Battle Lines

by Andy McNab

  ‘No.’

  He twisted her wrist easily. It required little effort on the part of this big man to cause her pain. The phone fell from her hand and bounced on the floor. At that moment the landline started to ring.

  ‘Leave it. I’m talking to you.’

  ‘It might be Dave,’ she repeated lamely, knowing that both calls must have been Eugene, anxious because she had not rung him as promised. What would he do now he had received no reply? He cared about her. Did he care enough about her to come looking for her on a wet, windy night? Please come looking for me, Eugene. Please.

  ‘That’s not Dave. He’s fast asleep in some FOB. Wishing he hadn’t married a slag like you.’

  ‘Fuck off, Steve.’

  ‘Don’t flash those eyes at me. It might turn your fuck buddy on, but it just makes me want to hit you. I expect that was General Coward on the phone. He’ll think you’ve fallen asleep already because you’re exhausted. I saw what time you left the camp, slag, and I know what you’ve been doing since then.’

  She kept her voice strong and firm. Although it wanted to waver. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘I’m here on behalf of my mate, Sergeant Dave Henley. And I’m here in memory of another mate, Rifleman Jamie Dermott, 1 Section, 1 Platoon. See, Jamie was married to a slag of a wife who was with her fuck buddy while he lay dying. He knew what was going on and he suffered a lot and Dave knows all about what you’re up to. He’s hurting. He’s hurting a lot. And I’m asking myself, Jenny Henley, who the fuck you think you are, going around causing a fighting soldier so much pain? He’s away on the front line, he’s fighting for you and for his country, and all you can do is get your knickers off with some old geezer who should know better.’

  ‘Get out.’

  ‘No. Don’t expect you want to hear the truth. Don’t expect you like it, do you?’

  ‘Get out. You don’t know what the truth is. You just like the sound of your own voice in my kitchen in the middle of the night. Where does Leanne think you are now? What will she say when she finds out you’ve been here after midnight?’

  Steve hesitated and Jenny knew she had scored a direct hit.

  ‘Leave my wife out of it.’

  ‘Why should I? You think you can tell me how to behave? Look at your own behaviour. Ask yourself whether you make Leanne happy with all your anger and shouting.’

  She didn’t see his fist, only heard the crack of it against her jaw and then felt pain snapping through her face like a series of metal poles thrust through her cheeks.

  Dave and Angus leaned down to pull Finny up to the ledge. He was swift and quiet.

  ‘Give me the NVGs,’ whispered Dave.

  ‘Is Doc OK?’ asked Finny.

  ‘Fucking fantastic,’ a gloomy voice whispered back. Dave felt a mad urge to laugh.

  The men lay motionless on the cave’s rocky ledge, straining to hear in the extreme darkness. Dave wasn’t sure if that deafening thud was his own heart or the combined hearts of all four of them, thumping in unison against the rock.

  Sure enough, there were voices. At first it sounded like just a couple of men. Good. With the element of surprise on their side they could deal with a couple. But then more voices joined the others, calling from outside. They were climbing the steep ridge, silenced by the gradient until they reached the cave.

  Then he heard a dog bark. Shit! Another dog snapped back at it and the barking that followed reassured him that these animals were not following a scent. They were arguing over essentials like food and resting places. Dave felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up when he realized that the men were coming to the cave to stay here. For the rest of the night, perhaps. Maybe for longer.

  His heart ached. They had come so far. In their lives. And on their journey tonight. Was this as far as they were destined to travel? For a few moments he allowed himself to give in to despair. It was as black and cold and rocky as the cave itself, only despair had a much smaller exit.

  Finny was lying against him and now he felt a strong pressure from that side. What was Finny trying to tell him?

  He heard a sound that was half a breath. ‘NVG …’

  Shit! The glow from the goggles! He scrambled to take them off before the voices got any closer. Their faint green glow would certainly be visible in this intense darkness.

  A few moments later, voices entered the cave. He did not hear anyone strike a match but a hand held up a tiny flame. By its light Dave saw dark faces, moistened with sweat, eyes bright. He could not count how many. The hand holding the match stretched out so that the light flickered around the cave walls. Dave did not breathe. He shut his eyes as the light neared his face. The other lads all had their heads down and were pretty well undetectable unless someone happened to climb up here. In which case, they were dead. Because he had time to see an AK47 thrown carelessly across a shoulder before the light blinked out.

  So these men were not wandering camel-keepers or local goat-herders who had scrambled up here for the night to rest. They were Taliban. The men perceived no danger. They made no attempt to drop their voices. They called to each other and one man shouted at the dogs to get outside. They were without fear. Dave thought the whole cave must stink of terror, the terror of four silent, trapped British soldiers. But the insurgents chatted amiably among themselves, oblivious to their presence. And it seemed they preferred to keep their dogs outside. Thank you, Allah, for that.

  What were they doing in the pitch black? Could they see in the dark? They were dragging things around and calling to each other. Were they building a PB here? Dave knew what Doc Holliday would say about that. Fucking fantastic. He wanted to corpse at the thought of Doc’s sardonic voice. He might as well. Because all four of them would soon be corpses anyway.

  He felt the return of the strange, sudden piercing sense of grief he had experienced hours earlier when the Mastiff overturned. Once again Jenny appeared inside his head with the girls. This time there was an expression of immense sadness on her face. She had received the knock at the door, the news. She reached out for him. Jaime was on her hip, looking at her mother, but Vicky, tear-stained, clinging to Jenny, was reaching out towards him too. There were his mother and stepfather again, staring at him as if he was a ghost, his mother crying. As for his drunken dad, the old man still sat outside some pub with his glass empty before him and his head in his hands. Dave loved these people, even his dad. If he died he would lose them all. He felt his guts twist painfully with grief, as if he was a silent mourner at his own funeral.

  He continued to stare down into the well of darkness, where Taliban fighters not two metres away were busy dragging something around the cave floor. Then suddenly, surprisingly, he was looking into Jamie Dermott’s face. Not the Jamie whom he had last seen dying, a man in agony, his body sliced by an RPG. Here was the real Jamie, tall, whole, the good soldier. Jamie Dermott in desert camouflage with helmet, webbing and rifle. Solid, always in the right place at the right time, always ready, always alert.

  Jamie looked right back at him and said: ‘It’s not over till it’s over, Sarge.’

  Dave wanted to reach out and grab the man but he could not move. Helpless, he had to watch as Jamie gave him one of those strange, wistful smiles of his, and faded before his eyes. He wanted to shout to him but he could not speak.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  JENNY WAS TRYING to get up when something hit her sharply in the chest and took her breath away. She tried to pull in another breath, like a smoker desperate for one last drag, but if there was air available she could not reach it. She fought for breath and lost, sinking back down on the kitchen floor, helpless and gasping.

  Why try to fight? Stand up? Breathe? Why? Steve was big and he was strong and she was powerless.

  She lay on the floor in a crumpled heap. She closed her eyes. She felt herself switch into a strange new state, floating high above the ceiling, the roof, even above the rainclouds. Far below her she could see her own kitchen. On it, her body
lay curved on the floor, Steve standing over her, his back against the door. Even from up here you could feel his huge, dark, angry presence.

  She saw with a detached interest that he was kicking her. He was kicking the side of her body and she was not even trying to stop him, just curling up against the force of his prosthetic foot, the foot on the end of the metal jumble which was his leg. He swung it back as far as the kitchen door would allow him and then he swung it forward again in a smooth arc which terminated in her stomach.

  She listened. The kitchen was silent except for Steve’s swearing, a sound as inevitable and uninteresting as wallpaper or the background music in a shop. The woman on the floor was not crying out or begging him to stop or swearing back at him. She was lying in silence while his huge foot kicked her over and over and over again.

  Then the woman on the floor pulled herself up on to her hands very suddenly and pivoted sideways in a neat, circular movement and it was too late for Steve to stop the trajectory of his swinging leg and so this time he missed her. He lost his balance for a moment and in that moment the woman should have pushed him, pushed him with all her strength, and he would have toppled or fallen. But she did not. Instead she watched as he regained his balance, staring at her, breathing hard.

  Clear of his leg now, sitting up on the floor, one knee under her and holding her throbbing side, she said: ‘Stop, Steve. Just stop and think what you’re doing.’

  And Steve said: ‘You fucking slag, you never thought what you were doing with your fuck buddy, did you? You never thought about Dave!’

  ‘I think about Dave all the time! He’s my husband!’

  ‘Yeah, slag, and you forget that when it suits you.’

  ‘I never do, Steve.’

  ‘“I never do, Steve,”’ he echoed, turning her voice into a caricature of itself, into a small, whining, little-girl voice.

  He diminished her. She felt angry and this anger returned her, with a rush, to her own body. She looked up at him, his big face swollen, his eyes dark, his face shadowed. Steve, but not the Steve she used to know, a different, insane Steve. She scrambled to her feet. Pain threatened to take over her right cheek, her jaw, her temple. The pain almost blinded her and she felt sickness turn inside her stomach. She was going to throw up. She fought the urge to vomit, fought the pain, and found her voice.

  ‘That’s enough. Stop now, Steve, before you do something you really regret.’ Speaking hurt. It sent lines of agony across her face.

  ‘I won’t fucking regret it, slag. I might pay for it, but I won’t regret it.’

  ‘I’m phoning Leanne. I’m going to—’

  She didn’t see the truck which drove into her face. She felt its weight and heard its sickening crack. Tendrils of lightning flashed around her nose and eyes, into her hairline, blue streaks reverberated inside her head, and afterwards there was a series of explosions, each with a payload of pain. She did not know where on her face he had hit her. As the lightning subsided she could feel pain everywhere, on both cheeks, across her skull, stretching down her back to join up with the dull, throbbing pain where he had kicked her side. It was all connected. He had turned her body into an electrical circuit which conducted pain.

  She had fallen backwards across the kitchen worktop, head lolling. Now she managed to twist so that she could fold herself across the counter for support. She tried to hold her head in her hands, but this hurt so much that she just placed her forehead directly on the cool surface.

  Steve was shouting: ‘Don’t you bring Leanne into this. She’s a fat cow but she never looks at any other man. She wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t run around some bloke who’s got no balls just because he’s rich and he’s a general. She doesn’t fancy herself like you do.’

  Then his hands closed roughly on her head and he lifted it only to bang it down hard on the work surface. He dragged her head up again by her hair and pulled it back, back, until the skin along the front of her neck stretched like a drum’s surface. Then, when it would go no further, he pushed her head forward as suddenly as a fairground ride and there was a dull thud as her face smashed into the counter and the fairground lights, powered by pain, flashed on all over her head.

  ‘Bitch, slag, cunt, you’ve got everything you fucking want, you’ve got a man with two legs because I got blown out of the wagon instead of him, you’ve got another man with no balls but a big house, you’ve got money, you’ve got a baby, you’ve got people looking at you in your fucking dress, you’ve got it all and you still can’t stop yourself being a slag—’

  The skin on her neck threatened to rip again as he dragged her head back by her hair. All the small tubes which stretched down inside her throat reached breaking point. He was peeling the hair off her scalp. Then everything snapped forward and she heard the sound of her head crashing against the worktop again moments before she felt the pain.

  Nothing would stop him now. Steve was on his own, private journey to hell and he would take her with him. All the way.

  With immense sadness, a pain inside her which was deeper, heavier, more penetrating than any injury inflicted by Steve, Jenny sent Dave her love. As Steve smeared her face in her own blood she wished her husband farewell, and she told her daughters that she loved them and she would never stop loving them, even from beyond the grave. She saw Dave, standing in some over-bright FOB in that faraway desert, receiving the news from an embarrassed, unhappy officer. Dave’s shock. Dave flying home to pick up the girls from a silent, bleak-faced Adi. Dave bringing them back to the empty house, a house with no heart, a house with silence at its centre because she would not be there.

  For a moment she gazed on Dave. He was lying in a small, dark space. He was not moving but he was not dead. He was very scared. He was scared to move. Her heart beat harder for him.

  I love you, Dave, she thought. Together, you and me and the girls, together we are a home. When one of us is missing, there is no home. I’m sorry that the person missing is going to be me. I’m sorry. Love the girls enough for both of us. Please.

  Jamie Dermott, as usual, was right, Dave decided. It wasn’t over till it was over. The Taliban might just be here to bury something or dig something up and if the soldiers could stay motionless and silent for long enough … At that moment, the lights went on.

  So that’s what the ragheads had been doing. Building a fire. It sprang into flame as though lit by spontaneous combustion and the men made approving noises and then settled themselves around it. Some produced flatbreads from their pockets and began to eat them. A few held the breads up to the fire and the sweet smell of warm, simple food wafted around the cave. The insurgents relaxed, passing bread to each other, although Dave noticed they were warriors enough to keep their weapons to hand. A few continued to wear them.

  Dave tried to count how many were here but didn’t want to move his head. And he knew there were more outside with the dogs. Attracted by the smell of the food, two big, thin, ugly mutts tried to enter the cave and voices outside yelled at them. The dogs backed off. Say, two outside. And maybe ten in here. Twelve men with eyes and ears and senses that could detect four men hiding in their midst. He had been cold a few minutes ago. Now he was sweating and he was sure the others were too. They would die if there was just one insurgent with a keen enough sense of smell to detect their sweat, or another with ears sharp enough to catch the thud of their hearts, or another with eyes quick enough to glimpse Dave’s eyeballs moving.

  Scarcely daring to breathe, he watched them by the light of the fire.

  They’re just like us, he thought. He recognized fellow soldiers, sharp-faced and battle-hardened. They’ve having a brew and some rations and maybe they’ll get their heads down.

  From time to time different men looked for signals on their mobile phones, failed to find one inside the cave, and then went outside for a few minutes. They could be heard barking or crooning into them.

  Inside the men talked and laughed. Dave couldn’t speak Pashto but he didn’t need to bec
ause soldiers were the same everywhere. They were ribbing one of the younger blokes about something. He’d been firing and lost his footing and toppled over still firing. Dave knew that because a couple of his mates got up to imitate him. First one – everyone laughed and the lad they were teasing reddened – and then another, in much more comic and exaggerated a style, and everyone cackled into their beards even more. Dave almost caught himself joining in. Ha ha. A Taliban fighter fell over while aiming at a British soldier and almost killed his mate. Well, that was fucking hilarious.

  The talk went on. It grew serious. One man was insisting on something and the others were disagreeing with him. There was a lot of gesticulating. It was turning into a stand-off, when a third man intervened. Ah, the peacemaker. Or was he just of higher rank? He said a few surly words to the quarrelling men and they lowered their heads. One looked embarrassed. The other looked sulky. Dave concluded that the third man was the Taliban equivalent of himself, a platoon sergeant telling Finny and Angry to wind their necks in.

  Dave examined their faces. The man they had been laughing at was the youngest here. He was the Slindon of the platoon. After that, ages varied much more than in the British Army. One man was old, his hair white, his arms skeletal. He squatted closer than anyone to the fire. But one look at his face told you that here was a survivor of many skirmishes. He was scarred. He was hard. Once he laughed and Dave saw that he was toothless. Most of the others were Dave’s age or younger. They were thin and tired and they wore sandals on bare feet but they were fighters, every one of them. He had never been sure that was true of the ANA men they worked with. Maybe the Taliban creamed off the best.

  Despite the fact that every muscle in his body was as tightly strung as a violin, Dave found his mind wandering back to PB Red Sox. Had the lads watched while insurgents swarmed all over the vehicle, over Dawson? Tiny would be furious with himself for not getting the second Mastiff out of the base. When the platoon all finally met up again and Mal heard what had happened to them this night, he would be jealous because, if there was any danger out there, Mal wanted some of it. Maybe there had been enough danger at Red Sox to keep him satisfied.