by McNab, Andy
‘Too fucking close,’ Dave said.
Before they could run, Angus McCall took aim without hesitation and killed one. Mal took the other. Angus could not resist turning to catch Dave’s eye. Dave nodded at him. Whatever had held Angus back before had evaporated in this fight for his life.
‘We were lucky. They didn’t have many RPGs and they weren’t very handy with them,’ Dave said. ‘If they’d had mortar we wouldn’t have stood a chance.’
‘And if we’d had mortar it would have helped,’ the boss said quietly.
‘An HMG would have been good, too.’ Dave went over to Jamie. ‘I wish you’d sit down, mate.’
‘I’m all right,’ Jamie insisted.
‘You don’t look all right; your face is a weird colour.’
The medic appeared. ‘We’ll have to get you to Bastion. We need to check for internal injuries.’
‘You can forget that,’ Jamie said. ‘No one’s taking me away from my mates for no good reason.’
Sol said: ‘I really don’t want to lose you, but you have to be checked out. You know the score.’
Jamie sighed. ‘Listen,’ he said to the medic. ‘I’m OK. I’ll let you know if I’m not OK.’
The medic shook his head. ‘We’ll have to give you a proper examination back at the FOB, then.’
‘OK,’ said Jamie, ‘but I’m not going anywhere. Unless it’s in a body bag. And someone else can carry the machine gun back on top for me now.’
Angus heard this and picked it up at once.
Before following him on board the Vector, Jamie said: ‘You have to admire the flipflops. They don’t give up, do they? They must have known that air support would come sooner or later and try to finish them off. But they didn’t stop.’
The boss said: ‘They don’t care if they die. That’s the most frightening thing about them.’
Asma nodded. ‘We’ve been fighting for our lives. But they’ve been fighting for Allah.’
‘If you don’t mind me saying so,’ – Finn turned to her with admiration – ‘I never would have expected a lady to get a grip in a fire fight like that.’
Asma raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m no lady,’ she said. ‘I’m from Hackney.’
Finn laughed and held out his hand.
‘That explains everything.’
They were still shaking hands when the boss appeared.
‘Please stay alert, Finn,’ he said briskly. ‘The second AH is arriving shortly and insurgents may flee too close for the Apache to fire at them.’
Dave turned to Asma. ‘Well done. Nice one.’
She looked pleased and glanced at the boss. He turned away.
The second helicopter arrived and they sent up another flare. One Apache put down fire along the treeline. The other flew over the adjacent fields, targeting leakers as they ran away from the scene.
The soldiers watched for any who tried to seek protection from the helicopter by lying close by. It was a relief to be still at last and not to feel hot metal burning their hands. Streaky knew he’d thought of some good lines during the fire fight and was now scribbling furiously, although he’d already forgotten some of them.
Binman, colour returning to his cheeks, crawled from the Vector with the medic to see the Apaches hunt the insurgents from the sky. The boss and Asma stood side by side, watching.
Dave sat down and leaned his back against a wheel of the vehicle and closed his eyes. He drank some water and waited as the Apaches did their work.
About half an hour ago he had reached for some gun oil and found Jenny’s letter in the pouch next to it. He had thought he had left it with the other mail, since bringing anything personal out of the base was strictly forbidden in case of capture. He must have stuffed it in the pouch without thinking. But, now it was here, he wanted to read it.
With his eyes shut, he tried to pretend for a moment that today had just been a training exercise on Salisbury Plain. He tried to imagine that he’d be home this evening to find Vicky in her high chair and Jen manoeuvring her belly around the little kitchen. But the image had the unreality of a dream. For an ugly moment the woman with the belly was a figment of his imagination. She was nothing to do with him. She barely existed.
Alarmed by this, he reached into his pouch for her letter.
Dear Dave,
If my writing looks funny it’s because I have to stretch over the bump to get the pen on the paper because there’s no way the bump will fit under the table any more. This baby’s big but it’s a lot quieter than Vicky was. Sometimes I panic that it’s not kicking. I nearly drove up to the hospital for them to check today, it was so quiet down inside my belly. And just when I was thinking about getting in the car, kick, kick. Hey, Mum, it’s me. So I think this baby’s going to be a laid-back sort of person. I mean, like you, Dave. Not always running around in circles like me.
Dave read the words but they did not penetrate. He knew that this was a letter from his wife, whom he loved, about the baby, whom he also loved although it wasn’t even born yet. But there was a disconnect between this world of bumps and kicking and kitchen tables and this world that was Afghanistan.
Well I’ve been good and I haven’t told anyone about the man who’s hanging around A. That’s not a secret code. I just can’t spell her name. I went round to her house a little while ago because she dropped Luke’s mug in the park. But I didn’t knock because the red Volvo was outside. Then I phoned her later and she said that the repair man had just left. Not sure what he was repairing.
Dave glanced over at Jamie. He was back up on top now with the machine gun, watching the Apache’s high-precision operation intently. His face looked a deathly white and battered and bruised as though the round had bounced off his cheeks. When it seemed that the helicopter had found an insurgent hiding at the edges of the track, Jamie got ready to fire if the man tried to escape by running towards them, but the Apache pilot fired first.
Here was a man, thought Dave, whose heart and soul was concentrated in the work he’d been trained for. He must be in a lot of pain right now but his commitment was undiminished. Agnieszka’s antics with some bloke in Wiltshire could never hurt Jamie the soldier. But she could destroy Jamie the man, who was made of marshmallow.
Dave, I didn’t really want to write about what A’s up to. I wanted to write about us. It’s much easier to write it than to say it.
I can’t go on like this. I’m pregnant and I need you here. I don’t mean I need you to help with things, even though I do. I mean I need you here. And you’re not. And so long as you’re in the army you never will be. I can just about cope with the fact that you won’t be there when the baby’s born. Just about. But it’s knowing you can’t get home if you’re needed, that’s one of the worst things.
Worse even than that is knowing you might never come home. You can’t imagine what it’s like. You don’t know how awful it is to think there’s a possibility this baby will never know its father and Vicky won’t remember you except from pictures. And that’s another thing. I wish I had a really nice recent picture of you instead of wedding pictures and quick snaps. Because that’s what you are for me at the moment, a man in a wedding album and in lots of snaps but not a man who’s here. And I love you and I want you to be here.
So I want you to leave the army, Dave. I want you to really think about what matters in your life and understand what the army is doing to us. Think about what I’ve said, darling, and please would you . . .
Her neat writing continued over the page. Dave closed his eyes. He was in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, and that other world in Wiltshire could not influence events here or influence him. It was something that happened concurrently but separately. The camp there, with its wives and children, was a treacherous sea of emotions waiting to drown him. Here, life was clear and straightforward. You were under fire. Your life was under threat. You fired back.
He stuffed the letter back in his pouch. He hadn’t meant to bring it anyway.
Soon afte
rwards they were cleared to exit the area. Technical officers and support were coming to check for further devices. But 1 Section could go home to Sin City.
Dave sometimes saw the cases of enemy rounds at the base of trees as they rumbled past. Once he saw a sandal. He wondered if its owner was sitting dead in the branches but he couldn’t be bothered to stop the Vector to look.
‘Tell me something,’ the driver said as they bumped back along the track. ‘How the fuck did you know there was an IED there?’
Dave yawned. ‘The interpreter said something about it.’
‘Yeah, but that was after you’d told me to stop. You’d already said there was one ahead. But I couldn’t see the fucker for love nor money.’
‘The surface of the track didn’t look right.’
‘I don’t know how you saw that. I thought you’d gone AWOL for a minute. You were sweating like a pig.’
‘Who isn’t sweating like a pig? But OK, I’ll admit it was a guess. I’d have felt pretty fucking stupid if I’d been wrong.’
‘You weren’t wrong, though. From now on I’m going to make sure I’m always driving you.’
Chapter Twenty-five
1 SECTION HADN’T BEEN ABLE TO SHOWER SINCE RETURNING TO Sin City. There was no water. So they’d kicked off their boots and changed into shorts and flipflops and were lounging on their cots or cleaning their weapons when there was the deafening crash of a mortar.
‘Stand to! Stand to!’
Everyone groaned.
Jamie sat up, shirtless. He’d been showing off his spectacular high-calibre bruise. Binns, who was taking pictures of it from different angles, put down his camera. Finn rolled over. Angus and Mal closed their eyes as if that would make the mortar attack go away. Streaky Bacon looked alarmed and then swigged more water as though someone was going to confiscate it.
‘Come on, lads,’ Sol yelled. ‘Stand to!’
‘Maybe there won’t be any more now . . .’
Mal’s words were drowned by the sound of AK47s.
The men responded like sleepwalkers.
‘Get up, get going, get out there,’ Sol shouted. ‘Helmets! Boots!’
There was another ground-shaking crash and the men accelerated a little. But not much. Angus put his boots on the wrong feet, Binns couldn’t find his helmet. Jamie winced as he pulled on body armour. Streaky, who’d been cleaning his weapon, tried to put it back together again but found nothing would fit.
‘Lucky for us 2 Platoon are on the .50 cals tonight.’ If the heavy machine guns were always sited in the same place, the enemy soon worked out their arcs of fire. So every contact the .50 cals had to be moved.
‘We’ve already spent three hours fighting today,’ Finn grumbled.
‘Three hours?’ Bacon said. ‘Three hours!’
He could remember every moment of today’s battle. He’d remember it for ever. But it seemed to last seconds rather than hours.
‘Oh, right,’ Sol said. ‘I’ll go and explain that to the Taliban and ask if they’ll come back tomorrow, then. Get out there!’
The men ran to their firing positions at a loping pace and returned fire half-heartedly. Dave watched Binns. He was trying hard; he knew he had a lot to make up for. The others had teased him and Sol had talked to him but Dave knew he would have to grip the lad. Binns obviously knew that too; he’d been avoiding him.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Dave said to Jamie. ‘You should be lying down. You heard what the medic said.’
He’d advised him again to go to Bastion for a proper check-up, but without success.
‘I’m fine,’ Jamie insisted.
The one man who remained focused and kept firing was Angus. Straight after today’s ambush, Dave had noticed the subtle changes in the lad’s demeanour. Angus held himself differently. His face was sharper and he moved with a new confidence. Dave recognized this sudden maturity. Kill a man and age a year, he thought to himself.
The fighting stopped as suddenly as it had started. Everyone waited for a renewed attack. Men stayed in position but they relaxed. Angus got down into some cover and lit a cigarette.
‘You were good today, McCall,’ Dave said. He knew Angus would understand his previous failures had been forgiven. Even though it was dark, he could see the big lad blush in response. He thought he saw Angus’s tattoos blush as well. To his relief, Angry did not use the occasion to mention his father.
No one trusted the silence but when it continued the men gradually stood down.
Thirty minutes later, in 1 Section’s tent, Dave found Jamie fast asleep. ‘Thank God for that.’
Binns and Bacon were sitting on their cots with their boots on.
‘The medic gave him a mountain of pain relief and he was out like a light,’ Binns said.
‘Good,’ Dave said. ‘Now boots off, you two, if you’re getting your heads down.’
The two lads immediately sat bolt upright.
‘Or if you’re not getting your heads down you should get over to the cookhouse with the others.’
‘Not hungry,’ Bacon said.
Binns could not meet Dave’s eye.
‘Eat anyway. And drink. I’ve got a lot to say to you about your performance today during the ambush, Bacon, and the first thing is that you didn’t drink enough.’
‘I know.’ Streaky nodded. ‘I just didn’t think of it.’
‘It’s easy to forget, especially when you’re fighting. But in those temperatures, by the time you realize, it’s often too late.’
He turned to Binns.
‘What have you got to say for yourself, lad?’
Binns looked wretched. He stared at the ground and fiddled with a corner of his sleeping bag liner. Dave noticed a framed picture which Binns had evidently been looking at and shoved beneath the cot at his arrival. A pretty girl smiled out from it. She was sensibly dressed and her hair was neatly brushed. A girl-next-door type, the sort who worked in a building society.
‘Sorry, Sarge,’ he muttered.
‘Listen, Binns, I blame myself for not gripping you earlier. It was one hell of an ambush and I was so fucking busy I couldn’t get on top of you and neither could Sol. Normally I would have noticed earlier and I would have made you pull yourself together.’
‘I couldn’t help it, Sarge.’
‘You could. It didn’t happen during the mortar attack this evening, did it?’
‘No. I felt a bit safer here at the base with three platoons firing back.’
‘An ambush is a tough call for your first fire fight but I don’t want any excuses. You fucked up badly today and you’ve got a lot of ground to make up now.’
Binns looked as though he was going to cry. But Dave knew he had to be merciless, for Binns’s sake and everyone else’s. He was glad the boy’s mother, or the sweet-faced girlfriend, couldn’t see him.
‘We were in the shit today. We weren’t just fighting for ourselves but each other, and we were fighting hard. No one could stand over you, our hands were full. And you were a dead weight. You were sitting in the Vector or puking at the back and relying on us to take care of you. That’s not team playing, is it?’
‘No, Sarge.’
‘You’ve had the training, Binns. Now put it into practice. We’re not going to carry you, so pull your weight or get out of this platoon.’
Binns nodded. He still could not look Dave in the eye.
‘OK, Binns, go eat. And don’t be surprised if all the lads tear you apart for what happened today. You’ll have to work hard to make them forget it.’
Jack Binns sloped off, head hanging.
‘By the way,’ Dave called after him. The lad paused and turned. ‘You’re on shit duty for a week.’
‘Yes, Sarge,’ Binman said.
Dave watched him go. Over in his cot, Jamie turned over, snored for a moment and then fell silent. Dave sat down on Binns’s cot and turned to Streaky Bacon. ‘And how do you think you did today?’
‘Did some good rap,’ Bacon grinned.
‘You did what?’
Streaky’s smile wavered.
‘Got some good flow. Good rhymes and raps in my head while I was fighting,’ he said. ‘I’m a rapper, see.’
Dave, who ten minutes ago had felt tired and in need of food, felt the sudden rush of energy that anger brings.
‘A rapper!’ he said, jumping to his feet. ‘Did you say you’re a rapper?’
