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REGAN KNEW HE NEEDED help. Red was out of the game and Regan himself wasn’t fully functional. His mind wandered as the Bonnie chewed up the miles on the straight but boring motorway. A machine like this is meant for bends, he idly thought, disdainful of the largely straight and featureless motorway stretching out in front of him. He shouted, “Think Regan! Think!” The noise evaporated into the head wind buffeting the top of his helmet. He was annoyed at himself for not concentrating on Bill and how to get help.
Regan’s mind drifted to past times and people he had met and felt at ease with. One person came to his mind. “John!” he yelled into the wind. He could help.
John Barnard was forty-three years old. He was as fit as the proverbial fiddle. Regan met him when they were neighbours some eight years ago. They had struck up an affinity and an easy friendship. A friendship reinforced by their joint weekly training runs. John had played a big part in Regan becoming fit. He owed John a lot for that. It was this fitness of body that helped Regan despite the booze and drugs consumed as part of his undercover activities. John also taught Regan about mental toughness and how to cope with pain. John was an expert in these things. He was a former member of 22 Special Air Service Regiment, the SAS. At first Regan doubted he was the real McCoy. So many people bragged about belonging to the most famous regiment in the British Army and never once were they a member. Perhaps they did belong to one of the Parachute Regiments, 1, 2 or 3 Para. Perhaps they applied for the infamous SAS selection course only to fail like the majority. But John was for real. He only started to open up to Regan after they had known each other for two years.
John invited Regan for a week away in Savernake Forest, a remote area outside Marlborough in Wiltshire. It was there John taught Regan many new skills including rudimentary survival skills, how to use weapons and mental toughness. They bonded even more during the week. John was impressed by how easily Regan adapted and soaked up the newly taught knowledge. Part of the survival skills was learning all about camouflage. Camouflage was part of the stock-in-trade of an SAS trooper like John. There were just the two of them for one week so John had to improvise as these skills were usually honed as a member of a four man SAS patrol. John was as keen to impart this knowledge as much as the student was keen to learn. So John took Regan through all the skills of movement, camouflage, setting ambushes, anti-ambush drills, contact drills and emergency rendezvous skills.
John also had a stash of weapons secreted within the depths of the forest. It included two Browning HP’s and a MAC-10 sub-machine gun once used by John in Northern Ireland. With these, John taught Regan the fine arts of providing fire power protection. He demonstrated how each member of a patrol is assigned an arc of fire to cover, thus providing all-round protection for the patrol as a whole. The last man, or 'tail end charlie', was typically armed with a belt-fed machine gun such as a mini as he must be able to put down a lot of covering fire if the patrol was bumped from the rear. Once more John adapted the training for only two people, him and Regan.
The two of them lived in a subterranean world for most of the week in tunnels John had built over a two year period. They emerged at night in part to escape prying eyes or stumbling on dog walkers or lovers looking for their own secret place. It also instilled an ability to work in the dark, manoeuvre in the dark and use weapons without the help of daylight. They drank water from a river or caught fresh rain water. They caught and ate animals like small rabbits or mice. They ate them raw. There were no fires. Nothing could give away their location. Regan loved it except for one thing. He was prohibited from smoking. He felt it was a price worth paying to spend a week in the company of a man he admired and from whom he learned a lot.
It was the thought of the Browning High Power that made Regan enthusiastic. It was used in service in the Regiment for over 40 years, and the Browning HP was found to be a reliable and accurate 9mm handgun. John knew it better as the L9A1, its UK military designation. The Browning has a magazine capacity of 13 rounds. It is a single action pistol which means it must be cocked, the hammer pulled back, before firing the first round. For this reason, the SAS would carry the Browning cocked, with the safety catch on, to allow for a quicker draw and fire. John taught Regan all of this until he had mastered its use.
By the time Regan made his mind up to ask John for the use of one of the Brownings, he had reached Membury Series on the M4. Regan’s mind flooded back to memories of the meeting there with Bill. Regan called John from a telephone box in the services area. John agreed to meet within the half hour. He heard the anxiety in Regan’s voice so had no need to ask questions. In any event, Regan would not have answered over the phone. There was a telepathic understanding between the two men.
John arrived in his beat-up Ford Cortina Mark 2. He parked next to the Triumph Bonneville just as Regan had suggested. John closed the driver’s door then opened the rear passenger door. He reached inside and took out a backpack.
“Second thoughts. Before I go anywhere tell me what’s going on.”
Regan replied, “Look, mate, I really need your help. I’ve been shot. I need one of those Brownings because I need to fix things.”
John spoke in his quiet, unassuming way, giving the lie to his inner toughness, “Think you had better ride with me. I can hear better than on a bloody motor bike.” John glided rather than walked but not like a dancer. It was more like a hunter. He was five feet five inches tall and Regan towered over him. John was the more muscular of the two men. He had broad shoulders, muscled arms and legs and a slim waist. In his middle age, he was a testament to a life in the Regiment and staying fit thereafter. John threw the backpack on to the rear seat of the Cortina and both men got in through the front doors.
“Now, tell me the full story,” demanded John as he drove off the service area onto the M4 heading for Savernake Forest.
