The Walking Dead

'Of course, it's different when you're operating abroad, far away, on foreign territory. No Queensberry rules there. No monitors watching over you, and no human-rights pinkos. You do your job…You go in after your target, fair means or foul, and all that matters is that the target is captured and handed over, or it's his hand or head that gets brought back…Has to be something, or you won't get the bounty payment. Did I ever tell you what the rates were for bounty on a Taliban guy in Ghazni Province?'

He was perched on his stool at the left end of the bar, and his surgical sticks were propped between his legs. George Marriot's audience migrated between the bar and the dartboard. The golf team was back after victory on a sodden course, and the darts team were throwing. The crush at the bar suited him well.

'Didn't I? Well, for an Ali Baba — that's a thief, operating on the road, turning over aid convoys — there might only be a thousand dollars in it. Hardly worth the effort. I'd a team of more than a dozen to keep sniffing and interested after the Tora Bora. Did I tell you about the Tora Bora? Don't remember. Well, another time…I've this team to keep happy, damn good trackers and the best fighters anywhere, and the way to keep them happiest was to go up into the foothills of Ghazni Province, maybe up into the mountains, and go after the Taliban. Hard bastards, but I respected them — they'd have had my head off my shoulders soon as spit at me, if they'd had the chance. Yes, I respected them as quality opposition. For a big Taliban man, one of the old regime who'd been close to Mullah Omar, I was looking at a bounty — alive or for a head, ears and fingers for taking the prints off — at twenty-five thousand minimum. The Yanks, fair play to them, weren't cheapskates and they paid on the nail. They weren't easy to get, the big Taliban men, took days of tracking, weeks of hunting through the caves, and when they were cornered they fought like rats in a sack…Did I ever tell you how I got that grenade stuff in my leg, Russian made HE-42 with a hundred and eighteen grams of high explosive, did I?'

How many times had the story been told? One day — God, it would not be a pretty sight — the landlord swore he'd tell GG to drop his trousers, right there in the bar, and show the damn scars. One day…No, no, it would be cruel — no scars there to show. They listened politely and tolerantly, carried their pints away from the bar counter, left the story for the next customers, and talked their golf and darts, their business and families.

'Myself, I'd never ask a man under my command to do something, go somewhere that I wasn't prepared to do or go. I led into this cave. Knew it was used because the earth at the front was all scuffed. Went in with my torch, and the beam caught his eyes, like a damn cat's, and my finger was off the guard and on to the trigger bar but the grenade came bouncing at me. I stayed those seconds too long, gave him the whole magazine, thirty rounds of ball, then chucked myself down, but not fast enough and not far enough away. My boys, they carried me back down but not before they'd taken off his head, his ears and his fingers. The man I'd killed was a big man, a proper Taliban field commander. He was a man like me, a true fighter, not one of those who'd get some daft kid — a suicide-bomber — to do the work for him, hide behind a kid. He'd have heard me and the boys come to the cave, and wouldn't have thought of surrender, knew he was going to die but tried damn hard to take me with him. Have to respect that sort of man…The Yanks did, gave me thirty-two thousand five hundred dollars for his head and his bits. But I was finished, too bloody wrecked to go back up the mountains after the hospital.'

He was asked, a snigger from an accountant who queued for service, whether he'd worn the same shirt when he was in Afghanistan. Frayed cuffs and collar, the colour gone from it. He heard the laughter ripple round him. He was told that the shirt, it might be clean on that evening, looked worn enough to have done time on his back in Ghazni Province. Did he know that a sale — with bargains at giveaway prices — was staged that weekend in the town down the road? Another piped up, said he should have left the shirt up the mountain. The ripple of laughter was a gale. Had his sister sewn up the shrapnel holes in the shirt and washed out the bloodstains? He should treat himself to a new shirt, not leave thirty-two thousand five hundred dollars untouched in a biscuit tin under his bed.

George Marriot sensed, and it was new to him, that gentle mocking had gone nasty was ridicule. His hand came off his glass and his fingers touched his collar, felt the loose, worn cotton, and he saw the threads that hung apart at his cuffs. He let his sticks take his weight, left his unfinished drink on the counter, dropped his head and pushed forward towards the door. He heard a protest it was only a joke.

He elbowed the door open.