Battle Lines

by Andy McNab

  Dave was still speechless.

  Sol said slowly: ‘The whole point of training is that we prepare ourselves for what lies ahead. And what lies ahead is a dry, dusty country.’

  Dave recovered. ‘Blue Balls, I’m not arguing about it. Just get a fucking Camelbak, get some water in it and some more in your day sack. You keep your mouth shut and you wind your neck in or you won’t stay alive long when we get to Afghanistan.’

  The sun shone weakly as they loaded up the wagons. But by the time they rolled out of the camp, the winter morning had clouded over again. They had all seen the weather forecast. Rain. Turning to snow.

  Dave was at the front of the second wagon. The new platoon commander had established that he always liked to sit at the front of the convoy by rudely telling Dave to move on the first morning they had worked together. Dave had bitten his tongue. Even this morning there had been a disagreement between them over who was picking up supplies and when. Dave had argued and Chalfont-Price had simply overruled him. The officer had ordered Finny to drive to Donnington halfway through training to get the supplies and Angus had immediately offered to go with him.

  ‘There. Sorted,’ snapped Chalfont-Price. ‘Your analysis of the situation simply wasted time, Sergeant.’

  Dave wished he could think of a smart retort but the best retorts seldom occurred to him within two hours, often not until the next day and sometimes not for a month. Although a put-down wouldn’t help. The more he argued with the new boss, the worse relations would get. He knew that. And he knew that a sergeant and commander who can’t work together are dangerous in theatre. He would have to try harder with Chalfont-Price.

  His fury was overtaken by melancholy as they moved off. They drove past the sentries and climbed the hill. The fields were sown in neat rows and below them were the houses of the camp, also in neat rows. He wondered if Jenny happened to be at a window watching them go. She had woken this morning with that sad going-away face he recognized too well. He had held her close and said: ‘It’s only for three days, love.’ But they both knew that next week he would leave for a lot longer.

  The men travelled quietly in the truck. As they passed from England into Wales the silence became pervasive. This was another arrival and the next arrival would be at Camp Bastion, Helmand. It might be hard living outside on the bleak Welsh mountains for a few days but at least they were safe here. The enemy were targets which popped up as if in a game, without ever firing back effectively. There were no roadside bombs. No one really died. Training was nothing more than a rehearsal. But it was a rehearsal for a grim reality. Reminded of this, some of the men began to ask themselves just why they had wanted so much to return to Afghanistan.

  They got very wet tabbing across the hills to the RV in the rain. Now they were supposed to be resting before a night extraction exercise but the temperature had dropped dramatically. Most of the men felt too cold and wet to sleep. They lay in a hedge watching afternoon turn to evening.

  Mal and Angus were huddling under their ponchos when Angus said quietly: ‘By the way, mate …’

  Mal knew at once, from Angry’s careful tone, just what he was going to talk about. He braced himself.

  ‘I couldn’t get my hands on a TA sniper rifle.’

  Mal felt relief spread all over him, as though someone had just switched on a heater.

  Angry continued: ‘But I won’t need one. I’ve come up with a new plan to sort out your little problem up north.’

  The relief ebbed away. Mal slid further down inside his maggot. His teeth began to chatter.

  ‘Angry, mate, there’s nothing you can do before deployment. There isn’t time.’

  ‘Oh yes there is. I’ve got time and I always keep my word.’ Angus leaned forward and his voice hissed through the cold air. ‘Now listen, you were right that there’s no way I can get a clear sight on the target at one kilometre.’

  Mal realized he was frozen. He had already been very cold but this was worse.

  ‘How do you know that?’ he demanded anxiously.

  ‘Last weekend …’

  ‘You went home last weekend!’

  ‘Nah. I said I was going home. But I didn’t.’

  There was a long pause while Mal felt the impact of his words. They hurt his head, as though Angus had hit him there.

  ‘Shit! Shit, Angry. You never went to Wythenshawe!’

  ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t visit your mum. Would have been too dangerous. I just went to recce the place.’

  ‘Fuck!’

  ‘It’s a bloody big shop Aamir works in, World in Your Lounge. And most of the furniture’s crap. I agree with your mum, it’s overpriced crap.’

  ‘You went up to Wythenshawe to where Aamir works!’

  ‘To World in Your Lounge, yeah. It’s mostly cheap imports. They probably pay some Indian a fucking fiver for a sofa and then sell it for five hundred. Anyway, I saw Aamir. Smallish bloke, stocky, deep voice, with sticking-out ears, right?’

  Mal gulped. ‘His ears do stick out. Sort of,’ he whispered.

  ‘I got a good look at him. Then I recced the side door, which is where the target goes outside for a smoke. The best line of fire I could get would be from the motorway bridge. But that’s a no-no.’

  Mal said nothing. He had been turned to ice.

  ‘The thing is, I can do the job with an SA80. I’m good for four hundred metres with it. I reckon there’s one place I can fire from, around the back of this old warehouse place in the next car park. It’s less than two hundred metres.’

  ‘But they’ll identify your round and find—’

  ‘Nah. I’ve checked. The army’s got fucking thousands of rifle barrels everywhere. There’s no way they can identify the weapon from the round if I use an SA80.’

  Mal still could not speak. He couldn’t even swallow.

  ‘I’ve got it all sorted, mate. I just needed to make sure I’m on the supplies run up to Donnington and guess what, I’m going with Finny. Easy. It’s near enough to Wythenshawe and I’ve told Billy Finn I’ve got a hot chick up there I have to see before we deploy. He’s going to wait at the NAAFI in Donnington chatting up birds until I get back. Then we’re down the motorway and back to Brecon before you can say sniper. While the police are questioning every bloke in Manchester. Sweet, innit?’

  Mal closed his eyes. Angus was insane. He was plotting to kill a civilian. Mal wanted to tell someone, to confide in Dave, even ask his mum for help. But God knew what would happen to Angry if he did. He decided that during the night exercise he would find a way to talk to Binman. And they’d make their own plan to stop Angry. He thought some more. The plan would probably have to involve Finny.

  Jenny yawned and decided that she was too tired to carry out her daily trawl through the internet for jobs or even to check her email. She just wanted to go to bed, although it wasn’t ten o’clock yet.

  The bedroom felt cold and empty without Dave. He had been home just a few months and when he had first arrived it seemed to her that he filled every available space in the house – and some that weren’t available – with his presence or his noise. But now that she was used to him again, his absence felt acute, as if he was a whole crowd of people who had suddenly disappeared.

  She remembered how, that morning, she had paused at the window on the stairs as usual. From here you could look up the hill that swelled beyond the camp. It was always changing colour. Brown in the autumn. Green stripes in winter. The lines broadened in spring to a bright swathe of green. Then in the summer the whole hillside was magnificent in gold. But it wasn’t summer now. It was winter and the land was a chalky brown dotted with the green pinstripes of some half-hearted crop. It was intersected by the road out of the camp and at that moment a convoy was crawling along it.

  She had watched the vehicles snaking up the hillside and wondered which one Dave was in and whether he looked back at the camp, at their street, at their house.

  As she climbed into bed now she felt something hard, w
ith corners, dig into her side. She turned on the light and pulled back the bedclothes. An envelope. Her name was written across it in Dave’s big writing.

  She smiled and tore it open. She didn’t care what was inside. It was from Dave and he had planned the note and hidden it so she would find it when he was gone, and she loved him for that.

  Left you a small present. Because you are so beautiful. It’s not medicine and it’s not wine, it’s in between. BTW, I love you.

  She smiled more broadly. When they had first lived together he had left her something to find every time he went away. But that was the sort of game you gradually forgot to play when you married and had kids. Until now.

  Jenny reread the clue. What was in between medicine and wine? Vinegar, maybe? Why would Dave give her vinegar? She threw on her dressing gown and went downstairs to the kitchen. She opened cupboards. Nothing unusual. She thought hard. Brandy! Some people used it as medicine. She went to the cupboard where they kept wine and beer and, maybe at Christmas, brandy. It was empty now except for two cans of beer.

  She read the clue again.

  It’s not medicine …

  Well, it was worth looking in the bathroom anyway. She hunted through the wall cabinet. Nothing. She went back to the kitchen. It had to be in the kitchen or the bathroom. No, wait. The treasure was between the medicine and the wine. It must be in the hallway.

  She started an inch-by-inch search, including behind the radiator and under the phone. She ran her fingers along the edges of the stair carpet, around the top of the lamps on the landing, behind pictures. Nothing. It didn’t help that she had no idea what she was looking for. But, since Dave’s presents were often jewellery, she suspected it was a very small box.

  Finally she gave up. She checked the doors were locked one last time. Through the back door, she saw snow falling. She wondered if it was snowing in Wales. She dialled Dave’s number. A mechanical voice, not his, informed her that he was unavailable and invited her to leave a message.

  ‘I love you. Good night,’ she said quietly. He would know that she had found the clue.

  She went back up to bed and read the clue again before she turned out the light. She planned to lie thinking about it for a while, but within a few moments had drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter Ten

  WHEN DAVE TRIED to wake the platoon at 2200 hours, he found almost no one asleep. And no one who wanted to emerge from their maggot.

  ‘My balls have frozen off.’

  ‘Get moving! You’re lucky it hasn’t snowed.’

  ‘It’s too fucking cold to snow.’

  ‘Get up, get ready, get on with it, lads!’

  Some more trainers arrived, jumping energetically from their warm Land Rovers to join the men who had gathered around Second Lieutenant Chalfont-Price, stamping their feet, while he gave orders.

  ‘This is an emergency night evacuation exercise and there is no GPS and strictly no mobile phones. I repeat, leave your mobile phone behind with your kit. Anyone caught with one will have me to answer to. Now, order of march is 3 Section, 2 Section, 1 Section. I’ll be at the front, map-reading. Sergeant Henley at the back will round up stragglers. We hit a checkpoint every forty-five minutes to an hour and if we don’t hang around we’ll be back in bed at 0230 hours. Synchronize watches …’

  Chalfont-Price was the opposite of their last platoon commander, thought Dave. Gordon Weeks would not have been able to give such a clear set of orders. But everyone had liked him, he had known and cared for his men and he always performed well under fire. He wondered how Chalfont-Price would do in his first real battle. You could never tell until you got to theatre.

  The men took their positions and plunged off into the night. The ground was frozen hard now and their boots sounded as though they were clanging on iron. Occasionally people slipped, a thud followed by swearing. Dave saw Angus tumble to the ground. About ten minutes later, the signaller did a comedy fall, arms and legs flailing, almost righted himself, and then was pulled over backwards by his Bergen. He lay winded for a few moments.

  ‘All right, Goater?’ Dave asked him.

  ‘Yeah. Help me up, Sarge.’

  Dave pulled at the signaller until he was on his feet and his antenna was pointing the right way and they set off again.

  The moon was so bright that under trees it threw shadow branches with sharp edges. The commander set the pace and it was fast. Soon everyone felt warmer. Their breath could be seen above their heads in ghostly clouds. Each man’s thoughts became lulled by the rhythm of his walk. Even Dave allowed his mind to wander in the silence. They swung into a gloomy wood, barely penetrated by moonlight.

  Dave wondered if Jenny was in bed and whether she had found the clue. He doubted she had solved it yet; it was a good one. He smiled to himself, imagining her wandering over the house, her face puzzled, thinking hard, the clue in her hand. He was a lucky man, to have a woman like Jenny. He thought that often, but never when he was actually at home with her. Shit. That probably meant he was a fucking awful husband. Why didn’t he ever say it?

  They had emerged from the wood, crossed some fields and entered another wood, ancient this time, because they kept stumbling over big tree roots, before it occurred to Dave that they should have passed the first checkpoint by now.

  He radioed to Second Lieutenant Chalfont-Price to halt at the front and there was no reply.

  ‘Charlie One One to Charlie One Zero …’

  Nothing. He tapped his radio, a sound which was usually ear-numbing, but he heard nothing. The light wasn’t even on. Fantastic. The fucking radios weren’t working.

  He sent word up to the boss to go firm. He wanted to look at the map and give the signaller a chance to sort out comms. Chalfont-Price was invisible in the dark woods but it was easy to imagine his response, how he would stop short, angrily and impatiently.

  The file came to a halt and, as Dave walked forward looking at the map, men hanging around him lighting cigarettes and opening flasks, he became aware of the sound of one pair of boots stomping towards him.

  Chalfont-Price paused to question the signaller about the radios. The signaller, frantically juggling batteries, gave a harassed reply. Dave did not look up. He studied the map for long enough to be convinced that they had tabbed too far east. They should be among trees now, Chalfont-Prick was right about that. But not these trees.

  ‘Just what are you doing, Sergeant?’

  ‘Where are we, sir?’ asked Dave.

  The officer’s voice was a few degrees lower than the freezing air temperature.

  ‘Sergeant, who’s supposed to be map-reading. You? Or me?’

  ‘You, sir, but I’d be negligent if I didn’t keep an eye on the map myself.’

  ‘You have halted the whole platoon unnecessarily. I can assure you that I am fully aware of the route.’

  ‘No harm in checking it.’

  ‘I repeat. I am fully aware of the route.’

  Dave took a deep breath. ‘When do you think we’ll be passing Checkpoint 1, sir?’

  ‘Within the next ten minutes. I thought we’d get there sooner but I hadn’t anticipated that the back of the file would be so slow.’

  Dave felt the thump inside him of blood pumped rapidly around his body by anger. It boomed in his ears.

  ‘There’s nothing slow about the back of the march, sir. Everyone’s keeping up.’

  ‘No, Sergeant, they are not. Men keep falling at the back and I frequently have to slow down. Sometimes I feel as though the platoon is being torn in two directions: back by you and forward by me.’

  This was untrue and the officer must know it. Why would any officer make stupid, snide comments about his sergeant? Was he trying to divert attention from a mistake of his own? Maybe Chalfont-Prick wasn’t as confident of his map-reading as he pretended.

  Dave made an immense effort. ‘Right, sir. I apologize for that. I’ll see to it that you don’t have to slow down again.’

  ‘Let’s get going,’ sn
apped the commander. ‘And no more interruptions, please.’

  Dave knew he had to tell the man that they were nowhere near Checkpoint 1. Saying nothing and letting him get completely lost would not help the platoon on a cold night. The trouble was that the pompous young git couldn’t stand Dave correcting him. Not in front of the men, anyway.

  ‘Sir,’ said Dave, gesturing to a clearing, ‘let’s go over there and have a quick chat.’

  ‘Chat? Chat? Sergeant, we are in freezing woodland in the middle of the night! This is neither the time nor place for one of your “chats”.’ He sounded as though Dave had suggested a bit of ballroom dancing or a quick game of snooker. A few men smothered laughter. Most watched tensely, though, sensing that an ugly row was brewing.

  ‘I thought you might not want to discuss this in front of the men,’ said Dave, his voice taut.

  ‘At this moment in time, there is nothing we need to discuss, in front of the men or otherwise.’

  The frosty woodland which enveloped them was still. There was no breath of wind. The men did not move either. Even the smokers did not raise the cigarettes to their lips.

  Into the silence, Dave said: ‘We’re lost, sir.’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’ The commander’s voice was threatening.

  Dave said: ‘We’ve missed the checkpoint because we’ve tabbed too far east.’

  The silence got a lot louder.

  ‘Sergeant. I have studied the route. I have studied the map. Please do not presume to give me advice.’

  ‘Sir, I think we’re in Hanging Woods. You may be confusing this with Gaunt Woods.’

  ‘I am not confusing anything.’

  ‘If you look at the map, sir …’

  ‘I do look at the map, Sergeant. That’s my job. Now you do your job and get the fucking radios sorted. That’s enough of this nonsense.’

  The officer turned and plunged back into the gloom of the woods.

  ‘Sarge,’ said the signaller when he could be sure the boss had gone, ‘I’ve got a problem.’

  ‘You don’t say, Goater.’

  ‘You know when I fell over …?’

  Dave nodded.