Big Red

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2

There’s nothing important about me, nothing that marks me as anything different from anyone else you know. I’m that person you barely notice on your way to work, that familiar face in the office whose name you don’t know. I’m liked and I’m happy, but I’ve never been special.

I grew up in a suburb of Dublin, Ireland and spent most of my life there. It was a nice area; it had its rough spots, but I liked it. At school, I passed tests and did my homework, but my scores didn’t indicate I was gifted or anything.

Growing up, I was a typical teenage boy who chased girls, got into fights, and had fun with my friends, but no matter what I got myself into, I never brought trouble to my mother’s door. She knew I was no angel, but I think she knew that I was smart enough to never get caught.

At seventeen, I joined the Reserve Defence Forces—Ireland’s version of the British Territorial Army or the American National Guard. As a neutral country, it wasn’t as though there was any chance we’d ever see any action, but when one of my buddies told me he enlisted, I decided to check it out.

That probably ranks as one of the best decisions I ever made. From the moment they marched us around the parade square, I was hooked. It wasn’t just the assault rifles and uniforms, it was the camaraderie, the discipline, the notion that for once I was giving back to the country I loved so much. They also had cheap, tax-free beer. That helped, too.

I spent seven years in the Reserves. Although exhausting and a lot of times boring, I enjoyed it. Seven years later, only myself and two others remained out of a training platoon once thirty-three people strong, so we asked for our discharge papers and left.

I wasn’t sure where to go next and bounced between jobs, working and partying—sometimes doing both simultaneously. That is, until I met Louise. We hit it off straight away. She was fiery, intelligent, and ambitious. She was so ambitious that when we moved in together and had a daughter a few years later, I committed to staying at home to raise Kat.

It was on another average day when I got the call that would change my life. I had picked up Kat from play school and was watching her race around the room, still exhausted from my birthday celebrations a few days earlier, when my phone buzzed.

I didn’t recognise the number, but thinking it was Louise calling from another number, I answered.

“Oi! Oi! Governor!” a voice with a mock-English accent greeted me.

I recognized the joker on the other end of the line as Rory and laughed, greeting my ex-army comrade.

As Kat ran about, content like only a child could be, I dived into it with Rory. We talked like the old friends that we were and caught up quickly.

I was glad to hear he had stuck with his career in the British Army and had recently returned from a deployment to Afghanistan as a logistics officer. He shared colourful stories about his time over there before asking what I had been up to. I didn’t have much to share, so that didn’t take too long. At this point, Kat got upset with a doll that made the mistake of refusing to obey her will. Sensing a tidal wave of temper tantrums, I was bringing our talk to a friendly conclusion when Rory said the innocent words that would cost me a portion of my life and a head-full of jumbled, fractured memories.

“Ever wish you could get paid to play with guns and blow stuff up on the weekends again?”

“Hell yeah,” I responded enthusiastically. “I’d give my left arm to re-live those days, but I don’t have the time between work, Kat, and Louise’s job. If only, eh?”

“That’s why I called you, brother,” Rory continued. His infectious enthusiasm leaked through the phone. “The EU is putting together a new program for ex-service personnel. It’s in beta-phase at this stage, and it’s strictly hush-hush and invite-only, but they’re looking for people with skills to do some flexible work. You interested?”

It sounded too good to be true and, in my experience, if it sounded too good to be true, it usually was.

“Yeah, man, it sounds great, but I’m sure those types of things are for ex-full timers. As tempting as it is, I have to look after Kat, and there’s no way I could get time off work. The weekends are way too busy.”

“That’s the thing—” Rory laughed, and excitement built in his voice. “It’s totally unlike anything before. It doesn’t matter what your skill level is. As long as you served and you pass the tests, you’re in. I’m telling you, brother, if you do one weekend a month, that works out as the equivalent of a few weeks of pay now. Imagine having more time with Louise and Kat for doing something you’d be good at and not having to work at that dead-end job.”

As sales pitches went, his was pretty damn good.

“There has to be a catch, though,” I pressed. “What does it involve?”

Rory laughed again.

“The catch works in your favour, my friend. I got posted to it recently as a liaison officer. It’s a European initiative to create a part time, flexible body of troops that can aid the civil power in times of emergency and free up duties for front line personnel. The British are overseeing it so far, but with everything going on with them and to keep it fair and equal, the EU has pushed for quotas from different nationalities to apply, and they need more Irish and Europeans. Since it’s invite-only, consider this yours. You just need to pass the tests and you’re in.”

I was sold. I spoke with Rory for a few more minutes, squeezing as much information as possible out of him before letting him go. Barely a few minutes passed after hanging up when an application pinged straight into my phone’s email inbox.

Louise encouraged me to go for it. The very next day, I got a response on my application. The assessment stage was set for the coming Saturday morning, which was short notice, but Louise being Louise managed to book me a cheap flight to London on Friday night, stay in a nice hotel, and then fly back early on Sunday, all as an additional birthday present. I made plans with Rory to go out for drinks afterwards, so everything wrapped up well.

Screw my job. They could get by without me for one weekend.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about the flight over. Suffice it to say, I’m not the biggest fan of airplanes, but it was uneventful and thankfully my plane didn’t smash into the Irish Sea in a giant ball of flames.

Assessment day dawned. After showering, shaving, and getting changed into my freshly pressed suit, I hailed a London cab and arrived fifteen minutes early at the address for the interview. It was a mundane office block smack bang in the centre of London with nothing indicating it as being affiliated with the military. My heart pounded as I re-read the email, fearing I had the wrong address, but everything checked out.

Composing myself, I approached the revolving door and greeted the receptionist. Dressed in a black uniform that made him look more like a security guard, he unexpectedly flashed a disarming smile and, after taking my name, held up a leather-bound tablet and rose from his seat to study it. For a moment, I thought he was trying to take my picture, but he turned it around to show me a photo of myself, which was accompanied with additional information. It struck me as strange, since I’d never sent them my picture, but I didn’t say anything.

He directed me towards a solitary door to the right of the reception desk and buzzed me in. I opened the solid, reinforced door. On the other side, two heavily armed men clad entirely in black greeted me. At that point, I wondered if I’d fallen victim to an elaborate kidnapping scam, but realising I wasn’t worth that much to anyone, I flashed them a nervous smile.

They thoroughly patted me down and ran me through a metal detector. Despite the fact I wasn’t carrying a weapon of any kind, I relaxed immediately when they found nothing incriminating on me and followed one of the guards as he escorted me down a long, well-lit corridor. At the end, we reached a lift. The guard punched in a code and then led me into it.

“Don’t be nervous,” he said as the lift doors slammed closed.

“Thanks. Can I…”

“I’m not authorised to answer questions. But you look as though you’re about to crap yourself. Pull it together. You’ll do fine.”

Strangely enough, an armed guard telling me I looked as if I was about to void my bowels did reassure my fraying nerves. I took a deep breath and told myself I could do this. I had nothing to lose. Or so I thought.

We descended several floors before the lift doors creaked open and the guard gestured for me to step out. I nodded my thanks and stepped out into an illuminated, sterile-looking corridor. A tall and thin man with an immaculate suit and greasy, slicked-back black hair nodded politely at me.

“Mr. Loughlin,” he said, extending his hand and firmly shaking mine, “I’m glad you could make it. Shall we?”

He gestured to my left, and we walked and chatted politely about London and the weather. What followed next was four hours of non-stop gruelling psychometric, physical, and mental testing. It wasn’t as bad as I expected, though, because although I get a bit jittery, I excel at interviews.

The questions themselves were nothing unusual and gave no hint about the actual program or my expected duties. It was standard stuff: talking about myself, my life, my time in the Reserves, what I would do in this or that situation, how I would resolve a certain series of problems, and so forth. Once you’ve heard one set of interview questions, you’ve heard them all. The written test was next, which didn’t seem any different from tests I’d done in school. Most of the questions were straightforward problem-solving, while others were similar to that of a personality test, like the ones Louise had gotten me to do online.

The physical side of the assessment was the thing I was afraid might let me down. I wouldn’t class myself as unfit, but I’d let myself go a little. It had been hard to find a proper balance between working, looking after Kat, and the million other things I had to do every day.

For this part of the test, the slicked-back hair man, who never gave me his name, led me into a changing room and handed me a green Army-style uniform. The camouflage patterns weren’t Irish or British, or any other nation’s colourings that I recognised, but I pulled them on all the same. After donning the trousers, T-shirt, shirt, and combat boots, they led me into a waiting area, where I got a first glimpse of my soon-to-be-comrades. Everyone appeared nervous, so taking advantage of that, I cracked a few jokes to lighten the mood. I could tell it was well received; sometimes people need someone to break the ice before they know it’s okay to let their guard down. Thinking about it now, although I didn’t know them at the time, that was the first time I spoke to Tazz, Smack, and Big Mo.

They led us to a large exercise hall filled with all sorts of equipment and training gear. They ordered us to remove our shirts and attached heart rate monitors to our chests and suction cup devices to our temples. Then we began group exercises. It was excruciating, but I held my own, as did everyone else.

After giving us all water, one of the doctors led us back to the waiting room and told us we’d be called upon one at a time to discuss whether we’d made it to the next round. A few minutes later, they called my name. I said my goodbyes to everyone and exited the room. I remember thinking at the time that they were a nice bunch of people and I hoped that if I got through, I’d see them again. I was escorted into a nearby office where a bureaucrat in a suit and a cheap haircut looked me up and down with bored indifference.

“Congratulations, Mr. Loughlin. You’ve passed. We’d like to offer you a position in the program.”

I was stunned. I had expected there to be at least another round of interviews or assessments, but, after replaying his words over in my mind, there was no way I could be misinterpreting him.

“Thank you, sir,” I said, trying my best to contain my excitement. “I’m grateful for this opportunity. When do I start?”

“Soon,” he replied dryly. “You’ll need to sign some paperwork first, followed by a mandatory blood test. Once everything is signed, you’ll be briefed on all relevant information. Please follow the nurse outside.”

He waved at the door for me to leave. Without another glance, he returned to something far more interesting than me buried in his paper work. Smiling, I left the room as Tazz walked in, nodding as she gave me a cheery wink and a smile. The nurse silently led me back down the corridor towards the lift I had emerged from earlier, but we took a left through another set of reinforced, security code-protected doors. As the doors opened, I was surprised to see at least two or three dozen uniformed applicants already queued up in a line by the wall ahead of me. I didn’t recognise any of them from the waiting room, but it made sense that they’d have multiple, smaller assessment groups all on the same day. The nurse motioned for me to join the line and, after disappearing for a moment, returned with a clipboard and at least a hundred pages of a document attached to it. The writing was extra small; it looked as though I had the guts of a compressed encyclopaedia to read through and the queue edged forward at a quick pace.

Several more interviewees from my own assessment group fell into line, flashing me victorious smiles as I tried to speed read through the document. Unfortunately, I’m not fluent in legalese, but from skimming through some of the pages, it seemed to be about protecting the program from liability in the event of injury. I could understand the logic to that, but I felt a bit uneasy at signing something that I hadn’t had the time to read through properly.

The top of the queue stopped at the entrance to an open set of doors. By the time I reached the top, I’d barely gotten through the first few pages when an authoritative “Next!” called from the room.

Still trying to race through the document, I stepped forward and found myself in a large, open hall with dozens of green, foldout cots. A sterile room with gleaming white walls and dozens of large, luminous lights glared down at us, illuminating every aspect of the hall. Already, at least thirty or forty uniformed applicants were sprawled on or sitting on the cots with dozens of scurrying orderlies racing around, pushing trolleys laden with equipment back and forth. I noted three other sets of double doors along the far wall and wondered if more groups were in there, too.

At the head of the room sat three doctors working from a folding table, surrounded by stacks of paperwork. I eagerly approached them, hoping they could answer a few questions.

“Name?” a tall, bearded doctor asked.

“Loughlin, Darren, Sir.”

Without looking up at me, he handed me a ball point pen.

“Please sign the areas highlighted with stickers,” he said.

I looked back at the clipboard in my hands and noted four stickers at the edges of the document, showing where I had to sign.

“That’s the thing, sir. I haven’t had a chance to read everything before I sign—”

He sighed loudly and rubbed his face in annoyance. “Christ, there’s always one,” he growled through his hands.

I thought his frustration was a bit extreme considering I only had a few questions before I signed my life away. Beside him, a red-haired doctor with cool eyes looked up at me.

“Mr. Loughlin, my name is Doctor Lucas. Allow me to be blunt. You are fully entitled to read every word of that document, but if you haven’t read it by now, we’ll have to stop the queue completely and wait for you to go through it line by line before proceeding. That means everyone else out there in the corridor will have to wait until you’re done and everyone else in here will have to sit there, unable to leave. Would you really like that to be the first impression your future colleagues have of you?”

That hit home a bit. I suddenly felt the eyes of all my future comrades staring up at me, judging me. They probably weren’t, but I still didn’t want to be that guy.

“I swore an oath, Mr. Loughlin, to do no harm,” she continued, “you have my word as a doctor that there’s nothing illegal in that document. It’s a standard waiver to cover the program from liability in the event of injury. If you were to be injured, that document states that we’ll cover the full cost of any medical expenses or loss of earnings. It is entirely your choice, though. Would you like to step aside and read this document or would you like to proceed?”

All three of the doctors looked at me with a combination of frustration and pleading. Against my better judgment, I conceded. Resting the clipboard on their table, I quickly signed my name on all the relevant spaces. If you couldn’t trust a doctor, who could you trust?

Relieved, the doctor thanked me and signalled for an orderly to lead me away, before calling for the next applicant to come in. The masked orderly led me through the maze of cots before selecting an empty one and ordered me to take my shirt off and sit down. Despite being self-conscious about how sweat-stained my T-shirt underneath would be from the earlier workout, I did as I was told.

Gesturing to a nearby nurse pushing around a trolley, he gave her my name. She checked her clipboard, rummaged around in a plastic box, and pulled out a small plastic bag with my name labelled on it. The orderly took it from her, pulled out a set of dog tags, and told me to put them on. I remember thinking how weird it was that they already had a set of dog tags made for me when I’d just signed up, but I pushed that out of my mind, too.

With everyone settled, the orderlies eventually made their way around the room and one-by-one took blood samples from us before giving us separate inoculations. I was a bit wary of being injected with something containing an unknown substance, but a neighbour asked the burning question of what it was. The orderly advised it was a backup injection to reinforce our immune systems and it was perfectly fine, but that the side-effects sometimes resulted in drowsiness or temporary disorientation; hence the cots.

When it came to my turn, I didn’t even ask and presented my arm. I looked around to see those who had gone before me were mostly lying back on the cots, looking around or fidgeting to get comfortable. Sure enough, a minute or two after the injection, my mind went hazy, and I decided it was best to lay back, too. My head swam, but I hoped the powerful white light above my cot would be enough to keep me conscious. I didn’t want to be known as the guy who made a fuss about paperwork and then passed out.

It wasn’t to be, though. Even with the light shining down on me, my eyelids grew heavier and my brain drifted away. I didn’t fight it and remember thinking that everything would be fine when I woke up in a few minutes.