Once A Pilgrim: a breathtaking, pulse-pounding SAS thriller

‘Standby, standby… Go!’

There were two deafening explosions, instantly followed by the wailing of car alarms activated by the pressure wave from the breach charges, and the assault teams were in.

From where Carr stood, he could hear the immediate crackle of small arms fire coming from inside the villa.

He fought the temptation to ask questions on the radio, to find out what was going on; the teams had to be allowed to get on with their task with no interruption.

Instead, he turned to speak to Evan Forrest, and it was at that moment that gunfire erupted from a building directly opposite the target.

It was wild and high, and the assault team at whom it was directed were able to take cover inside the walled compound of the grey villa.

Carr watched as they began returning fire.

‘Fucking amateur,’ said Geordie, and he was right – the gunman had fired two long bursts, the first of which had illuminated his position in one of the upstairs rooms, the second of which confirmed he had not changed his position.

But this was still very much not ideal: a number of Carr’s men were now engaged in a firefight inside and outside the target.

He made a quick decision. The team outside was Delta 18 Charlie, led by Steve Smith. Steve was a good man, and full of balls, and that meant that in a matter of moments he’d be over the wall and rushing across the street to take out the shooter.

That was not the best way to deal with this threat.

Carr keyed his mike. ‘Steve, it’s John,’ he said, calmly. ‘Stay put, mate, and keep suppressing that house. We’re in a blind spot to them so I’m going in round the back. Okay?’

Smith’s reply came back a moment later. ‘Okay, John, got it. I think there’s at least three shooters in there.’

‘Noted, mate,’ said Carr. ‘Moving shortly.’

He turned to the small group he was with. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Evan, you stay here with the scaley and Jedd, okay? Me, Wayne and Geordie are going to take them fuckers out.’

The OC nodded.

‘You watch your back round here, Evan,’ said Carr. ‘Geordie, ready? Wayne, ready?’

Rooney nodded. ‘Ready, John,’ he said, the effort to use Carr’s first name written all over his face.

Carr grinned. ‘Good man. Right, let’s go.’ He pressed his transmit button. ‘Moving, Steve.’

Smith acknowledged.

Carr led Geordie Skelton and Wayne Rooney into the alley behind the shooters’ house, until they were level with it. As they reached a rear gate, in the shadow of an eight-foot back wall, he stopped.

A sound, from the other side of the wall – low voices, and the click-clack of weapons being cocked.

Carr raised his hand to stop Geordie, and put his finger to his lips. Wayne immediately took a knee and turned to cover their rear.

Carr moved forward and looked through the gate.

He saw four men, one of them placing an RPG7 warhead into its launcher, the others peering cautiously around the side of the building towards the target house where the assault teams were still engaged.

Carr looked back towards Geordie.

Gave a thumbs down – enemy – and held up four fingers.

Geordie nodded.

Carr removed a fragmentation grenade from his assault vest and showed it to Geordie, who nodded back and immediately brought up his weapon to cover him. Noiselessly, Carr removed the pin and casually lobbed the grenade over the wall, and moved back into cover.

In the darkness, and amidst the cacophony from the firefight, the men neither saw nor heard the grenade land.

Three seconds later it detonated, partially eviscerating the three to the side and leaving them moaning and writhing on the ground. Carr stepped through the gate, followed closely by Geordie. The RPG man turned, seeing only black shapes – though Carr saw him well enough, and saw his look of utter surprise – and opened his mouth to say something.

Carr placed the barrel of his weapon into the centre of the man’s face and squeezed the trigger. The muzzle flash illuminated his head as it exploded from the impact of the high velocity round, and Carr was turning and moving before the body hit the floor.

Geordie took care of the three on the ground and then they moved quickly to the back door of the house, ready to make entry.

As they reached it, a burst of gunfire erupted from the window above, followed by shouting.

Carr turned: Wayne Rooney had been following them through the gate, and had taken rounds directly into the chest and face; his body armour had absorbed the impact to his chest, but a round had just clipped his right temple. It might have been survivable, ironically, if it hadn’t been for his helmet. As it was, the bullet had bounced around inside the Kevlar, ricocheting through his brain and making mincemeat of it. An inch to the left and things would have been different.

*

But shit happens.

The temptation was to run to help him, but that would have been suicidal, and pointless: Carr knew the young trooper was dead before he hit the ground.

The only thing to do now was get into the house and kill everyone inside.

Cursing, he opened the door.

He and Geordie stepped into a darkened kitchen, and paused to listen. They could hear some movement upstairs, but nothing in the immediate vicinity. While Geordie covered an open doorway which led into a hall, Carr keyed his mike and transmitted. ‘Steve, it’s John. We’re in the downstairs of the house. Make sure no-one fires into the downstairs, okay?’

He listened for a response.

Nothing.

He repeated the transmission.

This time it was acknowledged.

With rounds smacking into the upper floor, and rapid AK fire being returned, the two men quickly cleared the lower floor of the building.

Carr got on the net again. ‘Steve,’ he said, ‘Downstairs clear. We’re moving upstairs. Stop firing.’

‘Okay, John.’

Carefully, John Carr and Geordie Skelton headed up the marble staircase. They cleared the rear rooms of the house – whoever had shot Wayne Rooney had obviously returned to the front – and came to the final two doors, which faced the target building.

Both doors were closed.

Carr pointed at the first and held up one finger.

Geordie understood that he was going to be the first through the door.

He nodded and took up position.

Carr pressed the door handle and pushed it open.

Geordie stepped through.

Directly in front of him, an insurgent began to turn, lifting an AK47 and swinging it around.

Geordie fired two quick shots into his face, and the man was punched backwards and straight out of the open window.

To the right, a second insurgent turned to engage the SAS man, who beat him to the shot and pulled his trigger…

Nothing.

It couldn’t have happened at a worse time.

‘Shit,’ screamed Geordie. ‘Stoppage!’

He began to drop into the kneeling position, reaching for his pistol, knowing that he would not have time to draw it and take out the threat, knowing also that Carr would hear and respond.

The big Tynesider felt the impact of the round in his mid-thigh at the same moment that he heard the report of Carr’s weapon sounding over his head.

The shooter was flung backwards against the wall; just to make sure, Carr stepped forward, put the barrel of his weapon to the man’s forehead, and shot him again.

Then he turned to Geordie. ‘You okay?’ he said.

‘What do you fucking think?’ said Skelton, through gritted teeth. ‘I’ve been fucking shot, you daft twat. Fuck me, it hurts.’

‘It’s only a flesh wound, you big girl,’ said Carr, with a sniff. ‘Sort your weapon out.’

Geordie nodded, cleared the stoppage, and stuck in a new magazine.

It was as the mag was slapped home that Carr looked down, and immediately saw that it was far from a flesh wound.

Geordie’s leg was sticking out at an unnatural angle, indicating that the round had hit bone; Carr knew that he could bleed out quickly from a shot to the femur, especially if the femoral artery was damaged.

‘Oh, bollocks,’ he said. ‘Right, Geordie. I’m going to pull you over to the wall over there and prop you up. Keep an eye on the doorway, okay?’

Another nod.

Sweating, Carr dragged Skelton the ten or twelve feet over to the side of the room. It was a bastard – he weighed more than 270lbs with all his kit, and he couldn’t help much, and Carr felt horribly vulnerable, especially when he had to turn his back to the door to sit him up.

Once that was done, Carr pulled the tourniquet from his chest rig.

‘Keep watching that fucking door,’ he said, feeling for the entry point on Geordie’s leg.

He found it, and then located the exit wound on the back of the thigh. It was large, and wet with blood, and full of bone splinters.

Shit, he thought. But at least the artery appeared to be intact.

‘Okay, mate,’ he said. ‘It’s fine. I’m going to put this on, yeah? It’s going to hurt a bit.’

Carr applied the tourniquet and pulled it tight.

Geordie let out a low moan of animal pain; he was a hard man, and Carr knew he must be in something near agony.

‘That’s done, mate,’ he said, wiping his bloodied hands on his combats. ‘Now listen, I need to go and clear that last room. Anyone but me comes through that door, you kill them. Got it?’

‘I’m coming,’ said Geordie. ‘You can’t do it by yourself.’

He tried to stand, but fell back down.

‘Ah, shit,’ he said. ‘That does fucking hurt. Give me a hand up.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Carr. ‘Stay here.’

Geordie gave him a thumbs-up with his left hand, his right wrapped round the pistol grip of his Diemaco, which was aimed at the doorway.

Carr smiled, returned the thumbs-up, and stepped out and back into the hallway.

Looking at the door to the last room, readying himself to step through that breach.

And then the handle started to move, and the door began to open.

Carr moved to the wall, flush to the door, and took aim.

A bloodied hand gripped the side of the door recess, and then a man of sixty or so stepped out, unarmed, hands cradling his belly. His white shirt was stained red with blood from a gunshot wound to the stomach, and when he looked at Carr the Scot saw shock but no fear in his eyes.

He smiled at Carr and nodded – as if he was acknowledging a stranger in the street, on a nice summer’s day. But then another man, much younger, stepped out behind him.

The second man looked at Carr for a split second, yelled ‘Allahu akhbar!’ and raised his hand.

Carr was diving back into Geordie’s room when the suicide vest detonated, and the force seemed to propel him even quicker.

Momentarily stunned, he came to a few moments later, lying in a heap in the floor, his ears ringing, covered in plaster and dust, and coughing and choking.

From outside, somewhere across the street, he could hear a voice shouting, ‘John! John!’

He sat up and looked around himself.

His hearing became clearer, and he realised that the shouting was coming from Geordie.

‘Jesus man,’ said Skelton, his own pain momentarily forgotten. ‘Fuck me. You okay?’

Carr patted himself down, and stood up. ‘Motherfucker,’ he said. ‘That was close.’

He could feel the heat before he saw the flames.

‘Geordie,’ he shouted. ‘We’ve got to get out. The place is on fire. I’m gonnae have to help you up. It’s going to hurt, bud.’

Skelton shot him a withering look. ‘Just get on with it,’ he said. ‘It’s not like I can fucking hang around, is it?’

Carr keyed his radio. ‘Steve, house clear. We’re coming out the front. Get some guys over here to pick up Wayne, he’s down at the back.’

He helped Geordie to his feet, and they made their way quickly down the stairs, the injured man hopping on his good leg and cursing as he went; the flames were confined to the top floor, close to where the guy had detonated, but still the heat drove them on.

Outside, the assault teams had cleared the grey villa, and they were now starting to regroup, ready to move out.

In the distance, one or two shadowy figures were flitting across the road – locals, roused by the firefight.

As yet they’d not been contacted.

But it was only a matter of time.

They needed to get moving.

Geordie was starting to falter, the adrenalin waning.

Carr laid him on the ground, as gently as he could.

‘Medic!’ he shouted. ‘Medic! Quick!’

One of the team medics rushed over and took in the situation.

‘Has he had morphine, John?’

‘No mate, nothing. The tourniquet’s only been on couple of minutes. Soon as you get a drip in him, get him back to the vehicles and call into the Ops room. Casualty requiring immediate surgery, get the medevac stood by at the FOB.’

For a moment, he’d considered bringing the medevac into Dora, but he didn’t think the injury was life-threatening, and he wasn’t going to risk a heli and its crew, even for his best mate.

With Geordie handed over, he looked at his watch: from the first explosion until now, only six minutes had elapsed.

He jogged over to the OC. Forrest was standing talking to the primary assault team leader, and Carr picked up the tail end of the conversation.

‘Definitely dead?’ Forrest was saying.

‘That’s right, boss.’

‘Fuck me. We’re going to be popular now.’ He looked at Carr. ‘Did you hear that? Joker’s dead.’

‘Yeah,’ said Carr. ‘Good news.’

‘It’s not fucking good news, John.’

‘Hey, boss,’ said Carr. ‘We’ve got Wayne down round the back there, and Geordie’s took a bad one to the leg. So you’re right, it’s not good that he’s dead. It’s fucking great. Now, we need to get the fuck back to the FOB.’

2.

SIX MONTHS LATER – nineteen years after he’d passed Selection and walked into Stirling Lines in Hereford for the first time as a young blade – it was all over.

Carr had spent the time since getting back from that last tour on gardening leave, getting ready to leave the Army.

It wasn’t easy – the military was all he’d known since his early adulthood – and his marriage was collapsing. Not many lasted in his line of work: the longest period he and Stella had spent together since he’d joined the Regiment was three weeks, and being thrown together – with all the comedown of a demanding trip to Iraq, and the emotion of leaving... They weren’t at daggers drawn, but she didn’t know him anymore, and he didn’t know her, and neither of them cared too much. She was talking about taking the kids back home to Bangor, the County Down town where they’d met and courted. He wasn’t too keen on that – his little girl, in particular, was happy and settled in a good little school near Hereford – but he wasn’t sure he had the strength to fight her.

At least he had a decent job lined up – security manager with an oil company in Southern Iraq. Eight hundred quid a day, month on, month off. He might finally buy himself a decent car.

He’d spent a fair while with Geordie – that round in Dora had shattered the SQMS’s femur, and after three operations and a lot of metalwork he’d been left with a nice limp and a good line in bitter, melodramatic asides. The SAS never medically discharges any man against his will – there’s always a desk job needs doing somewhere – but Skelton had put his own papers in. If he was never going to make sergeant major, and clearly he wasn’t now, then what was the point?

‘Probably for the best,’ Carr had said, deadpan, as he sat in his mate’s hospital room. ‘You’d only have ruined the Squadron, anyway.’

The last thing he’d done in uniform was to attend the funeral of Wayne Rooney. It always upset him to see a flag-draped coffin, adorned with a beige beret, and it was even worse when the guy in question was young.

Rooney had been just twenty-four, and engaged to his childhood sweetheart.

But Carr took comfort in the fact that the men who wore that beret accepted the risk that came with it.

He’d been very glad to know Paul – the dead man’s real Christian name – he told the young man’s mother and fiancée, as the wake got going.

Glad, too – he didn’t add – that his days of visiting grieving families were over.

And now here he was, sitting in front of the Commanding Officer in Hereford for his farewell chat.

It was a bittersweet moment.

Carr and Mark Topham had been around each other for almost every year of the Scot’s Special Forces career, and they liked and respected each other, despite coming from very different backgrounds.

Topham had been born into privilege – big house, expensive school, his father a High Court judge – whereas Carr had grown up sharing a bedroom with his brother in a council tenement in Niddrie, the grey, miserable, shitey, arse-end of Edinburgh.

A welder, his dad, and his mum a school cleaning lady. Hard-working, good and decent people – his mother, in particular, had been a regular at Craigmillar Park Church just across the way – but there’d never been much in the way of luxury. If his dad was scratching around for work, and he often was, then some weeks there’d not been much in the way of food, either.

Mark Topham’s school friends were all stockbrokers or lawyers or businessmen; off the top of his head, Carr could name half a dozen pals from his own early years who were dead from heroin, or booze, or from looking at the wrong guy in the wrong way in the wrong pub. His best pal from junior school, Kenny Shaw, was currently doing a twenty stretch in Saughton for killing a guy in some stupid gang feud, and Carr knew that he could very easily have ended up alongside him. The very day he’d gone down to the Armed Forces Careers Office in Edinburgh – a fresh-faced teenager, in love with the idea of soldiering – a local ne’er-do-well had collared him outside the chippy and offered him twenty quid to keep a shotgun under his bed for a couple of weeks.

He’d been tempted, as well: he’d never seen twenty quid in his life. But he’d walked away from it – partly because it just felt wrong, mostly not wanting to upset his mum – and every day he gave thanks for that. The Army had given him discipline and focus, and turned him into a man.

And now, all those years later, he looked across the desk at Topham, waiting for him to try and twist his arm.

He wasn’t disappointed.

‘You know it’s not too late to change your mind, John,’ he said. ‘What would it take to keep you? Realistically?’

‘I’d like to be an operator in a Sabre Squadron again,’ said Carr, knowing he had more chance of levitating. Experience and know-how took you a long way, but there was no substitute for the strength and fitness and aggression that a younger man could bring.

‘Yes,’ said Topham, making a church steeple out of his fingers and smiling ruefully. ‘I thought you’d say that. But that’s the one thing we can’t do. Not even for Mad John, I’m sorry to say.’

Carr smiled despite himself at the nickname, which had followed him round the Regiment for the last fifteen years.

‘Of course you cannae,’ he said. ‘But you asked. What else is there? Become an officer? No offence, Mark, but that’s not me.’

‘This has been your life for nearly twenty years. Are you sure you want to walk away from it all?’

Carr looked at the CO for a moment. ‘No, I’m sure I don’t want to. I fucking hate the idea. But it comes to us all, and this is my time. I’m going to walk to the main gate, hand in my pass, and it’s all behind me.’

‘I respect that. It’s a shame, but I respect it.’

Carr smiled. ‘Not to mention, I’ve been offered a job I can’t refuse. Twenty years living in shitholes, getting shot at, blown up, eating compo… It’s time to enjoy life. It disnae last forever. I want the cash.’

‘You tight Jock bastard,’ said Topham, shaking his head and grinning.

Carr laughed. ‘Me, a tight Jock bastard? Here’s you with your stately home, and your polo ponies.’

‘Fair one,’ said Topham, with another rueful expression.

‘Boss, trust me, I hate it more than you do, but it’s just time to go. At least I can walk out the gate with my head held high, and think about all the guys we knew who didn’t have that option. I beat the clock. Ask young Rooney if he wants to walk out the Camp again. Ask Pete Squire, or Jonny Lawton, or Rick Jones. Ask any of them.’

‘True. A lot of good men on that clock.’

‘Too many.’

Mark Topham stared out of the window at a cloudless blue sky. The thump of a helicopter landing on the field outside bounced through the glass.

‘Well, you can’t say I didn’t try,’ he said, with a resigned smile. ‘You’ve had a citation submitted for the night in Dora, by the way.’

Carr raised his eyebrows. ‘Just doing my job,’ he said. ‘It’s not about the medals.’

‘Sell it to Ashcroft, then. But joking aside, well done. Richly deserved.’

‘Thanks boss. Means a lot.’

Topham stood up, and Carr followed suit.

The 22 CO held out a hand. ‘I can honestly say, John, that it has been an enormous pleasure and a singular privilege to serve with you. You’re always welcome here. Godspeed.’

A slight lump in his throat, and his eyes stinging a little, Carr nodded.

‘Aye,’ was all he could manage.

He strode out of the Commanding Officer’s room into the corridor and towards the exit to the Regimental Headquarters building, where he walked, head down, straight into a tall, slender man in the corridor – a man whose angular appearance belied his considerable tenacity, courage, and intellect.

Major General Guy de Vere, Director Special Forces, who had arrived a few minutes earlier on the helicopter, for a planning meeting with Mark Topham.

‘Christ, John, you nearly took me out,’ said de Vere, when he saw who it was. ‘I understand you’re leaving us?’

‘Yeah, that’s me, boss,’ said Carr, shaking the outstretched hand. ‘I’m out the door. Civvie street.’

‘Mark couldn’t persuade you?’

‘Nah. Sorry.’

De Vere shook his head. ‘Oh, well,’ he said. ‘Amicitiae nostrae memoriam something-sempi-something fore.’

‘I’ll be honest with you, boss,’ said Carr. ‘I havnae a clue what you just said there.’

‘Cicero,’ said de Vere. ‘I hope the memory of our friendship lasts forever.’

‘Jesus,’ said Carr. ‘I’m not dying, you know. I only live down the road.’

Guy de Vere smiled broadly and clapped Carr on the shoulder.

‘Tell you what, John,’ he said, ‘we’ve come a fucking long way since that night in the Clonards, haven’t we?’

PART TWO

BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND TWENTY YEARS EARLIER

3.

LANCE CORPORAL JOHN CARR hefted his rifle in his left hand and looked across the vehicle yard at the young officer.

‘Jesus,’ murmured Carr. ‘I reckon your missus shaves more often than he does.’

Next to him, Corporal Mick ‘Scouse’ Parry chuckled. ‘You cheeky bastard,’ he said. ‘Fair one, mind.’

A thin, pink dawn was just catching the top of the Black Mountain on the edge of west Belfast, but the inside of Fort Whiterock was still lit by orange sodium. In the glare of one of the lights, the second lieutenant – who was very tall and very slender – was struggling to lay out the unwieldy tribal map on the bonnet of his Snatch Land Rover.

‘He’s in my wagon, is he?’ said Carr, with a thin smile. ‘I think I’ll stick the lanky streak of piss up on top cover. See what he’s made of. Hopefully he’ll get a pissy nappy in the face.’

‘Character-building,’ said Parry, with an approving look.

The officer finally succeeded in smoothing down the map, and now he made a show of studying it.

‘Look at him,’ said Carr, shaking his head. ‘The height of the bastard, he’ll make a fucking good target. Mind you, he’s a thin cunt. They’ll hardly see him if he turns sideways.’