After an hour he jumped off the final wagon, his coveralls filthy, and took them off to reveal his immaculate combats. He hated getting these dirty. Ever fastidious, he took his beret off, ran a comb several times back through his hair and then beamed at Brennan. ‘Well, Sergeant Major; it looks like half of NATO’s entire stockpile of ammunition is on these wagons. Bloody good job; very well done indeed. We’re quite a force to be reckoned with, aren’t we?’
‘Too right, sir. Let’s just say it’s going to be a brave bastard who decides to mess with us on the way up.’
They held the O Group for the move. It was nothing that they hadn’t talked through informally over the past week, and when Tom in turn delivered the orders to 3 Troop he didn’t have to refer to his notes at all. As he handed over to Trueman for the casevac plan and CSS part of the orders he looked at the scene in front of him. The boys were sitting around in canvas chairs, shirts off, dog tags clinking softly on their chests in the steady warm breeze. They had lost their little rolls of puppy fat and were lean and hungry-looking, and the pumped-up look in their eyes rubbed off on him. He could tell they were excited about the move through the big town.
Frenchie thought that while they would avoid IEDs on this route, the move would inevitably generate a big contact from the local Taliban, who would feel impelled, almost out of pride, to put up a performance as twenty wagons trundled through their backyard. Tom noticed Miller and Davenport’s contrasting reactions: Miller calmly taking in every word, Davenport a bundle of nervous energy, his foot tapping the ground and his head bobbing up and down as though he was listening to music. They were in the zone. Christ! Tom thought. I’m in the zone too.
In the afternoon everyone lined up in their crews on the football pitch, and Jason took them through a dozen scenarios, from the lead wagon hitting an IED, to the centre wagon hitting one, to a strike on the rear one, to a complex ambush being thrown at them with three wagons taken out in one hit. They rehearsed what would happen in a sustained contact from the left, from the right, from the rear, actions on a single shoot and scoot from a lone gunman. They rehearsed what would happen if Frenchie was killed, how they would move in mist or fog, bunching much tighter together. The midday sun beat down, but they were used to it now.
At one point soldiers from another unit walked past and sniggered at the sight of the squadron moving in their strange bundles of three. Brennan predictably blew up. Striding towards them so quickly that they started to run, he screamed after them, ‘Right, you lippy cunts can fuck off. We’re doing this not to look good, but so we don’t end up with our fucking legs blown off. You fucking REMFs wouldn’t know a thing about that, would you? You ballbags, get the fuck out of my sight before I rip your eyes out.’ The fat rear-echelon soldiers scurried off as fast as their unworn boots would take them to a chorus of jeers and abuse, and Brennan said to Jason, ‘Sorry, sir; please carry on.’
Just at the point where Tom could tell the boys were about to lose interest, Frenchie called a halt; time was moving quickly. They rolled out at midnight, and it was 1700 now. Time for scoff, and then back to the wagons for last-minute tweaks until they struck out. He dismissed the boys and they ran to the scoff house.
They stuffed themselves with food as Brennan had told them all to, in case there was a major drama on the move and they found themselves on the ground and on rations for a week. Plates were piled high with curry and rice, stew and chips. Jason had the fullest plate and was about to further engorge himself with a chicken leg like a Roman emperor when he sniffed it, pulled a face and put it back down. ‘Something’s definitely not right with that.’
‘I thought you were the human dustbin: eat anything animal, vegetable, mineral or metal?’ said Clive.
‘Yeah, not that though. It just smells weird – like off. The rest of it’s all right though.’ He started chomping through the rest of his plate.
Tom stopped eating and seemed to go green. He picked up the chicken on Jason’s plate and held it up to his nose.
‘You’re right, mate. It reeks. And I’ve just eaten one of those bastards. I thought it tasted weird.’ He prodded the mangled remains of the chicken leg on his own plate, pink ripped flesh hanging off it and watery fat beneath.
They stopped eating and looked at him. They all knew what happened when they got ill on tour: you were out for five days minimum, of no use to man or beast. To get ill on a big move like this one was going to be dreadful.
Clive chuckled. ‘Well, mate, glad I’m not in your wagon. I don’t envy Dusty.’ He spotted Miller on another table. ‘Hey, Dusty, hope you’ve got some Immodium on your wagon, cos I thing your boss is going to be shitting for Britain after that chicken he’s just eaten.’
Miller shouted back to Tom, ‘Oh cheers, sir; rookie error. You ain’t heard the rumours about them chicken legs, did you? Everyone says they’re a killer.’
Tom clicked his teeth. ‘Bugger off, the lot of you. I’ll be fine. I’ve got a lead-lined stomach anyway.’ He started upon a bowl of apple crumble with studied nonchalance, praying inwardly that he wouldn’t get ill. He glanced at the chicken leg. It looked rancid.
They finished and went back to the tent to pick up their gear. Tom felt sorry to be leaving the civilian comforts of the tent. He would miss the eight nights they’d had here, watching films, playing cards, writing letters home. The last one to leave, he turned out the red lamp and paused for a moment in the dark before running outside with his rucksack to join the others.
At the tank park there was nothing to do but wait. They knew the plan inside out. Leave camp at midnight, head north to Highway One, head east on that for ten kilometres, then leave the road to strike north again and thread their way up the seventy kilometres to Loy Kabir. Try not to hit any IEDs en route. All going well they’d be there by dusk the next day. All going badly it could turn into an epic.
Frenchie’s philosophy on military operations was simple: plans either work perfectly or not at all. If one tiny thing goes wrong, he held, everything else unravels until what eventually happens bears no resemblance to anything that has been planned or even conceived of before the operation. All or nothing. It was vital to have a plan, he maintained, as it was useful, when things went awry, to be able to use a previous template to judge progress and inform possible decisions, but it was equally important to be able to depart from it without pride or sentimentality. That was why he spent more time on rehearsals than he did on orders. They constantly rehearsed and talked through every possible scenario or weird mutation of a plan, and he rammed his philosophy into the troop leaders as they gathered around his wagon for a last pep talk.
‘Here we go, fellas. Henry, best of luck. Whatever you do, don’t get us lost, all right? No pressure! Remember, lads: if one thing goes wrong here, the plan’s going to disappear. But don’t worry about that. Have faith. You’ve all got the grammar and vocab of ops by now. When things start to go wrong just apply them to the new situation, and you’ll be OK. Forget the basics, and we’re screwed. And at least we’re not working with any Afghan muppets this time. Hopefully next time I see your ugly mugs this close will be in Loy Kabir. Here’s hoping anyway. Right, back to your troops. Best of luck. And keep VP slick, whatever you do.’
By 2300 everyone was set in the wagons, snatching some sleep or lost in their own time-passing rituals. Davenport was fast asleep in his driver’s seat. Dusty was plugged into his music reading a Bernard Cornwell book by the light of an orange cyalume. Tom had checked and triple-checked all the weapons and radios and had oiled everything inside the turret two times now, so he reached into his side bin and drew out a bluey. He’d write to Cassie. He folded it out, took a pen from his trouser pocket, thought a bit about how to begin, toying with various ways of opening up, and started writing.
Bastion
Dear Cassie,
I hope this finds you very well. I can’t believe I am writing this, stuck in the desert a million miles away. At the moment I am in Camp Bastion, and we ar
e about to begin a move north to this town called Loy Kabir that we’re working in. I cannot even begin to describe to you what it is like out here. And I don’t mean that in a bad sense at all, but in an all-encompassing sense. It is quite simply the most overwhelming experience of my life. Everything is brought into focus to the sharpest degree. You cover the entire range of the emotional spectrum pretty much every day, from excitement to terror through boredom.
And there’s a lot of boredom. But it doesn’t really matter, as the boys are always there to chat to and get you through the dull times. And the most amazing thing about here is that you do everything against a backdrop of astonishing scenery. The sunrises and sunsets are something else. Like tonight. We had a bright red sunset, and as the sun dropped to the west the full moon rose as its exact mirror in the east. It hung on the horizon even redder than the sun, like some kind of blood orange. It’s now fully back to its normal bright white, almost directly above us now. It feels quite friendly, just next to the good old North Star, our guide for tonight. This one star trillions of light years away which through some random intergalactic chance is our homing beacon. I promise you I haven’t become a space geek in the past few weeks. But the sky is amazing out here, so much more intense that anything I have seen before.
I think about you a lot, Cassie. I hope we can still be friends. I think it’s fair to say that I became a bit of a prat when I joined the army, a real puritan in many ways. The army gives you the opportunity to seize the moral high ground in virtually every situation, so that you look down on people and often actively despise them just because they haven’t decided to join the army. It is not a good look, and I am not proud of it. When I get back I promise I won’t be so bad. It would be great to see you when I get back on R & R. I’ll let you know when it is asap.
Better go now – we roll out of here in about half an hour and my gunner is telling me it’s my turn to make the brews on the little kettle we have inside the turret. What an impertinent wretch. I could spend hours trying to close this letter, so I’ll just take the easy way out and say that I am thinking of you, with love,
Tom
He sealed the bluey and dropped down into the turret to plug in the boiling vessel. ‘All right, Dusty, how do you want it?’
‘Oh cheers, sir, thought you’d never ask. Usual please, tea Julie Andrews.’
‘What?’
‘Julie Andrews. You know, Sound of Music. White nun.’
‘Oh, I see – white no sugar.’
‘Exactly, boss.’
‘What’s black with no sugar? Black nun?’
‘Yeah – tea Whoopi Goldberg. Do they teach you nothing at university?’
Tom made the brews and they sat on the turret breathing in the steam from the tops of their flasks. They were shivering, partly from the cool night air and partly because of the ticking clock, and their teeth chattered in curt machine-gun bursts. Tom drained his brew, jumped off the turret and trotted over to Staff Sergeant Grant next to Brennan’s wagon. As the SQMS, Grant was based in Bastion and so could post the letter. ‘Evening, SQMS; sorry to interrupt. You couldn’t bung this in the post, could you?’
‘Course sir, no dramas.’ He looked at the address. ‘Miss Cassandra Foskett. Interesting. What is she – out of ten, I mean? Any less than a four, mind, and I’m not going to send it, for your own good.’
Tom blushed and hoped it wouldn’t show in the moonlight. ‘She’s just a friend.’
‘Come on, sir; I ain’t falling for that. No fella’s just friends with any girl. You’re having a laugh.’
‘OK, hands up, guilty. Maybe she is more than a friend. As for the out of ten, I dunno, probably a two or a three. Face like a bulldog chewing a wasp. Only joking. Truthfully? I reckon a nine, possibly more. Way out of my league anyway. But you’ve got to dream, haven’t you? But if you could get it to the post I’d be grateful.’
‘Of course, sir, I promise. I’ll do it first thing you lot bugger off. And, sir,’ he said as Tom started to walk back to his wagon, ‘best of luck for the move. I’ll be thinking about you guys. Stay safe.’
Tom heard Grant’s concern not in the words themselves but in the soft manner they were spoken. ‘Thanks, SQMS, we will. We’ll be good.’
Not long left now: twenty to midnight. Tom scrambled up the Scimitar’s bar armour and into the turret. He carefully fastened his headphones and then put his helmet on top, did up his chinstrap and enjoyed the satisfying pop that said the button had securely hit its housing. He reached forward with his foot to nudge Davenport on the shoulder to wake him up. They tested the intercom. All good to go. He looked around him at the compact grid of wagons and the silhouettes of the gunners and commanders of each vehicle through the haze generated by the engines.
Ten minutes. Frenchie came up on the net for a final radio check, and in sequence all callsigns gave it. They had done this two hours ago in any case; it was more out of form than necessity.
Tom’s watch struck out the final few seconds, its luminous tick like a drumbeat. It hit midnight, and as if on cue Frenchie came up again. ‘Hello, all Tomahawk Callsigns, this is Tomahawk Zero Alpha. H-Hour. In order of march, move out. Best speed. Out.’
Henry’s four wagons started to roll, and then Scott followed on. SHQ moved next, in the middle of the column. As the final SHQ wagon left, Jesmond, the lead car of 3 Troop, moved, and Tom said over the intercom, ‘Right, Dav, we’re on.’ Davenport put the wagon up through the gears and then they were moving, wordlessly sliding through Bastion. They passed soldiers at the side of the road, who threw them thumbs up and shouted good luck.
On Tom’s left he noticed in the artillery camp the dark bulk of a GMLRS rocket system pointing into the sky, framed against the stars, and just as he was about to point it out to Dusty a plume of fire scorched from it into the night. Another and then a third followed in quick succession. Three phosphorus fireworks searing through the night and bathing their skin in white. Tom could see Dusty’s freckles. Frenchie came up on the net. ‘Fire mission for a contact in Sangin. Pity the folk who are going to end up beneath those thunderbolts. Out.’ Tom kept watching, his neck straining up as the bright smoke trails lingered way above them, memorials to the targets of the missiles, who would be dead long before they disappeared. Space-age weapons used at midnight to kill men who didn’t even have electricity in their homes.
Tom was taken back to when he was a boy, to when he watched footage of the first Gulf War, with Scud missile launches and rockets from aircraft carriers. He wasn’t shivering any more. He was grinning. Finally he had come into his inheritance.
At dawn Tom took off his goggles, slugged some water, swilled it around his mouth and spat it out over the side of the wagon, filthy from the packed dust which clung to his gums and his swollen tongue. He took a photo of himself on his digital camera and examined it. He had huge panda eyes where his goggles had been, and the rest of his face was caked in the dust that had been thrown up by the column through the night. Everything on the wagon was covered by it. It was in his rifle, it was in his pistol, and when he snapped the elastic on his helmet a cloud of dust jumped up. He could feel it in his crotch, and it clogged up his fingernails and matted his hair. Every pore was stuffed with it, and he couldn’t blink properly; his tear ducts had been blocked up even behind the goggles.
They were in a temporary halt, as 1 Troop barma’d the exit to a wadi that they had been driving up for a couple of hours. Tom rasped over the IC, ‘Dav, use this – get some kip. I’ll kick you when we’re on again. Dusty, I’ll stag on. Get your head down.’ But Dusty was already out, slumped in the turret, mouth open, head resting on the sight.
Tom looked back to the wagons behind him and gave a thumbs up to Jesmond and Trueman in their turrets. He felt the kind of giddiness that only comes on after extreme lack of sleep, and he stuffed a chocolate bar from the side bin down his mouth, hoping for a tiny sugar hit. The chewed chocolate became clogged by the dust in his mouth and moved down his throat
in a viscous lump, dragging sand and mucus down with it. His legs ached – he had been standing all night – and so he sat on the turret hatch and stretched them out in front of him, enjoying the creak of his muscles and the blood flowing back into starved capillaries. He moved his legs apart and then together and wondered what they would look like as stumps, what they would look like jagged and bloody after an IED strike. He had never before thought about how big legs were, how much blood they must contain.
He took his binoculars out and looked ahead of him. All the wagons in front had just one figure standing out of them; clearly everyone else was sleeping. The net was silent save for the occasional sitrep from Henry, whose wagons were inching along behind his four-man barma team, the gunners from his four cars, who were moving with brisk and purposeful steps up the shallow exit of the wadi, now and again stopping to examine the ground where a Vallon had picked up a reading.
One of the barma team called to the others to halt. He had obviously found something. The other three crouched down on their knees as he drew a paintbrush from his body armour, lay down on his front and brushed away at the dust. After a minute or so he picked up a small item, probably a coin or a wheel nut, hauled himself onto his knees again and dismissively tossed it aside. He gave a final cursory wave of his Vallon over the area and then stood up. The others all rose from their crouches and they continued their funny, deft ballet. Tom found it strange not being able to hear them and oddly lonely in his turret, cut off from the rest of the column by an eerie silence. The radio was quiet too. Here they were, a tooled-up violent caravan, all isolated from each other in a strange archipelago. He could see every wagon but talk to nobody.
After twenty minutes the exit had been cleared, and slowly every turret came to life again. Drivers were kicked awake, and water was thrown on sleepy faces. It only turned the dust into a cloying mud. The column started to move again, the sickly pale sun to their east shallow in a milky sky. Tom could feel its heat increase by the minute, and the desert sand lost its night-time greyness and paled into a white glare. The column rolled on. The horizontal light from the sun created shafts of rainbow prisms in the glinting, shifting dust, and Tom was surprised by his shadow imprinted on the haze of dust around him. He lost himself for a moment and looked more closely at the shadow, permanent against the ever-changing dust cloud. He waved his arm in the air, and the shadow copied it. He did it again and again, thinking of Cassie always being in front of him but then slipping away into the shadows. He drifted until his trance was broken by Dusty over the IC: ‘You OK, boss?’
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