‘The pampered Etonian homosexuals in Whitehall, who we have the misfortune to serve, have, in their wisdom, chosen to turn my beloved 2 Para into a penal legion! That’s penal as in penitent, not as in penis! You are amongst the first lowlife parasitical scum who have been sent to befoul my beloved battalion! We normally have nothing but contempt for recruits stupid enough to join this regiment! You! We actually hate! We hate you more than the French! I congratulate you on your stunning achievement on making the entire of 2 Para hate you! You will not be here long! We will break you! You will have training accidents! Terrible things will happen to you at the hands of trained killers! You will come to me, begging to me to be allowed back to Wormwood Scrubs so large unpleasant gentlemen can get at your tight little bottoms! What you will not be doing is joining the parachute regiment! Is that understood!?’ There were a few mumbled replies. ‘The proper reply, scum, is, “Yes, Sergeant”!’
‘Here, do you think you’re hard or something?’ Psycho asked. The training sergeant turned to look at the squat, muscular, shaven-headed item who had spoken.
‘Oh, well volunteered…’ the training sergeant started. Psycho laid him out with one punch.
He thought he had been tortured before. He hadn’t. He didn’t really know what it was. He thought he could withstand torture. He couldn’t. He’d tell them anything as long as they stopped. No, that wasn’t true, he’d tell them anything if they ended it and killed him. Except they weren’t asking any questions.
Four hot days in summer and the riot season was upon them again, but this time it had been different. This time people, who were normally killing each other over which postcode they lived in, were armed, organised and had had at least rudimentary training.
To Psycho, looking down the barrel of his Minimi, there was a degree of inevitability to this. It was going to happen eventually in any society where the gap between the rich and the poor was so well-defined and widening. When you had a society that penalised the least fortunate for the excesses of the most fortunate, it was only a matter of time before the unfortunates at the bottom, who were used to desperation and fighting each other, finally turned on the people that were actually screwing them over. He’d said as much to the squad. Perkins had called him a communist. It wasn’t politics. It wasn’t economics. It was common sense. Cause and effect. You beat a dog often enough, it’ll get round to biting you. And frankly, as far as Psycho was concerned, if you hadn’t done anything about the reasons why these things were happening then you couldn’t complain when your capital city burnt.
Psycho had heard a couple of the old boys, ex-2 Para, talk about how the LCZ looked like Belfast during the 1980’s now. The police had very quickly been overwhelmed. The TA had gone in. A lot of them had been killed. Car bombs, rocket and mortar attacks and just good old-fashioned street fighting. Then the Paras had been called in. Yeah, because 1 Para had really cooled things off in Northern Ireland, hadn’t they? Psycho thought. The Royal Navy were also involved. The Frigate HMS Anguish was anchored in the Thames less than a mile away from where Psycho was in cover behind sandbags.
The problem was, the kids with the AKs had taken over a number of tower blocks. They were well provisioned. Knew the area. They seemed to have endless amounts of ammunition. Even for people who knew what they were doing when it came to fighting, the prospect of going in and rooting them out did not appeal. The same architecture that turned these tower blocks into rat-infested warrens was the same architecture that would turn them into death-traps that would have to be cleared room by room. Their ROE were to engage them in the street or if fired upon, but otherwise to patrol and contain while the politicians and the police negotiated.
The gunmen may have been organised to a degree, at least when it came to fighting, but they didn’t even have a name. It had just steadily escalated, kicking off with a policeman killed in revenge for shooting an unarmed kid. The gunmen and women wanted fairness, an even playing field, but lacked the vocabulary to express it in terms that politicians would understand. Fat chance, Psycho thought. Nobody with a vested interest wanted an even playing field and the negotiators were trying to buy them off with training shoes, X-Factor and PlayStations. After all, it had worked in the past.
It hadn’t taken much: a number of the older kids who’d been trained by the army, under the Offenders Conscription Act. Someone with contacts in the Eastern European mob for weapons. They would have gotten seed money from who-knows-where and then all it took was for someone to push them just a little too hard.
This was how Psycho found himself looking down the barrel of a Minimi behind a pile of sandbags in his hometown. Admittedly he was south of the river. He was probably shooting at Chelsea fans. He still couldn’t shake the feeling that he was on the wrong side.
They were stationed at a road junction, looking at one of the tower blocks. The six-wheeled Coyote tactical support vehicle was parked up behind them. The TSV’s mounted .50 calibre heavy machine gun was pointed at the block, the mounted general purpose machine gun, or jimpy, covering the road behind them.
‘Come on, you little shit, show yourself,’ Perkins muttered. He was looking through the scope of the L129A1 sharpshooter rifle. The corporal was one of the body-beautiful types, who somehow managed to hit the gym even after all the PT he did. An attractive guy who knew it, but his good looks couldn’t hide the vicious cast to his features. He knew who to brown nose above and who to victimise below. As far as Psycho was concerned he was a nasty piece of work.
‘Perkins, why don’t you wind your neck in? Things are quiet. Let’s just leave it,’ Psycho told him. He could see Lumley nodding in agreement. There was only one thing that career soldiers hated more than the offender conscripts: the fully integrated front-line female soldiers. This had led to a strange alliance between the women and the offender conscripts in infantry units. Psycho also knew that Lumley, a stocky girl from Derby, was harder than half the guys in his section. She’d had to be, to get where she was.
‘That would be Corporal Perkins, right, Private Sykes?’ Perkins asked, looking up from the scope.
It’ll be Corporal Wanker, Sykes managed not to say.
‘ROE, corp,’ Psycho told him.
‘The rules of engagement say that we may return fire if fired upon. I assure you that if I slot the fucker he will have shot first. Isn’t that right, Geordie?’
‘Aye, too right, corp,’ Geordie, the thickly-set Lance Corporal manning the TSV’s .50 cal said in his thick Newcastle accent. To Psycho it seemed that every squad in the British army had to come with someone called Geordie in it. Geordie was Perkin’s henchman in the squad.
‘Walker?’
‘Aye, corp,’ the massively built Afro-Caribbean private from Birmingham said.
‘Wally?’
Walowski was a wiry Pole who had somehow also managed to end up in 2 Para as part of the Offenders Conscription Act. The Pole hesitated.
Psycho got on well with Walowski. The Pole seemed to be constantly surprised at finding himself in the British army.
Perkins turned to glare at Walowski.
‘Yes, Corporal,’ the Pole finally answered.
‘Private Lumley?’ Lumley just stared fixedly ahead, watching her sector. ‘I said “Private Lumley”?’ Lumley ignored him. ‘Stupid bitch, probably deaf as well as frigid.’ There was laughter from Walker and Geordie. ‘You know what you need, Lumley?’
‘A corporal who isn’t a wanker?’ Psycho suggested. Lumley and Walowski tried not to smile.