3

Slocock hurt so much he knew he couldn’t do another yard, let alone a lap. His legs felt like kit-­bags full of suet and his throat was so raw that each breath was like swallowing a cheese grater. His heart was doing at least 180 mph and he wouldn’t have been surprised if it simply packed up on him.

But he did do another lap, driving his short, stocky body on.

“Nice one, Sarge!” shouted young Feely who was sitting on one of the low benches that ringed the track. There was someone with him but Slocock, his eyes stinging with sweat, couldn’t make out who it was.

Slocock staggered off the track and collapsed onto the grass. He lay there on his back, chest heaving. The hot midday sun beat down on him and he screwed his eyes shut against it.

In the distance there was a distinctive crump sound. The bastards were at it again. A big one too. Possibly another car bomb. Despite what had happened on the mainland, and what was still happening, the bloody IRA had stepped up their campaign against the army. They can’t drive us out now, thought Slocock bitterly, don’t they realize there’s no place left for us to go?

“You want to be careful, Sarge. Especially at your age,” came Feely’s voice from close by. Slocock smiled to himself. Feely was a good kid.

“If someone had said that to your old man,” wheezed Slocock, “you’d be nothing but a dried-­up puddle in an old rubber lying in some Liverpool alley. And what a loss to the world that would have been.”

Feely laughed. Some people—well, a lot of people—couldn’t take Slocock. And Slocock had convinced himself he liked it that way, particularly since Marge. But Feely refused to be offended by anything Slocock said and usually gave as good as he got. This time, however, all he said was, “You’ve got a visitor, Sarge.” And his voice held a note of amusement in it.

Slocock opened his eyes. Sweat continued to blur his vision and he could only distinguish two vague forms outlined against the sun.

“Good afternoon, sergeant,” said a female voice. A very nice female voice.

Slocock wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and squinted. He could now make out a woman in her late twenties. She was strikingly attractive. She had large eyes, high cheek bones, and a wide, suggestive mouth. Her hair was short and very black. And though she was wearing a pair of baggy jeans and a shapeless khaki shirt he could tell her body was lean and muscular. She held herself well.

“Begorrah, Feely,” he said in a mock Irish accent, “you’ve brought your dear old grannie to see your beloved Sarge.”

“I’m Kimberley Fairchild. Doctor Kimberley Fairchild. I’d say it’s a pleasure to meet you, Sargeant Slocock, but I’ve already been warned about you.”

“Lies. Filthy lies spread about by my envious inferiors. I am in reality the pasteurized milk of human kindness. So what can I do you for, Doctor?”

“Nothing in particular. I just wanted to take a look at you.”

He spread his arms. “Look all you want. Feast your eyes. It will mean reappraising your ideal of male beauty but that’s the price you must pay for the privilege.”

She laughed. “All I see is a short, overweight, and out of condition man in his mid-­thirties who has a tendency to freckle and who shouldn’t be lying out in this sun with that sort of skin.”

Feely laughed too. “She’s right, Sarge. You’re starting to look like a burned tomato.”

“That’s indignation, lad, not sunburn,” he growled. To Kimberley Fairchild he said, “If I’m such a disappointing specimen, Doctor, why are you wasting your time looking at me?”

“Curiosity, Sergeant. I wanted to see who I was going to be traveling with.”

Slocock’s body twitched. Then he abruptly sat up and stared at her. “You’re coming too? For fuck’s sake why?”

“You don’t have to sound so pleased,” she said dryly.

“But Christ, don’t you know what we have to do over there? What lame-­brained arse-­hole came up with the idea of including you in the operation? I’m going to have enough to worry about without playing nursemaid for you.”

“Oh, stuff the macho drivel, Sergeant. You’ve got it back-­to-­front. I’m to be your nursemaid. I’m a doctor, remember, and you’re going to need one over there.”

“Hah! What good will a doctor be? You’ve all been pretty useless so far. About the only thing you can do is hand out the death pills when . . .”

He didn’t finish but glanced instead at the burned-­out patch in the center of the grass area. That was where Hibbert had been incinerated. He’d managed to stagger this far before they’d caught up with him and surrounded him. Then they’d let loose with the three flame-­throwers at once. But it was amazing how long he’d kept screaming.

“Believe me, Sergeant, you’ll be glad I’m along. And don’t worry, I can take care of myself. I grew up with firearms. I’m a crack shot.”

It took an effort to tear his gaze away from the blackened patch of ground. He looked at her more closely, noting the touch of arrogance in her eyes; her air of total self-­confidence. She was definitely something out of the ordinary. She had to be. No one in her right mind would volunteer to go where they were going. He knew what his reasons were. He wondered about hers.

Unexpectedly she gave him a dazzling smile and said, “Come on, Sergeant. I’ll buy you and the Corporal here a drink. That is if you’re allowed to drink at this time of the day.”

“We’re both off-­duty. A drink would be fine.” He struggled to his feet like an old man carrying two sacks of potatoes. Feely knew better than to lend a hand.

As usual, the bar was packed when they arrived. It stayed open 24 hours a day now as there were always plenty of off-­duty men to fill it. The number of soldiers in the base had quadrupled since the Emergency. It was the same at every base in Northern Ireland.

Their entrance caused a stir. Everyone looked in their direction and there were wolf-­whistles and crude jeers. It wouldn’t have been like this a few weeks ago, Slocock reflected. Oh yes, these brainless bums would have reacted the same way to a woman like Kimberley Fairchild walking into their private male preserve, but not in so blatant a way. Things are beginning to crumble, he realized. The discipline is giving way. With the center gone the rest of the structure, what there is left of it, is collapsing. . . .

“I think you’d be more comfortable in the Officer’s Club,” he told her.

“Nonsense, Sergeant,” she said and plunged into the crowd toward the bar. Slocock watched her walk coolly through the offensive rabble, then followed after her with Feely bringing up the rear. He ignored the jibes along the way. He’d long since given up worrying about his pride. Marge had taken care of that. As everyone back at Aldershot had known about her sleeping around months before she had walked out on him he knew he was looked upon as being not much of a man. Unusually, for such a situation, Marge had got all the sympathy. No one blamed her for having affairs, because he was generally regarded as a bastard. Many just thought she was trying to get away from him but the truth was even more humiliating than the worst of the gossip he’d picked up about himself—she had been trying to rub his nose in the fact that he could no longer even begin to satisfy her. And when her ‘affairs’ entered double figures he gave up counting.

He pushed ahead of Kimberley and cleared a space for her at the bar. He had no difficulty in intimidating the men there—they may have despised him, but they still feared him. And for good reason.

“What’ll you have?” he asked her.

“What do grannies normally drink?” she asked.

“My granny drank brandy.”

“Then I’ll have a brandy.”

“It killed her.”

“Then I’ll have a double.”

Slocock grinned, ordered her drink, a pint of bitter for Feely and a double scotch for himself.

While waiting for the drinks he turned to Feely. “How did last night’s mission south of the border go?”

“Okay. No real fuss except we had to practically drag the bloke out from under his desk. He was hiding there. Thought we were the bloody IRA.” Feely laughed. “Bit of a wimp if you ask me. Beats me why we had to go fetch him. You any idea, Sarge?”

Slocock grimaced. “Yeah. Too many.” He glanced at Kimberley. “You met him yet?”

She shook her head. “No, but I will soon.” She looked at her watch. “In just over an hour’s time. At a briefing. You’ll be attending it as well, I gather.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said sourly. “I hear they’re going to show us some great snuff movies.”

“I understand you had something like that right here in the base. A man called Hibbert . . . ?”

Slocock downed his scotch with one swallow and gestured to the barman for a refill. “Yeah. Percy Hibbert. He came in the last batch to be evacuated from Holyhead before they slammed the doors. Spent two days having every inch of his body checked for any sign of the stuff like everybody else and finally got a clean bill of health. Was here for a whole four days before it happened.”

Slocock’s second drink arrived. He grabbed it thankfully. He swallowed half, then continued. “On the morning of the fourth day he’d been here I was walking by the shower blocks and heard a bigger commotion in there than usual. I go for a look-­see and almost get knocked down by a stampede of naked guys. Then through the steam comes Hibbert, screaming for help. He was bare-­arsed too and I could see his whole body was starting to split open with this green and black stuff pushing itself out of him. He came right up to me and grabbed me.” Slocock shuddered at the memory and finished his second double.

“I shoved him away. He goes sprawling across the floor but gets up and runs off. I start screaming for someone to go fetch the bloody flame-­throwers and then follow him. We chased him around the camp for nearly a quarter of an hour. We finally cornered him on the football field—out where we were just now.”

“And that was five days ago?”

Slocock nodded. He was watching, yet again, Hibbert’s blackened body writhing and kicking as the three jets of fire sprayed over him.

“It’s fortunate there’s been no other outbreak since then,” said Kimberley. “You were all very lucky.”

Feely said, “The whole place still stinks of disinfectant. And everything Hibbert touched was burned. We even burned down the shower block. But since then everyone’s been as nervous as hell. Most of the lads spend every spare minute checking themselves for a sign of the stuff.”

“Or checking each other. The faggots are over the moon,” growled Slocock. He was still embarrassed at the state of panic he’d been in for 24 hours after the Hibbert incident. He’d torn off all his clothes and locked himself in a bathroom in the officers’ block. He’d sat in an empty bathtub, shaking uncontrollably, and poured a bottle of disinfectant over himself.

“It’s unusual the fungus took so long to make itself evident in this man Hibbert,” said Kimberley reflectively. “It must have been a variety that incubates in the blood. Possibly the heat and humidity in the shower room caused it to suddenly grow.”

Slocock scowled at her. She could have been discussing the weather. “Just who are you, Dr. Kimberley Fairchild, and what are you doing here? You’re not British, I know that.” He had detected an underlying accent beneath her semi-­posh English one.

“The Sergeant has sharp ears,” she said with a slightly mocking smile. “You’re right, I’m not English, though usually most people presume I am. I was educated there but I was born in South Africa. My parents had a farm there. Near Kimberley, of course.”

Slocock nodded. That explained her remark about growing up with firearms. “So how come you’re here in Northern Ireland?”

“I flew over from Paris, which is where I live these days. My field is tropical medicine. I’ve worked in countries like Angola, Zaire, and Mozambique and I’m an expert on all the tropical diseases, including the African fungal diseases, of which there are several. As soon as I heard what was happening I called and offered my services to your government-­in-­exile. As most of their own experts are trapped on the mainland, they accepted my offer.”

“Okay. I’m with you so far. You’re a good Samaritan. But why have you volunteered to go on this mission? Surely you’re more use to the authorities here. You must know the chances of us coming back are pretty remote.”

“Let’s just say I have my. . . .”

She didn’t get to the end of the sentence. A soldier had suddenly lurched up to the bar and put his arm around her. “Hullo, darling, what are you doing with these faggots? Why don’t you come and drink with some real men?” he said in a loud, slurred voice.

Slocock had been expecting something like this. Out of the corner of his eye he’d seen the bunch at the nearby table nudging each other and pointing at Kimberley. They’d obviously been egging each other on to make a move—and now one of their number had. It was Baxter. He was a six foot four inch pile of balding flab. And as drunk as an Irish priest. Slocock knew he wouldn’t have had the guts to do what he was doing if he was even half-­sober.

Without saying anything Slocock stepped quickly in front of Baxter and hit him hard at a point midway between his navel and his crotch.

Baxter let go of Kimberley and started to double over. As he did so Slocock head-­butted him in the face. Baxter toppled backwards and hit the floor with a crash that made the glasses behind the bar rattle.

The place went quiet. Slocock turned his back on Baxter and his companions, confident that no one else would try it with him. And anyway, Feely would warn him if they did.

Feely said admiringly, “Neat job, Sarge. One of your better efforts.”

“Thank you, Feely.”

“If I’m supposed to be impressed by that you’ve made a big mistake,” said Kimberley who had maintained her cool poise throughout the incident. “I find that sort of thing a turn-­off. I was quite capable of handling the situation my way. There was no need for juvenile violence.”

“Doctor, I didn’t do that for you, believe me,” Slocock said as he gestured at the barman for another round. “I did it for me.”

He turned to her. “Hasn’t anyone told you yet why I’m needed on that mission? We both know why Wilson has to go, and according to you your medical skills are going to be essential for keeping him alive long enough to do the job, but what about me?”

Stiffly she said, “I was told you were a good soldier.”

He choked on his scotch. Feely guffawed.

When Slocock stopped coughing he said, “The brass told you that? Jesus! Look, lady, I’m being sent because I’m not a good soldier. I’m only good at one thing and that’s damaging people. Trouble is, once I start I find it hard to stop, and the army finds that kind of embarrassing, especially over here. I’m a liability to them. They’re happy to get rid of me.” He drank the rest of his scotch.

“You’re going to make yourself drunk,” said Kimberley accusingly.

“Lady, I hoped to be smashed out of my brain by the time I have to see those videos they’re going to show us. I advise you to be the same.”