Chris Ryan - Killing for the Company

She took Harry’s right hand in hers and squeezed it tenderly. He smiled at her — such a reassuring smile that she almost felt calm again. Like she could think her way through this.

If she couldn’t tell the police, who could she tell? Her mind flitted back once more to the night of Chet’s death. If you ever need any help, track down Luke Mercer, 22 SAS, tell him what you know. But only if you have to, Suze.

Luke Mercer. The name was etched in her memory. She had no idea who he was, or where he was. From time to time she’d thought about approaching the SAS directly, but she’d never gone through with it. After all, if the police were compromised, why couldn’t the army be? She had tried to locate him other ways — not because she wanted to get in touch, but because she knew the day might come when she did. It had all come to nothing. Luke Mercer, whoever he was, had no listing in the telephone directory, nor any mention on the electoral register. He hadn’t been married; he hadn’t died. The internet had no mention of him whatsoever. It was like he didn’t exist.

But he did exist. He had to. Chet wouldn’t have mentioned him otherwise. Suze only had one remaining idea of how to contact him, but after everything Chet had said, and after everything that had happened, the thought of doing it made her feel nauseous.

It was too dangerous. It would put Harry at risk.

Suze stood up and, with a sad smile at her son, returned to her position behind the bar. Nothing had changed. The locals were still there, in their usual places, sipping slowly at their pints and ignoring everything all around them. The TV was still on. The rolling news was still rolling.

She stared once more at the images. The scenes of devastation. For the umpteenth time she saw the young journalist breaking down on camera, unable to keep his composure in the face of such horror. And then the picture again: the two Palestinian men circled in red, and Chet’s killer, easily distinguishable in the background.

She suppressed a shudder, but remembered what Harry had just said. If we don’t do bad things, then that’s all right…

The decision was a sudden one. She grabbed her coat from where she’d stashed it under the bar and went to the back room to get Harry. The little boy looked surprised as she took him by the hand and dragged him towards the front door of the pub — just in time for them to bump into the landlord waddling back in. ‘Aye up, Linda Lovelace, where the hell do you think…?’

‘Fuck you!’ Suze spat at him, and hurried with her boy out into the street.

Half an hour later she was in a local supermarket, spending money she couldn’t afford on a pay-as-you-go mobile, choosing the cheapest one that had a camera. Suze hadn’t touched a phone all the time she’d been in hiding, and she felt uncomfortable with it as she walked out of the supermarket and continued up the bustling high street. Five minutes later she and Harry arrived at Argos, where a bank of twenty-five display TVs were showing the same channel; and after another five minutes, the picture of the bombers, with her attacker clearly in the background, was repeated on each screen.

Suze held up her camera phone to one of the TVs. It made a click and, as she examined the tiny screen, she was surprised by how well the image was reproduced. The woman’s face was perfectly clear. She switched off the phone and put it back in her pocket.

‘Can I help you?’

Suze spun round to see a suspicious female shop assistant standing there. She shook her head, grabbed Harry’s hand and hurried out. She checked her watch. Nearly half past twelve. She would wait until tonight, when Harry was asleep. Then she would play the only card she had. She just wished it wasn’t so fucking dangerous.

Mother and son started wandering back to the squat in silence. And as they went, Suze thought about Luke Mercer. Would he really be able to help her? she wondered. What kind of man was he?

And where in the world might he be now?

Luke Mercer was in the back of a Pinzgauer 6 x 6. The canopy was closed against the rain, and his face was bathed in the monochrome light from a VDU about the size of a laptop screen.

The olive-drab vehicle had seen better days, but the modifications it had undergone were state-of-the-art. Mounted on the cab was a high-velocity missile launcher. Known as THOR, it was a four-missile variant of the Starstreak HVM, a high-velocity surface-to-air munition that had not yet seen combat. Top-speed Mach 3.5 — three and a half times the speed of sound — laser-guided and each missile containing three armour-piercing darts. These darts were each packed with a pound of explosive. The weapon’s sights — regular, thermal-imaging and night-sight — could pick up and track targets at a range of more than seven klicks, even fast-moving UAVs behind cloud cover. All in all, a pretty formidable bit of kit. Not the sort of thing you wanted to entrust to some wet-behind-the-ears crap-hat not long out of nappies.

Some of the younger guys in camp had a habit of taking the piss out of Luke these days. To them, he was the old boy, with a flash of grey round his temples and a body scarred by a long career in the Regiment. Top brass had given him the opportunity to slow down a bit on any number of occasions. Take a training role. Move over to L Detachment as a PSI. Luke had resisted, preferring to mix it with the kids. To keep active. Plenty of the younger troopers thought he was nuts. Why wouldn’t you take the same pay for less aggro? Why wouldn’t you grab the chance not to have some extremist fuck using your arse for target practice?

Luke had his own reasons. Reasons he kept to himself, and which he probably couldn’t have wholly explained even if he’d wanted to. A sense he owed something. Whenever that thought crossed his mind, he would see Chet’s face. Scarred. Stony. The knowledge that his best friend was dead, killed in a tragic accident from which he couldn’t escape on account of an injury that should have been Luke’s. How often had he relived that night in Serbia so long ago? How often had he seen the fragmentation grenade rolling towards him, only to be kicked out of the way by Chet in one moment of selfless bravery?

And what right did Luke have to give up fighting, when the man who had saved his life would never fight again?

To keep fighting meant ensuring his Blade skills were sharper than sharp, his body in peak condition. So when the others were in the Hereford boozers drinking for England, Luke was gymning it or pounding the streets. And when his younger colleagues gave him the sarky comments, they did so knowingly. There wasn’t a man in Hereford who didn’t think Luke Mercer was the equal of anyone in the Regiment.

With the aid of a joystick, Luke was practising manoeuvring the sight mounted above the truck. Its accuracy and range were remarkable. On the screen in front of him, he could make out individual trees miles away in the distance. The THOR was intended to take out low-flying aircraft, but it also had ground-to-ground capability, and it was this that they were testing today.

‘Extra points,’ a voice behind him said, ‘if you can take out one of those fucking ramblers.’

Luke looked over his shoulder and grinned at Nigel Foster. Fozzie was a good lad. Luke had even forgiven him for getting his team compromised all those years ago in Iraq, when he and Finn had been forced to make a break for the Jordanian border. At least they’d all got out in one piece, which was more than he could say for the Mossad agent they’d picked up on the way. SIS had been quick to bury that one. Thanks, lads, for your help, now be terribly good boys, would you, and don’t mention Amit’s little personal firework display to another soul. Six months after he and Finn had made it over the border back into Jordan, Luke had made a half-hearted and unsuccessful attempt to locate Amit’s sister like he said he would. He’d drawn a blank, though, and there was no way he was going to use his contacts to dig a little deeper. That would have had the Firm sniffing round him like dogs round a bitch’s arse.