Street Soldier (25 page)

Malcolm calmly pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the screen. ‘Do you usually answer the phone at this time on a Saturday night?’

‘Huh? What?’ Sean demanded. The question was so ordinary that he had difficulty pulling the brain cells together to answer it.

Malcolm turned and gazed at him. ‘It’s important that you stick to your usual routine. It’s a simple question. Yes or no?’

‘Uh – then, yeah. Yeah, I do.’

Malcolm handed the phone over. ‘Then answer it.’

Sean reached out for it, already pre-emptively running through excuses in his head for why, no, he couldn’t come out on the piss right now. It had to be one of the lads. They would have clocked that he wasn’t in barracks.

His eyes bugged out when he saw the name on the screen. ‘Mum?’ It came out almost like a scream.

‘Hi, sweetheart!’ Amazingly, she didn’t sound like she was about to burst into tears, which was what usually happened when some crisis made her call him. She sounded almost . . . happy. ‘I just wanted to thank you for the flowers. They’re beautiful.’

‘
F-flowers?
’

‘
From Sean and all his mates
, it says here.’

There was a few seconds’ silence as his mind raced.

‘So – what are you up to tonight?’ she asked, when he still hadn’t said anything.

‘Mum . . .’ He struggled to think.

The Guyz were sending flowers? Matt and Copper? Come on!

The lads in the platoon? They hardly knew she existed.

The only alternative was . . .

His eyes locked with Malcolm’s. The phone wasn’t on speaker, but it was quiet enough for the tinny voice to fill the van. The men in front had heard every word.

‘Perhaps you should ask if it says anything else,’ Malcolm suggested.

And because Sean guessed Malcolm wasn’t one to make casual chat, he passed it on, dreading what the answer might be.

‘Ooh, hang on . . . Yes, it says,
World’s best Mum. We always know where to find you
. It’s so sweet, love.’

‘Yeah,’ he said harshly. ‘Gotta go.’

‘Oh – right – of course. Didn’t want to bother you, just—’

He jabbed the screen to end the call.

We always know where to find you.
Rich just making his point. He didn’t even have to send Malcolm round to do his dirty work. He could send a bomb through the post. Even the Guyz couldn’t protect her against that.

Flowers? You shouldn’t have. No, really.

He mutely handed the phone back to Malcolm for safekeeping, and went back to waiting.

The icing on the cake was that by the time 22:00 came round, he was bursting for a piss. He hadn’t actually been all afternoon.

‘It’s time,’ said Malcolm. Sean looked at his watch as the van started moving again: 21:53. ‘Five minutes. Get ready.’

‘Right,’ Sean replied. He reluctantly lifted the weapon out of the box.

He couldn’t even fake missing the pub. Once the van stopped, he would have to open the door, fire, and know that the rocket he had just launched was dead on. Anything else wasn’t so much inexcusable as just unbelievable. And Rich, Sean now knew, would not take kindly to the unbelievable.

The van started to slow.

‘Two minutes. Put this on.’

Malcolm handed Sean a black balaclava. Even with everything swirling around his head, he could see it made sense. Someone might catch a glimpse of the guy inside the van, might even recognize him.

Sean reluctantly pulled it over his head. The wool was scratchy against his face and it smelled of sweat. Not his.

‘Stand by.’

He checked the weapon – not that there was much to check: a basic trigger mechanism and a flip-up iron sight that did little more than get in the way.

He had to do this. He had to trust that the signal had got through – that the phone had finally sent its message, that the spooks had been able to arrange something. He was more in the dark than he had ever been before. He would never have gone into a job with the Guyz with as little information as this. That was how you screwed up; that was what got you arrested. He would have simply refused until Matt or whoever came up with a plan that actually made sense. But now he was in one place at one moment with one job, and he had to do it.
Shit.

The van slowed and stopped. Malcolm and the driver both pulled on balaclavas of their own and suddenly leaped out. A moment later, both the side door and the rear doors were pulled open.
Of course
, Sean thought.
Got to ventilate the exhaust
. . .

And there was the Monty, right in front of him. They’d pulled up just at the entrance to the car park.

Malcolm was at the side door. ‘Now!’

Sean gave himself no time to think, no time to pause. In a smooth move, he had the Carl Gustav on his right shoulder and was staring down it towards the Monty. In the brief seconds between aiming and firing, he noticed the cars outside the pub, the shadows of figures in the windows. Music pulsed faintly from inside. The wind was warm, scented with the remaining heat of the day and something delicious from the pub restaurant.

Sean pulled the trigger.

Chapter 28

The rocket shot out of the end of the launcher like a greyhound from its cage. The backblast filled the interior of the van with fumes, even though all the doors were open. Sparks flew from the rocket as it ignited and gained speed, racing towards the pub.

The doors slammed shut a split second later, so Sean didn’t get to see the explosion. It wasn’t as dramatic as he had expected – a dull thud, followed by a sort of thumping pop that made the van rock, then the immediate chorus of car alarms set off by the explosion.

A moment later the driver and Malcolm were back in. Sean toppled over as the driver pulled away, and over the noise of the engine he heard the first screams and shouts.

No one said anything else. Sean didn’t even stop to ask where they were when they pulled over and Malcolm indicated with a jerk of his thumb that this was where he left them. Once he was out in the fresh air, he recognized
that he was a five-minute walk from the main gate. Malcolm silently handed him his phone through the window.

As the van drove off, he dropped to his knees and threw up at the side of the road.

When he got back to barracks, Sean had hoped for solitude – somewhere he could just collapse and make sense of everything. No such luck. He was in a block of single rooms that all opened into a common area. Ravi Mitra and Curtis West were there, watching a movie.

Mitra looked up in alarm at Sean’s appearance. ‘Shit, you look bad!’

Sean grunted and went into his room, wiped – not from exertion; from the battering his emotions and nerves had taken.

Rich was right – he was trained to kill. He was a soldier. It was what he would be asked to do if necessary, and he would do it well. But what he’d just done had no connection to that. Launching a rocket at a pub on British soil? It was insane. It was unbelievable. There was no way such a thing could ever happen. Except that it had – and he had done it.

Sean wanted to cry, wanted to scream, wanted to kick the living shit out of anything he could, just to let out his rage and confusion.

He became aware of raised voices outside. Fists knocking on doors. Then, after a single cursory knock, his door flew open and Sergeant Adams filled the frame.

‘Harker,’ he said. He jerked his head towards the common area. ‘Outside.’ He disappeared immediately, going from door to door to deliver the same message.

Sean slowly got up and went out.

The others from the platoon were filing out to join the ones already there, all obviously wondering what had happened.

‘This everyone?’ Adams asked. ‘Right. There’s been an attack on the Monty. Some kind of explosive. I’m just doing my rounds to check names.’

‘Oh my God!’ Mitra exclaimed.

Sean forced his dry mouth into action. ‘Was anyone hurt?’

‘Yes. A few.’

Sean closed his eyes and felt his guts clench. He wanted to hurl again.

‘All minor,’ the sergeant said distinctly. Sean opened his eyes again, not quite believing it. ‘The front bar that got taken out was closed for redecorating. Everyone was in the lounge bar at the back. Lucky, eh?’ He was looking in Sean’s direction, holding his gaze a fraction longer than necessary – long enough for Sean to get it and the others not to notice anything. ‘Minor injuries only. You
know. The kind of thing we’re so good at faking for our exercises. Sounds like a real catastrophe was averted.’

Suddenly Sean had to fight to hold it together. He was nowhere near as good at it as the sergeant. The gush of relief that ran through him was like cool water after a twenty-mile march.

Mitra had switched the TV to a news channel. It was still too soon for pictures, but the basic facts scrolled across the bottom of the screen as breaking news. They painted a grimmer picture than Adams was describing.
Substantial damage . . . Number of casualties unknown . . . Statement expected
. . .

Well, Sean thought, if MI5 were in control of the scene, it stood to reason that they would want to big up the damage as well. Let Rich think it had been a lot more successful than it was.

‘Oh, fucking hell!’ Mitra exclaimed. ‘Clark and then this? What’s next?’

Adams patted him on the shoulder. ‘Don’t fuss yourself, Kama Sutra. The world’s a shit place, end of. They hit at us – it just makes us stronger. Right, lads?’ But he looked at Sean again as he said it.

‘Right!’ Sean happily added his voice to the chorus of agreement.

One by one, or talking together in outrage, the platoon dispersed back to their rooms. Adams half
turned to go, then came back. He delved into his pocket. ‘Oh, Harker, I think you dropped this. Take more care – I’m not your nanny.’

And he handed over the phone. The spooks’ phone, retrieved from the train. They must have tracked its signal.

‘Wow. Thanks.’ Sean took it, slipped it into his pocket. ‘I’ve been looking for it everywhere.’

‘Now get some kip,’ said the sergeant. ‘You look exhausted.’

And with that, he was gone.

Sean went back to his room. Adams was right. He was exhausted, and his relief at the news had simply added to his tiredness. It meant that all the adrenaline that had been keeping him going was no longer needed, so it could just drain away and leave him running on empty.

He fell onto his bed, and his phone – his own phone – buzzed in his right pocket. It was a text from Heaton:

I owe you a drink. Pick you up Tuesday evening 1900.

Sean immediately wanted to be sick again. Trouble was, he had nothing to bring up.

And he still had a job to do. He pulled out the spooks’ phone, and called up the text menu.

Chapter 29

Testing, testing . . .

Sean wanted to say the words out loud and hear the reassuring confirmation that he was getting through. The glitch with the phone on the train had dented his confidence in MI5’s electronics.

But he was sitting next to Heaton in the Impreza, crawling slowly at the tail end of the evening rush hour, on the way to a rendezvous with madmen. He was being forced to trust again – trust them to have set up the wire correctly, trust himself to have turned it on right.

It was a neat device – a gadget the size of a credit card sewn to the inside of his shirt. The microphone was one of his buttons. It meant that if he got searched – if he had to take his shirt off – then it wouldn’t be like the movies where the guy always has trailing leads and an incriminating box taped to his stomach.

But it was still there – it was still discoverable if he got careless. It seemed appropriate that the gadget lay
more or less over his heart. Whenever it brushed against his skin and reminded him of its presence, it felt like a great big target saying
Shoot me now
.

Heaton had picked him up as promised, but it hadn’t been for a drink. They had headed straight for the A303 and London. Rich had summoned them again.

Heaton had headed for the M25 and they had circled London anti-clockwise before coming off. They were now somewhere near Peckham. After numerous stop-start traffic lights and junctions, Heaton turned into an ordinary-looking light industrial estate. It looked pretty new, with nice shiny metal surfaces to all the units. He drove slowly, looking at the numbers painted on the front faces of the units. There was only one with cars parked up outside, and sure enough that was where he stopped. Sean instinctively scanned the vehicles – a top-of-the-range Jaguar XE, a much more modest Mondeo, and a Yamaha motorbike.

‘This is it.’ Heaton switched off the engine. ‘Front line of the war!’

‘You mean,’ Sean couldn’t help saying, ‘front line to a tidy profit.’

Heaton grinned and shrugged. ‘Demand’s going to shoot up, mate. Someone’s got to supply it.’

‘What’s next, then?’ Sean asked as they got out, for the benefit of the microphone. Making casual conversation
with Heaton was almost impossible without wanting to simultaneously throw up and kick the shit out of him. But at least trying to gather intelligence made talking easier, and he could only hope it brought forward the time when MI5 had everything they needed to come in with all guns blazing.

He pushed his door shut; the Impreza beeped as it locked itself.

Heaton grinned. ‘The big one, Harker. Exciting times.’

The unit had a large sliding shutter for vehicles, now closed up, and a smaller door to one side for people. Sean took a deep breath and followed Heaton through this one.

Inside, the space was occupied by four large, long-wheel-base Transit vans, parked facing the shutter. White, no signage. Beyond them was an office. It shouldn’t have surprised Sean, but still his heart sank at the sight of Malcolm waiting outside. The Doberman indicated with a jerk of his head that they should go through.

‘Come in, dear lads, come in!’ As they entered, with Malcolm hot on Sean’s heels, Rich turned away from two other men.

Sean stopped dead when he saw who the company was. They stood there with big grins on their faces and
Sean wanted to kill them both, even while he went into acting mode and shook Rich’s outstretched hand.