Highbridge (15 page)

‘OK,' Matt continued. ‘So how much does a bullet cost?'

‘What calibre?'

‘It's supposed to be theoretical, Luke. But, OK, let's say we'd use a standard H&K PSG1. So, 7.62, right?'

‘About three dollars a box or something. Or what was that gear we used on the last job?'

‘Er, Tulammo. Yeah. Around 25 cents that Canadian guy said. OK, bulk buy. We'd probably get 'em for less than 15p.'

‘So, your argument is, we just shoot smokers and instead of the thirty grand it costs to treat them, it only costs 15p to waste them?'

‘Yeah.'

‘I can see some people voting for it.'

‘And I know what you're going to say next. Win the war, lose the peace, right? How do we win the minds and hearts beforehand?'

‘Something like that,' Luke conceded again.

‘OK. The thing that's always missing. Fairness. Give everyone a chance.'

‘What? Arm the smokers so they can shoot back?'

‘Now you're being ridiculous.'

‘Oh, sorry.' Luke slid back into the hide. Nothing would happen until tonight. He reached for the boiled sweets in one of the ration packs. ‘Go on then. Win my heart and mind.'

‘We set up on top of a high building. OK? Good angles. All-round vision. We spot a smoker. Red dot them. Bit of a jiggle until they see it. They get thirty seconds to stub out. Or be taken out. Their choice, isn't it?'

‘If they know what the red dot is.'

‘Labels on all ciggy packs. Red dots can kill. Something like that.'

‘Education. Always the key. But, that's it? One chance? What about, I dunno, someone who's short-sighted or colour-blind? Or am I just being a woolly liberal?'

‘No, it's a perfectly valid democratic argument. Which is where we nick the three strikes rule from the Yanks.'

‘“We” do, do “we”?'

‘Yeah. So they just get a warning for the first offence, right? Blam. Fleshy bits around the armpit. You know the way smokers hold their arms when they light up.' He had put the Barrett's scope on one such target about to light up, watching him raise his arms slightly to shield the lighter from the wind. ‘They get that fixed and, here's the clever bit …'

‘It all sounds very clever to me so far.'

But Matt was winding up to his really clever bit, so missed the sarcasm. ‘During the patch-up, the medics stick in an RFID implant. Use radio scopes that get a return path from the implant, right? Second-time offender. Blam. Opposing upper body shot.'

‘And we fix that. And put in another implant?' Luke asked and saw Matt nod with a grin of delight. He knew he was being drawn in, but when Matt started on one of his theoreticals, it was like approaching a black hole. Once over the event horizon there was no turning back. ‘So the next time they get tagged. Two return signals. Third offence. Kill shot?'

‘But don't forget the thirty-second warning. It's their choice to stub out, or –'

‘– be taken out,' Luke finished it off for him.

‘Three shots. 45p.' Matt beamed.

‘Er … what about the cost of the operations to patch up their armpits?'

‘Less than five grand, on average, apparently. For a straightforward in and exit repair. We'd be using balls, remember. So, on average, three at five is fifteen plus the 45p for the ammo, right? Couple of grand for us and overall it'll save the NHS between ten to twenty grand. And don't forget, that's only for the right stubborn so-and-sos. I reckon most would jack it in after the first shot.'

‘Or before. With enough publicity. We could get that Ross Kemp to do a show about it.'

‘Right. As you pointed out. Education. Always about educating people. And multiply it all up by the millions of smokers we'd take out of the system. Money that can be better spent on roads and education and other health problems.' He held out his hands. ‘Simple, yeah? But the best bit is that it gives people like us something to do with the skills the government has spent years giving us, but then doesn't know what to do with when we've finished killing on their behalf. So. We just carry on doing it for them. In a new way, with a renewed sense of purpose, while saving the taxpayer a fortune in the long run.'

‘I get it. Stub out or be taken out. It's catchy. And you have thought it through, haven't you?

Matt nodded, as he slid back from the Barrett, while adding, ‘And I've got the perfect name for it.'

‘Go on.'

‘Surgical Strikes.'

Luke couldn't suppress a laugh. It was so daft. So macabre. But made so much sense. As much as it did them lying in a hide waiting to take a shot at a fat bloke in a chippy.

‘Never happen though, would it?' Matt grinned as he reached across for a granary bar.

‘Something tells me not,' Luke replied.

‘We'll just have to go back and work for the Yanks. Be the ones that the locals whinge about. They come over here. Take our sniper jobs. Kill our enemies. Kill our friends. Should be local killing by local people. That's what they'll mutter into their beards. And exactly what everyone's muttering here, isn't it?'

Luke looked across at Matt, now rummaging in the ration box for another granary bar. Sometimes he was never quite sure. The line between genius and madness.

‘What you looking so glum about?' Benno suddenly asked as he wriggled out from a service duct dragging the 110 V cable behind him. No one else was small enough to fit.

‘Oh, usual. Why life has to be so complicated.'

Benno just cackled. ‘Keep telling you, Joey, lad. It ain't. Do unto others and all that. If everyone's OK, it's fine. But if they're not, then you have the right to slap back.' He held up one end of the cable. ‘You figured this out yet?'

‘Nearly. Get the return to behind that worktop.'

Benno nodded and started to pull the cable from its reel, as Joey mulled over Benno's words. It seemed like such a simple code. Much simpler than the turning the other cheek line. It was that simple but markedly different interpretation of the Christian ethic that had got him into so much trouble during his life. Especially the bit about not taking matters into his own hands but letting others like the school or the law do it for him. Problem was, they never did, really.

‘It's probably the reason that mate you were telling me about can't settle after leaving the forces,' Benno offered. ‘A lot of them can't. If someone sticks a gun in your hand and the authority to use it, must be a bit hard having to deal with the jobsworths you meet back home.'

Joey had been telling Benno a bit about Luke. You got to know someone very well when you slept in a sleeping bag side by side. Luke may have been on some mountainside with Matt, but Joey had spent many a cold draughty night with Benno, kipping down on site to save spending money on digs.

Joey had also told Benno that life seemed to be falling into place for Luke when he met and married Janey. He had only a year left on his term before they would buy one of the small cottages on Top Road that, as its name suggested, looked down over Highbridge, and then start a family. How Luke then went to Afghanistan and while scraping the remnants of his colleague from the remains of a Snatch Land Rover he got the call to say Janey was dead. A relay of transport legs got him back for the funeral but 48 hours later he was back hunting the Taliban with a renewed vigour his commanders were concerned about but couldn't fault.

But, Joey explained to Benno, they had offered him all the usual psychobabble counselling, as he referred to it, but fell back on his own self-diagnosis. He had had only two things in his life and one of them was now dead, killed for no purpose other than becoming another statistic. It was not long before the disillusionment mounted alongside the body bags.

While the cause was worthy, Luke had repeatedly told Joey, the resources and political will were, as usual, lacking. Politicians always seemed to want to fight a civilised war. But, Luke kept asking, what the hell was that? The locals never appeared to mind blowing up their own, whether kids, women or passers-by. So why not let our lads get down in the gutter with them and rip 'em up?

They all knew it was about politics and opinion polls. And risk aversion. Just the system. But Joey also knew that, like Luke, Benno understood the real cause of disillusionment. Being screwed by that system. Just as Benno had become a victim of Health and Safety, so Luke became a victim of austerity cuts. Having decided to re-enlist he discovered that, despite his past service, he was, like so many others, no longer required. So he joined one of the American companies that provided what was euphemistically called ‘additional security'. Luke knew he was following one of the oldest traditions of warfare, from the Roman legions through the Crusades and into Afghanistan. History's hired guns. Of course he was never allowed to use the term ‘mercenary', but as Natasha had said, that was exactly what he was. And whatever he did, he made sure he was paid. Handsomely.

‘So why'd he come home?' Benno had asked, going straight to the point.

‘Dunno, Benno. Just dunno,' Joey had responded after deciding that despite how close they were, he wasn't going to say it was because after a late-night chat at the cottage, the obvious conclusion they had reached was to use the skills Luke had been given. And shoot the sort of people who had caused the death of Janey.

It was all this and the sense of camaraderie Joey shared with Benno that was going through his mind when Benno asked him why he looked so glum. To help one friend he would have to let down another.

Sean had been speaking for about ten minutes on the theme of how most people have strong opinions on what needs to be done but feel powerless to influence anything. A feeling that no one in authority listens or is in touch with them. Looking round the room he noticed how this just bounced off the seemingly impervious skin of officialdom. A sign that he was right? Or simply that they'd heard it all before?

He decided to ramp it up a bit.

‘But, well,' Sean continued. ‘We lost another of our young people at the weekend. Another senseless death. We probably all have our own individual opinions on what we should and shouldn't do. But that is always tempered, perhaps restrained, and constrained, by what we can do. I mean, what we are allowed to do.'

He turned and looked deliberately at the County and Council Chairmen and then towards Hilary, the major power brokers in the room. The Chairs remained impassive. Did they really have an opinion, Sean wondered, or was this just something they had to do as part of the role? But from Hilary there was a slight nod, although that, Sean knew, could simply illustrate either an understanding that people will take things into their own hands if frustrated enough, or her own desire to be let off the leash. To hang 'em and flog 'em. It did, however, give Sean his next line.

‘But does that mean more draconian action? Zero tolerance? Round 'em up?' He looked at Hilary, then to Arthur Young who was now taking advantage of Glynnis heading off to the kitchen to work his way through a plate of mini chocolate éclairs. ‘Hang 'em and flog 'em? Or, as we've tried that for years, decades, perhaps centuries, do we look for a new strategy?'

‘And when that fails, yet again, is it any wonder that people are looking to fringe politics? If they think those in the traditional parties – those in power – don't listen or seem powerless to act, is it any surprise they start to look for answers elsewhere?'

He hesitated for a moment. Wondering how far he should push his own ideas today. Or should he just play the polite host? He noticed Arthur was now being joined by a few other grazers who had spotted the cakes. Sod it, Sean thought, I am paying for this. Taking a deeper breath, he raised his voice above the growing gabble.

‘But do you know what I really think? We should stop messing about with all this.' He waved his hand in the direction of the CAD pop-up displays. ‘All this partnership stuff is great, but what is the point?' He saw Gill's teeth immediately retract behind stiffening lips. A smile of apprehension. This could be bad.

‘I don't mean the partnership bit. That's fine.' The lips remained tight. ‘But what are we really working towards? Teaching people what cannabis plants look like? For what? So they can spy on their neighbours? Or worse, as someone has already pointed out to me, they turn informant on the local drug gangs and then get kneecapped, or worse, for doing it?'

Gill was slowly moving towards the County Chairman. He might need some support, but Sean noticed he had a smile on his face. Did that mean he agreed? Or that he enjoyed someone making an idiot of himself? But the smile didn't match the one that now spread across Hilary's face, although Sean noticed her eyes were not on him but on an almost panicky Gill heading towards her main funder. Even the newshound was grinning as he put down his plate and reached for his iPhone.

‘I don't mean to be controversial,' Sean continued, ‘but surely the answer is in education.' He looked over to find the Head of the Comp, who had frozen, chocolate éclair almost in her mouth. He saw the expression on her face. Oh God, she was thinking. What's he going to blame me for now?

‘Not in school,' Sean quickly added. ‘As the kids probably know as much, if not more than any of us about the “drugs bad” philosophy, but real education about what drugs – any drugs – do to you.'

The éclair disappeared into a relieved and grateful mouth.

‘We spend time teaching our children the dangers of things like bleach under the sink, don't we? We practically educate them on how to handle two other major killers: alcohol and nicotine. But on other things we remain silent. We don't even try to find out, if we are honest, because we feel it isn't, well, it doesn't feel right. Is that simply because we think that if something is illegal we shouldn't? Somehow we feel we are not allowed to learn more about it.' He emphasised it again. ‘Or, is it because we are not encouraged, perhaps allowed, to discuss these things openly?'