Street Soldier (16 page)

And Sean still had the five hundred from the first drop safely in the bank. Shit, sometimes you just had to know when a deal was done and walk away. He hadn’t lied to Heaton – he had never grassed and he didn’t
intend to start now. His only problem now was finding another source of cash.

But still, being monumentally pissed off does not just go away, and being stuck in Heaton’s company for most of the afternoon hadn’t helped. He had been for a good long run when he got off duty, booted feet pounding the perimeter road until he was hot and sweaty and exhausted. Still in the same T-shirt and MTP trousers, he had hurled himself into the next essential task before he allowed himself the luxury of relaxation. And that was kit maintenance.

After that first day of agony, back in the gym at Burnleigh, Sean had gone back for more without a second’s thought. But the bullshit of cleaning kit once he got to Catterick had almost been enough to make him walk. Wasn’t he there to shoot guns at the nation’s enemies? Did it matter what state his uniform was in? You what? But my boots
are
polished. Sorry? You want me to pick the
dirt
out of the
tread
with
tweezers
and . . . You’re pissing me, right? . . . Oh, shit, you’re serious . . .

But it had got into him, soaking in like polish into leather. You didn’t do this because some twat of a Rupert just out of public school told you to – though that seemed to be a pretty good reason to some of the real twats. You did it out of respect for your regiment, for your colleagues, for yourself. If you couldn’t keep your kit serviceable in
camp, then once you were in the field you wouldn’t able to function.

He went back to his boots. Two brushes – one to put polish on, one to take it off. For the polish itself, black Kiwi – accept no substitutes. For bulling the leather, a yellow duster that had been washed and tumbled a few times. For getting rid of the dirt first, an old toothbrush. He knew the ritual off by heart. Keep it all in a drawstring bag so you’ve always got it to hand. And to keep the polish off the floor, an old newspaper. The
Sun
could always be relied on to give you something decent to look at while you worked.

‘So, after all that cleaning, how do you fancy getting a bit dirty?’

Sean looked up at her from under his eyebrows, ignoring the way West was doing pelvic thrusts under the table. He wasn’t remotely taken in by the innuendo – not with the big grin on Clark’s face. And he was pretty sure he hadn’t totally misunderstood their relationship.

‘How dirty?’ he asked carefully.

‘Dirty as in you and me getting under the bonnet of the Cosworth? It’s still pinking between sixty and sixty-five and I can’t shake it. I just got it back from the garage, but no joy. So I’d appreciate your input. And this time you actually get a ride. You look as though you could do with cheering up.’

Despite his determination to hang onto his foul temper, Sean couldn’t help grinning. Shit, he had a good mate in Toni Clark. Maybe it was time to put Heaton down to experience and get on with the rest of his life.

‘Shit, yeah!’

She grinned and ruffled his hair. She was the one member of the platoon who could get away with it.

‘Cool. I’ve got some things to do first – meet at twenty hundred? I’ll be at the gatehouse.’ She gave him a wink as she left.

‘Hey, Stenders!’ West called across the table. ‘You’ll let us know how many
rides
you get in the Cosworth, right?’ He and Bright bumped fists at the joke.

Sean rolled his eyes. ‘Guys, a car is seriously uncomfortable unless you’ve totally got nowhere else to go. The seats are so narrow you’re afraid of falling off, and it’s so cramped, one of you’s going to bang your head on the roof or a window whatever happens.’

He went back to his polishing, innocently not meeting their looks, fully aware that they were staring at him.

‘Experience?’ Bright asked eventually.

Sean let it hang for a couple more seconds, before modestly admitting, ‘Experience.’

‘Nice one, Stenders!’ West shouted. ‘And you owe me a fiver,’ he added to Bright.

*

Sean left barracks at 19:55 with a spring in his step. It was a warm, sunny August evening. His good mood was only dented a little when he noticed Heaton coming down the pavement towards him. The corporal had his eyes glued to the screen of his phone.

‘Harker,’ he grunted as they passed.

‘Corp,’ Sean acknowledged, and Heaton walked on.

The gatehouse was ahead. He could see the red splash of the Cosworth parked outside, next to the
SEVERE
warning. Toni was leaning against it, chatting to a guard. She saw him coming and gave him a wave.

The barrier was up to let a small convoy of military vehicles through. At the front was a Foxhound, a truck only slightly less fuck-off-now than the Warrior, designed for Afghanistan – apparently by getting a Land Rover and a Humvee to screw and then rolling the baby in armour plating: Gaz would have sold his soul to get his hands on one. Behind it were a couple of troop carriers, the trusty 4x4 Leyland four-tonners. The canvas hoods in the rear were open, and each truck was loaded with getting on for twenty soldiers and all their kit. Probably coming back off exercise, knackered, dirty and starving, Sean thought, happy at that moment that he wasn’t one of them. He broke into a jog to catch up with Clark.

Just in time to see the explosion that ripped through the guardhouse and enveloped the convoy in flames.

Chapter 17

Sean felt it like a hammer blow. He couldn’t remember being knocked backwards – he just knew that his head was splitting, and there was grit embedded in his hands where they had broken his fall, and his mind was screaming that something terrible had just happened.

And then he staggered to his feet again, and broke into a run, all on autopilot, still only vaguely aware of what the fuck was happening; he just knew that something was, and he needed to be there. He stumbled towards the flames and the smoke and the wrecked vehicles and bodies. There was no sound. He wasn’t sure if he was deaf or if his brain was just refusing to process the information, denying what he knew had just happened.

A bomb – in camp.

His hearing came back as his boots pounded on the pavement.

A haze hung in the air, and the chemical smell of
scorched metal came down on the breeze. The Foxhound had been knocked to one side, but its hull was designed to take blasts and it was relatively undamaged. The lads inside were already clambering out.

It was a different story for the four-tonners.

The first had been blown off its wheels and was on its side. Fire was spreading from the cabin and across the rest of the vehicle. The other had jumped off the road and smashed into the gatehouse. Black, oily smoke belched out of the truck and the building.

A Wolf was parked unattended in one of the spaces there, dented by the blast but still upright. Sean yanked the door open, grabbed the medical kit that was standard issue to all army vehicles, and ran to help however he could.

Soldiers were tumbling out of the back of the four-tonner that had hit the gatehouse. Some seemed fine, some were half stunned and shaky on their legs.

But Sean saw that there were bodies scattered around the Leyland that lay on its side, some moving, some not. The canvas hood was gone – shreds of charred material hung from the hoops.

For a moment he didn’t know where to go, who to attend to. Everywhere he looked he saw someone injured, someone bleeding, someone dead.

Blood had been sprayed everywhere – across the road
and the remains of the gatehouse walls – like some kid had come along with a high-powered water pistol filled with red paint. The ground was covered in shattered wreckage, bits of vehicles . . . bits of humans. Some were stuck to torn pieces of cloth, the camouflage pattern just visible through the blood. Others were on fire, burning brightly as the fat melted in the heat. The air was thick with smells that reminded Sean of a barbecue – the sickly sweet tang of burned meat mixing with lighter fuel. Through the smoky, eye-stinging haze that hung over everything came the sounds of groans, cries.

Sean had dealt with injuries before. Like every soldier in the British Army, he was a competent field medic. Fully trained medics were assigned to platoons, but when you were out on a four-man patrol, more often than not it was just down to the training you’d received. And that meant being able to deal with anything and everything, usually in the middle of a firefight, right up to stabilizing a seriously wounded mate while securing an area to allow them to be medevacked.

In training they used real amputees to make it realistic – men who had done all the screaming and yelling for real. Fake blood and horror make-up ensured that it was as close to being there as the army could get. This was different. In every possible way.

‘Harker!’ Sean’s head snapped up. Heaton was there
too, running past him, also with one of the kits. ‘Help anyone you can. Stabilize them.’

‘What about Clarky?’ Sean yelled back. She had been waiting by the gate with the Cosworth. She could help out too. ‘Where the—?’

Then he saw it. The Cosworth. Or what was left of it.

It was on the other side of the road, hidden behind one of the four-tonners. The entire front section had been blasted to nothing. The rest of it was an inferno. It was the source of most of the smoke and flames.

Sean started to run towards it, but another yell from Heaton pulled him up sharp.

‘The wounded, Harker! Clark doesn’t matter! Stabilize!’

Clark didn’t matter? What the fuck was that about? Sean thought. Yeah, she and Heaton didn’t get on, but she’d just been blown to pieces!

But he also knew what Heaton meant. You concentrated on need, not on who your mates were. A complete stranger dying at your feet took priority over your mucker who was dying somewhere over there.

Sean forced himself to turn away from the wreckage of the Cosworth and dropped down beside the soldier nearest to him. The guy had been thrown clear of one of the four-tonners and was just coming round.

‘OK, mate,’ Sean said, quickly, efficiently, calmly. ‘I need to check you over, OK? Just lie as still as you can.’

The soldier moaned, sliding in and out of consciousness. Sean checked him over for broken bones and puncture wounds by sight and by feel.

‘The medics are on their way,’ he said, more in hope than conviction. He had found nothing broken, but there was a deep laceration in the soldier’s leg. He quickly applied a high-pressure dressing – a wad of sterile, absorbent padding, held in place by a couple of strips of bandage, tied into position with a swiftly efficient knot.

‘You need to apply pressure,’ he said, guiding the guy’s hands to the wound. ‘Hold this. You’re fine, OK? Just stay with it.’ If the soldier had a job to do, there was more chance he would stay alert.

‘I’ve done the fucking training too,’ the lad muttered, but he did as he was told.

Other soldiers were arriving, running towards the scene as fast as they could. Sean moved on to the next casualty, a woman who was sitting, dazed, among shards of broken glass and shattered metal. She was staring into the distance, rocking back and forth. She didn’t seem to notice the compound fracture in her arm. Bone jutted out above her elbow and blood pulsed out onto her combat shirt.

‘Hey, hey . . .’ Sean got her attention by clicking his fingers in front of her eyes, bringing her back to the here and now. He had nothing to splint the break with, but he
wrapped it tight in another bandage. Then he guided her good hand over to hold her damaged arm.

‘Just hold it straight. Steady. Right?’ He cocked his head. He could hear sirens, still distant. ‘They’ll be with you in a minute, OK?’

He moved on again. ‘Oh – fuck – me . . .’ he whispered.

The next casualty was Clark.

His friend was alive, just. Sean only knew this when he saw something bubbling between her lips. She was one charred mess, from her face down to her knees. It was hard to tell where her skin ended and her clothing began. After the knees, there wasn’t anything. Her legs ended in ragged stumps that were slowly weeping fluid.

For a moment it sounded like Clark was weeping herself. She wasn’t. There was a long-drawn-out, high-pitched sound which Sean realized was her breathing.

Where to start? He was trained for bullet wounds and fractures. Not this.

Keep them warm. That was it. Part of it. A burns victim would go into shock; core body temperature would drop dramatically.

Sean pulled off his shirt and draped it over her. ‘Clarky. Mate.’ His voice shook. ‘Let’s have a look at you . . .’

He gazed helplessly at the remains of Clark’s legs. She
could haemorrhage if they were left like that. He fumbled in the bag. ‘Gonna need a couple of tourniquets here . . .’

A hand touched his shoulder, gentle but firm. ‘We’ll take it from here, soldier.’

And then two paramedics were there, crouched over Clark’s still form, not even looking at Sean. They tossed his shirt over to one side. Sean slowly picked it up, shrugged it back on, and tore his eyes away from Clark to look around.

Several ambulances had turned up, civvy and military. The paramedic crews were at work among the dead and dying soldiers. A fire engine had arrived and its crew were spraying foam on the wrecked vehicles. It looked like a war zone.

Sean spent the next half-hour helping load casualties into the ambulances that kept on arriving. Adrenaline had him wired. He couldn’t stop moving. If he stopped, then his body started shaking. It needed to be occupied.

That was until he bent down to pick up another stretcher, and realized it was Clark, and she had a sheet over her face – which meant only one thing. And then his body froze. His knees shook and his eyes filled with tears and he
couldn’t move
.

‘Take a rest, soldier.’ The voice in his ear was gentle but firm. He blinked and focused on a Rupert, but a medical Rupert. The guy put out both hands to turn him
gently away and propel him in the direction of the barracks. ‘That’s an order.’