‘Understood, sir. Are you—’

  ‘I’m on my way to Brize. I land at Shorabak at 15.30 local time.’

  The line was dead.

  Jacko drew a deep breath, fortifying his aching limbs. Then he ran to his Toyota, turned the engine over and headed once again through the slowly rising dawn to the southern entrance of the camp. Here he dumped his vehicle by the guardhouse as before, nodded to the guards who recognised him, and looked through the barriers out across the desert. To his right, mountains. To his left, the sun was nudging its way above the horizon. Jacko looked straight ahead, scanning the desert in front of him from left to right and back again, as he’d been taught in basic training. The terrain was parched, empty and featureless. He could see nothing.

  The sun rose a few more inches above the horizon, flooding the desert red. The terrain shimmered in the heat haze so that anything more than a couple of hundred metres distant was blurry.

  Jacko had been standing there for fifteen minutes before he saw it: a solitary vehicle, indistinct, but definitely approaching.

  He checked his watch. 05.31 hours.

  As it grew nearer, Jacko could make out more features. It was a small, open-top truck, but not a military vehicle. It looked more like it had been taken from a local farm. It kicked up a cloud of dust as it approached, and it was clearly making the five Afghan guards at the guardhouse nervous. Four of them stood in a line at the entrance barrier, their weapons engaged, while the fifth remained in the guardhouse itself.

  The vehicle stopped thirty metres from the barrier. Nobody exited. The guards kept their rifles raised.

  A minute passed. The fifth guard shouted something in Pashto from the guardhouse. The others looked nervously at each other, but then they lowered their weapons and opened the barrier.

  The vehicle advanced. Jacko jogged from the fence and positioned himself so that he was standing in the vehicle’s path. It drove past the guards, into the camp and came to a halt just a couple of metres from where Jacko was standing.

  There was only one person in the cab. He was wearing full camo gear, tactical helmet and sunglasses. Even if Jacko hadn’t been expecting an SF unit, he’d have recognised the personnel immediately. The driver just had that look. He stared straight through the windscreen as if Jacko wasn’t even there, and occasionally revved the engine.

  ‘Tony Wiseman?’ Jacko shouted. His voice was as dry as the terrain.

  Silence.

  Then, from the back of the vehicle: ‘Who the fuck wants to know?’

  ‘Captain McGuigan,’ Jacko shouted. ‘Royal Military Police.’

  Another silence.

  ‘Praise the fucking Lord,’ said the voice. ‘A long day at the office, we rock up here for a little R and R, and what do we get?’

  There was a clattering sound. Two soldiers appeared from the back, one walking round either side of the vehicle as they approached Jacko. They were both dressed like the driver: full desert ops gear. They looked dirty, tired and they didn’t smell very good. A dog, wearing its own battle gear, trotted alongside one of them.

  The other man stopped directly in front of Jacko and removed his sunglasses. He was much taller than the RMP, and he had to look down to lock gazes with him. ‘We get a fucking rat, lads,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s what we get.’

  His companions said nothing. The dog let out a low growl from the back of its throat. Jacko made a conscious effort not to stare at the animal. He locked gazes with the soldier who had just spoken to him instead.

  ‘Are you Tony Wiseman?’

  The soldier looked down at him. Then he nodded almost imperceptibly. ‘I want to speak to my CO.’

  ‘Not a chance. You’re to follow me. We’re going to a debriefing room for an informal chat. No lawyers, off the record. But you don’t deviate, and you don’t speak to anyone else. I don’t want to put you under arrest, but if I have to, I will. Am I clear?’

  Wiseman didn’t answer. He just continued to stare down at Jacko for a full ten seconds. Then he turned and headed to the cab of the vehicle. His mate did the same, and the driver revved threateningly. ‘We’re not signing any fucking autographs,’ Wiseman shouted as he climbed in beside the driver and slammed the door closed.

  Jacko didn’t know if they were going to follow him. Sweat was running down the nape of his neck. Wiseman had unnerved him. He jogged back to his vehicle and got behind the wheel. As he turned the engine over, he could see that the three SAS men were in conversation. He started driving back towards the centre of the camp. To his relief, the farm vehicle followed him.

  The building to which he led them had once been an ammo store, squat and thick walled. These days it was seldom used for anything: a bleak, empty space set apart from the medical centre and the accommodation blocks, at least a kilometre from the helicopter landing zone and runway. It was a place Jacko knew they wouldn’t be interrupted. He gathered three chairs from different corners of the room and was arranging them in a line as the three SAS men entered.

  ‘Sit down please, gentlemen,’ Jacko said, trying to avoid eye contact.

  The three men stood in the doorway. They didn’t move. The Malinois dog sat to one side. It was staring at Jacko.

  ‘I said—’

  ‘What is this?’ Wiseman said. ‘Musical fucking chairs?’ He stepped a little further into the room, flanked by the two others. ‘We’ll stand,’ he said.

  They were an imposing sight with their battle gear, their helmets and their rifles spray-painted in the colours of the desert. But it wasn’t the way they were dressed that made Jacko nervous. It was the look in their eyes. Steely. Determined. But also . . . tense. Like they could snap at any minute, and you wouldn’t want to be there when it happened.

  ‘You were operating last night in the village of Gareshk.’ Jacko framed it as a statement not a question. Nobody contradicted him, which gave him a little more confidence to continue. ‘I’ve just returned from there.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ Wiseman muttered. ‘Does you good to get out once in a while.’

  ‘Be careful what you say,’ Jacko replied. ‘If the things I saw last night are the responsibility of a member of the British Army, it’s enough to put them in prison for life. Is that understood?’

  No reply.

  ‘Did you assassinate a single male target in a compound to the south-east of Gareshk?’

  Wiseman remained completely expressionless. So did the guy with the dog. The third soldier licked his lips and glanced momentarily at the floor.

  ‘Yes,’ said Wiseman.

  Jacko felt a small thrill. He was close to something. He tried to keep cool.

  ‘Did you kill and mutilate the bodies of a woman and three children in a compound to the west of Gareshk?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re certain?’

  ‘It’s been a long night, fella. I don’t want to answer your questions more than once.’

  ‘Fine,’ Jacko said. He nodded at Wiseman’s rifle. ‘Are you carrying spare magazines for that.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Show me.’

  A flicker of annoyance crossed Wiseman’s face. He took a magazine from his ops vest and handed it to Jacko. Jacko removed one of the rounds and held it up. ‘A 5.56,’ he said. He handed the magazine back to Wiseman, then took from his pocket the spent round that the doctor had given him. ‘This is also a 5.56,’ he said. ‘It was retrieved from the shoulder of a fourth member of your team, one Danny Black, who is currently extremely lucky to be alive. Do you have any idea how this round might have got there?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Wiseman.

  ‘How?’

  ‘I shot him,’ he said.

  Jacko found himself breathing very deeply. He looked from Wiseman to the others. The dog guy looked completely unconcerned. The third man, not so much. He was looking into the middle distance and there was a tightness around the eyes. Jacko moved his attention back to Wiseman, the self-appointed spokesman of the trio. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘Black went berserk.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Wiseman sniffed. ‘We had instructions to take out two targets and plant weapons on them to prove they were an active threat. The first one went smoothly. Black made the hit while Cole here watched the family. They were all alive when we left the eastern compound.’

  ‘They still are,’ Jacko breathed.

  Wiseman inclined his head. He clearly didn’t much care either way. ‘We moved on to the second compound. I told Black to watch the family. He didn’t like it. Wanted to be in on the hit. I told him tough shit. Left him to deal with the missus and the kids while we went after the target in another part of the compound.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘The target must have heard us coming. He’d left by a different exit. Door was still open. We heard him starting up a vehicle outside the compound. Ran out. Saw him leaving to the north-west. Decided to go after him, but we needed to find a vehicle first. Dexter and Cole here went car shopping. I headed back to get Black and make sure he’d secured the family.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He’d secured them all right. Permanently. Had his fun with them, too.’ Wiseman frowned. ‘It was bad shit.’

  Jacko remembered the butchered family. Bad shit didn’t do it justice. ‘Where was Black?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Gone. Left the same way that we entered. I went after him. Saw him running away along the irrigation ditch to the west.’ Wiseman shrugged. ‘Knew I had to put him down, didn’t I? Fucker was out of control, simple as that.’

  ‘So you shot him?’

  ‘No, I used a fucking lasso. Of course I shot him.’

  ‘In the back?’

  ‘No. He turned round to check if he was being followed.’

  ‘At what range did you shoot him?’

  ‘Seventy-five metres. A little more.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me that a member of 22 SAS couldn’t kill a man at that distance?’

  Wiseman sneered. ‘Kill him? I wasn’t trying to kill him, mate.’

  ‘Why not? You said he was out of control.’

  ‘What’s your parent regiment, pal?’

  ‘I’m asking the questions, Wiseman.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Jacko hesitated. ‘Scots Guards,’ he said.

  ‘And I’m guessing,’ Wiseman said, ‘that since you’ve thrown your hat in with the RMPs, you wouldn’t think twice about shopping one of your former mates?’

  ‘If they’d stepped out of line I’d know what my duty was,’ Jacko said.

  ‘Well it’s not like that in the Regiment, sunshine. Me and Danny Black? Not friends. Far fucking from it. But on ops, that doesn’t matter. I put Black down because it was the right operational call, not because I wanted to. I aimed for the front of his shoulder. Then I called in a casualty evacuation to make sure he got out of theatre safely.’

  ‘And the rest of you?’

  ‘We went after the target.’

  ‘Did you get him?’

  A grim smile crossed Wiseman’s face. ‘Yeah,’ he said quietly. ‘We got him.’

  Silence.

  Jacko turned his back on the others. Walked to the far end of the room. His mind was turning over. Everything Tony Wiseman had just told him was gold dust. Holroyd had been saying it for months: that the SAS was out of control. That they were performing illegal operations in Afghanistan. That the Royal Military Police had a duty to investigate, and prosecute if they found evidence. Jacko had better than that. He had a full confession from an SAS operator. He had a smoking gun. These three meatheads might be good fighters, but they were stupid. They shouldn’t have said a word to Jacko. They could have kept silent, waited for Hereford to get them lawyered up.

  But they hadn’t, and Jacko had the mind of an investigator. He realised that he needed these three on his side. An off-the-record confession was one thing. Getting them to repeat their story in front of other witnesses? Quite another. That would only happen if they knew they were safe from prosecution. They would each need to testify against their unit mate, and they were only likely to do that if they thought it was the only way they could save their own skins.

  Jacko turned to face them again. ‘You’re all confined to camp,’ he said, ‘pending further investigations. Your commanding officers will be informed. You’re not to speak to anybody about this matter. Is that understood?’

  No reply.

  ‘Is that understood?’

  ‘You want my advice, Colombo?’ Wiseman said quietly. ‘Put some guys on Danny Black’s guard detail. He won’t want to talk to you and even if he’s injured, there aren’t many men who’ll stop him. It’ll be a numbers game, if you want to keep him where he is.’

  Jacko felt his eyes tightening. The horrific scene at the village flashed in front of his eyes again. Once more he felt nauseous. He put it from his mind and focused on what this case could do for his career.

  ‘You’re damn right I want to keep him where he is,’ he said.

  He strode past the SAS unit, ignoring the growl from the Malinois as he passed, and exited swiftly into the bright morning sunlight of Helmand Province. He felt excited. Sure, Holroyd would take the lion’s share of the glory, but Jacko would surely be moving up the ranks with him. He’d be known as the guy who revealed the Regiment for what they really were. As a guy who was going places. His superiors in the Scots Guards who’d refused him promotion would soon understand how mistaken they’d been.

  He looked at his watch. 06.03 hours. Holroyd would be landing in just under ten hours’ time. Then the fun would really begin.

  Until then, he was going to follow Tony Wiseman’s advice. Bullet wound or no bullet wound, he was going to make sure there was no chance of Danny Black going anywhere.

  The three SAS men watched the royal military policeman leave.

  ‘You think he bought it?’ Dexter said quietly, scratching the Malinois’ ears as he spoke.

  ‘I dunno . . .’ Cole started to say. ‘What if . . .’

  ‘He bought it,’ Wiseman said. ‘All we need to do is stick to the fucking script. You muppets think you can do that?’

  ‘Course,’ said Dexter.

  ‘Cole?’

  Cole looked uncertain. ‘What if they do a DNA test?’ he said.

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ Wiseman replied. ‘Out here? They’ll have the bodies in the ground before sunset. No one’s doing any DNA tests.’ He looked Cole up and down. ‘Your hands are fucking shaking,’ he said. ‘What’s the problem? You not up to it? You know there’s no way back, right?’

  ‘I’m up to it,’ Cole said.

  ‘Good. Because the only way this goes wrong is if one of us fucks it up.’

  ‘It’s not a problem,’ Cole said.

  ‘It had better not be. Let’s find our digs.’ Wiseman nodded towards the door to indicate that they should all leave.

  Dexter exited first, with the Malinois walking obediently to heel. Cole went next. He had his back to Wiseman, so he had no way of noticing how his unit leader looked at him, his jaw set, his eyes hollow, his expression calculating and cold.

  CHAPTER 11

  ‘For goodness sake! Will one of you please tell me what’s going on!’

  The ops room at Cornwall had been a shit storm ever since the operation had gone south. They’d lost voice contact with the team at approximately 01.00 Afghanistan time, fifteen minutes after they’d lost drone support. Everything they knew about the unit’s movements they’d had to piece together from scraps.

  There was a casualty. That much was certain. Radio intercepts had confirmed that a British soldier had been evacuated to Camp Shorabak for medical treatment. Nobody in the ops room had been able to confirm that the casualty was Danny Black, but since his was the only GPS tracker that was not showing up on their systems, the analysts at Cornwall had joined the dots. The remaining three GPS trackers – they were fitted to the unit’s radio packs – had shown that the rest of the unit had headed north from the village of Gareshk. Their speed of travel indicated that they were in a vehicle – presumably the farm vehicle that had been left for them as an extraction tool. They had continued for five miles and come to a halt at an area that the ops room’s mapping indicated was a steep slope in the foothills of a small mountain range. The team had remained there for approximately thirty minutes before returning – by vehicle again – to Camp Shorabak.

  All that time, they’d been out of contact. ‘We had no communication from Tony or the guys,’ McLean had explained.

  ‘Don’t we have any assets at Shorabak?’ Cadogan shouted across the ops room to nobody in particular. He sighed huffily: ‘Ten years ago we had thousands of men there.’

  ‘It’s an outpost now, sir,’ said one of the ops room guys. ‘A forward operating base for the ANA, a medical centre . . . we’ve no reason to have anybody there . . .’

  ‘Sir,’ McLean interrupted. He had a phone to his ear, and he’d turned pale. ‘We’ve got a problem.’

  ‘I’d noticed,’ Cadogan muttered.

  ‘A bigger problem.’ McLean killed the phone. ‘That was a contact of mine at Brize Norton. He keeps his ear to the ground for me. He just arrived at work and—’

  ‘What’s the problem, McLean?’ Cadogan snapped. ‘Spit it out, man.’

  ‘A specially commissioned Hercules left Brize for Camp Shorabak at 07.30 BST. Only one passenger. Mike Holroyd. Royal Military Police.’

  Cadogan stared at him. ‘Is that so?’ he said, very quietly. He thought for a moment. ‘Can we get a legal team out there? When does our devout friend land?’

  McLean looked at his watch. ‘It’s too late, sir. Wheels down in ten minutes.’

  Cadogan closed his eyes. ‘The lord is clearly with him,’ he muttered. He opened his eyes again. ‘I need to know what’s happening,’ he said. ‘Do whatever it takes.’ He opened his eyes again and waved an arm to indicate everyone in the room. ‘Gentlemen, be under no illusion. If the RMP get their teeth into this, every single one of you is compromised. Make contact with the unit. On no account are our chaps to speak to anybody. And find out about Danny Black. What happened? How badly is he hurt? Is the fellow even alive?’