This Day, Our Daily Bread: Chapter One
"Dad?"
"Mm?"
"How fast does it go?"
"I don't know, son. Ask Jim when we get there."
"How does it work?"
Angus MacTavish laughed. He turned to the boy, stretched out on the back seat, and watched him spin the rotors of his toy helicopter round slowly with his fingers. "You can't do it fast enough. It goes faster than that!"
"How fast?"
"You'll see it soon enough."
"Iain?"
MacTavish shook himself awake. "Is this us?"
She laughed. "No. The boy's hungry" She slapped the dashboard. "Fair guzzles up the petrol. He's a greedy bastard. Do you want anything from the shop?"
He shook his head. In the distance, he could hear the roar of the motorway traffic. Rubbing the condensation from the glass, he saw that they were in the forecourt of a petrol station. Outside the pool of light, dawn was breaking, casting a limp, grey light over the damp hills. They had been on the road all night, winding their way across the country. He didn't know the brief yet, but today's destination: a submarine base snuggled in the Firth of Clyde, spoke volumes.
Outside, he stretched. The air was tinged with the odour of fuel, but he was grateful for it anyway. It was cold and it was fresher than the stale atmosphere he would be spending the next few days in. He hated subs. He could see Ghost already on the grass beyond the forecourt, his collar turned up against the cold, puffing away on a cigarette like it was all that was keeping him alive.
It was already fading. He hadn't dreamed of his father in years and he wondered if this was a bad omen: to dream of the dead before a job. Either way, it didn't make him feel better. He tried to recall the trip, but now that he was awake it was a distant blur: just the faint outlines of voices and the stench of kerosene. He was forgetting more and more. He felt old.
Behind him, he heard the van rock as the driver jumped in and slammed the door shut behind her. He took one last deep breath, nodded to Ghost to hurry up, and climbed back inside.
"Seems we're headed the wrong direction, Sir. Shouldn't we be coming back to the fight?"
The face of General Shepherd filled the screen. He was several thousand miles away, beamed through a black satellite network that they were sure the Russians hadn't cracked. He laughed.
"Plenty of fight to go around, MacTavish. Glad you made it out of South America. You're meeting up with the 6th Fleet. Leading the counter-strike."
MacTavish felt a hand at his elbow. A young aide proffered an expensive looking tablet computer. It was heavy and smooth in his hand, springing to life immediately and streaming data.
"Prisoner Six-Two-Seven. We believe that's who Makarov's got the mad-on for. But we can't get to him." said Shepherd.
The information provided was surprisingly sparse. Intelligence reports from Ultranationalist defectors who talked of a foreign spy that Makarov had more than one expensive altercation with. Snippets of paperwork showing false names, fingerprints, but tantalisingly, no photograph. He frowned, thinking this was a little odd, and then the screen changed, showing a map of the East coast of Russia briefly and then an image that struck a bolt of fear through his heart.
"Oil rigs, sir?" said MacTavish, trying to control the waver in his voice.
"Russians are using them as SAM sites. Oil workers are human shields so we can't just blow up the rigs wholesale. And this one is the least defended. Boys, I know I'm sending you into the meat grinder in this one... "
"They're defending it," MacTavish cut him off "So it means we want it. Especially if it gets us to Six-Two-Seven."
Outside, MacTavish steadied himself against the wall. He pulled the squashed packet of cigars from his coat pocket and, his fingers shaking, cut and lit one.
The rigs. It had to be fucking rigs. He sucked deeply on the end of the cigar, filling his lungs with its sweet, smooth smoke. He closed his eyes, but his mind was filled with the single, stark image of boiling flame and the crippled pumping station.
"Sir?" He turned at the sound. Ghost was standing behind him, looking sheepish. He looked down at his feet and kicked a loose piece of render, sending it tumbling across the concrete. "You coming to the canteen? I fancy a bacon roll."
"Aye. I'll be there in a minute."
Ghost scuffed his boot into the ground and then looked at him, a worried frown on his face. "Are you all right. I mean, with the whole-"
"I'm fine." MacTavish interrupted. "You don't need to worry about me."
Ghost nodded. An uncomfortable silence descended. He pursed his lips. "I'll... I'll see you then."
MacTavish watched him turn and go, hunched with his hands in his pockets, trying to make himself smaller and more unobtrusive. He smiled. Ghost was over six feet tall and with his piercing blue eyes and neatly trimmed blonde hair, he looked like a Danish prince. It was ridiculous: he was cripplingly shy in conversation, but always first into danger in a fight. The fact that he was worried enough to bring up his concerns told MacTavish a lot more than he had said.
Piper Alpha. There was something about the words, they had an almost musical quality when they came together, despite their strangeness. Even after the grief was over, even after twenty-five years, he still didn't like saying them aloud. Fucking rigs. He spat the butt of the cigar from his mouth and ground it under his heel before heading off in the direction that Ghost had taken, towards the warmth of the canteen.
Authors notes: Iain is the Scottish form of John. Whilst John may be the given name, there are some people who use Iain in day-to-day life. Piper Alpha was a real industrial disaster in the North Sea, a huge fire after an explosion in a gas pumping station killing 161 men in 1988.