Battleground

by Chris Ryan

  ‘What now?’ he called.

  ‘There’s a rope leading from each harness,’ Ricki shouted, ‘with a metal link at the end. Throw them to me, one at a time.’

  Ben located the ropes – the sturdy links had levers on one side that only moved inwards – and did as he was told. The SAS man caught them with ease. Sweat pouring down his face, Ben saw that at the end of the winch rope there were two loops, each with similar metal links. Ricki attached Ben’s rope to one loop and Aarya’s to another. Then he turned his attention back to the two of them.

  ‘Is she awake?’ he shouted.

  ‘Kind of,’ Ben replied. ‘But not really aware.’

  ‘All right, Ben. Listen carefully. You’re both firmly attached. You need to roll her off the ledge, and yourself at the same time. Can you do that?’

  Ben felt himself going white, but he knew he didn’t really have a choice. ‘I’ll try,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t think about it too much,’ Ricki advised. ‘Just do it.’

  Ben clenched his teeth together. He put his arms around Aarya and the suitcase bomb, holding them firmly. He drew a deep breath, counted to three.

  And then he rolled.

  In his mind, the fall happened in slow motion. They fell towards the earth as the rope remained slack; when it tightened it was like a jolt going through Ben’s whole body, followed by a sinking, spongy feeling as the extra weight pulled the chopper downwards slightly. But then he felt them being lifted up, and he saw Ricki grabbing Aarya and the suitcase bomb, making sure it didn’t slip from her back.

  They rose higher, above the level of the cliff and then over firm ground. The rope was winched up – slowly, it seemed to Ben – until finally they were just a metre away from the side door of the chopper.

  ‘Ben!’ It was Matt’s voice. ‘Give me your hand!’

  Ben stretched his arm up and a firm grip seized him. He felt himself being pulled up into the chopper. There were other men here as well as Matt, and a good deal of confusion as Aarya and Ricki were also pulled up into the body of the aircraft, and to safety.

  Numb with exhaustion, it was all Ben could do to sit up. Aarya was lying on the floor of the chopper while Matt and Ricki removed the bomb from her back. Her eyes were open, but her face was racked with pain.

  ‘Her foot,’ Ben shouted over the noise of the aircraft. ‘I think she’s broken it. Be careful.’

  Ricki nodded to show that he had heard as he stowed the suitcase bomb at the back of the chopper.

  ‘We should get her to a doctor,’ Ben insisted.

  ‘Roger that,’ Ricki replied. ‘We’re going to take her back to the base at Kajaki – there’s a medic on stand-by and we can offload the bomb. And then I think we’ve got something else to attend to, haven’t we?’

  And with that, Ben felt the chopper perform a sharp turn and speed back over the dam, accompanied by a group of grim-faced but determined soldiers . . .

  Chapter Twenty-six

  It had been the longest night of Dr Bel Kelland’s life. No question.

  The noise of the attack on the base – the brutal sounds of war – had been bad enough. But she was beginning to think the silence was even worse. The quiet was only occasionally shattered by the noise of a round from the weapons of one of the soldiers who still stood in a protective semicircle around her. All night they had continued firing towards the blown-open gates of the base, single shots that made it clear to the enemy that they were still armed and protected, even if it was only just.

  Bel was optimistic by nature. She tried to look for the positives in everything, even in a dreadful situation like this. She was glad of the cover of darkness. It meant she couldn’t see the dead bodies that she knew littered the floor of the base; and Private Mears had told her that if the enemy were going to attack again, they were more likely to wait until dawn.

  Dawn, however, had never been so fast coming. It was just round the corner now and still they were here. Dug in. Surrounded by enemy. Half expecting an attacking surge and desperate for someone to get them out of this mess. But no one came. The red glow of the burning Apache outside the walls of the base had long since faded away. Now the air was still. Empty.

  ‘How long till dawn?’ Bel asked. It was the only thing she’d said for ages.

  Private Mears’s lips were thin and nervous. ‘It gets light early,’ he said. ‘Less than an hour, I’d say.’

  ‘How much ammo do we have?’ Bel couldn’t believe the way she’d slipped into military slang.

  Mears avoided her question. ‘We’ll be all right.’ He sounded like he was trying to persuade himself as well as her.

  Silence again.

  It was cold. Very cold. A different place to the one that only hours ago had been so burning hot. She shivered as a round whizzed through the air.

  Voices outside the base. Shouting.

  Alarmed, Bel’s eyes searched for Private Mears. He’d heard them too – they all had. ‘What was that?’ she breathed.

  More shouting. Bel couldn’t tell what they were saying, but she knew this: they weren’t speaking English. And as that thought hit her, there was a loud bang. A whizzing sound over the walls of the compound, and then an explosion.

  ‘RPG!’ someone yelled, and everyone hit the ground as a burst of shrapnel kicked up.

  ‘Don’t stop your fire!’ It was Mears shouting. He scrambled to his feet and pointed his rifle at the entrance to the compound. ‘If we stop covering the gates, they’ll be in here like flies!’

  He fired, but as he did so a second RPG flew over the compound walls out of the darkness.

  ‘They’re attacking!’ Bel screamed. She just couldn’t control herself any more. ‘They’re attacking!’

  But the soldiers knew that. Once the shrapnel threat of the second RPG had disappeared, they got to their feet again. To a man, they were white-faced and their eyes bulged with a strange mixture of fear and numbness. They took up their firing positions once more while Bel retreated hard against the protection of the back wall.

  As she looked at the young men protecting her, she couldn’t help thinking that they had the aura of a group of soldiers preparing themselves to fight to the very end . . .

  There were only five of them in the chopper now: Ben, Ricki, Matt and the two pilots. Ricki and Matt were talking to the pilots in shouted military jargon Ben could barely understand; which left Ben, almost deafened by the noise of the chopper, his brain racing. Aarya had been safely off-loaded and was even now being treated by an army medic; the suitcase bomb had been carefully carried off the helicopter and taken to the safety of the British base. ‘You need to stay with her, Ben,’ Ricki had said, but Ben had refused to get out of the chopper.

  ‘They’ll take care of her,’ he’d shouted. ‘I’m coming with you.’

  Ben’s insistence almost appeared to amuse the SAS man, who seemed intuitively to know that nothing was going to stop him from going to help his mum, no matter how dangerous it was. More than that, he seemed to understand it. ‘You’re getting obstinate in your old age,’ he had shouted.

  ‘Just part of my charm,’ Ben replied, his face totally serious.

  The chopper had barely been on the ground for two minutes – just time to offload – before they had taken off again. It was now mostly empty, to leave plenty of space for the evacuation they anticipated making.

  Ben looked out from one of the side-gunners’ positions. They were flying high, following the course of the river. The moon still sparkled on the water, making the ground below them as beautiful as it was perilous. Adrenaline surged through him, replacing his exhaustion with a new sense of purpose. His mum was going to be all right.

  Ricki turned to him.

  ‘We’ll be at FOB Jackson in about two minutes,’ he yelled over the noise of the chopper. ‘That’s where your mum is, Ben.’

  Ben clenched his jaw and nodded.

  ‘I’m not going to lie to you. The soldiers defending the base have taken casualties. Death
s. There’s no confirmation who. It’s possible your mum is one of them, we just can’t say.’ Ben’s blood ran cold, but he did his best to concentrate on what Ricki was telling him. ‘The base is surrounded by enemy combatants. They’ve already brought down one attack helicopter and nearly downed another.’

  ‘What’s going to stop them doing the same thing again?’ Ben asked.

  ‘The pilots are going to switch off all the lights and use night vision to approach. The enemy will be able to hear us, but they won’t be able to see us until we’re right on top of them. We’ll have the element of surprise, but that doesn’t mean we won’t take incoming fire, and the enemy might just get lucky.’ He handed Ben his weapon. ‘I meant what I said before, Ben. This isn’t a toy. But if you need it, use it. Me and Matt are going to provide covering fire from the side-gunners’ positions.’

  Ben nodded, his face serious, and he took the gun. If he’d expected to feel better with that weapon in his hands, he was wrong. He checked the safety catch was on, then put it to one side, doing his best to pretend that it wasn’t there, but at the same time running through the instructions Ricki had given him on the weapon’s use earlier that night.

  They started to lose height. Ben felt his stomach churning as Ricki and Matt attached their night-vision goggles and approached the side-gunners’ positions. He edged towards the back of the chopper, taking the weapon with him, nervous sweat pouring from his body.

  Ben took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He only opened them again when he heard the sound of firing. It was like thunder inside the chopper. Ricki and Matt were firing in short bursts, one followed by another. Ben watched the links of ammo chug into the guns as the chopper continued to lose height. He tried not to think about what would happen if they attracted enemy fire.

  The aircraft wobbled. Heavier bursts of fire from the SAS men. Ben grabbed hold of the M16 to stop it sliding along the floor.

  A change in the sound of the engines. Higher-pitched. From the side of the chopper Ben saw compound walls. The SAS men left the side guns and Ricki grabbed his M16 from Ben. ‘We’re landing in the middle of the base,’ he shouted. ‘You’re going to need to help people up.’ He handed Ben a torch. ‘Use this to guide them in.’

  Ben jumped into action just as he felt the chopper touch down. Ricki and Matt hurled themselves from the side of the aircraft as Ben looked out. Through the darkness he saw scenes of devastation. To his right, a boundary wall with a huge hole blown into it and just beyond it, barely visible, the tangled remains of a downed helicopter. Ricki and Matt had positioned themselves between their Black Hawk and that hole and had started to discharge their M16s in the direction of the destroyed wall. The noise of the weapons, on top of the roar of the chopper, was almost deafening. Ben switched on the torch Ricki had given him. It was small but powerful. Almost immediately it illuminated a terrible sight: figures lying on the ground, entirely still. The sight sent a shiver down his spine.

  He turned and looked through the other side of the aircraft, shining his torch out into the base. All he saw was confusion – people running towards him. In the light of his torch he saw flashes of camouflage gear; and beyond that, a body lying on the ground. ‘This way!’ he shouted. ‘Follow the light!’

  Ben tried to pick out the faces of the people running to the chopper. He knew what he was looking for, but with each face that was not his mum, he felt a sickness growing in his stomach.

  ‘This way!’ he shouted again. ‘This way!’ Ricki and Matt’s M16s continued to fire in the background.

  The first of the soldiers reached him. He didn’t look surprised to see someone of Ben’s age, but then Ben realized that he was hidden behind the light of the torch. He held out one hand to help the soldier up into the helicopter, but at the last moment the soldier stepped aside. The beam of light from the torch lit up three more figures. Two of them were armed, flanking the third figure, which they quickly manoeuvred up towards the side of the helicopter. And the sight of that figure made a wave of total relief crash over Ben.

  He barely recognized his mum. Her face was dirty, her clothes torn and her eyes wide with fright. She stumbled as her chaperones hustled her towards the chopper. ‘Help her up!’ one of them shouted at him.

  Ben didn’t need telling twice. He held out his arm and grabbed his mother’s hand firmly. ‘It’s OK,’ he shouted. ‘We’re going to get you out of here.’

  Bel stopped. A look of confusion crossed her face as she peered towards him, trying to see past the glare of the torch. ‘Ben?’ she whispered.

  He tugged on her arm. ‘Get up, Mum,’ he shouted. ‘We can’t stay on the ground for long.’ Behind her a small crowd of soldiers had congregated, waiting for her to get in. She clambered into the chopper, her face still a picture of astonishment.

  ‘What are you doing here, Ben?’ she said as she scurried to the back of the chopper.

  ‘It’s, er . . . it’s kind of a long story,’ he bellowed as he helped the soldiers up.

  ‘Then you’d better start talking, young man!’ she shrieked. Ben couldn’t tell if she was angry or relieved.

  ‘Actually, Mum,’ he shouted back, ‘I think I might wait until we’re out of here.’ He helped the last of the soldiers onto the chopper. ‘Are there any more?’ he demanded of the man.

  The soldier shook his head. ‘We’ll have to come back for the bodies,’ he said grimly.

  Quickly, Ben moved to the other side of the chopper. Ricki and Matt still had their backs to the helicopter and were keeping up the covering fire. He raised his torch to illuminate them, but at the last moment stopped himself. The SAS men wouldn’t thank him for lighting them up like a Christmas tree, he realized. Instead he called out to them. ‘Guys!’ he yelled. ‘Everyone’s on. Everyone’s on!’

  Ricki raised one hand – a thumbs-up – and the two of them started to walk backwards, firing their M16s as they went, their backs slightly arched to protect them from the force of the helicopter’s rotary blades. The chopper’s engines changed pitch again: the aircraft was preparing to take off. Matt turned and jumped up into the body of the helicopter while Ricki continued the covering fire. Then he too joined them. He had barely set foot inside the aircraft when it lifted off the ground. Within seconds the SAS men had taken their side-gunners’ positions again: their weapons pounded above the noise of the rotary blades as the pilots gained height with a speedy, sickening lurch before swinging the chopper round and roaring away from the base.

  Only then did Ben turn to his mum. Her mouth was open, agog. Her eyes were darting around and one of her hands clutched her hair in an expression of terrified bewilderment.

  ‘Will someone tell me what’s going on?’ she shouted.

  The thunder of the side guns stopped. Ricki turned to Ben, and even in the darkness he could see that the SAS man had a smile on his face.

  ‘Looks to me,’ he said, ‘like you might have a bit of explaining to do.’

  Ben looked from the SAS man to his mum, then back again. ‘You know what,’ he said, nodding his head sagely, ‘I think you might be right.’

  Outside the helicopter, the sky was beginning to lighten. Thursday had been the longest day of Ben’s life; Friday, finally, had come. The early morning sun glimmered above the craggy peaks of the mountaintops as the Black Hawk, laden with soldiers and two exhausted civilians, continued its way southwards along the Helmand River, towards the main British base at Camp Bastion.

  Towards safety, at last.

  Epilogue

  Camp Bastion. The following day.

  In a place as dangerous as Afghanistan, Ben had come to realize, you take your pleasures wherever you can find them. To most people, the stark canvas pod in which he was sitting would be far from luxurious; it was hardly where Ben would have chosen to spend his Saturday morning. But it had air-conditioning, so it was blissfully cool; more importantly, it was safe. And safety was something Ben had been hankering after for quite a while now.

  Aarya sat by
his side. The doctors at Camp Bastion had given her painkillers and put her foot in a cast. When Ben first saw his friend being carried off the Chinook that had evacuated her from Kajaki, even he had been shocked by the way she looked after the ravages of her ordeal. A couple of days of medical treatment, however, alongside plenty of water and some half-decent food, had put her well on the road to recovery. Within the next hour, a military transport would be taking her back to her village, while Ben and his mum were to be flown to Kandahar air base, and from there back to the UK.

  They sat in silence, feeling awkward on account of the goodbyes that they both knew were just round the corner. He suddenly found himself talking. ‘You should come and live in England,’ he blurted out. ‘There’s no wars there. No Taliban, or terrorists, or, you know, all that stuff . . .’

  Aarya smiled at him. ‘Why would I want to go anywhere other than home?’ she asked. ‘My parents are waiting for me. You would not want to come and live in my village, even if it was the safest place in the world, would you?’

  Ben thought about that. He thought about the small house in Macclesfield he shared with his mum and dad, and how he would feel about not going back there. And he realized that Aarya was right.

  ‘But I will visit you,’ she continued, still smiling. ‘After all, we still have the second part of our exchange programme. I hope you haven’t forgotten about that.’

  ‘I’m sorry I got us into so much trouble,’ Ben replied.

  Aarya shot him a quizzical look.

  ‘Well,’ he continued, aware that he was gabbling slightly, ‘if I hadn’t insisted on us going to get your books back . . .’ He gave her an apologetic smile. All that seemed like a very, very long time ago.

  His friend shook her head. ‘Ben,’ she said, her voice very quiet, ‘I owe you my life. If you had not made it onto that ledge . . .’ Her voice trailed off, as though she couldn’t bear the thought of such a thing. Ben too felt himself shuddering at the memory.