Firefight

ONE

They were in the toy department. A long line of children snaked around the whole floor, waiting patiently. His daughter Anna looked longingly at the sign. 'Visit Father Christmas in his grotto,' it read in bright, festive colours. 'A present for every child.'

'Can I go and see Father Christmas, Daddy?' Anna asked. 'Please?' She tugged on his hand and looked up at him with those wide, appealing eyes. In other children, an expression like that could be put on, but not with Anna. She was six years old and wore her emotions plainly on her face. She was desperate to see Father Christmas and she so rarely asked for things. She was not brash or confident. It meant she was picked on at school sometimes, but she seemed to deal with it in her kind, sad little way.

He looked at the line of children. It would take an hour to reach Father Christmas, maybe more. A quick glance at his watch told him they didn't have time — the train back down to Hereford left in forty minutes, and they still had to struggle across London through the Saturday afternoon Christmas shoppers. He glanced at his wife, who shook her head imperceptibly.

He bent down to look at her face to face. 'I'm sorry, sweetheart,' he said. 'We haven't got enough time. Another day, hey?'

Anna's lip wobbled and she gazed at the floor. He knew what she was thinking, at least he thought he did. You always say that, Daddy. You always say you haven't got enough time. You always say another day.

But she didn't say anything. Obedient. Good as gold. Like always.

'Come on, love,' he said, doing his best to sound bright. He took her little hand in his and together the family of three wove their way through the crowds. Anna kept looking back and gazing at the line of luckier children, and each time she did he experienced that little surge of guilt that only a parent can feel.

He put his hand on Laura's shoulder. 'You go on,' he told her. 'I'll meet you downstairs, by the entrance.'

His wife looked at him with a mixture of suspicion and amusement. 'What are you doing, Will?'

He avoided the question. 'I'll meet you downstairs,' he said, before lightly touching Anna's hair. 'Stay close to Mum,' he warned.

Still smiling, Laura led Anna off down the ornate escalators. He watched her disappear before turning back into the toy department. He knew what he wanted. Anna's eyes had lingered over an enormous fluffy dog, as soft as snow with a big brown ribbon. It was expensive — even Anna could tell that, he thought. Certainly it was too expensive to be bought on a whim with a Regiment salary, but what the hell — he spent half his life in the most farflung shit holes of the world. Why shouldn't he treat his little girl now and then? He grabbed the toy and headed to a till.

As he handed over his credit card he heard the explosion.

There was a momentary silence all around him, and then everyone started to panic. The line of children dissolved into a mass of worried faces, and from the corner of his eye he saw two security guards rushing towards the escalators. He dropped the cuddly toy and didn't bother to grab his card back from the cashier. Instead, he ran through the crowds, ignoring the shouts of the couple of people he pushed out of the way with his impressive bulk. He reached the escalator before the panicked crowds could swarm towards it, and charged down several steps at a time, his heart thumping.

The pungent department store smell of perfume hit him as he charged for the exit, his eyes darting around, trying to get a glimpse of his wife and daughter. But he couldn't see them; all he saw were frightened faces. And as he grew closer to the doors, he saw other things too, things that would have turned the stomach of a civilian, but which barely penetrated his emotional shell. He saw a woman with a chunk of shrapnel embedded in her cheek. Her body was shaking with shock, and a woman next to her was screaming at the sight. He saw a man whose white shirt was soaked red and who fell to the ground as he passed.

But he didn't see his family. Not until he reached the door.

They were lying on the floor, Laura's body draped over Anna, as though she were trying to shield her from something. And around them, seeping outwards, was a pool of blood.

He had seen hundreds of dead bodies in his time. Hundreds of mutilated corpses. He had seen children gasp their last breath, women garrotted. He had seen men die as a result of his own1 bullets.

But never anything like this. The scene sliced through him like a cold knife.

'no!' he roared as he launched himself towards them.

A security guard stepped in his way. 'Stay away, sir,' the man instructed, but nothing was going to stop him. He punched the guard squarely in the jaw, then threw himself down to his family. He felt his trousers soak through with their blood and he touched his trembling hands first to his daughter's neck, then to his wife's.

Nothing. No pulse. Their faces had the deathly pallor that he recognised so well.

'Wake up!' he shouted. 'Wake up!' His brain refused to process the information that it had been so clearly given. He refused to accept that they were dead. He grabbed his daughter's face in his hands and bent down to give her the kiss of life. As he did so, he felt himself being grabbed from behind. The colleagues of the guard he had floored — three of them — were on him, pulling him back. He tried to struggle, but somehow he felt as though his strength had been sapped, so he allowed himself to be pulled away.

The air was filled with screams and with the jolly sound of Christmas music being piped around the store. And then there was shouting. A man's voice, hoarse and desperate. He realised it was his own.

'My family!' he bellowed. 'It's my family! Let me see them. YOU HAVE TO LET ME HELP MY FAMILY!…'

'you have to let me help my family!'

Will Jackson awoke with a start, surprised by the sound of his own voice. Sweat poured from his body, but he was cold. He looked around, expecting to see his wife and daughter there, then the brutal reality hit him, as it had done every morning for the past two years. His wife and daughter were not there. They were lying in a churchyard on the outskirts of Hereford. They were cold and dead.

What he saw instead was a small apartment. After the bombing, he had moved out of the military accommodation he shared with his family and given up everything that went with it — though there was no way he would have been able to face staying in that place without them even if he had carried on in the Regiment. Instead he had moved into this one-bedroom ex-council flat several floors up that had little to recommend it other than cheapness and the fact it was close to the churchyard.

It was a bland place, with none of those little things that turn a house into a home, none of the softening touches that a woman's hand can bring. In fact, no woman had been in this place since he moved in — not for any reason — and it showed. Dirty washing-up was piled in the sink, clothes were scattered over the floor, and by the door there was a collection of empty bottles that he knocked over with a curse at least twice a day. There was an empty bottle by the sofa on which he had crashed, too. He drank vodka from time to time to numb the pain, but there was a down side. The more he drank, the more vivid were his dreams. Night after night he was forced to relive with crystal clarity the horror of that Christmas shopping trip two years ago; night after night his family were brutally taken from him yet again.

He pushed himself to his feet and immediately regretted it as a wave of alcohol-induced nausea surged through him. He retched, then ran to the bathroom where he vomited a thin, putrid liquid into the toilet, before resting his back against the bath, head in hands as he waited for the cracking pain in his skull to go away.

Two years. They said the pain would go away and he had believed them. Christ, he'd lost enough people over the years — friends, colleagues — so many that he'd lost count. But they were different. Soldiers always know that death is a possibility. He'd killed enough enemy targets in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan and Pakistan to accept that there would always be casualties on both sides. But a mother and her daughter. In London. At Christmas. That you didn't expect. And the pain couldn't be healed with a Regiment funeral and a few beers in the mess afterwards.

Will stood up uncertainly and looked at himself in the mirror. He hadn't shaved for three weeks, or was it four? A long time, anyway. Longer than he would ever have considered when he was in the military. With trembling hands he splashed some water on his face, squirted a blob of shaving gel on his palm and rubbed it into his whiskers, before picking up a razor. He tested the blade against his thumb, but it was blunt and rusty, so with a disdainful sigh he threw it back into the sink and washed the gel out of his beard. Shaving could wait another day, he thought.

Maybe a run would sort him out. He ran a lot and worked out too. Exercise was one of the few things that kept him sane and at times he took it to excess, as though by making his body feel the pain, the anguish in his mind wouldn't seem so all-encompassing. But the hangover was bad today. Tomorrow, perhaps. He'd work out tomorrow.

Stripping down, he washed, then walked back naked to the main room, where he scrabbled around for a relatively fresh pair of jeans and a T-shirt, before making himself a cup of strong, black coffee — the only thing that he could ever say with any confidence he would have in his cupboards. He gulped it down, relishing the burning sensation it gave as it sloshed down his gullet, then put the cup with the rest of the washing-up, grabbed his leather jacket and left the flat.

It was misty out, and cold. Biting cold. But it cleared Will's head as he strode the familiar route to the churchyard, his hands firmly pressed into the pockets of his jeans. He couldn't see that far ahead of him on account of the mist, and the yellow light of the street lamps cast a ghostly glow over the pavement as he walked through the early morning half-light. There were few people out at this hour — it couldn't have been much past 6.30, though Will seldom wore a watch these days, so he couldn't check — and he preferred it when the streets were empty. It was a surprise, therefore, when he became aware of the car.

He heard it first, the low rumble of the engine a little distance behind him. He didn't know what made him look over his shoulder — perhaps it was the fact that, despite being lost in his own thoughts, he had the feeling the engine noise had been in his consciousness for a good couple of minutes. He stopped and squinted his eyes slightly. The car's headlamps cast ghostly beams towards him and it looked as if it was black — though everything seemed monochrome in this light. The car was moving at a snail's pace, but as Will stared at it, it sped up and drove past. His eyes hadn't deceived him, he noticed. It was indeed black — not just the paintwork, but also the windows. He watched it as it drove to the end of the street and out of sight.

He blinked, then looked around. There was no one else in the street, at least nobody he could see through the mist, and he was instantly suspicious of the car. It had driven off as soon as he had clocked it. But who the hell would be following him at this time of day? At any time of day?

Then he smiled and shook his head. For fuck's sake, Will, he told himself. I know old habits die hard, but you're a pensioned-off squaddie. Enough of the paranoia. Blackedout windows? It was probably just a bunch of slappers on their way home after a hen night. He sniffed and continued on his way.

The rusting metal gate to the churchyard creaked as he pushed it open and the noise seemed unusually loud in the silence. It pleased him that the mist was so thick — this, along with the earliness of the hour, would keep people away and he'd have the place to himself. Will weaved his way through the familiar tombstones until he came upon the one he was looking for. When his wife and child had first been buried, the grave they shared had been at the end of a row. Now, though, as more plots had been used up, the row had been completed and a new one started. Will didn't like that. He didn't like the idea that their grave was just one of many. But people will always carry on dying, he told himself. Even him, one day.

Will stood in front of the grave, his breath billowing in clouds from his mouth and nostrils, and let the silence surround him. He found himself shivering from the cold, but that didn't matter — just being here in their presence soothed him. Noticing a patch of lichen growing on the stone, he stepped forward and rubbed it off, before taking a few paces back and reading the inscription as he had done so many times before.

He had never been good with words and had struggled over that simple epitaph for weeks. But in the end he was convinced it said what it was supposed to. Will stared at it, reading it over and over. He lost track of time.

It was a sudden sound that snapped him out of his reverie. Behind the gravestone was a high hedge and the noise seemed to come from that direction. He looked up sharply, but saw nothing. His eyes narrowed, however. No matter how bad his hangover, it couldn't mask all his instincts and Will Jackson knew, without knowing quite how, that he was being watched.

'Who's there?' he called.

Silence.

'I know you're there,' he said. It was probably just some wino, hanging around the churchyard with a bottle because he knew the police were more likely to be concentrating on the down-and-outs in the city centre. But Will didn't like the idea of people loitering by his family's grave. If no one else was going to move them on, he would.

'You might as well come out,' he insisted. 'Don't make me come and get you.'

Still nothing.

He sized up the hedgerow. It was too high to vault, but there was a gap just a few metres along. If he ran there he would be able to catch his peeping Tom before he had a chance to run away. He made as if to leave, then turned and sprinted through the hedge, fully prepared to make chase.

The man behind the hedge, however, didn't run. And he wasn't a wino, either. He wore a suit, was well turned out and he stared at Will with an expressionless gaze.

'What the — ?'Will started to say, before striding towards the man. He suddenly felt overcome by an irrational anger.

How dare this bastard spy on him, now of all times? How dare he intrude on his moment of grief? The man just looked back, his eyebrow arched in a superior manner, and all Will's anger and frustrations seemed to bubble to the surface. Something about the aura of arrogance that emanated from this guy made him seethe. He launched himself at him.

The man didn't move. He didn't need to, because before Will could get his hands on him, he heard a click.

It came from behind and it made him freeze. He recognised it, of course — the sound of a safety catch being flicked off — and almost instinctively he raised his hands, before turning slowly around to see another man, also suited, and clutching what looked at a brief glance to be a 9mm Glock. 'Get on the floor, Jackson,' he said harshly. 'You know the routine. Do it, now.'

Will's lip curled, but slowly he put his hands behind his head, fell to his knees, then lay prostrate on the ground. The dewy grass was wet against his cheek. 'What the hell's going on?' he growled.

'You'll find out soon enough,' the man with the gun replied.

As he spoke, he walked past Will towards his colleague. Will didn't hesitate — his arm lashed out and grabbed the man's feet, pulling him to the ground. In an instant, Will was on him. He punched him sharply in the pit of his stomach, then grabbed his gun hand and knocked it against a sharp piece of flinty stone that was lying on the grass. The man shouted in pain, then released the gun. Will grabbed it and jumped to his feet, keeping the weapon pointed directly at the head of his assailant.

'Right,' he said tersely. 'We'll try again. What's going on?'

The two suited men glanced nervously at each other, but they didn't reply.

'I said: what's going on? 'Will shouted.

'It's all right, Will,' a voice said from behind him. It was calm, well-spoken. Will spun round to see a third man standing about ten metres away. He wore a heavy, black, woollen overcoat and a pair of square spectacles with clear frames. His hair was dark and lustrous, though he was clearly older than his lack of grey hair suggested. He was smiling. 'It's all right,' he repeated. 'They're with me.'

Will found that his breathing was heavy and trembling. He pointed his handgun at the new arrival.

'Really? And who the fuck,' he asked, spitting the words out, 'are you?'