by Andy McNab
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Dave Henley, sir.’
There was a pause.
‘Where the fuck are you?’
‘We need to casevac someone out. Broken ankle. I’m going to give you our grid ref now.’
A small murmur went around the company when Dave rattled off their exact coordinates to the sergeant major.
‘So Sarge knew all along where we were!’
‘Why didn’t he fucking tell us, then!’
‘Because the boss wouldn’t listen.’
‘This is fucking nuts! It’s more nuts than O’Sullivan’s nuts.’
Dave ignored them and he did not look at the platoon commander’s face. In fact, he had forgotten that the boss was there at all.
He gave Si Curtis’s details and added: ‘Iain, I’m leaving Max Gayle to care for the wounded. He’s got a dodgy ankle himself. He’ll have this mobile phone. I’m taking everyone else on.’
‘On where? You haven’t even got to fucking Checkpoint 1 yet!’
‘We’re near Checkpoint 5.’
‘Listen, the checkpoints packed up hours ago and went on the piss. Just get back here now.’
‘I estimate we’re about an hour away.’
‘I hope you’ve got a fucking good explanation for this.’
‘Fucking good,’ said Dave grimly.
He handed the phone to Gayle, who had limped up from the back on hearing his name. He looked better for the brief rest and relieved not to be tabbing on. While the medic was busy around Si Curtis, Dave turned to Chalfont-Price. He expected to find the man looking humbled or embarrassed in some way. He even hoped for an apology. But the man blinked back at him, lizard-like, his face expressionless.
‘Right.’ Dave moved closer to show him the map. ‘We are here.’
Chalfont-Price studied Dave’s finger. ‘No, I think we are here.’ He was pointing at a position miles away. But he did not sound quite so sure of himself now.
Dave sighed. ‘Sir, it’s time you listened to me. If you’d listened before this never would have happened. We’re here. And the camp’s there. Now will you lead the men back or will I?’
The boss grimaced and shook some snow off his head. ‘I will. Of course.’
Progress to the camp was slow because, although the snow had stopped, in places it was deep. A new wind had carried it into drifts and occasionally the men found themselves plunged into unexpected valleys of snow. Behind the boss there were a few snowball fights but most of the men were too tired to play. They arrived back at the camp just over an hour later. The group of trainers who had been waiting for them had the wagon engines running to keep warm.
‘OK, everyone sort out their kit now and get in a wagon,’ Dave instructed. The men fetched their things and climbed in the back of the vehicles gratefully and wordlessly.
Kila positioned himself in front of Dave and Chalfont-Price. ‘What the fuck happened?’
Dave remained silent. So did the boss.
‘Well?’ Kila looked directly at the officer.
‘The platoon couldn’t agree on its map-reading,’ Chalfont-Price said through tight lips as he turned to climb into a cab. Implying that in some way he had been open to discussion, even persuasion. Dave wanted to punch the man.
Left alone with Dave, Kila turned to him, his face still a question mark.
‘What news on Curtis?’ asked Dave quickly.
‘Helicopter had a bit of bother with the weather but it got him to hospital. They’ll operate later.’
‘Operate?’
‘It’s a bad fracture.’ Kila’s hands were still on his hips. ‘And Gayle wasn’t in a good way either. They’ve kept him in overnight.’
The men were all on board now.
‘OK,’ said the sergeant major to Dave. ‘You’re travelling down with me now, Dave, and I want to know what the fuck happened.’
In the warmth at the front of the truck Dave just wanted to go to sleep but he knew he had to tell the sergeant major the whole story. Kila listened in silence as the driver tugged the steering wheel to right and left while the wagon slithered along the icy tracks.
When Dave had finished he sighed.
‘Who was the fucker who had the mobile phone?’
‘Doesn’t matter. I declared an amnesty.’
Kila raised his eyebrows but didn’t pursue the question.
‘I’ll hear what Chalfont-Price has to say.’
‘Well, he’s not going to tell you that he’s a pompous, arrogant little twat, but that’s the truth,’ said Dave. ‘Can’t Gordon Weeks come back for this tour?’
‘You know he can’t.’ Kila sighed and wrinkled his brow. The truck skidded for fifty metres downhill, the driver grimacing, his arms tense. The light was still dim but it was the cold, precise light of dawn instead of the moon’s glow.
‘Now probably isn’t the time to talk about this,’ said Kila at last, ‘but the fact is, Dave, you aren’t handling your platoon commander too well. He’s not the only one who has to clean up his act. So do you. Or your men are going to be in the shit when we get to Afghanistan.’
Chapter Twelve
THAT MORNING, ADI came over with her brood. The Kasanita kids were always polite and well behaved, but in a small house they were overwhelming through sheer force of numbers. Jenny hid butter beans and the children raced everywhere looking for them, putting them into paper cups and then pouring the contents on to the living-room floor to count who had the most. At the centre was Adi, who shrieked and laughed and sometimes slipped butter beans into the cups of the smaller children.
‘Again! Again!’ yelled the children.
‘We’ll have a break for some lunch,’ Jenny said, turning on the TV before she went into the kitchen. Adi positioned herself in the kitchen doorway so that she could watch the children and talk to Jenny at the same time.
‘Sol says it’s stopped snowing in Wales,’ she reported.
‘That’s good,’ said Jenny absently, pretending to be busy cutting slices of cake to hide the fact that she didn’t even know it had started snowing in Wales. Because, as usual, Dave had failed to phone. But somehow Adi seemed to guess.
‘They were on an exercise which went wrong and they spent all night tabbing in a snowstorm,’ she explained. ‘And then Si Curtis broke his ankle and had to be casevaced out.’
‘Oh no!’
‘I doubt Dave’s had a chance to call you …’
Jenny concentrated hard on cutting the cake.
‘… because he’s been too busy rearranging 3 Section. They can’t go out to Afghanistan without a section commander.’
Jenny knew Adi was creating excuses for Dave. She was trying to make things better, smoothing rough surfaces over as usual. Adi’s favourite phrase was ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’. Which was a strange phrase for a soldier’s wife but it was the right one for Adi, who brought good humour wherever she went.
‘Why did the night exercise go wrong?’ Jenny asked.
There was a pause.
‘Some kind of argument over the map-reading, I think,’ said Adi carefully.
Now Jenny looked up.
‘Argument between …’ She searched Adi’s face and knew the truth at once. ‘… between Dave and someone?’
Adi nodded and her grave look helped Jenny guess the truth.
‘Dave and the new platoon commander?’
‘Well, darling, I don’t know the whole story.’
Jenny wanted to defend Dave but she knew it was only too likely that he had rowed with the new boss.
Adi was watching her. She smiled, as usual. ‘Sol doesn’t like the new officer either. No one does. Apparently he doesn’t talk to his men or show any interest in them.’
But Sol, Jenny knew, would make an effort to get on with Chalfont-Price. Because he was the boss, because he was new, because he was young and foolish and needed to be knocked into shape. Dave was always so patient and generous with the new young officers. Why not this one?
As the children rushed out again with their paper cups to find them, crumbs and blackcurrant rings around their mouths, Adi said to Jenny: ‘I was planting a butter bean by your computer keyboard and I saw something you’ve printed off. I shouldn’t have looked. But it was lying on the top …’
‘Oh wow, Vicky, you’ve found three already!’ Jenny said enthusiastically as Vicky tottered towards her proudly with a rattling cup.
‘Are you really looking for a job?’ asked Addie.
‘If I can find one. You’ve probably heard about the row I had with Shona at the nursery …’
‘Everyone’s heard, darling. You can’t walk out on the camp nursery without the whole world knowing.’
‘Well, I’d like to earn enough to send Vicks to that new nursery school.’
‘So you won’t need any childcare then?’
Jenny found herself colouring.
‘Oh Adi, yes I will. That job you saw printed out, I’ve got an interview for it next week … and even if Vicks goes to the new nursery while I work, Jaime’s too young.’
‘And can I help you? I’m looking after Leanne’s boys for her, you know, when she starts at the bakery.’
‘I’d love you to take the girls. I’d pay you, of course …’
‘It would be a nice way for me to earn a little bit and help you at the same time. So think about it, Jenny. And let me look after them when you go for your interview.’
‘Thanks, Adi … I haven’t actually told anyone yet. I mean, not even Dave. I wasn’t going to say anything. Unless I get the job.’
Adi pressed her finger to her lips and made her eyes big.
‘Your secrets are safe with me.’
Vicky returned and tugged her mother off to find butter beans.
‘Look along the bookshelves, look very carefully!’ Jenny told her. Vicky stood on the sofa and her fingers crept along the line of books. Jenny liked these shelves. It wasn’t only that they had been her father’s and that her father had actually made them himself. She liked the colourful spines of the books and the way they reminded her not just of the worlds inside them but where she had been when she read them. And she loved to pull a children’s book out on a wintry afternoon and snuggle down with Vicky looking at the pictures.
Vicky’s fingers found a butter bean on top of the vast Family Guide to Medical Matters: Making Sure the Worst Never Happens! Right next to it was Emergencies in the Home and How to Prevent Them, hiding another butter bean. Both books were presents from Jenny’s mother, Trish, a doomsayer who liked to read out loud some of the hideous scenarios described.
Jaime was awake now, so Jenny carried her in one arm while she showed Vicky how to make her tiny fingers walk along the shelves.
‘Little legs!’ cried Vicky, walking the little legs past a book on fashion to Understanding Wine, Wines of Europe and Wines of the New World and then the cookery books, where she found a small nest of butter beans.
‘Three! You’ve found three more!’ Jenny told her as she dropped them into Vicky’s cup. She could hear the Kasanita children rampaging up the stairs. Adi was chasing behind them, yelling: ‘Now then, just calm down!’
Vicky continued to walk her fingers along the shelf but Jenny was suddenly distracted. Medicine and wine. Hadn’t Dave’s clue said there was a present somewhere between medicine and wine?
She ran her eye across the books again and saw Fashion For You! Look a Million Dollars! She realized she had never seen this book before and in the same moment noticed that the jacket was only photocopied and roughly coloured with a kid’s felt tip. She pulled it from the shelf and it was immediately obvious that this wasn’t a book at all but a slim box which had been covered to look like a book.
Billy Finn was watching the cloud formations over the white hills as he had a quiet cigarette outside a hut. There hadn’t been so much snow down here at the base but the tops were covered in icing sugar and above them the clouds were forming into billowing towers and massive white hill forts.
‘I bet that’s more snow coming,’ said Mal Bilaal.
Finn was surprised to find Mal standing next to him. He drew on his cigarette. ‘Nah, they’re not snow clouds.’
‘You still going on the supplies run up to Donnington?’ asked another voice and Finn saw that Jack Binns was standing on his other side.
Suspicious now, he took a step back and turned around so that he could face them.
‘Why? You two got a bird up there? So’s Angry.’
He saw them both flinch at this.
‘Listen, I can’t take the whole fucking platoon just because they’re needing a shag.’
Mal and Binman looked miserably beyond him at the spectacular view. Finn’s back was turned on the hills now but he could see the strange cloud formations reflected in miniature in the pupils of their eyes.
‘We don’t want to go to Donnington. We just think you should go without Angry,’ said Binman at last in a small, squeaky voice.
‘Why?’
Neither of them replied. Their faces drooped miserably.
‘Some reason he shouldn’t see this bird?’
Mal and Binman exchanged glances.
‘Well … yeah,’ said Mal at last. ‘We need to stop him seeing her.’
Finn waited but no one explained.
‘Let me guess. She’s married and her old man’s going to shoot him?’
He saw Mal and Binman look at each other again.
‘Well …’ said Mal awkwardly.
‘You’re not a million miles from the truth there,’ said Binman.
Finn looked thoughtful. His eyes darted in his lean face and behind them his brain was busy. ‘No, this is Angry we’re talking about. More likely he’s going to shoot her old man.’
‘Now you’re very close,’ admitted Mal.
‘So don’t do no more guessing, Finny,’ pleaded Binman. ‘Just trust us. He shouldn’t go and pick up supplies with you.’
‘You don’t want to tell me?’
‘No,’ they said together.
‘I’ll probably find out sooner or later. Because Billy Finn knows.’
Their eyes said they wanted to tell him. But their mouths remained firmly closed. The three of them watched in silence as Dave appeared, crossing the base. He was going towards the command post where Major Willingham stayed for the exercise. At the wooden door, the sergeant major was waiting. When Dave arrived Kila went inside with him and the door shut behind them.
As soon as they were gone, Finn sighed.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’m trusting you two. If you say there’s some good reason to stop Angry McCall, I’ll sort it out. Just leave it to Finny.’
‘So you’re telling me that you tried to point out to Second Lieutenant Chalfont-Price once, twice, three times that he was going the wrong way? On three separate occasions?’ said Major Willingham.
They were standing in the commanding officer’s hut. It was sparse but there was a tiny old two-bar electric heater glowing in the corner. After the Welsh hillside, its thin heat made the place feel tropical. Major Willingham’s face was red. Either with the heat. Or perhaps, Dave thought, because he was annoyed.
Dave said: ‘I stopped the platoon and asked him about three times to check the map and he said he didn’t need to. Finally I told him outright that we were in the wrong place …’
‘Did you tell him in front of the men?’ asked Sergeant Major Kila.
‘I tried to take him off to one side, sir, but he … he didn’t find that idea very acceptable. So I had to say it in front of everyone.’
‘And his response was …?’ demanded the major.
‘He was so sure of himself that… well, he made me think maybe I was wrong.’
‘Surely not, Sergeant! You have years of map-reading under your belt and St John Chalfont-Price is a very new officer.’
So that was how you pronounced Chalfont-Prick’s ridiculous first name, thought Dave, who had seen it written down and wondered at it. Did his mates call him Saint? Well, here was the answer. They called him Sinjun. And how daft was that?
‘Surely,’ the major was saying, ‘you knew that poor Sinjun Chalfont-Price had made a mistake through inexperience and it was your job to put him right?’
What was ‘poor’ about the twat?
‘Sir, I tried. The platoon commander wouldn’t listen.’
‘So here he was, completely lost with a platoon of men behind him. And no one helped him!’
‘He asked one of the corporals to look at the map with him.’
‘You let a corporal map-read with him! When you were standing right there!’
‘He asked a corporal. When I was standing right there.’
‘Which one?’
‘Aaron Baker, sir.’
Kila groaned.
The major turned to Iain Kila. ‘Is Corporal Baker noted for his map-reading skills?’
Kila shook his head. ‘He’s fucking useless, actually, sir.’
‘Unbelievable! You let your platoon commander ask the wrong man and follow the wrong advice. Because, Sergeant, he had put your nose out of joint by failing to listen earlier. For your own petty reasons you were prepared to see him lead the whole platoon over the hills in a snowstorm, completely lost. The result is that one good corporal has a badly broken ankle and will no longer be able to go into theatre. And, frankly, you’re lucky that was the only injury.’
Dave swallowed. He thought he deserved a reprimand, but maybe not this much of a reprimand. And he thought the major should be even tougher on Chalfont-Prick.
The major continued: ‘Well, I shudder to think what would have happened if you had been in theatre.’
‘I never would have let it happen in theatre,’ said Dave. ‘But this is training and if I couldn’t train him by explaining, I decided I had to let him learn the hard way.’
‘You didn’t like the way he spoke to you. That was why you decided to let him learn the hard way, and your whole platoon suffered for it. I understand that your men showed sheer incredulity when you phoned the sergeant major and coolly gave him your exact coordinates.’
