‘Go on,’ the Major said. Jackson took a deep breath before continuing. The CO was frowning, but at least he was listening.
‘There’s a long gun somewhere in the village. They’ll know that we’ve taken casualties, so they could be waiting for a Chinook to come in. They won’t know they’re grounded.’ Another rocket whistled over their heads, followed by an explosion. Close, Jackson thought, but still outside the compound. ‘Or they’re hoping that we’ll go after them, in which case their sniper will pick us off one by one. Or they’ll wait.’
‘They could be trying to grind us down,’ the young 2nd Lieutenant said. ‘Keep us up all bloody night with rockets, and then attack at first light when we’re knackered.’
‘That’s probably more likely, sir,’ Jackson said to the young officer.
The CO sat heavily on a canvas chair and ran his fingers through his hair. Jackson watched him try to decide what to do, before realising that they should probably all be wearing helmets. Not that it would do much good if one of those 107mm rockets came in through the roof of the CP.
‘Right,’ the Major said loudly, startling them both. ‘That’s what we’ll do. Hunker down. Jacko — get out there and make sure everyone’s in cover. Any more casualties and get back here with a sitrep. We’ll keep trying to raise Bastion.’
Jackson made his way over to the door, picking up his helmet as he did so. He was fiddling with the strap under his chin when he heard the CO calling his name.
‘Sir?’ Jackson replied.
‘Thanks, Jacko. Just make sure the boys know what to do. Keep their heads down and out of trouble.’
‘Got that, sir,’ Jackson replied as he stepped back out into the compound.
Adams watched as Lizzie leaned toward him, sitting forward in her chair. Apart from a slight widening of her eyes at his earlier statement, her face was impassive. Her eyes flicked between his, and for a moment Adams was certain that she was about to kiss him. She grabbed the bottle of wine from the table and filled up his glass before pushing her chair back, its legs scraping on the stone floor of the restaurant.
‘I thought,’ she said, her voice barely above a whisper, ‘that you had a bit more respect for me than that.’ Picking up her room key from the table, she nodded in the direction of his glass of wine. ‘Fill your boots,’ she said, her voice back to normal. ‘Enjoy. I’ll see you in a few hours at the airhead.’ Lizzie nodded towards the concierge who was still sitting behind his desk pretending to read a book. ‘He’ll get you a cab.’
Lizzie walked off towards the staircase. Adams hoped that she would at least look round and say goodnight, but she pushed her way through the door without a second glance. He looked at the full glass of wine in front of him and knowing that there was no chance of him standing up in the next few minutes, took a sip and looked out at the lights of the harbour.
‘Well, fuck it anyway,’ he said under his breath. ‘That went well.’
It took Lizzie a couple of tries to get the key into the keyhole of her hotel room. Whether that was the wine, what had just happened, or a combination of both wasn’t obvious to her. She opened the door, and locked it behind her, fighting tears as she did so.
Lizzie put the half-full bottle of wine down on her bedside table and kicked off her sandals. She looked around the room, saw her half-packed suitcase on one of the armchairs, and was reminded as she set her alarm for two hours’ time that not long after it went off, she would be going back to Afghanistan. Lizzie thought about Adams and hoped that the concierge had been able to sort him out with a taxi, before thinking again about what would be happening if he was here with her now.
Lizzie slipped off her dress, letting it crumple in a heap before shivering. She rubbed her arms to try to get rid of the goose bumps. It wasn’t cold in the slightest, but she still had goose bumps. Lizzie looked across at the sink where her toothbrush and toothpaste were sitting, but decided that she really couldn’t be bothered to do her teeth. There was no point if she was only going to be asleep for a couple of hours. She picked up the bottle of wine, and realising that she’d left her glass downstairs, drank directly from it.
‘Classy, mate,’ she said to herself. ‘Really bloody classy.’ As she said the words, she realised that she wasn’t sure whether she was talking about Adams or herself.
She pulled back the covers to her bed and slid into it. There was a lot of empty space in the bed, plenty of room for two, but it was too late for that now. Lizzie picked up the headphones for her iPod, jamming the earbuds firmly into her ears. She flicked through the music on it, before settling on a Snow Patrol album that she had bought just before going out to Afghanistan. She lay there, listening to the music, thinking about what could have been happening if she’d not walked off. She thought about Adams as she shut her eyes tightly, the fact that he was her boss, the fact that he was a friend. Lizzie knew in her heart that she didn’t really care about any of these things. The only thing that she could think about as the tears started rolling onto her pillow was him.
Adams knocked softly for a second time on the bedroom door. He looked at the numbers on the door, certain that he had the right one. After all, they had been painted in large letters on the key fob that Lizzie had thrown on the table earlier. He listened but couldn’t hear anything. Lizzie had only gone to her room a few minutes ago, and he didn’t think that she would be asleep just yet. Maybe she was ignoring him? He wouldn’t be surprised after what he had said, but as he had watched her walk, away he had realised immediately that he had made a big mistake. He just wanted to apologise, that was all.
He thought for a second about trying the doorknob to see if the door was open but instantly dismissed it as a really bad idea. Reluctantly, he turned from the door and walked back down the corridor to the stairs. When he got to the lobby below, he walked across to the concierge’s desk. As he arrived, the elderly man behind the desk looked up at him with a surprised expression.
‘Taxi?’ Adams said. ‘Please?’ The concierge’s expression changed to one of sadness as he looked at Adams. He reached for the telephone and said to Adams with a thick Greek accent.
‘Akrotiri?’ Adams nodded his head. The concierge dialled a number, and a few seconds later was talking rapidly to someone on the other end of the line. The only word that Adams understood was the name of the base. As he put down the telephone, the concierge held up his hand with his fingers and thumb extended and said something in Greek that Adams assumed was ‘five minutes’.
He thanked the concierge and went back to sit in the seat that he had been sitting in earlier by the window of the hotel. Adams looked at the door to the stairs that Lizzie had disappeared through, hoping that she might reappear. He caught the concierge looking at him, the sad expression back on his face, and considered how ironic it was that the old man had picked up on exactly what had happened even though they weren’t able to understand a word that the other one could say and were probably separated by over fifty years.
Adams closed his eyes and thought back to when Lizzie was sitting opposite him. He replayed in his head as much as he could remember. How she looked, how she sounded, and the way his heart skipped when she was leaning toward him and he thought she was about to kiss him.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ he said to himself. ‘What have you just done?’
He looked out across the seafront, and the twinkling lights of boats moored in the bay reflecting off the water. All in all, his rest and recuperation had been absolutely shit. On the other side of the road, a dilapidated Skoda with a magnetic taxi sign on the driver’s door pulled up. With a sigh, Adams stood and walked towards the hotel door, waving at the concierge as he did so. He stepped out into the cool night and walked across the road to the taxi.
38
Emma woke with a start, not sure for a moment where she was. She blinked a couple of times before remembering that she was on the TriStar out of Brize, heading back to Afghanistan. Her heart sank at the thought, but when she remembered th
at she would be seeing Lizzie when the plane got to Cyprus, she brightened a little bit.
According to her watch, it was just after eight in the evening, United Kingdom time. Cyprus was two hours ahead, so it would be gone ten o’clock there. Emma wondered for a moment what Lizzie was up to. If she had any sense, Emma thought with a smile, she’d be propping up a bar somewhere getting a few last-minute drinks in before the flight.
Emma stretched, easing her neck from side to side to work out a muscle spasm. She must have gone to sleep in an awkward position, but at least she had a bank of three seats to herself. When all the passengers were being boarded, the loadmaster in charge of the cabin, a miserable looking Warrant Officer who no doubt had seen it all before, had checked all their boarding cards. Most of the soldiers in the line, including the policeman she’d been talking to earlier, had been sent to the right and down into the main body of the plane. When the Warrant Officer checked Emma’s boarding card, he almost cracked a smile and nodded towards the right-hand side where a curtain separated the front of the plane from the rear.
‘You’re through there,’ he’d said in a gruff voice before turning his attention to the soldier behind Emma. She stepped through the curtain and realised that the seats in the front of the plane were spaced much further apart from each other than in the back. There were a few people in flying suits lounging around, and as far as she could see, she was the only non-RAF person in that part of the plane.
‘Hey,’ a young Senior Aircraftman had said to Emma as she looked around the cabin. ‘You must have friends in high places for the Warrant to send you up here.’ Behind them, on the other side of the curtain, they could hear the Warrant Officer arguing with someone. The conversation ended with the loadie telling whoever he was arguing with that he didn’t care if he was a full Colonel or not, he could sit in his allocated seat or get off the plane. Emma looked at the young man in front of her and they both laughed.
‘I don’t know about friends in high places,’ Emma had said as she took the cup of coffee that was being offered to her. ‘But I think maybe I have got friends in the right places.’
The crick in her neck finally appeased, Emma nipped to the toilet. As she came out of the cubicle, she peeped through a small gap in the curtain into the rear of the plane. It was crammed full of soldiers, most of them sleeping, a few of them giving her filthy looks. She giggled and closed the gap in the curtain before returning to her seat.
The next time Emma woke up, it was because the young Senior Aircraftman was shaking her shoulder. She opened her eyes and saw that he was holding a cup of coffee in his hand.
‘Here you go, mate,’ he said, pushing the cardboard cup in her direction. ‘It’s not Starbucks, but it’s the best we’ve got.’ Emma straightened herself up in the seat and took the coffee.
‘You’re a star, thank you.’
‘No problem,’ he replied. ‘We’re coming in to land in Akrotiri in about twenty minutes. The layover’s about ninety minutes, so you can stretch your legs and what have you.’
‘Can’t I stay on the plane?’ Emma asked.
‘Not when it’s being refuelled you can’t, no,’ the young man said with a smile. ‘We’ve all got to get off. Even Grumpy over there.’ He nodded toward the loadmaster, who was deep in conversation with a man in a flight suit who barely looked old enough to shave, let alone fly a passenger plane. ‘So how did you end up here, anyway? In the front?’
‘Probably my cousin, Matthew. He works on the ground crew at Brize.’
‘Big ugly bloke? Mashed up ears?’
‘Yeah, that’s him.’
‘Don’t tell him I said that, mind.’
‘I won’t, don’t worry,’ Emma laughed. ‘Not as long as you keep bringing me coffee.’
Half an hour later, Emma stepped down the stairs of the TriStar and into the muggy heat of the Cyprus night. Following the directions of the bored-looking ground crew, she made her way into what could only be described as a holding pen for passengers. It was surrounded by chain-link fences and had a couple of Portaloos in the corner. At least they looked reasonably clean, but Emma had no intention whatsoever of finding out if they were or not. Inside the fence, there were already quite a few people milling about. They hadn’t got off the plane, Emma realised, so they must be joining the flight.
Emma looked around to see if she could see Lizzie, but all the new passengers were male. As she scoured the faces, she recognised one them — the Flight Lieutenant from the TRT. Adams, she thought his name was, as she walked over to where he was sitting. When she got to within a few feet of him, Emma realised that he was wearing bright pink espadrilles.
‘Hi, sir,’ Emma said. ‘How’s tricks?’ He looked up at her, dark circles under both eyes.
‘Hey, Emma isn’t it?’
‘Yep, that’s me.’ Emma smiled at him, pleased that he knew her name. ‘How was your R&R?’
‘Bit hit and miss, to be honest,’ the officer replied with a sigh. ‘How about yours?’
‘Yeah, it was okay,’ she said. They looked at each other for a few seconds before Emma continued. ‘Is Lizzie about?’
‘She’s about somewhere,’ he replied. ‘Or at least, she should be.’ He looked down at his hands as an awkward silence developed. Emma was on the verge of asking him about his footwear when a door in the building behind him opened and Lizzie walked through.
‘Talk of the devil,’ Emma said, crossing to greet her. They hugged, but the combat boots Lizzie was carrying made it difficult. ‘How you doing, babe?’
‘All good, mate,’ Lizzie replied, glancing across at Adams. ‘Hang on a sec.’ Emma watched as she walked over to Adams and dumped the boots at his feet. ‘You left these in my room,’ Emma heard Lizzie say. He mumbled a response that Emma didn’t catch as Lizzie walked back over to join her. ‘Come on,’ Lizzie said. ‘Let’s go over here and grab a seat.’
Emma let Lizzie pull her arm and lead her over to an empty bench. The two women sat next to each other, and Emma saw Lizzie glance over at Adams who was trying to pull his espadrilles off his feet.
‘Lizzie,’ Emma said in a firm voice. ‘What’s happened?’
‘What do you mean?’ her friend replied, trying and failing to sound nonchalant.
‘Please tell me you’ve not slept with your boss?’
‘No,’ Lizzie barked back. ‘I haven’t.’ Emma stared at her, not sure whether to believe her or not.
‘Something’s happened, though?’ Emma pressed. Lizzie said something under her breath that Emma didn’t hear. ‘Sorry, mate?’ Emma asked. ‘I didn’t catch that.’
‘I said, I nearly did,’ Lizzie replied. She looked at Emma, tears in the corner of her eyes. ‘His girlfriend dumped him while he was away. He was going to ask her to marry him as well, but when he got back, she’d done a runner.’
‘Bloody hell, the poor bloke,’ Emma said. ‘So what happened between the two of you, then?’
‘We’d been out, had a few drinks and a meal, and he just asked me if I wanted to go to bed with him.’
‘What, he said that?’
‘Well, not in so many words, no,’ Lizzie said with a sigh before continuing. ‘But that’s what he meant. I didn’t know whether to slap him or kiss him.’ Emma started giggling. ‘What’s so funny?’ Lizzie asked her.
‘You could have done both.’
‘Oh, shut up.’ Lizzie looked at Emma, and Emma could see in the dim light that she was at least smiling. ‘If I’d done that, then we would have ended up in bed.’ They sat in silence for a few seconds before Emma replied.
‘Would that have been such a bad thing, mate?’
‘Oh, Emma,’ Lizzie said, her voice breaking. She turned around on the seat so that she was facing away from Adams, who was trying to pack his espadrilles into his small rucksack. ‘I don’t need this. What am I going to do?’
39
Lance Corporal Jackson shook his head from side to side to clear the tiredness. He was crouched down by
one of the walls, deliberately not sitting down so that he wouldn’t fall asleep. Although he wasn’t on sentry duty, he didn’t want to waste any time trying to wake up if something happened. Over the last couple of hours, rockets had been flying over their heads at irregular intervals. Only one of them had landed inside the compound, impacting not far from the accommodation, but it hadn’t detonated. One for the bomb disposal guys at some point in the future. Sporadic gunfire sounded from the village, but Jackson knew that it was only the insurgents letting them know that they were still there, and doing their best to keep the soldiers awake. The problem was, it was working.
Around him, the other soldiers at the FOB were mostly dozing fitfully, even though they were all wearing helmets and body armour. As Jackson watched, one of them half woke up, grabbing his rifle which was balanced on his lap as he did so, before closing his eyes again. On the other side of the wall, the black sky was slowly lightening as the dawn approached.
Jackson saw a bright light over on the other side of the compound and squinted at the door that had just opened. The CO, Major Fletcher, was standing there staring at Jackson, beckoning him over. Bloody hell, Jackson thought as he got to his feet, he’s got good eyesight if he can see me from there in this light. But standing in an open door with a bright lamp behind him probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do with a sniper still out there somewhere. Jackson broke into a run so that he could get the Major back into cover.
‘Jacko, get in here,’ the CO said as the Lance Corporal approached the door of the Command Post. ‘We’ve got an update.’
Inside the small CP, the young 2nd Lieutenant was standing over the radio. He looked up at Jackson with tired eyes before glancing across at the CO.
‘Er, sir, Jacko. I mean Lance Corporal Jackson…’ the 2nd Lieutenant stuttered before gathering his wits. ‘I’m on with Bastion Ops, they’re trying to get something out to us.’
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