Escape from Baghdad by James Ashcroft

Author:James Ashcroft [James Ashcroft]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2010-04-15T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

SEAMUS HAYES HAD been working as a VIP bodyguard for a young but famous actress. She adored Seamus. She paid him vast sums of money. Obscene amounts. She asked his advice on tour dates and flower arrangements, new houses and new scripts. The star was very intuitive. Each time Seamus was on the verge of quitting, she gave him more money.

There’s cachet having a military attaché on the staff.

Who’s the guy with the big moustache?

My bodyguard. I don’t go anywhere without him.

When I first met Seamus with Les in Baghdad they were both obviously cut from the same cloth, lean and fit from boxing and running marathons. Professional soldiers from the old-school British Army and hard as coffin nails.

Les had been too busy falling in love to send me a text but it was a relief to see him striding almost a head taller beside Seamus across the concrete concourse at BIAP. His back was straight as a ramrod, his green eyes glowed and there was a whisper of dark curls creeping over the buttons of his white shirt. As an appreciator of fine art and good architecture, I can without self-consciousness say Les Trevellick was a looker. In fact three girls in fatigues waiting to fly out watched him saunter by and you didn’t have to be a mind reader to know what fantasies were playing in their heads.

Les Trevellick was an ex-Royal Engineer staff sergeant who could build or blow up anything and had done both the Para and Commando course, on which he became an instructor. Seamus Hayes had been in the Paras fourteen years and come out as a colour sergeant. They were both in their forties, like Dai, sharp as Gurkha khukris and fit as a butcher’s dog.

Seamus and Les dropped their day sacks and greeted Dai and me with big smiles and firm handshakes. Although we’d kept in touch we hadn’t all been together in one spot since the last time we had been in Baghdad.

‘Any problems getting through immigration?’ I asked.

‘You know what they say, mucker, “Ask no questions, hear no lies.”’ Seamus laughed back at me.

Dai and I unloaded our bags full of weapons and ammunition for Les and Seamus to get kitted up. Neither of them had been working in a high-threat environment, so Dai and I had brought body armour and helmets as well as the rest of the kit. They filled pouches and checked weapons while ripping the piss out of me with the Rupert routine, beloved of all soldiers, which presupposes all officers are not particularly bright, inbred, upper-class toffs called ‘Rupert’ who have difficulty distinguishing rrrs from wwws, and who possesses the minimum intelligence required to shoot pheasant and quaff port. As I got behind the wheel of the car there was horror on every face.

‘Fuck me, Wupert’s dwiving. Are we even going to make it out of the car park?’

‘Ha ha. Just get in the fucking wagon or you can walk to the Green Zone.’

There

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