Chapter 1

 

Sweet Jesus in the rain, it's at times like this that being alive just doesn't seem worth the candle. Whenever I'm haunted by ghosts, and there are more than a few out there that were personally contrived by your truly, I take to the water. This time it isn't for distraction. This time I've got to be out beyond the Firth of Clyde on the West Coast of Scotland and into the Irish Sea before anyone has time to realise that I'm gone.

The surface of the broad, shallow river is grey against an overcast, starless sky. Like all mariners I miss the comfort of the stars. When they're not around I have the distinct feeling of there being something missing. On a rising tide I urge the tiller to starboard and jerk with pain.

There's blood trickling down my left arm but not in such a sufficiency that it either bothers or worries me. Thankfully, one, he was a lousy shot and two, I'm right handed. There's a bullet in there somewhere. I shoved a field-dressing onto it before pushing off. It'll be fine, this isn't the first time.

The dingy that I chose to sail in is far from ordinary, it was constructed by my paternal grandfather, who, like myself, was a man of the sea, as was his grandfather before him and all of those of us male members of the Clan Gunn in between. The former, a Royal Marine Commando, the latter a Royal Marine who, when not defending the realm against all external aggression, liked to do nothing but fish. Simple men, ordinary men, who lived out their ordinary military lives with distinction.

The Commando built this craft lovingly in his spare time and in his back garden well before epoxy resin appeared on the scene. A fourteen foot, larch on oak, clinker built dingy. He believed in tradition. He believed in continuity. He believed in me.

I swing the tiller to starboard. The jib shakes, flaps and drops as I tack against the oncoming breeze and then the rig lifts and the craft jerks forward with a new enthusiasm. The set-up, main and jib are hemp, no cotton fibres or polyester here, they stiffen as they swell and grow big bellied.

This makes me smile, this always makes me smile, it always allows me to feel like a kid again. At this an image of Shona forces its way into my head. Right this minute the last thing I need is a distraction but here she is larger than life.

For me there's always been something of the fairy queen about this woman, she's six foot and an inch tall, I'm considered tall and I only just beat her by two inches. Believe it or not she's the image of Elfhame, Queen of the Fairies, as she appears in all of the Fairy Tale books. You'd swear that Shona had modelled for each and every one of those prints.

As a kid I loved Elfhame with a passion, if anyone so much as looked at her the wrong way she would pull out her bow or her sword or her spear and let them have it good and proper. To add to this she had magic bolts of lightning or frost that came right out from her fingertips. God but she was powerful. She was my kind of woman. I grew up with her in my dreams and then along came Shona.

Shona's enthusiasm for everything in life radiates outwards like the magnetic field given off by a dynamo. I'm caught up in this each and every time, re-invigorated. Right now my body physically aches to be inside of her. I see the beads of sweat that formed on her skin and shimmered in the sunlight when we had sex amongst the heather on the lower hills when we first met and went out walking.

Later on, when she got around to my ways and began to climb with facility, we would get to ascend Munros the likes of Lochnagar or Ben Nevis or the Buachaille Etive Mor at the head of Glen Coe.

Somewhere around the summit, no comforting heather here, nothing but scree and the roughest of grass, I was always sufficiently the gentleman to be the one that lay on my back and welcomed her onto me. Up there, with the impatience of kids, we would set about climbing each other. This was our version of Munro Bagging.

Shona makes love with the fervour of a Scottish Wildcat in full flight. It's not that she dominates, she does exactly the opposite but with a fanaticism that I'd never known in any woman. To crown it all she has the flexibility that you would expect of a dancer.

She's danced with Scottish Ballet in her time. In my mind's eye I see her soar to those impossible heights of the grand Jete' that she achieved when dancing the lead in their production of Don Quichotte. Soaring above and beyond the less talented. I was astonished by this, as was the audience. That was back then during the dream time, things are now very different.

I'm forced to push the image of her to one side, I need to concentrate for just a little longer if I'm to get through this. Time is of the essence. I've just killed four nice, well brought up, well-educated, middle-class, British boys, citizens of this country born and bred, so there are those, on both sides of the law, who will already be after my body. Am I a monster? No, I'm just your average guy stumbling through his day.

It was the usual deal, I won they lost. In my profession I should have been dead and buried long since but the competition has never quite measured up to it. Like those four guys most of the competition thinks of itself as being tough and this is just about the worst mistake that you can make in my line of work.

Maybe they are maybe they are not but in my game tough doesn't cut it. In my game being one step ahead of the other guy is what brings home the bacon and I generally am. The key lies in preparation. This is not vanity, it's just a fact. The proof of this lays in the fact that out of all of them, and there have been many, I'm the one still breathing. Only just, mind you, considering the predicament I'm in but as they say, it comes with the territory.

I suppose the urge began when I was a vacant space waiting to be filled and going to the movies, ever since then I've been driven by the need to be both self-reliant and good with a weapon. I was fascinated by the very nature of such things. I've no idea of why this is.

Especially with regards to the weapons, back then I was surely much too innocent to recognise the sheer power of firing a rifle or an underwater pistol at a living target. All I knew was that those characters in the movies who has mastery over such things were amongst those most admired.

I practiced in the privacy of my bedroom, I practiced more publically in the garden with plastic guns and the noise of the displacement of air being emitted from my mouth. Once I had acquired a certain age and we had moved, due to my father's latest posting, down into the village of Drymen just north of Glasgow I began travelling into this city in order to practice in passing fairgrounds.

I did this for two reasons, the first and principal reason was because I came to recognise that my prowess with such things greatly impressed any bird I was even vaguely attracted to. Even an airgun served to impress them. I learned that birds crave both protection and the reassurance of strength that the weapon holder provides.

I learned that their fragile imaginations were filled with fantasies of being saved from the one thing that they dreaded most and could do least about, the constant threat of physical violence. They proved to be more than grateful, they were more often than not open and welcoming beyond the recognised norm.

I discovered myself not so much taking advantage of them as complying with their wishes. Without knowing it, as a lad in my teens with my hormones creating so much havoc that they threatened to rip through my skin and do me a serious damage, I had unravelled one of the prime mysteries in the life every sexually frustrated and over eager young sod on the planet. How to get laid without even trying. I no longer had to hold out a begging bowl in order to get my end away, I suddenly found myself beating them off with a proverbial stick.

The second reason was that the weapons in such places as fairgrounds come with real ammunition and that the stall holders even have the good grace to provide their clients with targets on the move. I was being presented with a challenge and I answered it with an enthusiasm that burned deep in my belly. Fond memories of days when life was a much simpler deal. Things did not shoot back, then.

With time and effort I eventually got my wish. I'm now not simply good with the various weapons of my choice, I excel. If you happen to have a need and you have a Contact Target that you want to be eliminated with the minimum of fuss and at extreme distance of anything up to four kilometres, then you will find yourself more often than not getting in touch with me or the likes of me.

All very legal of course. I'm a Royal Marine, a Bootneck who went on to become a part of the elite Special Boat Service. The Thrashing that the SBS handed down to me during the Acquaint and then the Beasting damn near did me in but I got there in the end. This being so now variously referred to by those who do not love me as a Bubble Head, an Underwater Knife Fighter, a Canoe Driver or simply Pond Life.

Because of my speciality I'm, at times, seconded into the Secret Intelligence Service. Within the SBS we refer to this as going on holiday. We vanish from our bivvy for a few weeks and then reappear behind Squadron Lines. No questions are asked.

There in that secret of most secret worlds I find myself rubbing shoulders with the real spies. Now their sort of Black Ops really can be filed away and buried under the general heading of being 'Morally Suspect' but more of that later.

The only other relevant information that you need to know at this particular juncture in our relationship is that I always wanted to be a writer, a real one. My grandfather, again. This dingy he christened the Nellie in honour of Conrad whose books were to be found sticking out of one pocket or the other. Granddad ranted on so endlessly about this sea captain who penned more than one masterpiece that I dreamed of becoming just like him one day.

Don't get me wrong, I admired and loved every last one of my family and did want to shoot people but at the same time akin to most young guys I wanted to be different. I wanted to be cool. I wanted to be the writer of international standing that granddaddy would admire.

I never made it. No talent. Just about broke my heart but once I got myself settled into the Marines, like so many others these days, I became comfortable enough to begin to write about my various Ops in the form of page turners. Better than bugger all, I suppose.

Financially, I do pretty well with the writing. I'm into my fourth book now and two of them have managed to sneak their way onto the best sellers list. Even I don't call myself a writer-writer, I sort of muddle along and depend on exposing stuff about the world of which the general public are not aware. Until this last one, that's. This last one is where all of this began. It's where I'm sure the bullet now residing in my shoulder originated.

Like any other combatant I ache to be in the middle of whatever scrap happens to be going down at that particular time. I enjoy the hunt and relish the kill. The opposition are killers, we're killers. When a fire-fight kicks off we're, all of us, in our element.

We hunt each other down with a pleasure that lies beyond the comprehension of the civilian. We have not only been given permission to act out of our innate savage nature but we experience a great sense of honour in doing so.

Full Blown Contact is what we signed-up for and what we live for and doubt this not, there are instants, right there at the centre of it all, at its heart, when it can approach the sublime. The rest is watching telly and getting laid in the arms of some eager and well-meaning stranger with a prick that's as emotionless as a lump of rubber.

The last Full Blown Contact, however, did not go well. It took place in the Sand Pit (Afghanistan or Iraq, this time it was Afghanistan). It began very badly and went down the head (toilet) from there on in. I had a new squaddy in my group and I mean raw new. So raw that when some of the maniacs hired by one of the myriad of private security companies, who run just about everything out here, asked him to a gig he said yes.

These maniacs are all ex-military to the last man, of course, with their green t-shirts, desert-camouflage and the compulsory fashion accessory, an M10, as long as it's manufactures by the Colt Company then it smacks of John Wayne and is in. The fact that this particular actor had his film company deliberately fake his call-up medical in order not to serve his country seems to have been conveniently forgotten by one and all.

This is the very fact that makes him the perfect hero, a marine, a gunslinger and a pugilist extraordinaire who managed never to harm or piss-off a single soul. Perfection. I've pissed-off far too many but fortunately they have no idea who I am or where I hang out.

Anyway, none of this lot's John Wayne, they're in the process of having a rape party. They invite my squaddy along. He knew a couple of these guys so was well up and over eager for it. Besides, as he put it, he had never had a haji's daughter who wasn't up for it and screaming her wig off in the process.

They do this, you see, are legendary for it, round up a half-dozen or sometimes a dozen or so birds from the outlying districts and label them as terrorist suspects. These guys have carte blanche' out here.

Military can't touch them. They then strip the birds naked and lock them in a room for a week or so where they are interrogated at great length before being released for lack of evidence.

This group are a little bit extra strange though, they seem to have no function. They are attached to no particular body and yet they have all of the paper that allows them complete access to all areas and clearance above and beyond the norm.

The second thing is that I recognise one or two of them and they are part of the elite. A few of the others I've never met but I can tell by the cut of their jib that they are exceptionally good at what they do, whatever that is.

No, this lot are not your run of the mill security team. This is a hit team if ever I saw one and I should know. The M10s are their own little joke, their hardware is stashed away somewhere close by and when this lot spring into action a whole lot of punters are going to die. This lot are weird city and then some.

I can't help but wonder if my father is involved in any way in any of this. It's no more than a passing thought but when he retired from the commandoes he was offered a job in the private sector as a strategist and planner. He took it and now he and my mother are living the high life out there in Barbados.

It's one of the particular ironies of modern conflict that we could well be fighting on opposite sides of the fence and never know it. We communicate very little, this by no means indicates that he does not love me, he loves me to bits but has never been given to what he perceives to be wishy-washy sentimentality.

He shows it in other ways, generally with a nod or a salute, even as a child when I was five or six and a cub scout I could tell that he was trying desperately to break out. Christmas and birthdays is about it and always via the laptop. I did a couple of personal visits to him on his island but while my mother was gushing with tears and all over me he shook my hand and looked ever so slightly discomforted.

I could tell that he wanted desperately for us to be buddies. He just had no idea of how to go about it. Anyway, when we do communicate over the ether I'm never sufficiently crass as to ask him what he's up to in his career and he does likewise.

We were brought up and we live within a world of career silence. It is our way. Being a member of Special Forces is in many ways like being a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, 'What goes on in here stays in here.' Not even our families are allowed to know.

Anyway, I've to explain to the new squaddie that the Regiment is not into this sort of thing. He protests, his civil rights and all of that. I tell him in no uncertain terms that if he wants in with them then he can get out of my unit now.

I can't charge him, I can't report him. What the private security firms do in their own time is up to them, as I say, what goes on out here stays out here, we're told. This is not a request, this is a direct order. I tell him that the deal is that he does not speak of it ever again, these private firms are more powerful than the army, the navy and the air force all bundled into one.

They run the show and could have all of us fried. In fact now that enough members of the Afghan and Pakistani governments have been sorted out these guys are just waiting for all of us useless and boring military to be pulled out so that they can run the entire show with impunity. End off. I also remind him that I'm one punter that he should not piss-off. He knows what I am but not, of course, who I am. So he agrees to forget it.

Later on we discover ourselves being forced into travelling through the American run heroin poppy-fields in Sanjin in the Helmand Province in search of some insurgents. We had Intel. This lot were a specialist squad.

Their task was to infiltrate Kabul and blow a building. This they had already achieved. Ten dead, seven of them civilians. Now they were heading home. I set up where we can skeg most of the landscape which is pretty flat.

Problem is, we're not supposed to be here but this is the way that they will come. This is where they are fairly safe if they arrive and depart without fire-sticks. Nobody wants a firefight of any sort inside a poppy-field. The direct orders to the American Marines are, if you can avoid it, let them pass.

When you're in full desert field kit with a kisser smeared with predominantly green-cam then you're boiling away like a midday meal, and knowing that what you are doing is illegal does not help. The sun is up there in a cloudless sky just to annoy the living daylights out of us.

We're already soaked through with sweat to say nothing of the bugs that have deserted the blossoms and nectar of the poppy plants for good old fashioned animal blood. Insect repellent, what a load of old moody. Bloody next to useless.

One of my squaddies eyeballs them first. We're on. They move. We track them. They pause. We pause. For whatever reason there were no American Marine Regiments guarding this particular patch on this particular day which is strange, they are generally here in their hundreds.

The rules laid down are very strict, there's a saying amongst the American troops out here, 'President Obama truly believes in GOD: Gold, Oil and Drugs', there has been an enormous amount of investment in this region we, the Brits, enter these fields at our peril.

Early in 2001 the Taliban, in an attempt to get their population off heroin, began to burn the poppy crop. The American, British and International Banks who finance its production and worldwide distribution began to lose three hundred million dollars a month, their fifteen per cent cut of the international trade.

America quite suddenly declared that it was searching for none other than Osama bin Leiden in a cave in Afghanistan. War was declared on October seventh and by the end of the year the Taliban had been driven out.

Not only was the status quo re-established, it was immediately recognised by the banks that what now lay in front of them was an opportunity not to be missed. Not only did they re-plant the original fields but added thirty times as many. Managing to provide more than ninety per cent of the world's heroin.

None of this is any of our business, as far as we were concerned we take the bad guys out guidelines or no. If they reach the Pakistan border then they are home and dry and into the safety of their wives and families.

No way we can cross the border into Pakistan and deal with them. These guys live in Pakistan as free citizens to cross the border and deal with them in any way would be to insult our one ally in the region. This would be considered unforgiveable.

Anyway, we get noticed, a firefight kicks off. The new guy uses an incendiary device. An incendiary, this is the sort of squaddie they are giving me these days. It fries the Taliban okay but takes out quite a few poppy fields. We find ourselves immediately surrounded by about a hundred Yank Marines plus a couple of Black-hawk helicopter gunships.

A cloud of smoke rises into the air around here and the gates of Hades are opened. Our weapons are removed and we're placed under arrest for the wanton destruction of American property. We have offended our masters and must now be held up and displayed to all and sundry as an example.

We get rightly worried when two guys in suits and Foster Grant sunglasses, in this day and age, appear on the scene seemingly out of nowhere. Security Firm employees or CIA. Their voices are raised sufficiently for us to actually hear what is being discussed. They are saying that they would prefer that a friendly-fire incident take place.

That is, that we should be mistaken for the Taliban and mowed down. The marine captain is having none of it, he's reminding them that there already have been two friendly-fire incidents amongst their own troops this month and though mugs the Brits may be they might just decide on this occasion to create a stink. Questions would be asked.

We consider ourselves fortunate when we're simply put in chains and ignominiously transported back into our own lines. Trust me, the amount of American Marines who have been about to go home and blow the whistle on what's going on out here to congress since 2001 but have changed their minds at the last minute and come to the immediate and out of character decision to commit suicide in these very fields using their own rifle is legend.

Such are the vagaries of modern warfare. I scrawl some stuff down in one of my many notebooks. It is remarkably difficult at times to figure out who the enemy really is. I decide there and then that I have to write a novel based on all of this, a sort of fictional expose. This excites me, it's the sort of skirmish that will allow me to fight back.

Little did I know then that I had opened the gates of Hell and unleashed all of Lucifer's minions upon myself and everyone who had even so much as breathed into my ear.