After years of stealing cars with the gang, the police finally caught up to me. I was eighteen and the judge gave me an ultimatum: prison or join the army. I was smart enough to know that the army was my only chance for something better so I signed up and went for it, eventually passing selection for the Parachute Regiment. The training was hell but I refused to quit, even when it was four in the morning and I was covered in freezing mud and someone was making me bawl Yes Sir at the top of my voice. My commanding officer said I had guts: I thought I was just bloody stubborn. But I made it through and found that I loved being in a unit. It felt like a family, even more so than the gang.

I liked the guys I was with but I didn’t make those deep, lifelong friendships that the others did. I couldn’t and I knew why: I was broken.

I was itching to drive again but it was a long time before I got the chance. In Afghanistan, our unit was riding in the back of a truck when we came under fire and three of us, including the driver, were shot. I jumped behind the wheel and managed to get us past three roadblocks and back to base in time to save the injured. After that, I became my unit’s go-to driver.

Fast forward a little while and I’d made it into the British Special Forces, the SAS, who needed someone who was handy with a gun and good behind the wheel. And a little while after that, on a joint mission with Delta Force, I met JD.

It was one of those missions where everything went to hell. We were in Yemen to snatch a terrorist leader who was behind a whole series of attacks on US bases. It should have been a quick in and out but the intelligence was bad. Our helicopter was shot down on the way in and crashed into the mansion we were meant to be raiding. I got separated from the rest of the SAS and wound up outnumbered and pinned down in the middle of a ballroom as fire spread through the mansion. And there, hunkered behind an upturned table, I met JD, the leader of the Delta Team, also separated from his men. Together, we managed to shoot our way out of there, rescue the rest of the lads and get everyone down to the basement garage, where I hotwired a Range Rover and got us out of there. JD said that Delta could use a guy like me and pulled some strings to get me seconded to them, and so it began.