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piece of litter, Stubbsy?’
    Stubbs glanced around him. Swallowed hard. ‘No, staff.’
    McCanliss simmered. His face twitched horribly. ‘Calling me a liar, is it?’ He pointed to a foil chewing gum wrapper on the tarmac. ‘What the fuck do you call that, then?’ He stepped closer to the student. ‘Is that what you do on an op, Stubbsy? Be scruffy and leave signs all over the fucking place? Sacking offence that, Stubbsy.’
    Stubbs’s mouth opened and shut but no words came out. Around him the other students shifted anxiously on their feet. McCanliss glared at Stubbs and pointed to the ground.
    ‘Cunt,’ he hissed. ‘Get in the position, and don’t stop until I say so.’
    Stubbs opened his mouth to protest. Then he thought better of it and reluctantly dropped to the ground and started banging out the push-ups. At the same time McCanliss swivelled his gaze towards the other students, his eyes burning with hatred.
    ‘Which one of you dopey wankers saw Stubbsy drop that litter, then?’ No one spoke. McCanliss’s face shaded red. The veins on his neck bulged like tense rope. ‘None of you? Right, either you’re all blind or you’re not fucking alert. You can’t be half asleep in the Regiment. This is the SAS not the fucking Boy Scouts. Get in the position right now. All of you.’
    The other seventy-four students grudgingly hit the deck. One or two shot angry stares at Stubbs. Then McCanliss gave his back to the students, smiling with satisfaction. He nodded at Terry Monk.
    ‘Do us a favour, Terry. Once these cunts get to fifty, get ’em on their feet and weigh their Bergens. I need to check in with the CO. See if we’ve heard anything from those two idiots at the RV yet.’
    As he shaped to turn away McCanliss caught Porter eyeballing him. The chief instructor turned towards him. He shot Porter a look like he was sucking on a bag of dicks.
    ‘The fuck are you looking at, Porter?’
    Porter shrugged. ‘I thought the idea was to pass people on Selection, Bob. Not fail them all.’
    McCanliss said nothing for a beat. His facial muscles twitched.
    ‘Did you, now?’ he spat. ‘Well, I’ve got some fucking news for you, Porter. We’re not here to have tea and biscuits with these tossers.’
    ‘We’re not here to fuck with them either, Bob.’
    McCanliss glowered at him. Porter stood his ground. The chief instructor stepped closer. The veins on his neck threatened to explode. He dropped his voice so low it could have crawled under the belly of a snake.
    ‘I’ll tell you something, Porter. Even the worst of these pricks would make a better operator than you. I wonder what our Keith would have said, if he’d heard you were on the Training Wing.’
    Something like a knife moved through Porter. The memories came flooding back, stabbing at him. Beirut, 1989 . A hostage rescue op. Porter’s first mission after he’d finished continuation training. A British businessman called Kenneth Bratton had been taken hostage by Hezbollah operatives demanding missile systems in exchange for his release. The government refused to negotiate and called in the Regiment to sort out the mess. The mission should have been a straightforward evacuation job, but it had quickly descended into a giant clusterfuck. In the sweat and chaos of the firefight Porter had spared the life of one of the Arabs guarding the Brit hostage. A kid, no older than twelve or thirteen. Instead of slotting him, Porter had knocked the kid unconscious.
    Only the kid hadn’t stayed down. Minutes later he was back on his feet and putting down rounds on the rest of the team. Three good Blades had died that day. Steve Rashford. Mike Jones. Keith Dunleavy. Porter had blood on his hands. Regiment blood. The kind you could never wash away.
    Every now and then Porter saw their faces. Sometimes it was nothing more than a flash of blood. Other days he’d see their brains splattered across the windshield, or their twisted bodies lying slumped in the streets in