Hank was fascinated with the differences between his country and this one, from buildings to clothing, cars, shops, even the signposts.They passed one that indicated they were headed toward Rockly Sands Holiday Park.

‘That the sea?’ he asked catching a glimpse of yacht masts and an expanse of grey water between the houses.

‘The harbour,’ Marty said.‘Supposed to be the largest natural harbour in the world, or maybe in Britain, I forget which.’

‘That a fact?’

‘Most of it’s too shallow for big boats - too much mud. Biggest goddamned mosquitoes you ever seen down on the south side. New SBS recruits get to sit in the bushes the first night and day wearin’ nothin’ but shorts and a T-shirt. Man, they get eaten’ alive. It’s the start of their hell week, like our buds.’

The road levelled out at the top of a hill. ‘These houses are officers’ quarters.’ Marty indicated left and right like a tour guide. ‘Those over there are for regular ranks.’

They passed a column of soldiers running along the road.

‘Are those SBS guys?’ Hank asked.

‘No. They’re regular Marines. The camp’s mostly SB but there’s a bunch of regulars: sailors, army, admin, cooks, transport, stuff like that . . . SB don’t run in columns of three.’

They reached the end of the houses and a field large enough to fit four rugby pitches appeared on the right, the other side of a high-security fence. Beyond the field, three hundred yards away, was a cluster of buildings, nothing taller than three storeys. ‘That’s the camp,’ Marty said.

Hank studied the base with interest as they drove parallel to it.

They turned a corner towards the main gate. Two Sea King Navy helicopters came into view, parked at the far end of the playing fields.

Marty pulled the car to a stop at the main gate, where an armed sentry wearing a green beret moulded to his head and combat clothing stepped out of a cubicle in the middle of the road to check his identity card. Hank watched another sentry the other side of the road waiting alongside a mirror lying face-up on wheels with lights attached in case he was needed to check beneath the vehicle.

‘Hank? ID,’ Marty said.

‘Oh, sorry,’ Hank said as he quickly searched for his ID. He pulled it out of his wallet and handed it to the guard, who checked the photo then Hank’s face.

‘Get used to my ugly mug,’ Hank said with a grin. The guard remained expressionless as he handed back the card and signalled his partner to raise the barrier. Marty gave the guard a wave and drove slowly into the camp and along the main road that headed through the centre of the building complex.

They passed hangars, administration buildings and a flag-pole in the middle of a small green where the Union Jack lay motionless at the top. Hank looked down the side roads beyond the buildings that lined the main road, catching glimpses of lines of vehicles that included large jeeps camouflaged for desert with twin heavy calibre machine-guns mounted in the back. At the end of one road he saw several sleek, camouflage speedboats on trailers, also with twin machine-guns mounted behind the cockpits. The road curved to the right leaving the main hub of the camp behind and headed towards another, smaller collection of buildings, all looking quite new with several more under construction.

‘A few years back SB only had a small piece of this camp. Now they damn near own all of it.’

‘Are all of SB based here?’ Hank asked.

‘Hell, no. They’re spread about the country like hen shit. They’re always goin’ or comin’ back from somewhere.’

‘A lotta missions?’

‘Yeah. A lotta ops I guess.’

‘What kinda ops?’

‘Well, you know how it is. They’re pretty secretive, obviously, just like us.’

‘They don’t tell you what’s going on?’

‘Well, depends what they’re doing but you won’t feel like an outsider,’ Marty said, trying to find the right words. ‘They’ve always made me feel at home, if you see what I mean.’

‘So you get to know what’s going on?’ Hank asked, not catching Marty’s attempt at subtlety.

‘It’s kinda like, well . . . I’m not officially supposed to know everything they get involved in, but . . . well . . . you virtually live on top of each other, and this ain’t exactly a big organisation. I mean, like they’re about a quarter our size. So you’re gonna hear things you probably ain’t supposed to. And they know that. It’s kind’ve understood that whatever you hear you keep under your hat, as they say.’

Hank nodded.

‘The boss is a pretty cool guy - Colonel Hilliard,’ Marty continued. ‘You won’t see much of him though. He spends most of his time in London or checking out operational areas.’

‘What kinda stuff are they doing?’ Hank asked.

‘A lotta stuff.’

‘Like what?’

Marty shrugged, reluctant to say any more.‘They go everywhere. ’

‘Like where?’ Hank persisted.

Marty sighed.‘They flew two minis out to South America last week, for instance.’

‘Mini-subs?’

‘One day a team’s packin’ jungle stuff, the next another’s loadin’ up arctic gear.’

‘You get to go on any ops?’

Marty drove into a car park with a handful of cars in it and pulled into a space. He killed the engine and remained in the car, taking a moment to compose a reply. ‘It’s like this, Hank . . . We’re over here to exchange knowledge with these guys and maintain a working relationship. As far as ops are concerned we’re only supposed to get involved in things that come under NATO or the North Atlantic treaty - joint Anglo-US stuff, okay? Like Afghanistan and the Gulf, for instance.’

Hank nodded.

‘If other stuff comes up, if you happen to be in the room when it’s mentioned, you just shut the fuck up and stay in the background.’

‘What kinda stuff?’

‘Come on, Hank.’

‘What’s the problem? You said I’m gonna hear about it anyway. What kinda stuff?’

‘Hank.’

‘What am I, some kinda spy?’

‘There’s nothin’ in particular. I’m just generalising here. Sometimes you run across something that ain’t nothin’ to do with the US.’

‘You saying you get involved in these things sometimes?’ Hank pushed, sensing there was room to dig a little deeper.

‘I never said that.’

‘But are you saying that? Come on, Marty. I’m gonna find out, right?’

Marty was reluctant to disclose any more detail but Hank was not going to let him off the hook easily. ‘Okay. Yeah. Things can happen.’

‘You get involved in ops.’

‘Yeah. It’s possible under the right circumstances to get involved in some ops. It pretty much depends on the situation, how you get on with the guys, the team boss especially. But generally there’s no way. It’d be too risky if anything went wrong.’

‘So how would you get on an op - just for instance?’

‘Jesus, you don’t give up, do you?’

‘I’m just asking.’

Marty sighed. ‘Well, supposing you were on an exercise with a team somewhere - the Far East for instance, and the balloon went up.’

‘What balloon?’

‘It’s just an expression. Supposing there was a sudden real op emergency and you just happened to be with the team that had to respond. Maybe they can’t leave you where you are or they can’t get you back to the UK. So they take you along.They ain’t technically supposed to, but there isn’t much anyone can do. You’re kinda stuck with ’em.’

Hank thought about that for a moment. ‘So . . . you done anything like that?’

‘I’ve been on a couple of short ops.’

‘Like what?’

Marty shrugged. ‘Stuff.’

‘Come on, Marty. It ain’t like we’re on different sides,’ Hank pleaded. ‘I’m not gonna say anything to anyone, for Pete’s sake. It’s your job to let me know what goes on here.’

‘I went on an op to Columbia.’

‘Drugs?’

‘Yeah.’

‘But that’s joint Anglo-US ops anyway.’

‘Yeah, I guess.’

‘What I’m talking about is, you know, other stuff. Their stuff,’ Hank persisted.

‘If I did I wouldn’t say.’ Marty was beginning to feel uncomfortable. Hank was about to complain, but Marty cut him off. ‘Hey, look, Hank. You gotta respect the job, okay. There’s a trust thing going on here.’

‘What’s the big deal? So what if you went on an op with these guys. I’m just interested, that’s all. Christ, if you think I’m gonna blab it all over town then fine . . . ’

Marty exhaled tiredly and gave in. ‘I was on that Sierra Leone job last year against the West End boys.’

‘No shit,’ Hank said, impressed. ‘You see any action?’

‘I ran a couple re-supplies to the OP dive teams sitting in the river below the enemy camp. It was interesting. We were outnumbered about twenty to one most of the time.’

‘Were you there when the shit went down?’

‘I was on the edge of it. We bagged a couple runners. I got to shed some lead.’

‘You bagged someone?’

A smirk grew across Marty’s face. ‘I gotta strike.’

Hank gushed enthusiasm. ‘Damn, that’s great, man. You fucken bagged a motherfucker.’

‘Yeah,’ Marty said, grinning.

‘That’s fucken cool,’ Hank said, momentarily lost in a daydream, suddenly wishing he had been on the last exchange instead of Marty.

‘It was a good op, well planned and executed. One of the guys leapt out of the water just as the Paras and the SAS were flying in on the choppers, ran into a hut and took out six of ’em in one go.’

‘No shit! Six?’

‘That was nothin’ compared to how many one team waxed at the jailbreak in Afghanistan. It must be some kinda record for an SF team.’

‘I know. I was there,’ Hank said.

‘You were there?’

‘Two days after it was all over . . . Where were you?’

Marty looked suddenly pissed off. ‘At the friggin’ airport, picking sandflies outta my butt. Sweet FA went on down there while the rest of the guys were running around Tora Bora rackin’ up the rag-heads one after the other.’

They both sat in silence for a moment, depressed at their missed opportunities.

‘Some guys get all the breaks, don’t they?’ Hank said. ‘I always feel like I’m the one who gets left out, you know? I’m not lucky that way. It’s like I don’t push it enough.’

Marty nodded in sympathy.‘Yeah, sometimes you’ve gotta make it happen,’ he said as he opened his door. ‘Let’s go take a walk about.’

‘Shit, I’d bust a gut to see some action while I was here,’ Hank said.

Marty paused to look at him. ‘Part of it is up to you. If they think you’re a dud they’ll leave you on the sidelines.’

Hank flashed him a look. ‘Why would they think I was a dud?’

‘All I’m saying is, don’t push anything on to these guys. Let the marriage happen at its own pace. Okay? For sure you’ll spend the first year in a training team taking selection courses, laying on demos, giving lectures, stuff like that. Then maybe after that they’ll put you in one of the squadrons for some cross training.’

‘Why would they stick me in a training team for a year?’ Hank asked, not overjoyed at the prospect.

‘It’s what everyone does. I did a year before I joined M squadron. Training team is the best place to learn how they operate in general. It’s cool. You’ll enjoy it.’

Hank shrugged, trying to adopt a philosophical attitude.

‘Trust me. It’s a lotta fun,’ Marty added, then offering him further consolation, ‘Sometimes training team is the only team around and if an op comes along they can find themselves suitin’ up.’

Hank nodded, looking a little more pleased about that. ‘What are the negative things?’ he asked.

‘There’s always negative things,’ Marty said. ‘They don’t have the same cash flow we do.They’re kinda poor compared to us.You lose a piece of kit for instance and you’re paying for it if you don’t have a good story. Can’t just walk into the store like back home and say give me another.’

Hank shrugged. He could live with that.

‘Come on,’ Marty said, opening the door. ‘It’s a good time to take a look around. A lot of the guys are away.’

As they headed across the camp Marty pointed out various buildings: the gymnasium, swimming pool, officers’ and seniors’ messes, the climbing towers and headquarters complex.

‘You enjoyed your time here?’ Hank asked.

‘Yeah, pretty much. I’m lookin’ forward to getting home though. I think Kate’s gonna miss it more than me. She was hardly in Virginia a few months before we came here so she never made a lotta friends. After two years she’s made a bunch of friends here.’

Marty glanced at Hank, something on his mind. ‘Everything okay between you and Kathryn?’

Hank shrugged. ‘Yeah,’ he said.

‘I don’t mean to pry,’ Marty said.‘Moving countries, especially with kids, can be tense.’

Hank glanced at him, wondering if he should give Marty an explanation for the day before.‘She’ll settle in. She doesn’t like being away from home.’

‘I only asked because it’s kinda important you don’t have any problems on the home front. I mean, she’s as much a part of the team as you are in a way. They hold the wives in pretty tight here. They’re encouraged to support each other, especially when the guys are away. If a big op goes down they haul them all into the camp and brief them as much as they can. The guys can sometimes be away for months without being able to call home and what with the job being on the dodgy side . . .’

‘Dodgy?’ Hank asked.

‘Dangerous. You’ll pick up a lotta new lingo here too. We may speak the same language but I gotta tell ya, when I first got here I didn’t understand half the goddamned things some of the guys said.They’ve got Scottish guys, northerners, cockneys. And they’ve all got their own slang. For instance, if you hear someone call out “septic”, that means you.’

‘Septic?’

‘Septic tank - Yank. Cockney rhyming slang. They like to take the piss.’

‘Piss?’

‘Yank your chain. It’s the way they are. At first I thought they didn’t like me.Then I noticed they did it to each other just as much.’

Marty led Hank through a square that separated the accommodation buildings from the main galley complex. ‘What I was saying about Kathryn though,’ he went on, ‘she’s gotta be able to stand on her own feet. If you go away for a couple months it ain’t gonna be cool if she’s bangin’ on the RSM’s door asking where you are or wanting to go home ’cos she’s unhappy.’

‘She’ll be fine. We’ve talked about it and she knows why we’re here. She was just tired. I’m pretty sure the tough part’s over with - that was getting her here.’

‘Hey, Marty,’ a man called out from across the square and made his way towards the two men.

‘What’s hap’nin’, Dolesy?’ Marty called back, then quietly aside to Hank, ‘This guy’s head of land ops training. A good guy. He may be your first boss.’

Doles arrived and shook Marty’s hand.‘When’s your leaving run?’ he said in a light Scottish accent.

‘Friday. You here for it?’

‘Free beer, you kidding? I’ll be there, pal,’ he said with a grin. Doles was squat and strong with tough, chiselled features.

‘This is Chief Munro. He’s takin’ over from me. Colour Sergeant Doles.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ Doles said, offering his hand.

‘Hank,’ Hank said, shaking his hand firmly.

‘Gotta run. Catch you later, Marty. Good to meet you, Hank. No doubt I’ll be seeing you around,’ he said as he headed away with a wave.

‘Friendly guy,’ Hank said.

‘Yeah. Most of the guys are. I’ve gotten to know a lot of ’em pretty well. We do the barbeque thing quite a bit, stuff like that. Their kids play with ours - you know. Just like back home. And going away can be pretty fun too. These guys like their beer . . . From what I hear about you, you should get on like a house on fire. They can party when they want to.’

‘That’s not quite so true these days,’ Hank said, playing it down. Marty didn’t comment further.

They arrived at a large hangar at the top of the camp. ‘This is C squadron hangar,’ Marty said. ‘They’re away at the moment.’

He pushed open the heavy sliding door and went inside. The cavernous space was divided into several areas. Dozens of individual equipment storage cages lined one wall, racks of diving suits, underwater breathing apparatus, gas bottles and high-pressure pumps lined another. Several nine-cell parachutes hung from the ceiling and half-a-dozen snowmobiles were parked in a corner beside various boxes of arctic equipment, tents and camouflage nets. Another area was home to a variety of specialised climbing equipment: harnesses, helmets, folding ladders and ropes, all neatly organised. Another stack of shelves contained communication and sundry electronics devices. A flight of stairs led up to several offices on a platform, which ran along one side of the hangar like train carriages.

‘Upstairs are the boss and sergeant major’s office, briefing room and ops room.’

‘You worked here?’

‘The last six months.’

‘How many of these hangars do they have?’ Hank asked.

‘A few, all around the country.’

The main door opened. They turned to see a man walk in carrying a heavy backpack over one shoulder and a holdall in his other hand. It was Stratton. He ignored them as he walked to a cage, opened it, threw his gear inside, slammed the door shut, and headed back the way he had come.

‘Who was that?’ Hank asked.

‘He arrived a couple days ago. I don’t know him.’

‘Man looked a little pissed.’

‘I overheard some of the guys talkin’. He just got back from Northern Ireland. Something went wrong on an op and he was the fall guy, something like that. It was one of those conversations you overhear and don’t ask about.’

Hank nodded and looked around the hangar. ‘Like ours but smaller,’ Hank said.

Marty checked his watch. ‘You like tea?’ Marty asked. ‘Hot tea with milk and sugar?’

‘Can’t say I’ve ever tried it that way,’ Hank said.

‘Get used to it,’ Marty said as he headed back to the main door. ‘It’s mandatory around here. You have to drink a cup every morning after your workout and it’s the only drink you’ll get when you’re on the job.’ Marty led Hank outside, closed the door, and walked across a small square towards a set of squat buildings. ‘Nine a.m. is teatime every morning in the dive team. Just about every SB guy who’s in the camp will show up there. It’s a kind of unofficial daily meeting place. Which reminds me. I guess I should tell you some useful phrases you’re gonna have to get to know, such as “the tea’s wet”.’

‘The tea’s wet.’

‘Right. That means the tea is ready.’

Hank nodded. ‘Tea’s wet,’ he said.

‘If you’re lucky you are known as a jammy bastard, as in jam.’

‘Lucky?’

‘A jammy bastard.’

‘Jammy bastard,’ Hank repeated.

‘That’s right. A knobber is like a wanker.’

‘You’re losing me.’

‘Sorry. A wanker is a jerk.’

‘Wanker is a jerk. Gotcha.’

‘And so is knobber.’

‘Knobber, right. And wanker.’

‘Wanker and knobber, right. And a sporny-eyed wazzack . . . ’

‘A sporny what?’

‘That’s team speak - maybe a tad advanced. Forget that for now. Kip means sleep: get some kip - go to sleep.’

‘Kip,’ Hank said.

‘But if you’re a kipper, you’re a stinkin’ two-faced dried fish . . . ’

‘Are there many of these?’ Hank asked.

‘Hundreds.’

‘Oh, boy.’

‘You’ll get ’em,’ Marty assured Hank as he led him into the diving equipment building and to the tea boat where a dozen SBS operatives were already partaking in a hot cuppa.