by Andy McNab
Doc Holliday shook his head again.
‘Shoot me, Dave.’
Dave assumed Doc was joking. Finny gave a sad half-grin in the darkness.
‘I’m serious. Because of me you could all be dead meat before morning. So kill me. Throw my body in the canal. No one will know.’
Dave felt a wave of nausea.
‘No fucking way, Doc.’
‘Think about it. You’ve got a choice between four dead men or one dead man. That’s a no-brainer.’
‘I ain’t carried you all this fucking way just to shoot you,’ Angus announced, too loudly. Dave quickly waved his hand in front of Angry’s mouth.
‘Sorry, Sarge,’ murmured Angus meekly.
‘You’re doing all right, Angry,’ Dave told him. ‘You’re doing more than fucking all right.’
Doc Holliday spoke again: ‘I’d kill myself to save you doing it if I could.’
Finny said firmly: ‘You’re talking shit, Doc.’
Angus added: ‘Yeah and I’m hungry, so tell me this, Doc, is it OK if we eat you after we shoot you?’
Dave said: ‘Listen, Doc, you’ve got a twisted knee. Now stop trying to be Captain fucking Oates. Here’s the plan. Remember the ridge running across the river valley and the desert? The track between PB Giants and PB Red Sox curves around it. I reckon it’s just about one and a half kilometres from the relief. That’s where we’re staying tonight. We’re there in fifteen minutes. Can you do fifteen minutes?’
Slowly, sadly, Doc Holliday nodded. ‘I’ll try. But I can’t do it fast.’
Dave hoped he was right that they were so close to the ridge. It was a good hiding place, steep enough so that no one would have bothered to plant a mine there. Above the irrigation so there would be no night sluice workers. And near to their target. All they had to do was get there.
The last leg of their route to the ridge was the longest, slowest journey that Dave could remember. It was less than a kilometre but it felt like thirty. Finn went behind to support Doc and Dave put Angus at the front. This meant Dave had to remain fully alert at every moment. He had trusted Finn’s instinctive awareness of danger but in comparison Angus was a big, blundering noise machine. He tried to tell himself that Angry had been moulded on mean streets which might have helped shape his survival instincts too. And, while Finny had been incapable of setting a really slow pace, Angus knew Doc’s limitations.
What Dave had meant when he said that the ridge was fifteen minutes away was that it would be fifteen minutes if they were all fit. At this speed it would take more like an hour, Doc’s body limp with agony. They continued at a snail’s pace in total silence. Dave knew Angus would be getting frustrated. But when he stopped suddenly and turned towards Dave, it wasn’t to voice objections or let off steam or be very angry. It was because they had almost reached their destination.
The ridge swelled above them. Dave could see it with the night-vision goggles but he wondered how Angus had sensed its presence from the canal in the dark.
Somehow they got the medic out of the water. Dave unfolded a field stretcher. Doc lay down on it gratefully and without arguing. Dave gave the injured man his rifle and day sack and Doc accepted them with fond familiarity, placing them across his body the way, thought Dave, that his elder daughter received her teddy bear at bedtime. Vicky’s small, serious face, framed by wisps of fine blond hair, appeared inside his head. Go away, Vicks. It’s better not to think about you now.
Finny and Dave stood at one end of the stretcher, big Angus at the other. Dave had remembered the ridge as rising gently to a halfway point, where it turned steep and rocky. His plan was to spend the rest of the night hidden by these rocks, before heading down before first light, earlier even than the call to prayer echoing across the valley. If they followed the canal at the extreme edge of the Green Zone, they would quickly reach the relief.
They lifted the stretcher. Holliday was deadweight heavy. Dave felt his arm and back muscles protest. The medic lay watching Dave’s face.
‘Shit,’ he murmured, and closed his eyes.
Dave knew that casualties and fatalities punch at double their weight. He had prepared himself but nothing could prepare you for this. He forced himself to carry the stretcher up the hill, in total silence, teeth gritted, face grimacing, hot sweat running into his cold, wet clothes.
The hill was steeper and longer than he remembered it. The soft soil immediately by the irrigation canal soon gave way to sand, which finally gave way to the crunch underfoot of small rocks and then larger rocks. Finally the big boulders which would shelter them for the night loomed almost directly overhead. At first they seemed not to get any closer. Pain slashed at his muscles like a rip hook. He staggered. Dave was about to tell the others he could not go on without a rest when he realized that they had arrived. They were in the shadow of the boulders and all they had to do now was support the medic as he stood up and heaved himself between the big rocks.
It was difficult to put the stretcher down carefully. Dave just wanted to drop it and rid his muscles of the pain. A few centimetres from the ground the agony got the better of him and the stretcher touched down with a thump. Doc Holliday lay still.
‘Wait, I’ll recce,’ breathed Finn, his slim body slipping between the boulders. Dave wanted to tell Angus to go with him but he was unable to speak. He was fighting the urge to splutter and gasp loudly for breath. He sat down next to the medic and waited.
Finny’s return was announced by a slight rockfall. If anyone else was staying at the boulders tonight, they would certainly know there were some new guests checking in.
‘Cave!’ reported Finn.
They pulled Doc to his feet and he put one arm around Dave’s shoulders and the other around Finny’s and, his head drooping, hopped up the last part of the hill.
The cave had been chewed into the side of the ridge many years ago, perhaps by water when the Helmand River had been younger and more tumultuous. It contrived to see everything without being seen itself. It looked out across the dark valley and tonight there was a panoramic view of the stars.
‘Two minutes to eat and drink,’ Dave instructed the other three. They sat in a row, looking out at the star show, munching in silence, while Dave reviewed the inside of the cave with his night-vision goggles.
It was obviously used by goat-herders because its gritty soil was lined with animal turds. It smelled strongly of goat, too. It went back into the rock about twenty metres but for roughly half of that you could not stand up without bending. The back part of the cave was less than a metre high. To the side, there was a ridge halfway up one of its rock walls. Leaving Doc on stag, Dave took Angus and Finn to help him climb it. They lifted him up and he saw it was not so much a ridge as an outcrop. Behind it a second chamber opened out. You could get right into the second chamber, which was low and smaller than the other.
‘Fantastic. We sleep here on our belt buckles, rifles ready, heads down. One man on stag outside, one man sleeping in that corner there behind those rocks. If anyone comes in he can see without being seen.’
Dave looked at his watch. It was only 2300. Which meant that, incredibly, this was still the same day that they had left Bastion for the FOB. If they moved off tomorrow at 0400 they would get a refreshing five hours of sleep, minus stag duty. Except he knew one thing. He would not sleep.
Doc was still sitting munching and staring at the stars when they went back out for him.
‘Kill me,’ he urged them. ‘I’d have done it while you were in there except the noise from my rifle would have blown your cover.’
‘Shuddup, wanker,’ said Dave affectionately, helping the medic to his feet.
‘I’m serious. My wife’s left me and the kids don’t speak to me and she’s even taken the fucking dog. What have I got to live for?’
Angus carefully placed Doc’s arm around his shoulder to help him in. Dave noticed that Doc could put more weight on the knee now. Resting it must be the answer. In the morning he should
be able to walk the last part of the journey.
‘More wives, more dogs, that’s the answer,’ Dave told him.
‘Not more fucking kids, though.’
‘The kids you’ve already got at the moment will realize what a great bloke you are,’ Dave assured him. ‘Now shuddup. We’ll get you on your ledge and you’ll sleep. Without snoring.’
Finn stayed outside on stag and Angus and Dave managed to lever the medic up on to the ledge. He instantly put his rifle by his side, pushed his pouches around his body, went straight on to his belt buckle and got his head down.
‘I’ll go on stag first,’ said Dave. ‘Get up there, Angry.’
Angus asked to borrow the night-vision goggles before he climbed up behind Doc.
‘Why?’
Angus looked embarrassed: ‘Just so’s I know there’s no bats in here. I hate fucking bats.’
They still spoke in an undertone but no longer on a low, outward breath. It was strange to hear a hint of their own voices again. In fact, there were bats in the cave. Dave had noticed a small colony hanging around in the far corner of the small chamber, God knew why, since everyone knew bats were supposed to hang about in caves in the day and fly out at night. Bats or no bats, Dave would normally have told Angus to man up and lie down. But it was important for Angry to get some sleep.
‘I’ve looked. There’s no fucking bats.’
Angus’s expression said he did not believe this.
‘It’s true,’ Dave assured him sincerely. And it was. There were no fucking bats, only sleeping bats.
That satisfied Angry. Dave helped him climb up alongside Doc.
‘You did well today, Angry. It was pretty tense out there but you saw what we had to do and you did it. That was fucking good.’
‘Thanks, Sarge.’
Dave couldn’t see Angry’s face up on the ledge, but from his voice he guessed he was grinning.
Finny was sitting outside.
‘All quiet?’
‘Yeah. No noise at all, not anywhere.’
‘I’ll stay on stag,’ Dave told him. ‘Go in and get some rest.’
‘Not sure I can sleep, Sarge.’
‘Try.’
‘Sarge … I killed Dawson.’
‘What?’
‘I killed him.’
Dave could see Finn’s face in the dark, lean and worried, his eyes darting.
‘What the fuck are you talking about, Finny?’ he said gruffly. ‘A raghead fired an RPG and hit the wheelbase of the truck causing it to capsize in the canal. Killing Dawson. So a fucking raghead killed Dawson, not you.’
‘Yeah, but if I’d had my safety harness on, I wouldn’t have hit him. See, my head hit his jaw, Sarge. That’s what knocked him out. That’s what happened. He drowned. He drowned because I knocked him out.’
Dave sat and thought for a moment. He looked up and saw the usual incredible blanket of stars, layer after layer, piled up into infinity. Infinity was a difficult idea to grasp, like death.
He said: ‘OK, Finn, why didn’t you have your safety harness on?’
Finn said: ‘You know why, Sarge.’
‘Let’s pretend I don’t know anything. Let’s pretend you’re up on a manslaughter charge for killing Dawson in some civilian court and the lawyer’s asking you questions. So: are you supposed to wear your safety harness, Lance Corporal Finn?’
‘Well, your honour, we’re supposed to. And we always do in the UK. But in theatre they let us decide, see, because sometimes it’s more dangerous to be all strapped up. If you’re under heavy fire. You need to be free.’
‘So you forgot to put on your harness today? Or you didn’t want to?
‘Nah, I decided when we left the base I was better off without it.’
‘For safety reasons?’
‘Well, yeah.’
‘Then your vehicle was blown up by the enemy and Lancer Dawson died?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Then the fucking enemy killed Dawson, not you, because you didn’t just forget to put on your harness, you took a decision based on safety. For Chrissake, stop worrying about what can’t be changed.’
It was easier to give advice than to follow it yourself. Because Dave had been haunted, on and off, by the suspicion that he never should have left the base this evening. Dawson was dead. And, over in the relief party, the man they had set out to save, McKinley, could be dead by now too.
As if he could read Dave’s mind, Finn said: ‘You did the right thing tonight, Sarge, taking Doc to McKinley. You didn’t know it would go so wrong.’
Most people would say that venturing out to a casualty while there was no air support was risky. Some people would say that venturing out without air support or comms was suicidal. Maybe you had to be in the heat of battle to understand the decisions you made there.
‘I hope we’re not too late tomorrow morning to save Gerry,’ said Dave.
‘Will Doc be able to walk in the morning?’
‘I just asked him that. And he told me to kill him.’
There was a pause. ‘Sarge …’
‘What, Finny?’
‘I wanted to kill him tonight.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I thought he was right. It looked like a choice between having four men dead or one dead and three alive.’
‘But that wasn’t the choice, was it, Finny? Because we’re all alive. So far.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And we don’t have far to go in the morning. We’re leaving at 0400, the bloke in the mosque starts singing them out of bed at around 0500, dawn’s around 0615. I reckon we’ll be home and dry by then.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And maybe we can bind up Doc’s knee before we extract.’
‘Yeah, right.’
They were silent. Then Finn said: ‘Sarge, this is serious. Holed up in a fucking cave with the ragheads all over the place down there and a medic who can’t walk and no comms.’
‘It’s serious, yeah. But we didn’t join the army to learn how to make a good brew.’
There was another long pause.
‘And we came through a lot of danger tonight,’ added Dave. Not mentioning that they were one man down.
‘Yeah,’ Finn agreed. ‘Yeah, if we can get through that …’
‘We can get through anything. Now go in there and sleep. You’ve got two hours before you’re on stag.’
But Finny did not move. Dave knew his mind was still whirring. And he knew it because his own was.
‘Sarge, I reckon the hardest bit now is going to be at the end. Because there’s going to be ragheads all around the relief party. They’ve had one blown-up Mastiff, now they’ll be after another.’
Dave did not admit that Finny had voiced his own fear. His mind kept buzzing like a bee around the possibility that the relief party would be under ambush and they would not be able to approach it. Instead he said: ‘Well, most of the night my ears were telling me they were still bombarding the base, not the relief.’
‘I hope Sol and the boys are all right.’
‘The relief lost a Mastiff but they’ve got a lot of men and ammo. Sol’s more vulnerable, and maybe the Taliban know it,’ agreed Dave.
Finny was silent again.
‘Go to sleep,’ Dave ordered him. ‘You did fucking well out there tonight, Finny. I knew I could rely on you.’
Finny stood up at last.
‘Once Angus got himself under control you could rely on him too. He’s a funny one, Sarge.’
He disappeared into the dark mouth of the cave. Dave followed him to help him on to the ledge. Angry muttered something which might have been a greeting when Finn arrived and lay beside him. But Doc said nothing. Dave hoped he was asleep.
When Dave had gone back on stag, Finn whispered: ‘Angry, will you tell me something?’
Angus was grumpy as usual. ‘Fucking what now?’
‘Were you asleep?’
‘Nope. Is that what you wanted to ask me?’
<
br /> ‘Is Doc asleep?’
‘You asleep, Doc?’
There was no reply.
‘Angry, we might get killed,’ said Finn. ‘We might die.’
Angus took a deep breath.
‘Yeah. And?’
‘I want you to tell me something. If we live, I won’t tell anyone, I promise.’
Angus sighed. ‘What do you want to fucking know, Finny?’
‘When we ran out of oil during training? And we couldn’t get to Donnington … remember?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Where were you planning on going that day?’
‘I told you. Got a bird up there.’
Finny shifted his weight so that a sharp rock dug into his flesh instead of his spine. He said: ‘I think you wanted to kill someone.’
There was a long silence.
At last Angus’s whisper cut through the cave’s still air. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘From your face when you got into the Land Rover,’ lied Finny. ‘Like you was on a mission, and it didn’t look like that mission was shagging.’
With barely a pause, Angus said: ‘All right, yeah, I was planning on killing someone.’
‘For fuck’s sake, Angry.’
‘This bastard who deserves it, Finny. This fucking bastard who’s got Mal really upset. Been throwing flames through his mum’s letterbox, really trying to burn the fucking house down. With his mum and dad asleep inside! And it’s the same with his brothers’ taxis …’ Angry’s whisper was threatening to break into a voice.
‘Shhhhh,’ hissed Finny. Doc rearranged his position in his sleep.
‘… and all because Mal’s in the army fighting other Muslims. Mal can’t even go home and see them ’cos it would mean more trouble. So I was going to sort it. That’s all.’
‘Sort it?’
‘Yep. Mal knows the geezer who’s doing it.’
‘So how’re you going to sort him?’
‘I’ll slot him.’
‘Fucking hell, Angry!’
‘Found out where he worked. Went there. Recced. Familiarized myself with the target. Real fucking sniper stuff, mate. Real Special Forces.’
‘Familiarized yourself with the target? You mean you spoke to the bloke you were planning to banjo!’
