Hereford, UK
Four days later, Carter sat at the end of a long table in a windowless briefing room at the Regiment camp in Credenhill. There were several such rooms at SAS headquarters: bland, sparsely furnished, with no electronic devices permitted inside, ideal for secure meetings.
He had been summoned by the Regiment ops officer to the camp earlier that morning. Three days after his return to Hereford. Carter had been kicking his heels at home since he’d left Tajikistan, reading and recovering from the injuries he’d sustained at the airfield attack. His own form of decompression. There had been an initial debrief at the British Embassy in Dushanbe in the immediate aftermath of his phone call. But Carter knew there would be a follow-up at some point once he was back home. Inevitable, given the sensitivity of the mission. When the ops officer had called him with orders to report to base, he knew exactly what was going on.
Four people sat around the table in front of Carter, their features starkly lit by the ceiling panel lights.
Peter Hardcastle, the CO of 22 SAS, was a stern man, a career Rupert who despised Carter for his freelance attitude. It was an open secret that he’d wanted Carter out of the Regiment ever since the Mali siege.
Next to Hardcastle sat a smooth-faced man in his late fifties with piercing blue eyes. Eliot Lebrun was a senior Six officer, an old China hand, with an accent redolent of old money and French aristocratic roots. Part of the Old Etonian dynasty that still liked to think it ruled Six, but increasingly found itself on the back foot.
To Lebrun’s right was another Six officer, Philippa Beck. She was dark-haired, with mouse-like features, small but fierce, a fortysomething Northern lass with a fondness for strong ale and rugby league. Carter had liked her from the moment they had first met.
The fourth person was a chubby guy in an ill-fitting suit and a Tory-blue tie, mid-forties, with a prominent bald patch. James Gregory was a former Colonel in the Grenadier Guards, and one of the up-and-coming figures in the Foreign Office. He had a permanent frown etched across his brow, and the restless energy, limitless ego and naked ruthlessness of a man who had his eyes on one day becoming Defence Secretary.
Carter had worked with Gregory, Beck and Lebrun on various jobs in the past. They had been waiting for him in the briefing room when he’d arrived at the camp. Lebrun did most of the talking. He greeted Carter with a pleasant smile and feigned concern for his injuries, then asked him to talk through his story one more time.
Hardcastle made no attempt to hide his displeasure with Carter. He spent most of the meeting glaring at him in silent contempt.
‘. . . and that’s when I decided to crash the plough into the jet,’ Carter said, finishing his account.
‘A rather risky move, don’t you think?’ Lebrun asked. ‘Could have easily turned out rather badly for you.’
Carter shrugged. ‘I had no option. It was the only way I could see to stop them taking off.’
‘Why not let them get away?’ Gregory wondered out loud. ‘You could have made a note of the tail number and called it in to us. Our chaps would have been able to track them down sooner or later. Hell of a lot less messy, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I had to make a decision,’ Carter said. ‘I couldn’t take the risk.’
‘Seems sensible enough to me,’ Beck said in her strong Lancastrian accent. ‘There’s no guarantee we would have caught them in time. Ramsey might have cached the weapons before we could locate them.’
Gregory muttered something under his breath.
‘Go on,’ Lebrun said.
Carter said, ‘After the crash, I neutralised Ramsey. That was it. I walked away, called it in to your lot. End of.’
‘What about Vann?’ asked Gregory. ‘Did you go over to check his body?’
Carter realised the others were staring at him intently.
‘No need,’ he replied. ‘I saw him go down. He was dead. I figured Ramsey had shot him in the head.’
‘But you couldn’t be sure?’
‘A plane full of nukes was on fire,’ Carter replied tetchily. ‘I didn’t plan on sticking around the scene for long.’ He frowned. ‘What the fuck’s going on? Why are you asking me all of this stuff?’
Lebrun and Beck exchanged a look. Gregory coughed and shifted uncomfortably. Hardcastle sat with intertwined hands, glowering at Carter like he was something he’d scraped off the sole of his boot.
Lebrun said, ‘After your call our friends at the Company sent in some of their local assets to secure the airfield. It had to be the Americans because we didn’t have any assets of our own in the area. They found the plane and the snow plough, in exactly the condition you described. They found Ramsey, and the two pilots. But there was no sign of your chum.’
Carter flinched in shock. He felt something cold running down his spine. ‘No.’
‘Also missing, a duffel bag filled with heroin, if we are to believe your version of events,’ Lebrun continued.
Gregory gave him a long, searching look. ‘I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that, would you?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Still.’ The Foreign Office man spread his hands. ‘It looks rather convenient, wouldn’t you say? Your friend vanishing without explan-ation, plus the drugs.’
Carter shook his head. ‘I don’t understand. Vann was right fucking there. He went down. I saw him.’
Lebrun slipped on a pair of rimless glasses and consulted his scribbled notes in front of him. ‘Let’s be specific, shall we? You told us that Vann was killed by a shot to the head.’
‘Aye. That’s right.’
‘But you can’t possibly be sure, can you? Not from a distance of six hundred metres.’ He looked up from his notes. ‘Unless you wish to volunteer some other explanation to us?’
Carter glowered at the Six officer but just about managed to bite his tongue.
Don’t give them the satisfaction. They’re trying to needle you, that’s all.
Keep a level head.
Hardcastle had been silent throughout the briefing. Now he leaned forward and shot Carter a look so hard you could have crushed rocks with it.
‘This is far from the only disconcerting aspect to this mission, Geordie,’ he said.
Carter frowned. ‘Not sure what you mean, boss.’
‘Aren’t you?’ Hardcastle snorted. ‘Let me lay it out for you, then. We’ve got a CIA agent dead on a runway in Tajikistan with a gunshot wound to the head. We’ve got two American contractors working as pilots, who were also found dead on the same runway. We’ve got a badly damaged private jet, not to mention the body of a former Coalition interpreter who appears to have been shot in the head at point-blank range. One of our most valuable assets in-country. Last seen in your company, I understand.’
Carter felt his face flushing with anger. ‘You’re not suggesting I had anything to do with the guy’s death. I told you, Hakimi killed him. I saw it happen.’
‘Perhaps all of that is true,’ Lebrun replied diplomatically. ‘But you must admit, it’s not a good look. There’s a trail of destruction that seems to have followed you from Afghanistan to Tajikistan.’
‘I was just doing my job,’ Carter hit back. ‘I had no choice.’
‘Your job?’ Hardcastle repeated tetchily. ‘You were given orders to locate Vann and bring him in, Geordie. Now he’s missing, and you’ve fed us a highly colourful tale of Vann going rogue and getting involved in the heroin trade.’
‘It’s all true, boss. Every word of it.’ Carter struggled to keep the rage out of his voice.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Hardcastle thundered. ‘I know David Vann very well. I know his character. Are you trying to tell me that a highly regarded former member of the SAS is now a drug smuggler? Do you think I’m fucking thick, Geordie?’
He stared defiantly at Carter, almost daring him to respond. Carter looked back at his CO. And suddenly understood what was happening.
This is a bloody stitch-up. They’re trying to cover their tracks. Vann’s going to be rehabilitated. Orders from above, probably.
They don’t want a public scandal blowing up in their faces.
‘Well?’ Hardcastle snapped.
‘No, boss,’ he muttered.
‘There’s also the question of the portable nuclear bombs,’ Gregory put in. ‘The, ah, backpack nukes, as you refer to them in your statement, I believe.’
Carter nodded. ‘Aye, what about them?’
‘You’re not seriously suggesting these things exist, are you? This is a nonsense story, man. Fantasy material. Belongs on a conspiracy website.’
‘If you don’t believe me, ask the Company,’ Carter said. ‘They’ll have removed the nukes from the jet by now.’
Gregory smoothed his Tory-blue tie and flashed a thin smile. ‘We have asked them already. They have assured us that no such weapons were discovered at the airfield. We’ve also independently contacted some of our Russian sources to clarify whether such bombs were developed during the Cold War. They have confirmed to us privately that they cannot. They are adamant that they would know about it, if indeed the Soviets had ever embarked on such a programme.’
Carter knew at once what had happened. As soon as the alarm had been raised the Americans had swept into the airfield and seized the bombs, disposing of the evidence before anyone else could get hold of them. Langley would have quietly disposed of the nukes and shared only the very sanitised version of events with their friends at MI6.
‘You can cover up this shit as much as you want,’ Carter said. ‘But I know what I saw. I know what was there. If you’re worried about me spilling my guts, forget it. As far as I’m concerned, it stays with me.’
‘Absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, old chap.’
‘Any more questions?’ Lebrun looked round the room. Then he laced his fingers and offered Carter an insincere smile. ‘I think we’re just about done here. You’re free to leave, Carter.’
‘What about my next posting, boss?’ Carter directed the question to his CO. Who looked at him with his expression contorted into a scowl.
‘You’ve got two years left,’ Hardcastle said. ‘I was minded to send you on another posting overseas to see out your contract, but now I hear that you battered the son of some general in Chile. So you can bloody well forget about anything like that. No, you’ll be seeing out your contract at home.’
There was a wicked gleam in the CO’s eyes. Carter felt his heart sink. He shook his head furiously. ‘What am I supposed to do for the next two years, then?’
‘Sit in the pub, for all I care. Get pissed and tell old war stories. Hang out at the local bookies. Learn a new language. Honestly, I couldn’t give two shits what you do. But you won’t be setting foot in the camp ever again. I don’t want you anywhere near this fucking place, d’you hear? No roll call, no turning up unannounced.’
Carter’s mouth hung open. He stared at his CO in stunned silence. ‘What for?’
‘You’re a liability,’ Hardcastle said icily. ‘We sent you out to do a straightforward search-and-rescue op, and you turned it into a bloodbath. Moreover, you’ve provided knowingly untruthful statements in an attempt to mask your incompetence by slandering Vann and Ramsey. This is totally unacceptable behaviour.’
This was all part of the big Six cover-up, Carter realised bitterly.
Keep me out of the Hereford loop. Blackball me. Trash my reputation. Make sure no one at Hereford wants to touch me with a barge pole. That way, if I ever go public with my claims, they’ll brand me an embittered fantasist with zero credibility.
This is the end of my Regiment career.
Lebrun said, ‘One more thing.’
Carter turned to the MI6 man and waited for him to continue. Lebrun looked him hard in the eye and smiled coldly.
‘If any of these, ah, outrageous rumours should ever reach the public domain, we will hold you personally responsible,’ he said. ‘At that point, we’ll tell the Americans who killed Ramsey. We wouldn’t want you to face a murder charge. Would we . . .?’