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  Too late, of course, he realises he’s crossed the line. Yet again. He’s vented his feelings but his words, his overall attitude, are tantamount to professional suicide. Sure, the CIA is civilian, all casual clothing and comfy shoes, but at its core the structure and thinking are military. No matter how much free expression they encourage, do not confuse that with criticism of those higher up the pole than you. You do not mock your seniors within what used to be the fabled Directorate of Operations. Not if you’re serious about your career.

  He’s pretty certain Meyers is doing some breathing exercises on the other side of the world. When he finally speaks the oily confidence in his voice is a little off. Just a tick or two. ‘Well then, Bill, how about you just cool off with these crazy messages you keep sending. You’re screaming the house down but proof, Bill. Proof. That’s what runs the engines here.’

  ‘That’s my miserable bloody point, Krandall.’ He crushes out his cigarette. Holds another between his fingers. ‘Every bone in my body, every drop of blood, every single grey cell, tells me we’re in trouble. But you want proof . . . I don’t have proof . . .’ He pauses, frowns as he waits for the sound and reverb to settle from the speakerphone.

  The excruciating high-pitch tone tells Bill Lamayette he’s lost his audience. Krandall Meyers. Langley. And Washington. All hung up on him.

  And in the bleakness of General Khan’s cell in Camp Lemonier, Djibouti, there is only the perpetual whine of the mosquitoes. Droning.

  On and on.

  Despite himself, the general can’t stop smiling.

  Operation Macchar, minus thirteen days

  In the cab of a hijacked refuse collection lorry

  Waiting by Kew Pier

  London Borough of Richmond

  Tristie Merritt is sitting just an arm’s length from Whiffler and he can’t stop thinking about her. Not straight-out lusting, but not very pure thoughts either.

  You’re not supposed to have contemplations about a female like this, Tristie being his boss, a former army captain and all. It’s making Whiffler’s blood run cold. He bites his lip. Someone’s going to have my pecker off if I’m not careful. Shit. Probably she’d have my pecker off, probably with the serrated edge of that two-inch Ladybug folding knife she keeps hidden in her boot.

  The captain’s hair is ash blonde; she has a short, no-pissing-around haircut. No dingle-dangle bits for a combatant to wrap around his hand. No way she is ever going to embarrass herself, or us, by having some frou-frou hairstyle. Five foot seven inches, 139 pounds. Two-time army welterweight boxing champ ion, and not a scratch or bump on her after twenty-seven bouts. A drop-dead smile that sucks the blood from your brain and a gorgeous, dirty belly laugh that tingles the skin, makes you feel the most important man in the world.

  Don’t get the wrong idea. Whiffler is not one of those who thinks females are only good for shagging. He never had a problem with females in uniform, which makes him something of a gay-boy radical. Females as officers, or NCOs. Not a problem for him.

  But Captain Merritt is different. She’s solid, proved herself again and again. And that’s why Whiffler knows he shouldn’t be thinking like this. Especially not about someone who served five years with the Det. Northern Ireland, Kosovo, then Iraq and Afghanistan. The physical she passed to reach the Det, or 14 Intelligence Coy., is the equivalent of the P Coy. test all Paras have to pass. Roughly the same failure rate as well: of each batch of one hundred people who take it, only six make it through. That, and everything she’s done for Whiffler and the boys, that’s why she has Respect.

  Once Whiffler had reckoned it would help if he visualised her as an Angel. Their collective Angel. But Weasel had put it better: Captain Tristie Merritt is Our Moral Centre. Weasel’s a bastard like that. Too good with words. ‘Face facts, boys.’ Weasel had glazed eyes, holding a half-drunk pint of Snakebite as he spoke. ‘We’d be screwed without her,’ and he took a whacking great drag on his king-size Senior Service lung-shredder. In a singular moment of clarity, all of them, Shoe, Piglet, Ferret, Button and he, had nodded. Long and hard. Weasel spoke the truth.

  She is their Moral Centre.

  (Of course, Button wouldn’t know what he was agreeing to, but Whiffler had watched him bob his ginormous, straw-filled head along with the rest of them. Probably thought a moral centre was one of those crap Milk Tray chocolates, like the Praline or Truffleicious that everybody leaves for some other mug.)

  You can’t understand how important she is without knowing the rootlessness of what they’d all become since leaving the army. That they’d been yearning for someone to come from some where, as officers are supposed to, lead them away from the slow death of their sad-sack existences. Top marks in the desperation stakes went to Shoe, who’d gone from three stripes in an elite anti-tank platoon to sexing day-old chicks when Captain Merritt found him: squeezing the poop out of their little butts so he could see whether they were male or female. He reckoned he could do almost ten thousand a day. You never saw a man smile like Shoe when she fished him out of that job.

  That was why they need Captain Merritt. She made them whole again. She gave them back a sense of honour and pride. And comradeship. It’s not the same as belonging to the best regiment in the army, but close as. And an honourable cause to fight for. Just like, back in the day, when the Paras were the whole of their lives.

  One thing they all understand is this: lift a finger against her . . .

  The last time her hair colour came up in conversation had been at the end of a long night drinking in Aldershot – ‘blonde up top, but sure as hell, black box down below’. Well. The whole place went quiet. Shoe, Piglet, Ferret, Button, Weasel and Whiffler looking at each other. Trying to control their anger. Thank Christ she wasn’t there. You’ve got to hate people who disrespect. You expect it of civilians. But the guy mouthing off was a toerag corporal from Signals . . . bastard crap-hats. Even the empty bottles and pots of beer on their table seemed to shimmy with the tension of a big problem about to break. Someone talking about Captain Merritt’s pubic hair? Death wish, or what?

  It was left to Shoe and Whiffler. Closing time they all ambled outside. Palling around as they lurched to the chippy and found somewhere good and dark. Whiffler got the corporal in a hammerlock. Then Shoe whacked the crap out of him. His face red with anger. Each kick thumping out a very clear message. You. Watch. Your. Tongue. About. Our. Captain.

  Back to the now. Captain Merritt is right in front of Whiffler in the driver’s seat of this light green, ten-wheel monster. A Volvo FL6 refuse collection vehicle. The captain’s head is just inches from Whiffler. If he could tear his eyes off her high, almost gaunt cheekbones he would be able to see the boathouse of Kew Pier through the windscreen in the distance. Her dark blue balaclava still rolled up, sitting on top of her head. He could reach out and run his fingers over the fuzzy ridges of her scalp.

  There was a serious smell in here of engine oil and garbage. So Tristie has a white-spotted red handkerchief over her mouth and nose, tied off like a Wild West bandit’s, scented with Opium, which takes the edge of the stink.

  Sandalwood and jasmine hang in the air. The scent of a woman . . .

  Whiffler is in the back, in a little cab with its own set of side doors. Button and Shoe sitting beside him. Weasel in the front seat with Tristie. All of them silent, apprehensive, togged up like they’re about to go and empty dustbins. Gloves. Beanies and fleece neck gaiters, or full-on balaclavas. High-visibility jackets with the orange plastic strip. Thick anonymous coats. Cuffs and trouser legs discreetly taped up so that not a shred of evidence gets left behind.

  Shoe already has his balaclava rolled down. Eyes blinking nervously as he looks forward and back. Scanning. Nervously pressing his thumb along the thick, purple scar that runs the length of his cheekbone and right down his neck to his collarbone. They all have their reasons, but that scar is Shoe’s. The reason he was turfed out of the army at age thirty-one.

  Button takes out his dental pla
te and pockets it. Grins at Whiffler, showing his four missing front teeth. A sign that he too is ready . . . He fits his thick cap over his great ox head.

  All are waiting for Ferret, on a motorbike following the target on the other side of London . . . waiting on his Go signal. Their hearts drumming quietly. Feeling good about themselves. Adrenalin dancing through their veins once again. Back in that groove. Waiting for that surge. That signal: Green On – Go . . .

  Button catches Whiffler’s eye, and taps his nose. The perfume. Shakes his head in amusement. This is the first time any of them have been led by a woman. Females don’t pass the P Coy test. They just don’t make it as Paras. You need a combination of speed and strength. Nothing against women, it’s just that those who tried and were beefy enough weren’t fast, and those who had speed didn’t have the basic brawn.

  But Tristie Merritt had earned her command of these ex-Paras, and won their loyalty. So Whiffler shrugs his shoulders at Button, the perfume. Women, eh . . . what can you do?

  There’s a beep-beep on the captain’s mobile. She looks at it carefully, lowers the handkerchief. As she turns, everybody sees the smile spread across her face, the light playing off her powder-blue eyes.

  ‘They’re coming,’ and she rolls down her balaclava, guns the huge diesel engine. ‘Let’s give it another minute . . . they’ve just passed the first marker.’ About two miles away.

  The Volvo refuse truck edges out into the tiny feeder road and the former Paras are gripped by the sweetest sensation. Not just about going into battle. This is about dishing out some payback. The Ministry of Defence is going to get a serious slapping . . . thanks to the team that Tristie Merritt has gathered around her. Ward 13.

  Nobody had turned her down . . . but very few that were recommended got an invitation to join. She had looked closely at all the candidates knowing she needed not just something like the best, but the best of the best. Near enough was not going to be good enough. With the benefit of their army paperwork she tried to get inside their heads and work them out; finally Tristie surveilled them in their communities.

  Dicking them, the old IRA style of watching, took her around the country, to the various towns and cities that her potential recruits had shrunk back to since leaving. It gave her a good idea of what sort of a man had once filled out that uniform.

  She was recruiting to fill six positions. The basic SAS unit structure is four people, likewise the Pathfinders from the Parachute Regiment. Ward 13 needed a specialist in communications, a linguist, an explosives expert and a medic, plus two more skill sets beside. A mobility expert – covering everything from getting up and down mountains to fast cars and how to fix them. And a sniper, because in this game you never say never. Tristie had already learnt that to her cost.

  She started with forty names.

  There would be some basic, simple rules. No matter what, she wouldn’t put up with any thieving, no drunks, bullies or mercenaries. She didn’t want the sort of soldier whose default setting is violence and anger. She was looking for brains. Calm operators, who could think on their feet, work through the unpredictability of a live situation. Restraint on the trigger has not always been a Parachute Regiment strength, but Tristie considered this especially important for her unit, the one she’d already taken to calling Ward 13, because they were all civilians now. They might still live to a military code but no matter what they held in their hearts – about battle honours and courage under fire – Civvy Street would give them no special breaks. As much as possible the violence would have to be non-lethal and with an absolute minimum of firepower. Also, because she would be the sole officer type, Tristie wanted nobody whose record showed an obvious problem with females.

  Which brought her to an age-old problem. The boy–girl thing.

  By this stage she was down to less than twenty names. To each of them, she offered the same cautionary advice. ‘Don’t think for one second that I’ll ever send you a signal that in any way could be interpreted as an offer even to hold hands. Do you understand?’

  Some had nodded, understood straight away, and straight away she had seen the acknowledgement in their eyes. Most had kept their thoughts to themselves, except in their eyes, of course, where she could read their minds. The self-satisfied smile, the cocksure desire and hope. A clear sign they couldn’t be trusted to take her seriously. Down to only ten names now . . .

  To only one of them, a ginger-haired lad called Whiffler, had she found it necessary to explain herself.

  ‘Your file says you’re an explosives expert . . . correct?’

  He’d nodded with boyish enthusiasm. She’d already made up her mind to recruit Whiffler, sensed he was right for Ward 13, so it was just a case of testing him with her Nothing Personal But I’m Just Not Interested policy.

  ‘If you fire a thousand rounds of eighty-one-mil mortar shell, how many duds would you expect?’

  Whiffler had rolled his eyes, started moving his lips fast, doing the maths. ‘Depends . . .’ The 81mm was the British Army standard light mortar. Somebody as good as Whiffler could drive his crew to a rate of fire of as many as twenty rounds a minute.

  ‘I guess anything worse than one in a thousand would be a real shitter.’

  ‘Mostly those duds are fuse problems, right?’

  ‘Running through the jungle or wherever, that’ll get moisture in the fuses, yeah. Screws them up good and proper.’

  ‘So when you try to make sense of what I’m saying to you . . . the fact I will not be interested in you in that way . . . think of me as one of those defective fuses. A one-in-a-thousand. I’m the faulty wire, the damp firewood, call it what you will. But you try and put it on with me, and it will end badly. For all of us. Understand?’

  Whiffler had rocked forward, a question already formed in his mind. What happened to you? But immediately thought better of it. Caught the crystal-clear expression on the woman’s face, and in her suddenly bleak eyes the warning, Don’t Go There. Gulp. And he nodded his understanding. Tristie Merritt is off limits.

  Finally, in her selections Tristie had had to be mindful of that famous battle cry you sometimes hear, the sign you’re really in deep trouble: married men with family hold firm, single men . . . with me. No point beating about the bush on this. Dependants would be fine so long as they were well out of the way, and being cared for, but her very strong preference was for the unrelationshipped. After that Tristie was looking for those who still held to the basic discipline of elite soldiering: you have your fun, enjoy your downtime, but you are always prepared.

  From a starting-off point of forty names, Tristie recruited a colour sergeant and a sergeant, two corporals, a lance corporal and the oldest private (thirty-four) in the Parachute Regiment. Six in total, plus her. All had quit or been booted in the previous six months.

  And so it was that a woman became the leader of six hard, brutal men shaped by training and battle. Smallest by height, and lightest in the group. The only female. She knew she wasn’t going to outmuscle any of them in a straight-up competition but there were opportunities that would fall to the right female that no Para comes close to achieving.

  Right now Ferret and Piglet are tailing the mark. The other four are in the cab with Tristie as they wait by Kew Pier. She looks at them in the rear-view mirror, and brief snatches of conversations come to mind from some of those first face-to-face meetings. Always interview-style in a room in the nearest motorway hotel to where they lived.

  Button. Private, A Coy., 3 Para: Button’s conduct in the field was always exemplary, cool-headed and brave (‘the very best of the very best’, as one officer commanding noted), but he was something of a recurring feature in the guardhouse when off duty.

  ‘Says here you were once busted down from corporal to private. That’s a hell of a tumble. What happened?’ The copy of the file said only, Unspecified-conduct incident, US Ambassador’s Residence, Winfield House. December 2008. Refer Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

  He has a big wide f
ace, boyish, simple looking in a way. ‘Are you sure you want to know?’ Trace of red rising up his neck.

  ‘No secrets.’

  ‘I was company medical technician. Helped save some American’s life in Helmand. That got me invited to a function at Winfield House, to meet a senator. Frankly some of their soldiers were pretty lightweight, all dicky sunglasses and chewing gum. Anyway, all the chat, the politeness, the pain of being on best behaviour, add a dozen or so sherbets on an empty stomach, and I sort of lost it a bit. Found myself in some crapper needing an up-chuck. Didn’t quite get my head in the bowl. Sort of coughed everything up into a nice fluffy towel . . .’

  ‘Why was that a problem?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what I was thinking, but I didn’t put it in the laundry basket. Wanted to cover my tracks, sort of.’

  ‘Where did you put it, Button?’

  ‘I sort of folded the towel back up again. Made it look like nothing had happened. I thought I was being dead clever.’

  ‘And then you put it back in the cupboard?’

  Button’s neck had flushed with embarrassment. But there had been a wry look of humour in his eyes too . . . he’d have worn no end of grief for this from his officers. Even more unforgiving would have been his mates.

  ‘And I’m presuming they had close-circuit television.’

  ‘Well, there was that. Also it turned out I was in the private crapper of the senator, and the wife took a shower that night and . . . well, she sort of . . . got the towel . . . and it wasn’t what she was expecting. Not the sort of freshness and fragrance she was used to. And so she got a bit fucking stressy. Don’t quite remember . . .’ He shakes his head, as though still a bit mystified. ‘Hell of a kerfuffle that was.’

  ‘Yes, Button. I can just imagine how delighted everybody was.’