Street Soldier

by Andy McNab

  ‘Best part of the job, this!’ It was Heaton, standing alongside him.

  Sean nodded in agreement, with a big grin. Legally firing off guns was the next best thing to driving a fast car.

  And what had Heaton said in the car? Could always use a little help . . . That sounded a lot like an offer. How serious had it been? He gave the corporal a sideways glance and wondered if now was the moment to bring it up.

  But then the order came through from Sergeant Adams to prepare to fire.

  Sean was in standing position, his weight already forward on his left foot, ready to fire. He pulled his weapon up and into the shoulder, staring down through the ACOG, which drew the targets in close and clear.

  ‘Single shots, in your own time,’ Adams said. ‘Have it, then!’

  Sean squeezed the trigger. The crack of the round was followed by the thump of it slamming home down range. He fired off single shots, lowering his weapon between each one to adjust his aim and stop his arms fatiguing, breathing, staying calm. He knew why they were on single shots rather than the usual three-round bursts – this was all about nailing their accuracy and marksmanship. And fully automatic was, as every soldier knew, a last resort. If you were down to that, odds were that things had really gone to shit.

  For the rest of the day the platoon cycled through a range of weaponry, honing their skills so that they could use each gun efficiently and with deadly accuracy. Last item of the day was their Glock pistols, firing 9mm rounds down range. Which made Sean think of Heaton again. He took up the position, feet apart, hands together on the grip, sighting along the barrel at the target, a black silhouette of an attacking soldier. And he couldn’t help thinking back just a few days to when he had been sighting like this for real, on a cowering, pimply loan shark he had just beaten up. How many of the lads around him could say the same?

  His lips curled into a grim smile and he opened fire. Steady shots, relaxing into the kick from the weapon, adjusting his aim each time to ensure accuracy. Despite what you saw in the movies, hitting anything accurately with a pistol at a distance beyond twenty metres was not easy. In fact, it was basically a miracle. But that wasn’t what these weapons were designed for. They were for close quarter combat, and that meant around five metres or less, or as backup – which meant that everything had gone to shit even more than putting your rifle on fully automatic. The Glock was your last resort.

  Eventually the day came to an end and Sergeant Adams gathered everyone around him.

  ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Not brilliant, but not bad. I’ll be putting in for a few more days like this. Can’t have you lot becoming slack with your marksmanship. Check your weapons and piss off. Harker, you have the lovely job of helping Corporal Heaton clear up and sign this lot back in.’

  There were worse jobs. After a day on the range, while everyone else was hitting the pub, someone always had to spend a while checking the area for any live rounds, clearing up, then lugging stuff back to the quartermaster department. They all ended up doing it at some point. Today was Sean’s turn.

  As the rest of the section piled into the back of a Land Rover Wolf, he stood there with Heaton.

  ‘Done this before? No? Doesn’t take long,’ the corporal said. ‘All the weapons are already checked through and clear, so we just need to load those up, bag up the brass’ – he meant the expended rounds – ‘check the area, and we’re done.’

  ‘What about the rounds left over?’ Sean asked.

  ‘No problem. I’ll deal with them, you get the weapons sorted, right?’

  Sean nodded, and for the next half-hour loaded up the SA80s, side arms and GPMG into the Wolf.

  Finally Heaton came over. ‘Done?’

  ‘All in and accounted for. You?’

  The corporal nodded. He had stacked up the ammo crates that had accompanied them for the day on the range.

  ‘I’ll give you a hand,’ Sean offered.

  ‘No need,’ he said. ‘You can drive.’

  Something else the army had done for Sean was get him through his driving test. His HGV licence was the next target on the radar. He went round to the driver’s door and clambered in. A couple of minutes later, Heaton got in beside him. Sean sparked the engine into life and spun the Wolf round to head off back to barracks.

  ‘Your mate Clark was on good form today,’ Heaton said. ‘Nice to see a woman can aim and fire at the same time.’

  Sean bit his lip and several angry responses ran through his mind but he’d had practice in this kind of thing, with Copper. You didn’t get offended by Copper being a jerk – just like you didn’t blame a dog for yapping: it was what they did. So all he did was mutter, ‘Leave it out,’ and they drove in silence for a few moments.

  ‘Good weekend, then?’ Heaton asked.

  Sean grunted. ‘I’ve had better.’ He subconsciously flexed the fingers of his right hand again. Shit, they were stiff. The split skin had scabbed over and the bruises were fading, but it had never taken that long before. He really must have pounded that bastard Ricky.

  Heaton saw the movement, then leaned closer. He whistled. ‘OK, so things kind of went downhill after Friday. What was that? A bust-up for old times’ sake?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Sean was happy to let Heaton think whatever he wanted – telling an NCO he’d stolen a car was probably not his best plan. Especially not when he wanted to get into the NCO’s good books. He took a breath to raise the subject of extra work, but Heaton got in first.

  ‘Do you miss it?’

  ‘What? London? Nah, not at all really.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ Heaton said. ‘Your old mates, all that . . . The lifestyle.’

  Sean shook his head.

  ‘Not very convincing,’ Heaton noted.

  ‘Lifestyle got me banged up,’ Sean said. ‘Never again.’

  He wasn’t sure what else he could say. He didn’t miss it, but at the same time . . . There was no question about it. Grabbing that car had felt good. It had scratched an itch he hadn’t known he had, and it meant his mum was safe.

  And there was still the issue of money.

  ‘I . . .’ he began.

  Heaton looked at him expectantly as he pulled the Wolf off the ranges track and onto a metalled road.

  Sean looked straight ahead. ‘I could really do with some extra cash. Like you were saying.’

  Heaton glanced sideways at him. ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s just that—’ Sean paused, bit his lip. Heaton didn’t need to know why he needed the money and he wasn’t going to start blurting out his mum’s problems. ‘Yeah. Stuff at home . . . It’d come in handy.’

  For the next few minutes neither spoke. Sean drove on, his right arm resting out of the open window, his left making sure the Wolf stayed in a straight line.

  Heaton cut the silence. ‘I think I can help you out there.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s easy work. Just delivering stuff for me, that’s all. Would give me time on some other projects. Cash in hand and we’ll split anything I use you for sixty–forty. How does that sound?’

  ‘Sounds sweet,’ Sean said. ‘What’s the money like?’

  ‘Depends,’ Heaton told him. ‘Sixty–forty would get you . . . a few hundred extra a month. Say, half a grand.’

  Sean glanced at him. Alarm bells were going off in his head. ‘For delivering stuff? What stuff?’

  ‘Supplies,’ Heaton said. Sean kept looking at him and he shrugged. ‘Reassigned stuff. Stuff we get for free but’ – he gave a laugh – ‘some freaks will pay big time for it. And you’re about to hit that lamppost.’

  Sean looked back at the road, just in time to pull the Wolf back within the white lines.

  ‘You mean you steal from the quartermaster? Are you fucking mental?’ The last thing he needed was to get nabbed by the army and thrown back inside, this time in a military prison.

  ‘I said reassigned,’ said Heaton. ‘Damaged, out-of-date ki
t – the MoD doesn’t want it. They’d only destroy it. I just cover with a bit of paperwork and it’s done. Anything from a sleeping bag and a stove to ration packs and magazines. I just siphon it off.’

  ‘Sleeping bags,’ Sean said sceptically. He thought back to Heaton’s flat. It would take a lot of hooky sleeping bags to pay for that. But he had learned long ago not to ask too much unless you knew for a fact that you would like the answer. What you didn’t know couldn’t implicate you. And he really needed some way of earning more money.

  Heaton laughed. ‘OK. Let’s just say that what the MoD doesn’t need, I make use of, and leave it at that. It’s in that strange grey area between black market and eBay. So, you free Saturday evening? I got a new contact placed an order. Small delivery to sound me out, potential to go mega.’

  Sean looked stonily at the road ahead. The gatehouse was approaching and he shifted down a gear. To tell the truth, Saturday night he’d been kind of hoping to hit the town with some of the lads from the platoon. Beer, dancing and a distinct possibility of pulling . . .

  But five hundred quid for a few nights’ work was five hundred quid more than he would get any other way. And he might be back in time for the night out.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Saturday.’

  Chapter 14

  Sean had kind of hoped he would get the loan of the Impreza to make the drop. No such luck. Heaton also had a battered blue Daewoo Matiz for these occasions. It had about as much street cred as leg warmers and a perm, and he had to put the seat as far back as it would go to get his long legs in. But the radio worked, so he just settled back and followed the satnav directions, thumping out the beat from a CD of old-school rock hits on the steering wheel.

  The route took him out over Salisbury Plain, on well-maintained civilian roads rather than the rutted army tracks he had got used to. It was getting on for sunset on a late summer evening, so the sun was low and the rolling landscape was bathed in orange light. Sean wondered how it was that civvy and military roads apparently had different weather systems. Whenever he was out on exercise it seemed to be raining.

  But now the weather was good, the roads smooth, and he found himself simply enjoying being out and about – until the satnav told him where to go.

  ‘Your destination is on your right.’

  It was a rutted track, overlooked by trees. Sean squinted doubtfully down it.

  He had kind of assumed they would meet in a layby or something and do a simple switch. Still plenty of daylight for everyone to see something perfectly innocent going on. Other cars passing by. No one watching would think there was anything funny happening.

  But off the road, in an out-of-the-way place like this? And if things went south, he was hardly in the world’s greatest getaway car.

  That thought made him laugh. It also eased his nerves. He had met people who tried to go back on deals. Take the goods, refuse the payment. The ones who survived the reminders soon went out of business for the simple reason that no one would trust them again. A successful operation was based on trust – and Sean had seen with his own eyes that Heaton was successful. He wasn’t being set up.

  He put the car into gear and headed down the lane.

  The trees blocked out enough light for the car’s headlights to come on automatically. The smell of stale manure started to drift in through the car vents and he wrinkled his nose. Country smells had been a brand-new experience during training; he had been quite revolted to learn that cows and sheep could just crap in the field and no one picked it up. He had seen more of the countryside in the last year than he had in his first sixteen, and he still didn’t like it.

  At the end of the track he drove into a small yard surrounded on three sides by old farm buildings. The skeletal remains of a tractor were rusting in a far corner. He checked his watch – early by five minutes. He turned off the engine and stepped out.

  Car headlights swung off the road in the distance and disappeared into the tree tunnel. The lights strobed through the trees as the car drew near. Then it was out of the tunnel and rumbling towards Sean. He recognized the silhouette as a Range Rover. He propped himself against the Matiz and tried very hard to look cool.

  The driver’s window slid down smoothly. ‘So where’s the package?’

  The voice was one of those accent-less ones. Well-spoken but difficult to trace, giving no real hint of being from any particular part of the country.

  ‘In the boot.’

  ‘Well, it’s not doing much good to either of us there, is it?’

  Sean shrugged and made his way round to the back of his car to pop the boot. He hadn’t asked Heaton what the package was, and Heaton probably wouldn’t have told him if he had – they both appreciated the need for plausible deniability. It was barely the size of a weekend suitcase, so whatever it was, it definitely wasn’t sleeping bags. It could be ration packs, he thought; medical kit maybe. Wasn’t his problem.

  He reached in and lifted the box. And almost fell into the boot. ‘Shit . . .’ He hadn’t expected it to be so heavy. He had to use both hands to haul it out.

  The man climbed down out of the Range Rover and went to open the rear door. ‘You OK with that?’

  ‘Yeah, no problem . . .’ Sean carried it over.

  ‘Just drop it in here.’

  Now Sean could get a better look at him. He was dressed in dark jeans and shirt. Hair short, age about thirty. He was shorter than Sean; Sean guessed he could take him in a fight, if the guy tried to stiff him for the payment. Sean had enforced a few debts in his time, and he had never enjoyed it.

  ‘Thank you,’ the man said as Sean swung the package into the back of the vehicle. ‘And this is yours, I believe.’ He held out a brown envelope.

  ‘Yeah, cheers,’ said Sean. As per orders, he opened it and ran his finger over a large wad of notes. The man snorted but waited with exaggerated patience.

  It was all twenties, all used, and fifty of them. So, yes, a thousand quid.

  ‘That would all seem to be in order,’ Sean allowed. Then, as the man shut the rear door, he couldn’t resist adding, ‘Never realized there was such a market for army surplus.’

  ‘Army surplus?’ The man laughed. ‘Whatever. Give me five minutes. I don’t want to feel I’m being followed.’

  So Sean watched him drive off before returning to the Matiz. It seemed even smaller now, even more pathetic, having sat in the shadow of the Range Rover.

  He chucked the money on the passenger seat and squeezed himself in after it. Then he paused, and picked up the envelope again. Flicked thoughtfully through the notes.

  Since leaving Burnleigh he had been clean – until this week – and now he had broken the law twice. The first time could have just been a relapse – old, buried habits unburying themselves. But this? He hadn’t just broken the law – he was getting paid for it too. That made him a pro.

  Heaton had said that it wasn’t exactly illegal, more a sort of grey area. Like shit. Legal stuff did not go down in deserted farmyards in the arse end of nowhere.

  Sean tucked the envelope into a pocket, still thoughtful. Clean sheet, to amateur, to professional, all in one week. What lay at the end of that particular path?

  But he was no longer some hot-headed kid, doing it for the rush. This was grown up. He needed the money for a good reason, and so he was earning it. The risk was low compared to some of the stuff he’d done in the past, and no one was getting hurt.

  Sean smiled as he eased the Matiz off the track and out onto the road. Perhaps he could have it both ways. The proper job, all above board, with pay and everything else that came with life as a soldier: excitement, adventure, awesome kit to play with. And alongside it a little bit of lawbreaking that wasn’t going to harm anybody. Why not? He felt the pocket that bulged with the envelope inside it. Yes, why not?

  A week later, Saturday afternoon, he was on his way again, working for Heaton, pushing the Matiz up the M3 and onto the M25, then hooking onto the Great North Road and into Londo
n.

  The week in between had been a real ball-ache, thanks to Sergeant Adams, filled with relentless PT and checks, right down to kit inspection, all rounded off with a night attack exercise. Now Sean badly needed to spend some time sorting out all the stuff Adams had found wrong with his kit. But that, as Heaton had pointed out on Thursday night when he made the offer, wouldn’t take all weekend. And it was an easy journey – he almost knew the way blindfold. Right next to Walthamstow.

  With the Matiz in second gear – first was not just painfully slow, it made the engine squeal like a pig caught in a trap – Sean threaded his way off a main road into a small side street. It was lined with derelict warehouses, blank walls rising up high – old mills waiting in line for some developer to come along and turn them into expensive flats to be sold to celebrities.

  The street came to a T-junction. Sean turned left and rolled on until he came to what Heaton had described as a door the colour of shit. He climbed out of the Matiz and knocked on the door with the delivery under his arm. It was slightly larger than a shoebox, heavier, but nowhere near as heavy as the box a week ago.

  Footsteps, then a bolt shifting.

  The door opened and Sean found himself looking – staring – up at Copper.

  ‘It’s the delivery lad!’ Copper’s face was one huge grin. ‘How’s it hanging, Seany?’

  Sean finally found words. ‘What you doing here?’

  ‘Waiting for you, you twat.’ Copper glanced over Sean’s shoulder at the Matiz and smirked.

  ‘Don’t say a word,’ Sean warned.

  ‘Suits you,’ said Copper. ‘Come on.’

  Sean followed him inside.

  ‘I’m guessing Josh Heaton didn’t tell you I was the customer, then?’ Copper said cheerfully.

  ‘No, he didn’t! And how the fuck do you know Heaton, anyway? And how did he know we know each other?’

  Copper led him down a passage with a scuffed carpet and scabby wallpaper. ‘How do I know him? Mutual acquaintances. How does he know about us? He asked me if I knew a lad who looked like a daddy longlegs that can’t get laid. I said, sounds like Sean Harker. He said, that’s him!’