by McNab, Andy
‘I can manage,’ Sol said.
‘You fucking can’t,’ said Finn.
‘Did you say he can’t walk?’ Dave repeated slowly.
‘Fell down from the top,’ Sol admitted. His voice was miserable.
‘Twisted his ankle,’ Jamie said.
‘Maybe broken it,’ Finn added.
‘It is not fucking broken!’ yelled Sol and there was a momentary silence as everyone remembered again that Sol never swore.
Dave said: ‘Try to find a more heroic way to die, Sol. OK, you stay there. I’ll have Finn with the rest of 1 Section. Get moving. Come on, 2 Section, where are you?’
He got out and the men joined him. He didn’t press the mic button; he didn’t want the boss to hear what he was about to say next.
‘All we’re doing is keeping the boss happy now, lads. Just go up the track looking for a wounded civilian, then through the trees, and we’ll work our way back herringbone. Don’t take too much time or trouble over it. Finn leads with 1 Section, Baker follows with 2 Section and, as Sol’s out, I’ll go behind.’
Finn’s watchfulness was so acute that it was almost a sixth sense. When he was around, it was hard to make anyone else point man.
‘What are we looking for, Sarge?’ Jamie asked.
‘An old geezer. Dead or wounded. He’s got a beard . . .’ He turned to the driver. ‘He did have a beard, didn’t he?’
‘They’ve all got fucking beards.’
‘OK, beard and knobbly knees. Last seen holding a stick. The boss is worried that he may have gone the same way as his goat.’
‘I’ll look for the beard, you look for the knees,’ Jamie told Angus.
‘Get your sling clip undone, for Chrissake, Bilaal,’ Dave said to Mal. ‘And two hands on your weapon!’
‘Oh, yeah, sorry, Sarge.’
Mal wasn’t thick or lazy. Far from it. The sling clip would limit his firing arc and Mal knew that but he just wasn’t thinking. Not enough about soldiering, anyway. He thought about women all day and all night. He was probably standing there fantasizing about Emily the sex grenade right now. But if you could just get him to concentrate, he was good.
They moved forward up the track, along the line of trees, up to the site of the explosion. They stared in silence at the scorched earth and shredded foliage.
‘There but for the grace of God . . .’
‘Could be a few bits of barbecued goat . . .’ Jamie prodded the ground with his foot.
‘Let’s hope it’s not barbecued beard.’ Dave led them to the place where the old man had emerged onto the track. They peered between the trees. The soil was sandy, the canopy thick with tangled leaves.
Finn plunged in and the others followed.
‘OK, swing left and back to the vehicles,’ Dave said. ‘If he’s lying wounded, we should find him.’
It felt like another world in here. Cooler. The shade from the overhead leaves was green.
Just ahead of Dave and to his right, Angus suddenly stopped. Dave stopped too. It took a moment for him to realize why. Their stillness made the woods seem unnaturally quiet. The trees came to an abrupt end. Ahead of them, walking casually across an open field, along the top of one of the drainage ditches, were four insurgents.
Their weapons were slung carelessly over their shoulders. Their sergeant really should have bollocked them big-time. Two were carrying belts of ammo. They must have been firing at us a few minutes ago, and now the contact’s over here they are, walking home in pairs, talking and laughing. Just like us after a contact, Dave thought, experiencing a strange sense of fellowship with the enemy even as he raised his weapon to kill them.
He muttered into the mic but did not look around for the others. He took the safety off and watched the insurgents drop, one by one, into the ditch. It was so easy and so quick that he was hardly aware of the sound of his own rifle. He thought someone else, a bit further up the herringbone, had fired too, although he wasn’t sure.
He reported back quickly and then silently moved forward, telling Angus, Jamie and Mal, who were nearest, to come too while the others covered from the woods.
The field felt uncomfortably exposed. Dave became aware that something was nagging at him. Angus McCall had seen the enemy first but instead of taking immediate action, he’d frozen. It was the shock and rigidity in McCall’s imposing frame which had alerted Dave to the enemy presence. It should have been the sight of Angus raising his weapon. He made a mental note to deal with the problem later.
‘Four enemy dead, now searching,’ he muttered into his mic.
The men were lying in the drainage ditch, their hair tangled with the undergrowth, their bodies crumpled.
‘You take the two at the back,’ Dave instructed Angus.
He jumped down into the ditch. The water was thigh-high and smelled rancid. Some of it splashed onto his face. It soaked rapidly through his clothes.
One of his dead men was still holding a weapon; the other had dropped his on the bank. Dave took both AK47s and pushed them right out of reach. Jamie swept them up.
Angus scrambled down to the other two bodies further along the channel.
‘Got an evidence bag?’
‘No,’ Angus said miserably. ‘Didn’t think I’d need it.’
Dave groaned. ‘Got anything at all to put stuff in?’
‘Well . . . my Camelbak, I s’pose.’
Dave was just about to yell at him when Mal dragged a couple of evidence bags from his belt kit. ‘Here’s some.’
Dave pulled at the first body. He was surprised by how light it was. This man was a lot thinner than any British soldier, Dave thought, as he pressed his knee into the bony back and turned the corpse over.
‘Clear.’
Jamie Dermott: cool, efficient, focused. Dave liked to work with a man he could rely on.
He began a systematic search from the head down. When he reached the feet he found they were bare. He looked in the water and the bank for shoes. There were none. He felt the man’s feet. Still warm. And the soles were hard and leathery as sandals. These were habitually bare feet. The man had been barefoot with an AK47.
He turned the body over. Man? He was scarcely more than a boy.
He extracted a mobile phone from his pockets and folded papers and some beads which looked as though they might have religious significance. There was a laminated ID card, too, with a photo and indecipherable script. Dave didn’t waste a second examining it. The sound of their rounds would certainly draw the enemy and it was just a matter of time before they came under fire again.
The second insurgent had been dragged down into the ditch by the weight of his ammo belt. As Dave pulled up the soaking body, he heard Angus.
‘He moved! Christ, he’s fucking alive!’
Dave stared along the ditch. ‘Get his weapon away!’
Angus had failed to clear the weapons before starting his search. Mal moved rapidly from the bank to swipe the AK47 out of arm’s reach.
‘Get on with it!’ Dave said.
‘I lifted him and he moved!’ Angus had dropped the body back into the ditch and was now staring at it, his face horrified. The man was covered in blood and showed no apparent signs of life.
‘Get on with it!’
Angus did not move.
Mal raised his SA80 and fired twice at the man’s chest. Blood appeared like a fast-blooming flower. The weapon’s report was followed by silence.
Angus remained motionless.
‘Now search him!’
Dave’s roar finally seemed to wake Angus from his dream. He grabbed the body and started to search it correctly but his face remained blank.
Dave watched. His men had done this often enough in training, but searching a real body methodically and professionally – without thinking destructive thoughts about how the man had a mother and maybe a wife and small kids and a bunch of mates he’d been to school with all waiting for him to come home – was something else again.
He heard
a nearby volley of fire. Their own shots had certainly drawn the enemy, who must now have found the convoy. He wondered how long it would take them to discover that a small group from the Vectors was in an exposed field with the bodies of four of their fighters. And all because of an old geezer with knobbly knees.
His second body was bigger and stronger. The man wore more serious kit, solid sandals, and had a Pakistani passport in his pocket. This was not a local, but a professional Taliban fighter.
He slipped the passport and personal effects into his evidence bag and, when Angus had finished, they climbed out of the ditch and ran back to the cover of the woods.
‘Firing from all sides.’ Boss Weeks’s voice crackled in Dave’s ear. The column of men advanced slowly and quietly through the trees. Dave told the convoy to move forward for them. They remained hidden as they waited for its slow advance. Dave saw the thin, anxious faces of his men, looking for the enemy on all sides. Angus looked up.
‘Fucking hell, Sarge . . .’
Almost directly above them was a foot. The foot was attached to a thin, brown leg. The leg was attached to a man and the man was attached to a weapon. The weapon was trained on the path of the oncoming convoy.
They understood the man’s stillness with one glance. From the rigid position of his head, his neck frozen like a frightened animal’s, they knew that he was unable to disengage his weapon from the branches to aim it at them. He’d turned to stone in the hope they wouldn’t look up.
‘McCall, step back to fire,’ Dave said. ‘So you get something a bit more useful than his arse.’
Angus had frozen when he had a clear view of four insurgents crossing a field. He’d frozen when he found one of them wasn’t dead. Now Dave wanted to give him another chance but he saw the lad’s face was rigid with alarm. He’d experienced enough death for one day.
Finn said: ‘I’ll do it.’
He stepped back.
The Taliban sniper looked down at them, knowing what was going to happen. Dave stared up into his brown eyes. The man looked back at him and started to speak. He didn’t cry or yell and he showed no fear. He spoke in a strange, soft way, without pleading. It was affecting, more affecting than any cry or shout could have been.
There was a flash and the report of a weapon. The man slumped forward.
‘Sorry, mate,’ Dave said quietly.
A mobile phone fell from the man’s clothes and Jamie caught it neatly. The convoy drew level with them and, under fire, they piled into the back of the first two Vectors.
‘Let’s go.’
Dave thought about the man in the tree, whose pleas for his life he’d ignored. Technically, it was a legitimate killing: the man’s weapon had been trained on the convoy. He told himself that the man wouldn’t have spared him if their positions had been reversed. All the same, he found himself wishing he had brought him in as a prisoner. He didn’t feel uncomfortable about the insurgent Mal had shot in the ditch, even though he was aware that this might be harder to explain under the Rules of Engagement.
Finn said: ‘That’s the first time I’ve killed someone.’
‘Me too,’ Mal said.
‘All right with it?’ Sol looked up at them as he nursed his ankle.
‘Yup,’ Finn said. ‘’Course. That’s what we’re here for.’ But his face was hollowed and drawn.
‘It did feel well weird.’ Mal sounded uncertain.
Angus said nothing. He examined his feet, his cheeks hot and red, as the convoy sped out of the Green Zone.
Chapter Eight
BOSS WEEKS COLLECTED HIS MEAL IN THE COOKHOUSE THAT EVENING and, without giving himself a chance to think about it, joined the two female interpreters. His heart started beating faster and his senses were suddenly extra alert, symptoms he now associated with enemy contact.
The women, who’d been talking intently to each other, looked up without welcome when he sat down.
‘As salaam alai kum,’ Weeks said awkwardly.
‘What?’ Jean stared at him.
He tried to smile back. He didn’t dare look at Asma.
‘As salaam alai kum,’ he repeated, more clearly this time. His food suddenly looked less appetizing.
‘Oh-oh,’ Asma said. ‘We’ve got another Captain Boyle here.’
‘Captain Boyle?’
‘He was with A Company.’
‘A marine?’
‘Engineer. He had this book: Speak Pashtu in Six Weeks,’ Asma said. ‘He used it like a car instruction manual.’
Weeks permitted himself to look at her, but only briefly. She really was stunning. Those large, almond-shaped eyes and slanting cheek bones. Why wasn’t every man in the place writing her poems and offering to clean her weapon?
‘Kur-see,’ he said, pointing to the chair. ‘War!’ He pointed to the entrance. ‘Meez.’ He tapped the table.
‘Oh Christ.’ Asma rolled her enormous eyes.
Jean started to giggle.
‘How long have you been learning it?’
‘For months.’ Weeks gave a gesture of helplessness. ‘I still can’t complete a sentence.’
‘Most people give up when they get to the sentence structure.’
‘The alphabet alone makes me feel like coming out with a white flag. How did you two crack it?’
They both looked as though they’d answered this question a thousand times before.
‘I was in Kabul as a kid,’ Jean said. ‘My parents were aid workers out here until I was twelve. Asma came to the UK at about the same age.’
Asma nodded. ‘My parents managed to slip through the Soviet net and, well, it’s a long story but we ended up in London. My mother never did learn much English. So I’ve been translating for her for most of my life.’
‘Your family’s Pashtun?’
‘Yes. We lived in Kandahar province.’
‘Do you remember it?’
‘Of course.’
‘So does this feel at all like home?’
She smiled sadly and shook her head.
‘An FOB doesn’t feel like home. Even after a month.’
‘How does your family feel about . . .?’
‘Me doing this job?’ She looked even sadder and studied the table in front of her. She held an empty water glass in her long, slim fingers. She turned it around and around.
‘I don’t have any contact with them,’ she said. ‘I married a man who wasn’t Pashtu, wasn’t even a Moslem. So they don’t consider me a member of the family any more.’
Weeks felt a rush of emotion. She was married. But his disappointment didn’t overcome his compassion. To be exiled from any family must be hard, and the Pashtuns were a proud and close-knit people.
Jean was watching him closely. ‘It’s worse than that. She’s ended up with no husband and no family.’
‘Wouldn’t your family take you back when . . . when . . .?’
‘When I divorced?’ Asma shook her head. ‘When you get to understand the Afghan people a little better, you’ll know there can only be one answer to that question.’
He looked down awkwardly at his meal.
‘Eat up!’ Jean said cheerfully. ‘I hear you’ve had one helluva day. You went out on a routine patrol and ended up with five Afghan bodies on your hands.’
‘We had a very . . . interesting . . . patrol,’ he said carefully.
‘You might need to go over the RoE with your men. From what I’ve heard, there are some questions to be answered.’
‘We’ve discussed the matter fully and I’m satisfied that the Rules of Engagement were observed.’ He’d been aware of a certain amount of hesitation on Dave’s part in the debriefing, but had decided not to pursue it.
‘I think Major Willingham will want to satisfy himself too,’ Jean said. Her smile was both bright and determined.
Weeks felt his jaw muscles clench. He’d watched these two contravene every rule in the tactical questioning book. And now they were suggesting his men had ignored the RoE. He felt his face re
dden further. He cursed this stupid habit. He cursed his entire blood supply.
‘Obviously, the police don’t get involved unless the OC is worried. But this is a small base and I’ve offered the major my help if he wants to look into it,’ said Jean.
Weeks tried to suppress his anger. He was aware that she was still watching him intently. He was also aware of the steady and unnerving gaze of the beautiful Asma.