Battleground

by Chris Ryan

  When the bomb hit, she assumed she was going to die. A silent prayer flashed though her head as her ears were deafened by that unbelievable noise. The impact threw her off her feet, forward into the air. She thought about her mother and father as she hit the ground, a crumpled mess of limbs. She imagined them weeping. As she opened her eyes and saw nothing but a sandy-coloured fog all around her, she wondered for a split second if this was what paradise looked like.

  But then she realized how much she was hurting. There was no pain in paradise. She knew that was true. Aarya pushed herself up to her feet and continued to run, just as the rubble started to rain down on her. She put her hands over her head and staggered blindly into the mist.

  Out of nowhere, a face. One dark eye, one the colour of milk. A body. Very close. Within grasping distance.

  Aarya’s heart jumped into her mouth. He looked like a spirit, and an evil one at that. ‘Amir!’ she whispered.

  Amir didn’t reply. He just grabbed her and started to pull her away from the caves, moving quickly despite the package on his back. She opened her mouth to scream, but immediately it was filled with thick, unpleasant dust and all she could do was spit and retch.

  Still Amir pulled her. He seemed impervious to the rubble that was raining down on them. Impervious, almost, to pain. A small stone struck Aarya’s face. She felt blood. It dripped into her eyes and blinded her. Amir continued to pull, refusing to stop when she stumbled and just dragging her through the dirt until her feet could catch up again.

  The rubble storm stopped. The fog cleared. Looking over her shoulder, Aarya searched for Ben; but they had moved round the hillside now, and she could see nothing. Just the edges of the devastation.

  ‘The men in the cave!’ she whispered. ‘We need to help them.’

  But Amir just gave her a dead-eyed look. ‘They cannot be helped,’ he stated. He narrowed his eyes, as though he was judging Aarya in some way, like a doctor. Then he pulled a bottle of water from inside his robes and handed it to her. Aarya put the bottle to her lips and drank the warm water gratefully. She felt like she could have drunk for ever, but after a few seconds Amir pulled the bottle from her lips, allowed himself a little water, then put it away.

  ‘They cannot be helped.’ He repeated his earlier statement. ‘You are lucky not to have joined them. If you are not silent, you will. I will keep you alive only so long as you are useful to me.’ To emphasize his point, he grabbed Aarya by the throat and squeezed hard, so hard that she made a weak, croaking sound.

  With that, he tugged her even more firmly and dragged her further away from the bombsite. Where to, she did not know.

  Ben stumbled as he ran. He was so parched he felt like his body was made of sand, so weak he knew he could collapse at any moment. He needed water, but he saw nothing except dryness all around, shimmering in the heat.

  He fell, knocking his shins against a rock, but there was no energy left in him to cry out. In his muddled brain something nagged at him. What was it Amir had said, an age ago when they were driving through the night? There may be landmines in the road ahead . . . An image filled his mind. He was in the Congo. A mine had exploded. There were body parts everywhere.

  It could happen to him, he knew, as he pushed on through the heat. But what could he do? To stay here now, in the sweltering afternoon sun when he was so dehydrated, would be to sign his own death certificate.

  ‘I need to find the British Army,’ he whispered faintly to himself. ‘I need to find them . . .’

  His head was pounding now. Ben raised his hands above it – a vain attempt to shelter himself from the sun’s rays. Stopping to catch his breath, he looked ahead. The green zone was there, but with the heat haze he couldn’t tell how close it was. All he could do was continue towards it, and hope he reached some sort of civilization before the heat defeated him.

  A tree. With the sun so high in the sky, it barely cast a shadow. Ben staggered past it, then squinted. A field in the distance. He scanned the greenery, looking for people. But he saw nobody. Why would he? Who would be working in this intense, intolerable heat?

  A ditch. A thin trickle of muddy water oozed along the bottom of it. It was smelly and unappetizing, but to Ben it looked as tempting as a fountain full of the clearest, freshest water. He stopped and stared. For a moment, he considered drinking it. He even found himself bending down, his hands cupped, ready to take a draught. But then, at the last minute, sense kicked in. The water wasn’t fresh. It was foul. He had to look elsewhere.

  Ben drew himself up to his full height. But the very process of doing that made him giddy and nauseous. He took a step. The giddiness increased.

  And then, although he tried to stop it, Ben felt himself tumbling into the ditch. He was vaguely aware of the muddy water soaking his clothes before he lost consciousness.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Bel had spent two days at FOB Jackson now. Two hot, sticky, traumatizing days and she wished she could be anywhere but there. After yesterday’s rocket attack, she felt like she was afraid of her own shadow. And while the soldiers around her had taken the hostilities in their stride, she could sense that some of them had still been rattled by that short, sharp contact.

  She had spent most of her time trying to keep cool and drinking as much water as she could. This was drawn from the well in the centre of the compound, then sterilized using little white tablets. The water itself was warm with a rather unpleasant aftertaste on account of those tablets, but she gulped it down nevertheless. She realized that she had forgotten to remind Ben to drink plenty of water back in Pakistan and she chided herself for the oversight. But it was OK, she consoled herself. Ben was a sensible boy. He knew how to look after himself.

  Private Mears would check on her every couple of hours, a smile constantly on his young, earnest face. ‘All A-OK, Dr Kelland? Feel free to sunbathe if you like . . . What do you mean, you didn’t bring your bikini?’ Under other circumstances she would have found his chirpy comments annoying; out here she was grateful for them. They helped take her mind off gloomier thoughts.

  ‘Any news on the shura?’ she asked, just after noon on the Thursday.

  Mears smiled apologetically and shook his head. ‘Looks like you’ll be staying here another night,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have to start charging you board and lodging soon. I know the room service isn’t up to much, but—’

  It was a noise that interrupted him. A huge, booming noise. It was distant, but still very loud – louder, certainly, than the occasional explosions Bel had become well used to over the past forty-eight hours.

  ‘What was that?’ she asked sharply.

  Mears’s jokey expression had fallen from his face. ‘Sounds like an airstrike. Wait there – I’ll find out what’s going on.’

  He sprinted across the courtyard of the compound, past the well in the centre and up to where one of the radio operators was crouching with his equipment. Bel watched as they spoke. The radio operator pointed in a northerly direction and Mears nodded as he listened to what the guy had to say. Then he came jogging back.

  ‘I was right,’ he said. ‘Airstrike on a cave system to the north. Enemy combatants seen entering. Sounds like we gave them a bloody nose.’

  ‘Sounds like you gave them more than that,’ Bel murmured. ‘Sounds like you gave them a lot more than that . . .’

  Ben didn’t know what it was that made him regain consciousness: his aching body or the sound of strange chattering voices all around him. Whatever it was, he didn’t feel inclined to open his eyes, so he just lay there, trying to make some sense of the confused fog in his mind.

  Where was he? he wondered. It was warm. Very warm. Was he on holiday? Or maybe he was lying in his garden at home and the chattering voices were those of his mum and dad. But if that was the case, why couldn’t he understand them? He gave an impatient sigh, then forced himself to open his heavy eyelids.

  When he did, he got the shock of his life.

  A face was looking dow
n at him, close enough for Ben to feel breath on his cheek. It had dark, leathery skin so deeply lined that for a moment he wondered if it was actually human. He told himself not to be stupid. Of course it was a human face. It was a man. He had a long white beard and intense blue eyes that looked like they were seeing right through him. On his head was a kind of embroidered cap. The man was leaning over him, his face only an arm’s length from Ben’s, and he barely moved.

  Ben grew frightened, and then all the events of the past couple of days crashed back into his head. He looked from left to right, trying to get his bearings; but still the man staring at him did not move.

  ‘Who are you?’ he tried to say. But his throat was so dry that he simply couldn’t speak. He wondered how long he had been out. Was it still the same day?

  Like a stationary lizard suddenly moving, the man stood up. He said a single word, and as he opened his mouth, Ben saw that what teeth remained were yellow and crooked. Pushing himself up to a sitting position, he realized that he had been lying on a thin mattress in the shade of a tree. The tree itself grew in the middle of a compound and surrounding him, in a ring, were ten – maybe fifteen – people. The chattering sound came from the children, who became even more excited when he turned to them. The adults, however, looked on with a solemn lack of expression.

  Suddenly he became aware of someone else standing next to him. He saw a girl – Aarya’s age, perhaps a bit younger – holding an earthenware cup. She handed it to Ben, then nodded encouragingly. Ben took the cup and looked inside.

  Water.

  He put it to his lips, closed his eyes and drank. The water tasted warm and stale, but that didn’t matter. It was still the best drink of his life.

  When he had finished he handed the cup back to the girl. ‘Thank you,’ he said. The girl looked at him a little shyly, then disappeared.

  Ben’s head was still throbbing. He looked down at himself and saw that his clothes were scorched and full of holes – a souvenir from the bomb blast, he supposed. The skin on his hands and arms was cut and sore; his muscles shrieked at him. The water had barely gone halfway to reviving him, but he suddenly felt alert again. Alert and full of purpose. ‘I need to speak to the British Army,’ he addressed the strange-looking man. ‘It’s urgent.’

  The man’s expression didn’t change. He certainly gave no sign that he had understood what Ben was saying. Ben looked around at all the other people staring at him. ‘English,’ he said. ‘Do any of you speak English?’

  The silence with which they replied spoke volumes.

  Ben hauled himself up to his feet. A moment of dizziness: he steadied himself against the tree trunk and looked around again – blank expressions, all except the children, who seemed to have lost interest in the strange newcomer and were now tearing around the compound. Looking for the exit, he saw a rickety wooden door set into the wall. It looked as though it could easily have been a hundred years old. Ben staggered towards it, but immediately there was someone in his way – a younger man with a short, brown beard. He shook his head emphatically and then mimed the action of someone shooting a gun, before wagging his forefinger in Ben’s face.

  ‘I have to find someone,’ Ben said, his voice hoarse. He spoke slowly, as if that would help the Afghan man in front of him understand.

  The man shook his head again, before pointing to himself, then to the door and making a walking motion with his two forefingers. He smiled again and nodded.

  Ben gave him an uncertain look. The man appeared to be suggesting that he would go and find a soldier. But what was Ben going to do? Stay here? He didn’t much like the thought of that. His experience of compounds such as this hadn’t been all that great, after all. But then he looked back at the inhabitants. They had clearly picked up his unconscious body from the ditch, brought him here and laid him in the shade. They had given him water. These Afghan locals had shown him more kindness in the two minutes he had been awake than his terrifying captors had since they had been abducted. If he could trust anyone, he thought to himself, he could trust these people.

  And besides, if he walked out of this compound now, where would he go? The locals looked strange to him: imagine how he must look to them. Imagine the attention he would draw, wandering aimlessly through the green zone in his ripped jeans and T-shirt, desperately seeking a British soldier but not knowing where to look. In a dangerous place like this, he’d be a magnet for trouble.

  He turned back to the young man. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Please hurry.’

  The Afghan man grinned, nodded and sprinted out of the compound.

  Ben returned to his mattress, glad of the shade that the tree offered. When the girl reappeared with more water, he accepted gratefully, and as he drank it he looked over the brim of the cup. He was still being stared at and he tried to ignore those alien glares by closing his eyes and trying to get his head in order.

  Amir still had the bomb. That much was clear. Did he have Aarya too? Ben decided that he must have, even though a nagging voice told him he was only thinking that because he couldn’t bear to imagine the alternative. And everything that had happened since their abduction suggested to Ben that he had plans to use the weapon, and soon. When their convoy through the desert had stopped for the daylight hours, the owners of the compounds where they stayed had been expecting them. Amir and his men had a plan. They knew where they were going and what they were doing. It was an operation of some kind. Ben shuddered to think what the consequences might be.

  Time passed. In the corner of the compound a woman lit a fire. Ben watched as she took flour and water, then kneaded it expertly into big sheets of dough and cooked it over the fire. When it was ready, she tore some off and gave it to Ben. He thanked her profusely and wolfed it down, suddenly aware that he was hungrier than he could ever remember being. Two children, a boy and a girl no more than five years old, shyly approached him. The boy had a small toy car – metal, very old and dented. The paint had long since peeled away, but he presented it proudly to Ben as though it was the finest treasure in the land. Ben smiled at him, then handed the toy back. The two of them sat in the dirt beside him and played happily, etching roads in the dust and making engine sounds. They could have been any kids anywhere.

  At one point, everything went quiet and there was suddenly hardly anyone around. Ben felt a moment of panic, until he realized what was happening: the villagers were praying, and he remembered Aarya explaining that it should be done five times a day. Everyone soon re-emerged and continued to go about their business.

  Gradually, Ben realized, he was becoming less of a curiosity. The inhabitants of the compound had stopped looking at him like he’d just walked off a spaceship and had started getting on with their lives: washing clothes, cooking food or just sitting and talking in low voices.

  Ben became drowsy, but despite the welcome he had been given he didn’t feel at all comfortable falling asleep here, so he stood up and walked round the tree. He felt much better now that he had food and water inside him . . .

  Suddenly there was a shout.

  It came from the direction of the compound entrance. Ben spun round just in time to see the door being kicked open and two men in desert combats, big sunglasses and military helmets burst in, their rifles directed straight into the compound. One of them shouted a word Ben didn’t understand before a whole line of soldiers ran in. Some of them took up positions around the compound; others sprinted into the living quarters that ran along the walls, re-emerging only when they appeared confident they contained nobody who posed a threat. The children playing near Ben scurried to a far corner of the compound, clearly terrified; the grown-ups just looked on with that emotionless stare Ben had come to recognize – all of them except the young man who had gone to fetch help. He was out of breath, but his eyes shone. Ben gave him a curt nod of thanks.

  And then a voice. Relief flooded over Ben as he realized it was speaking English.

  ‘Compound secure!’

  One of the soldier
s stepped towards Ben, removing his sunglasses and propping them up on his helmet.

  Ben stepped forward to meet him. ‘Are you a sight for sore eyes!’ he said.

  The soldier looked at him warily. ‘Major Simon Graves,’ he introduced himself.

  ‘Ben Tracey.’

  ‘I see.’ Major Graves sounded curiously like a schoolmaster. ‘Well, perhaps you’d care to tell me, Ben Tracey, what the hell you’re doing in the middle of Helmand Province . . .’

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘To be honest,’ Ben said, ‘it’s kind of complicated . . .’

  ‘Why am I not surprised?’ Major Graves muttered. ‘All right, son, hold your tongue for now. We’d better get you back to the base.’

  ‘But I’ve got information,’ Ben objected. ‘Important information. A terrorist strike, or something. I need to tell you now—’

  ‘Look, son,’ Graves interrupted him sharply. ‘You’re surrounded by British soldiers in the middle of the green zone. That’s a bit like being covered in jam in the middle of a wasps’ nest. We haven’t got time to sit around here chatting – you can tell me what you need to tell me back at base. Until then, you stick with me and you do what you’re told. Got it?’

  ‘But these people here are friendly. They helped me – and there isn’t time. It could happen any—’

  ‘Got it?’

  Ben scowled. ‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘Got it. Just tell me, is it still Thursday?’

  Graves widened his eyes. ‘Yes, son, it’s still Thursday.’ He turned to his men. ‘All right,’ he announced. ‘Fast extraction. Let’s not give the enemy any time to find out where we are. This village might be friendly, but it doesn’t mean we’re safe here.’

  The soldiers didn’t hesitate. Two of them left the compound and covered the exit.

  ‘Ben, listen carefully. We’re going to perform a leapfrogging manoeuvre. Half of us advance, then we stop and wait for the other half to overtake us while we give them cover. Then they stop and let us advance. Do you understand?’