Traitor by Duncan Falconer Page A

pretty much all of its facilities and features.
    He felt his anxiety levels rise. The days of waiting had suddenly become minutes. Deacon certainly hadn’t done anything like this before. His career had begun with the 2nd Parachute Regiment and had been followed by three years in B Squadron, 22 Special Air Service. He’d missed the Falklands conflict by a couple of years because of his age but had seen some action in the first Gulf War - which was where he’d begun to head down the slippery slope. A combination of boredom with the military life and the discovery of how simple it was to make money illegally had altered his perspective. He had never owned anything of value because he had never been particularly attracted by modern comforts such as fancy cars or wristwatches. That changed a month before the end of the conflict.
    Special forces customarily received solid gold coins to take on operations in the desert. They were part of their emergency survival equipment. They could buy assistance if an action resulted in a team member failing to make the pick-up or emergency rendezvous. Nomadic tribesmen, for instance, roamed much of the desert entirely ignorant or uncaring of the battles going on around them.
    During Deacon’s last operation, an observation post along with three other SAS troopers, he had decided to keep the gold. He made a joke of it to the others, just serious enough for them to go for it if they agreed in any way - they all had to be a part of the plan for it to work. He mused how it would be such an easy way to make some money, that they deserved to come out of the war with something - the gold Krugerrands were worth around five thousand pounds for each man. The others bit. They agreed to see it through to just before the point of no return. If it looked like they could get away with it they would do it.
    They would claim that a threatening enemy presence had caused them to bug out of the position, and that the only escape route headed away from the rendezvous point. Despite them hiding out during the subsequent daylight hours, a group of nomadic Arabs had discovered them and had threatened to turn the patrol over to the Iraqis. They’d had a choice: they could either fight their way out, which might have been costly, or hand over the Krugerrands in exchange for freedom.
    It felt sound enough to go ahead with. Deacon warned them that suspicions would be raised but if they all stuck to their guns they would get away with it. No one would be able to prove otherwise.
    The point of no return would be when the time came to hide the gold and present the operational report. They would secrete the gold among equipment already packed for the return to Hereford.
    And that was precisely what they did. The interrogators questioned the soldiers as a group and individually. They even tried to convince each of the men that another had cracked and revealed the truth. But the technique did not succeed. And despite practically everyone ‘knowing’ that the patrol had stolen the gold, no one could prove it, as Deacon had said, and so they were never charged.
    Deacon quit the SAS and the military a few months before the invasion of Afghanistan. Had he known that the regiment was going to war again he would have changed his mind - he liked a good battle. He turned his sights on becoming a mercenary, advertising himself as a former SAS soldier now turned freelance ‘military specialist’. He soon got all the battling he could handle: many of his subsequent experiences were more dangerous than any he might have had with the SAS. The oil platform task, as it was planned, would be nowhere near as perilous as some he had carried out during those years. By the end of the second Gulf War, big money, along with big risks, had become the norm for him. Running convoys from one side of Iraq to the other, and more recently along the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan, was the most dangerous mercenary work there was. In the half-dozen