by McNab, Andy
She opened her eyes. He was lying close to her.
‘You are beautiful,’ he said.
She told him: ‘Please don’t say this.’
He kissed her. Not a long kiss, or a hungry one. His lips were salty. She pulled away and lay back in the sand and closed her eyes. She tried to imagine Jamie’s face. But it was a blur. Jamie was an absence. And Darrel was here, he was now.
He said: ‘Aggie . . . when we get back tonight, I don’t want to drop you off by your car and drive away.’
She kept her eyes closed.
‘Aggie . . . look at me.’
She opened her eyes. He was leaning over her. The sun had already found his cheeks and forehead. He looked healthy and full of fresh air.
‘Aggie. I want to come home with you tonight. I don’t want to leave you outside a bloody supermarket.’
She felt relaxed and happy. She certainly did not want the day to end with Darrel driving off while Luke screamed. And she did not want to go home alone to the blocked drain and the dingy house. Jamie was away somewhere and would not ring. Luke would have a fit. It was unbearable.
‘Well, Aggie?’
She said: ‘I want you to come home, Darrel. I do. But . . .’
‘We’ll go to your place, then. And see how we feel.’ He rolled to one side. He had been shielding her face from the sun and now it smothered her again. ‘No pressure, Ags. I just want to make this a perfect day.’
Chapter Fifty-five
JAMIE AND DAVE WERE ON STAG. THE CAMP WAS QUIET. ONLY THE air moved a little, descending slowly down the hillside. When it reached Dave’s cheeks it felt like hot breath. He watched a piece of litter, lying inside the wire fence below them. It didn’t even flutter.
He looked out across the plain and then back to the hills. Nothing moved. He looked inside the camp. Nothing. He knew Emily was in her lab. There was no sign of any other civilian at work. The soldiers who weren’t on duty were under their ponchos, asleep. He glanced over at the major’s poncho. The soles of two feet were visible beneath it.
‘Thank God we’re going home tomorrow,’ said Dave, realizing he had just called Sin City home. But compared to this Godforsaken piece of nowhere it was full of comforts. The cookhouse, with tables to eat at. A phone to call Jenny from. The chance of seeing pictures of the baby on the OC’s computer. Even the Colour Boy’s bowls seemed like a luxury if they had some cool, clear water in them for a good wash. But most of all he wanted to speak to Jenny.
There were strange, unpredictable moments, just standing here on stag or sitting in the ops room, when he got what felt like an actual physical ache in his heart for Jenny. He always meant to tell her about those aches next time he spoke to her. Although he never did.
‘You’re definitely first in line for the phone when we get back,’ said Jamie, as though he could read Dave’s mind.
‘Yeah. For once I won’t be waiting.’
‘And I want to get the phone after you. I really want to talk to Agnieszka.’
‘Going to try to sort things out?’
‘Yeah. I’m hoping we’ve just got our wires crossed. Or she was just having a bad day last time we spoke.’
‘You’ll probably find that everything’s all right,’ said Dave. ‘It’s easy to read too much into a short conversation when you’re this far apart.’
‘But after six months, she’ll have changed. And so will I. So will Luke.’
‘Yeah. Nothing’s ever exactly the same. You have to work hard to find your place in the family again.’
‘It’ll be different for you at home.’
Involuntarily, Dave smiled.
‘Two kids. It’s going to take a bit of getting used to.’
The silence returned. The half-hearted breeze gave up and stopped completely. Nothing moved at all in the intense heat. Even Jamie, at Dave’s side, was as still as a reptile. Was there life somewhere in that vast expanse of sand? Small mammals, bugs? Maybe they burrowed down deep where the earth was cooler and went to sleep until last light.
It would be easy to fall asleep on stag in this heat and have the piss taken out of you for ever. Except that suddenly Dave felt wide awake. His back straightened. His senses strained.
Jamie looked at him.
‘What’s up?’
‘There’s something happening.’
Jamie looked around at the camp with its hardware and soft tents. The flat desert plain was so still that even the dust lay pinned to the ground by the sun. The Early Rocks rose like statues. And on the other side of the camp were the hills and then the purple shadows of the mountains.
‘Can’t see anything.’
‘Over there.’
Dave’s back was stiff now and his face alert.
‘But it’s so quiet and—’
‘It’s the wrong sort of quiet.’
Jamie put his head on one side and Dave knew he was considering whether it was possible that his trusted sergeant had finally cracked.
‘Don’t look at me like that. Look at the hills. Look across the camp to Three Boulders and then right and down some. Now stare.’
There was a long pause.
‘I’m staring. And I’m not seeing anything.’
‘Keep looking at the shadows. They seem still but they’re not. They’re moving. Very, very slowly.’
Jamie watched.
Dave said: ‘I only saw it when my eyes started to glaze over a bit.’
‘What are your eyes, fucking infra-red?’ There was admiration in Jamie’s voice and Dave knew that he could see it too now.
‘Doesn’t look right, does it?’ Dave said.
‘It’s like watching a ship going over the horizon. You think it’s still, then it disappears and you realize it was going all the time.’
Neither man moved. Their eyes were fixed across the camp to the side of the hill.
‘I reckon Angry McCall might have been right,’ Dave said. ‘I reckon there’s someone—’
But he was silenced by an extraordinary sight. A small, hunched figure in shirt sleeves and body armour but without a helmet was walking outside the perimeter wire towards the hillside.
Chapter Fifty-six
AGNIESZKA AND DARREL DROVE UP FROM THE COAST, ACROSS moorland and forest, through the centre of the city and finally towards the rolling countryside where the camp was situated. And all the time, Agnieszka was asking herself what she wanted to happen next.
When the time came to turn into the supermarket where they had left her car, Darrel did not turn. He did not look at Agnieszka or ask her if she wanted to change her mind, he just drove on past the supermarket towards her house.
Luke was quiet. Agnieszka did not speak. She was frightened now. What was she doing? Did she still love Jamie? You didn’t just switch off love. Thinking of him caused a strange, twisting feeling like a corkscrew buried inside her chest. She loved him but his absence was immense. Gradually he was becoming a ghost, a vapour, a shadow, as though one day he would disappear altogether.
She glanced at Darrel. His face and body were more than the light and shadow of memory. But if he went home tonight then he would just be a memory too.
Her heart beat faster as they entered the camp. She felt sick.
As they neared the house she saw, at the end of the street, a dark-skinned woman surrounded by small children. Adi Kasanita. Trailing home from the rec with her kids before bedtime on a summery evening. Adi’s walk was slow and relaxed. She swung her hips as she pushed the buggy with one hand and held a toddler with the other. The older children were playing some sort of game at her side, surging around her like water. Adi was talking to them and laughing. She looked content with her uncomplicated life.
Agnieszka watched her and knew that Adi had got it right. Yes, Adi, relaxed and smiling with her kids on a warm evening, was the way it was supposed to be. The day by the sea, her car hidden at the supermarket, their furtive kisses on the beach, it hadn’t really been wonderful. It had been complex and furtive.
She stole another quick glance at Darrel. For a moment she hated him. He made her feel so good that she had chosen not to notice that he was a huge, threatening storm gathering over peaceful waters. But she knew it really. That was why her heart thudded and her head spun with nausea.
‘Darrel. Don’t come in. You can’t come in.’
He looked across at her in surprise.
‘What?’
‘I very sorry. I want that you drive back to supermarket for my car.’
‘Ags, you’re scared. You don’t have to be scared.’
‘Don’t come to house, Darrel, it very dangerous for me.’
‘Listen—’
‘No, please! Please don’t come home now.’
He sighed and passed her house without even slowing. At the end of the street they turned.
‘What changed your mind?’
‘I very sorry, Darrel.’
‘Was it that woman with the kids you were looking at? Is she a friend of yours?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought you said you don’t have any friends here.’
Agnieszka closed her eyes. It was true that Adi wasn’t really a friend. She was one of a group of women who had invited Agnieszka into their circle often enough, and Agnieszka had chosen to remain outside their orbit. She had thought it was boring, stifling and small-minded. Now it looked warm and attractive. It looked safe. But if Darrel came home with her she would be stepping far, far from its protection.
He said: ‘If you’re worried what your friends think, I could come back later, maybe. When it’s night.’
‘No.’
‘I’ll make sure no one sees me.’
She shook her head vigorously.
‘No, Darrel. Please. It wrong to do this.’
She waited for his reaction. For a minute his face darkened and he looked angry. Then she saw him wrench a smile from somewhere.
‘OK, Ags. We’ve had a good day. We won’t ruin it now. We’ll stay friends,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We are friends, just friends, Darrel.’
At the sound of her own sureness, her nausea evaporated and she felt the relief, all through her body to her nerve endings, of a narrow escape.
Chapter Fifty-seven
‘FUCKING HELL!’ SAID DAVE.
He and Jamie stared in silence for a moment at the sight of Martyn Robertson crossing the desert, alone, unarmed and unguarded. His walk was shambling in the heat. He leaned slightly to the left as if he’d grown that way over the years. He was crossing the flat area around the base and now reached a spot where the hills began. That spot was directly to the right and down from Three Boulders.
Dave’s body was already swelling and his face expanding as he filled himself with breath to yell.
‘Staaaand tooooo!’
Before his words could bounce back at him from the hillside he was leaping down from the sangar.
‘Keep shouting,’ he told Jamie. Stand to, stand to, stand to, whispered the desert to the camp and the hills to the desert.
Heads started to appear under ponchos. Jamie could see Dave running towards the sentries at the main entrance. He looked up into the hills. Martyn was still visible, scrambling over the layers of pink rock now, towards the suspect shadows. He had heard the shout, glanced over his shoulder and evidently chosen to ignore it. He continued climbing. Jamie waited to wave at him, but Martyn did not turn again.
‘Staaaaaand tooooooooo!’ Jamie roared.
Now more men were emerging from ponchos, stumbling in untied boots, cramming on their helmets, looking around them bewildered.
‘Staaaaaaaaand toooooooo!’ Jamie yelled into the echo of his last shout.
Dave had reached the sentries.
‘What the fuck is that idiot doing out there?’
The lad looked scared.
‘It was all quiet and he said he needed a crap. Wanted a bit of privacy.’
‘Fucking dickhead!’ Dave grabbed the lad’s radio.
‘It was all quiet,’ the other sentry repeated defensively.
‘What’s going on?’ Major Willingham’s voice over the radio.
‘Topaz Zero’s out there and so’s the Taliban,’ Dave told him.
‘Out there! Outside the fence!’ the officer roared. ‘What’s Martyn doing?’
‘Said he wanted a crap in privacy but he’s walked right into the choggies. Look to Three Boulders, right and down a bit . . .’
The major had his binoculars out but by now Martyn had gone. He had completely evaporated. Dave wanted to believe he was crouching down enjoying his privacy somewhere but he knew it was too late. It had been too late five minutes ago. They had lost Martyn Robertson. Their primary task here, the focus of all their efforts, had been to protect the contractors. And they had lost their key man. He had walked into the arms of the Taliban.
‘Get two vehicles out there NOW, and fucking get him back,’ the major roared. Within seconds Dave was up in a Vector with the driver, eight men and another wagon behind him, but the pit in his stomach told him they were wasting their time.
They were barely out of the gate when the firing began. The Vectors headed straight towards it. Behind them, inside the barbed-wire fence, their own firing team were already in trenches, a line of helmets and weapons looking strangely neat inside the dust clouds. On the other side, hidden somewhere in the pink-purple rock of the hillside, were the enemy. And Martyn. Dave thought he could make out his footprints in the sand.
Men were starting to pile out of the wagons into the dust and clatter of machine guns and AK47s. Dave saw an RPG sailing gracefully in the direction of Emily’s lab.
He did not have time to see where it exploded, or whether it had exploded at all, because the OC, recognizing the enemy’s superior fire power and the vulnerability of the vehicles, had ordered the men back inside. The drivers roared straight on around the perimeter and in through the entrance.
‘That’s just about the fastest lap I’ve ever done,’ Dave’s driver said. Dave looked across to Emily’s Vector. She was standing at the door, her arms crossed. Her engineers were lying face down on the desert’s sandy floor, their bodies half under the wagons, as they had been told to do in case of attack. One was remonstrating with her, trying to persuade her to lie down but she remained defiantly standing, glaring at the Taliban.
‘Get down!’ he yelled at her. ‘We’ve lost one civilian, we don’t want to lose another.’
She turned to him now and, even from this distance, he could see not confrontation but shock and bewilderment on her face.
‘Get down!’ he repeated. She slowly lowered her body, hanging onto the side of the Vector.
But he knew the firing wouldn’t last long. The Taliban had their hostage. While most were putting down fire, some would be spiriting Martyn away. If they hadn’t already killed him.
Sure enough, the firing eased rapidly and then stopped.
Dave listened as the OC, standing with one hand on his hip, spoke into his radio. ‘Contact initiated when Topaz Zero decided to go for a crap outside the base. Vehicles sent to retrieve him. Enemy then engaged us with RPGs. By the time we got to assistance of Topaz Zero we had lost him. I repeat, we have lost Topaz Zero. Unknown dead or alive. Assume taken hostage. Over.’
The voice from HQ was crisp and formal. ‘Roger. Topaz Zero has been taken hostage. Wait. Out.’
The major kept a few men back to guard the camp and civilians and sent the rest out to scour the hillside. While he requested Apaches to help with the search he stood helplessly staring at the spot where Martyn had disappeared, as though he would mysteriously reappear.
1 Platoon ran across the desert to the hills. Outside the wire the expanse felt bigger and the heat fiercer. And the hillside itself was different when you were climbing across its face. The boulders were not big, round shapes but massive, dark obstacles. Hostile bushes tried to hold you back, small, sharp rocks slid treacherously away beneath your feet.
‘Fucking hell, Sarge,’ said Bacon. ‘It’s steeper than it looks.’
‘If we had our Bergens on, we’d never get anywhere,’ said Binns. His wiry body coped well with the climb when he had no weight on his back.
‘Stop kicking fucking rocks down here,’ roared a red-faced Angus, from further down the hill. He was carrying ammo.
