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Authors: Charlie Charters
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walk out those gates. Walk away, with your honour and your memories. What I’m here to discuss is not rejoining the army on the sly. But it’s also not flipping burgers and sexing baby chickens either. It’s a decent cause, using what you know and what you’ve been trained to achieve, so that yourmates and my mates and hundreds of people we’ve never met can get the deal they deserve . . . OK?’
Piglet. Corporal, D Coy., 2 Para: Tristie had looked up from the file, a little bewildered. ‘So your father sued the MoD . . .’
‘Well, it was my sister actually. She’s the lawyer. My family is quite tight like that. But Dad was determined to hammer them. Said that was the only way to teach a big organisation to change, though it pretty much brought the curtain down on my time with the Paras.’
Piglet’s file showed that a couple of months after getting his wings in 2000 he’d been part of a contingent scrambled to Sierra Leone to protect a United Nations contingent. Operation Palliser. As the Hercules droned across the steaming West African jungle, they’d passed out the anti-malaria tablets. But there were not enough. And the MoD had supplied a less effective brand instead of Mefloquine. Over a hundred Paras would catch malaria, cursing them with recurring bouts of fever, vomiting, joint pain and worse.
‘My father, you see, comes from a very wealthy family. Serious Jewish money. He was always uncomfortable that I joined up, had his own plans for me. In the end he took a bit of quiet pride in what I was doing, until, that is, I got the malaria. He got really ugly about that. Just found it outrageous that a set-up like the Ministry of Defence would do such a thing. Putting us in harm’s way is what we get paid for. But without basic medicines? I mean, who would do something like that? In the event it turned out to be nothing more than a dry run for everything that happened in Iraq and Afghanistan . . .’
Chiswick roundabout
Junction of M4/A4 and Chiswick High Road
I t’s all about the timing. Always the timing.
Piglet powers the Honda sports cruiser bike in and out of traffic on the old Great West Road, trying to make sure they keep close to the black cab. The road ahead seems awash with black cabs all nose to tail, heading into London with the long-distance, early morning Heathrow arrivals. Ferret cinches his thighs together. Clutching tight on to the rear seat using desperate muscles he’s never put into service before. He needs both hands to thumb a text message.
On the left, about twenty yards ahead, is the off-ramp that leads down to the Chiswick roundabout. When the cab leaves this roundabout, Tristie Merritt on the other side of the river gets her second text message. Only two markers after that . . . the Kew Bridge railway station on the right and a thousand yards later, when they come off the bridge itself on to the south bank of the Thames, by the top of the Green.
Ahead the lights are red and traffic is backed up from the roundabout. Piglet nudges the bike up to the rear of the stationary cab. Discreetly. Dougal MacIntyre is the poor guy’s name. Ferret feels the slightest wince of pity for what is about to happen. The trouble they are about to cause. Then easily dismisses it.
The senior official from the Ministry of Defence has his head laid out on the back headrest, his thick grey hair dishevelled and clearly visible through the rear window. Zonked out.Just to his right is the redhead. Dalia. One of Tristie Merritt’s mysterious friends summoned up from her shuttered past. The redhead is curled in towards MacIntyre. Not quite à deux but with a slender inch of air between them. A promise of good things to come.
Beyond the name Dalia, Ferret has no idea who the redhead is. Never saw her paperwork. Tristie’s assignment for him was simply to contact, shadow and facilitate. So. They had met at Washington’s Dulles International the previous evening, in a Starbucks on the other side of
Piglet. Corporal, D Coy., 2 Para: Tristie had looked up from the file, a little bewildered. ‘So your father sued the MoD . . .’
‘Well, it was my sister actually. She’s the lawyer. My family is quite tight like that. But Dad was determined to hammer them. Said that was the only way to teach a big organisation to change, though it pretty much brought the curtain down on my time with the Paras.’
Piglet’s file showed that a couple of months after getting his wings in 2000 he’d been part of a contingent scrambled to Sierra Leone to protect a United Nations contingent. Operation Palliser. As the Hercules droned across the steaming West African jungle, they’d passed out the anti-malaria tablets. But there were not enough. And the MoD had supplied a less effective brand instead of Mefloquine. Over a hundred Paras would catch malaria, cursing them with recurring bouts of fever, vomiting, joint pain and worse.
‘My father, you see, comes from a very wealthy family. Serious Jewish money. He was always uncomfortable that I joined up, had his own plans for me. In the end he took a bit of quiet pride in what I was doing, until, that is, I got the malaria. He got really ugly about that. Just found it outrageous that a set-up like the Ministry of Defence would do such a thing. Putting us in harm’s way is what we get paid for. But without basic medicines? I mean, who would do something like that? In the event it turned out to be nothing more than a dry run for everything that happened in Iraq and Afghanistan . . .’
Chiswick roundabout
Junction of M4/A4 and Chiswick High Road
I t’s all about the timing. Always the timing.
Piglet powers the Honda sports cruiser bike in and out of traffic on the old Great West Road, trying to make sure they keep close to the black cab. The road ahead seems awash with black cabs all nose to tail, heading into London with the long-distance, early morning Heathrow arrivals. Ferret cinches his thighs together. Clutching tight on to the rear seat using desperate muscles he’s never put into service before. He needs both hands to thumb a text message.
On the left, about twenty yards ahead, is the off-ramp that leads down to the Chiswick roundabout. When the cab leaves this roundabout, Tristie Merritt on the other side of the river gets her second text message. Only two markers after that . . . the Kew Bridge railway station on the right and a thousand yards later, when they come off the bridge itself on to the south bank of the Thames, by the top of the Green.
Ahead the lights are red and traffic is backed up from the roundabout. Piglet nudges the bike up to the rear of the stationary cab. Discreetly. Dougal MacIntyre is the poor guy’s name. Ferret feels the slightest wince of pity for what is about to happen. The trouble they are about to cause. Then easily dismisses it.
The senior official from the Ministry of Defence has his head laid out on the back headrest, his thick grey hair dishevelled and clearly visible through the rear window. Zonked out.Just to his right is the redhead. Dalia. One of Tristie Merritt’s mysterious friends summoned up from her shuttered past. The redhead is curled in towards MacIntyre. Not quite à deux but with a slender inch of air between them. A promise of good things to come.
Beyond the name Dalia, Ferret has no idea who the redhead is. Never saw her paperwork. Tristie’s assignment for him was simply to contact, shadow and facilitate. So. They had met at Washington’s Dulles International the previous evening, in a Starbucks on the other side of
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