"So where's the rocket?" Mike asked. He'd seen the flash. It
had
to be an RPG. "Where's the tube?"
It took Rob a few minutes to find some debris scattered in the scrub. He brandished a launching tube like a trophy.
"You called it, Zombie. Good effort."
It was a massive relief. Mike had started to doubt himself. They walked back to the Suburban and inspected the damage, noting dents, gouges in the bumper guard, and scratched paint.
"Not bad." Rob nodded approvingly. "Better put some warning triangles down. There'll be traffic through soon."
Rob took out his phone and grabbed some images of the vehicle and the positions of the bodies as if it was just a routine accident that he was going to report to his insurer. By the time the army vehicle arrived, traffic had started again and a small jam had built up. Less patient or curious drivers just drove off the tarmac and skirted the obstruction. A Nazani Defence Force lieutenant poked around in the debris, slung the bodies on the back of their truck, and took Mike's and Rob's details before driving off. He didn't seem all that bothered. It definitely wasn't like a car wreck in Maine.
Mike drove back to the security compound next to the airport while Rob gazed out of the window, apparently content to be a passenger for once.
"Hoofing," he said absently. There was only one higher rank of approval on his Richter scale of excellence, and that was
fucking
hoofing. "I'm glad we disabled the airbags on this bugger."
They dissolved into nervous, shaky laughter. "I must have hit at least one of them," Mike said. "I put down enough fire."
"Either way, it bought a second or two, and that's all you need, isn't it? Shit, that was satisfying. I've never rammed a vehicle for real. Just on the CP course." Rob patted Mike's arm. "Sorry, mate. I could have got you killed."
"What were we going to do, take a vote?"
"You okay?"
Mike tilted his neck left then right to try to ease the pulled muscles. "My neck's screwed. I hope Livvie doesn't notice. If I don't do a video call, she'll know something's happened."
"Just tell her I beat you at arm wrestling."
The security compound housed contractors from other PSCs as well as Esselby, and word of the contact had already gotten around by the time they arrived. They were greeted with good-natured barracking from a few Brits standing outside the admin office.
"Bloody women drivers."
"There goes your no-claims, Ulcers."
Rob gave them a big grin and waved two fingers as he went in. They must have been former Marines;
Ulcers
was his old Royal Marines nickname, a play on the Rennie heartburn remedy, but Mike rarely heard anyone use it. Rob's callsign was just Royal. Any other former RM on the local radio net who wanted to use the generic nickname was out of luck.
"Is there anything you can't damage, Rob?" The site supervisor took the key to the Suburban and gave Rob a weary look, along with a sheaf of post-contact and damage report forms. "Go on, go see the medic. You as well, Mike. I don't want you two suing us for whiplash. You can't afford the lawyers anyway."
Rob just winked at Mike and took the forms. "Yes, Supe. Can we roster off, then?"
"Away with you," the supervisor said. "Good result, guys."
The supervisor didn't know anything about Mike's family. Few people he worked with ever did. He kept his connections quiet, and Rob, protective as a big brother, maintained the cover of ordinary guy-ness. For the first time since childhood, Mike had a really close buddy, the kind who gave him a nickname, ribbed him fondly in that way British troops called
slagging
, and always had his back. Rob treated him like a fellow grunt who just happened to have a few more bucks to his name. It was enormously liberating.
And we're a team. We stopped a massacre today. We did good.
At least Livvie wouldn't see it on the news. There was a plus side to being invisible.
Mike submitted to the medic and emerged with a packet of painkillers. He found Rob in the social club, a grim-looking demountable unit next to the canteen. Rob took a more home
-remedy approach to analgesics. The joint security compound was officially dry, but that never seemed to stop him or anyone else from drinking liquor. He nursed what looked like a cup of coffee while he slumped in an armchair in the TV room, looking a little lost. A Thermos jug sat on the table in front of him.
"Is that decaf?" Mike asked.
Rob held a cup out to him to taste. "Dave's special blend."
Mike sipped it cautiously. It tasted like a half and half mix of brandy. "You know you get giggly and take your pants off after two beers."
"The curse of extreme fitness, Zombie. Come on. Skip the pills and join me."
They clinked cups. "Good day's work there, Royal."
"You too, mate. I didn't even see him raise the bloody launcher."
Mike was now in the pit of an adrenaline dump. As far as his body was concerned, it had been in a car crash and there was no convincing it otherwise. He spent the rest of the afternoon finishing the heavily dosed coffee with Rob, watching the sports channel in near silence.
"Brad keeps asking me to do yacht work," Rob said. "Fancy it?"
Mike shrugged. "I haven't done my maritime courses yet."
"If you're going to be siring Brayne heirs, you need to reduce your risks."
"It never stopped me before."
As soon as Mike said it, he felt guilty about Livvie. IVF treatment was no picnic, physically or psychologically. Did he have any right to keep putting her through this? It would be the thirteenth cycle. It wasn't the unlucky number that troubled him as much as the stress on her. All he had to do was aim into a container. She was the one who had to put up with the hormone treatments and endless tests.
He'd never missed her as much as he did right then. He checked the time.
"I'll be back later," he said, draining his cup. "I need to call her."
It was Mike's daily ritual. He'd prop his tablet on the small desk in his cabin and try to pretend they were having dinner instead of thousands of miles apart. Livvie's auburn hair was a little untidy, as if she'd just untied her pony tail and raked her fingers through it. They chatted aimlessly for a while.
"What's wrong with your neck?"
There was no fooling her. "Oh, rough-housing. So, one more IVF?"
"Do you want to?" She sounded tired. "Tell me straight."
She wasn't keen. He knew it. "Only if you want to."
"Okay, try not to widow me, then."
"I've got Rob watching my back. I can't lose."
The decision was made. Mike changed the subject and they chatted about the garden and plans for homecoming. It occurred to him that he might simply have been holding her up. It was too easy to forget that she had a job and a life while he was away, even if she was stuck on her own in her office. She never complained.
"I'd better go," she said. "I've got a live interpretation for a client in Paris in half an hour."
She lived in a virtual world. After Mike rang off, he struggled to remember the last time they'd actually been to Paris. He reminded himself that this deployment would be over soon, and that military wives coped.
But we don't have to live like this. I don't have to be here. I've never needed to earn a cent.
The worst thing about compulsions was that even the apparently noble ones were no different to a drug habit for the people you loved. Mike couldn't blame his sister for trotting out the same line every time they had a fight – that he was playing at it, Marie Antoinette indulging in a fantasy of being a simple milkmaid while courtiers worked to maintain the illusion around her.
Livvie was chipper again for the rest of the week, but he couldn't shake his guilt. He needed to accept that he couldn't do this forever.
"Did she bollock you?" Rob asked. They were back on escort detail, with plenty of time on their hands to gossip while they sat in the Suburban waiting for trucks and buses. "You've been a sulky sod this week."
"No. I'm just fretting. You know what I'm like."
"Well, I'll bollock you, then." Rob rapped his phone on Mike's forearm. "You did it again, didn't you?"
"Ouch. What?"
"Fifty grand. You sent Tom
fifty grand
."
"Come on." The easiest way to give Rob or Tom anything was to dump it on them and beg forgiveness later. "My nematode of a brother-in-law spends twice that on a new car every year."
"It's not a book token, Mike." When Rob was serious, it was always
Mike
. He shoved the phone back in his pocket. "It's fucking serious money."
"I'd only spend it on polo ponies, and I can't even ride."
"Sorry, mate. I must sound like an ungrateful bastard. I just don't want Tom to get used to you bailing him out. I'm his dad. It's my job to support him."
"I haven't got any kids of my own to spoil." Mike wished he hadn't said that. It sounded like blackmail. "Humour me, Rob."
"I'll pay you back."
"You don't owe me a damn cent. Neither does Tom. You're family."
It was hard to tell if Rob had given in. He looked embarrassed, chin lowered. "I'd still be your mate if you were living in a cardboard box. You know that."
"Yes, I do. Which is why I do it."
The issue seemed to be settled. But a couple of days later, Rob tapped on Mike's open door and simply handed him his phone again. He didn't say a word. Mike read the message.
'Hi Dad. I've written a thank-you to Mike. But I'm committed to the summer gig now. We'll get together, though. Promise. I've put the money into my house fund.'
Mike didn't know what to say. He'd never seen that look on Rob's face before. It was a mix of pain and bewilderment.
"He's grown up." Rob managed a shrug. "They say it hurts to let go. Yeah, it bloody well does."
Mike still thought of himself and Rob as young men. But it was another reminder of mortality and all the things they might never do, no matter how fit they were, and that even if middle age now started at fifty, forty was still the halfway mark of a guy's allotted span. It was numerical certainty. And it sucked.
He shook off the thought by focusing on the fact that he'd be back home in days. It would strip years off him.
When they finally shipped out, the long flight with all its stopovers eased him gradually back into a world that ran by his rules and where he had everything he wanted. But it was an illusion, and he knew it. Rob never let him forget that anyway.
"Here we go. Through the looking glass." Rob stretched out in his first class seat across the aisle from Mike, unscrewing and sniffing the freebie bottles of toiletries. "See, civvies think they're safe because they've got rules and someone to complain to. But Nazani's the
real
world. Like Afghan. It snuffs you out, bang, just like that. No apology, no reason, and no compensation. It doesn't give a shit who you are."
"I wish I hadn't let you read Camus."
"Yeah, it was tough for a colouring book, but I stuck with it."
They managed to laugh. They always could. The alternative was to dwell on pointlessness and absent friends. Dibeg, at least, had some point to it, and there were too many dead to think of futility without feeling blasphemous.
When they landed in Bangor and picked up the rental car, Mike fell automatically into the routine of letting Rob drive. He counted down the familiar road signs and billboards on the route home.
"I'm stopping to for a leak," Rob said. "Coffee?".
"Sure. Let's find a diner."
Diners were comforting, a rare treat. Dad had always told him that he should never be too proud to eat in one. The diner that Rob stopped at smelled and tasted of Mike's childhood, and some elements even looked the same. A couple of tables away, a little boy was playing quietly with a toy soldier in DPM and body armour, walking the figure along the edge of the table and lost in his own thoughts. It seemed such an ancient, natural instinct for boys. The child's father was absent-mindedly stroking the child's hair, gazing out of the window at the passing traffic.
Mike nudged Rob. "Did you have one like that as a kid? GI Joe?"
"Yeah." Rob glanced at the boy. "Ours was called Action Man, though. I bet there was an MoD civil servant version called Inaction Man. Real grasping hands and interchangeable shiny arses."
"Is that what made you want to be a Marine?"
"What, to grip Barbie? Pervert."
"Seriously, how do you bring up a child and let them find their own way?"
"They find it whatever you do. You can't steer a kid by deciding whether he should have Action Man or Unshaven Feminist Barbie."
"Give me the benefit of your unedited advice," Mike said. "Am I pushing Livvie on IVF? Should we call it a day?"
"I can't make that decision for you."
"Just talk some sense to me."
"Jesus, look at me. Forty going on sixteen."