Chris Ryan - Who Dares Wins

It was around midday when they stepped out onto the tarmac of Brize Norton. The air was misty and damp – a thousand miles from the clear, dry heat of northern Afghanistan. With a sickening lurch, he saw a regular civilian ambulance parked close to the plane, its blue light flashing silently in the misty air, its rear doors open. That was for Craven; the rest of them were to be transported in the same two white buses that had brought them to the RAF base in the first place. Only this time, there was an addition.

At the foot of the steps leading from the aircraft, an MOD policeman stood counting them all off. He wore a white, open-necked shirt, black body armour and a protective helmet. In his fist there was a Heckler and Koch MP7. He didn’t look like he was there to welcome the lads back from holiday.

There were four more of them, all tooled up, all standing in such a formation as to encourage the men straight on to the buses. ‘What’s with the plate hangers?’ one of the guys asked the policeman at the bottom of the stairs as he passed. ‘Worried we’re going to run riot?’

The policeman remained expressionless. ‘Just move on to the bus,’ he ordered.

A silence among the men as they were herded by these armed police on to their transports, and not a happy one. As they took their seats, a discontented murmur arose. Sam and Mac sat together. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. They knew something was wrong. They watched through the window as Craven’s body was loaded into the ambulance, then driven out of sight at a funereal speed, the vehicle’s flashing light like some kind of beacon. But it wasn’t the only flashing light they’d be seeing. Once the doors of the buses were closed up, two black police vehicles arrived. Their windows were blacked out, but they, too, had the emergency lights blinking on top. The convoy pulled away, one MOD vehicle at the front, the other at the back.

‘Where are we going?’ one wag shouted from behind. ‘ Hereford or Wormwood bloody Scrubbs?’

A smatter of laughter. Sam didn’t join in; he glanced at Mac, who returned his look with a raised eyebrow. ‘I think our little secret might be out,’ he murmured quietly, so as not to be heard.

Sam looked out of the window. More British Army soldiers congregated glumly outside the main terminal building. The sight of the two white buses being escorted off the airfield supplied a welcome diversion for them: they stared as the squadron passed.

They were on the main road before Sam turned to Mac. ‘Thanks for your help back at Bagram,’ he said quietly. ‘That guy – I don’t know, he just got to me.’

‘Forget about it,’ Mac replied lightly. ‘I know what you Redmans are like when you see the red mist. Bunch of fucking lunatics. Thought you were going to do a J. on him.’

It was an inappropriate joke, but Sam smiled anyway. ‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘We should probably try to chill a bit.’ He looked around to check nobody else was listening. ‘Look, mate, I don’t know what all this police stuff is about, but when we get back to base, deny everything, okay. This is my problem. I don’t want you taking the rap for it.’

Mac shrugged. ‘Whatever you say,’ he replied.

‘I mean it, Mac.’

‘Yeah,’ Mac replied. ‘I can tell. Look, Sam, I don’t know what’s going on. You don’t want to tell me, fine. But any time you need some extra muscle, you know where to come, right?’

Sam surveyed his friend. ‘Yeah,’ he replied brusquely. ‘Thanks.’

The gates to RAF Credenhill were already open when they arrived – clearly someone had radioed ahead to let them know they were on their way. When they came to a halt in the main courtyard the conversational buzz in Sam’s bus – which had fallen to a silence towards the end of the boring drive – started up again. Something was going on here. There were more police vehicles for a start, and quite a number of MOD officers all carrying their MP7s. One of them approached the back of the bus and opened it.

‘All right, you lot, out you get, but no moving from the courtyard.’

‘What the hell’s going on?’ It was Davenport and he sounded like he’d had enough.

‘You’ll find out soon enough. Come on, down you get.’

They de-bussed and started hanging around in groups. A few of the guys lit cigarettes. A lot of them grumbled. They were knackered. They just wanted to get back home and didn’t appreciate being treated like a bunch of jailbirds.

Sam stayed to one side. He didn’t chat with the others. He didn’t smoke with them. Something was coming that involved him. He knew that. He supposed he should be apprehensive, but he wasn’t. When you’d faced what he had, it took more than a few MOD coppers to put the wind up you, no matter what sort of hardware they were wielding. But he didn’t expect what happened next. None of them did. It was the talk of Credenhill for months to come.

There were stairs leading up to the main headquarters building. A number of figures appeared at the top: two more MOD policemen – they were swarming round this place like flies around shit; two men in suits, one old, one young, who Sam didn’t recognise; and Mark Porteus. The CO wore camouflage gear, as always; and the hard features of his scarred face were as proud and uncompromising as always. But everyone fell silent as they saw him, because his arms were in front of him, firmly handcuffed. One of the MOD policemen prodded him with his gun. No one did that to Mark Porteus. Not ever. But Porteus didn’t react. He stepped slowly forward, down the stairs. As he walked, his face scanned the crowd, as though he were looking for something or someone in particular. His eyes were narrowed, his forehead creased into a deadly serious expression.

When his eyes fell upon Sam, he stopped.

The look was piercing. It burned through the crowd of soldiers and picked Sam out like a searchlight. It was a look full of meaning. Not anger. Not blame. But meaning nevertheless.

And in that moment, Sam felt all sorts of things slot into place. Clare’s article. The phone number. The hooded figure at his door.

Porteus .

It had been him all along. As the CO, he would have been in possession of information from the security services that nobody else would have had. He would have been in a position to deploy Sam’s squadron. And most importantly of all, Porteus knew Jacob. He would have recognised his picture. This was why, when Sam had returned from Helmand Province, the boss had kept his distance; this was why he had stayed away, out of sight. He’d been trying to warn Sam, without it being seen that this was what he was doing.

Now Porteus looked at Sam, his proud face held high. Sam nodded, gently, almost imperceptibly. If you hadn’t known what that silent exchange meant, you’d most likely not have seen it happen.

As the rest of the squadron looked on in astonishment, Porteus was once more jabbed in the back by an MP7. If it annoyed him, he didn’t let it show. He just allowed himself to be escorted to one of the police vans. Two MOD policemen joined him in the back, the doors were shut and locked and the van was driven away.

The conversation started buzzing again. Still Sam stayed separate from the others. He watched as the younger of the two men on the steps approached Mac. A word in your ear , the man’s expression seemed to say; once he had Mac’s attention, he spoke, though Sam couldn’t hear from that distance what he was saying. He’d find out soon enough, he guessed. But before he did, he became uncomfortably aware of somebody watching him. Looking back up the steps, he saw the older man. His grey hair was neatly combed back, his eyebrows were bushy and his face had the deeply lined dignity that only certain old men manage to achieve. He wore a suit and tie and he was looking at Sam with an almost mournful expression.