by McNab, Andy
‘It’s there but it’s very, very faint,’ said a medic. ‘Did you see what happened?’
‘RPG. Went straight through him.’
‘No one can survive that,’ said Iain Kila.
‘It didn’t detonate,’ Dave said.
‘Well, fuck me!’ said Kila.
‘It certainly touched him but it went straight on and then hit some rocks about thirty metres later.’
‘He’s in with a chance, then.’
‘This man survived a round from an AK, he survived a round from a machine gun . . .’
The other medic said: ‘The grenade sliced his left side off but there’s a chance it missed his vital organs. He must have been squatting over the gimpy because it went through the top of his leg and the bottom of his arm. But he can live without an arm and a leg . . .’
‘A few centimetres further left and he’d certainly be dead,’ said the other.
‘MERT will be here in four more minutes,’ reported Kila. ‘He’ll be at Bastion inside the golden hour.’
Dave leaned over the stretcher, looking at the unmoving face.
He tried to imagine Jamie without an arm, a leg and God knew what other body parts. Always trying to hide the pain. Making the best of it. Loving Agnieszka as she pushed him around in a wheelchair. Some people can live like that, Dave thought. But Jamie can’t.
If Jamie heard what the medic just said, then he can hear me now.
Dave moved close to the thin face. Eyes closed, it showed no pain. He grasped the still fingers.
‘Shit, Jamie Dermott,’ he said softly. ‘You’re the last man I can afford to lose. But I know that you’re a soldier through and through. And, Jamie, you’re the best. You’ve lost half your body. But you could never be half a soldier. I understand if you want to go now. So go, if you must, mate. You’ve done a great job soldiering. You’ve got a lovely kid. You’ve got a wife who does truly love you – I know that for a fact, whatever you think. So, if you want to, go peacefully. Good luck. I’ll never forget you.’
Of course Jamie did not respond. He couldn’t.
‘Not looking good!’ said one of the medics suddenly.
‘Are we losing him?’
‘Can’t be . . . but we are.’
Dave closed his eyes and fell back to let the medics do their work.
‘No! No way!’
‘See for yourself!’
‘Shit! I thought we had him!’
‘Resuscitate.’
‘Clear, everyone, please.’
Dave turned his back, walked away and stared out at the endless expanse of desert. His face stung. His eyes stung. Sand in his mouth, sand in his eyes, sand in his heart.
A Chinook had already arrived for the casualties. Another arrived for Martyn almost immediately and the hostage was taken aboard by the waiting medics.
The OC was there.
‘Martyn is very important but since he is a T3 we must ask him to wait while we load a T4.’
Finn could not stop grinning. He had been clapped on the back by everyone around him and he and Streaky had already told the story again and again of how they had gone to steal grapes and found Martyn.
He heard that there was a T4 and wondered briefly who it was, but he was really looking for Dave. Where was he when Finn was enjoying a bit of glory for once? And it would be nice to have Sol, Angus and Jamie here offering a few words of congratulations, too.
The group of soldiers around the Chinook fell suddenly silent. Finn turned to see his mates approaching. They were carrying a stretcher. The body on it was covered. So this must be the T4. Even then it did not occur to Finn that there had been a death in his own section. It was only when they were close enough for him to see their faces that he suddenly felt cold. His buoyant, triumphant mood turned inside out and left all the raw places exposed.
Dave and Sol were covered with blood. Dave looked bruised, as if he’d been in a fistfight. Sol’s white eyes were red. Huge tears spilled down Angus’s face.
Finn looked at the men who surrounded him. Among them were Streaky, Mal and Binman.
That left one man.
Billy Finn’s mouth fell open, his eyes sprang out, his body was drained so that he swayed a bit. He saw the boss, features frozen, white-faced.
‘No. No. Not Jamie, no,’ he shouted.
Boss Weeks closed his eyes. He nodded.
The body was loaded onto the helicopter in silence. There must have been the ground-shaking thump of Chinook rotors and the roar of its engine. But afterwards not one man could remember anything but silence.
Chapter Sixty-eight
AGNIESZKA STOOD MOTIONLESS IN THE BEDROOM, STARING AT herself in the mirror. When Darrel came in, she looked up at him. Not his real face, but the one in the mirror. He stood behind her and their mirror eyes met.
‘I’ve thought about you the whole time I’ve been away,’ said Darrel.
That’s what Jamie always said when he got back. And he would be back in a few weeks now. But then he would go away again. Loving Jamie meant saying goodbye. It meant waiting, waiting, waiting for him to come home.
‘I know you’re scared. I know this is a big step for you, Aggie.’
Her eyes met her mirror eyes. They were frightened. She felt frightened. She felt no sexual excitement. She just wanted to be touched and loved and cared for and not to be alone. She didn’t want to be a woman in an endless expanse of snow.
‘It will be all right. I promise. I’ll take good care of you.’
He began to kiss her neck. She tensed.
‘No, no, that’s no good,’ he murmured. ‘Melt a little, Aggie.’
She tried to relax. He stroked her gently. He massaged her back and rearranged her hair. And then he began to kiss her again.
Dave was leaning against the wagon. He thought he should get the lads moving, unloading, sorting things out. But everyone just wanted to stand very still.
The officials and VIPs buzzed around them, making a big noise about Martyn’s rescue. The SAS men were being wholeheartedly congratulated. Only the soldiers from the base did not speak.
The OC, who had initially disappeared into the ops room, had re-emerged now and was walking over to the men. His face was expressionless. His walk was slow. He dragged his feet through the dust as though they weighed a lot. He surveyed the quiet soldiers and then raised a hand to stop everyone else talking.
The OC cleared his throat.
When he spoke his voice was loud and grave.
‘I am very sorry to tell you that Rifleman Jamie Dermott, a loved, brave and highly proficient member of 1 Section, 1 Platoon, died at 1000 hours today. The medics treating him said that it is a testament to his courage and tenacity that he survived with such serious wounds for as much as thirty minutes. Less than an hour before his death, Rifleman Dermott ran into the desert under intense fire to help another man in his section out of danger. It was an action typical of a soldier who served all those around him without thought for his own safety. He died in action, shot through by a Rocket Propelled Grenade, having already remarkably survived two enemy rounds on two previous occasions. We will miss him and mourn him.’
Dave closed his eyes. The loss was so immense that you couldn’t put a fence around it, you couldn’t estimate its size, you couldn’t even begin to get to the edges of it. Because death was endless and so was loss. And even when he was an old man, many years from now, Dave knew that it would not have ended then.
The OC looked at him.
‘Sergeant. Would you please lower the flag in recognition of the death of Rifleman Dermott?’
Dave walked across the base to the flagpole. He was loaded down with invisible kit. It weighed more than any ammo. His body wanted to sink beneath it. He could hardly carry this immense burden and he almost stumbled once or twice. He reached the pole. Slowly, very slowly, he lowered the flag. The base was silent, the desert was silent, the distant hills were silent, and he knew that this was Jamie’s silence he was hearing no
w, a silence without end.
*
‘God, what am I doing?’
Agnieszka lay in bed, crying.
‘For Chrissake, Aggie!’ Darrel’s voice was tender and then exasperated. ‘You enjoyed it, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. But that make it worse.’
Darrel sighed and rolled onto his back. They lay next to each other, not touching.
‘I was trying to make you happy!’
Had she really thought that Darrel could drive away her fear and loneliness? Had she really thought that having sex with him would put right everything that was wrong? Her body was convulsed with sobs. She loved Jamie. And she had been unfaithful to him. Now she felt lonelier than ever and she even knew what the snow was. It was loss. She had gained nothing tonight and lost everything. Because she loved Jamie, even when he wasn’t there.
‘Aggie?’
Darrel reached for her but she pulled away.
He sighed.
‘Do you want me to go?’
She did not reply. She felt the bed rearrange itself as he climbed out. When he dressed, she could hear his anger and resignation from the way he pulled on his clothes. Before he left he leaned over the bed.
‘Aggie, call me when you want to talk.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘I don’t understand you.’
‘Darrel, I very sorry. It not your fault.’
‘Yeah.’
She heard him go down the stairs and close the door. She listened for the sound of his feet on the pavement. The house felt cold. She heard, at the bottom of the hill, a car starting. It pulled away rapidly.
Luke started to scream. She went to him. He would not stop. Finally he had a fit.
Maybe that was why she didn’t hear the car. But she heard the doorbell. Darrel. Back to reason with her. She wouldn’t let him in.
She pulled the curtain to one side. It was not Darrel and the car outside was at first unfamiliar. She stared down at the figure on the doorstep. Something very cold, like a splinter of ice, ran through her. It started in her scalp and made the hairs stand on end and, as it moved down her neck and her shoulders, on down to her toes, the tiny hairs on her body bristled. The Families Officer. On her doorstep in the night. At that moment, the world froze and this time she knew it might never thaw.
Chapter Sixty-nine
DAVE WENT TO 1 SECTION’S TENT TO CLEAR JAMIE’S THINGS AND found Binns and Bacon already hunched over them. Anger rose up inside him as if it had just been waiting for an excuse.
‘What the fuck do you two think you’re doing!’
They looked up guiltily.
‘We’re just sorting something out, Sarge,’ said Binman.
‘Sorting what out, exactly?’
Streaky was embarrassed: ‘Something we were doing with Jamie, Sarge . . .’
Dave could hardly contain his anger. ‘You don’t go through his things! I do that! You’ve got no right to sift through a dead man’s stuff!’
Binman looked too shocked to speak. Bacon said: ‘Sarge, we were making a story with Jamie for his kid, see, so his baby wouldn’t forget his voice. And it was almost, almost done. And we wanted his babymother to have it all finished off so . . .’
‘See,’ said Binns, ‘we didn’t want it to end suddenly. If it ends nicely his kid can listen to it over and over . . .’
‘That’s right, Binman’s right,’ said Streaky. ‘If it’s finished they’ll be able to listen to it and he’ll always have his daddy speaking to him . . .’
Dave felt his angry heartbeat slow.
‘So, what is this story?’
Bacon produced a small digital recorder. He flicked a switch. Suddenly the tent was filled with Jamie’s voice.
‘And so the little frog hopped towards the place where he knew his mum and dad were waiting for him and would wait for ever if they had to. Just one more mountain to cross and he would be there.’
Dave sat down on the nearest bed and put his head in his hands. Binns did not move. Streaky turned away, his arm across his face as though shielding himself from a blow. There was a long silence.
At last Binman said, his voice hoarse: ‘See, we do the sound effects and we thought we could finish it by . . .’
‘All right, all right, lads,’ said Dave, getting up. He had to cough to clear his voice and then cough again. ‘You do that. You finish it. I won’t interrupt you. I’ll just take the rest of Jamie’s stuff.’
He left the tent as quickly as he could.
He wanted somewhere private to open Jamie’s personal things. It was an unpleasant but necessary job to remove any letters from girlfriends or pornography or anything else a bereaved widow might not want to see. Not that there would be anything like that here. Jamie had loved Agnieszka and only Agnieszka.
There were letters and photos and a notebook. Dave felt intrusive looking through the notebook. It contained lists and a few sketches: of Luke, of some trees by a river and one of a GPMG. And there was a bit of poetry, love poetry, which he had written or copied from a book.
He delved a bit further in the bag and found some more pictures of Agnieszka. And then something small and hard. Another iPod? It felt like a phone but it couldn’t be. He pulled it out. It was. It was a cellphone.
Dave was shocked. Someone else must have put it there! Jamie, of all people, would never sneak in something that threatened everyone’s safety. Except here it was.
He switched it on.
There were messages to Agnieszka and from Agnieszka. The last one had been sent a few days ago.
He read: I love another man now.
Chapter Seventy
‘WE’VE BEEN THROUGH A LOT TOGETHER, ASMA,’ SAID GORDON WEEKS.
They were alone in the ops room. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office men had flown out into media frenzy at the hostage rescue, congratulating themselves on a successful mission. The colonel and his staff had gone. Kila and Jean were walking the perimeter together. The OC and the 2 i/c were in the cookhouse and the boss was manning the radio. He hoped there would be no calls.
‘Yeah,’ she agreed. ‘I didn’t like you at first.’
‘Really? How could you not like Gordon Weeks?’
‘Because you were such a prick when we were interviewing those two detainees and I pulled out my pistol. Did you stand there wittering on about the International Convention on Human Rights or did I imagine that?’
He gave her a withering look.
‘You imagined it.’
‘Bet you wanted to, though.’
He could not suppress a smile.
‘I did disapprove.’
She rolled her eyes.
‘Sometimes you have to do the wrong thing to get to the right place. A bit like your blokes shooting a wounded insurgent in a ditch?’
He decided not to reply. Something was coming through on the OC’s printer and he busied himself retrieving it.
‘Another press cutting from London. SAS SHOOTS ITS WAY OUT OF HOSTAGE CRISIS.’ He put it on top of UK SPECIAL FORCES RETRIEVE HOSTAGE IN BLAZE OF GUNFIRE.
‘I did tell you that it was a man in my platoon who actually found Martyn?’
She threw back her head and laughed. He watched her happily.
‘You’ve told me at least three times, Gordon. But did I tell you that it was thanks to me we worked out Martyn was at the Early Rocks?’
‘You! No, you didn’t tell me that!’
He was ridiculously pleased and proud, as though he had worked it out himself.
‘It was really exciting but I wasn’t allowed to talk about it at all.’
‘Not even to me?’
‘Not even to you. Remember I said that I kept picking up talk about a holy place and that’s when your blokes went and searched all the mosques?’
‘And then you worked out that the holy place was the Early Rocks!’
‘Yes. Because they said something about a pregnant woman there. That’s how I knew. The last time we saw Asad’ – her voice faltered; Asad had not been menti
oned by either of them since their argument after his death – ‘he said the shrine was special for women who wanted a boy child. To Asad it was all unIslamic traditional nonsense, of course. Anyway, we put the place under aerial surveillance and . . .’
