by J. M. Newlin
Broken
By J.M. Newlin
BASE Jumping Front Cover Image Credit to
Adrenaline Art at http://adrenalineart.com/
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This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are a figment of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © J.M. Newlin 2014
Contents
Chapter One – Dying in a foreign field
Chapter Two – One Year Later
Chapter 3 – At the bottom of the bottle
Chapter 4 – Homecoming
Chapter 5 – Everyday
Chapter 6 – Daily Grind
Chapter 7 – Troubled Waters
Chapter One – Dying in a foreign field
The zip crack of a round passing by his head brought Ben Checker back to reality.
Humping 150lbs of equipment around in the blazing heat of Afghanistan’s Sangin province, sometimes a man needs to give his mind a break and think some happier thoughts.
Getting back to the Forward Operating Base, some food and perhaps a sleep.
Ben’s pleasant day dream was shattered as a hailstorm of 7.62mm rounds hammered towards him across 300 meters of otherwise beautiful countryside.
‘Fucking contact, get down!’
Was it really necessary to state the obvious Ben thought as he dropped to the ground.
It wasn’t as if anyone in the platoon was going to be unaware of the lead bees passing between them at this point, but somehow shouting it out made soldiers feel that they were doing something useful when, for the time being, they were hiding and hoping not to get shot.
A chorus of shouts went up from the squad.
‘Where they shooting from?’
‘I’ve no fucking idea!’
‘Well start looking!’
Just as Ben popped his head up to start scanning, the lone AK-47 that had started this firefight had now been joined by a PKM, a belt fed machine gun that could bark out 250 rounds per minute, which laid down a continuous stream of fire from the tree line 250 meters away.
‘Tree line 250 meters to our 1 o’clock! Enemy PKM gunner’ screamed Ben, ducking his head as a burst of fire stitched the earth 5 meters from his head.
The Taliban gunner had forgotten to wipe clean his barrel after oiling it, giving off a huge plume of smoke every time he fired.
Dumbass thought Ben. If we act fast we’ve got him.
Almost instantly the squad began responding in kind to the Taliban gunner, the deep thud of their Minimi machine guns booming in Ben’s ears as they started hammering away at the tree line where Ben had spotted the Taliban’s fire.
Reaching forward to clear the dirt out of his way, Ben levelled his SA-80 at where he imagined the PKM gunner to be and started squeezing the trigger, each squeeze sending a 5.56mm piece of metal screaming towards the Taliban position.
Ben imagined his rounds piercing the gunner’s skull and blowing his brains over the soil behind his firing position, though if he had any sense he would have moved positions by now.
But not very far.
His squad support gunners on the Minimi’s knew their jobs and they kept putting fire down on each end of the tree line, pinning the enemy in a small section of the grounds so that artillery or air support could be brought down on top of them, blowing their worthless lives and bodies into smithereens.
The AK-47 was still sending rounds down on Ben and his platoon, but it was just an annoying insect compared to this PKM gunner – first deal with the enemy heavy weapons and then deal with the smaller arms.
‘We’ve gotta move out of this field’ hollered Ben’s squad commander Corporal Holland ‘we’re sitting ducks’
He was right, this field was flat and exposed, if they didn’t move out of this field now they were going to start taking casualties.
PFFFSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHH BOOOM
‘Jeeyyysus Christ!!!’ screamed half the squad in unison.
The RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade) had come out of nowhere from virtually behind them, whizzing over their heads before exploding in the open field only 20 meters from them.
Almost immediately two more firing positions opened up off to their left with a mixture of AK and PKM fire turning the situation from bad to much, much worse.
The fire was coming in from 3 different sides, they were caught in a 360 ambush.
We really need to get out of this field thought Ben.
‘Ben I need more link!’ called Alex off to his left.
Alex was hammering off bursts at the PKM gunner to their front to keep him suppressed whilst the rest of the guys tried to pin point and put fire down on the other Taliban firing positions.
But Alex was running out of ammunition for his belt fed machine gun and needed to quickly add another link of ammunition on the quickly disappearing belt.
If Ben didn’t get it hooked on in time, Alex’s weapon would run dry and the pause in fire would give the enemy machine gunner a chance to re-open up on them.
Flicking on the safety chance for his rifle, Ben reached around his shoulders, letting the rifle drop the few inches onto the ground and pulled a belt of 100 rounds off from around his shoulders and into his hands.
Cradling his weapon and the belt in his hands, Ben began to crawl as quick as he could towards Alex as he began to slow down his rate of fire to ensure he had enough ammunition to last until Ben could link some more to his gun.
God, he even looks cool now thought Ben as he pushed through the narrow dip in the ground that gave him cover from fire as he moved towards Alex.
Alex Kinney was 26 years old, with bulging biceps and blonde hair, he could have been a male model but he decided to join the Army instead.
None of the lads in his platoon could work out why he would choose the Army over being a male model, but Alex knew that walking up and down on a podium wouldn’t fulfill his yearning for adventure that the Army could provide.
And no matter how wet, cold, miserable or tired everyone else was, Alex would always be there with a smile on his face, cracking a joke and looking damn cool.
He’d already done one tour in Afghanistan, for most of the squad, including Ben, this was their first tour.
If he wasn’t already their hero, his combat experience made him so.
Ben and Alex had been born and raised in the same area of London, they had even gone to the same school but never met until they joined the Army.
And they moment they did, they were inseparable.
‘Come on wanker, I’m gonna die of old age by the time you reach me!’
Alex, ever ready with a joke even in the worst of situations.
Did anything actually scare him Ben thought?
Ben crawled the last meter to Alex and hastily clipped on the new belt to the gun.
Alex immediately upped the firing rate once again and Ben quickly pulled another couple of belts off his body so that he could keep the gun firing without any more stoppages.
The platoon was putting out as much suppressing fire as they could muster on the Taliban positions but it wasn’t enough. They were caught in the killing zone of a perfect 360 ambush and they were all going to die unless they could bring in air support onto the Taliban firing positions.
The platoon radio man was frantically shouting co-ordinates into his headset, relaying how much they were in the shit and how they needed every available air asset to their firefight ASAP.
It’s a m
iracle we haven’t taken casualties yet thought Ben.
And then it happened.
Ben was just looking down to pick up a new belt for Alex’s gun when PHEWWWWW.
He felt the bullet pass over his head and heard Alex scream.
Looking up he saw Alex drop his grip on the weapon and roll off to the left clutching his shoulder.
Forgetting where he was Ben jumped up and threw himself to Alex’s side.
His face had already drained of blood, shock and blood loss causing all color to disappear from his skin.
‘Man down, medic, get me a fucking medic!’ Ben screamed as he pushed his hand over the wound.
Looking into Alex’s eyes, Ben saw his friend like he’d never seen him before.
Scared.
The round had entered through his shoulder and through his lung before lodging itself in his guts.
As the pain shot through his body, he screamed out in between rasping breaths for air.
Ben’s voice became higher pitched with hysteria now as he screamed again for the medic.
‘I NEED A FUCKING MEDIC NOW’
‘Please hang in there Alex mate the medic is coming, he’ll fix you up’
But Ben knew there was no way the medic was coming, the weight of incoming fire was now so heavy that to even attempt to move was basically suicide.
Alex took a desperate gurgling breath as the blood started to rush into the tear in his lungs and fill them.
Where once was jokes and light, his eyes were now dark and filled with pain.
A tear trickled down his cheek as he struggled to breathe.
Ben watched as Alex’s face turned from white to blue as he struggled to get oxygen into his failing body.
‘Please don’t die on me, don’t give up’ pleaded Ben.
‘Care for Sarah’ gurgled Alex.
Ben nodded, tears streaming from his eyes and down his muddied face.
The whoosh and boom of the American jet flying in low and dropping 500lb bombs on the enemy firing points grabbed Ben’s attention.
Whoops and cheers from the platoon as the explosions tore up tree lines and the Taliban fired stopped as abruptly as it started.
‘Alex, it’s over. Just hang in there, the medic’s coming, you’ll make it’ Ben said as he looked back down at his best friend cradled in his arms.
But Alex couldn’t hear him.
Alex was dead.
Chapter Two – One Year Later
Ben was flying.
With his arms spread back behind his body like the delta wings of a fighter jet, Ben was travelling towards to lake below like a rocket.
Just 5 seconds ago he had been standing on the edge of the Kjerag cliff in Norway and now he was falling down and forwards at a rapidly increasing speed.
As he picked up speed towards terminal velocity, his body position began to turn his downward drop into forward momentum and he accelerated away from the cliff face and towards safer, clearer air in front.
Sucking in his stomach and rolling his shoulders forwards to create a concave surface gave Ben more lift, slowing down his fall and enabling him to travel even further away from the cliff face.
15 seconds after stepping off the cliff top, Ben reached around with his right hand and grabbed hold of the round ball dangling from the base of his ‘rig’ as the parachute system was called.
The ball was connected to a smaller’pilot’parachute that inflated in the wind as Ben threw the ball into the air to his right.
Within a few short seconds the small pilot chute had acted like an anchor in the air, dragging the parachute out behind Ben and standing him up in the sky as the parachute filled with air and cracked open only a few hundred feet above the rocky ground below.
‘Whoooohooooo!’
Ben’s cry reverberated around the cliffs as he reached up to grasp the steering toggles of his canopy.
It felt like a lifetime has passed since he’d exited the cliff top and opened his parachute.
B.A.S.E jumping did that to Ben.
It was like time just slowed down and everything became simple and crystal clear.
He didn’t have the time or the luxury of thinking whilst in freefall, one mistake and he was dead.
For others that was a terrifying concept, but for Ben it was liberating.
Since his return from Afghanistan all Ben could do was think.
Think about his best friend dying in his arms, gurgling and struggling to breathe.
Think about how the Taliban would put bombs in the ground and pack human shit around them so when they blow someone’s body apart the shit would be blasted into the open wounds and infect them.
Think about little Afghanistan children left homeless by Allied bombs.
Think about all the times he left their compound and never knowing whether each step would put him over an explosive device that would take his legs and maybe his life.
He needed a break from his mind, and B.A.S.E jumping gave him that break.
He’d left the Army after he returned from that tour. After experiencing the reality of combat, he couldn’t go back to routine Army life and pretending to fight a war on a training ground with blank rounds.
His 3 years were up anyway and without Alex around life in the Army just wasn’t much fun anymore.
Everything about the Army just reminded Ben of that day when Alex died in his arms and the guilt he felt that it was Alex who died that day and not him.
Why did they have to kill Alex, who had been trying to have a baby with his beautiful wife Sarah? Ben didn’t have anyone to share his life with, why couldn’t it have been him that took those rounds that day?
The guilt overwhelmed him and he was struggling to cope.
They’d offered him counselling, as they’d offered everyone counselling on their return from their tour.
Part of the Army’s care package now so many soldiers struggled with Post Traumatic Stress.
But no-one took them up on it, especially not Ben.
Talking to a stranger about how he felt, no thanks.
And anyway, how was some shrink going to know what it was really like to be out there in combat?
Even if he could explain it, how would it help him to re-live each terrible moment?
Ben didn’t think it would and he didn’t need no hippy shrink to fix his brain.
He had B.A.S.E jumping for that.
Steering his canopy towards clear grass between the boulders of the landing fields, Ben flared his canopy, slowing the parachute down so he could gently land on the soft ground.
Turning around, he helped the canopy collapse onto the ground behind him and went about gathering the lines and the canopy from the floor, bundling them up in his arms and moving himself out the way of the other jumpers now coming into land.
‘Hahaha, nice tracking der Ben!!’ said Mathias as he landed deftly beside Ben, shooting him a 5 five as he stepped onto the ground.
‘Dat was ferking awesome man!’
Mathias’s accent made Ben smile. His English was virtually perfect but he had never quite shook his Norwegian pronunciation.
But hell, it was a lot better than Ben’s nonexistent Norwegian!
As the rest of the group landed on the shoreline, Ben packed up his parachute into his stash bag and jumped aboard the speed boat which took them back to the camping area.
They’d hired a helicopter for the 5 days, which would shuttle them back and forth from their camping site to the top of the cliff, nearly 3000 feet high, saving them a 2 hour hike to the top.
Ben sat quietly in the back of the boat reliving his jump, the calm as he dropped off the cliff top into weightlessness.
This was the moment Ben lived for, the rest of his life to him was barely worth living.
If it wasn’t for B.A.S.E jumping he’d often thought, he would have probably finished it all long ago.
And, perhaps, he also thought, B.A.S.E jumping was his way of killing himself without deliberately doing it.<
br />
He wouldn’t mind dying on a jump, in fact in he reflected that he wish it would happen, at least he would die happy and it would give him the peace he so desperately craved.
Killing himself would be too ignoble, that he would be letting himself and his friends down. But dying in a B.A.S.E jump, well that would be just a tragic accident.
Torn between his desire for death’s release from his mind and his pride, Ben was in a difficult spot.
He’d also promised Alex that he would look after his wife Sarah. He couldn’t leave her without anyone to care for her.
She’d taken it bad Alex’s death. Upon hearing the news, she’d broken down with grief and hysteria and had shaved her hair off.
Her neighbors found her in her front yard, naked and wailing into the sky like an animal, with tufts of what remained of her hair dotted around her newly shaved head.
The loss of her husband so young had caused her entire world to collapse.
Her whole life had been dedicated to Alex, she worshipped him and he her.
Her strong soldier she’d called him, so proud to have such a handsome and powerful warrior as her man.
And just a few months after their wedding, she had buried that man, a whole lifetime of potential and dreams shattered with the single motion of a finger on a trigger.
Ben hoped she was doing well, he’d asked her neighbors to keep an eye on her whilst he was gone and to try and keep her away from alcohol, but he knew it was easier said than done.
He’d taken a job in construction near her home so he could pop in and keep an eye on her during the week and had recently moved apartments so he could be nearer to her on the weekends as well.
In their mutual grief, they’d kept each other company. They weren’t so close before Alex’s death, but their loss had brought them closer together and they stumbled through the grieving process as a team. The blind leading the blind.
Truth be told, they were both as fucked up as each other Ben realized. Sarah with her drinking and Ben with his indirect death wish.