A Pibroch (piobaireachd) is associated with the Highlands and is a series of musical variations on a theme, played on bagpipes. A Chaconne is similar but played on different instruments. The theme of this is a lament in five parts.

Now

He approached his house; his cap clutched in his hand. Soft light glowed from the lounge and bedroom windows, small illuminations in the darkness that surrounded his home. As he approached, he could see through the lounge window into the dining room, where candlelight revealed the table set for two, the places set with delicate china, crystal glasses and silver cutlery. Wine cooled in an ice bucket, and an extravagance of arranged flowers completed the setting. Soft jazz whispered from inside, and it looked warm and cosy – a sharp contrast to the cold darkness of his long walk from the main road. There was a flickering warmth from the fireplace, an unnecessary addition to the house’s heating system, but a focal point for the languorous lovemaking that they often enjoyed at the end of a perfect evening. They would linger over the food and drink, talking, discussing and planning, drawing things out in the knowledge that there would be an ecstatic culmination to another beautiful evening in their eight-year marriage.

It would have been the perfect homecoming – except for the fact that he wasn’t expected to be there.

Earlier

Captain Brian Barros smelt rank.

The odour was foul enough that he swore he could taste it on the back of his tongue, and that knowledge niggled constantly in the back of his brain.

The hastily borrowed uniform didn’t fit properly; the trousers were just too short, the coat – with no insignia whatsoever on it – was too big, and the cap made him look like Forrest Gump. Despite wiping them several times, his boots were grimy and scratched from the mountain chase. The realisation that he looked like a slob worried him; it didn’t fit his sense of self. He hadn’t even had the opportunity to shave before he was hustled onto the C-30 heading for the trip from Kuwait to Ramstein in Germany, with the promise that his kit and belongings would be sent on to him.

Being on the run from a vengeful Taliban through the mountains of Afghanistan for four straight days, trying to avoid capture, with sleep counted in minutes and sometimes even seconds at a time, had been his only concern at the time, which was as it should be. But now the pressure was off, his personal hygiene and appearance were beginning to take precedence.

The mission had been both successful and FUBAR at the same time. The three of them, dressed in the type of robes worn by villagers in that area, were deeply tanned enough to be taken as locals. Selected partly for their ability to speak the dialect, they had successfully followed the hints and tips that had come from Intelligence and finally tracked down the target – just one man – to a cave system at the end of an almost indiscernible trail. However, the intelligence had been flawed in not reporting the place was also home to what looked to be a whole company of foreign fighters.

The captain had sighed to himself, but the mission was there to be accomplished, and Philips and Ramirez knew that. Typically, a captain would be in charge of a company of anything up to two hundred men and women. Now he had just two. But that was special forces for you; you did what you were best at, not what the manual said. This time, it was his job to find a way in, come up with a way to make it work, and execute it – and the sergeant and corporal would be waiting to hear the plan.

His were the decisions. Corporal Craig Philips and Sergeant Manny Ramirez were the weapon. As a sniper team for a never-clarified Other Government Agency, they had worked together repeatedly over the last seven years, and the experience had led to a level of trust and understanding between them that made them seem almost to be psychic, each knowing what the other was thinking. With Philips as the spotter and Ramirez handling the MacMillian TAC-338, preferring the .338 Lapua Magnum round for extra distance, they were among the American military’s very best.

Typically they would work purely as a pair in the field, with Ramirez in charge. But this kill was deemed significant enough that Captain Barros was put in charge. As someone who had carried out many infiltration operations in this part of the sandlot, his job was to lead them there, confirm the target and subsequently the kill. He would let them decide how to set up and make the shot as that wasn’t his expertise; instead, he would act as their guard and relief spotter while they watched and waited for an opportunity. His reputation was such that Ramirez and Philips were more than happy for him to take the lead. He had a habit of returning with his men intact.

They finally reached the valley, approaching over the crest of the western escarpment to avoid any lookouts positioned at either end. There was a single lookout point on the approach with two men in place, neither paying any attention to their task. Barros waited until one wandered away to piss, silently killing him with a bloodless strike. The remaining guard went the same way, and the trio carefully hid their bodies before moving on. It seemed to be a low risk that their absence would be discovered any time soon, as observation of their movements and the quantity of supplies they had on hand all indicated that they were on permanent duty there. Their absence might very well be put down to simple desertion.

“Take half the supplies, enough to make it look as if they took sufficient to get them through a long walk,” ordered Barros. “Bury it with the bodies.”

That job taken care of, they scouted the summit for a clear sight of their target. The thinly wooded heights had offered no direct view of the area below the bulge on the opposite bluff, and they had carefully worked their way down the steep side of the valley. From a position almost a kilometre away opposite the Taliban’s potential cave system, the three had carefully scouted out the area. Camouflaged by rock, loose boulders and scree, and thin scrub around them, they concentrated on the target, a small dark area beneath a jutting bulge in the rock face opposite escarpment. In the end, it was easily identifiable as the entrance to a cave system, as different men, dressed in widely varying robes and western clothing, periodically popped out to smoke a cigarette, empty a latrine pot or enjoy some fresh air. Between them, Ramirez and Philips identified at least two dozen men wearing European clothes, watches, cigarette lighters and sunglasses, which meant foreign fighters. If they had been tribespeople sheltering from the war, they might have had the odd imported item as a status symbol, but the sheer quantity seen proved otherwise.

Barros attached a small hand-held device to his sat-phone and stabbed at the onscreen keyboard, sending ‘IN POSITION’. Then, moving slowly, he lay down alongside the other two. He had got them into position, and now it was up to the other two to complete the mission. After that, he would have to lead them out again. So he put his head on his arms and slept for an hour. Sleep was always a precious commodity to any soldier in an active warzone, or any other time or place.

Lying flat and scanning the area through the M151 high-powered monocular, whose mil cross reticule matched the one on the TAC-339 rifle scope, Philips kept referring to a picture of the target. He had taped an ID photograph to his left wrist to help try and match a potential cigarette smoker to their particular target without having to move too much. Movement was more likely to give them away than being spotted directly. The three ghillie suits had been matched to their surroundings, with dirt, plant life and twigs breaking up their profiles. But movement, any movement, could be a killer.

There was minimal talk between the two on the sniper team. Back at the base, they were loud, chatty and almost tactile as they rested between missions. Now they did their job in almost perfect silence, disturbed only by the breeze that intermittently stirred the dust on the track that zigzagged along the valley below. Philips concentrated all his attention on the men around the cave mouth, waiting for the captain to inform them that one of the other teams had found the target.

Or for that one face to appear on his scope.

There were no insignias or symbols amongst the foreign fighters, and the chief tactician and planner for that area, Abdul Noor al-Nazir, had no particular distinguishing marks. It was going to be facial identification only, although they did have an ace up their sleeve.

Al-Nazir was a clever, albeit humble man who had formerly sold and repaired cell phones from a mall kiosk in Baltimore, which also sold covers and protective screen covers in bright, plastic colours. Heeding the call to arms, he had returned to the place of his birth and quickly become one of the primary operations planners for the resistance and punishment units of the Taliban. It was a raid on one of the infidel bases while a three-star general had been there on a flying visit that raised him high on the most-wanted lists in the Pentagon – as well as on the list of leading commanders within the Taliban. Quick planning and the use of in-place assets was al-Nazir’s trademark. A mortar attack from one side had momentarily distracted everyone on the base, allowing an Afghan army soldier to carry out a green-on-blue strike from within. Neither the general nor the soldier involved had survived.

The death of a lieutenant general was something the military could not allow to go unpunished, and several special forces teams were brought in ready to strike. But Afghanistan was a nation created almost solely across high, barren mountains intersected by rocky valleys. The valleys permitted a basic road and communications system, while the mountains hosted cave systems that could hide whole regiments from eyes in the sky.

Then, a local tribesman had been attracted by the rumours of a high reward for information on al-Nazir. His enquiries revealed that the Americans were willing to pay a reward so high that his family would live in comfort, with no fear of hunger, for generations to come. He would be richer than all his tribe – especially as he would be able to claim the reward in bullion if he chose – and could then safely use the other part of the reward; free access for him and his family to any part of the world outside US territory.

Terrified but determined, he contacted the nearest base, trying to be unseen – an anonymous shadow in the night – as he spoke to an intelligence officer just outside the base perimeter. He was pressed to show them rather than tell them the whereabouts of al-Nazir, but his courage had failed him at that point. Even if they were all disguised as tribesmen, leading American soldiers through the mountains to a Taliban base was a death sentence for his whole family, just waiting to happen. No, he would only tell them about an extensive cave system that might be of interest. The officer wrote down every detail, quizzing him for many fear-filled, heart-pounding moments. He then warned him that not leading them there meant that he could only claim the reward if the Americans punished the Taliban and publicly acknowledged the operation. Bitterly cursing the perfidious infidels, the tribesman and his dreams retreated into the darkness.

The one detail that dismayed the intelligence officers at the base and the Pentagon was the description of the cave mouth being sheltered beneath a massive protrusion in the rock, sticking out of the rock face ‘like the thumb of Allah!’ It explained why none of the satellite or drone flyovers had captured photographs and identified a hiding place. It also meant that foot soldiers would have to go in. Drones wouldn’t be able to do the job. They couldn’t launch a missile into a hole they couldn’t see. Even collapsing the cliff wouldn’t guarantee that there weren’t other exits, and the Taliban might then chalk up a propaganda victory by dumping dead prisoners into the caves and claiming to the world press that ‘once again the American gangsters had attacked and murdered innocent peasant families!’

Four teams were sent out to various locations that fit the informer’s description. Captain Barros’ trio was team three, and they found the rock protrusion and the cave beneath it.

After a hasty search and identifying dead spots in the target area, the sniper team worked out reference points for quick aim. For two days, they watched almost without moving, Barros spelling Philips hourly when the corporal’s eyes became strained and red from the salty sweat that dripped down his face. At night, they had to hope that the clip-on passive night vision scopes would do the job.

On the second day, just before he was relieved after dawn, Philips suddenly tensed, hissed quietly and touched a button on the side of his monoscope.

“It’s him, Captain,” he whispered, never moving his eye from the scope. “I got him on the camera. You can go for confirmation.”

Barros peered down at the small screen he hurriedly drew towards him. He didn’t know what it was called; Intel hadn’t bothered to tell him while they hurriedly showed him how to use it. Onscreen, caught mid-stride while looking slightly to his left towards three fighters, was al-Nazir. He hooked the device to his satellite phone once more and tapped in a code.

“Move to view contact,” Philips murmured to Sanchez, who crawled the few inches needed to swing the rifle up on its bipod and settle it to his shoulder.

The corporal slipped even closer to position himself next to the sniper’s boots and, crouching low, set up his monoscope aimed over the sniper’s shoulder, the sightline just above the rifle. He was going to catch the bullet trace – the wake of the bullet through the air – no matter what. In the case of a miss, it was his job to identify the bullet strike and let Sanchez know how to adjust for a second shot. Philips had had an unsettled feeling about this job from the start and was determined to get it over with and them away as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The rifle was already loaded, a round in the chamber. He slipped the safety off, and his finger curled around the trigger guard, ready to slip back onto the trigger itself.

“By eye. Go to three alpha,” the spotter said, in what sounded strangely like a chant – a song the two of them sang every time.

The sniper adjusted his aim; three alpha was the cave mouth reference point.

“Four men 3 o’clock.”

“Got them,” Sanchez whispered, moving his elbows slightly to swing the rifle muzzle just millimetres.

“Lone man heading seven o’clock.”

There was a momentary pause, then Philips continued.

“Go to glass.”

Sanchez put his eye to the scope

“Contact,” the sergeant murmured, unblinking and remaining locked on the man behind his cross-hairs. “Target is wearing a black robe, white headscarf. He is carrying something in his left hand.”

Philips nodded. That described the correct target. “Contact identified. Check parallax and mil.”

The rifle tilted very slightly.

They waited, trying to quell their impatience to get this over. They were deep in enemy territory, surrounded by an unknown number of enemy combatants and a hostile civilian population. And now they had to wait for the decision of some anonymous officer in safe, air-conditioned offices a long way away. But all three knew this was too important to screw up by pulling the trigger on the wrong target. This was why sniper teams were almost cosseted. A plaque on the wall at the Marine Sniper School at Camp Pendleton had a translation of a Chinese proverb that read, “Kill one man, terrorise a thousand.”

That said it all.

“Hold,” muttered Barros calmly. “Hold.”

“Fuck,” Sanchez cursed in a whisper as his target squatted down to talk to some of his men. Slowly and smoothly, he raised the butt of the rifle a few millimetres to compensate.

“Locked in,” Sanchez repeated.

After what felt like an hour, the officer’s screen changed and the word ‘CONFIRMED’ stamped onto the screen.

“Go when ready,” Barros said softly.

“Holdover,” whispered Philips immediately.

Sanchez went into his pre-shoot routine; a deep breath and then letting it out slowly. Almost intimately close, Philips unconsciously held his breath as well.

“Ready,” muttered the sniper.

“Left, point four.”

The distance had been locked in on the rifle scope almost as soon as they set up the day before. Sanchez made the final, minute adjustment to his aim to compensate for the light breeze Philips had measured at the last moment. Even the lightest zephyr could affect trajectory over a kilometre’s flight.

The bullet left the muzzle of the gun at almost three times the speed of sound. Philips caught the trace, a slightly misty tunnel through the air, watched it dip as gravity did its work, and saw a red flower bloom into life slightly to the right of centre on the man’s throat. A thick red spray of blood and shredded flesh fountained behind him.

It was minutely high, as Sanchez had aimed for a point five inches lower. But it didn’t matter this time, as there was no need for a second. It was a killing shot.

Without fuss, al-Nazir folded forward onto his knees as if at morning prayer, his forehead to the ground. He died without ever hearing the muted crack of the rifle from across the valley, which arrived two seconds later, and all his men heard until then was a zipping noise and a sudden meaty slap.

“Kill shot,” whispered Philips.

They didn’t wait around to see the fighters’ response. They weren’t there to get into a firefight. Ignoring the firing that started some ten seconds later, they could well imagine the rest of the insurgents pouring out of the cave like ants from a disturbed nest. Nothing seemed to come close, and when Barros glanced around, the fighters appeared to be spraying shots wildly in every direction. Within seconds the three had their packs and weapons in hand and were darting or crawling from cover to cover as they slowly zigzagged back up to the crest of the hill.

They almost made it back up to the summit before the guns started in earnest. They’d been spotted, and at that point, the mission went FUBAR – Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.

Philips was the first to go down.

“Fuck, I don’t believe it!” he hissed in agony, writhing on the ground, trying to bring the pain under control. “Fuck my luck. Ricochet got me through the ankle. Those idiots couldn’t hit a barn if they were standing in it. Most of the time, they shoot straight up in the air and ask Allah to direct the bullet, and they still got lucky!”

Barros grabbed the man’s arm, noting the pale, sweating face of shock and drew him up onto his one good leg, the other foot dangling and swinging in a way that meant a shattered joint and, in all likelihood, a severed tendon. Sanchez swung his arm around Philips’ waist and hooked the corporal’s arm over his shoulder. Looking like they were running an impossible five-legged race, they moved on up the hill, constantly scouting the terrain ahead. A blood trail marked their spoor.

“I’m sad to say it, but maybe God hates you, cabrón,” gritted Sanchez as they heaved Philips up a steeper part of the slope. “You must be some evil bastard.”

“I guess he has his reasons,” Philips panted, trying to control the pain from overtaking him but unable to stifle a slight whimpering moan now and again as his foot swung from a shattered joint that did nothing to limit its range of movement. “Maybe I shouldn’t have fucked your Mama. Although I did make confession to the priest who fucked her after me. That should count.”

“Eres un pinche idiota, Craig.”

“Fuck you too, hermano.” Hermano, slang for big brother. The two were that close.

“We’ll rest at the crest,” said Barros, ignoring the whispered insults between old friends that would have led to bloodshed if said by or to anyone else in the Corps. He didn’t need to tell the wounded man not to remove his boot. Even though it acted as an anchor, dragging the bleeding foot into impossible angles to his leg, the boot was limiting the bleeding. On reaching cover, they would cut the boot away, dress the wound, and support the joint as best they could, although the corporal wasn’t going to be walking on it anytime soon – if ever again.

They never got the chance. Cresting the slope, they were met by a hail of gunfire. The three dropped to the ground instantly. Philips, already at the limit with loss of blood, slipped into momentary, dark-grey unconsciousness as the agony from his useless foot folding up beneath him sent his mind spinning into darkness with a shriek.

Barros and Sanchez hit the dirt, instantly returning fire with the Sig Sauer MCXs they both preferred on operation, trying to suppress incoming fire until they could see what they were up against.

Behind the dubious safety of a slight hump in the ground, they dragged Philips to one side, where a few scraggly trees somehow survived in the thin hostile soil of the heights, offering protection that was more imagined than real.

For a moment, Sanchez debated unslinging his sniper rifle, but the range was too short to be effective, and if they were rushed, the bolt action would make getting shots off too slow anyway. The two men crawled forward slightly, trying to scout the enemy without being seen. Periscopes were useless kit, just more weight to carry and slow down a soldier, but damn, one would be helpful right now, Barros reflected.

The thought was cut short by a thump nearby, audible even amongst the loud but strangely high-pitched barking sound of multiple weapons firing. Sanchez relaxed and slid back slightly, his face to the ground. Barros glanced at him and saw the raw exit wound on the back of his head.

He looked over at Philips, hoping he was still unconscious. The two had built a friendship more robust than most in the Marines, and this would...

Philips was staring at him, lying on his back, a pistol in his hand.

“Go!” he moaned.

Barros shook his head.

“Get the fuck out of here, or we’re all dead,” Philips was somehow shouting in a whisper. “Don’t worry. They’re not going to cut my fucking head off.”

The captain understood. They both knew the reality of the situation. Philips was going nowhere without assistance, and Sanchez’ death had removed that option. If they weren’t killed outright, they would be taken, kept barely alive, and then executed by a sword to the back of the neck while they knelt in humiliation before gleeful cameramen. He’d had the same solution to that possibility in mind for himself. Still had.

Barros helped Philips roll over onto his belly, facing the enemy, and put his Sig Sauer in his hands. His Colt 1911 was laid on the ground alongside him, ready to be lifted and turned inwards underneath his chin.

No, Philips wasn’t going to be taken alive.

The captain touched the wounded man’s shoulder, gave a squeeze, knowing that nothing he said at that point would mean anything, and then turned away, leopard-crawling quickly to the left. Behind him, he heard a short burst as the corporal fixed all the ambushers’ attention on himself.

He reached an outcrop of boulders, slid around it and started working his way down and away from the firefight, the fire from the insurgents seeming to step up a gear in anger and noise at the brazen defiance of the American.

There was a lull and then a further outburst of shots. Amidst the barrage, Barros heard the distinctive sound of the Colt and whispered a farewell to Philips. There would indeed be no public execution for him.

There hadn’t been time to cover his tracks away from the ambush site, and the fighters – especially the tribesmen amongst them – would quickly find out that there had been more than two in the team that executed al-Nazir.

The hunt was on.

Snapping awake as the massive aircraft landed at Ramstein, he still felt muzzy and slightly stunned, his thoughts and memory cloudy as he was rushed straight to the plane that would take him onwards to Virginia. Determined to catch up on all that lost sleep, he settled on a sleeping mat and drifted straight off again, not even feeling the intense vibrations of the massive plane powering up for takeoff. His last thoughts were at his luck at finding a place where a Little Bird could find and pick him up, directed in with infinite precision by that clever little device. Waiting for his pickup with his finger ready to press the abort command on the device if he was discovered had felt like the longest part of the whole mission. Then, as they rose into the darkness to fly to safety, he had thanked the Night Stalker pilot wholeheartedly, knowing that flying the tiny MH-6J in the dead of night to a GPS position deep in enemy-controlled territory took profound, almost suicidal, courage.

Barros slept for the whole journey back to America and remembered almost nothing at all of the debriefings. He couldn’t even remember climbing onto the bus that took him steadily into the heartland or any of the other passengers who thanked him for his service.

He did remember the long walk to his house, however. And he would never forget, no matter how hard he tried, what he found there.

Later

Brian Barros opened the door to his house, revelling for a moment in the familiar scent of home overlaid with the odours of his wife’s famous stroganoff. He’d never forgotten that smell, and it swarmed back to bring pleasure to his senses, no matter how rapid the beating of his heart and the heaviness in his thoughts. Hoping beyond hope that the situation was an official visit to tell his wife something about him, he looked around carefully. Without realising it, he was screwing up his cap between his hands and breathing heavily through his nose as suspicion began to cement into certainty. He was on high alert now, finding himself once more in enemy territory.

The first thing he picked up on was the highly polished pair of boots neatly tucked together below the coat hooks inside the front door. When it came to shoes in their house, Jenny was a martinet, and she had obviously insisted that her gentleman caller take them off when he arrived. Barros knew it was a ‘gentleman’ from the uniform coat that hung above them – two gold stars prominent on the shoulder and rows of almost meaningless ribbons at the breast. So, not an official visit then. The Pentagon didn’t send their generals out to tell the wife of a captain anything about her husband’s work. If it was needed ... well, that’s what majors and chaplains were made for.

Barros wondered if Jenny had started on lieutenants and been promoted to generals because of her outstanding attention to duty in bed. He was going to miss that attention, he thought, as he stared at a pair of strange slippers parked neatly next to the fire.

Part of him screamed to go upstairs and burst into their bedroom. All three of them would deserve what happened. But did cheating deserve death?

He shook his head. If he entered the bedroom and they were both there, he knew he would kill both of them – her quickly and him slowly. Or perhaps the other way around.

He heard her voice from above stairs, a voice set years ago like diamonds into his memory and now set like concrete in his heart.

Blindly he threw the twisted cap at the stairs, yanked open the front door and ran out. If he stayed, there would be two more deaths locked into his mind, deaths that would join the others in silent wait for the time and circumstance for them to bubble up again to plague him. Killing a man, even in war, exacted a price – a toll. He had seen it in many of his Forces comrades. The killing was forced deep down under the surface of conscious thought like drowning a victim, and in the same way, it would bloat up over time until it slowly rose to the surface once more. Then would come the guilt, the shakes, the withdrawal from society, often the bottle, and sometimes the bullet. Men dealt with it in different ways, but those thoughts had to be suppressed at the time. They had a job to do, and usually, killing was part of it.

Barros thought he’d reached those limits. Two more right now would be too many.

He remembered the way without thinking of it, trudging blindly but confidently along the road, the blackness of his thoughts matching that of the night. He’d been away two weeks ... two fucking weeks! ‘How much sex did you need if you couldn’t go two weeks without getting something jammed into your cunt?’ He raged the question silently, his face showing nothing of his thoughts. ‘And then moving the bastard not only into her body but my bed, my place at the table, my fucking armchair – into every place in my life, except out on the dirty jobs where fucking generals never go.’

He was a replacement in every way, he realised. She had called in reinforcements and sent him back to the assembly area – just another anonymous uniform in a milling mass of men. In a sense, she had removed his very identity.

Barros was not a man who questioned himself often; when there was the opportunity, he made command decisions after careful thought and planning. When the situation required it, he could also make good snap decisions and communicate them instantly.