Get Some (6 page)

Getting all the more irritated at even the thought of Joey and Tommy, Trigg didn’t know what this meant for him. ‘So what? That’s it? I can’t get made on account of a what if? In all due respect, Major, I’m ready!’ Don’t let this mishap affect your judgment please.’

‘
I’m not, Trigg. You see, we are all resourceful men in X Company. We all bring something to the table, that is always good policy, particularly in a business such as ours. Now we, I, am thinking that were you to handle this mishap, as you call it, yourself, you would prove to us, to me, that you are a man to be taken seriously, a man we can trust, but more than that, a man who handles his affairs swiftly, discreetly and professionally. Now, I don’t want to hear how you do it and I don’t want to hear when you’ll do it, just mop this mess up quickly.’

Smiling at Trigg, Major Roux told him the golden words, ‘You’re in, Trigg, for now, though we will keep it small with you, a few pick ups here and there to get you acquainted with our people on the street. If all goes well with your problem then I think we can point some major operations your way. If you prove competent and loyal to X Company, you’ll find that the rewards are exceedingly high.’

Disappointed but understanding the Major’s perspective, Trigg nodded in agreement. ‘You have my word, Major Roux. I will erase the problem, quietly and with no comebacks.’

‘
Outstanding,’ concluded Major Roux, ‘now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get my brag rags on (full military uniform with medals). The last time I was nuts-to-nose in ribbon was the day of my court martial.’

‘
I heard, Major, a goddam disgrace. However, you know what they say, your rank is your rank, in or out of the shit. We earned it, and no cock-faced judge with fake stripes can take it from us.’ Trigg stood to attention as the Major walked to the door and opened it for him. ‘It’s been an honour meeting you, Major. I hope to speak with you soon.’

‘
Likewise,’ replied the major. ‘Now haven’t you got a wife to go home to or something? It would do you good.’

‘
Not me. I’m a million dollar man who needs a billion dollar bitch. Ain’t many of them about, so I just fuck the rest.’

‘
Fucking is a young man’s game’ commented the Major, ‘but good luck to you, if that is what you want.’

Walking to his car with a sweat on, Trigg could hardly breathe, so he eased his tie loose. He lit a cigarette and puffed on it, taking quick drags. He grabbed his phone from his inside jacket pocket and dialed Mario.

‘
Fucking knew it, Mario, cunt ain’t even back yet and things are fucking up for me. The mere fucking whiff of him has people backing off - him and that fuckhead lawyer.’

‘
Relax, Trigg, we can sort this. What about the Major? Can they help? You in or what? Talk.’

‘
Yeah, I’m in, but they said they can’t do too much shit with me till this mess is sorted. I send them two kilos of uncut shit to be repaid like this. It’s fucking bullshit, Mario.’

‘
It’s necessary bullshit though, Trigg. You want the ride, you gotta pay the toll, in this case the toll is getting rid of the problem.’

Walking in circles near his car, Trigg was getting more and more wound up. ‘I KNOW! Fuck me; the thing is how do we get rid of the problem? We can’t buy Tommy, and we sure as fuck can’t buy that fuck lawyer. So where does that leave me, Mario. What other choices do I have?’

‘
You haven’t any, Trigg. Tommy has to go. No two ways about it. Should have killed him back in Basra, but how were we to know he’d get out of that shit alive. Should have been dead ages ago, but he keeps coming back. You know as well as I do he’s a dangerous motherfucker who raises friends quickly. The Major knows that too.’

‘
I know. He has to go.

‘
And the lawyer?’

‘
Don’t worry about him. I know exactly what to do with him.’

Chapter Nine

During the interrogations we were always blindfolded and, daft as it may seem, it did make a difference. The whole concept of not knowing when or where the pain is coming from is terrifying. No amount of training I had received prepared me for it. Sure, we had the standard training should we be caught and then tortured, but nothing prepared me for this.

Tommy sat there with his blindfold still tight around his eyes. His breathing was erratic. He was scared. The men who had collected him loved seeing their subjects quiver in fear. The room was silent. This in itself was a form of torture, the wait, the long wait of fear, the fear of knowing that something so so awful was going to happen. The fear of knowing that some indescribable pain was going to strike on some part of my body.

‘
Please God, not the nuts’ I prayed silently as I waited for the inevitable.

‘
Name?’ the voice said.

‘
Tommy.’

‘
Rank?’ the voice asked.

‘
Tommy.’

‘
RANK’ the voice was agitated.

‘
Corporal.’

‘
They don’t send Corporal’s out on missions like the one you were on. I say again, rank?’

‘
Oh fuck. Look me shoulder’s fucking killing me. I’ve been shot. Oh you dumb fuckers.’ Tommy spoke slowly as he tried to get them to understand. ‘I have beeeeeen shot, you know? Bullet? Gun? Shot? El shoto?’

‘
I understand everything you say. Ok, Ok, you want to make jokes, you want to test your strength, yes? Ok.’

Tommy’s heart beat faster as he realised that getting clever with a man whom he could neither see nor touch might not have been such a good idea. ‘I’m just in pain, sir; I am in pain, that’s all.’

Footsteps could be heard leaving the room with another set coming in. He heard the sound of shuffling about. ‘What the fuck are they doing?’ Tommy thought nervously.

Out of the blue Tommy felt indescribable pain. The men in the room laughed and joked with foreign words as Tommy cried. The torturer, who Tommy could not see, had inserted a nail into the top of Tommy’s thigh with a hammer. Tommy shuffled as the pain shot up his leg. The nail wasn’t all the way in yet though. As the torturer twisted the nail round and round, Tommy could feel the head of the nail scrape his bone as it was driven in deeper and deeper.

Screaming with rage and shuffling left and right in the chair with pain, Tommy let his anger be known. ‘I’m gonna kill all you fuckers, you fucking sick bastards.’

‘
Name and rank?’ the voice said with a hint of laughter.

‘
I told you! I fucking told you, my name is Tommy, and I’m a fucking Corporal! Arsehole!’ Tommy wanted to kill this motherfucker. No, Tommy wanted to rip this guy’s fucking eyes out with pliers, then set him on fire, and that would have been too good for him.

‘
Arsehole? Arsehole you say? You see, Tommy, I speak the perfect English. I understand everything. We are done with the questions for today.’ The voice then spoke what might as well have been Martian to Tommy. It sounded like people were leaving the room in some hurry.

There was still someone in the room with Tommy, though. The door shut. Tommy heard the squeak of the door. He felt a sudden sharpness on his throat. Then what felt like a punch to his stomach, then again, then to his face, once twice, again and again. ‘Aghh, you fuck, you sick fuck!’ Tommy screamed. He was in pain, but he was also mad. He felt some of his back teeth get knocked out; he spat them to the floor as his head hung down taking punch after punch. The punching continued long into the night until Tommy passed out. He was tossed back into his cell.

Chapter Ten

It seemed like as soon as I woke they were on me again, the fuckers. That’s the way it went for the first few weeks - sleep then a good kicking, sleep, then questions and a kicking.

On this particular day I was lucky, though. Somehow my blindfold had loosened and I caught my first look around. My eyes hurt like hell and my vision wasn’t too good because I’d been in the dark more or less for weeks. Well, I say it was weeks, I was going by my body clock, it could have been days for all I know. I had managed to scout about with my eyes and realised that there were two floors. The first floor had two trucks parked inside. It kind of looked like an old warehouse with an upstairs - not too big. I was in one of about four cells.

I wondered about Spade every night. I’d hoped he had survived but I knew the possibilities were slim. I wondered every night about Emma. How was she? Was she showing yet? I had to get home, I had to get home to my baby, and my baby to be.

I was in a real shithole. It was daytime, there was a small window at the top of my cell, it had no bars or glass, just an open vent really with light shining in from the outside. Then, as the guards stormed into my room and picked me up, I saw the man next door as they dragged me out. He did an action with his fingers across his chest. I realised it was a cross he was doing on his chest, the way Rocky used to before each fight in his films.

Fuck.

I didn’t get a good look at the guy in the cell next door. I only really saw that he was bald and wearing rags. How long had he been there?

After being sat back in the room he had only been in hours earlier, Tommy awaited the next batch of treatment. He was physically exhausted. His shoulder had at least stopped bleeding from the bullet he had taken off Trigg, though, but his knee was numb after having a nail hammered into it earlier, and his face was swollen, bruised and bloodied.

As Tommy’s eyes wandered the room he could see two guards stood near the door. Then, as he looked to his left he noticed the table.

‘
Oh shit, oh fuck me, what the fuck’s all that there for?’ Tommy asked as his eyes examined the sharp and scary instruments on the table. The table reminded him of a surgeon’s table of apparatus before doing an operation.

The guards just talked quietly in their own language. Walking in slowly a new man appeared. He was a short man around 5ft and a half. He was wearing beige camouflage combat trousers with a green vest. Tommy sniggered as he noticed the awful moustache the man had with the equally dodgy side-parting in his hair. He had a clipboard with some paper attached and a map, which he placed on the table of doom.

The man pulled up a chair and sat about a foot away from Tommy.

‘
You sleep well, Tommy?’ the man asked, smiling.

Now Tommy knew this was the same voice who spoke to him last night. ‘Like a baby, thanks to your guards playing football with my head. Listen, my shoulder and my knee are fucking killing me. Is there any way you could have a doctor look at me, please?’

The man talked to one of the guards, who then walked out of the room.

‘
It is being dealt with, Tommy. Now I have some questions. They are quite simple. Before I ask, I want you to think.’

‘
Water, I need some water.’ Tommy was so thirsty; the heat was becoming unbearable for him. He had a fever and the room felt like a greenhouse.

‘
Of course,’ the man said. He opened up his own water flask and gently poured some water into Tommy’s mouth. ‘Not too much, not too much,’ he said as the water spilled out of Tommy’s mouth and down his neck.

Feeling a little more composed, Tommy breathed and gathered himself again. ‘Right, fuck it, what do you want to know?’

The next ten to fifteen minutes I explained to Mr. Haircut 2007 that our mission was very simple.

A Black OP.

We had been ordered to check out a few huts which, according to our intelligence, could have been holding some Iraqi militants who, the day before, had blown up a convoy of UN Red Cross trucks carrying medical supplies. The powers that be were angry and wanted badly the people who had done it. It was a five man team, headed by the field ops expert, Trigg. I explained to Haircut that I and some of my crew had been fucked over somehow by our own man.

I told him the truth. It was not ‘good intelligence’ I was giving. It was the truth, though, nevertheless. It had no bearing on the war, was totally useless information, and he knew it. Mr Haircut proceeded to ask me about bombing routes, what my next mission was. How the fuck was I supposed to know that? I explained that my kind was treated like mushrooms where it came to Intel, fed shit and kept in the dark. I knew one thing and one thing only, orders.

They decided to torture me anyway, whether it was for more info or even for some sadistic fun on their part, who knows? I was tortured for roughly three days. I was punched, kicked and sometimes even bitten.

Believe it or not that was just for starters. When the guard came back who was supposedly finding someone to treat my shoulder, he only brought back a knife. The knife was glowing red and I knew it was red hot. I braced myself for the inevitable. Mr. Haircut stuck the blade into my wound sending me into shock. He said that the burn would close the wound. I suppose I was lucky, though, the bullet had apparently gone straight through and when I’d passed out from the pain of the burning, I at least had a rest for a while.

I remember on the third day of me being processed, the man was asking me questions again to which I had no answer, and I really didn’t.

I had not eaten for a few days and my physical strength was…well, not good at all.

I was under the impression that Mr Haircut was getting fed up with me. I really had nothing to tell him and I thought he was starting to sense it too. He threatened to take me to a village nearby where our bombs had killed many women and children weeks earlier. He strangled me as he shouted ‘imagine what they would do to you if I took you there’. Again, though, I had nothing. I was beginning to think that maybe if I just lied about something it might keep them happy, but then thought if it was checked out maybe they would kill me for lying. I was getting desperate.