Dark Winter by Andy McNab Page B

beeper. Fuck the time difference, he was paid 24/7.
    I listened to the prompts and was pressing home my number when I heard a vehicle draw up just behind me. A Jock voice shouted, ‘All right, boy?’
    I turned and saw two smiling, hard-lived-in faces that I’d hoped never to see again. Fuck knows what they were called. They were Trainers and Sundance to me, the Yes Man’s regulators, the ones who would have killed Kelly if I hadn’t done the job for him in Panama.
    My cell rang and I saw Trainers pull up the handbrake, keeping them a few metres back.
    ‘It’s me. You paged.’
    I stood and stared at the Volvo as Sundance got on to his cell as well, probably to the Yes Man.
    ‘I’ve just got the call. Why me? You know why I’m here.’
    ‘Yes. But I’m not a social worker, son.’ He didn’t sound as if I’d just woken him up.
    ‘I can’t do it.’
    ‘I’ll call Osama, have him put things on hold, shall I? No, son, duty calls.’
    ‘There must be somebody else.’
    ‘I want my man on it, and today that’s you because you’re there.’
    ‘But I’ve got a duty here, I need to be with her . . .’ I was suddenly aware how pathetic I must be sounding.
    ‘What do you imagine I do all day? I’m paid to think, that’s what I do. I’ve thought – and no, there isn’t anyone. It’s an unsparing world, son. You’re paid to do, so do.’
    ‘I understand that but—’
    ‘You don’t understand, and there are no buts. Get to work or she mightn’t ever get to appreciate that fancy therapy.’
    I got a sudden dull pain in the centre of my chest as Sundance carried on gobbing into his cell. I’d had George down as a better man than that. ‘Fuck you! That stunt’s been pulled before with these two fuckers he’s sent for me. Why bring a child into this shit again? Fucking arseholes.’
    George remained calm as Sundance closed down his cell and smiled at Trainers. ‘You misunderstand, son. We’re not the threat here.’ There was a few seconds’ pause. I kept my mouth shut. ‘Don’t call me any more. Report to London until I say otherwise, you hear me?’
    I closed down and walked over to the Volvo. The headful of dirty blond hair that had reminded me of a young Robert Redford the first time I saw it had gone. Sundance poked his head out of the passenger window, looking like he was just growing out of a Number One.
    ‘I said, all right, boy?’ He had the kind of thick Glasgow accent that you could only get from forty-odd years of chewing gravel. ‘In a bit of a huff there, ain’t ya? That girl of yours must be getting a bit older now. You know, getting a bit of a handful.’ He held his hands up as if weighing a pair of breasts, and gave me the kind of leer that made me want to smash his face in.
    Trainers liked that and joined in the laughter as he pulled out a packet of Drum and some Rizlas. He was about the same age and had the dark brown version of Sundance’s haircut. They’d obviously kept up hitting the weights since their days in the H Blocks as prisoners of the UK’s anti-terrorism laws, but still looked bulked-up rather than well honed. With their broken noses and big barrel chests they wouldn’t have looked out of place in ill-fitting dinner jackets and Doc Martens outside a nightclub.
    I could see Trainers’s forearms rippling below his short-sleeved shirt as he started to roll up. Last time I saw him his Red Hand of Ulster tattoo had just been lasered off, and all traces had now disappeared.
    I knew this wasn’t the time to do anything but breathe deeply. Trainers handed the first roll-up to Sundance, and his one hundred per cent Belfast boomed through the passenger window: ‘The boss said to make sure you come to the meeting. Don’t want you wimping out on us now, do we, big man?’
    I leant down to get a better view of him as he got to grips with the second roll-up, and had a chance to admire his trademark shop-soiled Nikes. Sundance flicked unsuccessfully at a disposable