by Andy McNab
He edged forward, leopard crawl, the three Airsoft SA80s clamped to his chest. Cold, wet grass brushed against his face, and the smell of damp vegetation was strong in his nostrils. The first trench came up fast and Sean paused. The sentry, the waking half of the pair, was sitting at the far end, hunched up, looking the other way and clearly not enjoying life. From his low position, Sean couldn’t see into the trench – couldn’t see what the other guy was doing. But he could hear gentle snores coming from ahead. He aimed his body in that direction and began to crawl again—
Then a flare went off: a hiss-s-s as it fired into the sky, and a sharp crack as it exploded, flooding the small valley with white light as bright as day.
Chapter 21
‘Shitshitshitshitshit!’
Sean flattened himself belly down under the glaring light, for all the good it would do. He might as well just walk up to them and pretend to be invisible.
The trenches were in chaos. Shouting. Lots of it. Action. Figures moving. What the fuck was going on?
More shouting. The trenches were emptying. Not in an orderly fashion either. The Reservists were up and out of them like rabbits from a warren.
An order disguised as a yell rolled across to him: ‘Get back in your trenches now! Move! Get in there!’
This was quickly followed by a shout of, ‘Who the crap let off that bastard flare?’
Whoever it was, Sean guessed, wasn’t going to own up. Because whoever it was knew he would be getting a royal kick up the arse.
And then came a shout which Sean thought at first must be directed at him: ‘You! Soldier!’
He gritted his teeth and looked up. Time to bluff his arse off.
‘What the fuck are you doing without your rifle?’
So, obviously not at him. He blinked into the light and studied the panicking Reservists more closely. Sure enough, he could count one, two . . . considerably more than six without their weapons. Their guns must still be in their trenches, alone and abandoned.
This was his chance.
He leaped up, and forward. The flare was dying and would soon hit the deck. There was still monumental confusion all around, and the trenches were empty.
He was in and out of the first in a heartbeat, one SA80 swapped. He scooted across to another trench, ducked in, bagged what he was after; same again at the third trench. And then he was out of there and into the dark before he’d even had a chance to think about what he’d just done. Several of the guys running around like headless chickens must have seen him, but he was dragged up like they were and no one saw anything unusual. The flare faded into nothing and he legged it without looking back, crouched all the way, until he got to the OP.
He dropped to the ground and spilled the weapons onto the dirt. Then he realized one flaw in the plan, which was that the entrance into the bush was too well hidden. He couldn’t find it in the dark. OK, so he could wait for Heaton and they could do it together.
He stayed still, listening for any sign of someone coming after him. But there was only one noise – the sound of someone else breathing nearby. It turned into a low chuckle.
‘The flare worked a treat, didn’t it?’
Sean swung round in the dark. ‘You are shitting me!’ he gasped between breaths. ‘That was you? Why the fuck didn’t you warn me? I was out in the open! I could have been spotted!’
‘I was thinking on my feet,’ Heaton said. He emerged from the shadow, a dark shape splitting from a dark shape, and squatted next to Sean. ‘One of the Reservists must have dropped a flare. I found it. Boom! And look what it got us.’
They both looked down at what was lying between them. Six SA80s. And somewhere out in the dark, six unsuspecting Reservists were at some point this weekend about to experience a whole world of confusion.
‘Have we really just done that?’ Sean felt himself start to grin. He was still mighty pissed off with Heaton – but hey, he might have done the same thing if the opportunity had come up. And between them they had pulled off one cool heist.
‘Yeah,’ said Heaton. ‘A rush or what?’ He didn’t give Sean a chance to reply. ‘We move now,’ he said. ‘Get these covered and let’s get out.’
That had been the final stroke of genius in the plan. The corporal didn’t want half a dozen semi-automatic rifles knocking around in the back of his car or stuffed away in a cupboard back at his flat. So they would stash them there on the Plain. It was the last place anyone would look, because no one in their right mind would leave stolen weapons in the place they actually stole them.
Sean didn’t need telling twice.
A sunny Sunday afternoon, the wet Saturday night well and truly gone, and Sean was back in the Monty. They had got back to Tidworth in the small hours and he had crashed in Heaton’s spare room, then back to barracks for a good long hot shower. His muckers naturally assumed he’d pulled the previous night, and he saw no reason to deny it.
Heaton came in, a huge grin on his face, and headed straight over without a detour to the bar.
‘Well?’ Sean asked.
‘We did it!’ Heaton said, a grin creasing his mouth. ‘We only did it! Christ, mate, this is the stuff of legend!’ He slid an envelope across the table. ‘Your cut of the fee. The goods have already been collected.’
Sean looked at him sharply. They were meant to be going back the next weekend, once any fuss about the guns had died down, to retrieve them. ‘Whoa! But I thought—’
‘Buyer agreed to collect. I just gave the coordinates. All sorted.’
Sean glanced inside the envelope. It was stuffed with notes and his heart beat a little faster.
‘That’s two grand, mate,’ Heaton said. ‘Not bad for a night’s work.’
‘Uh-huh . . .’
OK, so he wasn’t doing this for the money. That was what he told himself. He was doing this to get weapons into the hands of people who could fight back where the army couldn’t. But – like the drop he’d made in the farmyard – he couldn’t deny there was a rush that came with it, and handling money only made it better. Old habits were too ingrained to die.
But if this was going to go on, something had to change.
‘Jeez, don’t sound too happy about it or people will stare,’ Heaton said.
Sean looked him in the eye. ‘Mate, you’ve got to start playing straight with me.’
Heaton put on a puzzled frown. ‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning, you didn’t say anything about the buyer collecting. Meaning, you didn’t tell me about Copper. Meaning, you didn’t let on what I was supplying. Meaning, you keep telling me one thing and then I find it’s something else, and it’s pissing me off and it makes it hard to fucking trust you.’
They stared hard at each other, unblinking.
Heaton was the first to look away. ‘OK. Maybe . . . maybe I’m just too used to being a one-man show. Maybe I could learn to let you in a bit more. Shit, mate, I don’t want you not to trust me. So I’m sorry, OK?’
Sean grumpily allowed himself a smile. ‘Had to be said, mate.’
‘Course it did. And we’ve been invited to a party. The buyer wants to show his gratitude.’
Sean’s rising spirits came crashing very quickly back down. He shook his head firmly. ‘Nuh-uh. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll give it a miss. You don’t mix business and pleasure.’
Heaton frowned. ‘Doesn’t matter if it’s all the same to me. It’s not all the same to him, and I’ve already accepted on your behalf. They want to meet us, discuss possible further business.’
‘There isn’t going to be any further business,’ Sean snapped. ‘Not for bloody ages anyway. We can’t just go out shopping at the quartermaster stores twenty-four/seven, can we? You said yourself – it’s time limited. And we’re not going to bag another handful of SA80s any time soon. You can only be lucky for so long . . .’
Heaton just looked impassive and twirled a finger, waiting for Sean to get to the end of his spiel.
Sean sighed. ‘When is it?�
�
‘We can be there in an hour,’ Heaton said. ‘Drink up.’
Chapter 22
‘OK,’ Sean said as the Impreza rolled up a gravel drive, small stones popping and crunching beneath the tyres, and the house loomed at the end. ‘He’s rich.’
The place was all old wood and red brick, with a stunningly landscaped garden behind it. There were discreet cameras at the corners – not big enough to spoil the looks, but enough to be noticed.
All Sean knew was that they were somewhere near Guildford, which automatically meant money. The house, the grounds and the collection of cars parked outside – Jags, BMWs, wanky sports cars – meant lots of it.
Heaton hadn’t gone into any detail about their mysterious host, despite repeated questions as they made their way up the M3 and round the M25. Now, for some reason, he laughed. ‘Yeah. He’s Rich.’
‘Why’s that funny?’
‘Because he’s Rich, you prick. That’s his name.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’
‘He’s . . .’ Heaton drummed his fingers on the wheel as he found a spot between the swishmobiles. The Impreza could hold its own there. The Matiz would have crept away behind the nearest tree and quietly shot itself. ‘He’s one of those guys who knows people. Lots of people. And he’s best mates with every one of them. He wants something, he can grease it so it happens. You learn not to say no.’
‘So we’re going to be best mates too?’
‘Shit, no.’ Another laugh, this time more of a bark. ‘We’re the workforce. But fuck that. He treats us decent and, above all, he’s the customer. Got that?’
‘Got it.’
They climbed out and Sean gave the house another appraising look. He didn’t know what Heaton made from their deals, but even at two grand a pop it would take a lot of illicit hauls on Salisbury Plain to pay for this place. It was way out of his league. ‘I’m gonna guess the, uh, merchandise isn’t here.’
‘Only illegal thing here is your haircut, mate. C’mon.’
Heaton led him up brick steps to the front door. It opened at his third knock to reveal what Sean could really only describe as a hard bastard.
The man wasn’t particularly tall – probably around five foot nine, so Sean had a couple of inches on him. He wasn’t particularly heavily built, either, not like some nightclub bruiser pumped full of steroids. He wore a nice suit that was probably tailored.
But the eyes that flitted across Sean’s face were dead. Not a flicker of curiosity, or any kind of emotion. This guy, Sean knew with a certainty based on two seconds’ acquaintance, would squish him without thought or care if he had to.
‘Josh Heaton and Sean Harker,’ said Heaton, ‘as ordered.’
The man stepped back to let them enter, then closed the door behind them. ‘This way,’ he said, in a strangely soft voice – which made it sound all the more sinister.
The hallway was thickly carpeted, with wood panels on the walls. Now they were inside, Sean could hear the muffled sound of polite conversation dusted over with a sprinkling of laughter. The hard bastard led them through to a large room dotted with comfortable chairs and sofas, the walls covered in what Sean guessed was expensive artwork. A fire was burning in the ornate fireplace, even though it was the middle of a warm September, filling the air with a faint sweet smell of wood smoke. There were around twenty or thirty people there, all well dressed, all smiling, none looking in any way criminal.
A tall man, late forties or early fifties, tailored suit, sauntered over, holding out a hand. ‘Josh!’ he intoned in a deep, resonant voice. Then he turned to Sean. ‘And you must be the rather excellent young man who works with him. Sean, yes?’
Sean nodded, didn’t speak. Thirty seconds earlier he had felt comfortably clean and well dressed in his usual civvy gear of jeans and T-shirt and leather jacket, but right now he was feeling like some homeless guy they had dragged in off the street to have a laugh at.
‘A drink?’ the man said, and gestured to a young woman circling the room with a silver tray and a number of filled fluted glasses.
Condensation on the sides was slick beneath Sean’s fingers as he took one, and he suppressed the urge to hold it up to the light and watch the little trails of bubbles as they streamed up from nowhere. He guessed that for the first time in his life he was holding a glass of champagne.
Shit, I’m turning into a real nob. Crime really did pay, if you did it right.
‘There’s plenty of food,’ the man continued. ‘Just help yourselves.’ He nodded to a far wall, where a long oak table was piled high with nosh in silver dishes. Sean took a sip from the glass and sneezed as the bubbles found their way up his nose. People drank this for pleasure?
But still, champagne . . .
The nosh was bloody decent too, especially the lobster. The only seafood Sean had ever eaten before was fried in batter, with a side order of chips. This was ten times richer, buttery and with a whole range of flavours, none of them bad.
About an hour and several more glasses of champagne later, Sean was onto his third plate of food and having the time of his life. Free food, head pleasantly tingly from the bubbly, and everyone treating him with respect. The one downside was that apart from Heaton he was half the age of anyone else in the room. And there were no birds – no women at all, apart from the one serving the drinks – which seemed a bit lame . . . but hey, it wasn’t his party. The man who had shaken his hand was the perfect host. Insisting that Sean call him Rich, instead of Richard – ‘because I don’t enjoy formality in a relationship like this, do you?’ – he had taken him around the room, introducing him to everyone. One of them asked suspiciously if he was Irish, but relaxed when he said he had got his name because his mum fancied Sean Bean.
‘You make it sound so easy,’ Rich said as Sean finished telling, for the benefit of yet another interested party, the tale of how he and Heaton had scrumped the SA80s. ‘Which is actually rather shocking, wouldn’t you agree?’
Sean shrugged. ‘Not saying it was’ – he fought down a hiccup – ‘easy.’ He had a reputation to keep up. Easy? He’d like to see any of this lot try it. ‘I mean, we planned it, y’know? ‘Cos we got’ – another hiccup, and he bit back a laugh – ‘skills. We recce’d the place first, sorted a hideout . . .’
‘Using your army skills to look after number one,’ said another man, this one middle-aged and a little portly. ‘Something I approve of utterly. After all, it’s not as though this bloody useless government of ours is going to, is it?’
There was a murmur of approval from around Sean. It was the first time since they’d arrived that he had heard anything other than general cordiality.
‘We need more people like you,’ the man went on, turning to point at Sean. ‘People with the balls to stand up and take control and actually do something about what’s happening in this country.’
Sean wasn’t sure where the conversation was going. One minute he was bragging about nicking weaponry; now he was in the middle of some kind of angry political discussion.
‘It’s not all that bad,’ he said, looking for the woman with the silver tray.
‘The biggest problem we have facing us today,’ continued the fat man, ignoring Sean, ‘isn’t unemployment. It’s worse than the financial crisis, or immigration, or family breakdown or even gay marriage.’
The fuck’s gay marriage got to do with it? Sean thought. He looked around for tray girl and stumbled because only one of his feet felt like moving.
But the line about immigration made him look around again – and notice something he hadn’t clocked earlier because it hadn’t seemed like a big deal. Everyone here was white. He had spent a year in a multi-ethnic world and suddenly it seemed weird.
‘What it is,’ the fat man barked, ‘is those traitors, those so-called British citizens, who grow up here, living off the state, using our hospitals and doctors and benefits and God knows what else – then have the audacity to claim the right to act as they like on our so
vereign soil and kill our people! It’s outrageous!’
All the politely swish, upper-class, rah-rah bollocks seemed to have evaporated.
‘Terrorists are shits,’ Sean agreed. Tray girl appeared in the corner of his eye and he swagged another glass, even though Heaton tried to take it off him.
‘The Tidworth bomb . . .’ said a younger man with a moustache. ‘Five brave soldiers dead. You’d think that would be enough of a wake-up call, but no! The government tackles the problem by cutting back on the armed forces even further. What is it going to take for them to open their eyes?’
The fury that had never quite gone away came surging up from inside. Sean drained his glass in one go. ‘Me and Heaton – Josh – we were there. Our mate got blown up.’ He burped out some bubbles and tried to force his muzzy brain to come up with the right word. For some reason it wasn’t as easy as usual. ‘F-wank-stards.’
‘They should be hanged,’ said the older man. ‘Summary courts – no clever lawyers to get them off to reoffend.’
‘It was a car bomb, wasn’t it?’ said the man with the moustache. ‘Inside the camp. Which means the terrorists probably had an inside man.’
Sean snapped round at this. ‘Hey, that was the mate I was talking about! It was her car!’
‘Sorry,’ said the man, raising a hand in defence, ‘but I’m just saying what I heard. You never know, do you? They’re everywhere, these people. Like a bloody rash.’
‘Clarky wasn’t a fucking terrorist, mate,’ Sean said.
The man with the moustache narrowed his eyes at him. ‘I’m not your mate,’ he said. ‘And all I’m saying is that we need to be careful. Vigilant. They could be anywhere, couldn’t they? They’ve infiltrated the Iraqi army, so why not ours?’
‘Because our soldiers aren’t terrorists,’ Sean said. ‘They’re the bravest bunch of bastards I’ve ever met!’
Moustache man laughed then, his voice like a dagger of ice. ‘Wake up!’ he said. ‘They’re everywhere! For all we know, you’re one!’ He laughed again, clearly enjoying his joke.
