Killing for the Company

The moment after the first Puma touched down, seven men jumped out, all carrying bright torches. They wore DPMs and hard hats and Luke instantly recognised the maroon flash of 1 Para on the arms of six of them. The seventh man had no hard hat and a regular uniform: Chris Andersen, OC B Squadron, and a man who had just gone up several notches in Luke’s estimation for making the journey out here.

‘ Follow me! ’ Luke roared at the Para QRF over the noise of the helicopters, and he sprinted back into the house.

There were two medics among the Paras. One look at Chet and their faces turned grim. But they were in charge now, and Luke knew to leave them to it.

The OC walked down the stairs. ‘Ivanovic?’ he asked.

Luke pointed at the Serb lying on the floor. ‘All yours, boss,’ he said. And then: ‘Sean and Marty are dead.’

A dark look crossed Andersen’s face, and Luke could tell he was feeling equally murderous. They had their orders, though. Ivanovic was to stay alive. The Hague wanted their trophy conviction, no matter what had happened here tonight.

Minutes later Luke was back outside in the snow. He watched Chet being stretchered into one of the waiting Pumas, then stood with a frown as the Paras carried the two bodies up into the chopper.

Ivanovic came next, held under the arms by a couple of Paras who made no attempt to spare him any of the agony caused by dragging his splintered shins across the ground. Amid his shouts of pain, he took a second to cast a hateful look at Luke, who returned it. The bastard didn’t know how lucky he was Luke hadn’t given him one behind the ear.

And then Andersen was there again. ‘Let’s go,’ he ordered, and the two of them boarded the Puma that was carrying Chet and their fallen comrades.

As the heli lifted up into the air, Luke crouched down by Chet’s stretcher, steadying himself by gripping the webbing that covered the inside of the aircraft. His mate’s face was covered with an oxygen mask and he had a new drip in each arm. A blood pressure and pulse monitor beeped next to him. His face looked as white as death.

Luke stared at the man who’d saved his life.

Suddenly Chet’s eyes flickered open.

‘Fuck me, buddy,’ Luke burst out. ‘What does it take to put you down?’

‘Don’t… bullshit… me…’ Chet could barely get the words out, and Luke struggled to hear them over the roar of the chopper. ‘Am I going to make it?’

Luke looked him up and down. He saw the damaged leg and the tubes sticking out of his body. He saw the medics, their faces severe.

He fixed his expression in what he hoped looked like reassurance.

‘Course you are, mate,’ he said, as he felt the Puma struggling against the elements. ‘Course you are. That’s a promise.’

He turned away so that Chet couldn’t see his face any more.

Luke Mercer wasn’t a religious man, but as the Puma struggled through the blizzard and the dark night of Eastern Europe, he found himself muttering a silent prayer — to God and all the fucking angels on high — that this was a promise he’d be able to keep.

PART TWO

January 2003, two months before the coalition invasion of Iraq.

FOUR

London.

‘ It’s six o’clock on Monday, 7 January. This is the news. ’

In a small ground-floor flat just off Seven Sisters Road, a man stared at his reflection in the mirror while the radio babbled in the background.

‘ UN weapons inspectors have reported that there is no indication that Iraq is in possession of weapons of mass destruction. The chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, however, has stated that, while Iraq has cooperated on a practical level, it has not demonstrated a genuine acceptance of the need to disarm unilaterally. This follows claims by the United States that Saddam Hussein has ordered the death of any scientist who speaks to the inspectors in private, and it is expected that… ’

The man switched off the radio and went back to staring in the mirror. It wasn’t a pretty sight. His right eye was hooded, the result of an old injury. Just below his left eye there was a two-inch scar, bright pink and crooked. When he smiled the scar made his face look more damaged. Not that he smiled much these days. Today — his birthday, as it happened — he was more than usually aware of how fucked up he looked. He scowled and glanced around the tiny bathroom. Thirty-four years old, and this piece-of-shit flat in one of the scummiest bits of London was all he had to show for his life so far.

Chet Freeman looked down to see the prosthetic limb strapped to the stump of his right leg. It always hurt — especially when he put pressure on it, which he did every time he stood up. The remnants of his shattered knee bone were forever breaking down; his skin was often bleeding and sore. When people saw an amputee, they only ever saw the prosthetic limb, never the damaged flesh that sat in it. The limb itself was hi-tech and well cushioned, but the flesh was human and it ached 24/7.