by Andy McNab
The pallbearers sat in the choir stalls, sideways on to everyone else, ready to take the coffin out again. It gave Sean a good view of Clark’s family, nodding quietly during the eulogies, singing the hymns with gusto. Sometimes the mother dabbed her eyes with a hanky; apart from that, her restraint and the way she held herself somehow communicated a far deeper loss than if she had been howling or wailing.
We let you down, Sean thought, looking at Mrs Clark. She chose that precise moment to glance up, and their eyes met. He quickly looked away again, but then stole another sideways glance. Her face was kind, and Sean thought he saw her give him a brief nod before turning her attention back to the padre.
And what the fuck had that meant? Yes, I know? Or, I forgive you? Or, Wasn’t your fault?
Sean knew what he would be saying in her place, and it wasn’t any of those. If he was a civvy who had just lost a loved one, he would want to scream: If you lot can’t protect yourselves, how can you protect us?
And then they were outside again, ranks of soldiers standing at attention while the coffin was loaded into a hearse. They saluted as the hearse moved off and a small fleet of black limos carried the Clark family after it for the private cremation.
‘Fall out!’
And the funeral was over.
‘Well, fuck me,’ said a familiar voice. ‘I could very easily never have to do that again.’
Milling around outside the church with the other soldiers, Sean found he was standing next to Heaton. The events of the last few days had drained him of emotion and he just felt tired. They had also made him re-evaluate the reason why they had fallen out. The thoughts he had been having in the church hadn’t helped.
Heaton offered him an open cigarette packet, then began to pull it away. ‘No – you don’t, do you . . . ?’
‘Cheers,’ Sean said, and took one before they were gone.
Heaton’s eyebrows went up. ‘Filthy habit, Harker.’ He flicked the lighter on and held it out. ‘Could get you killed.’
‘Ha. Funny.’ Sean drew in a breath. No, it wasn’t really his thing, but he wanted an excuse to keep talking. ‘Mind if I have a word?’
The eyebrows went up again, but Heaton nodded his head slightly down the road. They started to walk.
‘Clark should have checked her car more,’ Sean began. ‘I know that. Doesn’t mean that what happened was her fault.’
‘Never said it was, mate.’
‘We’re the best fucking army in the world. Maybe not the biggest, but the best. And we couldn’t stop one of our own mates being blown up. So how the fuck are we supposed to protect anyone else?’
He waved a hand in the general direction of the perimeter fence. ‘They’re defenceless, out there. We’ve got all the guns in here, but . . . the army can’t be everywhere. It isn’t allowed to be. And we’ve got Rules of Engagement. So in all those places where we can’t be, people have to be able to look out for themselves. Stands to reason.’
Heaton looked at him strangely. ‘That is the weirdest echo I ever heard. Could have sworn I said all that back in the pub. The time you – uh, let’s say – resigned.’
‘Yeah. Well. About that . . .’
Heaton looked up at him coolly, one eyebrow raised.
OK, you bastard, Sean thought. You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you? He swallowed. ‘That thing you’ve got going . . .’
‘Yeah?’
Oh, crap, this is going to be such a bad idea but I don’t know what else to do . . . ‘Tell me how it works.’
Chapter 19
Sean sat opposite Heaton at the small kitchen table in the corporal’s flat. Between them was a teapot, two half-full mugs, an opened packet of ginger nut biscuits, an envelope full of money, and the main focus of their discussion: two Glocks.
Heaton grabbed his mug and took a gulp. ‘So, pop quiz, hot shot. Which one’s real?’
Sean stared at the pistols. ‘They’re identical.’
‘Without doing the NSPs, pick them up,’ Heaton suggested.
He did exactly that. The weight was the same, the serial numbers were there. Even the number written by the quartermaster on the hand grip. They were identical. ‘I don’t understand. They’re both real, right?’
Heaton placed his mug on the table, picked up the weapon on Sean’s right. He pulled back the slide so that Sean could see the spring mechanism inside. It was never going to fire real bullets.
‘As long as no one cocks it, no one will ever know. It’s really too easy. All I do is get the fake, knock it around to give it that worn-in look, sort out the serial number and the number from the quartermaster’s records. And no’ – he cut off Sean’s question – ‘the quartermaster isn’t in on this. Anyone can look up the records. Then I replace the Airsoft magazine with the real thing – they’re dead easy to get hold of – and there you go.’
Sean sat back and remembered the briefing on how the arms kote – the secure armoury where the weapons were stored – worked. It was next to the guardroom, which was permanently manned by armed soldiers. It had a permanent storeman, a veteran sergeant who had lost a leg in Afghanistan and was medically unfit for ops. Not a man who would easily be fooled. He was responsible for ensuring that all the weapons were present and secured by chains. Each one was individually checked out and signed for, and then checked back against the arms book, which listed every number. The book was seen daily by the duty officer, who would also count the weapons, and the RQMS – the Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant – checked the armoury at irregular intervals too. Any missing weapon would soon be found.
‘So . . .’ he said, thinking this through. Heaton gave him an encouraging nod to go on. It was all falling into place. ‘You get the number of the real gun . . . but then you’ve got to get the number onto the fake . . . They’re not just written on. They’re engraved. So . . . you get the number one day, out on the ranges, and then the next time you’re on the ranges, you’ve got the fake all prepared. The real gun comes out to the ranges, the fake goes back . . .’
‘Give the boy a GCSE,’ Heaton said admiringly. ‘You got it.’
‘How do you know who’s got the gun you want to swap?’
‘I’m the corporal, remember? I’ve got every reason to check the records. I just look up which private has the weapon I’m after. Then, at the end of the day, when all firing is done, I make an excuse – a snap inspection – to check his weapon. And I make the switch.’
‘Bloody hell.’ Despite everything he had been feeling about supplying stolen weapons to people like Copper, Sean felt a grudging glow of admiration. Heaton was to guns what Sean had been to cars. It was a whole new area of lawbreaking, and any kind of expert had to be respected. ‘That’s brilliant.’ Then he shook his head to clear it and let reality back in. ‘But someone’s gonna want to fire the fake at some point in the future . . .’
Heaton grinned. ‘There’s more guns than there are soldiers. The storemaster rotates the collection and I know the pattern. I always take a weapon that’s about to be rotated out of use. After a couple of months, sure, gun number 12345 is going to come back into circulation, the fake will be discovered and this little earner is going to come to an end. But until then’ – he tapped the envelope – ‘money, money, money. So far I’ve lifted four Glocks and I’ll get a few more in. Plus there’s plans for other stuff.’
‘It’ll do more than end. It’ll be a fucking hurricane-force shitstorm.’
‘And not one speck of it will hit yours truly.’ Heaton flashed Sean a complacent smile. ‘Or you.’ The smile seemed to slip off his face and just hang there like it had snagged on something. It was technically a smile but there wasn’t an ounce of humour in it. ‘I’ve got a long memory, and let’s just say I have my fall guys lined up to take the rap.’
The smile reminded Sean just a bit too much of Copper. It reminded him that however much he might admire the heist, he wasn’t in this for fun. This was to protect people. Heaton had lied too many times for Sea
n to think of him as a friend now.
But everything he was saying had the ring of truth about it. All the lies had been things Sean wanted to hear. He didn’t particularly want to hear this.
Even so, he had to ask: ‘Suppose you need to supply, uh, a bulk order?’
He got another of those complacent smiles. ‘Baby steps, Harker, baby steps. I’ll let you in further when I’m confident you’re not going to wuss out on me again. Let’s just agree that I have other little side operations going on, and leave it at that.’
Sean flushed – he had not wussed out, he had been fucking livid about being played and used – but he had other priorities now. He sat back, thrust his hands into his pockets, gazed at the two pistols that were lying side by side in front of him. The blaze of admiration for a stroke of sheer lawbreaking genius was being pissed on by the one fact that he was truly unhappy about.
‘We’re still getting firepower into the hands of civilians. People like Copper.’
Heaton sighed. ‘People like Copper have come to the same conclusion as people like you and me. There is a problem. This is the solution. This stuff isn’t for robbing banks or doing houses over or scaring people. It’s for use against the enemy. And face it, you know the enemy when you see them.’
Sean thought again, for the thousandth time, of Clark’s bomber. Oh yes, he knew the enemy.
He sighed and bit his lip. And looked up at Heaton from under his brows. ‘OK. OK, you got me. I’m in.’
Heaton grinned. ‘I knew you’d see it made sense. You’re not stupid. OK. First things first.’ He opened the envelope and peeled off twenty-five £20 notes. Sean didn’t reach out to take them. Heaton folded the notes, reached over and tucked them into Sean’s breast pocket. Then he leaned back in his chair and rested his hands behind his head.
‘And you’re just in time to help me with the next job. This is something else – bigger than the armoury scam. I can put a Glock in my coat, but these . . . not so much.’
‘What?’ Sean asked. ‘What’s the something else?’
Heaton got up, walked over to a cupboard and pulled out a long box with an Airsoft logo at one end which he laid on the table. Sean saw the picture on the top and felt his heart stop. He didn’t need Heaton to open it up, but he did anyway.
‘SA80s,’ Heaton said. He lifted the weapon out and laid it on the table with the Glocks. ‘You were asking about bulk orders. This is the fake. We need the real deal. Times six.’
Chapter 20
Rain.
Well, what had he expected? Sean pulled the collar of his army-issue Gore-Tex jacket a little tighter around his neck, under the rim of his helmet.
He lay on his front next to Heaton in the OP, the observation point the two of them had established beneath a gorse bush in the middle of Salisbury Plain, while Heaton scanned the area ahead and below with the night-vision binos.
‘Here,’ said Heaton, breaking into Sean’s thoughts. He passed the binos over. ‘Have a goose at that.’
The bush clung to the top of a rise looking down into a long shallow valley. Sean took the binoculars and jammed them hard against his eye sockets to stop the rain running into them.
They had left the Matiz – the Impreza would have been far too memorable for other drivers – parked off the road between Tilshead and Chitterne. Then they had yomped the rest of the way on foot, which meant they were now about as far from the civilian world as it is possible to be in the south of England. That was where the army liked to hold its exercises.
If it had been a CQR, a Close Quarter Recce, they’d have dug out a hole deep enough to hide them and their kit completely. But Heaton didn’t want to leave any trace of where they were hiding or where the weapons would eventually be stashed, and the scattering of soil might attract attention. So, instead of digging, they had spent a couple of hours before the Army Reserve arrived carefully carving out a hollow in the centre of the gorse bush, and camouflaging it. The stuff was a bitch to work with, carving out a thousand little pricks and cuts in your hands and wrists, but when they were done, the only way you would know anyone was hiding there was if you were the person doing the hiding, or happened to stand on them by accident.
But it wasn’t waterproof. They didn’t even have a basha – a piece of waterproof material stretched above them by clever use of bungees, paracord and a few well-placed sticks. It could still be seen, and it was one more thing to risk leaving behind. So tonight they had to accept that Gore-Tex clothing on top of the normal kit was the only protection.
Sean was already freezing and it was only ten p.m. They would be here for a good few hours more. He was already fantasizing about long hot showers – never mind what the rest of the platoon was getting up to that night. They were just getting back on track after Clark’s death, and many of the lads had been planning a night on the town to over-compensate. Sean knew where he would rather be.
‘What do you see?’ Heaton asked.
‘Rain,’ said Sean. ‘No . . . wait a minute . . . over there on the right . . . Yep, more rain. Fuck me, mate – I think it’s raining.’
‘Don’t be a dick.’
Sean kept staring through the binoculars. The thing they were looking at was a fair distance away, about a kilometre, but there was enough movement to make it visible even through the rain. Despite the relentless downpour, moonlight was streaming across the land. Somehow the moon had positioned itself in the one clear area of sky. It gave the evening an odd feel. The rain came down in stair rods, almost glowing under the lunar gaze. And beneath it all, small figures were moving.
‘They’re in for a properly shit weekend,’ Sean said. He watched the Reservists busying themselves with trench-digging, and even though these were the guys they were going to rip off, he let himself feel a little sorry for them.
Heaton had deliberately targeted an Army Reserve exercise for newbies. ‘No live ammo, so they’ll never get to shoot their guns, and they’ll all be knackered,’ he had said, back in his kitchen two weeks earlier. ‘And they’ll be new to all this. No ex-professionals among them, other than a few of the NCOs and officers. Once they’re dug in, we’ll move out. The trenches won’t be more than deep scrapes. They’ll be working in pairs. One will be grabbing kip and the other will technically be on watch, but even he’ll be half out of it. All we have to do is crawl up to some of the ones on the outside, bag our SA80s, then disappear.’
Sean, like any soldier, had respect for the Army Reserve. Sure, he knew the jokes – I’ve been in the Reservists for ten years, so in real life I just passed basic – but they were good-natured. The Reservists made up a huge proportion of the armed forces. Even the SAS had two Army Reserve regiments, 21 and 23 SAS. And those who joined from civvy street worked their arses off to match the standards expected, and often exceeded them.
But that came later, as the Reservists settled into their role. The newbies down the hill might still think Army Reserve life was all weekend soldiering and a bit of pocket money. In a way, Sean reckoned he was doing them a favour. They were going to learn the hard way that someone could infiltrate them. It could get them killed, one day. They wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
So for the next couple of hours Sean and Heaton took turns on the binoculars while the other tried to rest as best he could. They were cammed up like Arnie in Commando, in the same kit as the Reservists, so even if they got pinged, they could try and play like they were on the exercise too.
Finally, with midnight slipping past and the rain easing, Heaton made his decision. ‘OK, let’s get us some guns.’
As he’d been keen to point out to Sean, he had ‘invested’ in half a dozen Airsoft SA80s, and they were with them now in the OP. They’d cost him just a shade over two hundred quid each. Usually they would be more than that, but these ones had . . . well, not exactly fallen off the back of a lorry – just not got all the way from the supplier to the shop that had ordered them. And these were the ones they would swap for the real weapons. When th
e job was discovered, Sunday evening or Monday morning, all eyes would be focused on the stores that had supplied the weapons for the exercise.
It was, Sean had to admit, just a little bit genius, but he wasn’t going to say so to Heaton.
Heaton gave his orders, directing unnecessarily with his hands. ‘You go left’ – gesture – ‘I’ll go right’ – gesture – ‘then, when you’ve swapped your three out, we meet back here’ – gesture.
‘So hang on . . .’ Sean said. ‘I go left?’ He pointed right.
Heaton scowled. ‘Just go in the opposite direction to the hand you wank with.’
‘Aw, now I’m really confused.’
‘Oh, piss off.’
Heaton took three of the rifles and slipped out of the back of the OP, snaking through the gorse and bracken. Sean followed directly behind him with the rest. At the edge, they gave each other a final look. Heaton made a wanking gesture with finger and thumb, and slid off to the right. From that point on, Sean focused on his own movements. Heaton was of no interest.
Move fast, stay low, Sean told himself silently. He got behind a low rise, then was up on his feet and running at a crouch. The thump-thump, thump-thump of his feet sounded loud enough to wake the dead. But when the rise came to an end, and he slipped back down onto his front, he was still safe. No one was alerted to his presence. Yet.
Now he was within a couple of hundred metres of his targets, each scrape about fifty metres apart, and he could barely see them. The clouds had finally caught up with the moon. They were full and thick, and only the dimmest glow came through – just enough to enable Sean to navigate through the darkness.
