For Valour by Andy McNab Read Free Book Online Page B

logs and we squatted in the gloom beside a neatly rolled bivvi bag and a Rocketpak Bergen. I could make out a selection of Meals Ready to Eat and their flameless ration heaters neatly stashed in one of its side pouches.
    The glint in his startlingly blue eyes told me that the banter was over. ‘A kid took a round in the head during training.’
    ‘When?’
    ‘Two weeks ago. Eleventh of January.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘That’s the million-pound question. They’re claiming a negligent discharge. I don’t believe a word of it. If it was that simple, why the blackout? DSF has pulled the shutters down tighter than a duck’s arse. That’s one of the things that bothers me.’
    ‘What are the others?’
    ‘I could give you a list, but here’s the headline: the lad being blamed for it is under lock and key at Barford, and I’m certain he didn’t pull the trigger. It’s a stitch-up. And as soon as I stuck my nose in where it wasn’t wanted, they tried to fuck me up.’
    ‘Mate, you know I’ll always go the distance for you, but what’s this got to do with me?’
    ‘He could be facing a manslaughter rap. He needs us to get him off the hook, Nick. And you’ve been out of sight long enough not to be caught up in it.’
    ‘Caught up in what?’
    He shifted position on his log, but his eyes never left mine. ‘Whatever shit is happening behind the wire. I don’t know what’s going down, but they’re killing their own because of it.’
    There were a whole lot of things here that didn’t add up. ‘How can you be so sure he didn’t do it?’
    ‘Because I’ve known this lad since he was yay high.’ Trev placed the flat of his hand about six inches above the ground. ‘Virtually adopted him when we got back from Sweden in ’ninety-two.’
    Now I knew where this was heading.
    Trev nodded. ‘Yup. It’s Harry’s boy, Sam.’
    I took a couple of deep breaths and watched them billow in the chill air as I exhaled. ‘We all fuck up from time to time, Trev.’
    His eyes blazed and his thumb pad went into overtime. ‘Do me a favour, Nick. I know Harry lost the plot for a moment back in Swedeland. But this is twenty years later, and I haven’t.’ He gripped my arm. ‘OK, so I wasn’t absolutely sure from the word go that someone else pulled the trigger in the Killing House, but I am now. You want to know why I’ve gone native?’
    He looked like he might start frothing at the mouth any minute now. I nodded.
    ‘Because some bastard left a claymore in my front hall. An MRUD, for fuck’s sake. If Icarus hadn’t gone ape-shit, I’d be history.’
    ‘Icarus?’
    ‘My dog.’

9
    Unlike a conventional anti-personnel mine, the MRUD wasn’t disc-shaped and didn’t have to be buried underfoot. In its plastic convex casing, it looked like an iPod sound dock on legs, or a drab green scale model of the Grwyne Fawr Dam.
    They could be mounted on the ground, in trees, or on your target’s hall table. Some of the American versions had ‘FRONT TOWARD ENEMY’ embossed on their face, so even the grunts knew which way to point them.
    Trev, ever the linguist, had once told me that MRUD was the acronym for Mina Rasprskavajuća Usmenog Dejstva . When I’d scratched my head and looked stupid, he’d written it down and explained that it basically meant ‘directed fragmentation’ in Serbian. And from what I’d seen of them in Bosnia, they did exactly what it said on the tin. Triggered by a command wire, det cord, manual detonator, booby-trap fuse or bog-standard electrical power source, nine hundred grams of explosive blasted hundreds of steel balls in a sixty-degree arc, with a lethal range of about thirty-five metres.
    I wasn’t surprised he looked miserable. ‘So you must have rattled the bars on somebody’s cage …’
    He gave his thumb a rest and sucked his teeth instead. ‘I’ve got some ideas about that, but even the Old and Bold are keeping schtum, and I’ve been knocking pretty hard on every door I can think of.