Free Street Soldier by Andy McNab Page B

curled into an O, and she was moving it back and forth. He grinned.
    The Warrior lurched through the trees and skidded to a halt under Private Penfold’s unskilful guiding hand.
    The hostage looked round. ‘Christ, is that how he always drives?’ he asked.
    And Sean clocked his face properly. His mouth dropped open and a word blurted out before he could stop it. ‘Sergeant!’
    Sergeant Phil Adams gazed casually back, not registering any surprise. ‘Well, bugger me, it’s Sean Harker. Worst traumatic flashback I ever had.’
    Heaton looked from one to the other. ‘You know each other?’ His expression suddenly changed. ‘And – uh – Sergeant ?’
    Sean reckoned Heaton had known the hostage was a volunteer, but not that he was also a guy who outranked him. Minus his helmet, you could see that he was a slim, usually scowling twenty-one-year-old. He was from the same part of the world as Sean, and that was all Sean knew about him. Sean wondered if he had a gang background too. Maybe he still clung onto the old politics and couldn’t bring himself to be chummy with one of the Littern Guyz.
    Now, Heaton was looking at Sean with slightly narrowed eyes, like Sean had kept a deep secret from him.
    ‘All the way back to the Why-Oh-Whys, Corporal.’ Adams straightened up and began to unbutton the combat blouse.
    The Why-Oh-Whys was the name that had inevitably got stuck to the YOI Cadets – probably the first time someone said the name out loud. It certainly summed up Sean’s feelings after that first, intense session in the gym.
    ‘You back with the real army, then, Sergeant?’ he asked.
    ‘Recruiting for the Why-Oh-Whys was only a brief posting while I got sorted out after Afghanistan, Harker. Yes, I’m back, for my sins.’ He pulled off the blouse to reveal the standard smock of a Personal Clothing System Combat Uniform, with his three sergeant’s stripes clearly visible. From his pocket he pulled a dark blue Fusiliers beret, which he set on his head with precise, millimetre accuracy. The red and white feathered hackle ruffled proudly in the breeze.
    ‘And guess what, lads,’ Adams added. ‘I’m your new platoon sergeant, so it is my pleasure to be the first to tell you that what I just saw was an absolute fucking disaster . Lance Corporal Marshall’s gorillas came into the room guns blazing. If it had been live ammo, there’d have been a neat row of holes stitched right across my chest, just prior to tearing my torso apart.’ He clapped his hands together with a big smile. ‘So I can see I’m going to have the time of my life setting you lot straight.’
    *
    The three Warriors were parked up in a half-circle around the cottage, while Franklin took them all through the exercise – what had gone right, what had gone wrong, quite apart from the small detail of having killed their hostage. A light drizzle drifted over them.
    The platoon was split into three sections, each commanded by a corporal, with a lance corporal as his second in command. Above them was the sergeant, second in command of the whole platoon, and above him was Franklin – the Rupert, the officer in overall charge, with a piece of paper signed by the Queen to prove it.
    In real life, Franklin would have been the one getting it in the neck from his own superiors for the hostage’s death, so he was probably being nicer than anyone deserved.
    ‘OK, so you weren’t expecting a hostage. Not important . I didn’t tell you to expect one. Not important . I might not have had the full gen from Intel either. Or the hostage might have been acquired more recently than the latest report. Or there might not have been a hostage at all, but there could have been valuable intelligence for the Green Slime’ – he meant the Intelligence Corps – ‘on planned attacks or the placement of Improvised Explosive Devices – anything that would serve the army better if it was retrieved in one piece,rather than vaporized along with the people who put it