Silent Weapon Read online

  Sean wasn’t a leech-virgin but the little buggers still made him shudder. On his first jungle patrol he had innocently assumed that none of them had got him because he had kept his trousers tucked into his boots and hadn’t felt anything. Then the trousers came off, just to be sure – and there were four of the tossers, three on one leg and one on the other. When they bit you, they injected a natural anaesthetic, so you didn’t feel your life blood being glugged by vampire slugs.

  Ravi ‘Kama Sutra’ Mitra, nineteen years old and the second-youngest member of the platoon, was humming ‘YMCA’ as he pulled his T-shirt over his head. They caught each other’s eyes and grinned. Mitra turned round. ‘Check me out, Stenders?’

  No one could see their own back, so Sean checked that Mitra was leech-free there and Mitra returned the favour. The rest of Sean got off more lightly this time. When he got his trousers off, he found only two of the sneaky bloodsucking fuckers clinging to his thigh. They were easily dealt with, once you knew how.

  You didn’t just yank them off. They got revenge for an interrupted meal by leaving their mouthparts embedded in your skin, ready to go rancid. Leeches attached themselves to you at both ends, but only the front end – the little end – was actively blood-sucking. Both ends were fastened with suckers. Sean pressed his finger against his skin next to the front end of leech number one and slid his fingernail sideways. The gentle pressure detached the slug, and its mouthparts slid smoothly out of him, immediately followed by a gush of red blood. As well as natural anaesthetic, the leeches also injected a decoagulant to keep the blood flowing freely. The wound would have to wash itself out under its own pressure before the blood flow dried up.

  With the front end sorted, Sean quickly did the same to the rear of the leech, the fat end, before the front could re-attach itself. He let it fall to the ground and then concentrated on removing its friend. It wasn’t going anywhere very quickly – certainly not fast enough to escape the Vengeance of Sean.

  Which came as soon as the second leech had fallen to the ground, and a size-eleven army boot could splat down on both of them from above. Sean’s blood shot out in thin jets under the tread.

  ‘Two down, only umpteen billion to go,’ Mitra said cheerfully.

  ‘Hey, if we don’t stop them here, next thing they’ll be back home, stealing our jobs, taking our women …’

  ‘Oh, fucking hell!’

  Tommy Penfold was standing in just his shorts and boots, with the front of his shorts pulled out, staring down at what he had found there.

  ‘Oh, sweet Jesus Christ!’ He swung towards Sean, still with one hand keeping his shorts firmly away from the rest of his body. ‘Stenders! Look!’

  Sean held up his hands. ‘No offence, Penny – I know it’s been a long time for both of us, but you’re just not my type.’

  ‘I …’ The colour had drained from Penfold’s face. ‘I just put my hands in there to pull it out and, you know, take a slash …’

  ‘Yeah?’ Sean couldn’t help grinning, and he was not the only lad to crane his neck and peer at what Penfold was trying to show them.

  ‘Shit, Penny, what are you going to call it?’

  ‘Aw, it found a little friend!’

  ‘Identical twin, I’d say …’

  ‘Can’t blame it for forming an attachment, can you?’

  ‘Guys, what should I do?’ Penfold begged. ‘You all heard the MO say you shouldn’t pull it off.’

  ‘Yeah, but what about the leech?’ someone inevitably asked.

  But Penfold had a point. If it didn’t respond to the method Sean had used – and no one was going to try it apart from Penfold himself – then dousing it in mozzie repellent or touching it up with the tip of a lit cigarette was agreed to be the best way. Cue half the platoon, smokers and non-smokers alike, fighting for the privilege of puffing a fag inches away from the Penfold family jewels.

  Sean left them to it. He needed a piss so he pulled his trousers back on and headed off to the nearest broken-down mud-brick hut, where a pile of rusted empty oil drums gave some privacy without completely blocking off the view. With a happy sigh he let go a stream of urine, aiming at an insect that was crawling up the wall, knocking it down to the ground and harassing it as it scuttled towards the shelter of the drums.

  The stream hosed off a camouflaging layer of earth, and Sean was suddenly staring at an electric cable that disappeared into the ground.

  The urine came to a stop, and the bug took advantage of the ceasefire to disappear. Sean stood very still, and felt his dick and balls withdraw into his abdomen.

  Cables in the ground only meant one thing, in his experience. He’d had the briefings and seen the pictures …

  An IED – the weapon of choice of insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq and other places where they’d rather just blow you up at a distance than come out and fight like a gentleman. Somewhere between a bomb and a mine, it could be disguised as any old thing, or just buried out of sight, ready to be triggered by any disturbance or a signal from a nearby operator. They could blow the legs off anyone who walked on them, or send a vehicle flying, or spray red-hot supersonic fragments of metal in a circle around them, cutting down personnel like a lawnmower over grass.

  So Sean was very probably standing next to an unknown quantity of explosive. Which could go off at any moment.

  Chapter 4

  Tuesday 1 August, 14:00 GMT+1

  But Sean couldn’t stand there for ever. He very cautiously glanced over his shoulder. No one was looking in his direction – no one whose attention he could grab. He didn’t want to shout and wave. If the device had an operator in the vicinity who realized they were twigged, they might just set it off.

  Was anything he did going to make it go bang? He scanned the ground all around him, swivelling his hips to get the best view of any tripwires or pressure switches covered with leaves or painted to match the colour of the grass.

  But there wasn’t anything.

  So he very slowly walked backwards, stepping – as close as possible – in exactly the same places he had stepped on to reach this spot, careful not to knock anything with his boots.

  He kept going backwards for several metres. Then he turned and hurriedly walked towards Adams, the other NCO and the three officers, who were in conversation. He tried for quick but casual, which meant that he felt like someone had shoved a broom handle up his arse.

  That would certainly explain why his butt cheeks were clenching like they were.

  Sean didn’t bother waiting to be excused. In the field you didn’t salute or stand on ceremony; if you had important news, then you didn’t wait politely to be noticed. He addressed Franklin directly.

  ‘I think I’ve found an IED, boss.’

  Their easy smiles quickly faded into something harder.

  No one said anything like Are you sure? because no soldier was going to piss about making up jokes about bombs.

  ‘Whereabouts?’ Franklin asked.

  Sean indicated with his head, not looking round. ‘Pile of cans at two o’clock, sir. Look old and rusty, but one of them has what looks like brand-new cable going … somewhere.’

  ‘Shit.’ Franklin angled his head slightly to peer past Sean. The other two officers subtly shifted position to look themselves, without making it obvious to any watchers.

  ‘Well, if we were under observation, they’d have set it off by now,’ said Kokumo after a moment.

  ‘True,’ Franklin said. ‘Or they could just be off having a slash, or they could have bugged out weeks ago and just left this for us …’ He looked at the other Rupert. ‘Do you have anyone trained in EOD, Neil?’

  Hanson shook his head. ‘No one experienced enough yet – though if we’re going to start getting these things, we’ll have to do something about that.’ He looked like he had just chewed down on something bitter. ‘I believe it was my lads responsible for checking that area. We will have … words. Later.’

  But no one was throwing blame about at present.


  ‘Cross that off as an option, then,’ said Franklin. ‘Captain Kokumo, sir – any recommendations?’

  Kokumo spread his hands in a big shrug. ‘Your men, your decision, Lieutenant. For what my opinion’s worth, calling in for a heli will take time, and maybe alert the insurgents.’

  ‘If it’s a typical device, sir,’ Adams said, ‘it’ll be a homemade, low explosive, or an ANFO main charge with a high-explosive primer. Rigged to go off if it’s disturbed.’

  If it’s a typical device. Sean felt it was a big if. Because they were improvised, knocked together by whatever the insurgent had to hand, no two IEDs were alike – which made them hard to spot and even harder to dispose of, since there was no standard factory plan for an EOD expert to work with.

  But Franklin seemed happy to go with it. ‘So let’s disturb it.’

  He passed on his instructions. The two NCOs nodded, and strolled casually over to their men. Then Franklin gave the signal and the sergeants burst into life.

  ‘Stand to! Grab your helmet and weapon and get over to the water’s edge, right now!’ Adams clapped his hands together and bellowed into the faces of any men who were caught by surprise at the sudden outburst of activity. ‘Chop chop! Shift your arses!’

  The other sergeant was doing the same with his men. This being the army, there was even a slight feeling of competition to see which platoon could be in place first. Whatever the risk of being horribly maimed or killed by a terrorist device, honour was honour.

  Sean hurled himself down at the edge of the water, just below the bank. For half a second he felt safe. If the thing went off now, thirty metres away, he would be protected by the earth.

  But the point wasn’t to be safe. He wriggled into position, poking his head above the earth and bringing his rifle to the ready as the other platoon pelted towards him. His heart pounded enough to lift his body slightly off the ground with each beat as he squared the pile of drums in the centre of his ACOG. He had to take some deep breaths to slow it down. He couldn’t afford to have his aim put off.

  If it went off, he told himself, he would only notice it after the bang. And the memory would mean he had survived. If it went off and a piece of red-hot debris skimmed horizontally across the ground, precisely aimed at the small gap between the earth and the rim of his helmet …

  Well, he wouldn’t feel a thing.

  One minute later both platoons, still in various states of undress, were lying along the bank. Their feet trailed in the lake, their bodies were shielded by ground and only their heads stuck up above the bank.

  ‘On my command,’ Adams ordered in a voice that carried all along the line. ‘Target is pile of oil drums next to the house at two o’clock. Platoons will fire continuous three-round bursts until told to stop or until … Well, you’ll know when to stop.’

  Sean set his rifle’s fire selector to automatic, and centred the drum he had just been pissing against in the middle of the ACOG.

  ‘Aim … fire!’

  Sean squeezed the trigger.

  The rifle bucked in his hands, and the crackle of thirty other weapons roared through the jungle and sent birds shrieking up from the trees. Streams of NATO standard ammunition converged on the drums, and for half a second they began to crumple under the withering fire—

  BLAM.

  The blow was like a simultaneous slap in the face and a thump with cupped hands over both ears. The drums vanished in a flash of smoke, converted by the explosion into a rain of lethal shrapnel that was meant to cut the soldiers down where they stood. Sean buried his face in the dirt as the metal slashed through the air above his head, though he knew the basic laws of physics meant that if you could hear it, you had already survived it. The mud bricks of the surrounding huts simply disintegrated where they stood, shocked by the explosion into a cloud of dirt.

  Sean raised his head, looking at the small crater and the circle of scorched grass. He knew that everyone around him would be thinking, That could have been me going up in smoke …

  Franklin was already on his feet. ‘Sergeant Adams. Have the men get their kit on, ready to move in two,’ he ordered.

  The NCOs rattled off the orders to the men and they started to get ready. No time for self-congratulations or catching up. That could come later.

  Sean and Bright shrugged their PLCE back on and checked their rifles. The debrief would come back at base; until then only a few people knew what role Sean had just played in the excitement. No one liked a gobby blowhard. Best to leave the big reveal to the officers.

  ‘After the big bang, back to leech city central,’ said Bright. ‘And twenty-four hours till Tidworth. Christ, bring it on.’

  ‘What, enema ground zero for Salisbury Plain?’ Sean asked, remembering what Bright had said earlier.

  ‘Mate, my opinion of Tidworth hasn’t changed,’ Bright said. ‘But I’ll take it over leeches and malaria and IEDs. C’mon.’

  He gave his weapon a final check and went to join the others.

  But Sean took his own last look back at the lake beyond the village, and thought about his time in Nigeria.

  Weird.

  He was going to miss it.

  OK. Six months of tropical sweltering, and then someone had tried to kill him twice in the space of twenty-four hours – though it hadn’t been personal in either case. The country had still expanded his view of the world by about a thousand per cent.

  But still, he thought as he held his rifle at the ready and slouched into place with the rest of the platoon, there was no place like home.

  Chapter 5

  Tuesday 1 August, 23:00 GMT+1

  ‘It’s got music,’ Bright whispered. ‘And light. And soft seats. And – fuck me, Stenders, it’s so beautiful!’ He choked on a sob.

  ‘Piss off,’ Sean murmured as they shuffled their way down the aisle of the Boeing 777. They pushed past civvy passengers who were trying to jam bags into the overhead lockers.

  It might not have been his smartest move to let the lads know he had never flown on a civilian plane before. They’d been taking the piss ever since.

  At least he’d kept quiet about not liking flying in the first place.

  The flight out to Nigeria – his first time outside the British Isles, and his first flight anywhere – had been in a giant army C-17 Globemaster. The Globemaster was a cargo plane, the nearest thing real life got to the latest Call of Duty, designed to shift tanks and other heavy ordnance around the world. When it carried people, they just bolted rows of seats down the middle of the hold. In-flight entertainment was your iPhone or a book, or a pack of cards.

  But Nine Platoon’s reward for staying on for the extra handover week was that they could go home by CivvyAir or, to be more precise, the scheduled British Airways flight from Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, to London Heathrow. It flew through the night, departing 23:00, arriving 06:00, with no jet lag as Nigeria was almost due south of the UK. The platoon were flying home in two halves: Wolston’s section today and the rest tomorrow.

  Sean intended to make the most of it. A database of movies, comfortable seats, cabin crew who had to be nice to you, and pilots – he hoped – who treated passengers like humans, not hardware, should take his mind off the fact that he was still suspended in a steel tube five miles above the ground.

  The lads were scattered around the cabin – Sean wasn’t sure if that was a security measure or just how it went down at check-in. Wolston was a few rows down, in the central block of seats between a couple of Africans. Chewie West – so called for his phenomenal porn-star sideburns and moustache – was almost at the very back, and somehow the lucky sod had snagged a couple of hot girls all to himself. Sean was in a window seat near the front.

  He wriggled around to get comfortable. Definitely better than the Globemaster flight from Brize. He wondered if civilian planes also rattled and shook like they were a washing machine and the passengers a load of dirty boxers, or did BA do it more smoothly?

  Brig
ht settled into his seat in the row behind. ‘All right, Stenders? Just remember, if it all gets too exciting you can ask a stewardess to read you a story.’

  Sean silently held up a finger for Bright to see, and kept it there until he remembered he was also giving it to the rest of the cabin. So he turned his attention to the flat LCD screen on the back of the seat in front of him, and started to explore the options of the in-flight entertainment system.

  ‘Salaam,’ said a voice. A young African man in a traditional white agbada robe and round cap was looking down at him. The guy squinted at his boarding pass and the seat numbers above them. ‘Nineteen B. This must be me.’

  ‘Reckon it must,’ Sean agreed. There wasn’t much else to say. The dangling hem of the guy’s sleeve brushed annoyingly against Sean’s face as he put his bag in the locker. Then he sat down, gathering the many folds of his robe around himself. Sean went back to the screen menu. Bloody hell. So many movies, so little time to watch them all …

  And so Sean and his neighbour didn’t exchange any further words until a couple of hours after take-off when the cabin lights had been turned down. It was oh two hundred and he should get some kip, he thought – snatch a few hours to be ready for the rest of the day after they landed. He leaned forward to find the complimentary pillow in the seat pocket in front of him, and became aware that his African neighbour was looking at him.

  ‘Salaam,’ the guy said again. ‘It seems rude to travel next to you and never even greet you. Okwute.’ He held out his hand.

  ‘Uh. Sean.’ Sean held out his and they shook.

  Okwute regarded him with his head slightly cocked, like Sean presented him with an interesting puzzle. His accent was somewhere between London and Lagos.

  ‘You are young for a diplomat or businessman, and I saw you in Departures with a group of similar young men, all your sort of age with very similar short haircuts. So I deduce you are a soldier.’

  Sean immediately tensed up. It wasn’t like he was travelling undercover or anything. It was just drummed into you that you didn’t make your affiliation public.