Blackout - By Tom Barber Page 0,52

and four of them held me down on the soil, no one else around for miles, I was looking up at the stars.' He blinked. 'Then they got a set of bolt cutters and took off my small toe. One snip, and it was gone.’

With a great effort, he pushed back the bed covers and lifted his feet out of the bed, laying them on the sheets.

The men looked at his feet.

Seven of his toes were missing.

‘The guy with the spider tattoos told me no one knew we were there,' Fletcher continued. 'No one was coming for us. And they were going to kill us over the course of the next three months. A piece at a time. First the toes. Then the fingers. Then the feet, and the hands. Then the arms. Then the genitals. Then the eyes and tongue. Then the head.’

The room was silent.

Fletcher's chin trembled.

‘They dragged me out there each night and took seven of my toes, one by one, over the course of a week. They didn't touch Carver and Floyd. They let them watch, telling them that once I was dead, they would be next.'

Pause.

'Then, on the eighth night, we were rescued. Six men came in the dark and got us out. The other two could move, but I had to be carried.’

He shook his head weakly.

‘Neither of them paid any sort of price for what they did, unlike me. I never recovered properly. My body started to heal, but my mind and conscience didn’t. My whole life ruined because of Carver and Floyd.’

By the windows, Chalky shook his head, his arms folded. His face was hard.

‘Bullshit,' he said. 'You were there. You could have stopped them. But you stood there and let them kill those women and children.'

There was a long silence.

Fletcher didn't respond.

‘So what happened next?’ Archer asked.

‘We were taken out of there by chopper. Not to Bondsteel, but somewhere else. They gave me morphine for the pain as we took off and the next thing I remember was waking up in a hospital in Birmingham, back in the UK. There was a man sitting there beside my bed dressed in a suit. I didn’t recognise him. He told me I had to sign a form, even before I was fully awake. He said that if I left the army immediately without a fuss, there would be no follow up to what happened that night.'

He paused.

'But he said if I ever spoke about it to anyone, anyone at all, the punishment that would come my way would be incredibly severe. And from then, until this moment, I've done exactly what he said. I’ve never said a word about any of it to anyone, ever. Gladly, I might add. I just wanted to move on as best I could and make the most of a second chance. Minus seven of my toes.'

He coughed.

‘Guess it doesn’t matter now. Nature is getting rid of me for them. Dead men don’t talk.’

He paused.

'But it’s always confused me,’ he said. ‘Why would they go to so much effort to save the three of us after what we did? We weren’t important. Just three grunts, a Corporal, Private and Captain. Why weren't we punished and hung out to dry? The whole world deserved to know what happened to those people. At the very least Carver and Floyd should have been court-martialled.'

‘So should you,’ Chalky said.

Cobb turned and looked at Jackson.

'I think this is where you fill in the blanks,’ he said.

Silence. His arms still folded, Jackson looked up at him.

'Why weren't we punished?' Fletcher asked him from the bed.

Pause.

'Because Carver's father was in the CIA,' Jackson said, eventually.

'So what?' Chalky said, by the window. 'They still murdered all those women and children. Who cared if his father worked for the government?'

Jackson said nothing.

'How high up was his father, Ryan?' Cobb asked Jackson, his voice even, putting two and two together.

Pause.

'How high?' he repeated.

'Deputy Director,' Jackson said, eventually.

'Holy shit,' Fox said, as every man in the room looked at Jackson.

'I don’t believe this,' Cobb said, almost at the same time. 'No wonder everyone was sworn to secrecy. Carver's father was one of the heads of the damn CIA?'

Jackson nodded.

'That's right.'

There was a long, somewhat uncomfortable pause as each man processed what they had just been told, none more so than Fletcher, lying in the bed.

‘You know three of the men who rescued you have died today,’ Cobb said, looking down at Fletcher.

The sickly man looked up at him in