by Andy McNab
‘You and Hacker settled down?’ asked Jackson. ‘That was some serious shit you accused him of a couple of days ago. What the hell were you thinking?’
Liam was doing his best to either avoid Mike or not think about him, but it wasn’t easy – it wasn’t like he could just go for a walk. He, like the others, was either trapped behind the walls of the checkpoint or out on patrol. None of them could nip down the pub for a pint.
‘Dunno,’ said Liam, not turning, maintaining his focus on the land in front of him, and the weapon in his hands. ‘Just saying what I saw, that’s all.’
‘You really think he was going to slot you? Why the hell would he do that?’
‘Clash of personalities,’ Liam said, keeping their history private for now. ‘It’s not like the Army guarantees you’ll like every soldier you have to work with, is it?’
‘No kidding,’ said Jackson, taking out a pouch of tobacco and some Rizlas. ‘You don’t smoke, do you?’
Liam shook his head.
‘Sensible. Could kill you.’
Jackson finished making his rollie, then deftly flicked it into his mouth and lit it.
Watching Jackson take a draw, Liam was almost tempted to ask him to roll him one. He’d never smoked in his life, but for some reason, it seemed to fit with where they were, like another part of the uniform. And he could do with something to help him relax, even if it was a cigarette.
And it was then, as Liam breathed in the sweet, woody smell of Jackson’s tobacco, that the RPG slammed into the wall right beneath where he was standing.
The walls shook, dust and grit and stone kicked up into the air and Liam instinctively dropped away and to the floor, half expecting it to give way beneath him.
He was given no time to think.
‘Scott!’ It was Corporal Jackson. ‘Scott! Get on that bloody GPMG now! Return fire!’
Liam was up, readied the weapon, saw muzzle flash and unleashed a hail of metal as Jackson, eyes glued to the binos, tried to get eyes on where the RPG had come from.
A flash far off, about two hundred metres. Liam saw it clearly, realized it was nowhere near where he’d seen the muzzle flash and returned fire. Which meant there was more than one of them out there having a go.
Jackson yelled out, ‘Incoming!’
The rocket landed short this time, but at least it had given away their enemy’s position.
Liam was on it immediately, as was Mike from the other lookout. The bush disappeared in a cloud of dust as the rounds smashed into it. Liam saw a shape moving to the left of where the RPG had been launched, tracked it with his weapon. He fired and the shape dropped from view – dead or just lucky, he didn’t know.
Jackson was off the binos now and laying down fire with his own weapon. The rest of the lads were up on the wall and the peaceful evening disappeared quickly as the sound of gunfire shattered the gloom.
‘Ten o’clock!’ Liam yelled, jabbing a finger to the left of the checkpoint. ‘Either they’ve moved or there’s more of them!’
Jackson swung his weapon round and they both opened fire, but as soon as they did so, more rounds would come in but from another position. It was like shooting ghosts.
‘This is stupid!’ Liam yelled as more fire came in, this time from another position yet again. ‘They’re all over us! Where the crap are they?’
‘Stop talking and keep at them!’ Jackson shouted back, emptying his magazine and smoothly replacing it with a new one, like it was second nature, the weapon merely another part of his body.
A shout came up from below and Liam saw Cameron running towards them carrying a green tube.
‘Here!’ he shouted and passed it up to Liam. ‘We’ve got about a dozen of these, I think.’
Liam took the tube. It was a Light Anti-Structures Missile (LASM), a 66mm unguided extendable rocket launcher, designed to be discarded after launch. Carrying a kilo of enhanced explosives, it used kinetic energy to penetrate the outer wall of the target structure, with the high-explosive warhead detonating inside. They were being phased out, to be replaced by the larger Anti-Structure Munition (ASM), but there were still enough around to be useful. As yet, Liam had only ever fired one on exercise. But things had just changed dramatically.
‘You OK with that?’ asked Jackson. ‘Want me to do it?’
Liam shook his head, extending the launcher, the integral mechanical sight popping up automatically.
It was time to blow something up.
20
LIAM PLACED THE weapon on his right shoulder. It was light, and he thought how something with so much destructive power should really have weighed considerably more.
‘Where are they?’
‘To the left still,’ said Corporal Jackson, letting out short, sharp bursts from his weapon to keep the shooters pinned down. ‘Sustained fire is coming from the end of that field, where there’s that section of crumbling mud wall. You see that?’
Liam trained the sight of the LASM on the place Jackson had described. ‘Got it.’
‘In your own time, Scott,’ Jackson replied. ‘So long as that’s within the next five seconds and you give them a serious fucking headache.’
Liam let out a breath to steady himself.
‘I’ll keep their heads down,’ said Jackson. ‘Now smash it, Scott, you hear me?’ He continued to put down a good volley of suppressing fire.
Liam stared down the pop-up sight of the launcher. Calmly, he depressed the black switch on top of the green tubing and the rocket bucked out of the tube. A heartbeat later, Liam watched it slam into the section of old wall, which disintegrated immediately in a shower of old dry mud and brick. He knew that if anyone was behind it, there was no way they could have survived, or that there would be much of anything left.
Jackson opened fire once more and Liam joined in with the Gimpy, riddling the site with more bullets. Easing off, no fire was returned.
‘Nice one, Scott,’ said Jackson as Liam kicked the now-useless tube away so that they wouldn’t trip over it.
But the battle was anything but over as more gunfire opened up on the checkpoint.
Jackson swore under his breath. ‘I reckon we could be in for an all-nighter,’ he said.
Liam didn’t reply. He didn’t have any words. All he had was an urge to make it through till dawn and to depend on his training. After all, in that moment, it was all he had. That, and the huge flood of adrenaline now racing through his body, and hard-wiring him to the battle they were now in.
Hours later, with midnight long gone, and dawn finally threatening to break through, Liam was dead on his feet. His legs didn’t seem to work properly from either standing in one place too long and getting pins and needles, or having to maintain a semi-squatting position while firing the Gimpy. The Taliban hadn’t let up all night, and no matter what Liam and the rest of the lads had thrown at them, they just seemed to keep coming back for more, taunting them almost. Liam had no idea how many kills, if any, they’d got, but it had clearly made sod all difference. And that was really pissing him off. It seemed that even a few dead mates wasn’t enough to stop them.
‘You need to get that seen to,’ he said, nodding at Jackson, whose right cheek had been opened up with a deep gash. The blood had dried down his face, but the wound was still weeping.
‘Nah, it’s just a cut,’ said Jackson, chugging down some water. ‘Only a wood splinter, nothing to worry about. Gandalf can sort it later with his magical bag of medicine.’ He passed the water to Liam. The gunfire had eased a little, but not completely, and sporadic rounds were being fired both into Checkpoint 3, and out.
‘We’ve nearly twenty confirmed kills,’ said Jackson. ‘At least, that’s how many I spotted through the binos before we ran out of flares. There could be more we just haven’t seen.’
In the dark, and with no flares, the only thing they’d had to go on to pinpoint where the enemy fire was coming from was muzzle flash. But to Liam it seemed like they were trying to shoot at fireflies.
They saw one, brought their arms to bear, and then another would pop up somewhere else. It was hopeless.
‘It’s making no difference,’ he said. ‘They just keep coming. Not even air support’s stopped them.’
Sergeant Reynolds had called in three strikes that night, but even though each one had caused the battle to stall, the gunfire had soon started up again, often from a completely different location.
‘They’ll ease off when dawn breaks,’ said Jackson. ‘Without the cover of darkness, they’ll scuttle off to whatever cave it is they’ve been planning this attack from.’
‘And what? Wait it out?’
Liam didn’t like where his thoughts were leading. Because if the Taliban came back for more, then the multiple would get to a point where they had nothing left to throw back but rocks. Then what?
‘Just have to wait and see, Scott,’ said Jackson. ‘And try not to get killed.’
* * *
When dawn did break, and the day peeked over the horizon as though nervous of what it would see, Reynolds got the lads to do a stocktake. By lunch time, everyone was jittery. Come evening, Liam knew there was a real possibility of things not coming good for any of them.
‘So what you’re saying,’ said Reynolds, the lads sitting around him, though he was now staring hard at Corporal Jackson, who’d been in charge of tallying everything up, ‘is that we’ve not got enough to get us through another night like the one we just had.’
‘Pretty much,’ said Jackson with a shrug. ‘So unless you want us fixing bayonets and doing a re-enactment of Rorke’s Drift, we need to either get the hell out of here, or be re-supplied immediately.’
‘Sounds like we’re fucked,’ said Jason.
‘Can it!’ snapped Reynolds. ‘We are not fucked and we are not going to be fucked, so you can bin that attitude immediately.’
Jason nodded, but said nothing more as Reynolds ordered John onto the radio. Connection made, he took the receiver, the conversation punctuated by well-delivered swearing and a hell of a lot of shouting.
‘The short answer,’ he said, looking at the lads as he hung up the radio, slamming it home like he wanted it to break, ‘is that we’re stuck here. That is, until someone can pull enough of his or her head out of their arse to see that we’re in the shit up to our eyeballs and send a cow in to pick us up.’
‘No way will they send a Chinook out,’ said Jason. ‘Terry would knock it out of the sky in a minute. Ground’s too hot. We don’t know how many are out there, if there are more coming in. Nothing.’
‘Sodding typical,’ said Corporal Jackson. ‘Being quiet for weeks and nothing’s been sent because no one thought we needed it. Now we do, it’s too dangerous. Genius.’
‘So they’re doing a drop,’ continued Reynolds as Jason’s voice died to a mumbling grumble. ‘Cover of darkness, so it’s a tough call. Not easy to accurately throw something out of an aircraft in the middle of the night. But it’s the best chance we’ve got. They’re doing the fly-by at 2100 hours. So keep your eyes on the skies for a crate of stuff coming our way.’
When the time came, Liam heard the distant telltale sound of an aeroplane.
‘Here she comes,’ said Cameron, who was standing with him. ‘Santa on a C130.’
The plane passed overhead and Liam was just about able to make out its silhouette against the night sky. But his eyes were looking for something else, and when it exploded out above them, catching air as it plummeted – a parachute carrying with it a crate of supplies – he joined in with the others and cheered.
Liam, Cameron, Paul and John were ready at the gate of the checkpoint to head out and drag the supplies back in, fully expecting the package to drop, as promised, pretty much at their front door. Except it didn’t.
‘It’s drifting!’ called Mike, who was up in the sangar again. ‘God knows how, seeing as there’s no sodding wind at all, but it’s drifting badly.’
Everyone looked up. Liam saw it and Mike was right. It was going to miss them completely.
‘Brilliant,’ said Jason as the parachute disappeared from view behind trees and scrubland about a mile away. ‘All they’ve done is gone and resupplied the Taliban. Given them extra stuff to kill us with. What a total fuck-up.’
‘We’re screwed,’ said Cameron.
‘Pretty much,’ agreed Liam.
Reynolds quickly pulled them all together. ‘This is the situation,’ he said, and Liam had never seen or heard him so serious. ‘If it kicks off tonight like it did last night, there’s a good chance we’ll be overrun.’
‘How do you mean?’ asked Liam. ‘What, they’ll try to get in?’
‘There’s no try about it,’ said Jackson. ‘If we’ve got nothing to throw back at them, they’ll want to be in here for us, simple as that. And believe me, they’ll fucking well succeed too.’
Liam went cold. What he was hearing couldn’t be true. But it was. Every soldier’s worst nightmare – to be overrun and taken prisoner. Except here the Geneva Convention wasn’t exactly bedtime reading, and prisoners of war weren’t even used as bargaining tools. They were propaganda. And in the eyes of the Taliban, the bloodier the better.
‘Everyone,’ said Sergeant Reynolds, keeping order, ‘is to destroy all possible forms of identification. And by that I mean all letters, name tags, absolutely anything that can trace you or give away any information about who you are and where you’re from. All of it must be destroyed.’
He paused, composing himself.
‘I’m not going to bullshit you. You must all of you ready yourselves for the possibility of capture and all that it would entail. I don’t need to go into any more detail than that, I’m sure; you all know it.’
Sergeant Reynolds let out a breath, then stared at the soldiers in turn.
‘Suffice to say, lads,’ he growled, ‘this is our party and they’re not invited, so let’s make absolutely fucking sure we don’t let the bastards in.’
21
LIAM AND THE others had hardly had time to digest exactly what Sergeant Reynolds had just told them when the sound of automatic gunfire opened the night like a tin opener, and a barrage of rounds hammered into the walls of Checkpoint 3.
‘It’s like they knew we were talking about them,’ muttered the sergeant, standing up. ‘Let’s get to it, lads!’ he ordered. ‘Let them know we’re not a bunch of pussies!’
With mechanical efficiency, Liam and the others were up and manning their weapons and returning fire, both from the sangars and various points around the checkpoint walls. Liam was back on the GPMG, the weapon spitting angry fire into the night. He was terrified, but he was also excited. That he could die tonight was far from his mind. His job was to lay down fire and protect his mates, period.
Jackson shouted over to Liam. ‘Muzzle flash to the right, mate! Get some stuck in there!’
Liam swung his aim and squeezed the trigger. A hellish hail of metal blasted out from the GPMG, destroying the section of bush that Jackson had directed him to. Then, just when he thought that nothing could get up from the ferocious spray of bullets he’d fired, the area lit up with the telltale flash of a rocket.
‘RPG!’ he screamed. ‘RPG! Incoming!’
Liam had lost count of just how many he’d seen fired at them since heading out from Camp Bastion. But it didn’t make this one any less deadly. Unable to move, and frozen for a moment by what approached, Liam just stood and stared as the rocket blasted towards the compound. Hands grabbed him, tried to pull him to the ground, but he couldn’t move. It was like he was hypnotized by the sight of the fire and flame and heat spitting out behind the rocket. Then it slammed with brutal effectiveness into Cameron and Mike’s sangar at a speed touching 300 metres per second. Only this rocket was luckier than the one that had come at him and Jackson. Instead of impacting almost uselessly on the wall just below, it skipped in through the opening Mike and Cameron had been firing from – and took it apart.
The roof of the lookout shot up in the air, then gl
ided back through the night to the ground, like a leaf falling from a giant tree. Dust and muck and metal and wood burst outwards, a deadly spray of violent shrapnel capable of ripping to pieces anything in its way.
A moment after the impact Liam made to drop to his knees, but was too late, and the shockwave bashed into him, knocking him back into Jackson. They both crashed to the ground, their weapons clattering about them. Liam crunched his head on the spent tube of the launcher he’d used earlier, and the pain of the impact was like someone hammering a six-inch nail into his head.
Dazed, but on autopilot now, Liam was up and out of the sangar, grabbing a medical kit on the way and racing across the stony courtyard of the checkpoint. From the corner of his eye he saw Jackson get up, make to follow him, then get back onto the GPMG and open fire. As he ran, bits and pieces of Cameron and Mike’s sangar rained down about him, falling to the ground like confetti.
Liam caught sight of John, Jason and Paul, all turning to join in and search for their mates, but Sergeant Reynolds had all of them bar Paul back at their posts.
‘Back on your weapons and keep their heads down!’ he barked. ‘Or shoot them off, I don’t care which! Gandalf – you’re needed!’
Climbing up to the sangar, Liam found that his vision was obscured by the dense cloud of dust swirling around in the air. It got into his eyes, made them water, and he put his hand over his mouth to stop it choking him. The smell of it was worse than usual. Not just the dry dust, explosives and burning, but something sweet was in there too, and he knew it was the reek of burned, scorched flesh.
‘Dinsdale! Where the hell are you? Dinsdale! Fucking well answer me!’
No answer came and when Liam reached where Cameron and Mike had been standing, he saw why.
The place itself was rubble and ruin. Sand and grit and rock were strewn everywhere. With the force of the explosion, wood and slivers of metal from the roof had embedded themselves in the walls and the floor.
