2
Raines drove into Lower Downtown Denver, glancing at a sign welcoming him to ‘LoDo’. He passed by converted Victorian warehouses housing bars and shops and parked his pick-up truck on the street outside a diner at the corner of Seventeenth and Market.
Inside, he told the waitress that he was meeting someone and needed a table for two. She grabbed a couple of menus and led him to a table set against a bare brick wall. The place was nice, but nothing out of the ordinary – anonymous.
Raines liked anonymous.
He rubbed at his jeans where the scar was on his leg, feeling an ache starting to throb.
He stared out of the window fronting the street, light from the sun reflecting in the glass of the shop fronts across the road. Remembered the baking heat of the sun that day at Lashkar Gah. Remembered the oven-like interior of the Land Rover they travelled in to get to the poppy field.
Raines and Horn got to the Land Rover and waited at the rear door with the British lieutenant and the RMP corporal. Two privates came over from the body of British soldiers, unlocked the rear doors and went round to the front.
The corporal looked no older than Horn, who was twenty-three. Raines still found it hard to believe that Horn had left college, where he was studying chemistry and physics, to join the army and come to this god-awful place. Plus, he’d had his shaggy, student hair shaved off in a regulation military cut. Raines had turned forty on this tour and for the first time in his military career was starting to feel old.
The lieutenant motioned for Raines and Horn to get in the back of the Land Rover. They climbed in and sat facing each other on parallel benches immediately behind the front seats. They shifted, trying to get comfortable in the heat, swatting at flies that buzzed in from outside. Horn wiped his sleeve across his face, smearing sweat on his uniform.
‘Christ it’s hot,’ the British RMP corporal said, climbing in and sitting next to Horn.
The lieutenant sat next to Raines and pulled the rear door shut.
‘Yeah,’ Horn said. ‘Wait till next month, then complain.’
The corporal stared at Horn as though he had insulted his mother. He caught himself and tried to smile. It was less than convincing.
Raines knew the type: way too much testosterone and always on the verge of a fight. Even the most innocuous of comments or a look out of place was likely to set him off. He knew, because it was how he used to be.
‘What’s your name, son?’ Raines asked him.
‘Andy Johnson, Sarge.’
The lieutenant leaned towards the soldiers in the front of the vehicle.
‘Let’s get this moving, please, gentlemen,’ she shouted over the sound of the diesel engine starting up.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ the driver replied.
‘Hold on to your hats,’ Raines said. ‘We’re heading for bandit country.’
A man sat opposite Raines in the diner and put his newspaper down on the table; waved at the waitress to bring him some coffee. He was a stocky man with dark hair cut military short.
‘Penny for them?’ the man asked.
Raines said nothing and waited for the waitress to finish and leave. He thought about Matt Horn. About how it all went so wrong.
‘How did it go last night?’ the man asked.
Raines put his hand on the newspaper and turned it to read the headline on the front page about the crash. The man waited.
‘He was on that.’ Raines tapped the photo under the headline. ‘Stark, I mean.’
‘That won’t be the end of it. You know that, right?’
‘Of course I know.’
‘So what do we do now?’
‘Nothing. I mean, it’s business as usual. I’ve got my meeting with the … investor tomorrow.’
The man looked at Raines for a long beat, leaning back in his seat.
‘You know if that’s the way you want to do it I’ll go along with it. So will everyone else. But it’s risky.’
Raines snorted.
‘Like it was all fun and games up to this point.’
The man held his hands up.
‘I’m just saying, is all.’
Raines remembered another man doing the same thing in very different circumstances. A British field medic in an operating theatre at the camp in Afghanistan. The man’s hands covered in Matt Horn’s blood. His hands up like he was giving in, letting Horn go. Raines didn’t care much for surrender. Made that plain to those medics.
Raines looked at the man across the table.
‘We can’t stop now,’ he told the man. ‘And I don’t want to anyway. I’m owed. We all are.’
The waitress came over and they ordered breakfast, Raines staring at the photograph of the downed plane on the front page of the newspaper.
Now they’ll really come after me hard, he thought.
Bring it on.