Andy McNab: Exit wound

He shook his head. ‘He kept wanting to go out on the ground with the rifle companies. I heard he was next on the list for a cabby on the Javelin. That’s when he got zapped.’

I smiled, and he smiled back. We both knew what that meant. The Javelin anti-armour rocket was a great bit of kit, and there was always a queue of guys wanting to have a go. Originally designed to take out tanks, it was now antipersonnel, anti-car, anti-bicycle, you name it. No job too small. And over long distances, too. Its optics and second-generation thermal-imaging technology could see in the dark or through rain and smoke. It was an infantryman’s dream. Once you’d acquired a target and locked it on, you kicked off the rocket and that was that. Most brilliant of all, it cost seventy-six grand a pop.

Everyone wanted to lob the military equivalent of a Porsche at the enemy. There was a list, and everybody put their name up. When it was your turn, it was your turn, whether you were an eighteen-year-old rifleman or a forty-eight-year-old colonel. If there was nothing between you and a target up to 2,500 metres away, it kicked off and flew line-of-sight, with pinpoint accuracy. If you had a moving target, say a car, you could select top attack mode and the missile went up into the air, climbing 150 metres before striking down to penetrate the roof – just as it would do to a tank, hitting it at the point of least armour protection.

Pincombe took a mouthful of Stella. ‘He got up onto the wall, took aim, and was just about to kick it off when…’ He supplied the impact site with his finger. ‘Taliban round, straight through the launch unit and into his nut. Simple as that.’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and came out with the predictable, ‘At least he died the way he would have wanted.’

No, Tenny. I bet you didn’t, mate.

A photographer walked past and took a couple of shots. All he got of me was the back of my head.

A bell tolled. Shoppers stopped and nodded at the drinkers. They all knew whose funeral it was. The local media had made it a big deal. I doubted a rifleman would be getting the same attention, or his local cathedral.

I turned away as another flash kicked off. ‘I’ve got to go and meet up with a mate before we go in. See you there, yeah?’

‘You going to the wake?’

‘Nah, haven’t got time. Besides, I’m driving.’

The bit afterwards was what I hated most. That was when the storytelling started. Everyone would swap memories of Tenny’s awesome talent with anything from a PlayStation to forty-kilo dumbbells – just how he would have wanted it – but also of his courage and compassion, which he would have hated. Then, at round about the five-pint mark, everyone would start admitting to each other how shit their lives really were. Divorces, child support, mortgages… and a longing to return to the days when no one gave a fuck, except about each other.

Graham Pincombe went back to his beer, and I still couldn’t place him. I walked down the hill, took a left and paralleled the main road to avoid any more pubs. I followed the line of guys, wives, friends and everybody else Tenny had collected over the years snaking along the pedestrian walkway towards the cathedral.

I was early, but I could already see that by the time Squaddies Reunited rolled out of the pubs and got themselves up the hill it was going to be standing room only. Lots of guys were in number-twos, their best dress. Boots and medals gleamed around me. Off to one side, I spotted a bugler blowing nervously into his mouthpiece to keep his lips up to the mark. It was a huge responsibility, playing the Last Post. If you fucked up, it was the only memory people took away with them.

‘Oi, lard-arse…’

I spun round. ‘Pikey, mate – how’s it going?’ I had to keep my voice down to control how happy I was to see him.

Pikey had joined the battalion back in the late seventies, the same time as me. We were both scabby seventeen-year-old riflemen. He was South African and, I soon discovered, a total nightmare. For the first six months I couldn’t even understand what he said. All I knew was that every time I went down town with him, I woke up the next day with a hangover and black eyes.

For this lad, fighting was recreation. Provoking a brawl and getting filled in was his equivalent of going to the pictures. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing now. One, he was still in the army, and two, it was now Major Pikey. He had more medals hanging off his chest than a Soviet general on May Day. And he still looked as fit as a butcher’s dog, the fucker.

I grinned. ‘Should I say “sir”? Well done, mate!’

A group of senior officers filed past. Any rank above full colonel confused me. I’d never understood all that scrambled egg even when I was in. The American system of one to five stars was easier on the brain.

Pikey whispered, ‘It’s a fucking nightmare.’

I thought he was talking about the promotion.

‘I’m on rear party. I’m the lad who has to go and give the families the bad news. I’ve got four kids myself and two of them are older than the last two we buried.’

A couple of the scrambled-egg brigade nodded at him and he nodded back. ‘I go and break it to them but they’re the ones making me cups of tea. Even reading the eulogies, I start to crack up, man. Just send me back out there, I can’t hack all this. My youngest, the girl, every time the mobile rings she flinches. She thinks it’s someone else in the battalion who’s got zapped.’

My eyes followed the officers as they took their reserved seats in the first three rows on the left. Tenny’s family filled the opposite side of the aisle. Near the back of the church, a guy who’d just come in removed his raincoat to reveal an immaculate dark grey suit and well-pressed shirt. Pikey had also seen him – and noticed me noticing. ‘Who’s he?’

The closely cropped hair, clean shave and glowing ebony skin made him look like a Premiership footballer from Senegal. ‘No idea.’ I turned back to Pikey. ‘I didn’t even know Tenny came from up here. All the time you’re with someone, and it never occurs to you to ask where they come from…’

‘That’s because it doesn’t matter where you come from, man. It’s where you are that matters.’ He slapped me on the back. ‘Good to see you, mate. Now I’ve got to fuck off and sort out the bearers.’

His George boots clicked off down the aisle and I squashed myself into a seat at the end of the very last row. I liked being at the back. It had something to do with my schooldays. People can’t see or hear you there. And I’d be able to ping everyone as they came in.

I picked up the order of service. Tenny stared out from the cover in his Green Jacket kit and, for some reason, a moustache. Maybe it was part of the uniform. Whatever, he looked very much the colonel. But some things never changed. I felt myself grin. His rusty Brillo pad hair was still trying to fight its way out from under his cap.

Dex, Red Ken and I had told him that when he was prime minister we all wanted a peerage, something that would set us up for life. Tenny promised he would, if only to make us shut up: Lord Ken of t’Pit, Lord Dex of Cards, and Lord Stone of Stony Broke.

The smile left my face. It couldn’t disguise the grief I felt that someone like him, a man with a future and a purpose, had got zapped – while someone like me… well, I just plodded on.

Another flurry of toe- and heel-caps clicked along the flagstones as a group of officers and warrant officers made their way to the front pews. Then Dex and his girlfriend appeared, looking sharp in their immaculately tailored outfits. He was decked out in a black suit, crisp white shirt and thin black tie. She was in a short black dress and very high heels. Even her hair was jet black, in honour of the occasion. She still had her sunglasses on.