War Torn

by McNab, Andy

  The lads watched.

  ‘That webbing wouldn’t even go around Angry’s arm,’ Finn said.

  ‘Wouldn’t even go around my dick,’ Angus said.

  ‘Dream on,’ Jamie said.

  ‘Take no notice of them and try this,’ Sol told Binman. When Binns nodded, Sol passed him his pouches to hang on it, working his way carefully from the back round to his hips.

  Mal appeared holding a meal pack.

  ‘Pepper risotto with cheese. The colour said he’s got an impressive array of vegetarian dishes produced to the highest standard and he looks forward to sharing them with you and hearing your comments.’

  ‘The colour boy said that?’ asked Sol, astonished.

  ‘Nope,’ said Mal, flopping down on the ground with the others. ‘He said: look through this box, find one of your gay meals and then fuck off, nancy boy.’

  ‘Ah, that sounds more like him.’

  Angus was shuffling about, smoking impatiently. ‘If an entire platoon of men and support and a fucking convoy of vehicles can be ready to go at 0700 hours, why can’t Martyn Robertson get himself out of his isobox on time?’

  ‘I could have stayed in my cot a bit longer,’ said Mal, who was always last to get up.

  ‘Which wagon are the contractors in?’ asked Jamie.

  ‘See that one up there with the cushions, the air-conditioning, the reclining seats, the bar and the satellite TV?’ said Finn.

  At that moment the civilians appeared. Martyn was surrounded by a cluster of young engineers, but marching determinedly ahead of the group, handbag over her shoulder and a bulging shopping bag in each arm, was Emily.

  ‘Oh no!’ said Sol, who had heard all about Emily’s last outing.

  ‘That’s why they’re late, they’re bringing a woman,’ said the lads, pulling each other up. ‘Because ol’ Emily’s been getting sexed up in front of her mirror.’

  The vehicles started and men began jumping aboard. The boss greeted them and gallantly helped Emily into the civilians’ wagon before jumping into the front himself.

  CSM Kila, throwing Dave a crafty look, opened the door at the front of the second Vector, where Jean was seated.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’

  She gave him a faint grin and he leaped aboard as the convoy moved off.

  ‘Funny the way the civilians hardly ever get attacked,’ he remarked, settling himself next to her.

  ‘Because the Afghans want this oil and gas project to go ahead.’

  ‘But what do a bunch of flipflops know about oil and gas?’

  Jean pursed her lips. ‘At the shura the town headman was friendly and showed a real interest in the exploration.’

  Kila thought for a moment.

  ‘Listen, diplomacy isn’t my strong point. I’m a soldier and I just say what I think.’

  ‘And you think . . .?’

  ‘Well . . .’ He looked at her. ‘I think that you are very beautiful.’

  Jean began to colour. He watched as a pink glow, turning to red, rose from her neck up to her cheeks. She glanced involuntarily at the driver, hoping he hadn’t overheard.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ said Kila hastily. Although he didn’t look sorry. ‘Got distracted for a moment there. What I meant to say is that I think the town headman may not be so friendly.’

  ‘You weren’t even at the shura.’ Her voice was cool.

  ‘If he can call off the Taliban because he likes the oil exploration project then he’s got to be Taliban himself. At a high level. Otherwise they’d just tell him to fuck off. Oh!’ He looked shocked at himself. ‘Excuse my language!’

  Jean reddened but said nothing. Instead she pursed her lips again and indicated that she had picked up something on the radio which required her intense concentration. Kila smiled.

  Their destination was a parched place at the foot of hills which were themselves at the foot of mountains so that layer upon layer of rock towered above them on one side. On the other the desert was so hot and flat that when the men dismounted it was like stepping into a giant frying pan. Heat radiated up as if it came from the centre of the earth.

  The contractors debussed.

  ‘You want to watch this little lot,’ said Kila to Dave. ‘When you’ve got your engineering degree you might be back here doing a bit of oil exploration yourself.’

  ‘As a civvie?’ said Dave. ‘Guarded by 1 Platoon? No way, you can kiss my swingers.’

  Kila lit a cigarette, waved the match out and threw it away. It bounced a few times on the thin, hard desert floor.

  ‘Jean reckons the Taliban aren’t targeting the civvies because they’re keen on some oil revenue.’

  ‘How are you getting on with the monkey, then?’ asked Dave. ‘I’ve seen you with her in the cookhouse.’

  Kila looked sly and drew on his cigarette. ‘I’m finessing her.’

  They heard the sound of raised voices: Martyn’s deep and slow, Emily’s fast and high-pitched. They were taking it in turns to grab a site map and jab their fingers at it. The boss was attempting to broker peace.

  ‘He should just bang their fucking heads together,’ said Iain Kila.

  Dave smiled. ‘Finessing is definitely your strong point, Iain.’

  The work started. The young engineers carried a black box where they were instructed, mostly by Emily, and everyone was ordered to switch off machines and engines and be silent whenever it was in place and the engineers were taking readings.

  Angus started a dirtiest joke competition and soon everyone was joining in. Raucous laughter swept across the desert. Men in 2 Section not on look-out or covering the contractors challenged 3 Section to a poker game, which also became noisy. The sun moved slowly in the sky. People munched their way through their ration packs.

  Mal, Angry and Streaky had a meal but Binns, pale and puffy-faced, did not open his bag.

  ‘What’s up, buddy?’ asked Martyn as he passed.

  ‘He’s right off his rations,’ said Angus.

  ‘I’m not surprised, they look like crap and they smell like crap,’ said Martyn. Binman looked grateful.

  ‘He’s going to puke,’ Streaky said knowledgeably. ‘His face always goes puffy first.’

  Martyn said: ‘Wait here.’

  He came back with a bag of sandwiches.

  ‘We get ours made for us by the chef and they’re good. Go on, try one.’

  ‘What’s in them?’ asked Binns miserably.

  ‘Egg and mayonnaise, stuff like that.’

  Binman, with great reluctance, bit the corner of one sandwich. His face brightened and he ate some more. Martyn’s face broke into a smile as Binns began to tear pieces off the sandwich hungrily.

  Angry watched with disgust. ‘You’ve spoilt him now. He’ll never eat his ration pack.’

  Martyn turned to glare at Angus.

  ‘This kid just needs to eat, it doesn’t matter what. He looks half starved.’

  ‘That’s because Angry always eats his rations,’ said Mal.

  ‘Makes sense. I’m hungry, he’s not.’

  Martyn glared at Angus, shaking his head.

  ‘Just clean up your act, son. He’s your buddy, you should take better care of him.’

  Angus’s large, round face turned bright red. He looked as though he wanted to reply but he said nothing.

  Martyn turned back to Binns. ‘Finish it up, I don’t want it. I have to get back to Enemy now or she’ll make my life hell.’

  He strode off across the sand.

  ‘Fucking nosy American know-all,’ said Angus McCall, as soon as he was out of earshot.

  ‘Oh, come on, he’s a nice old guy,’ said Mal.

  Binns nodded, his mouth full.

  ‘He’s an American shitbag,’ said Angry. ‘They all think they know everything. Binman has to eat rations like the rest of us.’

  But the sandwich had fortified Binns and now he was opening his risotto. After the first slow taste he began to spoon it into his mouth enthusiastically. Sol, on
stag, swung around in time to see this and gave him a thumbs-up.

  Jamie was watching the contractors.

  ‘What the hell are they doing?’ he asked Dave. They had built a wooden pier and were now bending over this and its accompanying paraphernalia.

  ‘Could be preliminary passive seismic measurements,’ said Dave knowledgeably.

  ‘So they’re measuring earthquakes?’

  ‘If it’s a seismometer they’re supposed to make some sort of noise, like an explosion, so they can measure the sound that comes back. Maybe it’s a gravimeter . . . I dunno, Jamie.’

  Watched over by machine guns and surrounded by WMIKs, Vectors, soldiers, poker and dirty jokes, it soon became clear that Emily was agitated. She and Martyn frequently raised their voices. On one occasion she marched up to Weeks.

  ‘Mr Weeks,’ she said angrily. ‘Would you please ask your men to be quiet!’

  The boss passed on the instruction, along with a warning about the nature of the jokes. There was silence for a while. Then the talk and laughter started again.

  Emily, her large face red with the exertion of working in the sun, confronted Weeks again.

  ‘Mr Weeks!’ she said. ‘Not only are your men creating unnecessary noise but so are your machines.’

  ‘What machines, Professor?’ asked the boss. ‘You told us to switch everything off and we did.’

  Martyn appeared at Emily’s side.

  ‘They say their machines aren’t on!’ Emily told him.

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Emily means your radios.’

  ‘You want us to switch off our radios?’ said Boss Weeks. ‘We can’t possibly do that.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Emily said irritably. ‘No wonder our equipment isn’t performing! It’s picking up your frequencies.’

  ‘But in the, er, er, event of a-a-a-attack we’d be powerless to communicate!’

  ‘In the event of attack there would be far too much noise for us to continue working anyway!’ Emily evidently regarded enemy attacks as nothing more than an inconvenience. ‘So you would be welcome to turn the radios back on.’

  ‘I’m s-sorry, but no,’ said the boss.

  ‘But if you keep your radios on then you will invalidate all of our work!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mr Weeks, I insist.’

  ‘It’s Second Lieutenant Weeks, actually,’ he told her.

  ‘I have little respect for military rankings or protocol,’ she said. ‘And I realize that every time you come out with us you are hoping to fire your guns and shower any passing Afghan with bullets but I have no interest in your war games and I must ask you to cooperate.’

  ‘I can’t switch off the radios,’ said Weeks.

  ‘But you will invalidate our work!’

  ‘I’m s-s-sorry. But it would be too dangerous to switch off.’

  ‘Then our work here today must be at an end.’

  ‘All right. Back at the base we can agree with the OC how to deal with this problem in future,’ Weeks concurred.

  ‘If only they had sent a more senior officer, he might have been able to make a decision here and now!’

  ‘No, er, er, officer, however senior, would agree to switch off the radios.’

  Dave and CSM Kila were watching.

  ‘I didn’t know he had it in him,’ said Kila.

  ‘He’s come a long way. Still can’t give a good set of orders, though.’

  Kila said: ‘Think we ought to give him a bit of support?’

  ‘He’s coping. And if he can cope with her he can cope with anything the Taliban throws at us.’

  ‘I am here making a major contribution to the development of Afghanistan, Officer,’ Emily was saying. ‘I understood you were here for the same purpose. Now I find another perfect example of how the needs of those engaged in the peaceful activity of reconstruction have been ignored yet again in favour of war, war.’

  ‘The radios are needed for your p-p-protection.’ Weeks’s face was beetroot red. ‘There’s nothing warmongering about maintaining radio contact.’

  ‘I’m sorry to say that since I have been at the base my views have been confirmed that the British Army is a warmongering force. The best that can be said is that it keeps some very aggressive young men off the streets of the UK.’

  The lads who were listening looked at each other.

  ‘Does she mean us?’ they muttered.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ continued Emily, ‘the poor Afghans are on the receiving end of this aggression.’

  She instructed the waiting engineers to return with the gravimeter while Martyn shrugged helplessly at Weeks. The boss ordered the men to pack up.

  ‘Congratulations, sir,’ Dave said.

  ‘Fucking well done, sir,’ agreed Kila. The boss blinked in surprise, since Kila had never called him sir as if he meant it. ‘That was one hell of a handbagging.’

  Weeks was still red-faced. He did not reply. He was thinking that if standing up to Emily won him this much respect, he wished Asma had been here to see it.

  As the convoy prepared to leave, Martyn Robertson climbed into the front of the Vector with Weeks.

  ‘There’s no way I’m travelling at the back with Enemy, she’ll be moaning all the way.’

  Their route took them across the empty dustbowl of the desert, around the strange shapes of the Early Rocks which jutted eerily from the flat landscape. Gordon Weeks studied their distant outlines.

  ‘I’d sure like to visit that place,’ Martyn said. ‘It’s a weird formation. Natural although it looks manmade.’

  ‘Reminds me of Stonehenge,’ Weeks said.

  ‘Those rocks are so big they’d make Stonehenge look like it was made out of pebbles. You can’t tell the size of them when there’s nothing near to compare them with.’

  At that moment a shabby, dusty car, driven by a man but full of women passengers, their brightly coloured headwear flapping from the open windows, cut across the desert. As it neared the rocks the massive outlines towered over the car as if it was a tiny toy.

  ‘Pilgrims,’ explained Martyn. ‘The place is some kind of holy shrine, that’s why we aren’t allowed to go there.’

  Weeks made a mental note to ask Asma about the Early Rocks.

  After this landmark the desert was featureless, apart from the occasional town or village, until the straight lines of FOB Senzhiri were visible in the distance. Usually they could expect some enemy fire if they approached to the east past a small, hilly zone but today they continued unhindered.

  It was strange, thought Weeks, the way no one took a potshot at them when the civilian wagon was in the convoy. Without the civilians, they were guaranteed at least some token firing.

  Martyn was evidently thinking the same thing.

  ‘They sure leave us alone these days,’ he said. ‘Must have finally understood that there’s nothing to gain from getting in our way.’

  Weeks was silent. He feared Martyn was wrong.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  JEAN AND ASMA LAY ON THEIR COTS IN BODY ARMOUR AND HELMETS listening to almost incessant firing. They shared a room in one of the safer areas of the base. Reinforced with concrete, it nestled inside thick Afghan mud walls.

  Jean said: ‘I’m sure the enemy waits for the contractors to leave the base before they start this.’

  ‘But only a couple of the contractors went out today,’ Asma said. ‘Martyn’s still here because he’s coming to the shura.’

  ‘Well, the Taliban don’t know how many are in the civvies’ Vector.’

  At that moment their beds were shaken by a particularly loud explosion. Small, powdery pieces of wall scattered over them.

  ‘Toenail time,’ said Jean.

  Asma nodded and reached for her makeup bag. They always painted their toenails during intense fire on the grounds that military morticians probably wouldn’t bother with toenails before their corpses were carried through Wootton Bassett.

  Jean was pulling off her boots.


  ‘Not much chance we’ll get out for the shura now.’

  ‘It’ll be all over by then.’ Asma chucked a tiny bright red bottle over to Jean’s bed and shook a similar pink one herself.