Steve nodded. ‘We just need one more man, then.’
There was still no answer from Dan, and with less than twelve hours to go, they couldn’t rely on the Aussie any more. If he’d gone AWOL, then he was going to have to miss this one.
Steve had rung around a few guys he knew from the ‘circuit’, as the network of former soldiers who hopped from one war zone to the next was known. So far, he hadn’t found anyone. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan meant there was plenty of demand for well-trained soldiers. The oil price was still high enough for the exploration companies to keep pouring money into small, volatile countries - and they needed guys to protect their kit. There was plenty of easy money to be made in the security industry right now, without flying into Batota and kicking off a revolution. Nor did anybody want to fight for Guy Wallace. They were too many stories of men being tortured to death in African jails after failed coup attempts. ‘No bloody way,’ said Darren Millar, an ex-Regiment guy Steve had once fought alongside, when he got him on the phone. ‘Suicide jobs - that’s Wallace’s speciality, and this one sounds like the craziest of the lot. You can keep me on the subs bench, thanks very much.’
‘How about you?’ Chris asked, glancing across at Ollie. ‘Found anyone?’
Ollie shook his head. ‘There’s only one choice,’ he answered. ‘Roddy.’
‘Christ, no,’ snapped Steve. ‘Not that bloody clown.’
Roddy Smarden was a schoolfriend of Ollie’s who’d served alongside him in the Household Cavalry, specialising in communications and signalling. A Fulham Road public schoolboy, he ran a travel business called The Big Ski Adventure Company that took City boys off on escorted tours to some of the world’s most dangerous black runs. But after a Merrill Lynch trader suffered brain damage on a trip to Norway, business had dried up. He’d been on the bus for the Afghanistan trip but jumped off at the last moment. Steve reckoned he was the worst kind of public-school tosser: arrogant, smug, and with no backbone.
‘Woddy the Wanker?’ frowned Ian.
‘He’s all right,’ said Ollie. ‘Back in the Blues, there was no finer soldier.’
‘He’s an idiot,’ Steve said flatly.
‘Maybe we’re all idiots for taking this job,’ Ollie responded. ‘But we’re a man short, and right now he’s the only bloke we’ve found who’s willing to come.’
On the departures screen, the BA flight for Aberdeen was open for boarding. All nine men were ready, each of them casually dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, their kit bags slung over their shoulders. We look like a bunch of oil workers heading back up to the rigs for a two-week shift, decided Steve. But if you looked closely, you could see the edginess in each man’s eyes. Every time he set off for a mission, Steve could feel the adrenaline running faster through his veins, knowing that he was putting himself on the front line of experience, taking risks and challenges that most people could never contemplate. Maybe that’s what makes me do it, he wondered to himself. Or maybe I’m just too stupid to understand the chances I’m taking.
‘Where’s Roddy then?’ he questioned Ollie.
The other man was glancing around the crowded terminal. It was just after five in the afternoon and Heathrow was thronging with travellers.
But there was no sign of Roddy.
Ollie had already switched on his mobile, was stabbing at the dial button and cupping the phone to his ear. By the time he looked back towards Steve he was bright red. ‘Roddy’s at Gatwick,’ he said. ‘Apparently he thought we were flying from there.’
Steve chuckled. ‘Then he’s missed the sodding bus, hasn’t he?’
‘And I nearly missed it as well,’ said a voice.
Steve spun around. Dan Coleman was standing right behind him. The Australian was a big man, at least six two, with shoulders like steel girders and a jaw so thick and square it looked like breeze block. His hair was dirty blond, and his grin was rough and rugged. There weren’t many guys Steve would avoid getting into a fight with, but Dan was one of them. He’d trained with the Special Air Services Regiment, as the Australian special forces were known, but he’d spent a year in a military jail after a UN report had blamed him for the deaths of two children in a fire-fight in the border country between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Steve had no doubts the judges had got it wrong. The Aussie was among the straightest men he’d ever met: with the enemy, he was about as subtle as a cruise missile, but off the battlefield he was the kindest, gentlest man ever born.