Chapter 13

It was so hard to keep his eyes open. The dingy classroom reminded him of his old school days. The rickety desks and the smell of burnt offerings in the canteen brought memories flooding back that were not wanted. At the front of the makeshift classroom stood a man in his fifties with the most irritating one tone voice he have ever heard. Dressed in black cargo pants and laced up para boots, the teacher must have been an army wannabe. With a pronounced limp on his right side, it was obvious he was never going to be more than a jumped up security guard.

The room was full of kids from all lifestyles. Half of them couldn't even speak English. Sitting up with their backs straight, it looked like they were skewered on spikes that entered their arse and left through the top of their heads.

There was nothing worse than sitting through three days of lecture, especially when you knew everything that you were being enthusiastically taught.

If this was all you needed to know to pass the course, is it any wonder every Tom, Dick and Harry had a license Saim thought as he daydreamed out the window.

Having served in the Pakistani military for some years, there was not much Saim did not know about security. He revelled in the power he felt knowing how to kill anybody by just using his hands. Knowing which pressure point on the body would paralyse a man had come in handy over the years. The intelligence gathering and unarmed combat he had learnt was far from the slap and tickle techniques he was being shown today in the Physical Intervention course.

The only thing he could not get to grips with in the military was the discipline, the being told what to do. He loved discipline, when he was dishing it out, and that's what finally broke him. He did not have the time nor the patience to rise through the ranks naturally, and wanting to give the orders rather than take them had sent him on the path he now lives and surrounds himself.

After seven impatient years of serving and learning everything he could, he went off the rails. An anonymous tip-off to the top brass resulted in a search party arriving at his home. Discovering a good portion of guns and grenades from the arms storeroom was his undoing and led to him being dishonourably discharged and arrested. He received a sentence of twenty years in a military prison, along with five other men under his command. By then though, he had learnt the art of disguise and built up a good portfolio of identities and he was out of the country by the end of the week.

"Now you have had three days of training. Time to see how many of you were listening." came the drone of the teacher

"Once the paper is completed, place it on my desk and go get a coffee"

The paper consisted of a hundred multi choice questions and Saim flew through them. He could answer these in his sleep. Within fifteen minutes, he was in the canteen with a strong black coffee. He sure needed it just to stay awake.