Trial Under Fire

by Zoe Sharp

  The relief his words engendered was followed by a flick-switch of guilt and then rage. If I was a guy, would my captain be giving me such an easy get-out, or would he be willing me to man up, step up, be worthy of the uniform?

  Before I’d absorbed that brief wave of emotions, the arrogant one rocked back on his heels, head tilted, and said in a surprisingly well-brought-up drawl, “OK, so let me just ask you one last question—a tie-breaker, you might call it. I don’t suppose by any chance you know how to ride a horse?”

  “A horse?” I repeated blankly.

  “Yes, you know—big quadruped. Dangerous at both ends and uncomfortable in the middle, as Oscar Wilde would have it.”

  “I know what one is, but…don’t tell me you’re going to ride into battle?”

  He was still looking down his nose at me, but I thought I detected the hint of amusement in those dry tones. “Well, since some idiot shot up the truck we were planning to hijack, what other option do we have?”

  7

  When the Taliban who’d attacked the downed Lynx fled there were fewer of them than when they arrived. Seemingly convinced by Captain MacLeod’s pretence of a larger opposing force, they’d left in something of a hurry. No other reason for them to leave valuable assets behind.

  Those assets were eight Afghan horses.

  They were short, narrow, and shaggy coated. More overgrown pony than horse, with slender legs that looked nowhere near robust enough to handle the ferocious terrain, and cracked, unshod hooves. Their bridles were of leather so brittle it was like cardboard, decorated with intricately beaded straps and tassels. The saddles were little more than wooden boards, padded away from the horses’ backs with woven blankets, and covered in goatskins. I was a little alarmed that the stirrup irons seemed barely large enough for the toe of my boot. The leather straps from which they dangled weren’t even adjustable. It was a one-size-fits-none deal.

  “How do we know this lot aren’t booby-trapped?” Tate demanded, eyeing them suspiciously. “How do we know they didn’t leave them on purpose, like?”

  I glanced at him. “Booby-trapped how, exactly?”

  “I dunno. They could all be wild. They might throw us off and trample us to death or something.”

  The well-spoken soldier snorted. “In my experience, you don’t actually have to booby-trap a horse to get it to do that.”

  “Again, stop with the overselling, will you?” Tate muttered.

  “You’ve never ridden, have you?”

  Tate shifted awkwardly. “’Course I have. Just not horses, eh? But how hard can it be?”

  I didn’t answer. He’d find out soon enough.

  By the carriage of their tails and the slightly dished faces, there was Arab in the horses’ breeding somewhere. I could imagine they’d be hardy, quick, but take no prisoners. They were nervy as strangers approached, scuttling to the extent of their tethers, head-shy when I lifted a hand to stroke a flinching shoulder.

  The horses had been tethered to whatever was handy, their reins wrapped around rocks, or knotted onto the stubby shrubs. A couple of them had been tied to the saddle of another, the equine equivalent of double parking.

  “They brought extra with them,” said a voice alongside me in the gloom, making me start. I jerked round to find the sergeant standing less than three paces away, although I could barely see his face. “It wasn’t just an ambush—they were hoping for prisoners to carry away with them.”

  “Does that mean…?” I hesitated. It wasn’t my place to speak, wasn’t my question to ask.

  “Spit it out, soldier.”

  “Does that mean they knew you were coming?” I blurted in a rush. “Or were they intending to grab the next helo crew who happened by, regardless?”

  Helmand province was somewhere close to sixty thousand square kilometres by itself. Hell, the UK as a whole was only two hundred and forty thousand. Besides, taking down a modern helicopter with a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher was not impossible, but it wasn’t a certainty, either. The chances of this being opportunistic were practically zero, and we both knew it.

  He shrugged. “Hope for the best,” he said. “Plan for the worst.”

  “Oh, that’s comforting. Do they teach you those sayings in the SAS handbook?”

  He paused, and for a moment I couldn’t tell if he was deciding on a suitably scathing rebuke.

  Then he said, “Actually, I think I got that one out of a fortune cookie down our local Chinese takeaway.”

  I couldn’t quite raise a laugh, but I smiled and realised how tense I’d been, that the joke was deliberate. I tried to see the sergeant’s face more clearly but it was in shadow. He unshouldered a rifle, longer than the assault weapon he carried and thrust it at me. It landed heavy in my hands, bulky and alien, smelling of gun oil and smoke.

  “You’ll need this. First light you can have half a dozen rounds to zero in.”

  “Half a dozen?”

  “Can’t spare any more.”

  I shrugged. There wasn’t much else I could say.

  He nodded as if I’d spoken anyway, jerked his head towards the horses.

  “If you know what you’re about with this lot, get your lads ready to go. We’re out of here in ten.” And with that he turned and was swallowed up by the darkness.

  I watched him go, took a breath and gave the rifle in my hands a proper once-over, or as much as I could in the dim light.

  The weapon was a heavily camouflaged L115 sniper rifle. I’d seen them on the ranges in training but never come close to firing one. British built by Accuracy International, it was a manual bolt-action with a five-round box magazine snug in front of the trigger, and sturdy spring-loaded bipod legs at the front of the frame. The end of the barrel sported a sound suppressor. A high-power telescopic sight scope was mounted on the top rail.

  I tried the rifle up into my shoulder. Even with its relatively compact layout, the weapon had been chosen for a six-foot-plus squaddie in mind and it was far too big for me. If I seated the butt properly, I could barely reach the pistol grip, never mind get my forefinger to the trigger. God knows what would happen when I tried actually firing it.

  Ah well, I’ll worry about that at first light.

  I glanced over and found Captain MacLeod watching me. Not that I could see his face clearly, but I could tell from the angle of his body. He turned away with what might have been a slight shake of his head. The heat was back in my face again as I tried to work out how I went from being a reliable member of his team to a disappointment, so fast.

  I slung the rifle over my left shoulder on its strap. It should have balanced up my personal weapon, but all it did was pull me down further. Ignoring the drag on my back, I moved forward, unknotted the reins of a dirty grey horse and led him out of the lines. He didn’t want to be parted from his herd-mates, but once the first reluctant side-step was taken, he followed me docilely.

  “All yours,” I said to Tate, checking the girth-strap was tight enough to hold the saddle on top before handing him over. A couple of our patrol held onto the horse’s bridle for him to hoist himself on board, so I left them to it.

  I picked out a dark bay mare for Brookes, and a little chestnut with a white face for myself.

  “Hey, that’s not on! You’ve gone for the smallest one,” Tate protested. “That’ll be dead easy to get on and off.”

  “Yeah, but I weigh less than you do. No point in making the poor little bugger’s legs buckle.”

  “You saying I’m fat?”

  “Depends when you last saw your cock without the aid of a mirror, mate,” Brookes said cheerfully, getting an upraised middle finger in response.

  He was as much of a novice as Tate, but less inclined to bullshit about it. They both looked totally out of sync with the motion of the animal beneath them. You had to anticipate how the horse was going to move and flow with it, not hold yourself so rigid you lurched awkwardly in the saddle every time they took a step.

  It seemed the lads assume
d I didn’t need any help. By the time I came to mount up, they were all conspicuous by their absence. Without anyone to hold the chestnut, he danced about while I hopped in pursuit trying to get onto him. Eventually I gave up stretching for the tiny stirrup, slung the rifle over the front of the saddle, grabbed hold of the pommel and made a jump for it. Undignified, but effective.

  I soon found that the wooden boards on his back were just as uncomfortable as they’d looked. Although he’d been skittish on the ground, once I was on top the chestnut didn’t seem bothered about what I was doing. He stood without twitching while I wriggled my combat jacket off my shoulders, then stripped out the sleeveless liner and stuffed it underneath me. The night was bitter, but it was a while since I’d ridden and I reckoned bleeding saddle sores would be worse than the cold.

  I patted his scrawny neck, silently named him Mones in lieu of anything better. I’d been told it meant ‘companion’ or ‘friend’ in Pashto.

  “Salaam Alaikum, Mones,” I murmured. Peace be upon you.

  The chestnut flicked back one ear in response.

  Meanwhile, the four unmarked soldiers had hauled themselves aboard their own mounts. Only the tall one with the upper-class voice looked as if he’d been anywhere near a horse before. The other three were clearly uncomfortable in the saddle to one degree or another.

  Perhaps the sergeant was hiding his unease best. Maybe he’d realised that tensing up was going to make things worse so he sat slumped in the saddle, reins held casually in his left hand. Only the tightness of his grip gave him away.

  His assault weapon was in his right, balanced with the butt on his hip. The horse, I assumed, was so accustomed to the sound of close-proximity gunfire it wasn’t likely to do anything stupid if he shot from the back of it.

  “We set?” he asked. He probably couldn’t see the nods he got in reply, but it was a rhetorical question anyway. We were going regardless.

  “What about her?” I asked, nodding to the last horse. A grey mare, she was still tied to a spiky bush and was stamping her front hooves in the dusty earth as if to say, “Hey, don’t leave me here!” I could see white around the liquid darkness of her eyes and hear her snorts of distress. Horses are herd animals, after all.

  “We’ll take it,” the tall soldier drawled. “Never a bad idea to carry a spare.”

  One of the lads, Baz, untied the horse and tugged it over towards him, but the tall soldier shook his head.

  “I didn’t mean I would be carrying it personally,” he said. He nodded in my direction. “I think you’ll find Charlie has a hand free, and aren’t women always telling us blokes how good they are at multitasking?”

  I tied off the reins to my saddle without comment. There wasn’t much I could say that wouldn’t have got me into trouble.

  Captain MacLeod stepped forward.

  “Good luck. And take care of my lads.”

  “I’ll do my best,” the sergeant said, “but no promises.”

  8

  Everybody had their quirks when it came to firing a long gun at a target more than a hundred metres away. The greater the distance, the more magnified the quirk.

  Mine was a tendency to pull the shot high and right. Especially if I was under observation, under pressure, or thinking about what I was doing too damn much. Needless to say, the first time I fired the L115 sniper’s rifle the sergeant had dumped on me, I barely hit the target.

  Strangely enough, the Special Forces team made no comment about this poor performance. It was left to Tate, lying alongside and spotting for me, to mutter, “Oh come on, Charlie. You’re making us all look bad.”

  I blocked him out, reached up for one of the turret adjustment knobs on the Schmidt and Bender scope, then hesitated, glanced back over my shoulder.

  “Are you sure whoever owns this doesn’t mind me messing with the settings on his weapon?”

  “It’s your weapon now, soldier,” the sergeant said. “Just do whatever you need to.”

  I squirmed a little in the dirt, but however I positioned myself, the stock was too big for me. No getting around that.

  After a moment or two’s useless fidgeting, the sergeant nudged my shoulder. When I looked up, he shooed me away from the gun. I scrambled up, backed away feeling humiliated as he picked the rifle off its bipod legs. One shot had proven my worthlessness, and now I was a spare part. Useless to the team, redundant.

  “Hey, where are you going? Come here if you want me to get the damn thing to fit you better. It’s like watching my kid brother trying to ride our dad’s old bike.”

  He quickly removed the thick shoulder pad and taped a wadded-up mesh scarf in place over the end of the stock. It wasn’t perfect, but at least it was a lot closer to being the right size.

  This time when I lay down behind the gun, I didn’t feel it was trying to push my arm in totally the wrong direction. I settled myself, slowed my breathing, and aimed for the same blotch on the goatskin they’d strung out six hundred metres away. The suppressor on the end of the barrel reduced the sound to little more than a dull slap.

  “That’s more like it!” Tate said. “The round landed at two o’clock, about a hundred and fifty mil out from centre.”

  I ignored the ache in my shoulder. And this time, I didn’t ask permission before I adjusted the sight and fired again.

  “A hundred mil out, now dead-on twelve o’clock.”

  I wound the elevation knob a couple of clicks, bringing the crosshairs and the site of my last shot together, then fired a fourth time. That got me closer still. Another adjustment, another shot.

  “Bull’s-eye! Nice one, mate.”

  I unclipped the empty five-round magazine and picked up the final practice round the sergeant had allowed me, but hesitated before feeding it in. Instead, I clambered to my feet again, limp with the effort, and passed the round back to the sergeant, resisting the urge to rub my right shoulder where the makeshift pad had recoiled into it. The scarf was no substitute for high density shock-absorbent foam.

  “What’s this for?”

  “You said I had half a dozen to get my eye in. I only needed five.”

  He considered for a moment, then handed the round back to me, his expression guarded. “I’d have been more impressed if you’d just put that through the same hole as the last.”

  Well, that’s me told.

  We had stopped as the sun hit the tops of the mountains, started to bleed down into the valley we were riding through, turning the dust a golden red. Everyone had dismounted and was walking stiffly, something that only started to dissipate the more we moved around.

  Now, Tate went to retrieve my goatskin target six hundred metres down range. Brookes strolled across. “Nice shooting, Charlie.”

  “Eventually. I just hope I don’t mess it up when the time comes.”

  “Ah, don’t sweat it. You’ll be fine.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Such faith—or is that you with your medical head on, looking out for my mental health?”

  “Bit of both.” He grinned. “Speaking of mental health, how’s your arse?”

  The segue took me by surprise. “My…what?”

  “Sorry, I keep forgetting that unlike most of the lads that’s not where you keep your brain. Saddle sores—got any I ought to know about?”

  “My arse is fine, thank you,” I said primly, “and very much my own.”

  He laughed. “You know I’ll always watch it for you.”

  “Thanks… I think.”

  I finished strapping the rifle to the saddle of the little chestnut. Across from me, the sergeant was scanning the surrounding terrain. He’d sent the small red-headed guy and the one with the muscles on ahead when the rest of us stopped so I could zero the gun.

  “I’ve just worked it out who they are,” Brookes said suddenly in my ear.

  It took my mind a moment to backtrack and realise I had no idea what he was on about. “Who?”

  “This lot.” He jerked his head towards the sergeant and the taller so
ldier with the upper-class accent.

  I turned, saw his lips twitching. “Go on.”

  “The Spice Girls!” he said, breaking into a grin. “That’s Scary and Posh over there, and the other two are Ginger and Sporty. Wondered why they haven’t put out a new single for a bit? Well, it’s because they’re over here in ’Stan, doing their bit for Queen and country.”

  I spluttered with laughter. “My God…I think I’ll let you break it to them that you’ve uncovered their secret.”

  “Well, if they’re not prepared to tell us their real names, they’ll just have to take what they get, won’t they?”

  We mounted up and moved off soon afterwards, Tate groaning that his arse was getting to the stage where he was even tempted to let Brookes take a look at it.

  “Don’t need to look at it to know what you need,” Brookes said easily. “Got some liniment you can rub into it, if it’s bad. Just make sure you wash your hands before you take a leak.”

  Tate twisted in his saddle and gave me a leer. “Maybe I can get Charlie to rub it in for me, eh?”

  “I’m not getting close to your arse without a gasmask,” I told him. “It’s bad enough being able to hear it from the other side of camp.”

  The sergeant—Scary—was riding just ahead of us. Suddenly, he wheeled the dark bay he’d chosen and came back. He turned again alongside Tate so they almost bumped knees, and loomed over to him. The nickname Brookes had come up with had never seemed so apt.

  “All right, knock it off,” he said with quiet force. “Right now.”

  “What?” Tate seemed genuinely taken aback. “What the fuck did I do?”

  “You got the hots for her, or you two got something going on, I don’t care. Just as long as the pair of you keep it in your pants ’til this is over, you hear me?”

  Tate’s face, already reddened from a combination of both sunburn and windburn, flushed darker still. “I’m not! I mean, there isn’t…I—”

  “Well leave out the smartarse comments then, sunshine. If they’re not true they reflect badly on you.”