Scullion put on his helmet and raised his rifle and followed the younger officer into the farm. Rashid walked from the vehicle behind and Luke noticed his shirt was soaked in sweat. ‘It is okay,’ Rashid said. ‘This farm is safe, you can go in.’
‘And how do you know that, Rashid?’ Luke turned and squared up to him by the broken stones in the yard. ‘Would that be your fucken sixth sense or is it your priceless contacts with the enemy?’
‘This building has been cleared.’
‘By whom? Not by me.’
‘We have the surveillance plan.’
‘No, Rashid. Your head is a surveillance plan. I don’t fucken trust you as far as I could throw you.’ Rashid stepped back and put up his hands and shook his head like a professional.
‘We are the same rank. I will not be disrespected.’
‘No? Well, you can take your one beady eye and fuck right off over there, Captain. I am having a private meeting with Major Scullion of the British army. Fuck off, I said.’
The boys liked it. They liked his style. And they liked nothing
more than sudden anger directed at a local. They thought Rashid was all right but a bit of a crawler, and the captain’s way of sorting him out had them enthralled over in the Vector. Rashid just walked away and none of them turned their heads as he passed. When Scullion and Campbell went inside, the boys just fiddled with their rifles and then dropped onto the road. They started a game at the edge of the field with a few Royal Scots, playing football with some empty water bottles in a plastic bag.
There was chicken shit on the floor. Scullion flicked a gum wrapper and turned at the wall to look up at his young friend. ‘He’s one of us,’ he said. ‘You should be nicer to our allies.’
‘He’s irrelevant.’
‘A little keen, maybe.’
‘He’s got nothing to do with our section.’
‘He’s with us,’ Scullion said. ‘Mainly, he’s with us. And you can’t blame them for having maybe a … heightened sense of desecration, what, with everything that’s going on?’
‘It’s not the 1840s,’ Luke said. ‘And this is not your private army.’
Scullion made a show of listening carefully to him and then he walked to the far end of the room. Light came from the internal courtyard and he seemed to absorb the light and draw strength from it.
‘Listen, Luke. Are you homesick?’
‘Don’t make this about me.’
‘But, are you?’
‘I’ve been homesick all my life.’
‘Good. That’s a good answer. You’re an intelligent man and you should pay attention to these facts.’
‘I’m not your pupil any more.’
‘That’s right. Your contempt has run ahead of your wisdom. And you no longer have a use for me.’
‘This unit … this regiment has need of a senior officer in the field, sir, who does not absent himself during a major firefight. Can you explain yourself?’
‘As a matter of fact … I can’t.’
‘They said you fell asleep.’
‘I wasn’t asleep, Luke. I was in the Vector. I was on the floor of the Vector, to be accurate.’
‘And you decided it would be a good idea to leave a group of your own soldiers, average age eighteen, to survive and then recover from a heavily armed ambush by unknown enemy forces? You decided this was the best way to deploy your experience, did you? The best way to exhibit your leadership?’
‘I didn’t decide anything, Luke. I was frozen to the spot and that is simply what happened.’
‘You’re a fucken coward!’
‘So it would appear.’ Scullion didn’t flinch. He didn’t move. And as the seconds passed he seemed almost relieved.
‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘So do I. But it happened. Plain as that. I couldn’t move.’ He spat his gum onto the ground and looked at it. ‘Do you know how many countries I’ve fought in, Captain?’
‘I couldn’t guess.’
‘Just about all of them. Wherever we had a decent amount of hostility. And here’s my hand on my Northern Irish heart to tell you I was never scared in any of them. In fact, I was overjoyed.’
‘That’s what they say.’
‘You know the phrase, “They have blood on their hands”? Well, I have blood on my hands, comrade, buckets of it, all in the
cause of something good and something noble. Democracy.’
‘So you decide to launch your new career as a white feather just at the very moment when my boys are in danger? You leave them to a firefight in the dark, do you? Exposed on a hill? What the fuck is happening to you, Charlie? Are you losing your mind?’
‘I might be. It might be that.’
‘Not on my fucken watch.’
He sniggered. ‘Little Luke Campbell, who joined the army to find his daddy. Ends up confronting real-life danger and real-life fear. Shall I phone your mammy, Luke — get her to come up and turn your Xbox back on? Get you back to your nice wee world of video game combat, eh, my friend? Piling up the points. Topping the leader board. This nasty world of real people and unexpected turns doesn’t really suit you, does it?’
‘You’re sick, Charlie. That stuff with your wife has made you mental or something.’
‘Oh, we’re all mental. You think all this fighting was making me wise? Making me braver? Here’s the lesson, brother: it wears away at you; there’s less of you every day.’
‘There’s less of what?’
‘Less life. Less cause. Less morality. Less belief. Less judgement. Less energy. Less fucken hope. Just less. Know what I mean?’
‘You know what, sir: I don’t fucken think I do.’
‘Well, you should. Captain Sharp-as-a-Needle. Mr Up-at-the-Crack-of-Dawn. Where’s your fighting spirit now? It’s not just about me, all this. When you joined this regiment you wanted to police the world. What a sight you were. You wanted to arrest every bad guy with a mobile phone. No territory was too hostile for Private Ego and his wish to shape the future. That’s what made us friends. What happened to all that?’
The major’s words burned into him as they had in the days when he felt ideas could make him a better soldier. ‘Your private troubles,’ he said, ‘are threatening the lives of my men, and I won’t stand for it.’ Luke stepped forward and was up in the major’s face. ‘I’ll destroy you first. Soon as this mission is over, I’m reporting you.’
‘You’ve waited all your life for this, little Luke. I hope you’re enjoying your moment.’
‘The boys needed you …’
Scullion was shaking and blinking and as he turned sideways he put his hands under his armpits. ‘And I needed them. I did. But I wasn’t available and it makes me sick to my stomach.’ His face flushed when he said those words and he looked as if he might vomit on the farmhouse floor. He bent over, taking deep breaths with closed eyes, and when he looked up thirty years of humanitarian fatigue was on his face. He opened his mouth to say something but didn’t say it and then tried again. ‘I don’t sleep,’ he whispered, ‘and I may never sleep again. Those pills you gave me — I need more of them. I need to stop my insides turning.’
‘You need to leave, Charlie.’ They could hear the revving of vehicles outside.
‘I don’t think I can. They’ll have to kill me.’
‘Don’t be daft, Major,’ Luke said, suddenly younger again. It made him sad to see how willingly Scullion accepted blame. ‘The whole point of what I’m saying is you’re not fit for the boys. They need you. All your experience and what you have to offer.’
Scullion slung on his rifle. ‘All my experience,’ he said, laughing in Luke’s direction and twisting his mouth. ‘All my terrific experience and all the army’s experience, too.’