by Andy McNab
Liam started to call out again, but then spotted something. Whether it was Mike or Cameron he wasn’t at first sure. It was just the top of someone’s head, matted with dust and dirt and blood. He looked around, could see no one else lying in front of him. Climbing up, Liam saw that the rest of the body was, as far as he could tell, covered in the shattered, broken remains of the sangar. It was only on edging closer that he realized it was Cameron.
Or what was left of him.
Both of Cameron’s legs had been blown off at the knee, the mashed-up stumps a mess of torn flesh and bone, blood thick with muck and dirt. The right side of Cameron’s body was a mess of weeping burns and dust, all mixing up into a thick, oily mud. The Kevlar plates in his body armour had obviously protected him a little, but they were twisted and broken, and Liam could see nasty jagged splinters of wood jutting out from his sides, from his arms. Cameron’s face was burned and cut and bloodied.
The shock of what was now before him hammered down onto Liam and he had to stop himself collapsing. For a moment, though, he couldn’t move, the utter appalling horror flooring him immediately.
Paul appeared as Liam stalled, nailed to the moment by the murderous violence in front of him.
‘Hacker was blown out of the lookout!’ he shouted. ‘The hard bastard’s somehow survived!’
Liam heard what Paul said, but he wasn’t really listening. Dropping to his knees, he dragged all that he knew about first aid from the back of his mind, pushed it forwards, and got on with what he knew he had to do: clean Cameron down, and try and save his life. Paul joined him as he pulled a tourniquet out of the medical kit and tightened it around Cameron’s left leg. Cameron shuddered, his breathing ragged and rattling in his throat.
‘I need another tourniquet! Now!’
Paul was on it even as Liam’s words died and he took over and dealt with Cameron’s right leg immediately with lightning proficiency.
‘Speak to him!’ Paul shouted at Liam, as he began to sort out the rest of Cameron’s appalling injuries. ‘Remember your training. He knows you best out of the lot of us, so it’s you he needs now. I can deal with his injuries.’
Paul then shouted down to Sergeant Reynolds, who Liam saw was on the radio immediately and calling in a medevac.
Liam grabbed Cameron’s hand. ‘Dinsdale, it’s Scott,’ he said, not really knowing what to say to someone in such a state. He’d never seen anything like this before, and if he’d expected his emotions to go crazy, the exact opposite had happened: if anything, he felt numb, dead almost. ‘Gandalf’s dealing with your injuries and Sergeant Reynolds has called for a medevac. You’re going to be fine, just stick with me, OK? I’m not leaving your side. Just hold on.’
Another explosion shook the compound.
‘The bastards won’t give up now!’ hissed Paul under his breath.
Liam spoke again to Cameron. ‘You’re going to owe me after this, mate,’ he said. ‘And I don’t mean a few beers either. My cleaning bill’s going to be massive, thanks to you.’
‘You’re doing good,’ said Paul. ‘Keep it up, OK? Even if he’s not responding, just keep on reassuring him. He just needs to hear your voice.’
Liam did exactly that, and was soon talking about Jon and Matt, reminiscing about their training.
Sergeant Reynolds appeared. ‘Medevac’s on its way,’ he said. ‘As cover we’ve got three Apache helicopters heading our way to pummel Terry with a shitload of ordnance.’
The Apache, armed with an M230 chain gun, Hellfire missiles and flechette-armed rockets, was a weapon Liam knew the Taliban were seriously afraid of. The chain gun alone was capable of unleashing a hail of exploding shells, with a kill radius of 10 feet when used against unprotected, standing targets, at 300 rpm. The Hellfire missile was a laser-guided weapon carrying a twenty-pound warhead, accurate to a range of 8,000 metres and effective against tanks and pretty much anything else it was thrown at. The flechette-armed rockets would send in a cloud of over 80 5-inch-long darts travelling at Mach 1, and capable of piercing tree trunks.
‘There’s also a C130 gunship in the air, so it’s doing a fly-by for us,’ added the sergeant. ‘It’s closing in to give the Taliban a good hammering before the Apache get here to clean up what’s left. It’s going to get noisy.’
‘They’re sending a Spectre gunship?’ said Paul, raising a grim smile. ‘Then it’s bye-bye Taliban.’
‘Is he going to make it?’ Liam said, looking at the sergeant and forgetting his training for a second, his concern for the life of his friend overriding everything else. Paul had already sorted Cameron as best he could, stabilized him, and bandaged his wounds.
‘I’ll come for you when the medevac arrives,’ said Sergeant Reynolds, not answering Liam’s question. ‘Between now and then, keep your head down, cover your ears and talk to Cameron. Understand?’
‘Yes, Sergeant.’ Liam nodded, and Reynolds was gone.
A few minutes later the whole world shook like an earthquake had hit.
‘That’ll be the gunship,’ said Paul. ‘Be thankful we’re not on the receiving end of what it’s sending down.’
Liam knew exactly what Paul was getting at. Armed with two 20mm M61 Vulcan cannons, one Bofors 40mm autocannon, and one 105mm M102 cannon, the gunship could saturate a target with an almost unmatchable amount of firepower. It was as horrifying as it was awesome. There was no surviving what it could spit out if you got in its way.
The sound died down. Then, as Liam was continuing to chatter on to Cameron, the darkness was split apart by the white light of explosions ripping apart the Taliban positions.
‘That’s the Apache,’ said Paul. ‘Whatever wasn’t dead to begin with soon will be. You ready?’
Liam nodded. Then Sergeant Reynolds’ voice cut through the moment. ‘Medevac’s a minute away!’
The minute went by in a second, and with Liam and Jackson’s help, the rescue crew had Cameron strapped onto a stretcher, wired into a saline drip and out of the ruins of the sangar.
In the courtyard of the compound, Sergeant Reynolds ordered the multiple to cover the extraction.
‘I’ll go with Dinsdale,’ said Liam, making ready to head off with the rescue team. ‘I need to.’
Reynolds, however, ordered him back up into the remaining sangar with Jackson.
‘He’s got the best chance he’ll ever have now that the medevac’s here,’ he explained. ‘You’ve still got a job to do. Now let them do theirs.’
‘But he’s my mate!’ said Liam; and he knew how weak he sounded, but no other words would come. All he could see was his injured mate and he’d never in his life felt as helpless as he did at that moment.
‘You’ve done all you can, Scott,’ said Reynolds, stepping closer, his voice firm yet kind. ‘Let the pros take over.’
Liam glanced up at his sergeant. The man looked weary, covered in dust, but there remained a steel in his eyes that betrayed his fierce determination not to let the Taliban have their day. ‘Your job is to man your weapon and make sure that any Taliban lucky enough to have survived that assault from the air are occupied enough to ignore the helicopter.’
Liam watched as Cameron was stretchered towards the waiting Chinook; then, with a nod from Sergeant Reynolds, he jogged back to the surviving sangar. The sound of the Chinook lifting off seemed to rattle the darkness, and Liam, back on the GPMG, opened fire on what was left of the Taliban, his fury at what had happened to Cameron raw and burning and hungry for revenge.
22
WHEN MORNING SLIPPED forward from the horizon, a stillness hung in the air, as did the smell of a firefight. Liam was exhausted, but still too gunned up to rest. Leaning against the GPMG, his eyes staring into the light, willing the Taliban to show themselves, he tried to ignore the images burned into his mind of Cameron and his injuries. It didn’t work. Even when he closed his eyes, he saw them.
Sergeant Reynolds gave a call for the multiple to come together. Liam and Corporal Jackson ducked out of their
sangar and came down into the compound. Sergeant Reynolds was sitting round where they usually met to discuss foot patrols. John, Paul, Jason and Mike were with him.
Liam stared at Mike as he sat down. The man was bruised, his clothes torn, but that was about it. He looked hardly any different. How the hell had he survived?
With everyone quiet, Sergeant Reynolds started to speak, his face serious and drained of all colour.
‘Dinsdale was immediately taken to surgery on arrival at Camp Bastion,’ he said, his voice stating each word in a tone that seemed to be working almost too hard to display no emotion. ‘However, after two hours with the surgeons, he . . .’ Sergeant Reynolds stumbled over his words. Liam’s whole body froze. He didn’t want to hear what the sergeant was going to say next, but there was nothing he could do to stop it. ‘His injuries were just too severe,’ he went on. ‘Dinsdale died at just after 0400 hours.’
‘Scott?’
Liam, his eyes still stinging with tears, looked up into the face of Sergeant Reynolds.
‘We need to sort Dinsdale’s stuff out,’ said the sergeant. ‘It has to be done now, in case something else kicks off. We owe it to him. And because you knew him better than the rest of us, you’re the one best suited to making sure everything that should go home does.’
Liam understood. ‘I’ll do it now,’ he said, and stood up. His muscles were so tight it was as though they might snap with even the smallest of movements.
‘You did everything you could,’ said Sergeant Reynolds. ‘You must know that.’
Liam nodded weakly, forced back the tears that threatened to bubble up again.
‘I’ve lost mates,’ said the sergeant, his voice lower, a little more friendly perhaps, but no less authoritative. ‘But there’s a time and a place to deal with the grief. You’re a good soldier, Scott. Focus on that. Don’t let what happened cause you to lose focus and drop your guard. I’m depending on you as much as the others.’
With that, Sergeant Reynolds left and Liam made his way over to Cameron’s bed. Sitting down, he slumped forward, dropping his head into his hands. He was numb, like the death of Cameron had taken away all feeling, all sensation. He wanted to cry, but couldn’t. What tears he’d shed had already dried up. Nothing seemed to work inside him to make sense of what had happened. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? There was no sense in it. No reason. They were in a war zone. People got killed. It could just as easily have been any of them, but this time it was Cameron.
Liam sat back, stared at the sky. He’d lost two friends now. First Dan, now Cameron. He wanted to be anywhere but here. Cameron was the one constant he’d had through training and out to Afghanistan, and Liam had never felt so alone in his life. Or so helpless. Then he thought about what the sergeant had said and knew that he was right. He had a loyalty not just to Cameron’s memory but to his mates; hell, even to Mike. He’d grieve for Cameron later, and do it properly. If he dwelled on it now, he’d only be letting the Taliban win. And he wasn’t about to let that happen.
A few minutes later, as Liam was just finishing the hard task of sorting through Cameron’s stuff, a shout came from across the compound and he snapped round to see Lance Corporal Jackson signalling for everyone to join him. With nothing else to do for Cameron, Liam jogged over, arriving at the same time as Mike. Neither of them looked at each other, or said a word. When everyone was together, Sergeant Reynolds told them what the fuss was all about.
‘We’ve just this moment received the emergency code Man Away,’ he said. ‘A lad from the multiple at Checkpoint 1 has gone missing.’
Liam saw Jason sign for everyone to stop. With Cameron’s death not even twelve hours gone, and now away from Checkpoint 3 and searching for a lost soldier, Liam was raging inside. He wasn’t just out here on a manhunt. He was out to get one back on the Taliban for killing his friend.
With Macdonald, Pearce, White and Allan restocked with fresh supplies of ammunition, Liam and the rest were picked up in a Chinook and flown to where the missing soldier had last been seen. Though it was an area they’d not covered before, it looked no different to the area of Afghanistan he’d grown used to. Strangely, he longed to be back home and walking through a little bit of rain. Afghanistan’s endless dryness and dust-filled air was something he figured he would never miss.
According to what Sergeant Reynolds had said, pretty much every Coalition soldier within a hundred-mile radius had been sent in to join with the search. A missing soldier was a priority above all others. After all, if you went missing yourself, you’d want to think the rest of the Army was turning the country upside down to find you. And, right at that moment, that was exactly what it was doing.
Jason pointed. ‘Pile of stones up ahead,’ he said. ‘Looks bloody suspicious, if you ask me. Just going to take a look.’
Liam wanted him to get a move on, but that wasn’t about to happen. Any possible hint of an IED was caution city: there was no point hurrying and getting blown apart. In front of him, Liam saw Mike shifting from one foot to another, keeping his blood flowing to stop them going numb, but at that moment, whatever Mike thought of him, he could not have cared less. All that mattered was soldiering. It was something he was good at and he wasn’t going to fuck up.
Liam looked ahead to see Jason stretched out on his belly, slowly prising apart an odd little pile of stones with a thin length of metal. From where Liam was he could see that Jason had been right: the stones did look strange.
A moment later, Jason called out ‘Clear!’ then climbed back to his feet. The multiple moved off again, treading in his footsteps along the track they’d been following for the past half a mile.
Liam did his best to ignore the flashbacks to Cameron’s injuries, but it was near impossible. After a while, he just accepted them and used the feelings to make him even more alert. The track was narrow, barely wide enough to walk two abreast, and Liam just couldn’t work out what its purpose could ever have been. It didn’t connect anything to something else, and though worn, there were few signs, if any, that anyone had used it in the last thousand years. It was just a simple track, probably of no use to anything but a few goats.
He turned his attention to the fields running down their left. They’d been harvested and were lying bare for the sun to bake them up. A series of channels and gullies and ditches divided the fields from each other, and most had water flowing in the bottom, turning the earth to a thick, sticky gloop.
Liam had found from experience that the longer he stared at the view, the less he saw. So he did what he always did when this happened. He closed his eyes, took a breath to focus, then opened them again. It took a moment for his eyes to recalibrate, but when they did, something leaped out at him. It was an odd shape lying in a field. Its outline was soft, rather than lumpy and jagged as it would have been were it comprised of stones and lumps of mud. He stared at it a bit longer. No, there was definitely something wrong here. Whatever it was, it didn’t belong, and they needed to have a nosy.
‘Sergeant!’
Reynolds snapped round. ‘What is it, Scott?’
Liam pointed out into the field. ‘Over there. Don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t look right.’
Sergeant Reynolds grabbed his binos and the rest of the multiple swung their eyes to where Liam was looking.
Seconds passed slow and steady, like honey running off a spoon.
‘Call it in!’ shouted Sergeant Reynolds to Jackson, who was already on the radio. ‘We’ve found him.’
Liam, not thinking, made to step forward.
‘Don’t bloody move!’ yelled the corporal.
Liam froze.
‘The ground in front of us isn’t clear,’ Jackson continued. ‘Could be anything out there. Think!’
There was a moment’s silence.
‘Right,’ said Reynolds. ‘Everyone back to me. Now.’
The soldiers gathered around the sergeant.
‘OK, listen in. We’ve found him. But we have no idea what stat
e he’s in, if he’s injured, dead, even booby-trapped.’
That thought made Liam sick to his gut – that anyone would use another human being as a trap. But he knew that it happened, and Sergeant Reynolds had been right to hold them back.
‘Finch,’ ordered the sergeant, ‘I want you going in. Standard procedure, but be more cautious than ever, right?’
Jason nodded.
‘The rest of you, I want eyes on the surrounding area. Anything moves, anything so much as breathes, we need to identify it and make sure it’s a friendly. If it isn’t, we take it out. And we need Finch covered. Anything kicks off then we get him back here sharp. Understood?’
Everyone nodded a ‘Yes, Sergeant.’
Jason moved off and the rest of the multiple spread out. Liam scanned the surrounding area, but the brush was thick, impenetrable, and if anyone was hiding out there, he had a horrible feeling they wouldn’t know until the bullets went flying. He flicked his eyes to Jason. He was halfway to the downed soldier, going slow, checking everything. One casualty was bad, but two would be a hell of a lot worse.
Jason was at the soldier now, checking him over, going slow, methodical with every movement he made. He turned his head towards the others and raised a hand. Liam wasn’t sure what he meant. Was the soldier OK, dead, what? He looked past Mike, who was on his knees some twenty metres on, and over to Sergeant Reynolds for confirmation of what they were doing next.
The crack of a gunshot split the moment. Liam turned, saw Jason drop to the ground.
‘Man down!’ yelled Jackson. ‘Man down!’
But Jason was up again, returning fire.
‘Cover him!’ shouted Sergeant Reynolds. ‘Now!’
Bullets flew as Liam and the rest opened up with everything they had. The sound of automatic weapons danced in the air. Liam saw Jason grab the downed soldier, hoist him over his shoulders, then leg it back towards them. The multiple put down a solid wall of fire as Jason, his legs hammering hard, his face stern and determined, raced towards them. When he reached Sergeant Reynolds, he skidded to the ground.