The Network

6

I no longer recall the exact sequence of the training that begins that week. It’s dark and drizzling when I leave for Hereford on the Tuesday morning. The sky begins to lighten only as I turn west on the M50, and soon the Malverns loom up on my right. An hour later, on the outskirts of a small village to the north-west of Hereford, I turn off a narrow lane and pull up facing a wooden front gate. Across a tended gravel driveway stands a small black and white timbered house typical of the county. An ageing dark blue Range Rover is parked in front of a detached garage.

A barking terrier runs up, and H appears moments later with an eager wave, opens the gate and invites me inside for coffee, defying once again my naive impression of the SAS soldier as a hard-hearted killer. In the front hallway of his home is a large framed photograph of H, looking youthful and wearing the unmistakable sand-coloured beret with the flaming-dagger badge. I imagine it lit up in the beam of a burglar’s torch, the muttered curses and the swift retreat.

‘Good man,’ says H, noticing that I’m already wearing my boots. ‘How’s the running coming along?’

‘Fine,’ I lie. I’ve started a five-K routine, but not without a few pauses on the way. Five kilometres seems like a long distance until you’re used to it. Boredom and the body’s resistance make it seem like about a hundred. My legs aren’t the problem. The protest comes from my lungs. No matter how fit I’ve been in the past, I’ve always hated long-distance running. ‘I’m a bit slow,’ I concede, feeling uncomfortable with the deceit, ‘but fine.’

‘Well, alright. You work on it. Come and have a look at the route, then we’ll walk and talk.’ He’s put a large-scale Ordnance Survey map of the Brecon Beacons, laminated in soft plastic film, on the kitchen sideboard. ‘We’ll start here,’ he says, pointing to a small building at the edge of a patch of forest just off the A470 in the heart of the Beacons, ‘at the Storey Arms.’ To the north of the road the light-brown contour lines thicken like a fingerprint.

I know what that means: up Pen-y-Fan in the rain.

‘We’ll leave the car in the car park and RV there if we get separated on the south side.’ He traces the route with the tip of a pencil. The plan is to head for the summit, walk down Cwm Llwch on the far side, follow a small road for a couple of miles around the base of the slope, then ascend again via a point called the Obelisk before heading down to the car. He points out an alternative rendezvous point for the north leg of the journey. RVs, backup RVs and emergency RVs are an obsession with the SAS, I’m learning.

Half an hour later we’re at our starting point. The weather’s not ideal. I last climbed Pen-y-Fan in shorts and a T-shirt several years ago, on a brilliant summer’s day. Now it’s cold and raining. Not heavily, but gusting in sheets, and there’s a distinct lack of ramblers. The slope above us disappears into a barricade of cloud. H offers to carry the Bergen, which holds our water, dry clothes and a heavy-duty orange plastic sheet for use as shelter in an emergency. I’m too proud to allow him to take it. We put on our waterproofs and H sees me grimace at the cold.

‘Better than being too hot,’ he says.

We trudge up and establish our pace. At least we’re walking. For selection to the SAS, we’d be running, says H when I ask him about his time in the Regiment. Despite being known for the gruelling tabs in the Beacons that every would-be trooper had to undergo, the Regiment’s selection process was designed to uncover mental resilience as much as physical grit. ‘You’d see a lot of muscle-bound guys packing it in,’ says H, recalling time spent as directing staff on selection. ‘Not because they weren’t fit enough, but because they got fed up the quickest. Too used to being tough, I suppose. It was the squinty-eyed little fellows who’d get through.’

Those who survived the gruelling Fan dance – up Pen-y-Fan and back three times – the night-time navigation to control points at memorised grid references, the heavily laden cross-country marches and mock interrogations, would end up on a month’s continuation training in the jungle. Brunei was the chosen location. H calls it ‘good jungle’. I don’t know what bad jungle is. He says it’s the jungle that really sorts people out, and where the real selection takes place.

‘Everything’s wet the whole time and there’s beasties all over the place. A lot of guys who did well on selection couldn’t handle the jungle,’ he says. I ask him how he’d fared on his own jungle training.

‘Me? Loved it,’ he says, beaming as the rain cascades over his eyebrows. ‘Happy as a pig in shit.’

We enter the cloud and feel its coldness. A purplish scar of track leads upwards. Beyond a dozen yards, every feature of the landscape is absorbed into the whiteness. H walks behind me and gives directions where the route looks uncertain. Higher up, a slippery outcrop of stone resembling a ruined wall marks the steepest portion of the ascent. The summit of Pen-y-Fan lies several hundred yards to the north-east. We reach it at the end of a narrow ridge where the flanks descend with spectacular steepness into deep glacial valleys on either side. But we can see nothing of the views.

It’s too cold to stop for more than a few moments. Using the corner of his compass, H points out our position on the map as the raindrops roll across its laminated surface, and we check our bearing for the long descent into Cwm Llwch. Beyond the valley at its base, we reach Cwm Gwdi, the remnants of the Parachute Regiment battle camp and the deserted road beyond. It loops west towards the shorter steeper ridge leading back up to the Obelisk.

Now I understand why H has chosen the route. It embraces a series of rewards and punishments – upward and downward gradients of varying degrees, from the painfully acute to the luxuriously gentle. You reap the pleasure of the gentle slopes to fight the steep ones. On a long tab there are strong arguments for stopping and others for going forward, and both spin out silently in your head. Bad weather magnifies the pleasures and the pains. The longer the route, the less seriously you take the clamour of these voices, which settle down into a kind of background grumble, while you drag your mind repeatedly back to something more concrete: the rhythm of your pace or breath.

On the final portion of the return climb, just before we re-emerge on the ridge by the Obelisk, I can feel my thigh muscles wobble in protest. The big blisters on my heels are now at the final stage of fattening up before bursting. But we’ve kept up a decent pace. Six hours later we’re back at the car. I’m freezing and tired. H asks how I’m feeling.

‘Never better.’

‘Good man.’

I throw the soaking Bergen into the back of the car, and H retrieves a Thermos of deliciously hot coffee. We drive back to his house, change into dry clothes, and H fries up a late lunch. I light a fire at his request from a neat pile of logs stacked by the fireplace. We eat as we warm our feet by the flames. As dusk falls, H pours two generous whiskies, and we talk over the scope of the operation ahead of us, wondering when we’ll get the go-ahead from London.

‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ says H. ‘We get sent to Afghanistan to train them how to use our kit, and then get sent back ten years later to tell them they can’t have it any more.’

‘Blowback,’ I say. ‘That’s what the CIA call it.’

‘Blow job, more like. Anyway. Best not to talk about any of this from now on.’ Then he leaves the room and returns a minute later with a boyish look of mischief on his face.

‘When was the last time you saw one of these?’

His right arm swings up, and with it the barrel of an AK-47 assault rifle. This is an unaccustomed sight in rural England, and I splutter a reply through a mouthful of whisky.

‘It’s been a while.’

‘Know how to use it?’

‘Never really had to.’

‘Well, if you do ever have to, you might as well know how. Let’s sit on the floor.’

He takes two cloth bundles from the map pockets of his trousers and puts them on a small table. Then he sinks nimbly to the floor on his knees and rests the weapon like an offering across the open palms of his hands.

‘AK-47. Gas-operated assault rifle with selective fire, 7.62 calibre.’ He waves a hand up and down its length. The blueing on the metal glitters darkly in the light thrown from the fire. ‘Most successful assault rifle in the world. Any Soviet weapon with a K in its name means a variant of the Kalashnikov. There’s an AKM and an AKS, both modified versions of the AK-47, a PK light machine gun, and the smaller-calibre AK-74. The Soviets designed the rifle and its ammo so that, in theory, their invading army could use captured Western weapons, but not the other way round. Pretty simple weapon, really, and that’s its virtue. It’s an assault weapon, so you wouldn’t want to use it much over 300 metres, though it’ll send a round much further. If anyone’s firing at you with an AK from further than 300 metres, you shouldn’t be too bothered.’ A wry smile suggests he doesn’t mean this too literally.

He bounces it gently in his hands as if to weigh it. Perhaps he’s reminiscing. Then he squeezes the serrated edges of the rear sight and slides the range selector back and forth on its rail.

‘The sights are adjustable from 100 to 800 metres. Anything up to 300, just use the battle sights. Remember it fires high and right.’ He taps the muzzle. ‘Later models have a different-shaped muzzle to compensate. Looks like the tip of a Bowie knife.’ I’ve seen these in Afghanistan. ‘Some have a bayonet on a hinge under the barrel. You can stick this in the ground to stabilise the weapon if you want.’

His finger moves to the selector lever.

‘All the way up – safety on.’ He pulls on the silvery lug of the operating handle to show that the weapon can’t be cocked. ‘It inhibits the mechanism.’ Then there’s a loud metallic click as he slides the lever down. ‘One click down for automatic fire. When you’re in a hurry and you need it. Good for scaring crows.’

He wrinkles his nose as if automatic fire is only for films and books.

‘Two clicks for single shot. The only problem with the safety on an AK is it’s bloody noisy, so don’t do it unless you mean business. There’s no bolt-stop device, so the bolt moves back into the chamber after the last round’s been fired. You have to re-cock when you change mags.’

Then he tucks the wooden butt under his armpit as if to fire. ‘If someone has the weapon on you, try to get sight of the selector. There may be dust or dirt around it. A lot of blokes carry AKs for the prestige and they’re not really ready to use them. Check the position of the lever. If it’s all the way up, it might give you a bit more time. Right, let’s have a look inside.’

He takes the smaller bundle from the table and unfolds a triangular piece of cloth over the carpet. Then he removes the magazine, cocks the weapon to clear the breech, and pulls the trigger.

‘If you have a piece of cloth with you, you can spread the pieces over it in order, then gather them up in reverse. A shemagh is perfect.’

‘The Afghans use something called a pattu,’ I say, and describe a few of the near-universal applications of the Afghan woollen shawl, without which life in Afghanistan would be unmanageable.

‘We’ll pretend it’s a pattu then. This is the top cover.’ He taps the uppermost metal surface of the weapon, then pushes in the serrated catch at its rear and slides it off, exposing the innards. A long and snake-like recoil spring emerges. Then comes the bolt, sliding back into the receiver track with a clattering sound like a miniature train crossing a junction. At its far end is a long silver rod. ‘That’s the piston. It’s attached to the bolt carrier.’ He points out the curved surface, called the camway, on which the bolt rotates, and then the firing pin and the extractor attached to the bolt itself. Then he detaches the forward section of the wooden handguard to reveal the gas chamber. There’s also an easily removable rod beneath the barrel for clearing jammed rounds. But that’s it. Mr Kalashnikov’s brainchild, laid bare.

‘I’m amazed how simple it really is,’ I say.

‘That’s the secret of its success. Makes it less accurate than other rifles, but the clearances give it a lot of tolerance. When it really starts to fill up with rubbish, the mechanism won’t return fast enough and you get a second round coming up and jamming. That’s why you keep your weapon clean. Best way is to dump the whole thing in a pan of avgas.’

‘Aviation fuel?’

He nods. ‘But petrol will do. It cleans the dirt out and leaves the surfaces dry. Issue cleaning fluid usually comes in a fiddly little bottle, but a switched-on soldier will usually have something like this.’ He reaches over to the bundle, pulls out a green plastic insecticide bottle, and mimics spraying the rifle’s insides. Then he takes the head of an inch-wide paintbrush and waves it across the metal. A pull-through, stored in the butt, is used to clean the barrel. He drops it into the breech and gives a tug on the oiled strip of cloth from the other end, then closes an eye and peers into the muzzle. ‘If you put your thumb in the breech, it’ll catch enough light for you to see what’s going on. Want to have a go?’

He reassembles the parts, then reminds me of the golden rule. ‘Before you hand a weapon to anyone, clear it.’ He takes off the magazine and pulls back the bolt to make sure the chamber is clear.

I strip the weapon in the manner he’s shown, lining up the different parts, then fit them back in reverse order.

‘Right,’ says H, ‘now have another go.’

I repeat the process.

‘Again,’ he says.

And again, as my hands grow in confidence.

‘Now do it in the dark,’ he says, and instructs me to close my eyes. After several repeats, he says we’ve come far enough for the moment, and I put the weapon aside, resting it against the table.

‘That’s another thing,’ says H, reaching out for it. ‘Don’t ever prop the weapon anywhere where it can fall over. Always lie it down within reach of you, breech side up, so you don’t get dirt in it.’

Suddenly I remember a question I’ve been wanting to ask him.

‘You know those documentaries where you see American servicemen tapping the magazines of their weapons on their helmets before locking them onto their M16s? Why do they always do that?’

‘I don’t know,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘I’ve never worn a helmet.’

We move on. He unwraps the remaining bundle on the table to reveal a 9-millimetre Makarov pistol with five-pointed Soviet star on the grip panels. He releases the magazine, which slips into his palm.

‘You’ve seen one of these. It’s like the AK. A bit primitive, but effective and reliable. They say it’s based on the Walther PPK. Double action, so you can cock it either with the hammer or by pulling back the slide. The trigger pull’s a bit heavy in double-action mode. Good stopping power though.’

We go over the details of the mechanism, how to check the chamber and make safe. The pistol can be stripped by pulling down on the trigger guard, allowing the slide to be eased off from the rear. The barrel is fixed. I practise loading and unloading, thinking all the while about the expression ‘stopping power’. It’s a term as removed from the reality it describes as collateral damage or intelligence interrogation – death and torture respectively. Herein, I reflect, lies the terrible contradiction between two of the most momentous experiences in the life of a man: the near-irresistible thrill of conflict and the horror it produces.

Our session has a final stage. H leaves the room again and returns with what looks like a book and yet another weapon. On the dark blue cover of the book defense intelligence agency is printed in silver letters. Several yellow Post-its protrude from between the pages. The weapon in his hand is an FN HP, better known as the Browning High Power. It was originally manufactured in Belgium by the famous Fabrique Nationale, but has been copied all over the world. I’d learned how to use it in the army, where it was also known as the L9A1. I’d also killed a man with the same weapon.

‘Personal favourite,’ says H, as he clears it, then clicks the magazine gently back into place. The Browning has been the army’s sidearm of choice for decades, and compared to the latest automatics using plastic and ceramic parts, it’s starting to look old-fashioned. The Swiss-made SIG is the most recent sidearm of choice for the Regiment, he says, but the Browning’s reliability and high-capacity magazine make it popular with armed forces in so many countries, it’s going to be around for a while longer.

‘It’d be nice to have a couple to take with us,’ says H with a grin as he weighs the pistol in his hand. This one’s a recent DA model, he says, a double-action version of the original that incorporates a few modifications. The magazine can hold fourteen rounds, making fifteen with one in the chamber; the shape of the trigger guard has been changed to improve the grip when firing with two hands; and instead of a manual safety catch, there’s now an ambidextrous de-cocking lever mounted on the frame. There’s an internal firing pin safety mechanism and another safety to prevent firing if the slide isn’t all the way back.

As he points out the weapon’s features, his fingers move lightly over its surfaces with the swift dexterity of a conjuror, and the dark metal seems suddenly alive to his touch, ready to spring into action. He draws back the slide, presses the de-cocking lever, takes the magazine out and replaces it, and flips the pistol between his hands.

‘I used to sit for hours playing with one of these,’ he says as he slides it behind his back in a single fluid motion and presents to me his open palms. Then with the same effortless gesture the pistol reappears in his hand, supported by the other in a firing grip.

‘Get the feel of it,’ he says, and passes it to me.

I like the feel of the ambidextrous design, which means I can reach the de-cocking lever by lifting my thumb over the hammer without having to loosen my grip.

‘Do what comes naturally,’ says H. ‘Remember the mechanism stays open after the final round’s been fired. When you put in a fresh mag, push down the slide stop to send a new round forward, and you can keep firing without having to re-cock. You can also change the mag release button so that it goes on the other side, if you want.’

He puts his hands over mine to demonstrate the correct grip when firing over the sights, and the en garde position for what he calls instinctive shooting with the arms straight and both eyes open, when the target is up to fifteen feet away. It’s a style of shooting that the regular army doesn’t teach: two rounds in rapid succession to the head of the target. The Regiment has an expression for it: double tap.

‘Take them all with you,’ says H, waving a hand over the AK and the pistols, ‘and practise with all three. If you can strip them in the dark, so much the better. We’ll test-fire them next week after you’ve had a chance to play with them.’ Between the running, I’m thinking. I ask where we’ll do the test-firing. ‘We could go down to the Fort, I suppose. Good range, but it’s a bit of a hike.’ He’s talking about Fort Monckton in Portsmouth, where young spooks go for their early training in firearms. ‘But it’ll be easier to get up early and have a go in the hills somewhere. By the time anyone’s got out of their pyjamas to investigate, we’ll be long gone.’ He picks up the sinister-looking book from the table and fans its pages. ‘I’ve marked a few other weapons you might want to look at. You can compare with the Beretta and the SIG and the HK. Let’s hope we don’t have to use any of them, but you never know.’

I can’t help asking if he’s comfortable with me taking a bag full of weapons to my home.

‘Just try not to get nicked on your way. I can’t keep them here anyway. Sally would kill me if she knew I had weapons in the house.’ His wife’s aversion to guns seems an incongruous thing in the life of a professional soldier. Perhaps it’s the secret of their apparent happiness.

By degrees my training is moving from the abstract to the very concrete. H is a gentle but thorough taskmaster, who never hurries or raises his voice, nor pushes me too fast with anything I feel unsure about. He shares his knowledge freely and without any trace of pretension. I much prefer his manner and method to the arrogant mystification of Seethrough, who seems to delight in making me feel ignorant.

We walk again the following day, pushing the pace a little harder. It’s overcast but mercifully dry, saving us the discomfort of getting soaked by sweat under our waterproofs. We take the same route to Pen-y-Fan, then leave the summit on the steep eastern side in the direction of the pyramidal face of Cribyn, crossing the valley by the reservoir and climbing onto the broad plateau above. After a further two hours’ walking, a long downward traverse puts us on the road a mile and a half from the car. I run this stretch in considerable pain while H mutters encouragement at my side.

In the afternoon we begin drafting notes for the tasks and routines we need to cover. Then, breaking for tea, H wanders outside and feels the grass on his lawn. It’s dry enough and he has an idea. It’s one thing to be on the right side of a weapon, he says, but finding oneself unexpectedly at the business end is another matter. It’s time to practise disarming techniques.

At the heart of the theory of disarming – jap-slapping, as it’s unofficially called by Regiment men – lies the notion that, if a weapon is pointed close enough to one’s body, it’s possible to knock it aside before the attacker can pull the trigger. It’s difficult to believe at first, so the point of disarming routines is to demonstrate the truth of it. Unless the belief is there, says H, you’re liable to hesitate.

We start with the pistol, using the Browning in the manner of a hold-up. I push the muzzle into the small of H’s back. His hands go up; he shuffles forward and begins to babble as if terrified, then looks at me over his left shoulder. I’ve agreed to pull the trigger at the first moment I sense alarm. I feel his body turn and am about to respond, but within the space of a second I find myself on the ground, looking up at him. His left hand is clenched around the shirt on my chest, which he’s pulled up at the last moment to prevent my head from hitting the ground too hard. His right hand is poised above me, ready to strike. The pistol lies on the grass. I’m shaken, and very impressed.

‘Easy,’ he says, pulling me gently to my feet. ‘Let’s break it down into stages.’

Everything depends on confidence in the key idea that the weapon can be deflected before it can be fired. The rest is more or less common sense, says H. It’s an expression he’s fond of, I notice. There’s an element of stealth – glimpsing but not fixing on the threatening weapon – and distraction – dropping one’s keys or wallet onto the ground at the moment before counter-attacking. The counter-attack comes in the form of a swift turn and, at the same moment, a downward blow to deflect the weapon and open the attacker’s body to further disabling strikes.

‘Better not to launch into it at the first instant,’ says H. ‘That’s when a gunman’s most tense because he’s expecting you to try it on. Choose your moment. Get him talking and his mind off the weapon. Then check the hand it’s in by glancing over your shoulder. Pushing against the weapon is useful too, because when you start to turn it’ll slide off-target. The downward strike is hard and fast. Follow up with an open hand to the chin and a knee in the groin.’

There are more precise methods for seizing a pistol without harming an attacker, he tells me, but they take too long to learn.

‘Forget about Jackie Chan. The aim here is to disarm and disable, not circus tricks. Besides,’ he adds with a solemn look, ‘anyone who puts a weapon on you deserves whatever they get.’

This is the first glimpse I have of the steel beneath the velvet.

We practise being held up from front and back, applying the same principles with slight variations. A pistol to the head, pointed in the manner of an over-zealous gangster, is in fact the easiest of all threats to counter. But no two attacks are exactly the same, says H, and we practise until the moves come without thought. After this, he demonstrates optional refinements such as breaking the attacker’s trigger finger or nose.

Then he goes into the house and returns with the AK. We run through a similar routine, as he explains that a rifle is in fact less risky to deal with than a pistol. The defender can move past the point of danger – the muzzle – and prevent the rifle returning to its target by moving in close and blocking it. The bulky foresight on the muzzle of an AK also makes it ideal to grab, and allows the defender to control the weapon. As the attacker goes down, a few jerks on the barrel is usually enough to break his grip.

‘Once it’s yours, you can decide what you want to do,’ he says.

We try this out from the front a few times, at increasing speeds. H recommends a succession of kicks to the attacker’s knee and sharp pulls on the barrel of the rifle. We move on to the variation from behind. He jabs the muzzle into my back and shouts, ‘Move it!’ and I turn and strike the barrel, feeling the outer side of my palm connect with the foresight. But I hit it too hard, and the skin on the edge of my hand splits open like a banana peel. I finish the move, but there’s blood streaming over our clothes. H shoulders the AK with one hand and squeezes the sides of the cut together.

‘Bad luck,’ he says, ‘but I think you’ve got the hang of it.’ He leads me indoors, still holding the bloody hand, which drips over the kitchen floor. He stretches a few surgical strips across the wound, then binds it up in a bandage.

‘Lucky the memsahib’s away for a few days. She can’t stand the sight of blood.’

Life at home after our sessions together seems quiet. I study the weapons manual, practise stripping the AK, the Makarov and the Browning, and wonder how the Jehovah’s Witnesses might react if I came to the door with an AK at the ready. I perfect the skill of trapping small rodents, because the organisation of night-time ambushes in secondary jungle is not really practical in my garden, with the help of another manual H has lent me called Operational Techniques Under Special Conditions. I also force myself to run, and begin to shave seconds off my circuit times, though the margin is proving disappointingly difficult to improve on. My thighs are in fierce protest after the slopes of the Beacons, and running makes my calf muscles hurt all day long. I’m in constant discomfort.

The following week, my training with H follows the same pattern. His wife Sally is away again, visiting family over the weekend, and we have the house to ourselves. We walk and run long circuits in the mornings and go over practical skills in the afternoons. In the evenings we add more detail to the overall plan.

H says we’ll need to practise car drills too.

‘If our opsec is up to scratch, no one who doesn’t need to will ever know what we’re doing. But we have to plan for worst-case scenarios.’ He’s right. It’s not impossible that someone might try to rob us. In Afghanistan there are unofficial checkpoints where we might be held up, or worse. ‘Best way to deal with a bogus VCP is to never get into one,’ says H. ‘Next best is to turn around fast. Last resort is to drive through.’ We agree that driving through vehicle checkpoints isn’t such a great idea because trigger-happy Afghans are inclined to shoot at the occupants, rather than the tyres, of disobedient vehicles, and Afghans tend to be good shots. The problem of banditry has been much reduced by the Taliban, but their Arab allies affiliated with al-Qaeda are known to be cruel and frequently ruthless, and make Afghan bandits seem kindly.

One morning, another week later, he reverses his Range Rover into the centre of the driveway, and we stand by it as he speaks, imagining the scenario of coming under attack on some lonely stretch of Afghan road.

The interior of a vehicle, unless it’s armoured, offers no protection at all, which makes getting out fast a priority. H explains that a high-velocity round has no difficulty going through the body of a car and that the only part of a normal vehicle which can provide cover is either the engine block or the wheels. Since you can’t manoeuvre from behind an engine block, that leaves the wheels.

‘There’s just one problem,’ he says, asking me to lie down behind one of the wheels and imagine that I’m trying to return fire. Between the ground and the underside of the car is a thin strip of space, beyond which the ground obscures everything. The only thing I’ll be able to shoot from this position is our attacker’s toes.

‘You can’t see a bloody thing,’ I say.

‘Exactly.’

At that moment I hear a rapid panting in my ear as H’s terrier runs up and begins feverishly licking my face.

‘Jeffrey!’ hisses H. ‘Get out of it! Fuck off!’ The dog persists, so he leads it back into the house and, apologising, settles down beside me again.

‘If you stick your head up over the wheel, you’ll have a better view.’

That makes sense. Steadying my imaginary weapon over the bonnet of the car, I line up on an enemy sheep in the field beyond.

‘Get the idea?’ H retrieves the AK, puts it on the rear seat, and we get into the car. ‘Most important is to agree who goes where, so we don’t end up on top of each other. Let’s say we’re coming under fire from my side. You go back, I’ll go front. Shall we try it?’

I throw open the door and tumble out, slamming it behind me instinctively just as H is trying to dive out. He blocks it with his hand and peers at me over the edge of the seat with a tolerant look I haven’t seen before.

‘Best not to slam the door in my face. Let’s try again.’

We return to the seats.

‘Last one out gets the AK. Enemy left – go!’

H rolls out of the passenger side and crouches behind the front wheel as I follow, grab the AK out of the back and position myself behind the rear wheel, firing imaginary rounds at our attackers.

‘Better,’ he says.

‘You must feel pretty vulnerable with your head sticking out like that,’ I say.

‘You do,’ he replies. ‘That’s why you don’t want to be there too long.’

We install ourselves back in the car.

‘Now we’ll withdraw under fire.’ He points around the garden. ‘I’ll move to that tree while you give covering fire. When I say, you move along the same path until we’re both behind the rhododendrons. When one of us is moving, the other is firing.’

‘Got it.’

We tumble out again at his signal. Bang bang bang bang bang! H runs to the tree. Then I follow as he covers me from the bushes beyond. Bang bang bang bang bang! We end up lying beside each other thirty yards from the car.

‘Fine,’ he says. ‘But I probably would have shot you. You ran through my line of fire. Try to keep a sense of where I am.’

Leaving me feeling like a small child, H disappears inside his garage and emerges with two black nylon waist packs.

‘Here,’ he says, handing me one of them, ‘your go bag.’ From the weight of it I know the Browning is inside. We check the weapons, which are unloaded, and put the packs on the bonnet.

‘You’ll usually have something like this on an op,’ he says, unzipping the main pouch of his bag. ‘Medical kit, E amp; E stuff, money, maps, heli marker for your exfil, and some other bits and pieces – it depends on what you need at the time. We’ll pretend these are ours and keep them under the seats.’

We stash the bags behind our heels and pretend once again to be heading into an ambush. If we’re expecting trouble, the best place for the Browning is on the seat under one’s leg, which saves having to scramble about for it. I copy him as he slides the weapon under his thigh with the butt facing out.

The Brownings are in our hands as we dive out again, then bound in turn across the drive into the garden.

‘Good, but you forgot the bag.’

But I’m learning. We repeat the drill several more times, upping the tempo each time until we’ve covered all the combinations. Speed, aggression and determination are the keys to success, he says. If there are only a few attackers, a concerted counter-attack with a high rate of fire from the AK can turn the tables, but it has to happen quickly.

We break for tea and H starts his ritual note-taking at the kitchen table. We draw up some general notes on security, with a plan to refine them as we go along. He draws a map of the ideas we need to understand. He lists the possible threats we’ll face, and how to defeat or minimise our vulnerability to them. He’s concerned with communications and transport, and getting safely from A to B, and not letting our plans be known to others. The level of detail borders on obsessive, but being methodical is what gives the SAS its reputation.

H talks at length about vehicle security: not choosing taxis which offer themselves, avoiding fixed routes, not getting boxed in when in heavy traffic, how to carry out a quick inspection of a vehicle to see if it’s been tampered with, code words for agreed sites, identifying safe havens to divert to in an emergency, and the need for back-up plans.

I realise he’s working his way through his own version of a military orders plan at combat-team level. This is generally written up under several headings. The first is ‘Ground’, which identifies the physical terrain, both generally and in detail. ‘Situation’ details friendly and enemy forces in the area of the operation, as well as the political layout. ‘Mission’ defines the scope of the operation, summed up in snappy language: kill X or destroy Y. ‘Execution’ goes into the details of routes, movement, RVs, action on target and exfil procedures – how to get home again. ‘Service Support’ deals with weapons, rations and equipment and how to get them to and from where they need to be. There’s another standard heading, which I can’t remember.

‘ “Command and Signals”,’ says H. ‘Radios, mostly. Who talks to who, when and how. We won’t be calling in much air support. Just checking in with London from time to time.’ He waves a pen over the notes. ‘And we need to think of a cover story for our time in-country. Something short term.’ This is my task. He then explains how I should apply for a second passport, which can be left hidden in a safe place in case we’re parted unexpectedly from our things.

His wife has prepared a dinner for us in advance. We eat and then devote the evening to familiarising ourselves with the weapon that lies behind the whole operation.

‘Might want to study this,’ says H, putting a bulky manual in front of me. It’s the American DoD training documentation for the FIM-92. The pages are marked secret, and there are several hundred of them.

‘The Sovs would’ve killed to get their hands on this a few years back,’ he says, tapping the cover.

‘They were the first to find out the hard way what the Stinger could do,’ I say, thinking of the missile’s deadly effect on Soviet airpower in Afghanistan.

‘Not quite,’ he corrects me. ‘The Yanks gave us some of these when we were down south in the Falklands. There was only one bloke from the Regiment who knew how to use the Stinger, and he was on that Sea King that crashed in the South Atlantic. A trooper in D Squadron managed to shoot down an Argentine fighter, though he was bloody lucky. That was the first combat kill with the Stinger.’

Its portability and reliability make it one of the most desirable weapons in the world. It is strange to think of the most advanced anti-aircraft technology of the time being hauled around Afghanistan on the backs of donkeys and camels. The Stinger’s role in the final humiliation of the Soviet army was never really acknowledged.

The earliest Stinger models didn’t distinguish between enemy or friendly targets: anything in the Afghan skies was fair game. The long thin missile is fitted into a fibreglass launch tube, and then attached to an assembly made up of the trigger and the infrared antennae, which looks vaguely like a toaster. A small battery unit is clipped in place, and when the missile has locked onto its target, a small speaker gives out the signal to fire. In case there is too much noise for it to be heard, a vibrator buzzes in the cheekbone of the firer. There are a number of checks and sensors that indicate whether the weapon is serviceable.

We need to know these things, and we go over them in detail.

Several hours later H gathers up our paperwork and locks it in a small safe. Then, when it’s time to turn in, he waves a hand over his bookshelves and invites me to have a browse.

‘You might like this one.’ He pulls down a book about the Regiment and fans the pages until he reaches the chapter devoted to the campaign in Oman. There’s a selection of photographs taken at the height of the conflict, but the images of the soldiers don’t look like conventional portraits. The men wear beards, ragged-looking uniforms and frayed caps or Arab shemaghs; cigarettes dangle from their lips, and many of them look too old to be soldiers in any case.

H points to a photograph of a fearsome-looking bearded man with a sunburned face under a combat cap. A bulky general purpose machine gun and dangling belt of gleaming ammunition hang from his shoulder.

‘That’s the Ditch,’ says H, looking fondly at the photograph. ‘Gentle as a kitten. And that’s the Monk.’ There’s another photograph of a man wearing what looks like a monk’s hooded cassock. From the shadows of the woollen hood, a faint and enigmatic smile on the lean face does seem to confirm a contemplative temperament. Only the M16 assault rifle cradled protectively in his arms suggests a different calling.

He turns the pages again to show me a photograph of a young man peering over the sights of an 81-millimetre mortar in a dusty-looking sandbagged gun pit. His bare upper body is deeply tanned and he looks very fit. It’s H, twenty-five years earlier, up on the Jebel near Medinat al-Haqq.

‘We used to play with that mortar a lot.’ He smiles. ‘Just to let the Adoo know we could put down a round on a sixpence if we wanted to.’

It’s very strange. As a teenager I owned the same book and pored over its pages, never imagining that one day I might know the names of the anonymous soldiers who looked out from them.

‘Those blokes were the real deal,’ says H, nodding solemnly. ‘They don’t make them like that any more.’

We leave the house in the morning while it’s still dark. The Brownings are hidden in the go bags at our feet, and the AK under the rear seat. We’re heading for an abandoned quarry about half an hour west of Hereford, practising the anti-ambush drill on the way, throwing the car onto the verge and positioning it between us and our imaginary attackers. Then, as the sky is beginning to brighten, we turn from the main road onto an unsurfaced track. At the end of it the ground opens out into a wide flat stretch of chalky subsoil, criss-crossed by waterlogged bulldozer tracks. Beyond it rises a pale amphitheatre of stone about sixty feet high.

I cut the engine and H takes two rolled-up targets from the car. We walk across the open ground and fix the targets to the soft stone with tent pegs. We count a hundred paces and I stand on the spot we mark, while H takes the AK from the back of his car. He clears the mechanism, hands me the weapon and feeds three rounds into the magazine. From his pocket he takes a small box of yellow foam earplugs, which we squeeze into our ears.

‘Let’s zero the sights. Put three rounds on the black circle.’

The black circle, the size of a small plate up close, looks tiny. I line up on the speck of black and squeeze the trigger. The rifle bucks as if knocked by a hammer from below. I’ve forgotten how loud guns are.

‘One,’ says H. I fire again. ‘Two.’ And again. ‘Three. Clear it.’

We jog to the target. One round is a foot off to the left. This is probably the first. The other two are a few inches apart, in line with the centre but six inches too high. We jog back to our firing position, where H makes an adjustment to the foresight and feeds five more rounds into the magazine.

‘Centre of the target. Five rounds rapid.’

The AK rises and falls. I fire at the end of each downward lull and try to keep the rhythm even. My cheekbone, which I’ve been holding too close to the butt, is throbbing as if someone’s punched it, and despite the earplugs my ears are ringing.

‘Not bad,’ says H, grinning as we pull the pegs from the target. ‘Must be the quality of instruction.’ There are three small holes in the centre circle and two others within the second, all vertically aligned within a few inches. He looks at his watch. ‘Let’s see how you do with the other fellow.’

We walk to the car, put the AK back under the rear seat and retrieve the Brownings. H has also brought a plastic bag with a dozen empty beer cans, seven of which we now set on a sloping stone shelf running across the face of the quarry. We take ten paces towards the car and turn around.

‘When you’re ready,’ says H. ‘Double tap on each. Remember not to yank the trigger.’

I cock the Browning and fire at each can in turn. Four of the seven are sent spinning. Three remain stubbornly in place as little fountains of chalk erupt behind them.

‘Needs a bit of work,’ says H. We gather up the empty casings, then the cans, and fix them back on the shelf.

‘Show me how it’s done then,’ I say.

H cocks his pistol and tucks it into his belt above his left hip with the butt facing forward, and lets his coat fall in front of it. Then, in a single movement of astonishing swiftness, he draws his coat away with his left hand, pulls the weapon out with his right and begins firing with his knees slightly flexed. There’s hardly a pause between targets, each of which disappears as he works from left to right. By the time I look back from the targets to see him removing the magazine from his pistol, less than five seconds has passed. H says nothing but throws me a satisfied wink. Then he pockets the Browning and scoops up the empty casings.

‘We’d best be going,’ he says.

‘I enjoyed that,’ I say.

‘Me too.’ He looks at his watch again and gives me a pensive look. The sky has brightened in the east, but around us the land is silent.

‘I was just thinking,’ he says. ‘Shall we try the anti-ambush, and live-fire the Brownings? We could come from up there,’ he motions to the dirt track that winds upwards beside the quarry face, ‘drive in close, and retreat this way.’ There are some dips and mounds in the ground behind us, and roughly fifty yards from the quarry face is a long intervening ridge of bulldozed rubble about four feet high. It’s the perfect hiding place to retreat to from the car. ‘Just aim for the same place where the targets were. Imagine each one’s an Adoo with an AK. Let’s get those cans so we can scarper afterwards.’

We gather up the mutilated cans and hide them in the car. Then we sit in the front and H puts the box of 9-millimetre cartridges between us. We fill the magazines, chamber one round into the breech and add a final top-up round to the magazine, making fifteen. Then we slip the pistols under our thighs and I start the engine. In four-wheel drive we climb the badly rutted track, circle the rim of the quarry and turn the car around just before reaching the skyline at the top, from where we might be seen. With the engine running, we have a good look on all sides for any movement. It’s time to go.

‘Check chamber,’ says H. I ease back the top slide of the pistol and glimpse the brass casing nestling in the breech.

‘All set here.’

‘Right, take us down.’ I put the car into first gear and without accelerating let the slope carry us forward. ‘Come on, make it real,’ says H, and we accelerate, pitching hard across the braided ruts of the track. H braces himself with a hand on the dashboard grip. ‘I’ll say when,’ he growls.

As the track levels off we hit the flat ground with an almighty lurch. I floor it towards the quarry face, wondering how late H will leave the signal. As the tyres bite into the mud and gravel I can hear the debris from under us smacking violently into the wheel arches. Then, about sixty feet from the quarry face, I hear H yell.

‘Ambush! Ambush! Enemy front! Take the front!’

The brakes lock as I pull the wheel hard to the left. The tail end of the car swings to the right, and the front wheels grind to a juddering halt. H throws the passenger door open and somersaults out. He’s already firing as I hit the ground a couple of seconds later and take up a firing position across the bonnet.

H shouts, ‘Moving now!’ and I aim the Browning. It leaps five times. Beyond the foresight, puffs of chalk burst from the quarry face. Then I hear H’s shout from behind me.

‘Move! Move! Move!’

I sprint away from the car, cowering instinctively as I see the muzzle flash erupting from H’s pistol ahead of me to the left. An uncomfortable feeling. A watery dip in the ground appears ahead of me and I fling myself into it, bring the weapon up and fire another five rounds in the direction of the car. Its blue shape seems to be floating pointlessly against the light wall of stone beyond, and I think for a moment of how much it resembles a beached whale.

Then I hear H shout again and run another fifteen yards as he covers me a second time. I dive and fire as H sprints to our final position, then hear the click of the firing pin as the weapon seems to die in my hands. I make the final sprint to the ridge of rubble. He has both hands on his weapon as I dive in beside him and slither round to face our imaginary enemies at the far end of the quarry.

H ducks below the rim of the ridge and rolls onto his back to check his pistol. The air reeks of cordite and there’s a high-pitched ringing in my ears, which resounds at every heartbeat.

‘Alright?’ asks H.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Right, make safe.’

I check and pocket the pistol. Then we stand up and look towards the quarry face. The place seems strangely still after all the noise and movement. H’s eyes are fixed firmly on his car.

‘I’m glad I wasn’t stuck in there,’ he says quietly.

‘We certainly got out alright,’ I say, thinking he’s referring to our escape from fictional bandits. I haven’t felt such exhilaration for years and have a strong urge to laugh out loud. The low gruff tone of H’s voice brings me back.

‘It’s not that,’ he says, still looking intently in the direction of his beloved Range Rover. I follow his gaze. The car looks perfectly intact, only the normally transparent rectangles of window have turned a different colour, as if painted in the same chalky rainwater that’s splashed all over our clothes and faces. Then I understand what he’s staring at, and feel myself biting my lower lip.

‘You arse,’ he says grimly. ‘You just shot my bloody windows out.’

It’s our final week of training. It changes pace and lasts longer. At dawn every day we drive to different deserted places for further shooting practice. The time I’m allowed to aim and fire decreases at each session. Then when H is satisfied that I’m shooting accurately enough, he gets me to sprint thirty yards to the firing position, which makes steadying the pistol more difficult. He wants the weapon to become an extension of my hand, he explains. He shows me a quick-draw technique and lets me keep the Browning in the spare room to practise. I need to be able to draw and fire in my sleep, he says.

Rain or shine, we run everywhere. Sometimes H sets the pace, his rhythm as steady as a mountaineer’s and indifferent to gradient or temperature, and at others he lets me lead, muttering encouragement when the going gets more challenging. He drags me up the cruel slope of Hay Bluff, and we run to the far end of the long plateau called the Cat’s Back, and then along the neighbouring plateau towards Lord Hereford’s Knob. We tackle the lung-searing flanks of Pen-y-Fan and Cribyn in freezing rain. He pushes me beyond my habitual reach but just short of despair.

In the afternoons we work on personal security issues relating to journeys: assessing threats and risks, keeping in touch and keeping to plans, access and escape, emergency routines, and the importance of pre-established safe havens and RV points. We talk through trusted methods of anti-surveillance when on foot: crossing open spaces, doubling back on a pretext and using a friend to observe one’s movements from afar.

On self-defence, things simplify. Everything I’ve seen in films is bollocks, he says. The key thing is making the decision between fight or flight, and sticking to it. Flight is self-explanatory. Fighting is to decide that one will make use of anything and everything possible to defeat or disable an attacker. The hand, knee, elbow and head can all be put to lethal effect, providing they are used quickly and accurately and with complete conviction. Improvised weapons are nearly endless. A newspaper, pen or mobile phone can be used in a deadly manner, and any number of household substances can be used to inflict damage: pepper will temporarily blind when blown from the hand into an attacker’s eyes; bleach will choke; hot water will scald. Queensbury Rules do not apply.

We devote a session to mine recognition, which is my territory, so for a few hours I hold forth on the perverse technology of anti-personnel mines, and the lethal design refinements of the PFM ‘butterfly’ mine designed by the Soviets for Afghanistan, the PMN and its successors, and the almost undetectable Chinese-made Type 72.

Much of the next day is devoted to explosives in general, the improvised versions manufactured by people who can’t afford jets or tanks, and the devious and unlikely ways in which they can be set off. H mentions the high explosive that comes in the form of an adhesive roll that can be swiftly stuck to a door frame like a deadly strip of Sellotape before being detonated. The technique belongs to the Regiment’s curriculum on methods of entry, though we agree that blowing a door from its housing with plastic explosive is usually a last resort.

On our final day we drive to the Black Mountains, then walk for most of the day, paying close attention to one of H’s maps. In the afternoon we stop at a remote and beautiful spot by a small waterfall, sheltered by a steep crag. I wonder how we’ll get back before nightfall, because it’ll be dark in a couple of hours and we’re miles from anywhere. Over a tin of sardines, H is telling me about a Regimental reunion in Oman years after the war, where he was invited by the sultan to a huge bash with the other members of A Squadron. The sultan chartered a giant C-130 Hercules to fly them all in to Muscat. Then the subject changes unexpectedly.

‘Do you really want this op in Afghanistan?’ asks H. The wind is ruffling his hair as he looks at me, and the chatty tone has gone out of his voice.

‘Of course I do,’ I say, but as I speak the words I realise this is not the whole truth.

‘I need you to think about it,’ he says. ‘I need you to be 100 per cent convinced that you want it. If you have the slightest doubt, you need to face up to it and find the answer.’

I’m about to reply, but he cuts short my attempt by putting the map between us and pointing to a location several miles away.

‘Here,’ he says. ‘I want you to spend the night here. There’s an old shelter on this bluff that’ll keep the wind off you. I need you to meditate on all this. Find out your doubt and work through it – before you go to sleep, if you wake up in the night, and when you get up in the morning. Take the Bergen. There’s a sleeping bag in it. You can meet me back at the starting point at 0900 hours. Then you get cleaned up, we have lunch in the pub, and you can drive home.’

This is a surprise. The SAS is telling me to meditate on a mountaintop. I accept the suggestion, and we plot my return route, which is a direct bearing back to the spot where we’ve parked, so that if anything goes wrong he knows I’ll be somewhere along the line. He folds the map and pats it against my chest, then stands up. It’ll be dark before he’s back at the car.

‘Are you alright to get back?’ I ask, regretting the question as soon as I speak.

‘I was in the SAS, you know.’ He sets off at a jog without looking back.

A couple of hours later the moon is just rising in the east and I’m at the shelter, a ruined shepherd’s bothy half open to the sky. There’s a waterproof groundsheet in the Bergen, H’s own sleeping bag and a small emergency strobe. I settle in behind the stones and there’s nothing else to do but follow his advice. The hills and ridges sink into darkness and there’s no sound but the airy whisper of the wind against my ears.

I’m wondering who, if I had the choice, I could ask for advice on all this. I think suddenly of the story told in the Bhagavad Gita of the princely warrior Arjuna, doubting whether he should go to battle because he knows there are friends and members of his own family who he’s likely to meet. He turns to Krishna for advice, who reminds him that life and death are unimportant things and that righteous action is the key to life. No one, says Krishna, can get to grips with your fate except yourself, which is why it’s no good imitating the life of another. There’s a harsh solace to this counsel, it occurs to me now, for anyone troubled by questions of fate, choice and action.

I turn in, but my mind is see-sawing between past and future. H is right to suspect that I have doubts, and they’re coming at me like demons now. I’m not so much worried about the dangers ahead. Planning and training and common sense go a long way towards dealing with the obvious dangers. I’m actually looking forward to going back to Afghanistan. My doubt is whether I can carry my secret with me, which I can’t tell Seethrough or even H, and this already feels like a betrayal. No one but the Baroness knows about Orpheus or the fact that he needs to come in, or whether, in the jargon of the Network, he’s still a good householder or has become a lost sheep and will have to be eliminated.

I can’t sleep, not properly, anyway. It’s 3 a.m. I crawl out of the sleeping bag and pace around. There’s a half-moon above me and the clouds are sweeping in luminous silence across the sky, and through the tears in their fabric I catch glimpses of the stars.

Fear is a catalyst of strange thoughts, I realise.

In daily life you are swept along by events which prevent you from going too deeply into things. But now that the ordinary momentum of the world has been stripped away, my doubt is laid bare. I want to know if I am making the right choice, but I can’t be sure whether I have made a choice at all, or whether it has chosen me. When a man reaches a crossroads, it’s fair to suppose that the decision he takes is a free one. It’s what we’d all like to believe. But you can argue that his choice, so-called, is no more than the outcome of everything that has gone before, like a mathematical equation which, however complex, really only has one answer. All of a man’s experience of life is part of that equation, embracing all his hopes, dreams and prejudices, his wishes and convictions, his most tender longings, bitterest grievances, and all the dark machinery of his fears. All invisibly influence his choice, like a secret committee voting behind its leader’s back. Perhaps even the future itself exerts an influence, reaching back beneath the scheme of things. Then, when this formula of near-infinite complexity is at last resolved, and his decision, in which he has really had no say, rises like a balloon into the world of his conscious thoughts, the man will declare: I have made my choice freely and am responsible for it.

But that’s not the point. Any propagandist, magician or behavioural scientist can tell you a man has much less choice than he’d like to believe. The interesting question is whether a man who knows he isn’t free lives a different kind of life from the one who imagines he is. And if it is different, how is it different?

I can’t hold the thought long enough to calculate the answer. I’m cold and tired and shivering now, and it’s time to get some rest.