by Andy McNab
A sergeant by the name of Reynolds came over. He had a ratty look to his face; indeed, his whole body seemed built for wriggling through small spaces. And his eyes never seemed to blink.
‘You’re just tickling them,’ he said, clearly irritated by how long it was taking some of them, including Liam and Cameron, to clean their weapons. ‘They’re not bloody pets! Get some oil on those rags and get them cleaned!’
Liam did as the sergeant had said and worked from one end of the sheet to the other, cleaning each part meticulously. But, as he reassembled the weapon, the barrel slipped out of his hand.
Liam heard laughter. Not daring to look, and horribly aware now that he was being watched, his clumsiness seemed to take over as he picked up the barrel, and immediately the rest of the weapon fell apart.
Liam swore out loud, picked up the barrel to fix it in place, and noticed that the laughter had stopped dead. Looking up, he saw that another soldier was staring over at him, an SA80 – already stripped, cleaned and reassembled – cradled casually in his hands. He was standing alone, but it seemed not so much out of choice but because those around him didn’t want to get too close, like they were either afraid of him, or in awe, or perhaps a bit of both.
Sunlight now in his eyes, Liam could only make out the figure’s silhouette. Then he heard footsteps and realized that the soldier was making his way slowly towards him.
His steps were slow, purposeful, and his eyes were clearly focused on Liam as he drew closer. There was a look of surprise on his face.
Liam recognized him at once and his heart sank.
‘Mike . . .’
‘Hello, Liam.’
Liam noticed other soldiers watching. They reminded him of vultures circling a killing.
‘It’s been a long time.’
Liam nodded, his mouth dry. Mike Hacker? Here? What the hell was going on? It couldn’t be possible! Not only that, it wasn’t bloody fair – not now, not with everything going so well!
‘Funny how we should meet like this, isn’t it?’ said Mike, his voice calm, confident. ‘What are the odds, eh?’
Liam didn’t like Mike’s serrated tone of voice.
‘Look, I’m sorry . . .’ he said, but Mike held up a hand.
‘We all are,’ he said, each word measured, ‘but we both know that means fuck all, right?’
Liam didn’t respond, had no idea how to, was completely unprepared. For a moment, they just stared at each other, then Mike turned away.
Liam watched as the other man walked off and disappeared from view, soldiers folding in behind him, all of them looking at Liam, their eyes clearly questioning what they’d just witnessed.
Cameron came over, ever-alert to trouble around his mate. ‘Who the fuck was that, Scott?’
Liam was in shock and had to work hard to stop himself once again fumbling as he reassembled his weapon. When it was finally together, he stood up.
‘I didn’t join the Army just because I wanted to,’ he said slowly. ‘I joined to escape, get away.’
‘So fucking what?’ said Cameron. ‘We all did, right? Isn’t that what the Army’s all about? Isn’t that why most of us join up in the first place?’
Liam shook his head. His past was rushing at him now, demanding attention.
‘Back home, I was out with some mates . . .’ He paused, remembered, stumbled over his words. ‘We were messing around, you know? Doing a bit of free running, shit like that.’
Cameron screwed up his face. ‘You mean that jumping and swinging all over the place like a monkey?’ he said. ‘Are you fucking serious?’
Liam nodded. ‘I was pretty good at it and the others followed me. But . . .’ He didn’t want to say any more. It was too painful. And that nightmare, the figure at the end of his bed . . . he didn’t want that coming back. Not now.
‘But what?’ Cameron asked. ‘What happened?’
Liam paused, took a breath, composed himself. ‘There was . . . an accident,’ he said haltingly. ‘My best mate, Dan, was killed. Fell off a roof. Died on the way to hospital. I was with him in the ambulance.’
Cameron looked serious and for a moment said nothing.
‘So what’s that got to do with what just happened?’
Liam stared back at where Mike had gone.
‘Last time I saw him was at the funeral,’ he said, working hard to keep his voice steady. ‘I knew he was in the forces, but seriously? What are the odds of us being in the same bloody regiment?’
‘So who is he?’
Liam released a deep sigh. ‘Dan’s older brother.’
10
LIAM STARED AT the pictures on the screen. He knew what they were, they all did: Improvised Explosive Devices. IEDs. And the news seemed to be increasingly filled with stories about soldiers being smashed to pieces by them.
The pictures were labelled as victim-operated, suicide, suicide vehicle-borne, and remote control. Sergeant Reynolds, a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq and God knows where else, was at the front of the class, his face as pissed off and mean as ever.
‘2 Rifles is an Infantry regiment,’ he said, clearly proud of the fact. ‘You will fight on your feet, engaging with the enemy face-to-face.’ He jabbed a calloused finger at the screen like he was about to ask it out for a fight. ‘And these are the types of IED you’re going to face.’
He paused to stare at each of the soldiers in the room in turn, then spoke again.
‘This is what we do, right? And because of it, you’re going to be more exposed to the threat of IEDs than all those soldiers who get to mooch around in armoured vehicles all day like they’re out on safari.’
Liam stared at the pictures. One IED was just a clay jug. It looked harmless, but he knew it could probably blow his legs off, if not rip him to shreds and turn him into pink mist.
Sergeant Reynolds continued. ‘Question: how many soldiers in Afghanistan have been killed by IEDs since 2006?’
The room was silent. Liam hadn’t a clue what the answer was.
‘Too fucking many,’ said the sergeant, as though he’d fully expected no one to get the answer. ‘With hundreds more seriously injured. For every British soldier killed on the battlefield, four are being seriously injured. And these bastard things are to blame, more than anything else.’
He pointed again at the screen.
‘These things scare the shit out of me. I don’t mind admitting it. And they should do the same to you. If they don’t, then fuck off out of 2 Rifles and do something else. I don’t want you here and I sure as hell don’t want to be fighting alongside you in a few months’ time. Because that’s exactly what we’re going to be doing.’
Liam found it almost impossible to believe that Sergeant Reynolds was scared of anything at all. If he was, it made the seriousness of what he was saying somehow even more acute.
‘Some of these devices can even be set off by a torch beam,’ continued the sergeant. ‘You go and do a sweep of a room, click your torch on and that’s it, boom. Game over.’
Liam was liking this session less and less. It was as though Sergeant Reynolds wanted to scare them. But then he probably did, didn’t he? And Liam wanted to make sure every word he heard didn’t just sink into his brain, but really took root. Listening today could save his life – and those of his mates – in the future.
‘And whether I like you or not,’ said the sergeant, yanking Liam from his thoughts, ‘and believe me, I probably won’t, I’m going to do my best to make sure that you lot have enough information in your thick skulls to ensure that you don’t add to those numbers. Understand?’
Soon after the haunting session on IEDs, out on patrol, Liam’s mind was still bouncing between worrying about Mike, and worrying about being blown up. He still wasn’t sure which was worse.
A voice came from behind, breaking him away from his thoughts.
‘Lads, who’s covering tail-end Charlie?’
The patrol stopped dead.
It was Major Edwards and he was
living up to his reputation for being all about the detail.
‘Me, sir,’ said a soldier called Dave Woods. Liam knew him about as well as he knew anyone else in the company: not at all. His name was apt, though: he was tall and gangly like a sapling, and camo’d up, he looked like a rubbish tree.
The major walked over. When he next spoke his voice was quiet, serious.
‘Woods, you’re supposed to be checking all around,’ he said, leaning in, his voice growing louder, ‘not just glancing left and right, swinging your weapon around like a bloody dog’s lead!’
Dave said nothing, looked like his voice had got stuck in his throat, and the major jabbed a pointed finger at the ground.
‘All this is unchecked ground. For all you know, there could be an IED you’ve missed because of being so slack! Then what? Some poor sod comes up behind and they end up dead because you didn’t do your bloody job properly! Is that what you want, soldier? To have their eyeballs bounce off your back as they’re blown to Kingdom Come?’
Even though Liam knew he wasn’t the one being bollocked, the major’s words seemed to hit him just as hard as they did Woods.
‘That’s why we’re doing this,’ the major continued, his eyes not leaving Dave for a second. ‘To make sure you get it right here and don’t go screwing this up in theatre, got it?’
‘Sir.’
Liam watched as the major left Woods swearing to himself. Walking over to have a quick word with one of the two soldiers out front, the one tasked as section commander, Major Edwards then waved them all on.
A few days later, and after more foot patrol practice, live firing, and compound search training, Liam was once again on patrol in the rain. He was cold, wet and bored.
‘Not like in the movies, is it?’
Liam was with Dave, who spoke with a Geordie accent that made him sound as though no matter what he was doing, he was enjoying it. Even if he wasn’t. Living on rations in a shelter that had failed miserably, and only ever getting a maximum of four hours’ sleep, they were both exhausted.
‘How do you mean?’ asked Liam, his hands icy cold as they held his SA80.
‘Well, you never see this, do you?’ said Dave, looking about them and kicking his foot in a puddle. ‘Two blokes standing in the rain, bored to death, then going home having done nothing? Aren’t we supposed to be abseiling out of helicopters and shit like that?’
Standing in the rain wasn’t really in any of the Army’s promotional literature either, thought Liam with a laugh. But he knew enough to realize that soldiering was as much about routine tasks as it was explosive fire-fights. And everything had to be done correctly; if you got the little things wrong, like washing your bollocks, then who was to say you wouldn’t screw up when the bullets were flying?
‘You’ve got us confused with Black Hawk Down,’ he said, checking his watch. ‘Anyway, we’ve only got a few hours left till we get picked up. Then we’re doing compound search training, I think. Should be better than this.’
‘Couldn’t be much worse, right?’
‘Huh, wait till we get out to Afghanistan,’ Liam retorted.
‘Yeah,’ said Cameron, who had stepped up to join them. ‘And you know, most of me can’t wait to get the fuck out there, to do what we’ve been training for; I want to get on with it, prove I won’t brick it when it gets real!’
‘Don’t you get all shaky,’ said Liam. ‘Afghanistan won’t be half as much fun if you’re not out there with me enjoying all that death-at-every-corner stuff.’
‘And we’ll find out just how much fun when we’re back from leave, won’t we?’ said Cameron.
Liam raised an eyebrow. ‘We don’t head out for a couple of months.’
‘I’m not talking about Afghanistan,’ said Cameron. ‘I’m talking about Norfolk.’
11
A COUPLE OF weeks later, with a period of leave coming and going so quickly that Liam could hardly remember what he’d done with it – though he and Cameron had hit the pubs pretty hard, and copped off with a girl or two who he could only vaguely remember – he was sitting next to Cameron on another Army coach. This time they were bound for a multi-million-pound training area in Norfolk where a small part of Afghanistan had been brought to the English countryside.
‘Apparently it’s full-on realistic,’ said Cameron, his eyes closed, head back against the seat. ‘It’s even been populated with Afghan nationals, so it’s the closest we’ll get to being in Afghanistan without actually being right there in the middle of all that dust and heat.’
‘It’s just like the major said,’ said Liam with a smile. ‘You’ve done primary school, now you’re at secondary school. But when you get to Afghanistan, you’ll be at the university of hard knocks.’
‘You’ve got to love the man’s use of clichés,’ said Cameron. ‘You reckon they get presented with a book of them to use when they graduate from Sandhurst?’
The coach slowed and eased off the main road, turning down a track almost completely hidden by trees. It was like travelling down a dark green tunnel.
‘Reckon we’re nearly there,’ said Liam, looking down the aisle of the coach.
‘Thank fuck for that,’ said Cameron. ‘My arse is numb from the journey and I couldn’t half do with a shit.’
The compound itself was a snapshot of what Liam had seen of Afghanistan in pictures, on the news, and on the films they’d seen during training. Surrounded by high walls, he and the rest of the section were soon walking down an authentic Afghan village street. That he was in Norfolk doing it seemed bizarre in the extreme, as though the Army had somehow airlifted the place from one country to another in secret. People were milling around in traditional Afghan clothes, speaking in a mix of Pashto – the most common Afghan language – and English. An old two-wheeled cart was lying at the side of the road. Further on was a marketplace with someone selling vegetables; someone else had a small butcher’s stall, then there was a table with someone selling what looked like vintage bottles of soda.
Well-armed, they carried between them two light machine guns, one Sharpshooter rifle, and five SA80s, two of which were fitted out with the UGL 40mm under-slung grenade launchers – Liam was carrying an LMG which, firing at a rate of 700–1,000rpm, was an absolute beast. And Liam had to admit that having it in his hands made him feel pretty bloody good, if not invincible. Walking down such a street and carrying a weapon like the LMG, despite the whole scene itself being fake, was as surreal and as frightening as it was exciting. Liam was working hard to keep the smile off his face, to stay in character. But it wasn’t easy when, even though he knew why they were there and what they were being trained to do, he felt cool.
One of the Afghans ran over and touched Liam’s weapon. Surprised, Liam jerked it away, not sure if that was the correct response or not, and kept on walking. Further on, the stallholders called out to them with ‘Salaam alaikum’ and invites to check out their stalls, to wander over and have a look, try before you buy.
After a while, Liam began to relax into working a foot patrol through an Afghanistan village. Following the lead of some of the other more experienced soldiers, he chatted to the locals, at the same time as keeping eyes on everything that was happening around him. He spotted Mike, but they didn’t make eye contact. Since that first meeting, he’d been expecting to run into him at every turn, but the opposite had been true; the major was keeping them all so busy that there was no time for anything but training. And, by luck or good fortune, Liam had not yet had to work alongside Mike. And because of that, though he was still concerned that there was still some serious shit between them that would have to be sorted some time, the fact that Dan’s brother was here no longer really bothered him. He was focused now on getting on with what he was there for, why he’d signed up in the first place: to be a soldier, and a good one at that.
It was then, when Liam was completely absorbed in his role, chatting to a local and trying his level best to make him understand that he really wasn’t int
erested in buying a packet of batteries, that an explosion smashed the moment into pieces like a bunk-buster missile.
The peace shattered now, bits of it still rolling around in the air, and the dust continued to swirl as the once-calm street scene descended into utter chaos.
Liam, caught off-guard, his ears ringing with the rip of the explosion, was momentarily disorientated and confused. He’d not expected the explosion. None of them had.
On the ground he spotted a man with a leg missing. Blood was pouring from a mangled stump and beside him was a woman in a burka holding the rest of his leg. She was wailing – and the man was screaming his lungs out.
A hand grabbed Liam’s shoulder, whipped him round. ‘Scott! Wake up and respond! Come on! Start sparking, for fucksake!’ It was Sergeant Reynolds. And Liam could see that the devil was in his eyes. ‘We’ve got four casualties and eyes on possible Taliban!’ continued Reynolds. ‘Think like a soldier! Move it!’
Liam came to life in a moment as adrenaline poured into him. Everything came into focus as his senses rammed him full of information from what was happening all around.
‘Yes, Sergeant!’
Sergeant Reynolds pointed at a soldier lying on the floor, debris covering his head. Liam saw that his chest was a mess of blood and ripped clothing, and for a split second, his eyes told him the wound was real: the blood and the gore were seriously effective and Liam knew that the guys who made up the fake wounds could easily cut it on any good Hollywood horror movie. And the soldier was putting on a performance good enough for the Old Vic, screaming and yelling like he’d had his ribcage ripped out as he threw the fragments of rubble off his face.
‘Get your arse over there and evac that casualty now!’
Liam, with three other soldiers who’d joined with him from Harrogate and Catterick, was at the casualty’s side in seconds. The casualty grabbed him and screamed at him, covering him in spit, then slapped him across the face with a hand slick with blood. As Liam steadied himself from the blow, the casualty lashed out again, this time at one of the other soldiers. Then he turned back to Liam.
