Free Street Soldier by Andy McNab

circle showing whatever was right in front of the ACOG.
    The Warrior had come to rest behind a small clump of bent trees. The sky was clouding over and a cool breezeblew, bringing a taste of rain with it. Sean had no doubt that it would hit them before the night was out. That was something else he’d learned: air smelled different according to the weather. Back in London’s fumes of fast food and exhaust and warm pavements, he’d never noticed.
    The voice of Corporal Josh Heaton came through on the PRR.
    ‘ Intel reports insurgents are located in the cottage at the edge of the village, five hundred metres beyond the other side of the trees. Move! ’
    Sean was up on his feet, weapon lowered but still in the shoulder so that he could bring it to bear quickly if they were attacked. Ahead of him was Heaton, taking point. Behind him came Toni Clark and Johnny Bright. They moved together down to the left of the trees, and the village below came into view. It looked empty, not a soul about; the buildings were battered and abandoned. They followed a small rise in the ground until they were about two hundred metres from the cottage – a small stone building, two up, two down, with an overgrown garden. Sean felt adrenaline racing through his body like high-octane fuel, scorching away any tiredness and fusing him to the moment.
    Heaton came through again.
    ‘ Stenders and Clarky, take position by rock at eleven o’clock. Shitey and me will drop down at the end of the rise. That gives us two firing positions with good cover. We pin the bastards down while US takes Kama Sutra and Chewie through the front door. ’
    Shitey was Bright, for reasons obvious to anyone who ever had to share an enclosed space with him. US was Lance Corporal Marshall. Kama Sutra was Ravi Mitra, and Chewie was Curtis West, nicknamed for his phenomenal ability to grow facial hair, which he tried to tame with a moustache and sideburns like a seventies porn king.
    And Stenders was Sean. He had got the nickname because someone at Catterick, who had never been further south than Leeds in his life, thought he talked like a character from EastEnders . As far as Sean was concerned, the only people who talked like characters from EastEnders were characters from EastEnders , but it had stuck.
    Heaton’s battle order made strategic sense, but there was one drawback that Sean could see immediately.
    ‘So we’re at the back again,’ he murmured to Clark. The corporal had a tendency to put them together, somewhere where the action wasn’t. There were various reasons Sean could think of for that. For him – well, OK, he was the youngest in the platoon. For Clark – the only possibilities he could think of weren’t good ones, and he didn’t like them.
    But if Clark was having the same thoughts, she just shrugged them off. ‘We’re the ones with the UGL,’ she said with a smile, tapping the underslung grenade launcher bolted to her own SA80. ‘So the money’s on us surviving over those two bastards.’
    Footsteps came up alongside, followed by the dark silhouette of Bright. ‘Corp loves me more, mate, that’s just all there is to it,’ he said softly as he padded past. He made surprisingly little sound for a bloke who was six foot tall and, unlike Sean, had the bulk to go with it.
    ‘Nah, he’s just using you as a human shield,’ Sean answered in kind. ‘Me and your mum’ll have a good long shag in your memory.’ He grinned as he got the finger by way of reply.
    Sean and Clark hurried over to the rock, rifles at the ready and scanning all the way. They dropped to the ground in its shadow, giving the enemy as small a target as possible, and brought their weapons to bear on the building. Sean focused on the target through the ACOG with the same unblinking stare which, in another life, he would have given a car that he intended to take. Now all they had to do was wait.
    As it started to rain, the order came through on the PRR to attack.
    Sean and Clark