Battle Lines

by Andy McNab

  McKinley. Dave focused on him. Didn’t he have two, or was it three, little kids with reddish hair? Dave had a vague memory of coming home to find the living room full of red-haired people. Rose McKinley and her kids were having tea with Jenny. And he remembered seeing Gerry and Rose on the dance floor at the Dorchester. Rose was the shy, smiling type who didn’t say much if she didn’t know you. Now she had a husband without a leg. And if the Mastiff didn’t get there in time, maybe no husband at all.

  They were heading due west. In a moment, just before it hit the canal, the track would turn ninety degrees and from there it was a straight line south to the relief party and McKinley. Firing was coming from the south-west at the moment. He swung the Heavy Machine Gun around and let it rip in that direction.

  ‘That gave the ragheads something to think about,’ said Finny on PRR into the silence.

  ‘Can you speed up, Lancer Dawson?’ asked Dave. ‘They’re chucking the fuck of a lot at us.’ Had the enemy been silently massing its forces? Or had they been here in such numbers all along? Waiting quietly?

  The driver accelerated. ‘Ever wonder if they listen to our radios? I mean, it’s like they knew we were coming.’

  Firing started again from the enemy. An RPG exploded a hundred metres to the north-west of them.

  Dave did not fire back because both gimpys were suddenly busy from the base.

  ‘We’re covering you,’ came Sol’s voice on PRR. A voice could be heard swearing near him. Dave was not sure who it was but there was certainly some confusion audible in the background before Sol clicked off.

  The enemy was throwing rounds at the Mastiff now, like handfuls of deadly dirt. Dave went back to work on the HMG.

  Then Sol came on again: ‘Problem on the second wagon. Can you hang around a bit?’

  Lancer Dawson heard this and groaned. ‘We’re not hanging around in this, look!’ At the same moment, an RPG crossed their path before exploding in the desert just behind them, throwing up an ugly storm of stones and dust.

  ‘See,’ said Lancer Dawson. ‘If I’d been “hanging around” that would have—’

  ‘The second wagon still isn’t out of the base!’ Dave yelled.

  Sol said over PRR: ‘Mastiff’s stalled.’ Voices, possibly those of Tiny and Lancer Reed, could still be heard shouting in the background.

  ‘Well, restart it!’ ordered Dave.

  ‘Trying. He’s flooded it or something.’

  ‘Won’t restart?’

  PRR in these conditions was so short range that Dave knew they would very soon be losing contact with the base.

  ‘We can’t do this alone,’ he said. ‘If the second vehicle isn’t out of the gate in thirty seconds, we’ll have to turn back.’

  ‘Oh fucking hell,’ said Lancer Dawson. They had nearly reached that point where the track hit the canal and bent round to the south. Dave estimated that the corner was about a quarter of the way to the wrecked vehicle, the casualty and the relief party. A quarter of the way and if they now drove back through their own dust storm they would have covered half the distance and got nowhere. Shit.

  ‘That bend’s the place to turn,’ said Dave. ‘It’s wide enough.’ The bend had been fattened by a succession of vehicles cutting the corner.

  The driver repeated: ‘Fucking hell.’

  Dave demanded: ‘Is the other vehicle moving yet?’

  ‘It’s not starting,’ confirmed Sol. ‘And we’re coming under very heavy fire in here. So are you. We’re still trying to cover you.’

  ‘OK, we’ll abort. Close the gates until we get there,’ Dave told Sol wearily. So that was the end of their mission. And maybe the end of McKinley too. Rose McKinley’s face appeared inside Dave’s head. She looked quiet and sad. Dave silently apologized to her.

  ‘I knew that big lanky kid couldn’t drive a Mastiff,’ said Lancer Dawson. ‘I just fucking knew it.’

  ‘Turn back,’ Dave ordered him firmly. ‘It’s not safe to go on.’

  ‘It’s not safe to go back,’ Dawson muttered as they approached the bend.

  ‘Ready with the gates?’ Dave asked Sol. There was no reply. So they were now outside the range of PRR. No radios and now they couldn’t even talk to base. They were alone in the desert without comms, under fire. He suddenly remembered that night extraction exercise on a cold, snowy Welsh landscape. How the signaller had tried to change radio batteries and found he had damaged the spare when he fell on it. Goater. And he had said: ‘We’d never be out in the middle of nowhere without comms in theatre, Sarge. Not ever.’

  Dave knew the driver could no longer hear him on PRR but he roared down into the Mastiff: ‘Turn here! And don’t go off this track. Doesn’t matter if it’s a ten-point turn!’

  Even if he had heard, Lancer Dawson would not have had time to react or argue. Only Dave was high enough to see the RPG skimming low across the desert towards them and it took him just a split second to know this would be a direct hit.

  He grabbed the handles by the hatch and dropped his body instantly down from the top. His actions were so fast that afterwards he could not remember thinking about it and he had barely a memory of doing it. He swung inside the Mastiff just as the world around them lit up. The huge vehicle seemed weightless for a second, rising up before it was flung, with everyone and everything in it, in a violent circle through the air. Dave felt as though he was flying with suicidal force, his body following somewhere behind him. He was still holding on to the handles as the massive vehicle rolled and twisted, hurtling towards the water of the canal. He saw the splash go up like a flash of light. The water seemed so bright he shut his eyes. The Mastiff squirmed for an instant and then it was still and there was silence.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  ‘HOLY SHIT!’ BREATHED Slindon. He was up on the tower but he was not the only one, or even the first, to see the Mastiff crash. The focus of the battle had moved to the other side of the compound now because everyone else was covering Dave’s Mastiff from the courtyard by the main gates.

  Sol and Mal had been nagging at the enemy with the gimpys as the Mastiff cut across the desert towards the canal at breakneck speed, pursued by enemy fire. When it was clear that the second Mastiff would not move out of the compound and Dave had aborted the mission, Sol watched and waited for Lancer Dawson to slow the first Mastiff and turn it around. But instead it had continued, at speed, towards the canal.

  Tiny Hemmings, Lancer Reed and Binns were still arguing about the stalled Mastiff and hadn’t really got into firing positions. However, Bacon, on top of the useless Mastiff, had been rattling away with the Minimi.

  He saw a bolt of lightning, which must have been an RPG. Then there were sparks flying from somewhere under the vehicle like a welder’s shop. A brief pause for the impact on the wheel to take effect. And finally the incredible sight of five thousand kilos of heavy metal rolling on its side once, twice and into the canal.

  It settled on its left side, rocking slightly. And then it was menacingly still. Even the enemy was astonished into silence. All weapons at the PB stopped firing.

  The men at the base climbed up the Mastiff or gaped through firing holes in the mud walls. They were waiting, waiting, with every corpuscle in their blood vessels, for any sign of life to emerge from the wounded metal monster. But there was none.

  Mal erupted suddenly: ‘We’ve got to get out there to them!’

  ‘We can’t,’ said Sol.

  ‘We’ve fucking got to!’ shouted Streaky.

  Tiny Hemmings, his face distraught, said: ‘The engine’ll start in five minutes. I won’t flood it again. I won’t get it wrong again.’

  Lancer Reed was too shocked to contradict him.

  Sol said quietly: ‘We’re not giving the enemy any more corpses today.’

  Binns had started to shake. ‘They’re not corpses. They’re not dead. Sarge isn’t dead, neither are the others.’

  The men fell silent. Those who were not wearing night-vision goggles yet put them
on. No one said a word as they watched for some sign of life in the Mastiff. But there was none.

  The enemy had opened fire again, gleefully, energetically. In a few minutes they would start moving forward towards the vehicle.

  ‘Get to your firing positions,’ said Sol. ‘And give them all you’ve got.’

  Everything was still inside the Mastiff. Everything was quiet.

  Dave experienced total helplessness. He was in a new world without sound and without movement. The depth of silence was something he had never known before. Was this the quiet of the grave?

  His life spread itself out before him like a tablecloth groaning with good things. Jenny, tall and strong, a small child on one hip, another at her side, smiling at him. There was love in her eyes. Anger and differences were all forgotten now. This was his beautiful Jenny and he loved her and knew that she loved him. But in a short while she would hear the knock at the door and know instinctively what news awaited her. Then, gradually, over many years, she would age. She would be old one day. Jenny would be old without him there to love her and look after her. The girls would be tall and strong and beautiful like their mother and she would have to learn to lean on them for support.

  Here were his mother and stepfather in their allotment, proudly examining some bulging vegetable they had plucked from the neat, fertile rows. His mother’s mobile phone was ringing, the phone call which would bring them the news of his death and shatter their lives. And here was his own father, a sad and hopeless drunk, who had heard the news and was sitting outside a pub, an empty pint in front of him, his head in his hands. They would all be shocked; their lives would break into small pieces. For a while. Then they would regain their strength and start to rebuild. The world would continue in its own way without him.

  Dave felt a sudden, piercing pain inside him. He realized he was grieving for his own lost life. And then he opened his eyes.

  He could see the inside of the Mastiff, but the vehicle was at a strange angle. A corner of the dusty windscreen in the cab at the front was visible, splattered with round bubbles of water as if pairs of glasses had been dropped all over it. But something was hiding most of it.

  He moved a hand. It was trapped underneath him as if it had not kept up with the twists and turns of the vehicle. He disentangled it without difficulty. He waved it in front of his face. It was gloved but it was certainly his hand, and it had life in it.

  He remembered his toes. He moved his head into the strange, horizontal position which enabled him to see his feet. There were his boots with his feet inside them, amazingly still attached to his body.

  So he was alive. He turned his head through a curious arc and realized that the cold feeling along his left arm was water. It was impossible to understand if the Mastiff was upside down or sideways on but beneath him was water and the water was rising.

  ‘Fucking hell!’

  It was the voice of Angus McCall. That’s how Dave knew for sure he was alive.

  ‘Fucking, fucking hell,’ breathed Angry again.

  ‘You all right?’ Dave asked him gruffly over the sound of sudden and renewed firing. It came from the enemy. It came from the base.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Angus.

  ‘IED?’ suggested Doc Holliday. Dave was glad to hear the medic’s low, grating voice.

  ‘No, RPG,’ he said. ‘I saw it.’

  Rounds were bouncing off the Mastiff’s armour. He could hear the rattle of angry answering gimpys from the base.

  ‘The ragheads must think it’s Christmas,’ came the gloomy voice of the medic again.

  So Angus and Doc were talking. Dave felt something like electricity flow through his body and brain when he realized they had heard nothing from Finny and Dawson in the cab. The electricity powered him. He jumped up. How long had he just been lying here feeling the water rise along the left side of his body when he should have been checking on his men and getting them off the besieged vehicle? A minute? Or sixty minutes?

  He was upright now. His right leg hurt but he didn’t care. He was tearing at the big box which blocked Finny and Lancer Dawson into the cab. It contained ammo for the .50 cal and it weighed a tonne and neither his pulling hands nor his shoving shoulder shifted it.

  He peered around it. Dawson was under water. Finny was on top of the driver, his head not quite submerged.

  Yelling their names he continued to tug at the box. It remained firmly wedged, even though Angus had released himself from his harness and had wrapped his fingers around one corner and was tearing at the box with all his strength.

  ‘Pull!’ yelled Dave but even a concerted effort could not move the ammo.

  Angus peered through the crack.

  ‘Finny’s sort of moving,’ he reported. He yelled Finny’s name.

  Dave felt panic and desperation start to pound deep inside him but he did not indulge it.

  ‘Open the back. Angus, lay down fire; Doc, get round the front to Finny and Dawson.’

  But of course Doc had anticipated this. He already had the rifles out and, armed with his, he had succeeded in opening the back door. The enemy had seen him and were firing with renewed zeal. Dave heard the rat-tat-tat of a PK machine gun. It was answered by a GPMG from the base.

  ‘Don’t get out there until Angus can cover you!’ yelled Dave, but he was too late. The door had been opened up in the air and the medic was leaping out. He turned smartly to run around the back of the Mastiff where enemy fire could not reach him. Angry grabbed a rifle and followed, Dave behind him. Dave had no time to look at the PB but it seemed to him that a roar of delight at their emergence had gone up from the boys. Maybe he imagined it. It was hard to hear because the lads were firing energetically back at the enemy.

  The mighty Mastiff lay on its side, half submerged in the canal like a great, fallen beast. The left front wheelbase had been taken out by the RPG: it must have zoomed right under the vehicle.

  Doc had climbed on to the side of the Mastiff and was wrestling to open the door through the vehicle’s armour. Angus, crouching in the dark shadow of the wagon in a pocket between the cab and the back, fired almost continuously.

  Dave vaulted up just as Doc opened the door upwards. By now Finny, inside the cab, had worked out which way was up. He was righting himself, his eyes wide and shocked. Had he released himself from his harness? Or hadn’t he been wearing it?

  Dave slipped into the cab, wedged one foot against the windscreen, and helped him stand. It smelled very wet in here. And Dave had the sudden idea that he could smell death.

  Finny began climbing out, helped by Dave and pulled by the medic.

  ‘Shit, Sarge,’ he said. ‘Shit. I think I hit his head with my helmet when we crashed.’

  ‘All right, Finny, I’m getting him out now,’ said Dave, diving into the murky canal water which half filled the cab. This wasn’t the moment to ask Finny if he had been wearing a harness. If not, it would have been easy for him to plummet into Dawson, knocking him unconscious. An unconscious man could drown in rising water in a few minutes. Doc would have to be a fucking magician to bring a man back from that.

  He reached for Dawson’s chest and pushed the release on his harness. Nothing happened. He banged it again, this time forcefully, but it continued to hold the man fast. He felt for the harness-cutting mechanism. He could not move it. After a moment he ran his finger along the belt of the harness. It remained uncut.

  He would have to cut Dawson out. As he surfaced, he found Dawson’s hand. The second he felt it, he knew the man was not alive. He recognized the strange, rubbery feel of the recently dead. The hand did not resist him and it was not stiff yet, but it was without humanity.

  So he was too late. His own torso, his arms, his legs, his whole body, was suffused with a new weight, as though sadness was a heavy, toxic metal released into his blood stream.

  Doc Holliday hung down inside the cab as Dave grabbed his bayonet to cut Dawson out of his harness. Dave was soaking and not just because he had been im
mersed in water but because he was sweating profusely. He could feel sweat rolling down his cheeks and more sweat streaming down his back in hot rivers.

  He kept sawing at the harness and suddenly it gave way. Lancer Dawson was released into his arms. The body floated up through the water but it retained the shape of a man driving, his arms stretched to a ghost steering wheel.

  ‘He’s dead,’ Dave said.

  ‘Get him out!’ shouted the medic. Without consciously thinking about it, Dave was aware of the rattle of the enemy machine guns getting closer. As he tried to lift the body, Doc’s words echoed in his head: ‘The ragheads must think it’s Christmas.’

  ‘It’s too late.’ Dave heard the lifelessness in his own tone but he continued to heave Dawson towards the pair of hands reaching for him. The body banged against the open hole to the sky and the medic let it sink back down.

  ‘Shit, we’ll have to turn him around. This isn’t good!’

  ‘Can you get down and do your medic stuff in here?’

  The medic paused to consider this.

  ‘Not really. I need a floor not a fucking swimming pool.’

  Dave managed to turn the body through ninety degrees and then lift it again. Lancer Dawson was a big man and now he was a big deadweight. Dave gritted his teeth. His arm muscles strained and bulged the way they did at the gym when he was too ambitious with the free weights. He knew what the pain was saying: this is too much for you to lift. And he knew he had to lift the body anyway. Just in case the medic really could work his magic and bang some life back into Dawson.

  Every muscle in Dave’s body tensed and swelled to bursting point. Just when Dawson was almost out of the Mastiff, the huge machine rocked. At that moment a 7.62 gun round made a distinctive deep plonking noise, hitting the vehicle’s armour right by them. Dave did not know if it was the rocking vehicle or an instinctive attempt to duck that threw the medic off balance.

  ‘Shit!’ Doc roared, breathing out, releasing the body and buckling slowly. ‘Shit, my fucking knee!’