by Geoff Wolak
After an unsociable bite to eat, alone in the bar, I found my lads in the barracks. ‘Listen up!’
They gathered around, all still subdued; there were no jokes being cracked.
‘Today is a day for bad news, and there’s more bad news.’ I took in their faces as they waited expectantly. ‘Leggit has left us.’
‘Left us?’ Swan and Nicholson loudly queried. Swan was his best mate, and they had known each other since basic training, they holidayed together, double-dated girls together.
‘What the fuck do you mean, left us?’ Swan loudly asked, stepping forwards.
I considered my answer as puzzled faces stared back. I had to think on my feet. ‘Back in the UK, in school, Leggit was bullied by a boy. He recently found that boy, now a man, and ... killed him, badly hurting that man’s wife.’
The lads exchanged shocked and puzzled looks.
‘Unfortunately he left evidence behind, but London intel got there first and hid the evidence. Leggit will now go work for French intel in Africa and other places, and if he gets bored of that they’ll put a bullet in him and incinerate his body.
‘He’ll never be allowed back in the UK, and if he gets there he could face the murder charge, but London Intel won’t let him discredit us, so he would be found hanged in his cell. That, gentlemen, is the penalty for bringing this team into disrepute; you do something stupid, you pay the price.
‘He got cocky, and he left evidence behind. He figured, what with all the training he had - and with what we get away with, that he could kill a man on a British street, and not a terrorist. Be warned: if you do something like that and get caught there will be consequences. Don’t get caught ... and fine.
‘But if one of you does something nasty and I find out ... you’ll not stand trial, you’ll get a shallow grave. Don’t ever forget that. We fight with morality on our side, we’re the good guys, not the fucking criminals.’
I took in the shocked faces of Swan and Nicholson. ‘It will be hard on you two, you knew him well, but he chose his own path, he chose to hide something from you – at least I hope neither of you knew about what he’d done. Well, did you?’
Nicholson shook his head.
‘He ... he never confided in me,’ Swann struggled to get out.
‘If he had ... and you failed to warn me, I’d have killed you and buried you. This is a tight small team; one man does something stupid and we all get the blame. The newspapers would have crucified us all.’
Slider asked, ‘We likely to see him on a job? Because if we do I’ll put him in that shallow grave!’
‘No, that would be unlikely.’ I focused on Nicholson. ‘You staying with us?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, Boss, just ... just a hell of a shock.’
I faced Swan. ‘You can take some time off if you need it.’
‘He has a house he part owns, with his sister, stuff there, a nephew that’s expecting to see him, our old officers in the Sniper School will ask after him ... so what the fuck do I tell them all? What the fuck do I tell his damn sister!’
‘What would you have said to them when he was charged with murder, his face in the papers?’
Swan put his face in his hands for a moment. ‘Why the fuck did he do it...’
‘Be very fucking thankful he’s not standing trial, because you’d be blamed as well, you’d be a key suspect.’
‘Could I ... still be a suspect?’
‘Let’s hope not, and London Intel is hiding evidence.’
‘His sister will ask questions,’ Swan warned me. ‘She’ll be onto the press and looking for him. She needs his signature to do stuff with the house.’
‘I’ll have London Intel talk to her,’ I assured him. ‘If it helps, I’ll have him declared dead. Or I get him to call her once a month.’
With his head in his hands, and cursing, he went back to his bed.
‘Gentlemen, I want no talk of this, especially not outside Echo, not the Major, no one, we have a job to do, and war has been declared. We’ll soon take the fight to them – just as soon as we all cheer up a bit that is. Senior men, clamp down on gossip, watch the junior lads. And someone sort his kit, dump the personal effects, keep the rest, make sure we have his ID card.’
I had stepped out, but heard someone come up behind me. Swifty grabbed my arm and twisted me around.
‘There was a rumour in the village about a soldier raping a girl,’ he angrily hissed. ‘Was it him?’
I took in the Deltas walking by. ‘He’s gone, he’ll not come back.’
‘And if he talks someday! If he’s mad at us?’
‘Talk about what, what he did? I don’t think he wants anyone to know what he did, and he knows that we’ll find him and kill him.’
‘A shallow grave for him would have helped me sleep at night!’
‘I have enough problems at the moment, don’t go adding to them, eh,’ I said with a sigh before I walked off.
Next problem was the Major, and I stood calling his mobile. ‘Major, it’s Wilco.’
‘More problems? I have my holster on, a man outside!’
‘Kind of. Leggit has left us, he’s now a civvy, out the gate, gone, we have his kit here. Process it in the morning, sir.’
‘Gone? Leggit? He’s one of our best men! What happened?’
‘Not over the phone, sir, just process him gone, stop his wages, update the MOD about pensions and things.’
‘He didn’t want to go back to the Sniper School?’
‘No, sir, he’s now a civvy, cut loose.’
‘Cut loose? In Africa? He’s our responsibility!’
‘Not any more, sir, backdate the forms a day or two, state that he quit and walked off.’
‘That’s a court martial offence, MOD will be after him!’
‘I’ll deal with the MOD, sir. Make it look like an RTU if that helps, but he’s gone and we don’t need any publicity or any shit over it. Do what you can, sir.’
‘Bloody hell.’
‘Talk soon, sir.’
I called Tinker. ‘It’s Wilco, you OK?’
‘Course I’m not fucking OK! Not sure if I’m in shock, angered, or afraid, but I think I want to shoot some bastard!’
‘Get some pistol work in, carry one, you may get the chance real soon.’
‘Who are these bastards?’
‘You tell me. You get the phone data and the forensics and get a team on it. I’d say Nigerians, maybe Dupree, so look for a link. Where are you?’
‘Still at the base, got to be fifty heavily armed men here, men in civvy clothes. Some of your Lone Wolves here.’
‘Go see them, tell them from me I want two of them tailing you home, but well back, same for Mutch, Sanders, everyone. We need to bait the gunmen and catch them, not just scare them off. Oh, and warn everyone that there are police roadblocks -’
‘They know, there’s one a few miles up the road.’
‘Tell the Wolves they sleep on your couch till I say otherwise, or in the car outside.’
‘I have a spare room, my brother uses it when he visits,’ Tinker told me. ‘Oh, there’s some copper here, Donohue..?’
‘It’s his kind of work. Listen, do you think ... any of team will want to quit?’
‘Well, not sure. I don’t think Major Sanderson will allow himself to be bullied, and Mutch is wearing a holster! He wants to kill someone as well. Can’t speak for the French guy, and Baker is dead.’
‘I want updates from you whenever something happens. Get a team, and find out who killed Lesley.’
‘Already on it, with a passion – staff at GCHQ are fuming.’
In the command room I found Captain Harris and led him outside. ‘You OK?’ I asked him.
‘I’m a long fucking way from OK!’ he began, a glance over his shoulder. ‘I haven’t had the guts yet to ring my wife and explain it, she was due to meet Lesley shopping this Saturday; Lesley’s sometime boyfriend is back from six months in the States.’
‘What does that
guy do?’
‘Computers for big banks, good money. But they’ve had this on-off thing since university, so it’s dragging on a bit.’
‘This is a bit close to home for you, so ... any thoughts about quitting?’ I nudged.
‘If it was just me ... no, but my wife will go ape. She knows about the other security issues we’ve had, she worries about me.’
‘I don’t need to be losing you, but ... I’ll understand, you’ll get no shit from me and the lads for quitting.’
He put his hands in his pockets and took in the large hangars. ‘I feel frustrated. Want to get at them and kill them.’
‘I’ve been hearing that a lot today. You want me to send a man to your house?’
‘They tortured Lesley for information, my wife has no information to give, I don’t tell her much about jobs we do, and they should know that. And I’d know if I was being followed, I’m careful. Have to be, working for you!’
I smiled briefly. ‘Let me know if anything changes, now ring your wife before she sees it on the nightly news.’
‘Ah ... fucking bollocks,’ he let out, a hand on his forehead.
My next person to chat to was the DGSE manager. I grabbed a cold water and sat next to him in the base commander’s office, the colonel out at the moment. ‘I’m going to kill Dupree, and his men, off the books, so I’m hoping you’ll assist.’
‘We’ll assist, yes.’
‘And then ... then I’m going to send Petrov to Nigeria, to deliver a message, and it will be a loud message. He’ll be seen to kill al-Sheek, some considerable damage to a certain oil company.’
‘Sounds like the tiger ... is off the leash.’
‘The tiger ... has had his coffee, and is ready.’
‘Some news. They stopped the truck with the would-be Sarin Gas. Just paid drivers, they know nothing.’
‘Could you ... get me a few canisters?’ I risked.
His eyebrows shot up. But then he smiled. ‘What was in that coffee you had?’
‘Crystal meth.’
‘And ... what would you do with the fake Sarin?’
‘I think ... known Islamists would release some in a shopping centre in Lagos, after Petrov had a quiet word with the Nigerian Interior Minister.’
‘That would ... get his attention, yes.’ He coughed out a laugh. ‘From moping ... to extreme terrorism, in just a few short hours.’
‘Your fault, you gave me the pep talk I needed.’
‘Ah, well then I need to be careful how I motivate people, no.’
‘Get me some canisters, and some good men in Nigeria, and some transport, and I’ll get my Russians to cause some havoc in Lagos.’
‘We are very jealous of these Russians you have, very jealous indeed. They are the prized asset – after Petrov of course.’
I avoided the billet, not wanting to be answering silly questions about Leggit, and I sat in the command room making plans - and thinking. I had called Bob Staines and briefed him, and he would be moving men and money to Nigeria and Senegal. The French had a line on where Dupree lived, and that was on the coast of The Gambia, a nice lodge with a sea view.
Robby came and found me. ‘Got a minute, Boss?’
I led him outside and onto the sand. ‘Worried about family? If you are, you can go back, I don’t mind.’
‘Some of the lads are, yes, and I rang my misses, and there are police patrols, so they know something is up.’
‘There are fifty heavily armed men, police roadblocks everywhere. What more could your men be doing?’
‘Well, nothing except reassuring the families I suppose. You have men out around GL4?’
‘It’s buttoned up tight, Lone Wolves in civvy clothes.’
‘Well, I’ll tell the lads, they’ll sleep better knowing that.’
‘If they do want to go back, you all go back as a troop, so some training at GL4.’
‘I’ll talk them around, Boss.’
At 9pm I headed to the bar with Captain Harris, and he needed a drink as much as I did. The bar was full, but there was little evidence of the usual raucous laughter or the crude jokes. Most of Echo were here, but I could not see Swan and Nicholson.
Beer served to us, Castille closed in. ‘Been a rough day I hear...’
I nodded and sipped. ‘One of our lady support workers was tortured, then killed.’
‘And you kicked a man out your unit...’
Again I nodded, and sipped.
‘Someone’s gone?’ Harris asked me.
‘Leggit is now a civvy.’
‘What the fuck happened?’ Harris asked, shocked.
‘He broke the law back in the UK, police were closing in, London Intel hid the evidence or it would have been a dark day for us all, all tarnished.’
‘Christ, I would have never believed it, not him.’
I confirmed it with a nod. ‘He was a good soldier, a very good soldier.’
Castille put in, ‘Don’t need men going native off the range ... as with the profiling for these Lone Wolves.’
‘You never can tell,’ I told him. ‘Shrinks can be lied to, they’re not foolproof.’
‘Obviously,’ Castille noted. ‘And the men who grabbed your lady worker?’
‘Still a work in progress, but most likely paid for by the same men that dropped a bomb on us at the dam.’
‘Are those boys stupid or something?’ Castille asked. ‘They want to take on the British and us?’
‘They threw bombs at us in Sierra Leone and Liberia,’ I pointed out. ‘Mindset of the gang, not the sensible political leader.’
‘CIA don’t take kindly to such things,’ he pointed out.
‘I’ll be going after Dupree, at his nice beach front property in The Gambia. I may even damage the nice property some.’
‘We coming along?’ Castille asked.
‘No, it will be a job off the books, kept from the politicians back home.’
‘I think I need to go chat to Franks about us being in on it. Them boys dropped a bomb on us, and that’s a declaration of war, buddy.’
Ten minutes later Moran approached. ‘You avoiding us?’
‘Yes.’
He took a moment. ‘Don’t want to talk about Leggit, or Lesely I guess.’
‘Correct. What can I say to the lads?’ I shrugged. ‘It’s been a shit day all round.’
‘I would have never figured Leggit.’ He shook his head. ‘He was the perfect soldier, never any trouble.’
‘You have to watch the quiet ones – so they say.’
He nodded. ‘What you got planned for the people behind all this?’
‘A job or two off the books, our Russian speakers. We’ll hit the middle men and paymasters, and I’ll keep widening the net till there’s no one left but the fucking tea lady.’
‘Was a time when I would have been horrified by that, but now ... now we’re in a war, a real war, and it’s starting to feel like it, not just hostage rescue now and then, but a steady battle month by month.’
I nodded. ‘When we started rescuing hostages it was different, and we were ignorant to the real war, the one that the public sees on their TV screens without understanding why a bomb went off, or why a soldier died. They see the incident, change the TV channel and move on. We see the how the incident fits into the battle, the battle into the war.
‘It’s us against the gun runners, the gun users, the coup soldiers, the paymasters and the bomb makers, the kidnappers, the proxy fighters, the greedy oil barons, the Islamists and the warped freedom fighters. They all come under the heading of dirtbags, a large army of the fuckers spread far and wide.
‘I’d say non-conforming self-righteous undemocratic sociopathic malcontents, but that would confuse the lads.’
Moran tipped his eyebrows and nodded.
Franks approached fifteen minutes later, as I chatted to Slider about today’s extraordinary events. ‘If you’re going after Dupree, we want in. White House has already publically stated that ... they’l
l leave no stone unturned in finding the men who attacked our soldiers. They want payback, public air-time payback.’
‘Dupree has a nice beach-front property, in The Gambia, we’ll hit it.’
‘Real easy for a sea-launched assault, camera rolling...’
‘And the government of The Gambia?’ I posed.
‘Fuck ‘em. If they’re hosting Dupree, their look out.’
‘Send it to Admiral Jacobs, pretend I want his opinion on the matter.’
Smiling widely, Franks stepped away.
At midnight, my phone trilled as we all slept, a few moans coming from beds. I eased up in the dark, but so did several others; when my phone trilled it was not someone wanting to chat about the weather back in the UK.
‘Wilco.’
‘It’s Tinker. Your two Lone Wolf guys just shot dead two men outside my fucking house!’
‘Good.’
‘Good! You don’t have the neighbours I have!’
‘Get to the bodies quickly, before the police, get phones and call them in, get IDs, call me back. Work fast.’
He sighed loudly. ‘OK, I’m on it.’
‘What was that?’ Moran asked, others now sitting up in bed.
‘The two men who killed Lesley, most likely, were just shot dead by our Lone Wolves. We should be able to track back and see who sent them.’
‘Finally some positive news,’ Swifty grumbled from the next bed.
Ten minutes later the phone again trilled, men again moaning. ‘Wilco.’
‘It’s Tinker again. These men are Belgian, and I ran the names, and they’re mercenaries, on the Interpol list.’
‘No need to call me again, but update London and track back who they were in contact with.’
‘Night shift in GCHQ is on it, which is most of them.’
‘Most of them?’
‘More work at night than during the day, you know – time zones they monitor.’
‘Ah, yes. Good work, keep at it.’ Phone down, I told those sat up, ‘Belgian Mercenaries killed Lesley.’
Henri put in, ‘Tomorrow, give me names, I know these men well, there are not many.’
The next day I occupied my mind with training and testing the Wolves, a pleasurable task, and a diversion from reality. The recruits had all gotten three daylight static-line jumps in and one night static-line jump recently – on the same day, two days in a row, so they were now competent and experienced to say the least. If not knackered and in need of a rest.
