She was right to a certain extent. Stratton was only trying to make it easier for her to bear, although he didn’t know quite why he needed to. It wasn’t as if the lads died like flies every time they went away. Yes, it was a dangerous job but the number of fatalities over the years was low, considering the nature of the work. The wives had been complaining lately about the amount of time their men had been spending away from home. Most were bored with being left alone so much while others suspected that the men had too much of a good time when they were away. Stratton wouldn’t have put Sally in either category and knew that for the past year or so she’d been experiencing genuine fear about Jack going away. She had mentioned it to Stratton more than once and although she knew that it was silly to take any notice of what was, at the end of the day, just her imagination she couldn’t help how she felt.
Sally smiled at Stratton, trying hard not to be a wet rag. ‘I’ll go get you that beer,’ she said. ‘You’re not leaving this house until you and I are drunk, John Stratton. Understood?’
As she stepped towards the house a beeper cut through the air. Sally stopped in the doorway and turned to look at Stratton as he pulled his pager from his pocket to check the readout.
‘I’d better hurry and catch a ride,’ he said as he approached her. He opened his arms and she wrapped hers around his body, resting her cheek on his chest.
‘I know it’s what you all do,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I’ll just never get used to it, that’s all.’
Stratton released her as Josh came up to them. ‘You going too, Stratton?’ the little boy asked, adjusting the oversized pakol on his head.
‘Yes. I have to go with your dad. You have a happy birthday, and look after your mum.’
Stratton bounded up the steps to the kitchen balcony and as he went inside the house Sally called out his name. He popped back out and looked down on them.
Sally had picked Josh up and was holding him in her arms. ‘Take care of him,’ she said, suddenly looking quite worried.
Stratton nodded and she smiled bravely. But all Sally could hear were the voices in her head warning her that she would never see Jack alive again. Even though she had heard them before, this time they seemed more compelling. She wanted to tell Stratton her fears but knew it would only make her feel stupid and put him in an uncomfortable position.
She watched him disappear and was suddenly filled with the urge to run through the house, out onto the street, and see Jack one last time before he went away. But she took control of herself.
‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ Josh said.
‘I’m not,’ she lied and held him tightly in her arms.
2
Stratton and Jack stepped in through a doorway cut into a large grey metal sliding door that was closed across the entrance to what, from the outside, looked like a small aircraft hangar. It was one of the Special Boat Service’s operational squadron hangars inside their sprawling headquarters on the edge of Poole Harbour. Gathered in the hangar were the men from Jack’s party plus half a dozen others. Most had some kind of facial hair: a moustache, a goatee, or simply a few days’ growth of stubble.
The door to the operational offices that were constructed on a suspended platform above the floor of the hangar opened and an officer and the squadron sergeant-major stepped out. They were wearing desert-camouflage uniforms. The sergeant-major led the way down a metal staircase where he stopped halfway to address the men.
‘Listen up,’ he barked. ‘Teams Alpha, Bravo and Charlie should all be here. Team leaders speak only if there are members who are not present, otherwise your silence will be taken as affirmative.’ His stare scanned the group and paused on Stratton and Seaton, the only two men who were not assigned to teams. He nodded to them and looked back at the officer. ‘All present, sir.’
‘Thank you, sergeant-major,’ the young officer said, looking up from a clipboard that he was reading from and scribbling notes on.
‘I’m sorry about the call-out,’ the officer said in his well-bred accent. ‘I know that most of you are on local leave but we’re the standby squadron for fastballs such as this. There’ll be a detailed brief on the plane but the location is Iraq. One of the deck of cards has been located. Mohammad Al-Forouf. He’s a Sunni cleric from Ramadi and quite an important force behind the resistance movement within the Sunni Triangle. He’s also the man behind the UN and Red Cross headquarters bombings in Baghdad as well as numerous others. He’s recently been using the dilapi dated but still functional rail system to move ordnance around the country. This has been working for him quite well, mainly because trains are so rare and somewhat autonomous about their movements that co alition forces have been lax with stop-and-searches. Sources have revealed that Forouf will be travelling from Mosul in the north and heading south towards Tikrit and Baghdad in the next twenty-four hours. He’s very elusive, obviously, since he hasn’t been caught yet. Coalition forces have made three attempts against him since the war, all without luck. He’s rumoured to be heavily guarded and goes nowhere without serious protection. This is the first time we’ve had int that he’s actually on one of his trains. If it proves to be true, then that gives us a tactical advantage insofar as he and his men will be in a confined location, on a predictable route, and out in the open. The source is apparently very reliable and quite valuable to military intelligence who want him left in mint condition and – this is from them – the deal is we can’t just vaporise the train, which suggests that the source is going to be with Forouf. That means it’s going to require some surgery … Stratton?’
‘Sir,’ Stratton said, raising a hand.
‘This is an explosive op. You’ll be running that side of it.’
Stratton nodded.
‘As I said, we’ll have a detailed brief on the flight and any upto-date int when we get to our forward-base location at Camp Victory. Get your kit sorted. We leave from the lower field in thirty minutes.’
‘Listen up,’ the sergeant-major boomed as the officer headed back up the stairs. ‘For those of you who can’t remember where Iraq is, think desert – sand and heat, and a lot of both. Pack accordingly. Don’t forget mozzy nets and insect repellent – Yanks have so far reported six hundred and fifty cases of leishmaniasis which is a flying tick-borne disease. Smith? Don’t bring your hammock this time. There ain’t any trees where we’re going.’
Smudge rolled his eyes as some of the men looked round at him. ‘I packed it by mistake,’ he mumbled.
‘You heard the boss,’ the sergeant-major continued. ‘Thirty minutes. That means I want everyone down on the lower field to load the choppers in twenty and ready to go in twenty-five. Let’s go.’
Everyone immediately headed for their personal equipment cages.
‘You want to work with me on this one?’ Stratton asked Jack.
‘I’d be offended if you didn’t ask,’ Jack said. ‘I’ll go grab the boom-boom soon as I have my kit together, which’ll take three minutes. What do you think you’ll need?’
‘A lot of linear, methinks. Stacks of L-Ones and Twos. I’ll pick up the console and the RT devices.’
‘Right.’
‘P for plenty,’ Stratton said as Jack walked away.
‘Always.’
Stratton walked to his equipment cage, unlocked the combin -ation, took hold of his large backpack that was already good to go other than for a few changes for desert conditions and paused to deal with a major distraction. He hadn’t done a train before, not a moving option like this, and it posed some interesting problems. He was eager to solve them but pushed all thoughts of it out of his mind for the time being. Stratton no longer feared failing to find a solution to problems such as these as much as he used to. There had been a time when he would have been worried about fulfilling such a hugely pivotal role in an operation, but after so many years he knew that there was always a solution: it just had to be found. It was not complacency or smugness on his part, but a confidence in himself, his team, and the tried and tested system that was Brit special forces. He was looking forward to the journey to Baghdad, every minute of which would be spent going over details, calculating how he was going to blow the train without killing those on board, and then looking for all the things that could possibly go wrong.