In my capacity as Career Manager, I write to notify you that with regret, I must issue you with 12 months' notice of termination. This notification can now be treated as an executive order to start planning and make use of the resettlement package available to you.
UK Ministry of Defence notice of compulsory redundancy, issued to Sgt Rob Rennie, Royal Marines.
NAZANI, EAST AFRICA: 48 HOURS BEFORE THE END OF THE NPROFOR / AFRICAN UNION PEACEKEEPING MISSION.
Time was like falling off a cliff. One second you were alive, and the next you weren't: one minute you had a good career with a few years left before you had to find a job in Civvy Street, and the next you found yourself out on your ear without so much as a thank-you or a kiss-my-arse.
The e
-mail from the company handling the MoD's Dear John letters had arrived two days ago. The services of Sergeant Rob Rennie were no longer required. The timing couldn't have been worse.
You bastards.
You binned me.
And short of my pension date. So no lump sum on exit. Fuck you.
Rob fidgeted in the passenger seat of the armoured ACMAT pickup, staring at the bleak prospect of unemployment and an equally grim cluster of ruined buildings in the distance, all that was left of a town called Wadat.
There'd been a lot more of Wadat around on his last deployment, but the place was doing well to cling to the map at all given the pounding it had taken. A cluster of shell
-shattered, abandoned buildings refused to give up. In a saner world, Nazani could have been a resort for trendy adventure tourists playing at roughing it, but this was Rob's world, the real one, greedy and destructive, another angry, broken place where schoolboys were waiting to kill him.
One of them was loafing in a derelict shop doorway with a scabby ginger dog as the ACMAT passed. The kid couldn't have been more than twelve, smoking with all the weary assurance of a forty
-a-day man while he drummed one heel against the shuttered door. Rob couldn't work out whether he was a look-out or a decoy. He didn't seem to have a phone in his hand. Either way, he wasn't waiting for the shop to open so he could go in and buy a Mars Bar.
Sam Obado drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and gave him a quick glance. He must have seen Rob's eyes lock on to the kid.
"He's not a look-out, Robert." Sam was an accomplished mind-reader. "Relax."
Rob craned his neck and didn't take his eyes off the boy until he was completely out of sight. It didn't make sense for anyone to harass patrols when the peacekeepers were pulling out, but the end of deployments was a favourite time to pick off tired foreign troops with home on their minds. He'd be out of here soon along with the rest of the peacekeeping force, and then it would be someone else's problem. Rob had enough of his own to worry about now.
How am I going to top up Tom's university fund now?
I was counting on that fucking money.
He'd thought he'd have a few more years to get things sorted before he had to face Civvy Street for the first time in his adult life. But he'd thought wrong. He had a year to find a new job in a world that didn't have much use for what he did best.
Private security, maybe. Yeah, me and a few thousand other blokes. Not so easy to get your foot in the door now.
Sod it. I'll think of something. I'm thirty-seven. I'm not washed up yet.
If they'd just let him see out his twenty-two years, he could have picked up a tidy lump sum when he left. Now he'd have to wait another twenty-odd years for it, way too late to help Tom when he really needed it.
Bastards. Just to save a few quid on this year's budget. What do I get? A resettlement grant. Ten grand or whatever.
Rob opened the window a couple of inches, letting in air that now smelled of damp earth instead of lightly-toasted war zone. A zebra-striped bird with a rusty pink crest stabbed its long beak into the grass verge like a man searching for land mines. Somewhere a few miles north, a vehicle carrying aid workers and their mobile security guy — no confirmed number or nationalities yet — had missed its last radio check. Rob and Sam headed down the route the party should have taken, expecting to find them trying to repair a broken-down SUV.
It didn't explain why they hadn't called in, though. Rob checked his watch again.
"Be nice to them when we find them, Robert," Sam said.
"I'm charm personified. I don't have any problem with security blokes."
"I meant the aid workers."
Rob realised he'd griped about NGOs more than he thought. "Yeah. One minute we're compromising their precious neutrality. Then it all goes to rat-shit and they want us to rescue them."
"At least we have the moral high ground."
"I'll treasure that if I get my arse shot off saving them."
Sam steered through a slalom course of potholes. Shallow mortar craters were mixed with puddles of overnight rain, each one still a potential IED as far as Rob was concerned. Roads had long since ceased to be paths from A to B. Even back in the UK, he was a jumpy passenger. He fidgeted, trying to find a position to keep his boots off the floor, ready for a shockwave from below that could break his back. Sam should have let him drive. He was happier when he was in control.
"Don't worry," Sam said. "You'll find work. Your son will go to college. And the floor won't deform if we hit anything."
"I'm really obvious, aren't I?" Rob studied himself in the wing mirror again to check that he still looked fine for a man who was knocking on the door of middle age. "I just haven't got the civvy skills they want these days."
"You have time to acquire some."
"Not without a brain transplant."
"Try maritime security. You could call at Morrigan's office in Mombasa before you go home."
Bev would have called that mercenary work, but she'd given up having a say in Rob's life when she left him. He had to focus on Tom now. Maybe getting binned was Nature's way of telling him he'd done his duty and now it was Rob Time.
"Yeah, you're right." Rob tried to sound upbeat. No wrapping or whingeing, that was the rule: no giving up and no complaining. However bad things got, a Marine just cracked on with it. "I'll end up guarding luxury yachts. Sorted."
The ACMAT passed a couple of African Union Humvees with Senegalese and Kenyan markings, parked about twenty meters from the tarmac. Sam acknowledged one of the guys on the Miniguns with a discreetly raised forefinger. Then something bounced against the underside of the pickup with a loud clunk, probably just a chunk of concrete, but Rob still held his breath and waited for the bang that never came. It was enough to take his mind off his money worries.
"Relax." Sam read his mind again, not that it was hard. "Morrigan cleared the road this morning. Did you hear they lost another man last week?"
"Course not. Contractors are even lower on the food chain than us." Rob stopped himself mid-whinge.
Cheerful in adversity
. It was such a central part of being a Royal Marine that it was specified in the recruiting leaflet. "That'll be me this time next year."
The radio interrupted. "
Echo Two Three Bravo, this is Zero — confirming three Dutch, one French NGO personnel, plus one US mobile asset, armed. Nothing heard for thirty minutes now, over.
"
Rob adjusted his headset. So that was four aid workers and their American minder, what the civvies would have called their bodyguard, and he had a weapon. No problem there, then.
"Zero, this is Echo Two Three Bravo, any UAVs to give us eyes on, over?"
"
None available yet, over.
"
"Understood. Estimate, fifteen minutes to the Gibure road. Roger out."
Technology was never there when he bloody needed it. Never mind; they had a Mk 48 machine gun and a few hundred-round belts in the back, plus an H&K 69 grenade launcher to hand, useful both for smoke and giving someone an emphatic hello. In the end, it was reliable kit and basic soldiering skills that would get him out of trouble. Control could keep their toy planes.
"Step on it, Sam. Can't afford to misplace a Septic." Rob slapped the dashboard. "Too much diplomatic fallout. One Yank equals twenty Brits equals a hundred of you."
Sam did one of his terrific belly laughs. "Don't tell them that. They want to be loved."
"What, aid workers or Septics?"
"You always make me laugh, Robert. I shall miss you."
Sam pulled over to the side of the road to let a wide-load convoy pass. It was heading south from Gibure, a mix of tankers and trucks with Morrigan logos on their mud-flecked doors. Rob noted the security escort manned by hairy-arsed, unsmiling, sunglassed white blokes in black T-shirts and body armour, and wondered if contractors ever worked together long enough to feel like family in the same way the Corps did.
And that's my future. Okay. Can do.
"I'll miss you too, mate," Rob said.
He watched the convoy shrink and vanish in the wing mirror. This was how governments liked their overseas wars now — local troops to do the heavy lifting, a lot of Western hired help, and a handful of uniformed blokes like him as "advisers." They called it
scalable
and
flexible.
Rob translated that as
cheaper
and
no visible body bags to upset the voters
.
Sam was about to turn off towards Pelayi when HQ came on the radio again.
"
Echo Two Three Bravo, this is Zero — NGO confirms their vehicle's being held on the south side of the Pelayi river crossing by unidentified locals in three technicals, minimum six crew. No injuries. The US mobile asset's employed by Esselby. The locals want payment for using the road, over.
"
At least the aid party had been able to call in. "Zero, is this a hostage situation, over?"
"
Negative, treat as a bribe, over.
"
Rob ignored that and planned for a rescue anyway. There was looking on the positive side, and then there was being bloody stupid. The crossing on the sat map looked like the kind of spot he'd have picked for an ambush, a choke point overlooked by a hill, with tree cover one side for fire support elements. Sam glanced at it and tutted to himself. He obviously saw it the same way. It was an armed toll bridge by any other name.
"Roger that, Zero," Rob said. "Difficult location. We could use some support, over."
"
On its way. Two AU patrols about ten minutes behind you. Zero out.
"
Rob checked his pouches for the US dollars and local shillings that he took on patrols for those occasions when cigarettes, a watch, or a throwaway mobile phone weren't enough to placate the locals. He kept the cash with his combat trauma kit. That was the measure of its life-saving abilities.
"I'm going to pull up there," Sam said, tapping the dashboard screen at a point fifty meters from the crossing. "That looks like trouble."
"Too right, mate."
The Pelayi road deteriorated gradually from crumbling tarmac to a broad dirt track. Sam kept checking in with the Humvees a few klicks behind, chattering away in French to the Senegalese unit like Jean Paul Sartre on speed.
He looked happier for the chat. "They've split up to approach the crossing on both flanks to give us cover."
"Cracking. Better safe than sorry." Rob counted the dollar bills. This was probably just a last-minute rush to squeeze some income out of foreigners before they abandoned Nazani. "I'm good at sweet-talking the local delinquents. Bung them some cash and we'll be home for tea."
Rob scanned the slopes to the right, looking for signs of activity in the tree line. There'd probably be more blokes behind cover somewhere. He was looking for three "technicals", then, the makeshift gun trucks that every dodgy armed gang seemed to tool around in. According to the sat map, there was no useful cover near the road if things went pear-shaped. The left side of the road was flat for about fifty meters, a handy spot to lay mines to stop anyone skirting the control point. There was so much ordnance washing around the bazaars these days that he always assumed the worst.
"No cover," Rob said. "Sam, stand by to put some smoke down if we have problems. I don't like the look of the trees."
Trouble. Check weapons, comms, cam.
Rob adjusted the microcam clipped to his radio headband in case he needed to prove he'd handed over cash. When the road straightened out of a blind bend, he could see a knot of vehicles blocking the road seventy meters ahead. It resolved into a battered SUV hemmed in by the technicals, three Toyota pickups with Russian RPKs mounted on the back.
Two of the technicals were parked with their guns aimed down the road. The third faced the opposite direction, giving them a 360 degree arc of fire. These blokes weren't amateurs.
Rob counted heads while he went through his ritual again, touching rifle, sidearm, and ammo to remind his hands what might be needed. There were eight local lads on and around the Toyotas, all under thirty, five nursing AK-47s and three manning the guns. Next to the SUV, five white civvies – three men, two women – stood in a tidy line that said they'd been ordered not to move.