Glasgow, Scotland
The tracker team found Logan five days later. At first they believed he was dead. His body, lying in the snow, was lifeless, blue and frozen – like it had been in cold storage for weeks. But the small movements in his chest, his shallow breaths coming from his cracked lips, told them he was alive. Just.
By that point, Fleming and his men had already safely reached the rendezvous point. Knowing they’d lost the game, the trackers had been making their way back to camp to debrief when one of them spotted Logan’s unconscious form completely by chance, just four miles from the rendezvous point – he had somehow dragged his injured body across miles of barren land.
He was suffering from severe hypothermia, his core body temperature having dropped dangerously low to barely twenty Celsius. He remained unconscious for two days after rescue, by which point Fleming and Butler and the others had moved on to a different location and Logan had been flown to a private clinic near the centre of Glasgow to recover.
All this was explained to Logan by his boss, Mackie, who came to visit the day after Logan woke up. By that point, Logan’s core temperature was almost within the healthy range, but he was still a groggy mess. His body was leaden and useless. His broken leg was heavily plastered and would be for weeks to come. Full rehabilitation would take many months, if he recovered at all.
‘You’re a lucky guy, Logan,’ Mackie said.
He was sitting on a chair next to Logan’s hospital bed. His facial expression was sympathetic but his tone was almost indifferent.
‘You think?’ Logan said.
‘Yes, I do. I don’t know how you managed to stay alive. Not with your leg like that.’
Logan closed his eyes. He couldn’t remember exactly what had happened after Fleming and Butler had left him. His memory was a blur; he was only able to grasp snippets of his time out in the Highlands. But even those snippets were a jumble with no sense of the order in which the events had occurred.
‘The splint you made saved your leg. Probably saved your life.’
‘The doctor said he can’t be sure yet. About the leg.’
‘I’ve seen worse, Logan. That leg will be fine. Believe me. You’re a survivor. You’re a fighter. I knew my instinct about you was right.’
Logan wanted to take Mackie’s words as a compliment and yet it was hard to feel positive. He’d questioned many times during his short spell under Mackie’s wing why he was bothering with the charade at all. He wasn’t cut out for this. He didn’t care about the greater good. He’d been lured into the secretive world of the JIA by his own misconceptions of the glamour and reward to follow. There was no sign of any of that yet. All he’d seen so far was torment and misery. Was this life really any better than the shit he’d left behind?
And look at the mess he was in now. If he couldn’t even make it through the training, then how could he ever be the agent Mackie wanted him to be? He was surprised Mackie had bothered to show up at the hospital at all. Out in the wilds, Logan was sure that if he survived, then the least he could expect was for them to throw him back out onto the streets, to continue living the crappy life he’d been trying to run from.
‘I couldn’t die out there,’ Logan said, sounding more resolute than he really felt.
The truth was he had no idea how he had survived. Surely it was down to luck as much as anything else.
‘Tell me what happened,’ Mackie said, pulling his chair closer. ‘I mean, tell me what really happened. Not the bullshit that Fleming told his squad leader.’
On hearing Fleming’s name, Logan closed his eyes and clenched his fists as tightly as his weak body would allow. After a few moments, he found the strength and focus to recount to Mackie what had happened. At least what he could remember. He went from the hazing on his very first day with Fleming through to the fight in the Scottish Highlands that had left Logan on the brink of death. He stopped then, unsure which memory came next.
Mackie didn’t push for any more. Clearly the part of the story Logan had told was the part Mackie had wanted to hear.
‘I guessed as much,’ was all Mackie said.
No shock, no excuses, no apologies. No commitment to having Fleming reprimanded or court-martialled or discharged or whatever the hell it is that happens to SAS soldiers when they break someone’s leg on a training exercise and leave them for dead.
Not that Logan cared much for any of those trivial punishments. Whatever had happened to Fleming, Logan’s business with him was unfinished.
‘So what did Fleming say then?’ Logan asked.
Mackie shrugged. ‘That they lost you in a blizzard. That they searched for you but then deemed it safer to carry on to the extraction point to raise the alarm than risk all three of you dying out there.’
‘But you didn’t buy it?’
‘You with a broken leg, the bruises on the rest of you? Butler’s arm had been smashed – the bones were in pieces. He said he fell, but I’m not stupid. And I knew you lot wouldn’t be getting along like a house on fire. So no, I didn’t buy it.’
Logan could feel anger bubbling up inside of him at Mackie’s words.
‘Why did you send me out there with them in the first place, if you thought something like this might happen?’
‘Because this is what your training entails. This is how we’re going to mould you into the agent we need. You’ve got to expect to be taken to the brink mentally and physically. It’s how you deal with it that counts. It’s how you move on and get stronger and more resilient that I’m interested in. I never said this would be easy for you.’
‘No. You didn’t.’
‘You’re a natural fighter, Logan. I can see it in you. You’re fierce and you’re unrelenting. That’s why I picked you for this. But you’re also naive and stupid.’
‘Thanks. That makes me feel much better.’
‘What I mean is, you’re not a smart fighter. You fight with emotion. Hatred. Anger more than anything. That thirst for revenge that I can see in your eyes now, that I saw in your eyes the day I met you, it clouds your judgement. You can have all the combat skills in the world, but when you’re up against a man like Fleming, you need more. You need to be able to control yourself. You can’t let emotions get in the way.’
‘Revenge is a dish best served cold,’ Logan said, knowing full well that it was a concept his fiery temperament struggled with.
‘My point exactly. Everyone knows it but few can actually stick to it. Now, I want you to forget about Fleming altogether. He’s gone – a lesson learned and nothing more. Revenge is not what we’re about. It’s not what you’re about now. Emotion doesn’t come into what we do. It can’t. And that’s all revenge is. It’s a basic human reaction. Largely a mixture of anger and shame. It’s useless. You need to look past it. Forget you ever met Captain Fleming.’
‘And how do I do that?’
‘We’ll help you to do that. We’ll train you to fight like that – with no emotion. To live like that. You’ve already started down that road. There’s a way to go still, but we’ll help you. I’ll help you. When you can do that, this whole mess won’t even seem like a distant memory. It will be like it happened to someone else.’
Logan heard Mackie’s words and decided: he would have the training. They could mould him however they wanted. Despite his melancholic feelings as he lay in the hospital bed, deep down he knew that every step with the JIA was making him stronger, more able to handle what the world threw at him.
But he also knew he wouldn’t forget Fleming. For his entire life, Logan had kept true to a single principle: that people who wronged him got what they deserved.
It didn’t matter what the JIA did to Logan, Fleming was going on the list.
He’d get his comeuppance one day.