Whitehouse grinned. ‘Just had them lasered,’ he said. ‘Brilliant, it is. I can read a book without glasses for the first time in I don’t know how long, and driving is so much easier.’ He was carrying a metal case and he swung it on to Shepherd’s coffee table.
‘It’s a fourth-generation Glock 17, but there’s not much I can tell you that you don’t know already,’ he said. He checked the barrel was clear and handed the gun butt-first to Shepherd. Shepherd checked the action and nodded his approval. ‘Three clips, they hold seventeen rounds as you know, but I’ve put fifteen in each to keep the pressure off the spring.’ Shepherd took one of the clips and slotted it home. ‘Miss Button said we didn’t need to go heavy on the ammo, is forty-five rounds enough?’
‘More than enough,’ said Shepherd.
‘And she said a shoulder holster. You prefer leather to nylon, right?’
‘You know me too well,’ said Shepherd. Whitehouse grinned and handed Shepherd a dark brown leather shoulder holster. The leather had been recently oiled and it glistened as Shepherd stroked the leather. Whitehouse handed over two leather holsters designed to hold the clips. ‘If you want the spares on your belt,’ he said. He reached into the case and brought out two plastic-wrapped vests. ‘And these are courtesy of Mr Singh,’ he said.
Shepherd took the packages and ripped one open. He held out a white vest, about the thickness of a pullover. It had sleeves that reached to just above the elbows. He held it against his chest and smiled at the look of contempt on the armourer’s face. ‘You’re not convinced?’ he said.
‘Mr Singh swears by them,’ said Whitehouse.
‘But you’re not convinced?’
‘You know where you are with Kevlar and ceramic plates.’ He reached over and rubbed the vest that Shepherd was holding. ‘This feels like wool.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘I just don’t get it.’
‘He says it changes its structure when the bullet hits,’ said Shepherd. ‘Nanotechnology.’
‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ said Whitehouse.
‘I could put it on now and you could take a shot at me.’ He grinned at the look of surprise on the armourer’s face. ‘Joke,’ he said.
‘I’m glad to hear that,’ said Whitehouse. ‘But I have to say I’d feel a lot happier if I’d had the chance to run a few tests myself. I look at them and I ask myself if they would really stop a bullet.’
‘According to Amar they’ll stop any handgun at close range and an AK-47 from fifty feet,’ said Shepherd. ‘But like you, I’ll believe it when I see it.’ He grinned. ‘Hopefully it won’t come to that.’
‘And let’s not forget that if the person who’s shooting at you knows what they’re doing, they’ll probably go for a head shot anyway.’
Shepherd laughed. ‘Yeah, that’s the truth.’ He put the vest down and picked up the Glock again. ‘You took a bullet, in the Falklands?’
‘Two,’ said the armourer. ‘One in the calf, one grazed my head. According to the lads the second one didn’t count, it was just a flesh wound. But an inch to the left and I wouldn’t be here now.’
‘What happened?’
‘I’m not a great one for war stories, Spider.’
Shepherd rubbed his shoulder. ‘I’ve just been thinking about the time I got shot, that’s all. You never forget it, right?’
‘Every time I get into the shower I see the scar,’ said Whitehouse. ‘The scar in my head is hidden by my hair, but you can see that the hair around it is greyer than the rest. But yeah, you never forget.’
‘How bad was it?’
‘The wounds? Not too bad. There were plenty that got worse – two hundred and fifty-five of our guys didn’t come back. But the Falklands was nothing like what you went through in Afghanistan. We didn’t have IEDs or ambushes or men pretending to be women, or suicide bombers. At least we were fighting soldiers, even if a lot of them were kids.’
‘Do you know who shot you?’
Whitehouse shrugged. ‘Could have been any one of half a dozen,’ he said. ‘We were coming down this hill towards where the Argies were dug in. It was all about speed, back then, they knew we had to retake the Islands within weeks or we never would. There was no wait and see, it was full steam ahead, lads, and to hell with the bullets. This was the second hill we’d taken and it went pretty much the same way. Their lads were dug in and firing up the hill, we came charging down with as much firepower as we could muster. Then once we got to within about fifty yards of their position they’d just throw down their weapons and surrender. It was weird, Spider. They knew the Geneva Convention meant that you can’t shoot an unarmed man. So as soon as they knew they were beaten they threw their guns down. So you had the ridiculous situation where they would shoot the guy next to you, killing him stone dead, but then they’d drop their gun and you can’t fire back. Bloody stupid, if you ask me. Anyway, I got hit in the leg but that didn’t stop me. Then a round went under my helmet, grazed my head and exited at the back. Hurt like hell but no real damage. There was a lad next to me, only just turned twenty, took a bullet in the face. Just blew his face away. Will Dunbar, his name was. I’d given him some smokes the night before and we’d had a bit of a chinwag. I saw the guy who shot him. He was a young lad, probably a teenager. As soon as Will went down the lad chucked his rifle and put up his hands.’ Whitehouse held up his hand, the thumb and first finger half an inch apart. ‘I came this close to slotting him, I swear to God. I had a bead on his chest, my finger was tightening on the trigger, there was blood trickling down my neck and I had the full adrenalin rush. Then my sarge starts screaming at me to lower my weapon, that it was over. I was still going to fire but the sarge pushed the barrel down. I tell you, it was the hardest thing I’ve had to do because that kid deserved to die. No question. He shot Will in the face and because it was war that was OK. Then he drops his gun and I have to round him up with the rest of them and he’s now back in Argentina probably with a bloody medal.’
‘It’s even weirder out in Afghanistan and Iraq,’ said Shepherd. ‘Over there they don’t have uniforms, they use women and kids as suicide bombers and they fire missiles from mosques. Yet we carry on following the rules of war that are supposed to apply to soldiers in uniform. It’s like fighting with one arm behind your back.’
‘Lions led by bloody donkeys,’ said Whitehouse. ‘They should just have let your lot run things out there. Done it as Special Ops instead of putting bodies on the ground.’
‘I’m not sure that would have been any better,’ said Shepherd. ‘You can’t defeat an enemy that fights like that. The Yanks should have learned that from Vietnam. And if not from that, the fact that the Russians had to leave Afghanistan with their tail between their legs should have shown them which way the wind was blowing.’
‘Shouldn’t have been there in the first place, is that what you mean?’
Shepherd shrugged. ‘It’s not my call, Mark. I went to Afghanistan because I was told to go. I was eight years old when the Falklands War broke out, but looking back, I can see why we were there. The Argentines invaded British territory. End of. We had every right to do what was necessary to take it back. But you look at Afghanistan and Iraq and you have to ask yourself why British troops were ever sent.’
‘You know why. Because Tony Blair was Bush’s lapdog. Did what his master told him to.’ The armourer shrugged. ‘You’re right. At least I knew what I was fighting for.’
Shepherd put down the Glock. ‘If you got the chance to take that shot, to shoot the guy who killed Will, would you do it?’
Whitehouse tilted his head to one side as he looked at Shepherd. ‘That’s one hell of a hypothetical question,’ he said. ‘Where’s that come from?’