by Fiona Field
‘So what are you going to say to Lee, when he gets back and he sees what you’ve done?’ Maddy was agog to know how on earth Jenna thought she could get away with her plan.
‘It’ll be a done deal by then. Besides, I reckon I’ll be making enough money for him not to care.’
Again Maddy bit her tongue. Once Lee was back, and assuming Jenna hadn’t already been evicted, the army would probably expect Private Perkins to get his wife to toe the line. And if he couldn’t get her to behave, Maddy didn’t think Lee would have much of a career – if he had any career at all.
While Jenna carried on washing and then styling Maddy’s hair, Maddy tried to thrash out the problem of whether or not she should tell Seb about Jenna’s scheme. By the time she was paying her bill, she decided that she was going to pretend she knew nothing about it. She didn’t want to be involved and, if anyone asked, she was going to deny Jenna had ever told her a thing about it.
16
Chrissie looked at her movement order as she stood on the concourse of Oxford station. In her multicam and with her Bergen, day sack and helmet, she drew the odd curious stare, but she was too busy checking how she was going to get from Oxford to RAF Brize Norton to notice. She didn’t mind having to make her own way to the airbase. The Army had sorted her out with travel warrants and details of what trains and buses she had to catch, which made more sense than tying up a vehicle and driver for a whole day just for her. Anyway, as a private soldier travelling alone, there was no way she would have rated such luxury. She read the piece of paper again and then asked a member of the station staff the way to Gloucester Green – which was where her bus to Brize left from.
He took her to the entrance and pointed her in the right direction.
‘Going overseas then, love?’ he asked. Just about everyone in Oxfordshire knew that the RAF base was where most of the air-trooping happened.
‘Afghanistan.’
The railway employee gave her a kind smile. ‘Then you take care,’ he said, with genuine feeling, as she hauled the heavy load onto her shoulders, trying not to stagger as she did so.
She made her way down the steps, across the taxi rank, past the hundreds of parked bikes and up the road towards the main coach station. Dusk had long since fallen and a brisk wind cut through her uniform, making her shiver despite the exertion of lugging her kit.
There was a bus waiting at the stand when she got to the right stop and gratefully she climbed aboard, handed over her travel warrant and then dumped her baggage in the luggage rack. Wearily, she slumped into a seat. She might be fit, but she wasn’t powerful, and her military kit weighed almost as much as she did.
Mindlessly, she watched the other buses come and go from the coach station until, with a throbbing roar, the engine started and they were off. They made their way along the roads of Oxford, past the pretty and ancient stone fronts of the colleges, the pavements packed with students, off for an evening out with their mates, hurrying, heads down against the January weather. Then they drove out through the residential outskirts and onto the A40 towards the Cotswolds and the air force base. Once on the open road, the bus rattled along at a cracking pace, speeding along through the monochrome countryside, lit by a nearly full moon, between the ploughed fields and bare winter trees, past bedraggled livestock hunching miserably in their meadows, with their backs to the chill wind that blew down from the north. Chrissie wondered what it was going to be like in Bastion. Immi had told her it was miserable in winter. But wasn’t it in a desert? Weren’t deserts hot?
When Chrissie saw the sign off the dual carriageway to RAF Brize Norton, she felt a frisson of apprehension. As the bus slowed and turned off the slip road, the reality that in a few hours she would be heading off to a war zone kicked in. She knew her training was good, she knew she was up to the job, but she couldn’t help wondering how she would feel after months of dealing with desperate traumas. Her very recent weeks of pre-ops training had made Exercise Autumn Armour look like a walk in the park.
Once again, amputees had acted as casualties, with lashings of theatrical gore and raw meat applied to their stumps to simulate terrible injuries. Added into the mix this time, though, were pig carcasses with appalling gunshot wounds for the trainees to treat, while, as before, bullets and explosions cracked off around them. What with that, darkness, driving rain, bone-numbing cold, and the soldiers’ realistic screams for help, the training had morphed into some ghastly, Dante-esque vision of hell that had left Chrissie feeling physically and emotionally wrecked. Thankfully, she’d not once thrown up at what had confronted her but, the instructors told them, the pressure of their training was nothing compared to the experience of a real battlefield.
She’d heard stories about people who had suffered mental illness as a result of their tours. Not for the first time since she’d volunteered, she wondered if she would be strong enough to cope. Suddenly she felt very alone and very scared. What had she got herself into?
And then the bus passed the sign that said Repatriation Car Park and her heart missed a beat as she thought about all those poor soldiers who had wound up being carried off the back of a C17 in a flag-draped coffin, watched by grieving relatives. She gave herself a shake – her job was to do her best to prevent that from happening. She was going out to save every life that it was possible to save. And as long as she did her best and worked her hardest, then she mustn’t blame herself for those whom she couldn’t help. She had to hold on to that thought: it might save her sanity.
The bus driver obligingly dropped her at the main gates and, laden once more, she staggered over to the guardroom to show her ID card.
‘How far to the terminal?’ she asked, already feeling knackered.
‘About half a mile, love.’
She smiled to cover up her sense of despair. Half a mile! She put her ID card back inside her combat jacket, shrugged her Bergen higher up onto her shoulders, grabbed the rest of her kit and set off. She wasn’t going to give anyone, let alone the RAF, the satisfaction of seeing her beaten by the distance, or the amount of kit she was carrying. However, when she reached the car park in front of the terminal and found a luggage trolley, she nearly wept with relief.
‘Thank fuck,’ she muttered, rolling her Bergen off her back and letting it fall with a crump onto the trolley. For a second she felt as if she were floating, but then the ache in her spine and shoulders kicked in as she straightened properly and eased them. She was absolutely knackered and even the thought of pushing her bags was too much for the moment, so she sat next to her luggage while she got her breath and her strength back.
An unmarked white coach rolled to a standstill a few yards away and began disgorging thirty or so soldiers. Efficiently, some of the men unloaded their own Bergens and bags from the coach’s hold, while others brought over trolleys and formed a human chain to load them up.
‘You all right?’ one of the guys called over to Chrissie. ‘Want a hand?’
‘I’m fine,’ she lied and stood up to prove it. She began to push her own kit towards the huge, hangar-like terminal.
‘Chrissie?’
She stopped dead. She knew that voice. Slowly she turned around. ‘Lee?’ She stared at him, her heart thundering.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ he asked.
Chrissie stared at him, trying to make sense of what was happening. Was this someone’s idea of a sick joke? She had volunteered for Bastion to get away from complications like Lee and here he was. All the same, she felt a kick of happiness: his friendly face meant she might still be scared, but at least she wasn’t alone any more.
‘But…’ Her mind and feelings were in such a muddle, she could barely string a sentence together. She stopped, then a thought struck her. ‘What do you mean, what the fuck am I doing here? More to the point, what the fuck are you doing here?’
‘I’m going to Bastion – BCR.’
Chrissie’s jaw slackened. This was a sick joke. ‘Battlefield casualty replacement? Bast
ion? But you can’t be.’
Lee tugged at the sleeve of one of his comrades. ‘Hey, Mac, where are we going?’
Lee’s mate Mac looked at him as if he were bonkers. ‘Afghan, you twat.’
Lee grinned at Chrissie. ‘Now do you believe me?’
She nodded. ‘So am I.’
‘You?’
She nodded again.
‘Why?’ he asked, his brow creased in incredulity.
‘Because I volunteered.’
‘But why?’
‘Because I wanted to.’
‘You coming, Perkins?’ Mac interrupted.
‘Yeah, right with you.’ Lee looked from Chrissie to Mac and back again, as if wondering who had priority for his attention. ‘Here, hang on,’ he said, apparently arriving at a decision. He stopped Mac from moving on, hauled Chrissie’s stuff off her trolley as if it was a couple of feather pillows, and split it between his own and Mac’s trolleys. ‘Don’t say squaddies don’t know how to behave like gents,’ he said. Then he gave Mac a nod and they moved off, Chrissie with them.
Together, the three of them made their way across the car park and up the ramp to the terminal. Inside the doors there was a small waiting area, with a few chairs and tables for people meeting any arrivals, a little coffee shop, a couple of vending machines, and then to the right was a corridor that led to the massive hall which was the check-in area. In many ways it was very like a normal civvy airport, except here everyone was dressed in multicam combats. They joined the queue of other soldiers waiting to be processed.
‘Bloody hell, Perkins,’ said another soldier. ‘Have you pulled already?’
‘Fuck off,’ said Lee amiably. ‘This is Chrissie. She’s a combat medic.’
‘Cool.’ The guy stuck his hand out. ‘Nice to meet you, Chrissie, I’m Tim. And if Lee doesn’t want to pull you, can I?’
Everyone laughed, except Chrissie. She was still reeling from the shock of seeing Lee.
The soldiers shuffled forwards, yard by yard, while the RAF movements staff checked names and documentation against the manifest. When they finally made it through, they were herded towards the big departure lounge with floor to ceiling windows which looked out towards the runways and taxi areas and the massive grey C17 aircraft, lit by huge floodlights, which sat nearby waiting to take them all to the war. They weren’t due to take off for a very long time, not until the small hours of the morning, but, this being the military, everyone had to be there and accounted for, way ahead of time.
Their Bergens had been checked through to be loaded onto the aircraft, leaving them with their day sacks, helmets and body armour. They joined the rest of the troops in the hall, who were doing what soldiers always do, given the opportunity: making themselves as comfortable as possible, using their day sacks as pillows and grabbing a kip. Lee, Mac and Tim were no exception, and wasted no time in getting their heads down. Chrissie sat on one of the seats and watched the slumbering shapes on the seats and the floors.
How could they be so relaxed? she wondered. She herself was taut with apprehension and, unless things went horribly wrong, no one was going to shoot at her. But for these boys, being shot at was part of their job description, along with risking your life and being blown up. She wondered which of these guys, about to fly out with her, would be coming back injured, or worse. As she looked at their young faces, she felt tears form and the back of her nose start to prickle. Hurriedly she blinked and looked out of the window. She mustn’t think like that. Strong and professional – that was what was expected of her. She’d managed it in the pre-ops training, and she’d coped with the countless gruesome injuries she’d had to deal with. So given that she was now officially ‘tough’, it wasn’t going to do anyone any good if other emotions turned her into a snivelling waste of space. Brace up, she told herself.
The time for take-off drew nearer. Chrissie, unlike her male counterparts, unable to sleep, watched what was going on outside. The tailgate had been lowered off the huge Globemaster aircraft, a vast jumbo jet-sized aircraft, with high wings and four monster engine pods suspended underneath, and lights glowed from inside its enormous maw. It was a warehouse with wings, she thought idly, and wondered how on earth such an enormous structure could be held up by air. She vaguely knew about aerodynamics and the theory of lift, but it still didn’t seem possible. She watched the dozens of pallets of kit and supplies get pushed up the rollers on the ramp and lashed into place in the cavernous body of the plane by RAF loadmasters. A couple of vehicles had also been driven on, and Chrissie was starting to wonder how the hell they were going to fit on all these people as well.
Despite her own anxiety about the journey, Chrissie was just beginning to feel her own eyes droop with tiredness when there was a tannoy announcement ordering the assembled troops to prepare for embarkation. Around her, the slumbering shapes began to stir, collecting their stuff, yawning, stretching, cracking jokes as if they were about to board a cross-channel ferry. Once again, Chrissie felt her heart jump. This was it.
The doors from the departure hall were thrown open, and the soldiers shuffled forward, once again, to pass through them, out onto the concrete, and head towards the giant plane. No air-bridge for boarding here, at Brize Norton. The straggling lines of troops walked up the ramp, into the enormous tube that was the body of the C17. Two corridors were left either side of the cargo, to allow passage to the front of the aircraft, which was kitted out a bit like a civvy plane, only with some significant differences. There were seats ranged down the sides in line and also rows of seats in the middle. If you focused on the seats in the middle, you might just be able to kid yourself this was a holiday flight. But the instant you took your eyes off those, there was no way this could be an ordinary airliner: there was a cavernous space above the seats, but no overhead lockers, no neat plastic panels to cover up the bleak metal skin, no portholes with twee curtains or blinds, no TVs in the seat backs, no tray tables, no carpet, no galley, no smiling stewards to welcome you aboard. Not that Chrissie had ever flown before, but she’d watched enough episodes of Airport and Come Fly With Me to know what was what. This might be her first ever flight, but vicariously she’d been around the world. And no way had any airline she’d got to know through the TV had green lighting in the cabins. Green was weird. Green was wrong. It was all quite surreal, Chrissie decided as she followed Lee to a free row of seats in the centre.
She took her cue from the others and shoved her helmet, day sack and body armour under her seat, before sitting down and buckling up. Somehow, she thought, as she looked about her, she didn’t think she was going to be pestered by cabin crew trying to flog her overpriced sandwiches or duty free.
‘You OK?’ asked Lee.
Chrissie was agonisingly aware of his presence next to her. For fuck’s sake – she’d volunteered for Bastion to get away from him, and now here he was, closer than ever. How ironic was that?
‘Fine,’ was all she said. She was going out to Afghanistan to do a job, not to be mates with guys on the ground. She didn’t want to be worrying about anyone but herself while she was out there, least of all Lee, and she was going to try not to get any more friendly than was absolutely necessary, before he deployed to work with his multiple and she did some proper nursing.
She jumped at the sound of some clunks and thumps, but realised it was nothing to be worried about when she heard the low whine of a jet engine being fired up. The noises were repeated three more times, until all engines were running, and then there were a few rattles and shakes, and suddenly she realised that the plane was moving. They were off and taxiing towards the runway.
‘We’re off,’ said Lee.
‘No shit, Sherlock,’ said Chrissie with feigned calm. She felt her muscles get more and more tense as the huge plane lumbered along the taxiway towards the end of the runway, bouncing gently as the wings flexed when it passed over the slightest bump. She felt it turn through ninety degrees, pause, then move forward, and as it turned again, the whine fro
m the engine increased to a bone-shaking, mind-numbing roar and then the plane began to hurtle forwards. Chrissie felt herself being thrust back in her seat as the acceleration increased and then zoom, the bouncing stopped as the plane took to the sky and its natural element.
‘Next stop, Afghan,’ said Lee. ‘In the meantime, I think I’ll get my head down.’
Chrissie knew what he was suggesting was wise, but she reckoned she was far too wound up to follow suit. Even so, with nothing to look at and precious little to do, she shut her eyes and, like all the soldiers around her, she was soon dozing too.
17
The aircraft intercom bing-bonging woke Chrissie. She glanced at her watch which glowed weirdly in the green cabin lights. Nearly twelve. No, that couldn’t be right because she hadn’t changed her watch to Afghan time. Oh well, whatever, it was the middle of the night, she thought, only with no portholes to provide a clue, it could have been midday. It was odd not to be able to see out. Not that she had any idea what it would be like to see out from a height of thirty thousand feet, but it had to be better than what she was experiencing right now. She promised herself a nice holiday to somewhere exotic when she got back – if she got back. She put that thought out of her mind: of course she’d get back. Maybe Cyprus would be nice. They’d had a stopover in Cyprus and had been allowed off the plane. The air had been warm, the sky blue, and she’d spotted real oranges growing on trees. But, although they’d stopped for ages, they hadn’t been allowed out of the terminal at the RAF base before they’d finally re-embarked for the last leg. She’d had no chance to see anything other than the terminal itself, a glimpse of a lagoon and those oranges. Yes, she thought, sun, sand and sea would be a treat to look forward to – assuming she hadn’t had enough of sun and sand by the time her tour was over.
Anyway, they must be almost about to arrive. It had been explained to them during the in-flight briefing that for security reasons they would be arriving in the middle of the night.
