Battle Lines

by Andy McNab

  There was a silence on PRR as his two corporals digested this. Aaron Baker was asking himself whether they could really ignore their own drills and expect the Americans to take care of them. They were about to ford a small stream which ran from the canal across the track to a field which stuck out into the desert like a green thumb. How could they see disturbed earth under water? Jason Swift, behind, was so alarmed they were abandoning drills that he was actually on the radio repeating his request to Barma when the IED went off.

  The bomb exploded into the silence suddenly and massively. Baker held on to the machine gun as though it was a lifebelt. He felt no surprise. They were in a dead zone. Of course the enemy had seeded it with mines and now one was exploding. It was utterly predictable. He thought all this in the fraction of a second before he saw kit flying past him and felt his head exploding like another small bomb. He waited to see bits of it falling off him, an ear hurled this way, a nose that. The Mastiff rocked violently from side to side. Still clutching the machine gun with one hand, he reached up with the other to hold his face on. He could feel his features inside his glove. The skin of his face came alive under the harsh touch of the glove. So, he thought, it’s still there, then.

  His ears ringing, his head throbbing, his eyes aching from the mighty flash, he wiggled his toes and bent his knees. The impact had gone all the way up to his head but that didn’t mean his lower limbs were still there. Except they were, because he could move them.

  Aaron heard a voice in his ear, demanding to know if anyone was hurt. It was his own voice. He was on PRR talking to the lads, hearing their dazed, stuttering replies.

  Everyone was alive; everyone had all their limbs.

  Aaron remembered his own arms, hand and fingers. He wiggled them. So they were there too. He knew that Aaron Baker, the real Aaron Baker inside him, was shocked and scared and reeling from the noise and thrust of a massive blow. But Aaron Baker the soldier was already on the radio, telling everyone to stay put, instructing McKinley to pull the Vallon kit out and start clearing back so they could all extract to vehicle two. He told O’Sullivan to cover McKinley. He was aware, dimly, of strange background music. Was it inside his head? Was his iPod on? Then he realized it was the Muslim call to prayer, released from some distant mosque and haunting the landscape for miles around.

  Chapter Thirty

  AT PB RED Sox the world was quieter. The enemy was still out there. Every so often they took a pot shot. But it sounded to Dave as though the heavy men had gone home, leaving their sons to watch the PB. And the sons were too busy playing Angry Birds on their iPhones to care about firing too often.

  Far away there came the call to prayer, a deep bass voice singing across the desolate world beyond the Green Zone.

  ‘Good idea! Fuck off and go pray!’ said Mal to the invisible enemy from the Minimi.

  Dave had put the two drivers up the tower on stag. They had moaned a bit but Dave had not needed to shout because the other men had turned on them: ‘We don’t have enough manpower for you two to lounge around all day!’

  ‘But we—!’ Lancer Reed had begun, before the men interrupted him.

  ‘There’s no driving, so get your fucking finger out and help, pals! Even Doc’s firing for us.’

  Dave thought the drivers were like fish on dry land if you asked them to use their infantry skills. They were fine behind a wheel, but looked awkward as they climbed the tower with their hands and legs in all the wrong places. Then they had to be reminded to keep glassing throughout the time they were up there. And they were less keen to fire back at the enemy than the infantrymen.

  Finally, Dave told Slindon and Bacon to take over up the tower. Gratefully the two drivers started to climb down. Lancer Reed, who was behind, caught his rifle strap on the edge of the Hesco, almost suspending himself in mid-air. He managed to disentangle it but the moment’s vulnerability unleashed a volley of fire from the enemy. Over on the HMG, on the other side of the compound, Binns answered them.

  ‘You bastards,’ moaned Reed, falling awkwardly to the ground. He stumbled on to one foot and yelped in pain.

  Mal, who had just come off stag on the main gate, looked around for Doc Holliday. He was asleep under his basha. Mal did not wake him but walked over to the driver.

  ‘I saw you. Your foot twisted outwards.’

  ‘Shit!’ said Reed, grasping his ankle and flopping down on to the ground. ‘I would’ve been all right if my kit hadn’t pulled me over.’

  ‘That’s the trouble with all this kit. Whenever you fall, you fall harder.’

  ‘Should have fired more!’ yelled Finn from behind the gimpy. ‘Then you wouldn’t have been carrying so much fucking ammo.’

  Mal started to take off Reed’s boot.

  ‘What you doing?’ demanded Reed. ‘Just wake up, Doc!’

  ‘No,’ said Mal. ‘I’m team medic and I’m only waking him up if I think it’s broken.’

  ‘Mal’s a fucking good medic,’ said Streaky Bacon from the tower. ‘He knows what he’s doing.’

  Reed allowed Mal to run his hands over the ankle and pull his leg in various directions and flex his foot.

  ‘Ow, fucking ow!’ he said. ‘Look, it’s swelling up already.’

  ‘I think you’ve only twisted it,’ Mal told him.

  ‘Is that all? Oh fucking fantastic,’ groaned the driver.

  ‘What happens when you try to walk on it?’

  Mal helped Reed to his feet. The driver stood on one leg and then very gingerly tried to put his weight on the other. He moved forward slowly like a crab, bending sideways to avoid putting any weight on the twisted ankle.

  ‘If I can find anything really cold I’ll put that on it. Lie down and keep it elevated and I’ll bind it up,’ said Mal.

  ‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ said the driver. ‘I’d rather Doc put my bandage on.’

  Mal started to argue but everyone was distracted by a cry from the tower. It was Slindon, peering through the binoculars.

  ‘I can see them! Two fucking Mastiffs!’

  He sounded like a man marooned on a desert island who had just seen a ship. A loud cheer went up. Slindon continued to watch. Mal handed the driver a couple of tablets.

  ‘Anti-inflammatories,’ he explained. The driver swilled them down quietly.

  Slindon reported: ‘They’re in the Bronx now, Sarge.’

  Dave had half a mind to get on the radio and tell the relief party to check for mines in the dead zone. But it was so routine, such basic drill, to Barma a track for mines when it couldn’t be glassed that the boss would probably bite his head off if Dave tried to remind him.

  Sol appeared, his face puckered with concern because he’d found a leak in their water supplies. Then Finn suddenly responded to a single AK shot from the enemy with a long volley on the gimpy.

  ‘You’re late! Get yourself off to the fucking mosque!’ he roared.

  Dave thought he had heard the deep thud of an explosion somewhere behind all the noise. He listened, but Finn let the gimpy loose again now that he knew more ammo was just a few kilometres away.

  When at last there was a pause, Dave heard Slindon say: ‘Holy shit!’

  Blue Balls Slindon was capable of turning a packet of dropped biscuits into a T4 tragedy but this time his voice had a breathless undercurrent which made Sol stop in mid-flow and the lads in firing positions turn to stare at him.

  ‘What?’ Dave asked.

  Slindon remained silently glued to the binoculars, his mouth open.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  Before Slindon could reply, Binns appeared, running through the compound into the courtyard.

  ‘Did you hear that?’

  They turned to him speechlessly.

  ‘I could hear it clearly from out by the wagons!’ he said.

  ‘What, what, what?’

  ‘A big bomb. A few kilometres away, I’d say. Probably antitank. I’m just hoping it’s not …’ Binns did not finish his sentence. He
did not need to.

  The radio crackled into action. Dave knew it would be Chalfont-Price. It had to be.

  ‘Charlie One Zero to Zero. IED. Wait, out.’

  ‘Oh fuck!’ said Dave. ‘Oh fuck! They’ve hit an IED in the dead zone. Chalfont-Prick didn’t stop to Barma it. Why didn’t I tell him to? Oh Christ!’

  Sol had not moved throughout this exchange. He said: ‘You shouldn’t need to tell him to Barma the dead zone. It’s basic drill.’

  Anyone in 1 Section who wasn’t firing gathered round, their faces grave, waiting for Dave to tell them more. Dave was silent and still, only his heart moving inside his chest, thudding away like artillery. How many lads were hurt? Or worse? He waited for those terrible words. Man down. He was so focused on the radio for news that it felt like a part of his own body.

  They waited. Each moment was not a moment of real time, it was a moment lengthened by the anticipation of pain. Was it seconds, minutes or hours before Chalfont-Price came back on?

  ‘No serious casualties. Slight casualties. No burning.’

  Dave was so relieved that he felt lightheaded, and then realized this was because he had been holding his breath. Slight casualties only! He passed on the news, hearing his own voice shake.

  ‘Those Mastiffs are amazing!’ said Sol, his face breaking into a wide smile. Dave looked around and suddenly everyone was smiling. Something was plucking on unused muscles in his own face. He must be smiling too.

  ‘Fucking good thing Andy Skirt didn’t get banjoed because he owes me a tenner!’ said Finn and people started to laugh. It wasn’t funny, but Dave found himself laughing anyway and now his face was hurting. The muscles along his cheeks and around his eyes and under his ears were painful, they were so unused to laughing. His throat hurt too. It felt like weeks, no, months maybe, since he had smiled. Let alone laughed. And now he was laughing so that his stomach hurt. He clutched it. Other men were doubling up and Streaky Bacon and Binns were so helpless that when they could no longer hold each other up they fell dramatically to the ground like a pair of drunks. Doc rolled around under his basha. Angus bent over the gimpy, roaring.

  Dave had begun to reorganize his face and body back into its normal shape when there was a further exchange over the radio between the OC and Chalfont-Price. Dave could tell that the platoon commander was shaken but he kept coolly to the information he was asked to supply without spiralling off the point the way some men did after a shock. So the first vehicle, Chalfont-Price at the front, had driven through a small stream and apparently the bomb had been planted there. It had been blown up under its front left wheel station and was now blocking the track.

  ‘Sure you’re not hurt, Second Lieutenant?’ demanded the major.

  ‘I have a slight wound on my arm from a flying object, sir,’ said the boss.

  ‘Has the medic looked at it?’

  ‘Yessir. When do you estimate EOD can get here?’

  ‘I can’t get you EOD soon,’ the major told him. ‘They’re all elsewhere dealing with other incidents.’

  ‘We are likely to come under attack if we wait here long, sir. We are vulnerable without air support.’ Dave detected a hint of accusation in the young officer’s voice, because the major had told them to continue even when air support had been withdrawn. It was just like Chalfont-Prick to blame the major, thought Dave, when it was his own fucking fault for not Barmaring.

  ‘I’ll get you some firepower as soon as I can if you need it,’ said the OC.

  ‘No EOD and no air support, sir, plus the bomb has caused us a few equipment failures – for instance the Vallon has been damaged and so we only have the mine-detection kit from the other Mastiff. If I deny the vehicle, sir, then we could move forward to PB Red Sox,’ said Chalfont-Price.

  Dave hated to see vehicles destroyed by their own forces. Not just because it was like torching a bank vault full of fifty-pound notes but because destroying your own kit always felt like a small defeat. He hoped that the OC would refuse permission.

  There was a long pause before the answer came.

  ‘No. Don’t deny it. Just stay where you are. When Patrol Minimize is lifted we’ll send you some firepower.’

  ‘Have you any idea how long that will be, sir?’ the young officer persisted. Dave thought he was pushing his luck with the major and, sure enough, the OC snapped back at him.

  ‘I’m not the fucking Met Office, Second Lieutenant. They say the dust storm will only last a few hours but of course no one really knows.’

  ‘Sir,’ Chalfont-Price confirmed stiffly.

  ‘I’ll get you recovery as soon as I can,’ the major told him more amicably. ‘In the meantime, Sergeant Henley must stay alert in PB Red Sox.’

  ‘Yessir,’ said Dave quickly. ‘Of course, we can’t cover the dead zone. But we’re watching the area.’

  ‘The IED was in a dead zone?’ demanded the major. ‘Charlie One Zero, can’t you currently be seen by either PB?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘An insurgent’s paradise. Were you Barmaring when the IED exploded, Second Lieutenant?’

  ‘No, sir. The Americans Barmaed a few hours ago and I understood that they were then watching this area from the air.’

  ‘Who told you that? Because there are no Americans in the air. By now everyone is grounded.’

  ‘At lunch, one of the American officers I ate with said they were watching the track to the PB. I assumed they were using a drone.’

  Dave thought: That fucking steak has a lot to answer for.

  ‘Precisely which officer told you that?’ demanded the OC.

  ‘Er … I didn’t catch his name, sir.’

  There was another ominous pause.

  ‘It is unwise to abandon standard drills on the basis of intelligence which an unnamed US Marine throws around over a rib-eye, Second Lieutenant. However, we’ll discuss this later.’ The major’s tone was even. Too even. It meant that he was furious and trying to keep his anger under strict control, for now anyway. Dave felt his own anger surge. The men’s lives had been risked because their twat of a commander had failed to follow drills. Thank God no one had been badly hurt.

  Jenny remembered the first time she came to Tinnington House, for her interview. How she hadn’t known where to park and had felt small and intimidated by its size. Now she parked at the front of the house next to Eugene’s car and let herself in.

  Eugene heard her and came down the long corridor to greet her.

  ‘I’m wearing jeans because it’s Sunday. I hope that’s all right,’ she said.

  ‘Of course. What have you done to that finger?’

  ‘Peeled it.’

  ‘Ow.’

  ‘I’ll feel it for a few days. But I’ve managed to tie the bandage so it won’t affect my typing.’

  They were walking through the house together now but instead of going to the office, he led her to the dining room. She had never been in here before. There were pictures of people from long ago around the walls. It had high ceilings and arched windows, and an enormous log fire crackled at one end.

  ‘I lit the fire first thing this morning to make sure the room was warm enough to work in. Is it OK?’ he asked.

  She nodded. Across the middle of the room was a huge, polished dining table.

  ‘Look,’ he said.

  The table was groaning, but not with food. With piles of paper.

  Jenny turned to him and grinned. ‘What that table says to me is that we’ll be working all night.’

  ‘Don’t panic. It’s not as bad as it seems. First we have to collate it all. Then we have to type it up with all the comments and changes people have made.’

  ‘Has everyone given them to us?’

  ‘Except Douglas-Coombs. No surprises there.’

  ‘Have you rung him?’

  ‘Yes, he says he’s working on it now and we’ll have it in a few hours.’

  Jenny put down her large leather handbag, the one which contained everything including a small
screwdriver, and began to walk along the table, peering at each pile.

  ‘Shall I make us a coffee?’ asked Eugene.

  ‘I’d love one. And while you’re doing that, I’ll start.’

  She began to leaf through individual piles, nodding occasionally. When she glanced up, she was surprised to see he was still standing in the doorway, watching her. She moved to the next pile and when she looked up a few minutes later he had gone.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  THE WHEEL STATION was blown on the front Mastiff. When the ground around it had been cleared for mines, the driver examined it, shaking his head.

  ‘If we could get the other wagon in front we might just about be able to tow it …’ he said doubtfully. With the one functioning Vallon the men had made a track within the track between the two vehicles. It was marked with blue spray paint. Now the driver joined Sections 2 and 3, who were crouched inside a wobbly blue line around the second Mastiff, having a brew and heating rations.

  ‘I think it would be better to blow the thing up but the major’s not having that,’ said Chalfont-Price gloomily, looking at the other Mastiff. ‘He’s determined to fix us here.’

  Aaron thought that for once the man seemed human. He was sitting with his platoon, his hands clasped around a mug of tea as if it was a cold day in Wiltshire.

  ‘We don’t want to blow it up if we can help it,’ said the driver of the second vehicle.

  The driver of the exploded Mastiff lit a cigarette. He had a bandage tried around his head and there was a small bloodstain soaking through it. ‘Nah. Not unless you want to make me cry,’ he said.

  ‘It’s just fucking typical that the other Vallon kit was damaged in the blast,’ said Chalfont-Price. ‘Right now it’s the bit of kit we need the most.’ His arm was bandaged towards the top and there was an obvious tear in his camouflage. But the graze was slight; Aaron Baker knew that, because he had bandaged the boss himself.

  ‘We could be fixed for a while,’ sighed the second lieutenant. ‘And unfortunately my kit’s right over there.’