Man Down

by Nathan Burrows

  ‘Nice place, Lizzie,’ he said.

  ‘Piss off, it was cheap as chips,’ she retorted. ‘It’s got a bed, a shower, and a balcony. And it’s right next to the beach.’

  ‘Fair one,’ Adams replied. ‘It just looks like it was built in the Balkans.’

  ‘I need your boots,’ Lizzie said. ‘The car’s being picked up later this evening, so if you leave them in the car, they’ll be gone and there’ll be a Cypriot lad with some nice new footwear.’ Adams sat on a bench near the car and unlaced his boots. He rolled his socks off his feet and stuffed them into the boots before handing them to Lizzie.

  ‘There you go, mate,’ he said. ‘You might want to leave them on the balcony, though.’ Lizzie wrinkled her nose and took the boots between her thumb and fingers.

  ‘Yeah, thanks for that,’ she replied. ‘I think I will.’

  Lizzie walked into the hotel, clutching the boots, while Adams struggled with the espadrilles that she had bought him. Finally getting them on his feet, he regarded them warily. They fit, but that was about the only positive thing that he could say about them. He relaxed back on the seat, enjoying the view over the sea in front of him. Closing his eyes, he relaxed with the sun on his face. It was a different feeling to the sun in Afghanistan, softer and more welcoming. He let the sounds of the seagulls relax him, and started to look forward to the rest of the day.

  ‘Adams, wake up you lazy sod,’ Lizzie’s voice broke through his thoughts a few minutes later. ‘That’s twice today you’ve fallen asleep on the job.’ He opened his eyes and looked through his sunglasses at Lizzie who was bending over in front of him. Her dress had fallen away, giving him an unrestricted view of the contents of her pink, lacy bra.

  ‘Jesus wept,’ Adams muttered, closing his eyes.

  ‘What?’ Lizzie asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘What’s the plan, then?’

  ‘Well, I was thinking we could bimble down to the seafront, and maybe grab a drink somewhere?’

  ‘Sounds like a plan to me,’ Adams replied, reopening his eyes and stretching. ‘I could do with a pint.’

  They walked slowly along the promenade, taking in the sights and sounds around them. Adams watched Lizzie as she flicked through some CDs on one of the beachfront stalls before finally picking out a couple to buy. She looked so different in a dress and out of uniform. More relaxed, more human somehow. He wondered what Sophie would think of Limassol, and thought that she probably wouldn’t like it that much. Not that it mattered anyway, he thought with a sudden pang. He pushed thoughts of home to the back of his mind as Lizzie walked back over, clutching a thin plastic bag with her CDs in.

  ‘My God, you look a bit serious,’ she said. Adams looked at her, and his reflection in her sunglasses, before replying.

  ‘I’m just a bit concerned that you’re buying dodgy CDs from a seafront stall.’

  ‘Why? What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘How are the artists going to get the royalties?’ Lizzie laughed at his reply.

  ‘Oh, piss off!’ she said. Grabbing his arm, she pulled him towards her. ‘Come on, let’s go and have a look at the pier.’

  Lizzie and Adams walked along the wooden pier that jutted out into the Mediterranean. When they got to the end, they both turned and looked back towards Limassol.

  ‘Well,’ Lizzie said. ‘It could be worse.’

  ‘You’re right there,’ Adams replied. He pointed towards a small bar at the end of the pier. ‘How about that place?’ He asked her. ‘Do you think they do beer?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure they do,’ Lizzie said. ‘Seeing as it’s got a bright green neon sign that says “Beer” in the window, I’d be very surprised if they didn’t.’

  A few moments later, they were sitting at a table by the window, both with a glass of ice cold beer in front of them. Adams watched a couple of youngsters trying, and failing, to surf. They were persistent, he would give them that. He turned to look at Lizzie, who had her hands on either side of her face and was looking at him with a half-smile.

  ‘Do you know something?’ she asked him.

  ‘What?’ he replied.

  ‘We’ve never talked about what happened back at Sangin, have we?’ Adams looked at her as her smile disappeared.

  ‘No, you’re right,’ he said. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ He watched her expression as he asked the question, but couldn’t read her face at all. He was crap with women most of the time, and it looked as if today was no exception.

  ‘Not really,’ Lizzie said. ‘I was just thinking that it was weird how we never talk about it.’

  ‘To be honest, mate,’ Adams said, ‘I’ve kind of put it away in a box.’ He thought for a second before continuing. ‘But that might be because I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘Did you tell Sophie what had happened?’ Adams felt a flicker of anger cross his face as Lizzie mentioned his girlfriend’s name, and he made a concerted effort to hide it.

  ‘What? That you nearly got shot in the arse?’

  ‘No,’ Lizzie laughed. ‘Not that specifically, more the whole thing. What happened to us.’ She paused, and by the time she continued, any trace of humour in her voice had gone. ‘That you shot someone.’

  ‘I don’t think she would have got it,’ Adams said. ‘I don’t think she would have got it at all. But that doesn’t matter anymore now. It’s all in the past.’ He picked up his glass and clinked it off Lizzie’s. ‘Cheers.’

  Lizzie didn’t reply but just stared at him with a deadpan look on her face. Adams watched as she crossed her arms over her chest, uncrossed them, then crossed them again before her expression softened.

  ‘What’s all in the past?’ she asked. ‘You slotting someone, or you and Sophie?’ Adams’s heart sank. Bollocks, he thought. He’d been rumbled. ‘Spill the beans, Adams, and stop taking me for a fool.’ He thought for a while before deciding that now was as good a time as any.

  ‘When I got back to our flat, she wasn’t there.’ He took a sip of his beer. ’She was gone.’ Adams looked at Lizzie, who was staring at him with her mouth half-open.

  ’Shit,’ she whispered. ’Seriously?’

  ‘No, Lizzie,’ Adams replied, leaning back in his chair. ’She was only joking. Sophie burst out of the cupboard in the bedroom a few minutes later wearing nothing but a smile.’ He laughed, but it was short-lived. ‘I wish. She was well gone by the time I got back. Left a note, though. Not quite a “Dear John” letter, but not far off it.’

  ‘What did it say?’

  ‘Do you really want to know?’

  ‘Would I ask if I didn’t? Of course I want to know.’

  ‘It said that she didn’t think there was a long-term future between us,’ Adams replied, trying to keep any emotion out of his voice. ‘That it wasn’t me, it was her. That sort of bollocks. She didn’t want, er, what we had to be a long-term thing.’

  ’She dumped you while you were in Afghanistan?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘What a bitch.’ Adams watched as Lizzie took a large drink from her beer. ‘Have you still got the ring?’

  ’No, flogged it to a dodgy bloke in Yarmouth. Spent the cash on booze and prostitutes. The rest,’ he took a sip of his own beer, ‘I just wasted.’ That comment, at least, raised a laugh from Lizzie.

  ‘In Yarmouth? Bet they’re quality.’

  ‘The money went a long way, Lizzie,’ Adams said with a broad smile. ‘I won’t lie to you.’

  The two of them sat in silence for a few moments, before Adams continued.

  ‘Lizzie?’

  ‘What?’ She looked up at him, and Adams was struck by the expression on her face. She looked even sadder than he felt.

  ‘I didn’t really spend the money on prostitutes. It’s back in the bank.’ At least that raised a smile.

  Later that evening, Lizzie took Adams to a restaurant that she’d been to earlier in the week. It had been recommended to her by the concierge at the hotel when she
’d asked if there was anywhere local that she could go for some authentic Cyprus food. She wasn’t sure exactly what authentic Cyprus food was, but while she was here, she wanted to try some. It wasn’t just that — she was still reeling from what Adams had told her earlier

  ‘I came here on Tuesday night,’ Lizzie said to Adams as she pushed open the wooden door to the restaurant. As she walked in, the owner of the restaurant rushed up to her and greeted her like an old friend. As he showed them to a table by the glass windows that looked out onto the street, Adams whispered to Lizzie.

  ‘Well, you obviously made quite an impression on him.’ Lizzie glared at Adams.

  ‘Piss off, Adams,’ she whispered back. ‘He’s old enough to be my grandad.’ The restaurant owner pulled Lizzie’s chair back for her so that she could sit down before rushing back to the bar to fetch a jug of water, glasses, and some menus. ‘But at least he’s got some manners,’ Lizzie said.

  Lizzie and Adams studied the menus as the restaurant owner lit the candles on the table before disappearing again. Lizzie looked up at Adams in the soft flickering light and smiled when she saw the frown on his face.

  ‘What’s the matter, mate?’ she said. ‘Do you not see anything you like?’

  ‘It’s all Greek to me.’ Adams put the menu down on the table.

  ‘Very funny,’ Lizzie replied. ‘Do you want me to ask him if he’s got a menu with pictures in for you?’

  ‘What, you can speak Greek?’ Adams asked.

  ‘There’s a lot about me that you don’t know, Adams,’ she said. ‘Watch and learn, watch and learn.’

  Lizzie turned and waved at the owner who was standing behind the bar polishing some glasses. He came bustling over, retrieving his pad and pencil from the pocket in the front of his apron as he did so. When he reached Lizzie, he looked at her expectantly with his pencil poised above the pad. Lizzie pointed at the menu in front of her and shrugged her shoulders. The restaurant owner laughed, and went back to the bar returning a few seconds later with two menus which he exchanged for the ones he had given them earlier. Adams opened his menu and, seeing the pictures of the food next to the text, started laughing.

  ‘Nicely done, Lizzie,’ Adams laughed. ‘But you really are full of shit sometimes, you know that?’

  They both looked at the menus for a few minutes, although Lizzie knew what she was going to have already, which was exactly the same thing that she had had on Tuesday. She figured there was no point chancing it and ending up with something that she didn’t like.

  ‘Do you know what you want?’ she asked Adams.

  ‘I think I’m going to have the one that looks like a kebab,’ he replied, pointing a finger at one of the pictures on the menu.

  ‘Good choice,’ Lizzie said. ‘It’s called “Soulvaki” or something like that, I think.’

  ‘What are you going to have?’ Adams asked her. Lizzie pointed at another picture on the menu.

  ‘I think I’m going to have that. I’ve got no idea what it’s called, but I had it the other day and it was divine.’ Lizzie waved the owner back across to their table and ordered their food by pointing several times at the menu. Then she turned the menu over and pointed at some drinks on the back.

  ‘What are we drinking?’ Adams asked.

  ‘Wine, hopefully,’ she replied.

  A different member of staff came back a few minutes later and exchanged their menus for napkins and knives and forks. He also brought a large jug of white wine and two glasses which he put down next to them. Lizzie saw Adams looking at the wine with suspicion.

  ‘That looks like a quality vintage,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, stop whingeing Adams,’ Lizzie replied. ‘I had some the other night and it was fine. Maybe not the finest wine I’ve ever drunk, but it did the job.’ Adams picked up the jug and poured a dash of wine into Lizzie’s glass.

  ‘Would Madam care to taste it, even though it looks like a urine sample?’

  ‘Why, thank you.’ Lizzie took a delicate sip from the glass after swirling it around and sniffing it. ‘Mmm, I’m getting autumn leaves with a hint of citrus.’ She drained the glass. ‘Just fill her up,’ Lizzie said as she stretched out her arm with the empty glass. ‘Come on, I’m dehydrating while you’re farting about trying to be posh.’

  By the time the waiter returned with their food, Lizzie and Adams had polished off the first jug of wine. Lizzie pointed at the jug, and the waiter nodded at her as he put their plates in front of them. Lizzie was pleased that the food had turned up as she was starting to feel the buzz from the wine, and she had not eaten since lunchtime. The warm flush the wine had given her was not unpleasant, though. She watched as Adams picked through his food, moving bits and pieces around with a fork. The waiter returned with another jug of wine and filled up both their glasses before putting it on the table between them.

  ‘What’s up?’ Lizzie asked Adams. He looked up at her and smiled.

  ‘Nothing, nothing at all,’ he replied. ‘I know I’d said that I would have the one that looks like a kebab, but…’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’ she said.

  ‘Well, it is a kebab. The only thing that’s missing is the polystyrene box.’ Lizzie looked at Adams and they both laughed.

  ‘Just shut up and eat it,’ she said. ‘This time tomorrow we’ll be back in Afghanistan, and this time next week you’ll be remembering this meal as the best one you’ve had in months.’ Lizzie watched as the smile slowly dropped from Adams's face.

  ‘This time next week,’ he said, ‘we could both be dead.’

  35

  Private Dave Moffat was admiring the colours of the sunset over Sangin and wondering how his beloved Sheffield United would fare in the Premier League next season when the bullet hit him in the face.

  It entered just below his left eye, nicking the bone of his cheek which diverted it upwards. Ripping through his optic nerve, it carried on through the soft tissue in his brain before smashing its way through his skull on the crown of his head. When it met the hard Kevlar of the helmet that Private Moffat was wearing, the bullet flatted and ricocheted back through the hole it had just made before finally coming to rest in his brain stem.

  The cavitation pressure wave that the bullet produced as it passed through his brain had already caused irreparable damage to Private Moffat’s medulla oblongata and motor cortex. Private Moffat would have died from the damage to these two key areas, but the pressure wave finished the job regardless. Even if he had somehow survived the initial trauma of the high velocity round, the resulting cerebral oedema from the tissue damage would have herniated his brain, killing him at some point down the line.

  None of these things really mattered to Private Moffat, because although he was still standing, he was dead. His body rocked backward until his knees buckled, and he fell with a thump onto the wooden floor of the lookout tower that he’d been standing on. The half-smoked cigarette that he’d been so careful to hide the glow from rolled onto the boards next to his body. He never heard the echoing gunshot ring out across the village.

  A few hundred yards away from Moffat, Lance Corporal Jackson woke with a start, not sure what it was that had disturbed him. He was usually a pretty heavy sleeper, so whatever it was must have been significant. Unzipping his sleeping bag, he pushed aside the mosquito net that covered his camp cot and got to his feet. Around him some of his platoon were also stirring, so something must be going on.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ he said as he looked at his watch. It wasn’t even eleven o’clock — so much for an early night. He slid his feet into his boots after giving them a quick shake to check for camel spiders or scorpions. He’d heard the old wives’ tale about the soldier who’d put his foot into his boot and been bitten by a camel spider and, while he thought that the story was total bollocks, wasn’t going to take any chances.

  He padded towards the door of the small room that he and five of his colleagues called home. Jackson pushed the door open, wincing as the hinges com
plained. When they’d taken over the compound, they’d rehung all the doors so that they opened outwards, not inwards, in an attempt to stop the doors being blown open if they were attacked. But this one had never been the same since they’d done that.

  As he looked out of the door into the courtyard, he heard a shout from near one of the watchtowers that stood in each corner of the compound.

  ‘Man Down! Man Down!’

  ‘Bollocks,’ he muttered as he broke into a run and started jogging towards the watchtower. After a couple of yards, he turned back and ran into the accommodation block to grab his body armour and weapon. When he ran into the room, the rest of his platoon were still in their cots. ‘Wakey wakey, boys!’ he shouted, ‘Sounds like there’s a stand to!’

  On hearing this, the soldiers all started fighting their way out of their sleeping bags and mosquito nets. Jackson said to one of them as he picked up his weapon and body armour, ‘Can you make sure that the Doc’s up and about mate? He might be needed.’ The soldier swore as Jackson’s Kevlar helmet banged off the metal corner of his cot, but at least Jackson knew he was awake.

  Without waiting for a reply, Jackson left the room and resumed his run across the courtyard, trying to slide his arms into his body armour as he did so. Despite the dim light he could see a couple of soldiers near the bottom of one of the watchtowers, so he ran towards it to see what was going on. As he arrived, a soldier looked down from the top of the watchtower.

  ‘It’s Moffat, Jacko!’ the soldier shouted before turning to look out over the village. ‘He’s well dead.’ Jackson opened his mouth to tell the lad to get back down into the compound when another shot rang out.

  The soldier on top of the compound was thrown backward off the top of the watchtower, landing with an explosive gasp on the dirt by Jackson’s feet. The thud he made as he hit the earth was closely followed by the echo of the shot ringing out across the village beyond the compound walls.

  ‘Fuck, fuck,’ Jackson said, kneeling down next to his colleague. ‘Mate, are you okay?’ he said, although as soon as he said it he realised it was a stupid thing to say. The soldier at his feet was gasping for breath, each exhalation punctuated with a bloody bubble of saliva. As Jackson watched, the breaths slowed down and stopped within a few seconds. ‘Don’t go near that fucking ladder!’ he shouted at the other soldiers, who were standing like statues, staring at the body on the ground. Jackson rolled the soldier lying in front him away from him and peered at his back. ‘Fuck me, that’s gone straight through him,’ he said as he saw the large exit wound in the middle of his body armour. So much for the Kevlar plate.