was the way it had to be. How was I supposed to function if I spent all my time clicking thumbnails of a teenager dead on a King's Cross bed? The image I tried to cling to was of her bright and sparkly at the one birthday I did manage to get right, at the replica of the Golden Hind on the Thames.
I was spared having to go there, and poor Pete was spared having to listen. One of the rifle-company lads appeared and stood next to me, but it was Pete he was after. He had a blue Helly Hansen T-shirt on under his armour, and a brand-new tattoo of barbed wire curling round his right arm. Here and there a few scabs still clung to the ink – but not as many as there were on the zits he'd popped on his face.
Pete looked up at him with a big smile. 'Hello, mate. What can I do you for?'
The young lad smiled back. 'I heard you was a tankie. My dad was, too – Jim Duggan, you know him?'
Pete moved his head from side to side in thought mode. 'No, mate, sorry, don't ring any bells. He still in?'
The lad was Welsh, and flushed with pride for his dad. 'No, he's here, in Iraq, working for one of the security companies.'
Duggan . . . The name suddenly rang a bell with me. He was the boy who needed bigging up. I held out a hand. 'I'm Nick, that's Pete. You number one on the door tonight?'
He got even prouder. 'Terry. Yeah, first time. The platoon swaps round the entry teams.'
'Good luck, mate. You know, until about four years ago only special forces would be doing that shit.'
His eyes widened and he kept shaking my hand, and Pete just kept looking at him, deep in thought.
'Yeah?'
'That's right, mate. Big day. Good luck.'
One of the RMP girls walked past and Terry's eyes swivelled. Pete laid down his iBook, stood up and wrapped a fatherly arm round him. 'You do good tonight, my son, and she'll be all over you like a rash.'
Terry might have been about to get the party gear on and make entry into a house packed with guys wanting to kill him, but he was maybe nineteen at a push. The RMP would have had him soft-boiled for breakfast.
Pete gestured at the iBook. 'If that old man of yours is on email, you want to drop him a line? Tell him you're OK?'
Pete and I exchanged a glance. He knew as well as I did that if tonight went to rat shit this might be the last time he ever made contact.
Terry was even more made up as he sat and started tapping away.
Pete stepped over to me, looking pleased with himself. 'You know what? There would be stuff I'd miss. Mostly the camaraderie. The brotherhood. It's a bit like being a squaddy, what we do. Even when you're up to your neck in shit, you're surrounded by mates.' He smiled. 'We were in Kabul when Ruby's mum fucked off to Spain with the bloke who built our extension. It was Dom and all the other guys who kept me afloat.'
He slapped my arm. 'Sorry, mate, too much information. If you do ever get there, though, the Gandamack Lodge is the place to drown your sorrows. Great bar. The city's not exactly awash with them. All the news crews stay there, and it's the circuit's watering-hole. Plenty of company.'
The shout went up that the attack was over, but we stayed where we were. The area still had to be cleared before anyone could move.
'Talking of keeping afloat . . .' he hit my arm again . . . 'when Tel's finished, why don't you go online to Sad Fucks Reunited, see if you can hunt down the old diving team?'
10
The tank park
2340 hrs
'Where the fuck is Peter with those drinks?'
It was the first time I'd heard Dom swear. Things obviously weren't too hunky-dory on Planet Platinum Bollocks. He'd come back fuming from his session at the FCO building. Pete and I had tried to draw him out, but he stayed tight-lipped.
It was H-hour minus twenty, and we were choking on the exhaust from B Company's nine Bulldogs. Their back doors were open. In the dull red glow from the interiors I could see a mass of last-minute checks going on. I watched Terry as he tugged his chest harness over his Osprey body armour and positioned the