Red Notice (8 page)

Tom leaned back in his seat, tapping out the rhythm on the steering-wheel. After another loud sigh, Gavin reclined his seat as far as it would go, closed his eyes and pretended to go to sleep.

They eventually rolled into the Lines, just outside Hereford, and the Blue team’s hangar. The new Lines, an old RAF camp, had been officially opened in 2000 after the Regiment had moved from Stirling Lines on the edge of the city. The old Lines had looked more like a 1980s red-brick university and hadn’t had the room needed for an ever-growing Special Forces contingent, or been able to accommodate larger aircraft like Chinooks. When the RAF had abandoned the base, it was a no-brainer.

‘Why the Lines?’ Delphine had asked him.

The term had been used in the British Army for hundreds of years, Tom had explained, and referred to the tent lines that solders inhabited in the field. ‘The rows of tents had to be in perfect alignment – even the guy ropes and pegs had to be just so.’

Now Gavin sat up, yawned and stretched, then jumped out. ‘We’d better motor,’ he said. ‘It’s five o’clock already and we’ve got a big night ahead of us.’

‘Always the optimist, aren’t you?’ Tom pulled his ready-bag out of the back of the wagon. ‘I’m the one with the big night ahead. The most you’ve got to look forward to is a couple of pints with the lads, then falling asleep on the sofa watching
Hollyoaks
on catch-up.’

‘Mate, you’re wrong there.’ Gavin shouldered his own ready-bag and headed for the door. ‘In fact, I intend to have a very big night with all the money I’ll be collecting later.’

20

THE REST OF
Blue team arrived over the next forty minutes and spent a couple of hours cleaning their weapons and sorting out their kit. There was a quick debrief in the crew room with Major Ashton, though not the full post-mortem, which wouldn’t take place until the next day.

Tom headed for the washroom. He’d towelled himself dry and was dressed before most of the rest were out of the showers. His Omega Planet Ocean told him it was fast approaching 20.00 hours. He weighed it for a moment in his hand. Lots of guys in the Regiment had one, but it never failed to give him a kick. The offer of a special-edition watch had been made by the company a couple of years earlier, the sort of deal usually reserved for Formula One teams and Premiership clubs. It was a good marketing ploy, and the Regiment guys got a great watch at a discount.

The Regiment version looked like a regular Planet Ocean, until you turned it over. The engraved case-back had a winged dagger in the centre, ‘22 Special Air Service’ around the circle, and the first two letters of the wearer’s surname, followed by two digits indicating the year he’d passed Selection, then the last four digits of his army number. On the case side, between the shoulders, he could still read,
‘ALWAYS A LITTLE FURTHER’, taken from the SAS pilgrim poem.

He snapped it onto his wrist, grabbed his motorcycle helmet from his locker and was heading across the car park to his BMW when he heard a shout from behind him. He looked back and saw Ashton come out of the team office and hurry across the car park.

‘You want me, Boss?’ Tom started to put his helmet on. He was on a mission.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I promised to meet Delphine and –’ he glanced at his watch again ‘– I’m already running late.’

‘You’ve not forgotten it’s Fight Night, have you?’

‘Oh, shit.’ The helmet started to lift away from his head. ‘Yeah, I had, I’m afraid.’

‘I haven’t,’ Ashton said. ‘Not after what happened last year.’

Tom nodded. ‘So you’ll be looking for a bit of payback . . .’

‘I’d hate to be the cause of a domestic. But I think you owe me that much.’ Ashton adopted just the right note of sarcasm.

Tom bristled. ‘The thing is, I haven’t seen Delphine in weeks, what with that team job in Yemen and a few other things, and I had to stand her up again last night because of Hampstead.’

Ashton shrugged. ‘But you’re on the list, Tom. You can’t back down now, can you? Besides, I’ve been training.’

Tom stared at him for a moment, weighing up his options. He came to the conclusion he had very few. ‘You’d better go and get ready, then, hadn’t you, Boss?’

Ashton gave a triumphant smile, then turned on his heel and headed back towards the office. He called over his shoulder, ‘Stand by to be on your arse within a minute.’

Tom fumbled in his pocket for his phone.

It rang twice before she answered. ‘Tom?’

‘Yeah . . . I’m . . . er . . . back.’

‘Perfect timing. I’ve just finished work and I’ve booked a—’

Tom had to cut in to minimize the disappointment. ‘I’m going to be a while longer, I’m afraid. I’ve just been reminded it’s Fight Night.’

‘What? Again? I’ve booked a table and . . .’ Her voice tailed away. He couldn’t tell if she was angry or tears were welling.

‘It’s only once a year. I forgot about it . . . but I can’t get out of it. I’m on the list. I said I’d fight. I’m really, really sorry, but I can’t let the team down. It doesn’t mean—’

‘The mistress always wins,’ she snapped. Her voice rose an octave as she tried to control herself. ‘Tom, this is important to me . . . to us. I need to talk to you, tonight.’

‘You will – I
will
be there. It’s just that I have to do this first. I was looking forward to seeing you so much I forgot I’d committed to this. I’m so sorry . . .’

Delphine’s tone stayed calm. ‘There is no need to be sorry. I blame myself for being stupid enough to think that this time you actually would turn up when you said you would.’

‘No, it’s my fault, Delphine, and I will make it up to you later, I promise. But I really do have to go. It won’t take long. I won’t stay – I’ll come straight over. I can get this done and dusted in less than an hour.’

‘And just how will you manage to do that?’

‘I’ll throw the fight,’ he said. ‘I’ll never hear the end of it from the lads, but I could be on my way out of the door again within an hour at the very most.’

Delphine’s voice showed her surprise, despite herself. ‘You would really do that for me?’

‘Absolutely. Why don’t you cancel the table, head home and chill out with a glass of wine and I’ll come straight round to the flat?’

‘You promise?’ she said.

‘I promise.’

Delphine thought about it for a moment. ‘All right, then. I’ll be waiting. But not for too long. Don’t let me down again, Tom, please.’

21

TOM PRESSED THE
red button and headed for the sergeants’ mess. The bar was packed. He pushed his way through and bought himself and Gavin a beer, then walked through to the next room. A giant pink and blue inflatable bouncy castle was set up in the middle of the floor, the kind normally used for kids’ parties. A crowd of men had already gathered around it, claiming the best vantage-points, and there were cheers and a few jeers as Tom came in.

The draw for who fought whom had been made four days ago. There were two general teams: the officers’ mess versus the sergeants’ mess. Anyone could put their name down, and if there weren’t enough takers the CO and the RSM would nominate volunteers. They had the right to choose because they also had to fight, along with each of the four Sabre Squadron commanders. Their job was to lead from the front.

Fight Nights were more than a social event: they were an important part of producing good soldiers. Of course the men had to be aggressive, and all of them were or they wouldn’t have passed Selection. But there was more to it than that. They were bonding exercises between the two management groups of the Regiment.

The officers would normally serve a three-year tour before
returning to their parent unit and might go back for one more tour. The continuity of the Regiment lay with the sergeants and warrant officers. As with any infantry battalion, they held the experience of the unit.

Many things happened in an army that civilians like Delphine could not understand. On the face of it, Fight Nights looked dangerous or stupid and immature, but they had evolved over many years and always had a rationale. They built respect through shared physical pain and endurance. Maybe that was why Tom always put himself up for it, or maybe he just liked to fight. Maybe it was both. He could never work it out, but that didn’t matter. The only thing that did was that he was stepping up to the plate, not letting anyone down, including himself. Even if, tonight, he was going into the ring to lose.

Almost every man had a stack of cans of beer near at hand, and the air was already heavy with alcohol fumes. A warrant officer was sitting at the table on the far side of the room, in front of a whiteboard with a marker dangling from it on a piece of string. Tom and Ashton, his squadron commander, were up first.

‘Wouldn’t have it any other way, Lenny,’ Tom said, slapping his money on the table.

Bryce was right behind him. 'I won’t be going home empty-handed.’ He pulled his T-shirt over his head, flexed his pecs and pointed to the names of his six kids tattooed on his chest. ‘My babies need new shoes.’

‘You’d be better off spending your winnings on getting the snip, mate, and doing humanity a favour.’ Keenan wasn’t fighting. He never did, not wanting to lose his beach-bum good looks. ‘And just think of the money you’d save on nappies.’

‘And tattoos,’ Jockey said, as he strolled over to join them.

Bryce was still shuddering at the thought of a vasectomy and had covered his groin with his hands. ‘I’ll never have the snip,’ he said. ‘Even if we have sixty kids. Every sperm is sacred to me – and the missus. And I don’t mind admitting that
there’s one thing that scares me shitless. I tell you now, I’d rather play Russian roulette with a revolver with no empty chambers than let someone loose on my balls with a scalpel.’

‘Haven’t you heard, Bryce?’ Keenan opened his arms wide and slapped his hands together. ‘They do it with two bricks these days.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ Bryce had heard it all before. ‘I know.
Does it hurt?
Only if you get your thumbs trapped. Jesus, Keenan, I know Cornwall’s fucking backward, but you’d think there’d be a few jokes going around there that were less than a hundred years old.’ He glanced over to the doorway and broke into a broad smile. ‘Look out, it’s show time. Here come the Ruperts.’

Led by Ashton, a group of officers walked in as the soundtrack from
Rocky
burst out of the wall speakers. The guests were greeted by a rousing chorus of boos. The NCOs pelted them with empty beer cans, but Ashton and the others ducked and dodged them as they headed for the bouncy castle. Last year Fight Night had been held in the officers’ mess and their guests had had a similar reception. No one knew why it happened; it just always did.

The RSM jumped onto a chair. ‘Gentlemen!’

The
Rocky
fanfare died and everyone shut up, as you did when the RSM wanted you to, no matter who you were.

‘Before anything else, I want to give you a sit-rep on Davy. He’s stable. He’s lost some muscle mass on his left thigh, but he should be back with B Squadron by the end of the tour.’

There was a load roar of approval and applause. The RSM let it run for a few seconds more. ‘OK, listen in! We welcome the officers’ mess for the evening and we welcome the chance once more to kick their arse!’

There were cheers and boos from the two groups before the RSM quietened them again. ‘Remember, five minutes of hard, aggressive fighting but nothing between the legs or in the eyes. And no biting. Apart from that, the first man down and can’t get up loses – or the first man to go down three times. Winners can elect to continue fighting the next fight if they wish. It means double points for their team. Who’s first?’ He
turned to check the board. ‘OK, Buckingham and Mr Ashton.’

Rocky
kicked out from the speakers once more as Ashton headed for the castle, punching his gloves together like a pro. They were boxing-bag gloves, compact and hard. Until a few years ago they’d used martial arts gloves, but exposed fingers meant the fighters could grab each other. This wasn’t as much fun to watch as punching, and the fights were over much quicker.

Ashton bounced into the castle arms to the roar of the officers’ team.

Tom grinned. ‘You won’t catch me napping this time.’

Gavin slapped Tom on the back as he stepped towards the fight. ‘Mate, get in there and get among it, but keep a bit back for a few more scraps later on. I’ve just bet Jockey a thousand quid you’ll last at least five fights.’

Tom stopped in his tracks, drawing instant jeers from the officers. ‘Giving up already?’

‘You’re joking, aren’t you, Gav?’

‘No, mate, deadly serious. Why not? Last year you saw off four before getting dropped. It’s the easiest money I’ll ever make.’

Jockey looked him over like a farmer at an auction mart assessing a steer. ‘Hope you’re not going to let yourself down, Posh Lad,’ he said. ‘You’re not looking in such good shape. I’d say you’ve put on a few pounds.’

‘Trouble is, Jockey,’ Tom said, ‘every time I shag your girlfriend, she gives me a biscuit.’

‘Very funny, Posh Lad.’ Jockey liked that one and looked forward to using it on someone else. ‘Let’s just see if you’re still laughing after I’ve punched your lights out later on.’ He started a headbanger’s version of ‘The Eton Boating Song’ as Tom strode towards the bouncy castle to the cheers of the sergeants’ mess. Jockey’s shouts joined the barrage of support and advice.

‘Sort out the fucking Rupert, Tom.’

‘Deck the dickhead.’

'Make sure the only way he’ll be able to clean his teeth is by sticking a toothbrush up his arse.’

Tom stepped onto the bouncy castle and faced Ashton, all business.

Ashton put on his most confident smile for his supporters, then turned back to face Tom and gave him his best stab at a thousand-yard stare. ‘This year is going to be my year!’ The officers roared their support.

Tom was barely aware that Ashton had spoken at all. Every ounce of him was focused on what he was about to do. He saw a bead of sweat trickle down Ashton’s nose and a vein pulsing at his temple. By contrast, Tom’s pulse was barely above normal and his breathing slow. His mind was clear of all distracting thoughts. All he felt was a cold, calculated, almost clinical desire to get on with the job. Ashton did not exist for him as an individual, merely as an opponent to be destroyed as quickly and ruthlessly as possible. Afterwards they would have a beer and talk about any rubbish that came into their heads.