by Andy McNab
‘Certainly. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather bring them here to sleep?’
She paused to consider.
‘No thanks. This house is much bigger than anywhere they’ve slept before. They might not settle down.’
‘Will you have to pay your friend to look after them for the night?’
Jenny nodded in response.
‘It’s just a friendly arrangement; she’s not a registered childminder. But of course I pay her.’ She started typing again.
Eugene said: ‘This time I’ll pay her, obviously. And will you stay here or go home?’
Jenny stopped typing and looked at him.
‘I think it’s better if I go home. Don’t you?’
He looked back at her.
‘No.’
Her voice dropped. She was embarrassed to look at him. He was such a good man that she couldn’t bear to remind him what other people were like. She said: ‘You don’t know how the camp talks.’
‘Why do you care what they say?’
‘I don’t. That’s the problem.’
‘What problem, Jennifer?’
She sighed. ‘They’re talking in camp about me because I spend so much time here. Just as we left the pub today, someone I half know, someone from the RMP, came in and saw us together. She lives in camp. So by Monday, everyone will know I had lunch with you.’
He came and sat next to her at the long table with its centuries-old patina.
‘Why do you care about their gossip?’
‘Because I have to live with it. There are women in camp who’ve made up their own minds and they avoid me. Even one of my best friends has been steering clear of me because she disapproves of me spending all this time with you.’
He sighed. ‘I enjoy your company and I haven’t seen any reason to hide that. But maybe I should have done, for your sake.’
She felt her face softening the way it did sometimes before she cried.
‘We have nothing to hide,’ she said.
Eugene leaned towards her. This time he did not just reach out and stroke her hand for a moment. He took it in his.
‘Yes we do,’ he said.
She looked at him in surprise.
‘I’ve been meaning to tell you, Jennifer, how much I appreciate all you’ve done for me. I look forward to the days when you come to work. You’re always bright and cheerful even though I’m sure there are many reasons for you not to feel cheerful. Sometimes you literally seem to bring the sun in with you. My house was a gloomy place before you arrived and my life was a lot more gloomy too. You’ve made a big difference to me.’
Jenny did not know where to look. At the oil paintings of men in waistcoats and women wearing impossible dresses or down to the carpets, which might have come from Afghanistan? Along the table at the piles of paper or out of the windows where the rain was pattering as if thrown against the glass by a giant hand? She looked at none of these and all of these, aware that her hand was in Eugene’s as he spoke.
He said: ‘I’m sorry for embarrassing you. I just want you to know that I hold you in very high esteem. And I will add, at the risk of embarrassing you further, that I think you are a lovely – no, a beautiful young woman.’
She looked into his eyes. They shone with a mixture of sadness and laughter. The wrinkles at the corners made him look mature and wise. He smiled at her now with even teeth, the skin stretched tightly across his cheeks with no hint of that loosening around the jaw and the neck which aged most men. Yes, he was an attractive man, although it was something she had always chosen to ignore.
‘You’ve been good and kind and generous to me,’ she said.
He squeezed her hand more tightly. They smiled at each other.
She said: ‘Let’s get the report done now.’
He nodded and released her.
Dave walked into the still, dank water of the canal behind Finny. It retained something of the day’s heat. As it rose up to his knees, thighs and then waist he was suddenly, strangely, reminded how he and Jenny had found a hidden lake in a wood when they were camping in Scotland a few years ago, before Vicky was born. They had waded in together. It was September and they had prepared themselves for cold’s sting but instead they had found summer’s heat waiting in the water for them. Jenny had stopped walking and in one even motion had lifted her feet and started swimming, breaking the membrane of the lake’s surface with her smooth stroke. The memory of that warm, balmy water and Jenny swimming in it made Dave’s heart ache. Briefly, as the cold canal water closed around his stomach, he ached for home and for Jenny and for all things safe.
He heard the smooth entry into the water of Doc behind him. At the back, Angus’s splash was less muted. Big man, big splash. Not that it mattered here because the noise of the battle was deafening and the chances of meeting any civilians minimal.
Within a few minutes they had achieved a rhythm which enabled them to walk forward noiselessly into the unknowable dark.
With every step their clothes dragged them back. The bottom of the canal was soft and clung to each boot as they lifted it. The water felt viscous like treacle.
Dave paused to drop Dawson’s rifle into the mud. He buried it with his foot as best he could. He hoped that by the time it was found, when the water level dropped at the height of summer, it would be useless.
Dave looked back frequently through his night-vision goggles. Behind Doc was Angus’s face, expressionless in the way that faces went blank because the minds behind them were busy. Angry McCall was a complicated soldier. Brave as a lion one minute, furious to the point of apoplexy the next, often nasty, frequently rude. Angry wanted to be good at his job and he was both experienced and well trained but there was something about him which made him unreliable. Dangerous, even. He was the weak link in the file and Dave resolved again to keep a close eye on him. Angus was thinking so hard now that he had forgotten to breathe quietly. Dave could occasionally hear him taking sharp intakes of air.
Ahead, Billy Finn moved forward soundlessly with the confidence of a man who could see in the dark. He had been brought up to cut through streams and slip through woods at night, poaching and stealing in the countryside. The lads used to call him the Nike Pikey and for a long time he was the first to be suspected if anything went missing. But the others had soon learned that Finny was loyal and talented. And no one could move across terrain as stealthily while totally aware of everything around him.
On either side were cultivated fields. Crops grew at waist height and there were agricultural ditches cut from the canal into which the water flowed sluggishly. Dave knew there must be houses near here. He could occasionally hear dog barks. But there were no lights. Because there was no electricity. Because apart from their twenty-first-century weapons, the Afghans were still living in the Middle Ages. Why are we here, fighting these people? Dave knew the answer he was supposed to give the men. They were protecting the Afghan people from the Taliban and at the same time protecting the West from the terrorism which was spawned here. But the Afghans’ sullen distrust, sometimes even hatred, never made him feel like a protector. It made him feel like the enemy. And he had no doubt that Afghan civilians who encountered the four of them would do nothing to take care of them. No, they would be far more likely to alert the Taliban. Who would then kill them.
Dave tapped Finny on the shoulder and signed to go right. Finny nodded and scrambled up the bank by a drainage ditch in one swift, smooth movement. Dave did the same and then waited to help the medic up. Doc was limping, although only slightly. He took off his day sack and threw it to Dave, along with his rifle. He lumbered clumsily out of the canal, but he did it alone. Dave gave him back his kit and watched Angus, who was big enough almost to step out of the water. Then they set off along the edge of the field. Dave did not know what the crop was. The leaves were large and leafy. Was it something you ate or something you smoked?
The sound of firing at the base was distant now. After a while the rhythm of his walk in this qui
et world extinguished thought from Dave’s mind. He focused on meeting the next canal. When they reached it, the channel appeared so suddenly before them that Finn stopped short and Dave nearly pitched into him. The gap between Dave and the medic had widened and they had to wait for the last two to arrive.
Angus signalled that he had something to say. They gathered round, their heads close together. They had all shaved back at Bastion and now their faces were shining with sweat in the dark.
Angus knew how to talk in the dark. He breathed the words: ‘Sarge, I think they’ve got to the Mastiff back there.’
Finn nodded: ‘Yeah, he’s right.’
Dave and Doc simultaneously looked at their watches.
‘Shit,’ said Doc Holliday. ‘It only took them twenty minutes.’
Dave wanted to plunge on into the dark at once. But he asked: ‘How do you know?’
‘Sol went fucking mental from the base. He had the lads throwing all the big, exploding toys out of the pram. But when they got answering fire, it was definitely closer.’
‘I s’pose they’ll help themselves to the HMG,’ said Finn gloomily.
‘Glad they won’t have a fucking tripod for it.’
Dave said: ‘Everyone all right?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Let’s move north again, then.’
‘How long will we go in the wrong direction, Sarge?’ asked Angus. He threw the words out like a quick barrage of nervous fire from a Minimi. Dave suspected this question was the real reason Angry had stopped the file.
‘If they’ve got a pack of dogs, we’ll need another hour probably,’ said Dave, speaking so quietly that he breathed the words.
They plunged down into the next canal. It was deeper and muddier than the last. The water reached up to their chests. There was too much splashing as they entered it. Dave looked around anxiously and held his finger to his lips.
The world seen through night-vision goggles was a world of dull greens, as if they were travelling under water. He could see a green compound across the green field and dogs in it started to bark. He hoped their owners would not release them into the fields to investigate and that no human had heard the suspicious splashing. After a few minutes, the barking stopped.
Dave signed to Doc behind him any difficult areas or big boulders. He was alert, listening intently, and he soon knew for sure that the Taliban had got to the Mastiff, found it empty and were hunting them with dogs. Because in the distance was the barking of not one dog but a whole pack.
Dave felt instantly cold, even though walking through the canal water was such an effort that he was sweating. He knew the others would have heard the dogs too. He did not turn around to look at Angus.
As they walked on, the sound of the dogs did not lessen but at first it seemed to get no closer. He imagined the big, fierce animals the Afghans favoured rushing around the Mastiff, noses down, tails wagging, eyes hungry. He thought Sol would probably shoot a few and he hoped their handlers would encourage them to sniff south of the canal.
After another ten minutes the dogs were still barking like a pack of wolves, yelping and howling. The sound was blood-curdling. It was the voice of animals who would show you no mercy. They did not seem further away, as Dave had hoped. He was aware that their own pace had slowed significantly as the canal had narrowed and deepened and the muddy bottom had grown softer and harder to walk on.
Only this morning they had been at Camp Bastion. It seemed like a week ago, a month ago. And almost half a year before that, they had been at home in Wiltshire, standing around on an icy night saying how much they wanted to get back into theatre. He recalled that he had stomped off to the pub after some stupid row with Jenny. That Dave seemed like some other person now. Someone young and stupid enough to think that the front line was exciting without being any real threat to his life. Jenny and the other wives back home could smell the danger better from Wiltshire than the soldiers who were fighting. They lived with the possibility of men’s deaths, while the men themselves chose to ignore it, as if death didn’t apply to them. Until they found themselves in a situation which they were unlikely to survive.
The next time he turned routinely to check on the others he found that the space between him and the last two men had widened again. Each time he turned they had fallen a little further behind; now the gap was so great that he had to tap Finny on the shoulder for him to wait while the others caught up in the long stretch of darkness. Doc arrived at last, limping significantly. Angus behind him looked worried.
‘What’s up, Doc?’ Dave asked.
Doc Holliday’s face was white and sweating. He could not catch his breath to answer.
‘You in a lot of pain?’ Dave demanded.
Doc nodded and grimaced. ‘It’s the knee.’
‘Twisted?’
‘Yeah. I’ve had surgery three fucking times and it’s never really been right.’
‘We can’t go south until the dogs stop barking,’ said Dave, ‘but we can cut down the journey a bit and stay safe if we go east again. Think you’ll be able to walk on dry land?’
‘It’ll be easier.’
‘You’re carrying too much weight.’
Dave could tell that the medic did not want to admit he was right.
He said: ‘Get rid of everything except essential medical stuff, a few rations, your rifle and a bit of ammo. If it didn’t get blown up with the relief wagon, they’ll probably have a lot of the medical gear you need for McKinley.’
Doc sighed. ‘Shit,’ he said sadly.
‘Everything. Hurry up. Into the canal. It’s the only place where they won’t find it any time soon.’
The medic opened his sack and pouches and began throwing things out into the water. The first splash was loud.
‘Shhhhh,’ hissed Dave.
A few minutes later his pouches no longer bulged and his day sack was only half full.
‘All that great kit under water,’ he said miserably.
Angus tapped them on the shoulder: ‘Come on, come on, let’s go!’ he breathed quietly.
‘First we’ll listen,’ hissed Dave. They all stood motionless. It felt good to stand still. It was a relief not to experience the water’s resistance. They did not even breathe.
They could hear that there was still some distant firing, sporadic now and so far away it might have been further even than PB Red Sox. Dave hoped they wouldn’t arrive at the relief to find it under fire. But there were no longer any dogs. One barked but it was far away, a lonely dog in a compound further north. Otherwise the starry night was soundless. They all let out long breaths.
‘They’re not coming this way,’ said Finn. ‘They’ve given up looking or they’ve hared off south.’
So the plan was working, Dave thought. So far. Except that the plan had brought them miles in the wrong direction, one of them had an old injury, they still had to double back on themselves and pass through a populated agricultural area by night and they had no way of knowing whether the party they were trying to reach had been ambushed and overrun by the enemy. Apart from that, the plan was working.
He said: ‘OK, no dogs. Let’s start heading back. We’ll go east and at the next canal turn south.’
He saw Angus’s face break into a smile. Now at least they would be heading in the right direction.
Finny was an athlete, emerging sleekly out of the canal without a splash like a quick, black shadow cutting through the water. Dave and Angus scrambled out less gracefully. Then Angus turned to help Doc without being asked. Usually he was a selfish soldier, so Dave felt pleased. It was amazing how some serious fear and the smell of death could make a man grow up quickly.
Doc swung his day sack up first and Dave held it and was surprised by how light it was. He and Angus each took an arm. The medic did his best to clamber up the bank but there was a moment when Dave knew he and Angus were taking the man’s full weight. Then Holliday regained his strength and balance for long enough to swing upright. He stood still for a moment, halted
by pain, his face twisted.
Dave whispered: ‘How fast can you go, Doc?’
‘Faster than you think now I’m out of that fucking water.’
Finny indicated that he wanted to go south-east, cutting across the middle of the field, but Dave shook his head. The crop here grew in neat, lush rows and if they damaged it someone might guess that four big men had passed this way. He hoped to be far away by the time morning could shine its light on their path. But Doc’s limp was worrying him. He turned back frequently to look at it. He estimated that the relief party was now 4 k away in a straight line. And 6–8 k away if they took a safer, more circular route.
It seemed a long tab to the next canal, a long tab in wet, heavy clothes in the wrong direction. When they reached it, Dave took Doc’s day sack from him. The medic did not object. His look of relief, even more than his limp, told Dave how much pain he was in. With a thudding feeling he admitted the truth. This man did not have 8 k in him.
Dave tapped shoulders until he had everyone’s attention. They gathered round while he whispered: ‘Now we’re going south we’re moving into a much more populated area. It isn’t just people in compounds and their dogs. It’s blokes who come out to work the sluices at night. So for Chrissake be quiet.’
They nodded and Finny slipped into the canal. After a moment he turned, grinned and put his thumb up. This drainage channel was shallow. It would be easy to walk through it.
The others followed him in. They were going more and more slowly now, Finny and Dave stopping constantly to wait for the medic, who was limping so badly it was difficult to prevent the water lapping around him in tiny, noisy waves. Behind him, Angus’s face was creased with concern.
They had been progressing for ten minutes when Dave heard a splash ahead.
Finny was suddenly motionless. He held up a hand. Dave stopped and held up his hand to the others. Nobody moved. Nothing moved. Dave peered ahead through the bottle-green world of the night goggles. To the left was a field of some tall, large-leaved crop which could easily hide a man: in places the crop fell across the ditch. To the right the crop was only knee-high.