by James Meek
He found them at ground level, in the old taxiway between the aircraft shelters. Astrid was standing with her back to him. Next to her was Sardar, in his boiler suit, taking aim with Astrid’s pistol at a pair of large-calibre shell cases set up on a rusted barrel about thirty yards away. A group of the commander’s fighters, and the commander, stood on either side of them. They heard Kellas coming and looked around. They grinned and laughed and bent their heads a little as if they expected him to be angry. As if they expected him to bring order to a scene they did not understand themselves.
Sardar squeezed twice and the gun went off and rocked against his wrists. The second shot hit one of the shell cases. It jumped in the air, fell back onto the surface of the drum and rolled against the rim. Astrid called out ‘That’s one with two, man.’ Sardar lowered the pistol. Astrid turned and saw Kellas and grinned, shaking her head. She looked round at the fighters, holding her arms out and nodding. ‘I win, right? Right? I got two with two.’ She hadn’t put her scarf back on and her fringe swung bright in the heavenish light of morning.
The fighters laughed and shuffled and looked at each other, not sure what to do next and not sure where to put their hands. Astrid took the gun from Sardar, stuck it in her anorak pocket and extended her right hand towards him. Smiling and blushing, slowly and afraid, he moved his right hand to meet hers. Astrid took it and shook it and Sardar withdrew it and let it hang limp from his wrist, as if it no longer belonged to him. The other fighters were laughing.
They roused Mohamed, a motionless hump in the dark, warm-sweat smell of one of the shelter buildings, and sat around the cloth, as the night before, to eat breakfast. Astrid avoided meeting Kellas’s eyes. She talked only to Mohamed and through him to Sardar. She was excited and talkative. Her voice was fast and unsteady. Apart from Sardar, who had gained confidence, who was anxious to persuade Astrid of something and kept interrupting her and Mohamed, the commander and his fighters were no longer smiling so much. There were frowns and they looked more into their tea and at each other than at Kellas or Astrid.
Astrid stopped talking and looked at Kellas. ‘You’re quiet,’ she said.
‘I ran out of things to say.’
Astrid rocked her head from side to side, looked down, folded a piece of bread and jam and put it in her mouth. She spoke loudly to him with her mouth full. ‘You don’t like to see me with the gun, huh?’
‘I like you better without it. “Don’t ever mess with guns.”’
‘If it’s Johnny Cash you’re thinking of, “Don’t ever play with guns” was the line. My mother did tell me that. She was right. But this isn’t playing. Where do you think you are? You can’t pretend that you’re not here. That you have nothing to do with all this.’
‘I’m trying to be neutral.’
‘There’s only two ways to be neutral in a war. One is not to know about it, and the other is not to care.’ Astrid got up abruptly, brushing her hands. She beckoned to Sardar to follow her and leaned down to Kellas on the way out. She patted the pocket where the gun was and said: ‘Being professionally friendly.’
Kellas looked after her, then looked at the commander and put his hand on his heart.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. The commander waved at him that he shouldn’t worry, spoke a few words of benediction and ran his hands over his face. The meal was over, and the company stood up and went out. The cook and his boy came, climbed up to the platform and began with great care to remove the bedding. Kellas watched them for a while, soothed by their diligence and trouble. It took them ten minutes to lower the pallets down the ladder.
Astrid was on the other side of the taxiway between the shelters, sitting on the back of the tank while Sardar stood half out of the turret, a spanner in each hand, gesturing to her. There was an oil stain on his forehead. Kellas walked over.
‘Hey,’ said Astrid.
‘Hey. Do you speak Dari now?’
‘Sardar spent a year at college in Belgrade. We both speak about the same amount of Serbian.’
The cars wouldn’t come to pick them up for another six hours. Kellas climbed the platform and waited for the bombing to begin. He spent time looking through an old pair of Soviet field glasses at the Taliban positions. They had a reticle painted on the lenses for an artilleryman to reckon distance. He studied the desert behind the Taliban lines. He saw trucks, grinding through the dust.
Kellas turned the binoculars to look at the tank. He twisted the focus knob until Astrid’s laughing mouth could be seen clear and sharp, and Sardar listing points with gestures of a spanner. He seemed eloquent in Serbian.
When Mohamed and the commander came up to the platform, Kellas asked about the trucks. Mohamed said they were Taliban trucks. Kellas asked the commander why he didn’t fire at them; why none of the Alliance troops fired at them. Mohamed translated the question, and the commander smiled unhappily, turned from side to side and looked out over the parapet. He had a broad pakul hat and wore a fawn blanket over his dark grey shalwar kameez. He moved with impatience, like a small-time builder forced to take on a mean, tiring, low-margin job. Through the binoculars, Kellas could make out the flapping canvas over the backs of the trucks, and the bounce of the cabins as they bucked through the desert. Without the magnification, they crawled across the ground like lice.
The commander spoke, looking at Kellas only once he’d finished speaking. Mohamed translated.
‘If we hit and destroy ten trucks, the Taliban will still have enough,’ he said.
Kellas put the binoculars down and glanced at the tank. Sardar was beckoning to Astrid. He disappeared inside the turret and Astrid clambered over, picked up an oil-stained canvas bag and stood looking down into the hatch. She reached into the bag and passed a tool to the red hand that came out.
‘That’s not much of an argument, surely,’ murmured Kellas to the commander, picking up the binoculars again. ‘You have to start somewhere.’
The commander rolled a little and stepped in and out of his flip-flops when Mohamed translated.
‘If we fire at them, they fire back,’ said the commander. ‘Why should I risk my men, and you, and Mohamed, when the Americans are going to win the war for us anyway?’
The day was getting bright. The light off the sandy ground had turned harsh. Kellas wondered if it was too early to call Duncairn.His parents were early risers. It looked as if he’d picked a non-bombing day. Perhaps there was a way to get the cars to come earlier. There was no need for Astrid to be loitering around Sardar and his broken-down tank.
The commander spoke in a voice Kellas hadn’t heard before, the raised voice of a man with responsibilities, offended by foolish subordinates. Kellas was interested to know who he was talking to and looked round and saw that it was him. He blushed and waited for Mohamed to translate, but the commander spoke for a minute, his eyes fixed and wide and his mouth snapping, and Mohamed only looked at the ground, pinching his left thumb with his right thumb and index finger.
‘The commander is saying he doesn’t have good links with the artillery,’ said Mohamed in the end. ‘They often miss. He says it would be a waste of ammunition.’
‘Tell the commander it’s OK,’ said Kellas. ‘I didn’t mean to offend him.’
‘He is angry with you,’ said Mohamed. ‘He thinks you are criticising him.’
‘Tell him I’m sorry,’ said Kellas.
Before Mohamed could say anything the commander began talking angrily again. By the end he was shouting and Mohamed tried to interrupt him, gently touching his sleeve. ‘The commander says those trucks over there, the ones you call Taliban trucks, they’re carrying goods for the Taliban now, but maybe tomorrow or the next day they’ll be carrying goods for us. They’re only drivers.’
Kellas and Mohamed tried to soothe the commander. He stopped shouting and began taking short steps back and forward along the edge of the parapet, fidgeting with the controls of the walkie-talkie he carried and muttering. Kellas left the platform. At the bottom of
the ladder he looked over and saw that Astrid and Sardar were squatting in the weeds on top of the aircraft shelter where the tank was parked. Sardar was pointing out something in the distance and Astrid was leaning in to look along his arm. She turned, saw Kellas and beckoned to him. He walked across and found the path up to where the two were crouched.
‘See that tree trunk over there?’ said Astrid. She pointed to a broad swelling in the ground about a thousand yards to the east, of sand scaled with stones and scrub, where a squat, branchless wooden vertical poked out of the crest.
‘I see it,’ said Kellas.
‘Sardar reckons he can hit it with one shot. I say he can’t.’
Kellas looked down at the tank. The open turret hatch was encircled by stained tools. The entire machine looked as if it had been dug up, passed through fire, then water, then left to rust for decades.
‘The tank works?’ he said.
‘Of course.’
‘Don’t fuck about with it, Astrid. Leave it alone.’
Astrid was not listening to him. ‘He needs the commander’s permission before he can fire the gun. Can you ask him? The commander won’t listen to me. The commander thinks you’re the commander of me.’
‘I can’t do that. What if you hit someone?’
‘It’s nowhere near us, or the Taliban. It’s no man’s land.’
‘It’s not right.’
‘Treat your wife the way you should,’ said Astrid, looking hard into his eyes. ‘Stop pretending you aren’t here.’
Kellas looked at Sardar, who grinned at him and nodded.
‘Are you jealous?’ said Astrid.
‘No,’ said Kellas. He left them and went to the room where he had put his satphone. He lifted the case and climbed with it up to the platform. When he got there the commander hailed him too loudly, with an edge to his voice, as if he had something to say, but when he asked Mohamed for a translation, Mohamed shrugged and said the commander had only greeted him. Kellas set up the phone on the floor, took out the aerial and propped it on one corner of the platform parapet, where the ledge was broad enough to support it. He squatted by the phone, switched it on and waited for it to find the satellite. After a few minutes it came up: four bars. He took the handset and stood up. The flex was long enough for him to be able to use it while resting comfortably with his forearms on the parapet.
The commander asked how much the phone cost and Kellas said that he didn’t know, that it belonged to his newspaper. He offered the commander the use of it and the commander laughed and asked who he would call. Kellas’s finger rested on the dialling buttons on the back of the handset but he did not dial. He looked at the commander, who had been watching him.
‘Mohamed,’ he said. ‘Can you ask the commander if he would mind Sardar firing a couple of shots to show my colleague – my wife – how the tank gun works?’
Mohamed translated. The commander laughed and said a few words to Mohamed, then lifted his walkie-talkie and spoke into it. The walkie-talkie beeped and a reply came.
A mile away, to the south-east, two more trucks were making their painful traverse of the desert behind Taliban lines.
The commander spoke and Mohamed said that he was asking Kellas who he was calling. Was he making a report? Kellas said he was calling his family but before Mohamed could translate, the commander spoke again.
‘The commander says: “We’re only ordinary soldiers”,’ said Mohamed. ‘He says that they do what they’re told. He says he’ll do what you ask.’
Kellas dialled his parents’ number and after a few seconds heard the British ringtone. He watched the trucks in the distance. They were dogged. Whatever it was they were carrying, it would get through.
Somebody picked up.
‘Hello?’ said Kellas.
‘Is that Adam?’
‘Hi!’
‘How nice of you to call. I was just thinking of you,’ said his mother.
The commander spoke into his walkie-talkie again and a frying voice answered in Dari.
‘Hope I’m not calling too early.’
‘No, we’ve just had breakfast.’
‘Is it still dark there?’
‘No, the sun’s up. It looks as if it’s going to be a beautiful day.’
Kellas saw Astrid and Sardar hurrying down from the top of the shelter, kicking pebbles and dust as they descended.
‘I didn’t hear from you after that last email so I thought I’d give you a call.’
‘I thought I’d replied.’
‘It doesn’t matter. How are you?’
‘We’re fine.’ The reception was good. Kellas could hear the faint exertion in his mother’s voice as she sat down. Perhaps he could hear the creak of the wicker chair in the hall. It could have been static. At that time of day the light would be shining through the coloured glass around the door. It would be brighter if they had cut back the ivy.
‘I can’t speak for long,’ he said. He saw Sardar shout to someone, then slither down the turret hatch and, after a moment, Astrid lower herself in after him.
‘I know,’ said his mother. ‘But I must say I was a little bit cross with you the last time you called and you hung up suddenly.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Kellas. ‘I had to go.’
‘Please don’t do it this time. How are you?’
‘I’m fine. It’s very quiet here.’
A youngster, a boy, darted out of the corner of Kellas’s vision, leaped onto the front of the tank and slid into another hatch.
‘We had our peace vigil yesterday evening,’ said Kellas’s mother. ‘There were about a dozen of us on the square, with candles.’
‘Good for you,’ said Kellas.
‘A lot of people stopped to ask questions, so that was good.’
‘Great.’
A roar from powerful machinery stirred the air. The tank farted black smoke and lurched backwards a foot, then forwards. One of the reasons Kellas had written it off was the way it was parked, its gun facing the wall, wedged in between slabs of concrete, with no way to get itself pointed at the Taliban without many slow manoeuvres. But the tank was not a limousine. It was a Russian tank, ancient and nimble. It jerked backwards out of its bay, coughing fumes and squealing with every wheel and every link of track. The driver’s head poked up from a hatch by the front. He looked calm and focused. He aligned the tank with a slope of earth that ran up from the aircraft shelters at a forty-five degree angle.
‘What was that noise?’ asked Kellas’s mother.
‘A tank moving.’
‘A tank! Where are you?’
Kellas laughed. ‘Don’t worry. They’re just practising.’ He beckoned to Mohamed to hand him the binoculars. The commander was looking at him and grinning and nodding his head. He made the thumbs-up sign to Kellas and Kellas made the gesture back and took the binoculars from Mohamed’s hand.
‘How’s the garden looking?’ asked Kellas. He settled the binoculars on the bridge of his nose and watched the tree trunk. With the magnification he could see that the rest of the original tree had been torn off by a past explosion.
‘Well, it’s November. Not the best time of year for the garden, you know. It’s raking up leaves. That’s it. Compost. You get a better view of the firth in winter, of course.’
The tank driver made the rusted hulk turn with the heavy gliding grace of a curling stone, then hurled it at the slope. The tank hit the bottom of the slope, reared up, showed a foot of air, bounced back, slipped, roared with heightened frenzy, gripped the dirt, shot up the ramp of earth and stopped with its turret above the top of the shelters.
‘Listen, Mum, there might be a couple of bangs,’ said Kellas. ‘Don’t worry, it’s just target practice.’
‘Oh, God,’ said his mother, affecting a nervous laugh that really was nervous. ‘Where did you say you were, exactly?’
‘Hang on,’ said Kellas. He tightened the focus on the tree trunk. The commander’s walkie-talkie crackled and the commander spoke
a few words into it.
With a deep crack that shook their breastbones, the tank’s big gun fired.
‘Hear that?’ said Kellas in the still second while the shell flew.
‘Yes!’
‘At an airfield,’ said Kellas.
‘An airfield?’
‘That’s strange.’
‘What’s happening?’
‘He missed by miles.’ Through the binoculars Kellas could see for more than a hundred yards on either side of the tree and there was no sign of a shell landing. Yet he heard the far-off thud that signified an impact, and cheering from the commander’s fighters below. He took the binoculars away from his eyes and saw the smoke from the explosion drifting black into the air a mile away, halfway between the two trucks.
‘Mohamed, what the fuck?’ shouted Kellas.
‘Don’t worry, he’s going to fire again!’ said Mohamed.
‘What’s happening?’ said Kellas’s mother. Kellas’s mouth was entirely dry. There was too broad a span to take in. The tank, the smoke, the trucks, the tree trunk, the commander, Mohamed.
‘There are people in those fucking trucks!’ shouted Kellas. ‘He was supposed to fire over there.’
‘What’s happening?’ said Kellas’s mother.
‘I’m going to have to go,’ said Kellas.
‘Adam, it was what you wanted,’ said Mohamed. ‘You wanted the commander to fire at the Taliban trucks. You asked for the tank to fire.’
The commander said something quickly. He looked confident. ‘The commander said: this time he’ll hit one.’
‘Tell him to stop!’ shouted Kellas.
‘Why? They are the enemy. You asked for this.’
‘Adam, I want to know what’s going on. I’m very worried,’ said his mother.
‘It’s OK,’ said Kellas.
‘You sound worried.’
‘It’s OK. The tank driver made a mistake but he missed.’
‘I heard you say there were people in the trucks.’
‘He missed, Mum, it’s fine. Everything’s fine. I’m sorry but I have to go.’
