Aggressor by Andy McNab Read Free Book Online Page B

the rail. ‘I know, lad. I used to see you watching me. You learn much?’
    ‘I think I did. In fact I thought about you on the last day of that Waco job. Do I deck the bloke or not? I know I made the right decision.’
    ‘I’m not sure everybody at Waco did.’ Charlie turned his head to look at me. ‘Remember that young lad from DERA, the gas man? He killed himself a year later.’
    I hadn’t heard. I’d left the Regiment by then. ‘His name was Anthony. He was all right.’
    He sat back in his chair. ‘Good men, fucked over by the system. It’s nothing new.’ He picked up his beer with a trembling hand, as if the emotion of the moment was getting the better of him. ‘You know, I fell for it when I was a lad. I really did believe all that shite about Queen and country. We were the good guys, they were the bad guys. It took me thirty-seven years playing soldiers to realize what a load of old bollocks it was. Maybe you got there sooner? That why you got out?’
    Charlie wouldn’t know what I’d done after I left, and he would never ask. He knew that if I wanted him to know, I’d tell him.
    ‘Sort of.’
    He looked back at the solitary horse in the corner of the field. ‘Did you know I was in the troop when my boy was on foot patrol in Derry?’
    I nodded. A couple of guys had had sons in the green army, and all of them had been operating over the water at the same time.
    He gave a little self-mocking laugh. ‘I used to kid myself that every PIRA guy we dropped meant one less who could take a pop at my boy. Kind of felt I was looking out for him. But we weren’t doing the job full throttle, were we? We were only dropping the ASUs [active service units] that Thatcher and Major thought would hold up the peace process.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘We were actually protecting Adams and McGuinness so they could have secret talks with our “We do not deal with terrorists” governments. Seemed there were good baddies and bad baddies, something I hadn’t really thought of before.’
    I shrugged. No-one had ever officially admitted it, but we had all known what was going on. Eliminate the ones who were objecting to any sort of progress, then hope the rest were going to fall in behind our guys, Adams and McGuinness. ‘Maybe it worked. We’ve got a sort of peace.’
    ‘Whatever. Only thing that mattered was, all the time I was running around working was time I didn’t have to sit and worry about Steven.’
    He gazed at the horse, lost for a moment in a world of his own. ‘And afterwards . . . after he was killed . . . I didn’t care how they did it, just so long as they kept me busy.’
    I lifted the can. ‘Must have been grim, mate.’ I hesitated. ‘I’ve kind of been there myself . . .’ I tailed off again, because I wasn’t sure what I was going to say next. In any case, Charlie was giving me that slightly challenging look you see in the eyes of the bereaved when people say, ‘I know exactly how you must be feeling,’ and they have no fucking idea. I shrugged. ‘She wasn’t my own, but fuck, it felt like she was. If it had hurt any more, I couldn’t have taken it.’
    Charlie shifted in his seat. ‘Who was she? Stepdaughter?’
    ‘Kev Brown’s kid – he was in Eight Troop, remember?’
    Charlie tried to, but couldn’t.
    ‘He and Marsha had made me guardian in their will.’
    ‘Oh yeah, I heard about that. Shit, I had no idea it was you who’d stepped in.’ His voice dropped. ‘So what happened to her?’
    ‘She got killed two years ago in London.’ I stared down at the can. ‘She was fifteen. I took her back home to the States and buried her, then, well, I buried myself, a bit like you.’
    Charlie nodded slowly. ‘Then you just wake up one day and wonder what the fuck it’s all about . . .’
    ‘Something like that. I always used to pretend I didn’t give a fuck, but, well, you know, I loved her. Losing her fucked me up big-time. Next thing I knew, I was sitting at the