Andy McNab - Dark winter

'Don't beat yourself up, mate. Nobody could be doing more than you are.'

Josh was half black, half Puerto Rican. His looks had changed quite a bit since the first time I met him. Standing next to Kelly's family's grave site in the sun, his hairless head and glasses had glinted as brightly as his teeth. But what you noticed first these days was the rough pink scar along his left cheek that looked like a split sausage in a frying-pan, edged with spots of dried blood where he couldn't get used to shaving around the lumpy tissue. However much Christian-forgiveness shit he splashed around, and however much I tried to cut away, tell myself the damage was done, I still felt as guilty every time I saw it as he did about Kelly.

He was wearing a blue sweatshirt tucked into his black-leather belt with the same grey cargo fatigue trousers his Secret Service training team always wore, and a pair of Nike trainers. In the past, they'd always been accompanied by a very worn, light brown pancake holster on his belt, tucked against his right kidney, and a double mag carrier on the left, alongside a black beeper.

Five years earlier he'd been on the vice-presidential protection team, part of the Secret Service, until Geri had left him and their three kids for her yoga teacher. He'd had to sell the house in Virginia because he couldn't afford to keep up the mortgage, and had taken a job up here at Laurel, training baby agents. We hadn't come into each other's lives at that stage, but I knew the first few years had been a nightmare for him and the kids. That was when the born-again Christian stuff had happened.

The Service was finished for him now. Like he told me, it had been an easy choice to make: quit, or his kids never seeing their father. Now he was a baby vicar or reverend, something like that; the God thing had given him a new career. He had another year to go before he was officially able to shout and breakdance in church with the best of them. I'd told him he ought to think bigger than that and go the TV route. I'd be his sidekick. He could talk up God for the first part of the show and after the break I would explain how the two of us, God's little helpers, could do with a shed-load of dollars. That hadn't gone down too well.

'You got the devil, Nick.'

'That's right, I'm an agent of Satan – but my duties are now mostly ceremonial.'

That hadn't gone down too well either. The bell rang for the end of a period and a tidal wave of students and noise surged into the corridor.

'I wish I could help her.' Her maths teacher was very frustrated about the whole Kelly situation. He slowed kids down so the three of us didn't get swept away. 'I try to get her to talk, but I guess I just don't choose the best days. Sometimes it's so hard to communicate with her.' He ran his hand over the top of his balding head and checked his fingers as if expecting to find more fallen hair. He was only in his late thirties, but already seemed broken on the wheel of life. 'You've both seen it, she's withdrawn one day, then high as a kite the next. She takes some keeping up with. The school counsellor would like to help if you're willing to – look, here we are. I had to send her straight to the principal's office. We have to maintain standards in the classroom for these kids. Here we are, in here.'

He opened a door and ushered us into the principal's waiting room. 'Now, Kelly, look who – oh…' The chair I guessed Kelly should have been sitting on had a half empty paper cup of water next to it, but that was about it. The room was empty.

'She took off an hour ago.' The principal's secretary was big and black, radiating efficiency but still unable to hide the distressed look on her face. 'The principal has been trying to call you, Mr d'Souza. We were about to call the police.' She shook her head. 'All she said to me when she first came in was she was going to Disneyland.'

'Save us.' Josh sighed as he turned to me, his right hand cutting the air. He got out his cell and started to dial. It went up to his ear and stayed there for just a second. 'Her cell's off. OK, we go home. If she's not there we'll have to call in the police.'

'No need, mate.' I started for the Dodge. 'I know exactly where she's gone.'

We headed west, and it wasn't long before we were following signs for Baltimore and Washington. Josh had called his house three times already but no one was answering. Soon we were taking the ramp left on to the I-95 towards Washington. 'Disneyland, huh? Is that what she calls her old house?'

'Sort of.'

He shrugged. 'Did I tell you she doesn't come to church with us any more? She says religion is a con. I don't even think she believes it, she's just saying it to pain us.'

'You know her take on that, mate – if there's a God, then how come her family's dead?'

He shot me a telling glance. 'I'm not getting into that – and I keep telling you, go read the book.'

I looked at the dash. The Puerto Rican in him revealed itself in the recent picture of Kelly and his three mounted there in a small but ornate gold frame. Dakota was now sixteen and had the mother of all braces in her mouth. Kimberly was fourteen and the biggest concern in her life was her hair, and the boy, Tyce, was thirteen and thought he was Tony Hawks. Their skins were all lighter than Josh's because their mother was white, but they looked just like their dad. You couldn't move in their house for framed photographs. There was Josh when he used to have hair, as a young fresh soldier, looking very much like the ones in his neighbours' windows; Josh becoming a member of Special Forces; Josh and the kids; Josh, Geri and the kids, plus all the horrible school portraits with gappy-toothed grins and scabs on their knees.

It must have been clear he wasn't going to get an answer out of me and, like a good Christian, he turned the other cheek. 'So tell me, man, what you been doing?'

'I'm fine. I've been working in the UK the last few weeks. It's been quite strange standing in the foreigners' line at Immigration. But, hey, it pays the bills.' Which reminded me why I'd come to see him in the first place. I reached into my bomber for the still-sealed envelope and pushed it under his thigh. 'Get yourself a decent car, will you? And a wig.'

'Thanks. But I think I can put it to better use.'

I was sure he could. Kelly wasn't the only one who needed the cash.

He drove a while in silence, then leant forward for his cell from the dash mounting and passed it over. 'Get to "Names", will you, Nick? Look under B for Billman. They're neighbours in Hunting Bear. Keep an eye on the house and stuff.'

I hit a few keys and listened to the ringing tone. After a while an answering-machine kicked in.

He shrugged. 'We'll try later. ' He turned his head and gave me a wry smile. 'They're probably at another of their community meetings, still complaining about the way we're messing with their real-estate prices. Maybe we should give in, you know, let them have it cheap. No one's ever going to buy a house with that kind of history. Let them knock it down and make a play area or whatever it is they want.' It had taken a while, but Josh was slowly coming round to my way of thinking. 'It might help Kelly in a funny sort of way. Some kind of closure, know what I'm saying?'

He flicked the indicator to come off the I-95 at the next exit, towards the Outerloop, the I-495 around DC. Electric road signs constantly flashed out their instruction to report any suspicious terrorist activity. 'What are we supposed to do with any unsuspicious activity we see, mate? Just keep it to ourselves?'

He'd obviously spent the last few miles collecting his thoughts. 'Look, Nick, this is my take on things. It's nothing new, I'm just more sure. First of all, we're not going to give up on her, whatever. Her acting out, she's trying to cope. She's coping with her family being dead, coping with the fact she feels abandoned. She's coping with living with us. She's got a lot weighing on that heart of hers, man.'