by Andy McNab
Campo was mid-story. ‘. . And I’m, like, on station ready for deployment, and she says, “Honey do you have any protection?” so I say, “Baby I left my M16 at home, but if you wanna see it I’ll go get it. .”’
No one responded. They’d all heard it at least twice before.
Montes reverted to his favourite refrain.
‘I mean, who even wants to be here? TV say soldiers want to be here. Where they get that from? Make folks feel better? Maybe if you wanting to get your star, make some rank. All we want is get the fuck outta here, right Black?’
Black shrugged, not because he didn’t have an answer: he just didn’t want to have this conversation right now. He was thinking about the email home he would write tonight. Dear Mom and Dad. Today was 115°F. That’s the hottest we’ve had. He spent another ten minutes trying to come up with the next line. Three positives. That was his rule. His mother could find a silver lining in a tornado. The school they built just by the base has opened. He’d leave out the fact that no kids had turned up, that the deputy head had become the head because the original head had been shot in front of his family. He couldn’t think of two more positives right now. He abandoned that and considered writing to Charlene. Just to let you know I’m still sane. . Perhaps she’d take it the wrong way, think he was in doubt. She’d always known he’d enlist from the get-go, all through Senior High, but when it came to it, she said it had to be her or the army — not both. There wasn’t going to be any waiting for him. You may come back — she’d struggled for a word — different. She thought his father would sway him. She knew what he thought about the whole army thing. She just didn’t get it. But Blackburn still loved her, still hoped she’d come around.
He had been counting the days to September 1st, when they were due to go home, crossing off the days on a grid he had drawn in the back of his log. Since last week he’d stopped. Home didn’t seem to be getting any closer.
Black’s radio squawked: Lieutenant Cole.
‘Misfit 1–3 this is Misfit actual. Listen up. We lost contact with Jackson’s squad in grid eight zero, ten klicks west. You’re the only element I got to send. Last known position Spinza Meat Market. Bad freaking part of town. Go find ’em, got that?’
‘1–3. Copy that.’
Jackson was out of contact. That could only mean something bad.
Black looked at the crew. They’d all heard the order on their headsets. No one spoke for a few seconds, as if they were conserving every last grain of energy.
‘So, anyone else don’t get what we’re doing here?’ Montes was off on his high school debating society riff again. Blackburn wished he would shut up and just do his job. He was tired, and this was making him feel tireder.
‘Quit being a fucking hippie, Montes.’ Chaffin ripped the wrapper off a stick of gum and folded it into his mouth.
Montes loosened his grip on his weapon.
‘All I’m saying is we’re here to keep a lid on things, not start a fucking war with Iran.’
‘The PLR’s not Iran.’
‘Man, we been over this a hunnert times.’
Chaffin put his hands over his face.
Black continued. ‘They’re in Iran though, because that’s where they’re coming from. And Iran is just’ — he cocked his head leftwards — ‘right over there.’
‘You got that now, Montes, you fucking tree hugger? We want your opinion, we’ll give it to you. All right?’
Blackburn hoped this wasn’t going to evolve into something full-blown and personal between Chaffin and Montes. Debating the relative merits of twin cheerleaders or a one-on-one with the new British princess was a pleasantly pointless diversion. Questioning their entire purpose in this hellhole could develop into a discipline problem.
They’d served in the same platoon for eighteen months. They were family. But the terms of engagement had changed. They’d gone in thinking they’d be the last American deployment in the area, and Chaffin wasn’t the only one whose patience was running out. The whole place was sinking back into chaos. Montes was becoming the target for his frustration, and Blackburn didn’t blame him. Privately, he knew Montes had a point. He wondered what a man like him was even doing there, when he should have been handing out flyers about the decline of capitalism on a leafy campus somewhere. But Blackburn didn’t have time to be anyone’s camp counsellor. Jackson’s Stryker had gone silent and they had no choice but to go look for it. It’s what you did. What you didn’t do was sit in a 104°F sardine can discussing it like a bunch of liberals on PBS.
He raised his voice a notch.
‘Look at me. Montes? This is our job.’
‘Yeah, baby, I hear that.’
Black raised a hand.
‘And to finish the job, we gotta deal with the PLR. And to do that, sooner or later we gotta go cross the border.’
Chaffin opened his mouth to speak, but Blackburn silenced him with a look.
They dismounted from the Stryker and fanned out. The Spinza Meat Market was an old cloistered building with a gallery on the upper level. A week ago it had been swarming with activity. Today it was deserted: not a good sign. Campo tapped Blackburn on the shoulder. ‘Check this out.’
A freshly painted mural of Al Bashir, the PLR leader. A good likeness, Blackburn thought: someone had taken their time.
‘They sainting him here. He their man, now.’ Montes was next to them. The artist had given the Iranian former Air Force General a fierce glare of certainty. ‘Dude looks like he means business.’
‘Jerkoff. It’s just a painting. He’s gotta be as old as your granny. They just left out the wheelchair.’
‘Ever ask yourself how this part of the world got so fucked up all the time?’
‘Hey I just work here, Montes. Other people work that shit out.’
Montes persisted. ‘How long before we rolling ourselves into Iran?’
Blackburn waved them forward. ‘That’s way above my pay grade. Let’s go find this patrol.’
The old man was squatting in a doorway. Montes was crouched down, talking, his weapon pushed behind his shoulder, out of the way. He held up ten fingers, made fists, then another ten, and then another ten, then mimed using a machine gun. To give him his due, he was trying to be useful.
‘He’s saying there were thirty, all armed. Came through half an hour ago.’ He turned back to the old man. ‘Thank you, Sir.’
‘Thanks, I’ll take it from here.’
Black leaned down, continued in Arabic.
‘Were they PLR?’
The old man shrugged.
‘Local boys?’
He shook his head, although it could have been more of a tremor, and pointed at the westward gate of the market.
‘Well, let’s go the way the man says.’
The gate led into a narrow street of three-storey buildings. Blackburn heard a couple of shutters close and a baby crying. A Toyota pick-up lay sideways across the street, the front fender torn away as if it had been swiped by a much heavier vehicle and in a hurry.
Black signalled to the others to hug the walls. ‘Big cross street here, exposed.’
They all heard the rumble at the same time. Tracked vehicle. Blackburn flattened himself against the corner wall and peered round. He saw the vehicle nose out of a gateway, a block up the cross street, and turn left, moving away at patrol speed.
Black got on the radio.
‘APC, no markings, headed north, taking its time like it owns the place.’
‘That’s some serious metal.’
‘Flag him down, ask what side he’s on.’
‘Shut up Montes. Take a right up that street, where he just came from.’
They crossed the road in twos.
‘Keep it moving!’
‘So quiet it’s like they got the whole place on lockdown.’
‘Or the Pied Piper’s just been through.’
‘I no like this shit.’
‘Okay, that’s a Combat Indicator. Take it slowly gu
ys.’
The side street the APC came from was narrow, a chasm of tall buildings with overhanging upper storeys, throwing it into dark shadow. At the other end it opened into a small plaza. A group of women were huddled down behind wicker baskets in a deep doorway near the plaza entrance. They were waving them forward, pointing upwards.
‘Okay, let’s not do what the lady says just yet. Get visual on the rooftops.’
They froze, scanning the rooftops and every shuttered window. Blackburn saw the silhouetted figure first, just as the masonry beside him shattered. ‘Sniper! Cover, cover!’
Black wheeled round just in time to see Chaffin’s shoulder explode. ‘Man down. Smoke cover. Now!’
Campo tossed a white phosphorus grenade to block the sniper while Blackburn and Montes grabbed Chaffin and pulled him into a doorway, but he didn’t want to go, wrestling them with his dissipating strength. ‘Get me back up. I can still shoot. Let me at him, the fucker.’
‘Easy soldier.’
Matkovic was screaming down the radio.
‘Fucking smoke. I had visuals on three more!’
The wound was bloody but not deep. Blackburn let Chaffin get to his feet. He swayed, then grinned. ‘I’m fucked up but I’m up. Let me at ’em.’
Through the smoke, ahead, Matkovic loosed off a mag at the rooftop where Chaffin’s sniper had been. Paused, waited.
As the smoke cleared, Blackburn saw the sniper fold up on himself and drop like a bad guy in a Western. The body thumped into the street ten feet from Matkovic, who stood in a doorway. But Matkovic didn’t react. He was static, staring ahead into the plaza. Something about his stance, weapon down, told Blackburn that Matkovic had seen something he was going to have trouble forgetting. Without altering his gaze he beckoned to Black.
‘Think we’ve found what we came for.’
Two dead marines were sprawled at the gates to the plaza. One, helmet gone, face half off, looked like he’d been closest to an RPG. The other, a wide red crater in his chest, had a pensive look in his eyes, which were fixed on the blazing sky. Blackburn leaned down, took the tags off one, then the other, and pushed them into his top pocket. ‘Fuck this day.’
‘Black, look up!’
Matkovic was first into the plaza. Bodies and body parts had been thrown in all directions. The Stryker was on its side, its ramp down and its tyres on fire, with all eight wheels twisted at different angles. Close by was the chassis of what might have been a small truck or bus, the bodywork vaporised by the IED it had been carrying. A low, rhythmic groaning was coming from inside the Stryker.
Matkovic was already on the radio ordering CAS-EVAC, trying to keep his rage under control as the voice on the other end pressed him for more detail, eventually exploding. ‘Just get the fuck here yesterday, okay?’
He turned to Blackburn. ‘Going to check inside the Stryker.’
‘Stop.’ The word was out of his mouth before Blackburn knew why he’d said it. There were several other damaged vehicles in the plaza, two minibuses, glass all gone, peppered with shrapnel dents. Blackburn motioned them back, tracked right until he could see another vehicle, a Nissan pick-up, on the other side of the Stryker. Like the others it was a mess, its windows and lights gone, every panel dented. But something was wrong.
It was the tyres. Still inflated. They should have been shredded. Matkovic looked at Black, then the pick-up. Some civilians were starting to appear at their windows, looking down on the plaza. Matkovic waved his hands in the air like he was doing the breaststroke, screaming in Arabic: ‘Back inside!’
Black tracked further right, scanning what he could of the area round the pick-up, looking for detonator wires. Whoever planted this was waiting until as many US as possible were crowded around the Stryker tending the dying and wounded. A woman, only her large brown eyes visible under a dusty grey burka, was watching him from behind a fruit stand: a young woman — his age, maybe younger. He watched her gaze move slowly, deliberately, away from him and up to a first storey window on the south side of the square, then back down to him again. Then she slipped into the shadow of her doorway and was gone. He scanned the pavement again. It was strewn with bits of brick and metal and flesh. Amongst the mess he saw the wire snaking across to the building that had been pointed out by the woman’s eyes.
All the crew were stopped, waiting. They knew what he was doing. That was the upside of having been together in this shithole for so long — they could practically read each others’ minds. He’d miss that when it was over, when he was home. Where else would he ever have that closeness, that rapport? With a woman maybe? A family? Or would he be too fucked up by then. Maybe he’d become too good at this, and blow his chance of having a life. One thing at a time, he said to himself: focus.
He took his time, backed out of the square, fixing the building in his mind before he checked out an approach to it from its rear. Out of view, he slid swiftly through a passage that would lead to the back of the houses. He had cleared so many properties like these he could guess the layout, even though he had never been in this square before. Side entrances in the alleys were common. The stairs usually went sideways, the first floor front rooms, usually the largest, stretched across the building. There was music coming from this one, from inside the ground floor. He stepped in through a curtained doorway: a kitchen, two clean tea glasses on the draining board and a radio, playing that high pitched music. He reached in and, very slowly, turned up the volume. He thought of taking off his boots, decided against it. There were two bodies on the stairs, a woman and a girl. Both shot through the head, proof he was on the right track. He didn’t pause, but the split second’s vision was still sickening. He tiptoed up the stairs, listening to the blood hammering through his veins, adrenalin blocking every impulse but what he needed to get the job done.
At the top of the stairs he paused, about to step into the room. He saw the car battery, the wires, the jaws of the jump leads, one attached, one waiting. But nothing else. He just had enough time to see that it was empty before a blow to the back of his neck flattened him, his head inches from the battery. On his way down he managed to twist to one side and reach for his KBAR knife, his M4 too unwieldy in the narrow space. The figure was in shadow, a blur of fabric. As it lunged for the battery, Blackburn put the knife deep into a thigh — hitting the femoral artery. The scream was piercingly high. Too high for a man. A boy?
As he struggled to a kneeling position his assailant slammed down on to the floor beside him. Not a man or a boy, but a girl, a lake of blood gushing out from under her shalwar kameez, writhing like a beached marlin, seemingly unaware of the blood draining out of her. In between gasps she let out a torrent of Arabic. Blackburn could only make out scum pig and hell. But the message was clear. She went on struggling, sliding in her own blood. If he was going to save her he had about twenty seconds.
‘Let me help you. Or you will die.’
How many times had he said that, and how many times had his help been rejected? They had come to help. But it didn’t always look that way. As he reached down to her, she lashed out.
‘PLR?’
‘The PLR will destroy you all. You are finished. Finished.’
She tried to repeat the word again but nothing came and Blackburn watched helplesss as the life emptied from her.
4
Moscow
It was after two a.m. when Dima got back to his hotel room. Getting out of the Aquarium had been more difficult than getting in: one tradition that had been kept on. When he left Paliov, he’d found a trio of Internal Affairs heavies in the outer office. Hoping they were merely for decoration he started to move past them, but they blocked his way. He decided to deploy the sweet talk before punching anyone. A bit of foreplay, he thought to himself as he sized up the leader of the three, a face he recognised from way back.
‘And what can I do for you gentlemen?’
Two of them looked out of practice, their muscles gone soft from years of hitting those too weak to fight
back. The one he had to worry about was Fremarov, a Mongolian who had served with him in Afghanistan. The once proud soldier was now in the slow lane, eking out his time up to retirement doing the shit jobs reserved for older operatives who hadn’t been smart enough — or unpleasant enough — to progress up the greasy pole. Just the sight of him made Dima thankful that he’d got out when he had.
‘Fremarov, old friend. How’s life treating you?’
The pair of bookends looked bemused, thrown by this unexpected greeting from someone they’d been sent to detain.
Eventually Fremarov spoke. ‘This is awkward.’
‘What did they tell you? That I’ve broken ranks, failed to follow orders, spun out of control?’
‘Something like that.’
‘A simple misunderstanding: bit of a crossed wire that’s all. Right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. You know what they’re like.’
‘Yeah.’ Despite his instructions, Fremarov gave a shrug. With fifteen years to go till he could collect his pension, why not use up another five minutes? The bookends looked less convinced.
‘Your comrade here is a bloody good bloke,’ said Dima. ‘Saved my life on more than one occasion.’
Fremarov smiled. They both knew it was crap, but it sounded good. ‘It was the other way round, you bastard, as well you know.’
‘Was it? I can never remember. Well, it was a laugh anyhow.’
‘Do you two know each other?’ said Bookend One. Fremarov rolled his eyes.
‘The trouble with our superiors,’ Dima continued, watching Bookend Two and shifting his weight on to his other foot in readiness, ‘is they have such short memories. They forget who’s done them a favour.’
‘True,’ said Fremarov, just as Bookend Two chose that moment to make his move. As he swung a clumsy right at Dima’s jaw, Dima bent and flipped him over his back like a sack of potatoes and shoved him hard against the wall. He collapsed on to the thin carpet, panting. Not wanting to be outdone on the initiative front, Bookend One tried to knock Dima off balance by hooking one foot round his left leg while simultaneously slicing him hard across the solar plexus. Dima swung round to see Fremarov’s huge hand squeezing the man’s neck. He carried on squeezing while Dima stepped neatly out of the way.
