Kuwait

This piece is an unedited work in progress, but I thought I’d share it anyway. It explores some of the backstory for James Leipfold, the protagonist in my upcoming detective novels, and is set during the First Gulf War.

 

AT NIGHT, when the dry winds blew across the foreign soil, Leipfold thought he could hear the ghosts of the dead. They cried for lost love, knocked at the doors and walls with a rattatat-tat like machine gun fire or simply breathed warm air on his neck when he was sweating in his bunk, surrounded by the smell of men and intense determination.

He was nineteen years old, young and gullible, and determined to serve his country. Not because he was patriotic, although he was, but because there was precious little else for him to do and besides – women loved a man in uniform, even those who claimed to be against the war. And Leipfold had never been much of a hit with the ladies, thanks to his floppy tuft of ginger hair, his height – which had almost ruled him out of joining the army – and his terse mannerisms and perpetual attitude.

The ghosts of the dead were getting louder. But Leipfold barely noticed.

Instead, he was lying back in his bunk, struggling to read through his letters in the half-light. They used to arrive twice a week, but that had slowed to once a fortnight. Rebecca, his fiancé, had begged him not to join the forces, but she’d eventually relented when he used the last of his savings to buy her a platinum band with a diamond on top. He’d told her that the only way to pay for the ceremony was if he got a proper job, and the army was the only choice for a man like him. Rebecca had given him her begrudging approval on a Tuesday night and Leipfold had volunteered the following morning.

Now, in a military cot in a foreign country, that other Leipfold seemed a lifetime away. The army had changed him from a boy into a man, with a man’s stubble and a man’s appetite to go with it.

He smiled and turned over the pages of one of the letters. Then the world fell apart.

The first thing he noticed was a panicked shout, the kind of inarculate ‘wuargeh’ noise that signaled trouble. Then there was the sound of an impact, followed by an explosion that rattled the walls and sent shivers of plaster cascading down from the roof in a fine snow, settling on Leipfold’s shoulders like flakes of dandruff. That was followed by a second, smaller explosion, and then the rattle of automatic gunfire.

Not again, Leipfold thought. He’d been hoping to pen a response to Rebecca – he had decent paper and everything – but that wasn’t looking like it was going to happen.

Then a klaxon sounded, and mean-spirited Sergeant Grundy – whose name had been adopted as a Cockney slang term for the army issue undies that the soldiers wore – barged into the room, using his voice like a trumped to rally the few troops who, like Leipfold, had made their way back from the m,ess to enjoy a little downtime. But in the army – at least in Leipfold’s regiment – nothing was ever quite that simple.

“Let’s be having you, ladies,” Grundy bellowed. “Pull those hands out of your trousers, get off your arses and get your shit together. I want you kitted out and battle ready in T minus five minutes and counting.”

Leipfold sighed and stashed the fragrant-smelling letters beneath his pillow, then stood speedily to attention, snapping off a quick salute before checking his kit bag and rummaging around for his lucky St. Christopher. He never went into action without it.

From a couple of bunks down, Private Williams – the only non-Englishman in the dorm, from Newport in the south of Wales – asked, “What the hell’s going on, sir”

“Damned if I know,” Grundy replied. “Probably a bunch of ragheads trying to kill us all. Look sharp.”

Leipfold cringed at the casual racism, though he knew it was as much a part of army life as hooliganism to a football fan. It only took one bad seed to spoil the whole orchard, and Grunday had always been – at least in his eyes – as much of a bad guy as the people he was paid to shoot at. Unfortunately, he was also his commanding officer.

Precisely three minutes and eight seconds later, Leipfold was reassembling with the rest of the regiment. He checked his weapon and then checked it again, while Sergeant Grundy barked orders and grouped his men into teams.

At last, he reached Privates Leipfold, Williams and Hodges, who’d arrived in the middle of the pack but somehow found themselves at the end of the line.

“You boys,” he said. “You’re coming with me. We’re on patrol duty. Let’s catch these arseholes before they break through the perimeter.”

“Yes sir,” they chorused.

Privately, Private Leipfold questioned the decision to head outside of the base in the middle of the night. Sure, they had technology on their site, but the insurgents they were up against had a huge advantage – they knew the lie of the land, and a little knowledge could be a dangerous thing in the wrong hands. But he also knew that an order was an order, and that it was his job to obey it whether he liked it or not.

And so the four men piled into the back of an army-issue off-roader. Leipfold had been in the back of them before, but that had been with Corporal Hodges at the wheel. Hodges signed up after being given an ultimatum – he had to either join the army or get kicked out of the family home. In the forces, Hodges had been able to apply the skills of his misspent youth in a number of legitimate ways, but it was his skill behind the wheel which had set him apart the most. He’d learned to drive in a succession of boosted cars, mostly old shitheaps with no alarm, but the army didn’t care. “The boy can drive,” Sergeant Grundy had said, paternally. “Who cares how he learned to do it?”

That night, though, Corporal Hodges was relegated to the passenger seat. Grundy grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out of the way as they hopped on, saying, “I’ll drive tonight.”

Leipfold didn’t know why, and he didn’t care. His job was to keep a lookout, to use his eagle eyes and his observation skills to identify any threats before they became a problem. It was a role that he took pride in, knowing that he helped to protect the rest of the squaddies, and it was also a role that he was good at. He had sharp eyes and a sharp mind, and had once successfully saved his men from an ambush after picking up on a suspicious lack of birdsong and the faintest reek of cordite.

That night, their vision was obscured by a low, rolling dust cloud, sand and grime and muck whipped together by a strong wind. A gunshot echoed out, a little too close for comfort, and was answered by the rattle of a coalition semi-automatic.

Leipfold held on tight and dug himself into his seat, his eyes still scanning the road ahead and the streets on either side of them. From the passenger seat, Corporal Hodges shouted out directions, while Sergeant Grundy twisted the wheel and imposed his will on the ATV.

Their first patrol was uneventful, though there was tension in the air and, from somewhere, the distant smell of burning gasoline. From the seat beside Leipfold, where he sat with one hand resting on the open window and the other on his gun, Private Williams muttered under his breath. “It’s too quiet,” he said. “I don’t like it. Let’s hurry up and wrap this up so we can go back to base.”

Sergeant Grundy grinned mirthlessly and said, “Son, let’s make one last loop and then get the hell out of here.”

They were two thirds of their way along the route when it happened.

Leipfold saw it first, and his razor-sharp eyes and brisk reflexes almost certainly saved his life. The first clue was movement on either side of the road ahead. Then the moonlight broke through a break in the clouds and illuminated a thin, metal wire across the road ahead. Leipfold saw nails and broken glass on the other side of it, but even in that moment of terror, his mind worked quickly to calculate the stopping distance. There simply wasn’t enough time.

“Hostiles,” he shouted, simultaneously adopting the brace position. He’d heard that it was useless at saving lives, adopted instead by airlines to save teeth so corpses could be identified by their dental records. “Floor it.”

But Grundy didn’t floor it. He hit the brakes instead.

The ATV skidded and hit the tripwire at an angle. Metal crashed against metal and the wire snapped, but not before ripping through the bonnet and most of the engine. The vehicle slowed to a stop, its tyres deflated by the detritus of the road.

Then all hell broke loose.

It started with a flash of light, which the soldiers heard a split second before they were hit by the sound and the shockwave. It came from the road in front of them and buffeted the vehicle with sheets of glass and metal, carving in the windscreen and flipping the ATV on to its side. Sergeant Grundy was killed instantly when the steering column jabbed him in the guts at the same time as an 18-inch piece of steel shrapnel embedded itself through his eye and out of the back of his skull, pinning him to the headrest. From beside him in the passenger seat, Private Williams howled in pain and tried to apply pressure to his shoulder.

Leipfold was shaken but unhurt, and Private Hodges had only sustained a light concussion. He was bleeding from the forehead and wearing a glazed expression. As the smoke and dust settled, Leipfold choked on a lungful of sand, burning his throat as he swallowed it, and ordered Hodges to call for backup.

But Hodges barely heard him. The man was berserk – Leipfold had seen it happen before – and he hopped out of the vehicle and crouched behind it, before unslinging his rifle and returning fire. Leipfold swore and followed Hodges out by crawling along the seat and rolling down and out onto the ground. With Hodges covering him, shooting at moving targets that he couldn’t even see to begin with, Leipfold crawled across the floor to the passenger door. He opened it and picked his head up, relieved to note that Private Williams had failed, as usual, to secure himself with a seatbelt. Leipfold took a couple of seconds to scan the man over, before dragging him from the car and onto the ground.

Meanwhile, bullets flew all around them, a mixed bag of calibres from handguns to submachine guns. When they’d been briefed on the militants, the commanding officers had shared a report from intel that listed some of the known weapons that they had access to, and it read like the results of a raid on a gun-smuggling jamboree. At the bottom of the list were six RPG launchers and enough grenades to take down the houses of parliament.

He heard the tell-tale whistle of one of the big guns and instinctively threw himself to the ground. Then the world erupted with both a bang and a whimper, and clods of sand flew through the air, half-glass from the heat and the momentum and as deadly as the shrapnel it took with it. Leipfold took a glancing blow in the side of the head from something that looked horrifically like the severed limb of his former commanding officer, the last act of Sergeant Grundy as the blast tore his body apart.

Then everything went quiet and everything went dark.

When Leipfold woke up, he was in the hospital. He’d been inside a couple of times to visit buddies who’d been hit by an IED or a stray bullet from a firefight, but he never thought he’d find himself inside it for the long haul.

The ward was almost empty, which he supposed was a good sign. So far, they hadn’t sustained heavy casualties, but there had been plenty of injuries as the insurgents fought the army’s advance at every step of the way. As well as Leipfold, there were two other soldiers on the ward, both asleep and with the unhealthy, sallow skin of injured men who hadn’t seen the sunlight for too many days and nights. One of them was missing his arm at the elbow, and the other was bandaged across most of the top half of his body. But despite the extent of their injuries, Leipfold thought it was good news. They were the survivors, the people who were going to make it and had been moved out of intensive care to somewhere a little more comfortable. Somewhere they could recover.

He looked down at his arms and his legs and he found that they were still there. Then he flexed his muscles and tried to move a little, and everything seemed to be in order. He ached like he’d been through a dozen rounds with a titan, but he could move enough to sit up in bed and press the button to summon some attention.

The summons was answered by a field nurse with a flat face and a dour expression upon it. He had a three-day stubble that was clearly visible on the other side of his face mask. He was holding a clipboard and he looked impatiently down at Leipfold as he asked what he wanted.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Insurgent attack,” the nurse replied. “You took a hit to the head.”

“Is anything broken?”

The nurse shook his head. “You were lucky,” he replied. “Lacerations across your torso and some burns on your leg, plus a bad concussion. Overall, I’d say it’s a miracle you survived. The fact that you survived without sustaining serious injuries is even more of a surprise. You’re lucky to be here, Private.”

Leipfold groaned and lay back in his bed. “What happened to the others?” he asked.

The medic shook his head again. “You should rest,” he said.

“Rest?” Leipfold repeated. He sat up again, though it clearly cost him an effort. The nurse walked over to him in an attempt to placate him, but Leipfold grabbed his arm and twisted it uncomfortably. “Tell me what happened,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” the nurse said. Leipfold loosened his grip a little. “You were the only survivor from your unit,” he said. Sergeant Grundy and Private Hodges were dead by the time that backup arrived. Private Williams was wounded and brought back here, but we couldn’t save him. He died last night.”

“Dead?” Leipfold said, his voice flat and his heart numb. Then he looked up again. “Last night? How long was I out?”

“You’ve been in here for three days,” the nurse said. “But enough of this. Calm down and get some rest. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“I know,” Leipfold replied. “You said. But I’ve been resting for three days. I need to get back out there. I need to find out what happened.”

“Forget about what happened,” the nurse said. “Please. Get some rest.”

Leipfold acquiesced, wearily, and let go of the nurse’s arm. The man backed away quickly and then beat a hasty retreat, mumbling something about patients and a lack of patience.

Leipfold watched the man go and lay back in the bed again. He meant to just pretend to be asleep, but he quickly found exhaustion was taking over, and he let his body – and his brain – rest.

But the following day was a different matter entirely. Leipfold waited for the staff to change and simply checked himself out without telling anyone. He told himself that he had no time for resting, and that he could better serve his fellow soldiers if he was up and on his feet. In reality, he didn’t want to spend any longer lying bedbound in a British Army field hospital. He wanted to be up, on his feet and out and about again.

He wanted to find the bastards who’d killed his friends.

Getting out of the hospital was the easy part. Getting hold of a set of civilian clothes and an SA80 proved to be more difficult, but Leipfold was a man of means. Getting off the base was easy – even with his injuries and his concealed firearm – and it was easy to blend in with the locals It helped that he could speak the language.

Leipfold was exhausted, but he refused to show it. He spend seven hours dipping in and out of the local watering houses, the places that the locals talked about with hushed voices when they provided intelligence in exchange for protection. They weren’t safe places for a soldier to be in, but Leipfold didn’t care. He was out of uniform, which helped, but he also had his firearm to fall back on if the shit hit the fan. He hoped that it wouldn’t.

He was looking for names, information. He was looking for a lead on the vicious motherfuckers who’d attached his unit. And eventually, after parting with enough money and talking to enough of the locals, Leipfold had a lead, the name of an abandoned farm on the outside of town. He coaxed it out of a contact, a man called Awni el-Halim who’d befriended a couple of the army boys when they’d carried out recon along the advance. Leipfold had been one of the squaddies that was assigned to the recon team, picked purely because he knew a couple of languages and could teach himself new ones pretty quickly.

el-Halim gave him a name and a set of co-ordinates. It wasn’t much, but it was enough.

By then, it was the night time, which made it easier for Leipfold to tab towards the farm without running the risk of being spotted, either by the militants or by soldiers from his own side. Even a civilian could be bad news, if he didn’t handle it correctly. But it was quiet, almost too quiet, and he wasn’t weighed down by a kit bag on his back, nor slowed by the need to maintain a formation. He made good time.

Even so, dawn was threatening to the break and the first rays of sunlight were filtering in over the horizon. He was tired, of course, but his training had taken over. His body ached, but the pain kept him alert, awake. He wished he had a couple of shots of vodka, or possibly even just a cigarette. But he had neither – he had only his wits and his determination. But that was all he needed.

The militant farm was near to Mosudariya, a hamlet that wasn’t on the maps. Leipfold had to follow his nose, allowing the stench of burning gasoline to guide him through the darkness. Later, as the sun rose up to its full-glory and Leipfold’s skin broke out in a clammy sweat to cool itself, he could track the fire on the horizon by the plumes of smoke that disturbed the desert and clotted up the dry, fetid air.

Leipfold inched slowly closer, dropping to his hands and knees for the final approach before slowing to a stop in a natural ditch where a gully had once meandered along, millennia ago. He poked his head over the top.

On the other side of the ditch, maybe thirty yards away, there was a single man beside a bonfire. While Leipfold watched, the man threw a threw a tyre on to the top of it, scattering ashes to the four winds.

Leipfold stood up slowly and drew his weapon. He aimed towards the man and shouted a short string of Arabic, then gestured with the barrel of his weapon for him to drop to the floor. He did so, slumping unceremoniously beside the fire, and Leipfold approached him cautiously. It was difficult to see him, with his face and head covered and his loose clothing draped over his body like a cross between a rug, a poncho and a child’s ghost costume. But then the man looked up at him, and Leipfold recognised his eyes even if he didn’t recognise anything else.

“el-Halim,” Leipfold said. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Hello sir,” the man replied. His English was about as good as Leipfold’s Arabic, but he always said that he needed the practice and so English was their lingua franca. They switched to Arabic if they ever hit a stumbling block.

“What are you doing here, Awni?” Leipfold asked.

“I came to warn you, sir,” el-Halim replied.

“Warn me? What about? And why didn’t you warn me back in town?”

“The walls have ears,” el-Halim said. “And eyes, too. I sent you out here to get you out of the way.”

“Out of the way of what?” Leipfold asked. “Is it the militants? What are they planning?”

el-Halim shook his head. “No, sir,” he said. “Not the militants. The Americans.”

“Oh,” Leipfold said. “Those guys. What have they done now?”

el-Halim shuffled uncomfortably on the floor, and Leipfold gestured for the man to get to his feet. The two of them looked around nervously, and Leipfold suggested finding someplace quieter, out in the empty dunes and away from the infernal smoke signal. el-Halim was all too happy to agree.

When Leipfold had found somewhere to his satisfaction, a small hollow amongst the dunes that kept them down and out of sight while offering a wide field of view if they needed it. It was quiet out there, the only sound the howling of the wind and the sand as it formed mini hurricanes. They’d be able to hear people coming, but it also meant that their own voices were carried on the wind. Leipfold gestured for el-Halim to continue – quietly.

“Well, sir,” el-Halim said, “it’s like this. I heard about the attack on your unit.”

“Three men died,” Leipfold said. “And I was almost the fourth.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” el-Halim said. Leipfold knew that he was telling the truth. The war had torn el-Halim’s life apart. It had taken his only son. But he wasn’t anti-British or anti-American. He wasn’t anti-Kuwaiti either. He was on the side of humanity, which was why he dealt with the army in the first place. He wanted to minimise losses on either side.

“What can you tell me about the attack?” Leipfold asked.

“Just that it wasn’t insurgents,” el-Halim replied. “Well it was, but it wasn’t really. They weren’t militants, they were mercenaries, working for the highest bidder. In this case, the highest bidder was your friends, the Americans.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Leipfold said.

“The whole thing was set up by the Americans,” el-Halim said. “They orchestrated it all and arranged for it to happen.”

“Why?” Leipfold asked.

“To cause outrage,” el-Halim said. He shrugged. “To justify a revenge attack, perhaps. To justify their presence here in the first place. Who knows?”

Leipfold frowned and his hands subconsciously drifted to the trigger of his SA80. He tensed his finger for a moment, then relaxed.

“Can you prove it?” Leipfold asked.

el-Halim shook his head. “Sorry, sir,” he said. “But you can trust me.”

“Trust you?” Leipfold repeated. “I hardly know you. I only met you a week ago.”

“Have I ever been wrong?”

“No,” Leipfold admitted, begrudgingly. “Okay. Let’s just assume for a second that you’re right. Where did you get the information?”

“I know a man who knows a man,” el-Halim said. “And that man knows a man in the mercenary group. There’s a lot of them around. Trust me, sir, my contacts are never wrong. Especially not these ones.”

“I have to have something,” Leipfold said. “I can’t go back to my superiors on the word of a civilian.”

el-Halim shrugged. “It makes no difference to me, sir,” he said. “But please, listen to me. Take your men and get out of here. There’s been too much bloodshed, and good men gone on both sides.”

“We march in a few days,” Leipfold replied.

“You must march now,” el-Halim urged. “Believe me, sir. If you stay, lives will be lost.”

Leipfold frowned. “I’ll think about it,” he said. “Where can I find these mercenaries?”

“You can’t,” el-Halim said. “You just need to hope that they don’t find you.”

A shout went up in the distance, followed by coarse laughter and Arabic chatter that Leipfold couldn’t quite understand, although he got the gist of it. el-Halim glanced fearfully over the top of the dune.

“Someone’s coming, sir,” he said. “Quick. We must get out of here. No one can see us together.”

“Yeah,” Leipfold agreed. “That would be bad for both of us. You go. I’ll keep my eyes peeled and head of in a different direction.”

“Will you tell your superiors what I told you?”

Leipfold hesitated. Then he held out his hand and said, “I’ll tell them.”

el-Halim shook it and then disappeared into the dirt and dust.

Leipfold stayed put for as long as he could, but the Arabs were getting closer and he had no way of knowing whether they were friendlies or hostiles. When they were close enough for a lucky shot to take someone out, he broke cover and burst through the dunes, heading south-southwest and back towards base. At any moment, he expected to hear a cry or the rat-a-tat-tat of automatic gunfire, but there was nothing. He’d always made a rule of never looking back, but he chanced it this time and saw that he was in the clear, and that they hadn’t seen him. They were heading in the direction of the burning tyres.

It was a long, lonely walk back to base. Leipfold knew it was a bad idea to travel in the daytime, but he was tired and hungry, compelled by the message that he carried to keep pushing forward. Every time he heard a car, he found himself breaking from the dusty road and running for cover. He knew that he should take a less direct route, but he couldn’t wait. And besides, he felt confused, dangerous and ready for anything. If someone attacked him, they’d pay with blood – even if it meant that he had to make a payment of his own.

But the route through the semi-desert was a lonely route, and Leipfold was left largely undisturbed as he navigated the dunes with his compass. His weapon was concealed again, but he knew he could draw and fire within a second and a half, if it came to it. But the Kuwaiti sands were quiet and empty, which was probably a good thing. Leipfold’s nerves were shot, and he would’ve welcomed the reprieve of a little action.

He walked all day again and well into the night. By the time he saw the familiar haze of light pollution that marked the perimeter of the Anglo-American basecamp, he’d been awake for nearly 48 hours, and the wounds that he’d suffered were crying out in pain for sleep, to heal them. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he almost took a bullet as he approached the camp’s perimeter.

“Halt,” a voice shouted, as a beam of light shone through the night and hit Leipfold in the eyes, dazzling him and knocking him slightly sideways. The beam remained on him as he lifted up his hands and dropped down onto his knees, as per protocol.

“It’s me,” Leipfold shouted. “Private James Leipfold.”

“Private Leipfold?” The voice, which was distorted by a powerful megaphone but which still sounded vaguely familiar, went silent for a moment. Leipfold suspected that he was consulting a superior.

Leipfold saluted with one hand but said nothing.

“Come inside,” the sentry replied, eventually. His voice sounded doubtful, concerned even. “We’ve been expecting you.”

Leipfold entered the rest of the compound unchallenged, but he was met at the entrance by an armed guard of a dozen men. They were led by a dour-faced sergeant that Leipfold had never seen before. They cuffed him and led him away to an interrogation room.

Leipfold found himself sitting on a crate on the other side of an Irish field sergeant’s makeshift desk. He was so tired he could barely hold his head up, and the uncomfortable bed at the hospital felt like a dream he had half a lifetime ago.

“You’re in trouble now, boyo,” the sergeant said. He was chewing on a hunk of tobacco as he spoke, and it made his accent sound even thicker, even murkier. Even with all of his skill with foreign languages, Leipfold found it difficult to understand what the man was saying. “You’d better have a bloody good reason for disappearing, Private.”

“About that,” Leipfold said. He told the sergeant about his recovery after the attack, the chance he took to escape from the hospital and to track down the perpetrators. He told him about how he stole a set of civvies and trekked into the local villages, and how he found the burning tyres near Mosudariya. He told him about el-Halim and the message that he’d delivered, and about the rumour he’d heard of American involvement in the attack that had killed his colleagues.

“That’s all you’ve got for me, is it, pal?”

“That’s all you should need,” Leipfold replied. His fatigue was beginning to show, and he channeled his fury into striking his fist off the table.

“I need proof, Private,” the sergeant said.

“You’ll find your proof if you look for it,” Leipfold replied.

It was the wrong answer, but it had the desired effect. The sergeant sent him to the cells pending additional investigation, and Leipfold fell into a deep, psychedelic sleep.

The following days passed by in a slow haze. Leipfold was questioned again and again and again, but all by the same people. He asked to see a superior officer but was refused, and while he was given medical attention, it took place in his cell and the doctor refused to speak to him. His wounds were healing nicely, despite the strain he’d put his body under, but his mind was still in turmoil and he wanted out again, wanted answers.

Sometime during the second week, there was movement around the camp, and Leipfold was cuffed, taken from his cell and stuffed into the back of an armoured van, with two armed guards there in the back with him. The Irish sergeant, who Leipfold had got to know well across the intervening days but who had only ever identified himself with his number, completed the foursome in the back of the van.

“What’s happening?” Leipfold asked.

The sergeant chuckled and said, “We’re moving out, fella. Pressing further on. It’s not a good idea to stick around after what we just pulled.”

“What happened?”

“Revenge attack,” the sergeant said. “Against the insurgents. Heavy casualties.”

“On our side?”

The sergeant shook his head. “Just theirs,” he said.

“You idiots,” Leipfold murmured. “You murdered the truth.”

“Perhaps,” the sergeant said. “I’d keep your mouth shut if I were you. If you’re not careful, it’ll get you into trouble.”

“How much more trouble can I get into?”

“Not much,” the sergeant said. “You’re already looking at a court martial. Maybe jail time.”

“What for?” Leipfold asked. He felt numb all over, like the IED had just detonated all over again.  He felt the first, ghostly flashes of PTSD, like a curse that hung over him waiting to detonate.

“That story of yours,” the sergeant said. “Perhaps there was some truth in it after all.”

Leipfold looked sharply up at him. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“Think about it,” the sergeant said. He winked at him. “Why else do you think they’re trying to cut ties with you?”

Leipfold thought about it.

“Perhaps you’re right,” he said.

He stopped fighting. He stopped caring. He let the Irish sergeant take full control of him, passing through cells and jails and finally into a military tribunal. They found him guilty, quickly, but he dodged jail thanks to a deal that he signed. They wouldn’t take the case further, as long as he promised not to talk to the press.

But talking to the press was the last thing on Leipfold’s mind. He hated journalists on principle, and he only ever read the paper when he knew there was a crossword in it. And he had something else to occupy his thoughts.

Without any proof, his story had been discredited. Worse than that, it had been called an outright lie and called his whole character into question. He’d been kicked out of the army – discharged dishonourably like the pus from an infected ear. And he still didn’t know how it had happened. Politics, he supposed.

Or some sort of conspiracy.

Leipfold didn’t know, and perhaps he didn’t care. It was hard to tell, and it wasn’t like he could easily fly back into a warzone to investigate. He filed it away in his head on the ‘maybe later’ list. His mind was focused on two things. The first was his deep, lifelong desire to learn the truth. And the second was the bottle of whiskey that was calling his name and asking him to drink it.