Crossfire

by Andy McNab

  'If it kicks off, don't worry, I've got more brass in my wagon to resupply your lot than they had at the Alamo. We might need it. C Company were in there last week. Five fucking hours that contact lasted.'

  His jaw tightened as there was another explosion in the compound. 'Remember the two lads killed last week, and the poor fucker sent back to the UK with half his guts hanging out after one of those fucking things landed on him. Just make sure you look after your people and keep them alive, OK?'

  There was a murmur as everyone stood. We headed for the brew area. Nobody was going anywhere until the attack had stopped and the munitions guys had got out there to clear the compound.

  9

  Pete stood up with his empty cup still in his hand and his helmet at a jaunty angle. He didn't wear one of the black Wehrmacht-style helmets like the rest of the media. He said the lip at the front got in the way when he filmed. Instead, he'd got hold of an old British steel helmet on eBay, and ground down the front of the rim.

  He wore it tipped back and to the left, with a square of shammy leather underneath so it stayed at the same angle and didn't slide about on his bald head. With the corners of the shammy hanging down over his ears, all he needed was a Capstan Full Strength glued to his bottom lip and he'd have been a ringer for old Tommy Atkins in the trenches.

  I tapped his arm. 'Finish your emails, Bermondsey Boy, I'll see to these.'

  'Thanks.' He passed his cup. 'That's if the sat phone ain't shot to bits.'

  Pete went to the other side of the room, where his iBook was rigged up to a BGAN wire running out through the window. The BGAN itself was sitting on top of one of the HESCOs outside.

  Yet another rocket landed with a dull crump. It was the fourth attack we'd had that day. The last one had been mortars and had taken out two of the quartermaster's steel freight containers. No one was killed or injured, so I could just imagine the QM rubbing his hands as he prepared to compile a list of bomb-damaged goods long enough to fill two ships, let alone two containers.

  When I got back to Pete with his Shirley Temple, he was sitting cross-legged on the floor, back against the wall, his iBook on his lap. The memory stick he normally wore round his neck was jutting out of the USB port.

  He wore a big smile under the helmet.

  'Family stuff?' I laughed. 'So that's what you keep on those things. I thought you boys had 'em as some sort of good-luck charm. Fucking Dom walks round like he's immune to everything except green kryptonite.'

  'Don't I know it, mate. It's a worry. Here you are . . .' He shifted the screen so I could share. 'Last year's birthday party. Six years old and bright as a button.'

  A tall woman in a bikini with long wavy blonde hair was doing her best to keep control of half a dozen kids in armbands and goggles. The camera panned to take in more of the background.

  I did a double-take. 'Fuck me, Brockwell Park lido! That takes me back a bit.'

  'Done a few laps in your time, have you?'

  'We used to go and mess about there as kids.' I watched his grin widen. 'We'd get out at Brixton and go to the market first, see what we could nick. We usually landed up with a couple of tomatoes or some green thing we didn't even know the name of, but it still made a nice picnic. Then we'd doss by the pool until we got thrown out for divebombing the grown-ups.'

  Pete had been nodding along. He gave a burst of laughter louder than a 30mm. 'I got chucked out too! Wrongly accused of being the previous owner of a turd they found floating in the deep end. Wasn't you, was it? Too much exotic veg?'

  I pointed at the screen. 'That Tallulah?'

  'Yes.' He beamed. 'And that's the birthday girl.' His finger touched the screen and lingered as she blew out the candles on her cake. He was lost in his own world for a bit. 'I've missed every one of the last three . . .' He looked up suddenly. 'But do you know what, Nick? I'm not fucking missing her seventh, in three weeks' time. Or any of the others after that. I'm jacking it in, mate. Local news and quality family time, that's me from now on.'

  I wasn't sure if he was serious. 'But you'd miss all this.' I waved my arm to embrace the chaos.

  'Miss what? A reporter on a personal crusade he won't let me in on, crap tea – no offence – and an arse full of sand?' He tapped the screen again. 'No contest, mate.'

  I understood the tea and sand bit. 'Crusade?'

  He blew out his cheeks. 'He's always been hungry for it. Passionate, you know? I used to be up there with him, righting wrongs, changing the world. But I just don't have the appetite for it any more. It's partly the fact that all we're producing here is tomorrow's chip paper. Disposable news – nobody gives a fuck.' His eyes roamed back to the birthday party. 'Partly that other things, like spending time with Tallulah and watching Ruby grow up, are a whole lot more important to me now.' He shrugged. 'Don't get me wrong, the awards we got for the Kabul doc mean something because they were recognition for exposing the fucking nightmare out there, but I just . . . I just don't share Dom's passion any more.'

  'And the new passion is drugs? That's the crusade?'

  He leant forward to get his face closer to mine. 'He's so fixated he even had me secret-filming in Dublin a couple of weeks ago . . .' He slumped back and stared up at the ornate ceiling. 'But I'm checking out now. Maybe I'll do the odd wildlife documentary. Just as long as I can know what my schedule is far enough in advance not to risk missing another of Ruby's birthdays . . .' His eyes narrowed. 'You got family, Nick?'

  'I did have, once.' I got a sudden rush of pins and needles in my legs, a sensation I hadn't experienced for a long, long time. 'A little girl who was a lot like your Ruby, as a matter of fact. Her parents were killed, I was her guardian.' I was vaguely aware that sweat was now leaking more heavily down my face and tried to wipe it away. 'I never really got the birthday thing right . . . In the end I had to ask someone more reliable to take over.'

  My memory stick was set to locked, and that was the way I liked it. Somebody once told me I lived life with the lid on, and I guessed they were right. It was the way it had to be. How was I supposed to function if I spent all my time clicking thumbnails of a teenager dead on a King's Cross bed? The image I tried to cling to was of her bright and sparkly at the one birthday I did manage to get right, at the replica of the Golden Hind on the Thames.

  I was spared having to go there, and poor Pete was spared having to listen. One of the rifle-company lads appeared and stood next to me, but it was Pete he was after. He had a blue Helly Hansen T-shirt on under his armour, and a brand-new tattoo of barbed wire curling round his right arm. Here and there a few scabs still clung to the ink – but not as many as there were on the zits he'd popped on his face.

  Pete looked up at him with a big smile. 'Hello, mate. What can I do you for?'

  The young lad smiled back. 'I heard you was a tankie. My dad was, too – Jim Duggan, you know him?'

  Pete moved his head from side to side in thought mode. 'No, mate, sorry, don't ring any bells. He still in?'

  The lad was Welsh, and flushed with pride for his dad. 'No, he's here, in Iraq, working for one of the security companies.'

  Duggan . . . The name suddenly rang a bell with me. He was the boy who needed bigging up. I held out a hand. 'I'm Nick, that's Pete. You number one on the door tonight?'

  He got even prouder. 'Terry. Yeah, first time. The platoon swaps round the entry teams.'

  'Good luck, mate. You know, until about four years ago only special forces would be doing that shit.'

  His eyes widened and he kept shaking my hand, and Pete just kept looking at him, deep in thought.

  'Yeah?'

  'That's right, mate. Big day. Good luck.'

  One of the RMP girls walked past and Terry's eyes swivelled. Pete laid down his iBook, stood up and wrapped a fatherly arm round him. 'You do good tonight, my son, and she'll be all over you like a rash.'

  Terry might have been about to get the party gear on and make entry into a house packed with guys wanting to kill him, but he was maybe ninetee
n at a push. The RMP would have had him soft-boiled for breakfast.

  Pete gestured at the iBook. 'If that old man of yours is on email, you want to drop him a line? Tell him you're OK?'

  Pete and I exchanged a glance. He knew as well as I did that if tonight went to rat shit this might be the last time he ever made contact.

  Terry was even more made up as he sat and started tapping away.

  Pete stepped over to me, looking pleased with himself. 'You know what? There would be stuff I'd miss. Mostly the camaraderie. The brotherhood. It's a bit like being a squaddy, what we do. Even when you're up to your neck in shit, you're surrounded by mates.' He smiled. 'We were in Kabul when Ruby's mum fucked off to Spain with the bloke who built our extension. It was Dom and all the other guys who kept me afloat.'

  He slapped my arm. 'Sorry, mate, too much information. If you do ever get there, though, the Gandamack Lodge is the place to drown your sorrows. Great bar. The city's not exactly awash with them. All the news crews stay there, and it's the circuit's watering-hole. Plenty of company.'

  The shout went up that the attack was over, but we stayed where we were. The area still had to be cleared before anyone could move.

  'Talking of keeping afloat . . .' he hit my arm again . . . 'when Tel's finished, why don't you go online to Sad Fucks Reunited, see if you can hunt down the old diving team?'

  10

  The tank park

  2340 hrs

  'Where the fuck is Peter with those drinks?'

  It was the first time I'd heard Dom swear. Things obviously weren't too hunky-dory on Planet Platinum Bollocks. He'd come back fuming from his session at the FCO building. Pete and I had tried to draw him out, but he stayed tight-lipped.

  It was H-hour minus twenty, and we were choking on the exhaust from B Company's nine Bulldogs. Their back doors were open. In the dull red glow from the interiors I could see a mass of last-minute checks going on. I watched Terry as he tugged his chest harness over his Osprey body armour and positioned the pouches to make sure his mags, frag and smoke grenades were secure. Once he was sorted, he couldn't resist having another quick squeeze of a zit.

  All I had to check was the field dressing in the left map pocket of my cargos, same place everyone kept one. That way we knew where to grab it if someone took a hit and started leaking.

  The ear pad of my PRR crackled as guys blew into their mikes to test their radios were working and on the right channel.

  Dom turned to me. The guys were around us so he kept his voice low. 'They are so young.'

  I pointed to Terry, now pulling on his gloves – maybe to stop himself attacking his face. 'That little fucker there's first through the door tonight.'

  Dom moved a few steps to check he really was seeing teenage spots on the man leading the attack.

  'That's how it is.' I shrugged. 'They're infantry, they're all young fuckers.'

  Dom was still brooding as Terry clambered into the back of his Bulldog. Maybe he was thinking how lucky that stepson of his was in comparison. I guessed he'd be tucked away in a nice warm university bed right now, probably not his own. Good for him. I always wished I'd had the chance of college instead of running round like Terry, with a tin hat on, getting shot at.

  Pete returned with three white cups and caught the fag end of the conversation. 'That kid who's first through the door tonight is only nineteen.'

  I took my brew but Dom shook his head.

  'Take it, you'll like this one. I got us some real coffee. I told 'em vampires can't drink tea, it kills them. Go on, it'll calm you down. You shouldn't go chasing after those fuckers. It winds you up too much.'

  I took a sip of the strong, milky brew as Dave came on the PRR. 'All call signs. Ten minutes.'

  Around us, working parts were cocked.

  ''Ere, Drac, you get any one of those spooks to interview yet? We got a busy day tomorrow?'

  Dom's mobile rang before he got the chance to answer. 'Baz! You sure?' He jammed a finger in his other ear and shouted: 'Is that better? I said, are you sure it's him? That's great news. When did you find out?'

  He closed down and put the phone back in his pocket. He looked at Pete. 'I've got a lead.'

  'Want me to come with you?'

  'No, I'll go first thing – should only be a few days. Just get lots of footage. You know, the boys emailing home, that sort of thing. Bread-and-butter stuff. Cover for me with Moira. You know how much she hates me doing my stuff on her dime.'

  Pete was frowning. 'What are you—'

  There was an explosion two hundred away, followed closely by another.

  'Take cover!'

  As if anyone needed telling. Cups dropped to the tarmac as we legged it into our Bulldog.

  Pete grabbed my arm. 'Something's wrong, Nick. This is about more than an interview.'

  'Personal?'

  'Very.'

  Dave was already on the net. 'Soon as all call signs are complete, we're mobile.'

  Thirty seconds later, the company rolled out of the tank park in their nine wagons, just as another Katyusha piled into the compound. The explosion sounded much closer this time. Yet another whooshed over the open mortar hatches, its rocket even louder than the wagon's engines and tracks.

  The Bulldog was essentially the old APC (armoured personnel carrier) that had been rumbling over the Westphalian plains of Germany for thirty or forty years as part of the BAOR and during the Cold War. I'd spent two years in them myself as mechanized infantry, and remembered them as slow and sluggish. But this lot had been geared up with a brand-new power pack so they could scream along at fifty m.p.h., keeping pace with the Challengers and Warriors. They also had brand-new armour all round, including bar armour to keep the RPGs at bay, and a turret with a GPMG had been mounted where the wagon's commander would normally sit and poke his head out to watch thousands of Russian tanks screaming towards him.

  Ours was the command vehicle, at the rear of the column. Dom, Pete and I were crammed into the back, along with Dave, two medics, the company commander and his signaller.

  The company commander, a major, was on the net to another rifle company, Chindit, to tell them we were leaving early. Chindit were from 2 Lancs, who were defending the OSB (Old State Building) in the centre of the city.

  They'd be backing us once the contacts started. The plan was to let the militants run and drive into the contact area and take us on. As soon as that happened, Chindit Company, reinforced by three extra Warriors from Rhett and his recce platoon, would scream out of the OSB in their Warriors and cordon them off. With so many Warriors on the ground, the militants would have nowhere to run. It was then the job of both companies to dispose of as many insurgents as they could in the killing ground they had created.

  This was just one of the four strike ops that would be going in tonight. The other companies from 2 Rifles would be doing the same in other areas, also with 2 Lancs backing them in their Warriors. It was going to be one fuck of a party.

  I bent my five-inch plastic IR cyalume stick so that the glass inside broke, mixing the chemicals that made the thing glow, though only when viewed through NVAs.

  Everyone else was doing the same, then attaching them to the back of their helmet or Osprey. In the confusion of contact it was a good way of knowing where your mates were before you decided to take a shot through your night sight at a moving body.

  11

  It was just as suffocating inside the Bulldog as it was in the Warrior, even with the mortar hatches open. Dust and exhaust fumes blasted in as we roared towards the compound exit.