Stephen Leather - False Friends

‘It’s scary, isn’t it? Lying all the time?’

Shepherd smiled. ‘It can be. But you get used to it.’

‘I don’t want to get used to it,’ said Chaudhry. ‘I just want it to be over.’

Shepherd opened his eyes and was disorientated for a few seconds until he remembered he was in his bedroom in Hereford. He’d driven up the previous morning, then taken Katra to watch Liam play rugby. Liam’s team had won, and afterwards they’d taken him and half a dozen of his teammates for pizza. Shepherd shaved and showered and dressed in a polo shirt and black jeans before heading down to the kitchen. Katra was already up and by the time he’d picked up the newspaper from the hallway she had a cup of coffee ready for him.

‘Breakfast?’ she asked. She was wearing a baggy sweatshirt over cargo pants and had tied her brown hair back with a scrunchy.

‘Egg and bacon would be great, Katra. I’ve got a busy day.’

‘Working on a Sunday?’ she said, taking a frying pan from a cupboard.

‘No rest for the wicked.’

‘Can I ask you something?’ she said as she began to cook his breakfast.

‘Of course,’ said Shepherd.

Katra had worked as his au pair for more than four years and he thought of her more as family than as an employee. Over the years she had lost most of her Slovenian accent though her love of soap operas meant that her pronunciation was a blend of north of England and the East End of London, with the occasional Australian twang thrown in for good measure.

‘Now Liam’s at boarding school and you’re in London so often, I was just wondering if you really still needed me.’

‘Of course we need you,’ said Shepherd. ‘Liam’s here between terms and at most half-terms too. And the house still needs looking after.’ He grinned. ‘Besides, who would cook breakfast for me? And I really don’t want to be ironing my own shirts.’

She laughed. ‘I like ironing,’ she said.

‘Then you’re not going anywhere. Plus, I don’t know how long I’ll be in London. My situation can change at short notice.’ He put down his newspaper. ‘Everything’s okay, right? You are happy here?’

Katra turned round to look at him, the spatula in her hand. ‘Of course!’ she said. ‘I have been happy ever since I started working for you.’

‘That’s fine. You’re happy, we’re happy, everyone’s happy.’

‘But what if you get married?’

Shepherd laughed. ‘Trust me, Katra, marriage isn’t on the cards, not at the moment. And if I do meet someone it’ll just mean twice as much ironing.’

Katra nodded, reassured, and went back to cooking his breakfast.

An hour later and Shepherd was pulling up in front of the Stirling Lines barracks at RAF Credenhill, home to the SAS. He was driving an MI5 Range Rover that had been registered in the name of his Garry Edwards legend. He wound down his window. ‘Dan Shepherd, here to see Major Gannon,’ he told a young trooper.

The trooper consulted a list on a clipboard and nodded. ‘Can you show me photo ID, please, sir?’ Shepherd took out his wallet and showed him his driving licence. The trooper looked at it carefully, handed it back and then wrote down the registration number of the car. ‘If you could park by the shooting range, Major Gannon is expecting you,’ he said, raising a boom barrier so that Shepherd could drive through.

The Major, dressed in a black Adidas tracksuit, was waiting for him in front of the shooting range. He grinned as Shepherd got out of the car. ‘Traded in the BMW?’ he asked.

‘Nah, this is a pool car. More in keeping with what an arms dealer would drive, apparently.’ Shepherd walked round to the rear and opened the tailgate.

‘The guns are inside,’ said the Major, nodding at the double doors that led to the range. ‘I’ve got you three Yugos, but there’re more if you need them. I thought there were six but three have been signed out.’

‘Three’ll be fine,’ said Shepherd. He followed the Major through the doors into the range. He wrinkled his nose at the acrid smell of cordite.

At the far end of the range was a line of terrorist targets in front of a wall of sandbags. There was a table close to the entrance in front of a rack of ear protectors, and on the table was a wooden crate and a metal ammunition case.

‘So I’ve been hearing stories about you from a couple of Navy Seals we’ve had embedded with us for a few weeks.’

‘Just make sure they’re careful where they’re pointing their weapons,’ said Shepherd.

‘They do have a reputation for friendly fire, don’t they?’ agreed the Major. ‘Friendly fire ranks right up there with military intelligence in the tautology hit parade, doesn’t it?’

‘You know there are two thousand active Navy Seals? Hardly special forces, is it? I mean, how special can they be to let that many in?’

The Major grinned. ‘They’re not exactly fans of you, either.’

Shepherd’s eyes narrowed. ‘They were telling tales out of school, were they?’

‘What happens in Stirling Lines, stays in Stirling Lines,’ said the Major. ‘They were among friends; plus, they can’t hold their liquor. Not like our lads.’

‘And what did they say?’

‘Just that you were on the Bin Laden operation. Not that they knew who you were, not by name. Just that there was a Brit there and he was none too happy about the way it went down.’

‘They must have been well pissed if they talked to you about the Pakistan operation.’

‘What can I say? Part of the Sass initiation is to have your drinks spiked, you know that.’

‘Yeah, well, careless talk costs lives.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I did give them a piece of my mind, that’s true. No one told me that we were going out there to kill him. And I certainly wasn’t there to shoot women and kids.’

‘It was messy?’

‘It was a cock-up from start to finish,’ said Shepherd. ‘One of the choppers crashed. You know why?’

The Major shook his head. ‘But they do have a habit of crashing their choppers. The Iranian hostages. Somalia. All over Iraq and Afghanistan.’

‘This wasn’t just pilot error, this was plain bloody incompetence. The compound was surrounded by a concrete wall, eighteen feet high. We were supposed to land inside the wall and that’s the way they’d rehearsed it. For weeks. They’d built a mock-up of the compound in Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The plan was to fly over the compound and drop down on to the building. They’d rehearsed it a hundred times. But they screwed up. For the rehearsals they’d replaced the wall with a wire fence. I guess some prick decided that so long as it was the right size, all well and good. Except, of course, the downdraught could escape through the wire fence when they practised the manoeuvre. But as soon as we started descending towards the walls the downdraught blew straight back up and the pilot lost control. So they crashed because some idiot couldn’t be bothered to build a wall.’

The Major nodded. ‘Yeah, for the want of a nail. That’s the big problem with the Yanks: everything’s done for the lowest price. I wouldn’t use an American weapon if you paid me.’

‘Yeah, well, let’s make sure that this operation goes as it should.’

‘No problem,’ said the Major.’ He patted the crate. ‘I’ve put six clips in there, fully loaded.’

‘Excellent,’ said Shepherd. ‘And the suppressors?’

The Major nodded at a black holdall. ‘In there too. Do you want to check them?’

‘No need,’ said Shepherd. ‘When do you need them back?’

‘Whenever,’ said the Major. ‘They’re off the books and the serial numbers won’t cause us any trouble.’ He opened the ammunition box. It was filled with large polystyrene beads and the Major shoved in his hand and pulled out a spherical grenade. He brushed off a few stray beads and then gave it to Shepherd. It was painted a deep green with a thin yellow band across the top just below where the safety clip and fly-off lever were attached to the casing. Stencilled on the side were the yellow letters spelling out GREN HAND HE L109A1 and a lot number.