Lynda La Plante: Civvies

'You okay?' Jimmy asked at last.

Dillon gave a tight nod, the harsh lines of his face carved out of stone. 'Did any of them make it?'

Steve came up, overhearing Dillon's question, his mouth set grimly. 'No, they didn't stand a chance.'

'What about Billy?'

Steve shook his head, almost in tears. He gestured vaguely. 'They want you over by the trucks. Taffy's refusing to go to hospital -'

'Harry?' Dillon asked.

'With the medics. He's okay.' Steve tried again. 'They want you to -'

Dillon ignored him and walked over the wet cindery ground to the dark-grey body bags ranged side by side in a neat, military row. Some already had plastic tags, name and rank in black felt-tip, the ones in bits or too badly burned for recognition didn't. Dillon sank slowly to his heels, head bowed. He reached out, as if in silent meditation, his fingertips resting gently and briefly on one of the anonymous shapes. He stood up, about to turn away when he realised they were grouped round him, the four of them, his comrades and best mates, the men he'd crawled through shit and bullets with, two of them, Harry and Taffy, for getting on twenty years.

Without anger or emotion of any kind, as if all feeling had been drained out of him, Dillon spoke to them in a drab monotone.

'Those two guys, the ones at our table when we came in. They must have planted it.' Dillon looked at each of them in turn – Jimmy Hammond, Harry Travers, Steve Harris, Taffy Davies – searching each face with a cold, implacable scrutiny. 'I want them, no matter how long it takes. We find them, agreed?'

The C.O. had arrived, climbing out of his staff car. Jimmy touched Dillon's arm. 'C.O.'s here, Frank,' but Dillon brushed his hand away and went on in a throaty rasp, 'We make this personal. Agreed? We're gonna get those two bastards, agreed?' Fixing each man straight in the eye. 'Yes? YES?'

They were with him, he knew it, and only when he knew it and was satisfied did he turn to acknowledge the C.O.'s presence, standing a little distance away.

'Dillon, there's a truck waiting for you and your lads, get yourself cleaned up and then… well,' he cleared his throat, 'soon as you're fit I'll need – you know, the usual procedure.' Looking down at the row of body bags, his voice sank to a whisper. 'I'm sorry. Tragic… it's bloody tragic…'

Dillon nodded once, staring at the ground, made a pretence at saluting, and turned away. Taffy drew him forward, hugging him, almost like a father comforting his son. 'Like you said,' Taffy muttered under his breath. 'We make this personal.'

One by one they all touched Dillon's shoulder, each man making his private, unspoken vow.

The truck was chugging blue diesel fumes, the tailboard down, and Dillon was about to climb aboard when he stopped and went rigid. Across the carpark, standing between two MPs, Malone was staring about him with a look of dazed bewilderment. Dillon pushed the others aside, growling in his throat to get at the yellow bastard, beat the holy shit out of him. Jimmy and Steve hauled him back. 'Cool it, Frank – let's just get the hell out of here.'

Dillon was ashen, trembling. 'Okay, okay…' He subsided, wiping his mouth. 'But one day I'll have him for this!'

Two scores to settle. The IRA and Malone. One day for certain, both of them. He'd never rest till it was done. Never.

Dillon stood, holding onto the swaying truck as it bumped over potholes to the road, seeing them lift the body bags, so very carefully and gently, and slide them into the military ambulance. And even when the truck turned and the sight was hidden from view, Dillon continued to stare out. Never.

Thin curtains of chill wintry drizzle swept over the gleaming drill square, neat gravel paths and sodden grass verges of Browning Barracks, Aldershot. Known as The Depot, this unlovely collection of flat-roofed, slab-sided buildings, resembling nothing more than an inner-city council estate, housed the three regular battalions of the Parachute Regiment and units of Airborne Forces. Through the rain-streaked window of the Sergeants' Mess, lingering over his second cup of lukewarm coffee, Frank Dillon watched two truckloads of raw recruits just pulling in, 'Joe Crows' fresh from Civvy Street. Some of them would jack it in tomorrow, Dillon knew, others not last till the end of the week. As for the rest, they would go on to experience the joys of twelve weeks of mental and physical torture before they faced the ultimate test of 'P' Company – five days of sheer undiluted hell on earth.

Steeplechase, Log Race, Endurance March over twenty-eight kilometres of rough country, bergen rucksack loaded with 22kg of bricks and gravel, Speed March, Assault Course, including the dreaded Shuffle Bars – scaffolding poles fifty feet off the ground and no hand-holds -Stretcher Race with a twelve-man team hauling 75kg of steel bars and sandbags over twelve kilometres of Welsh peaks and gullies.

The ones that came through it would know – with the bright shining certainty of hardened survivors – that they'd earned the right to proudly wear the Red Beret with its winged badge of lion and crown above a floating parachute.

Their first day in, Dillon thought, watching the Joe Crows disembark, with it all before them. After eighteen years, four months and sixteen days, he was going out. Back to Civvies. Back to a world he hardly remembered. Another lifetime, a different Frank Dillon altogether, so it seemed to him, all those years ago – a gangling lad with a shock of floppy black hair, an attitude problem, and a sheaf of pathetic school reports, plus two scrapes with the law that had nearly landed him in Borstal. The Paras had sorted that out, hair, attitude, even the required discipline of book-study, the lot. They had shaped and trained and hammered him into the mould of a professional fighting man, a member of one the finest and fittest elite corps in the world, Commandos and SAS included. At thirty-six he was still remarkably fit. Still possessed the skills necessary to strip down and assemble blindfold the SA80 family of weapons, stalk an enemy through brush and bog, hurl himself into space through the door of a Hercules C-130 at eight hundred feet. That was Frank Dillon's story in a nutshell, serving Queen and Country. Question was, what the fuck was he going to do now?

Dillon pushed his cup away and checked his watch against the wall clock. 7.20 a.m. Better snap to it if he was going to catch the London train.

A Radio One DJ was babbling something about Red Nose Day as he went through the double-doors and ran along the covered walkway to the NCO's billet, feeling the sting of cold rain whipping through. His suitcase was packed, lying on top of the four grey blankets, plumbline straight and squared off at the foot of the bed; just a couple of things for his leather grip on the four-drawer chest, and that was that. The small room with its single window and plain cream walls had the austere look of a hermit's cell, but it had been home.

Dillon tossed in his shaving bag, opened the top drawer and took out a metal case tooled in dark leather. He didn't intend to open it but he did. Sergeant Dillon gazed at the three medals embedded in green velvet, the UN, the NI, the SA, not really seeing them. Now they too belonged to another life. He snapped the case shut, dropped it in the grip, zippered it.

In the square wall mirror he gave himself a final regimental inspection. A stranger in dark blue blazer with breastpocket badge, maroon tie embroidered with the Para motif, grey trousers pressed to a knife-edge, stared back at him. But for the moustache and the scar, a thin straight line below his left eye on which stubble never grew, he mightn't have recognised himself. As long as Susie and the kids did, Dillon thought without humour. Daddy's coming home – for good! Good or ill, that remained to be seen.