glancing down at the newspaper, he studied the front page again, not reading it in detail this time, merely scanning the long list of scientists who had been working on secret defence projects and died in mysterious circumstances. His gaze was drawn irresistibly to the article about the signals expert and former SAS man who had been picked up by two unknown men, left his home with them, then died when his vehicle crashed through the central reservation of a bypass.
Marty and Taff, Paddy thought. But now Taff is no more.
When he glanced at the separate article about the British government’s embarrassment over widespread revelations that it had been using the SAS to train the notorious Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, he knew that Marty would be setting his sights high when he chose his next targets. Yes, he would go straight to the top.
Shaking his head in disgust, or possibly despair, Paddy put the newspaper down, then slid his right hand around his waist, automatically checking that his Browning 9mm High Power handgun was still in the cross-draw position in its old Len Dixon holster. Satisfied, he gazed across the road, studying the front door of the house, realizing with grim amusement that the Browning High Power was the most apt weapon to use for the job – for more reasons than one.
He also brooded on the fact that he was about to assassinate his best friend. This thought gave him pause.
Not for long, though. At that moment, Marty emerged from the house across the road and stepped into the driveway. He spoke to his armed guard. The guard nodded and went inside. Obviously deciding that he could do without the guard, Marty walked past his gleaming Rolls Royce and headed for the front gate.
The gate was opened electronically from inside, probably by the guard.
Paddy slid out of his car, his rented Mercedes Benz. His bones ached and his head was hurting. He felt almost as old as Marty looked when he reached the front gate. Paddy hurried across the road. He had no time to waste. He stepped up onto the pavement. Marty walked through the opened gateway and then turned towards him.
Marty looked directly at him, recognized him, showed surprise, and Paddy felt himself smiling automatically until he remembered his purpose here. Marty, also smiling, kept walking towards him, raising his hand in welcome, and Paddy was washed in a great wave of love and grief that almost paralysed him.
Marty stopped and stared at him. He glanced down at Paddy’s waist. Paddy whipped the 9-Milly out, spread his legs in the classic stance, held the weapon in the two-handed grip and took aim all at once.
Marty saw what he was doing. He looked surprised, then he smiled again. He raised both hands in the air, as if releasing a white dove, then he shrugged and seemed to relax, perhaps even welcoming it.
‘Why not?’ he said.
Paddy fired a double tap, aiming at Marty’s heart, and Marty crashed backwards into the railings and slumped to the pavement. Paddy didn’t have to check: he knew that Marty was dead. Turning away, he hurried back to his Mercedes Benz and climbed in and slammed the door. He glanced once across the road and saw that Marty hadn’t moved. Reaching down for the button job in the glove compartment, he curled his fingers around it. His thumb rested on the button. He looked at Marty’s slumped body. The light seemed to shimmer and expand around Marty as Paddy saw the real world for the last time, brilliantly illuminated and magically magnified, caught in an unforgettable instant that stretched out forever.
He smiled and pressed his finger on the button job, thinking, Who dares–
Also available in the ‘Exit Club’ series as Kindle ebooks:
Book One: The Originals Book Two: Bad Boys Book Three: The Professionals Book Four: Conspiracies
GLOSSARY
agal small Arab cap or band for holding a head-dress in place
ARU Air Reconnaissance Unit
ASU active service unit
atap a kind of jungle palm
BBE Bizondere Bystand Eenheid
beasting psychological trick of pleasantness followed by abuse, used by Directing Staff (DS) during exercises
Bofors gun light anti-aircraft gun
casevac
CCO
changkol
chappal
COBR
COMMCEN COPS
CQB
CT
CT
DPG
DPM DS DZ
E and E Exfiltration Fincos FOB
Fred (a Fred) futah
GEO
casualty evacuation (a casevac
helicopter)
Clandestine Communist Organization a kind of hoe
Indian sandal
Cabinet Office Briefing Room communications centre
close-observation platoons
close-quarter battle
communist terrorist (note: two CTs, see next)
counter-terrorist
Diplomatic Protection Group
disruptive-pattern material
directing staff (in exercises)
drop zone, a landing zone for
parachutists
escape and evasion
surreptitious withdrawal of troops, spies etc., esp. from danger
gharries Ghibili GIGN
GPMG green slime nickname for members of the SAS Intelligence Corps GSG-9 German border police antifield intelligence NCOs forward operating base
a tout for MI5
long-sleeved Arab robe
Spain’s Grupo Especial de Operaciones
horse-drawn carriages
a hot, dust-carrying wind
Groupment d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie
general-purpose machine gun
HALO Int and Sy Group jarit
left
terrorist unit
high-altitude, low-opening, said of a certain kind of dangerous parachute jump
Intelligence and Security Group a meal of raw pork, rice and salt,
Ju Stukas
Keeni-Meeni
kijang
Kremlin, the kukri
kunjia LMG LRDG LUPS LZ
maroon machine
to putrefy buried in the ground in a bamboo shoot, favoured by the Dyaks of Borneo
German fighter planes
Swahili term used to describe the
movement of a snake in the grass, adopted by soldiers as a description of undercover work
a barking deer found in the jungle nickname for the intelligence Section of Regimental HQ
a machete
Omani knife
light machine gun
Long Range Desert Group
laying-up positions, dug out of the desert floor or earth, usually
Milos
MIOs MPI
MSR
NITAT
NOCS OP padi
parang
PC
PIRA
PNGs QRF R and I
RAOC
Rattan
REME
RTU RV
samsu
SARBE SAS
SBS
seladang
Senussi
SF
shemagh
for sleeping in
landing zone
Parachute Regiment troops in Northern Ireland
military intelligence liaison
officers
military intelligence officers mean point of impact, a term used by marksmen
main supply route
Northern Ireland Training
Advisory Team
Italian Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza
observation post
Malayan paddy-field
large, heavy Malayan knife also used as a weapon
patrol commander
Provisional IRA
passive night-vision goggles quick-reaction force
resistance to interrogation
Royal Army Ordnance Corps Malaysian climbing palm
Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers
return to (original) unit, a form of punishment for misdemeanour rendezvous point
a strong spirit made from rice surface-to-air rescue beacon Special Air Service
Special Boat Section
wild ox or bison of Malaya Muslim fraternity found in 1837 security forces
a type of shawl worn around the
head by Arab peoples souk Arab market-place
tab route march
TAOR tactical area of responsibility tapai a rice wine favoured by the
Dyaks of Borneo ulu Malayan jungle as known by the natives
yomping a colloquial word for marching
Other Kindle e-books by Shaun Clarke Underworld Red Hand
The Opium Road Dragon Light
