Andy McNab: Deep Black

Why the fuck hadn't I got there quicker? I could have stopped the fucking nightmare…

As I'd leaned over her, my tears had fallen on to her hair-covered face. I checked for a pulse, even though I knew it was futile.

I'd dragged her to the edge of the bed and gathered her in my arms, trying to hold her as best I could as I stumbled back towards the doorway.

They would be coming up the stairs soon, respirators on, weapons up.

I'd lain down next to her, gathering her head in my arms and pulling it on to my chest.

And buried my face in her hair.

Avoice from the TV told me tonight's hot ticket was going to be Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt. The TV had kept waking me during the night, but I couldn't be arsed to scrabble around for the remote to switch it off. In fact, last night I hadn't even been arsed to get undressed before channel-hopping for hours and eventually falling asleep. On an MTV night I could learn quite a lot about the latest bands out there. Kelly would have been proud of me.

It was no use. I was awake now. I felt about on the floor, knocking over a couple of empty mugs then running my hand over the remains of a toasted cheese sandwich. I finally got hold of the remote and flicked through the morning soaps and re-runs of Jerry Springer until I hit a news channel. Another two US soldiers had been killed in Iraq.

I planned my day, which didn't take long. It was going to be exactly the same as most of the other days I didn't spend sitting in front of Ezra. Or maybe not. I remembered promising myself I was going to open the windows today. It was getting so rank in here that even I could smell it. And, of course, there was another meeting with George.

I rolled off the sofa and threw the blankets back on top. The kitchen was a disaster zone. The stainless steel and glass had been clean and shiny when I took up the tenancy, but these days I seemed to be sharing the place with a gorilla. He came in every night while I was asleep and messed up all the cleaning I'd done. He dirtied all the plates, filled the bin to overflowing, then spilled coffee and tea on the work surfaces. To top it all, he chucked bits of stale bread and empty spaghetti-hoops cans about the place, and after trashing the kitchen he fucked up the rest of the flat. The last thing he always did before leaving, as far as I could tell, was shit in my mouth. It certainly tasted like it, this time of the morning.

I shoved the last couple of slices into the toaster and peeled the plastic from some processed cheese. A constant stream of aircraft headed into Ronald Reagan, and the TV next door blasted out that Channel Nine was going live to an armed siege in Maryland.

I fired up the kettle and wandered back in to watch, munching on the cheese. I never knew why I bothered taking the wrappers off: it all tasted the same.

I found myself watching a young black guy coming out of his front door in just a pair of jeans. His hands were in the air, but there was a pistol in one. The place was surrounded by police, one barking at him through a megaphone to put down the gun. It was hard to tell from his body language: was this guy drugged up or just pissed off?

I tried to unstick the cheese from my teeth and the roof of my mouth. The black guy shouted for them to shoot him, pounding on his chest with his free hand. The megaphone screamed at him to put down the weapon, and for a split second it looked like that was what he was going to do. He started to lower the weapon, but instead of laying it on the ground he turned the muzzle towards the group of police hunched down behind their cruiser, and that was the last thing he did. Six or seven rounds hit him at once and he dropped like liquid. The screen went black, then we were back in the studio, the anchors changing swiftly to traffic conditions on the Beltway. Another suicide-by-cop for us to watch live over our corn flakes.

The toast popped up. I went and shoved a fresh batch of cheese squares between the unbuttered slices and scraped the last bit of Branston from the jar with a dirty teaspoon. I'd been getting through three or four jars of the stuff a week. Ezra would have had a field day if I'd told him: I clearly had an unfulfilled yearning for the old country. Sliced white bread, cheese slices and Branston pickle – often three times a day, and lying on the sofa watching Oprah. No wonder my jeans were getting difficult to put on.

I turned towards the window, looking through the gloom in the direction of his office to have my daily mimic. 'Do you have any idea what that might mean, Nick?'

Chewing on the sandwich, I shoved what was left in the air at him. 'Shove it up your arse.'

'That's ass, Nick – you're an American now.'

I rooted round in the empty boxes on the worktop but with no luck. I was out of teabags but not out of pills. I had nine big bottles of the stuff Ezra prescribed me. I told him I was taking them but, fuck it, I didn't want that shit inside me. I had enough problems with the Branston.

I was going to have to haul my fat arse out of the flat and down to the Brit shop in Georgetown that all the embassy boys went to. All Brits hate the fancy teabags on a string they try to fob you off with in the States. They taste terrible and there's hardly anything in them anyway. What I wanted was monkey tea, the sort you can stand your teaspoon up in, the sort that comes out of a plumber's Thermos looking like hot chocolate. But, then, could I really be bothered? Probably not. Depending on what George had to say, I could be leaving today. Where would I plug in my kettle then?

I thought about taking a shower, but fuck it. I just ran the kitchen tap and threw some water on my hair to tame the Johnny Rotten look, and pulled my trainers on.

On the way to the Metro I grabbed a Danish and got it down me before I reached Crystal City station. Eating, drinking, smoking – you name it, you can't do it on the Washington Metro.

A few minutes later, as the pristine aluminium train rumbled under the capital, I found myself thinking about the guy on the news. Whatever problem he'd had, it was over now. He'd got it sorted.

I didn't care what happened to me, but Ezra was right: if I really thought that way, I'd have already done it. I would never take that route. I could still remember the feeling I got when other ex-Regiment guys killed themselves, and it wasn't envy, pity or anything else. It was just anger, big-time, for leaving someone else to pick up the pieces. Sometimes I'd had to sort out their kit before it went back to the next of kin. It was important there weren't any letters from girlfriends or anything else from their secret lives to embarrass the family. I remembered burning letters to one particular guy, thinking they were from a girlfriend. When I took the rest of his kit round to his wife she burst into tears. How could Al not have kept any of the love letters she signed off as Fizz, his pet name for her?

Then I thought about all the insurance policies that were invalid because some selfish fucker had taken an overdose. If you've decided to do it, and you're sane enough to stockpile painkillers or whatever, why not go out and do a couple of freefalls and just forget to dump the canopy on the third jump?

Worst of all was the effect on the kids they left behind. How could anyone be so selfish that they ignored the price their families had to pay? The guy on the TV, I wondered – had he got a wife, kids, parents, brothers, sisters? What if, like me, they'd watched the whole thing on TV?

If I took the easy way out, at least it'd make fuck-all difference to anyone else's life.

But I wasn't going to. I had other plans.

The sun was out at last, but I could still see my breath as I walked along Beach Street. It was ten to eleven and I was a couple of blocks south of the Library of Congress. That meant I'd have to slow down if I was going to be late. It was important for George to see everything was normal.