by McNab, Andy
The tension on the net was palpable. Dave’s eyes were fixed on the field, but there was still no sign of Angry.
‘I’ll have to tell them what’s happened,’ Dave said. He felt hollow. He felt sick. This was a massive and embarrassing failure for his platoon. ‘Sir—’
‘Look!’ Mal shouted.
A puff of something that looked like smoke but must have been pollen was rising from the edge of the cannabis field. Angus had stepped out of it and was running towards them, still bent double. He was carrying his rifle and the shotgun. His presence drew a volley of fire which Jamie on one side and gunners from 2 and 3 Sections soon silenced.
‘Yes?’ the major said wearily. ‘What is it you’re trying to tell me, Sergeant? I have a feeling that you’re about to cock up today’s action.’
‘Not at all, sir,’ Dave said. ‘The ECM’s working now and we’re ready to move forward.’
‘Well thank Christ for that!’
When he reached them, Angus handed the shotgun across Dave to his mate.
‘Listen, Angry, thanks . . .’ Mal said weakly. ‘You shouldn’t have—’
‘You fucking shithead!’ Finn shouted.
‘No time for that here,’ Dave thundered. ‘I’ll deal with you two when we get back. Now just get on with the fucking job.’
The section made its way along the ditch towards the compound.
Chapter Twelve
DAVE DIALLED HOME ON THE SATELLITE PHONE. WHEN IT connected he listened to the ringing tone without hearing it. His head was ringing already from the bollocking he’d just given Riflemen McCall and Bilaal.
Mal shouldn’t have left the shotgun. But Dave knew he’d been overcome by the cannabis plants. For Chrissake, he’d fallen asleep himself.
But there was no such excuse for Angry McCall’s dash to save the shotgun. It was so insane that, deep inside, Dave couldn’t help admiring the lad’s bravery and commitment to a friend. Especially since that friend had recently been merciless in his criticism of Angry’s own mistakes.
Dave had threatened to send Angus home, threatened anything he could think of, and the huge lad had hung his head and bitten his lower lip in silence.
‘You said you were going to prove yourself,’ Dave reminded him. ‘And you will. But today you didn’t. I’m putting you on shit duties for a week.’
He was just about to dismiss the lad when McCall said: ‘Sarge?’
Dave waited, hands on hips.
‘Sarge, I did it because I thought it was what my dad would have done.’ He looked up briefly, then back at the ground.
Dave sighed. ‘You’ve got to learn to be your own man—’
The phone’s insistent ringing snapped him back into the present. It was going on too long. Jenny should be at home because Vicky would be in bed. So why wasn’t she answering? The ringing gave him a hollow feeling. Had there been an emergency? No, he would have been told.
This sound of the unanswered phone was a sound more empty than silence. He forgot Mal and Angry and with each ring his mind and heart were pulled a little closer to home. He was tugged back to England, to Wiltshire, to the camp, to his street, to his house and to Jenny, Vicky and their unborn baby. The journey made him tired and tense. He had reached that point in his absence when it was better not to think about them too much. And now he had gone all the way back for Jenny. And she wasn’t there.
Dave held the phone to his ear even though the ringing had stopped. He was standing behind the place where soldiers washed their socks in the CQMS’s green bowls, behind the showers, behind the civilian area. Nobody was washing now but he could see a few socks and shirts and pairs of underwear hanging limp and forgotten in the Afghan darkness. This was the most private place he could get a signal to ring Jenny. He’d wanted to tell her he loved her. He’d meant to explain that the reason he didn’t phone more was that he tried not to think about her too much. Because too many home thoughts could make life here unbearable. He’d wanted to say all that. But she wasn’t there.
Jenny had put Vicky to bed. She was so tired she’d gone to bed herself soon afterwards. At first the ringing phone was a ringing phone in her dreams, reinforcing her sleep instead of disturbing it.
Finally she was jolted awake. Her heart pounded. The telephone. And it must be the middle of the night. A night sound more ominous than silence. Maybe it was bad news. She tried to roll over to reach the receiver but she did not like to roll onto her pregnant belly. She had to shuffle to the edge of the bed instead.
Just as she grabbed the receiver, the ringing stopped.
‘Dave?’ she said. Even though she knew he’d gone. ‘Dave?’
She heard her own voice in the empty room, talking to no one. She closed her eyes and turned on the light and when she opened her eyes the bedroom filled up the dark with familiar things. Which didn’t mean it wasn’t still dark really. One switch of the light and it would be there again.
She dialled 1471. We do not have the caller’s number. It had certainly been Dave. She’d missed his call. She felt an acute sense of loss. She’d missed his call. She started to cry. She’d missed his call. God knows when he might get his hands on the satellite phone to ring again. There were times when he barely rang once in ten days and now she’d missed his call.
And it would have been a close, intimate, night-time call when they might have said the things they were supposed to say, instead of the breezy daytime calls interspersed by shouting and chuckling from Vicky. She would have been able to tell him how she wanted him, no, needed him, to leave the army.
She felt the heat of her tears as they ran down her face and onto the pillow.
She hoped he’d call again. She lay awake, waiting. It seemed to her now that she’d spent the whole of her married life waiting for the phone and the reassuring sound of Dave’s voice. It also seemed to her that the other wives received more calls when the lads were away than she did. Leanne often got two calls in a week. So did Adi. At this thought, her tears flowed faster.
Try again, Dave! she thought, and she thought it so hard that maybe he would read her mind from the other side of the world.
Chapter Thirteen
DAVE DECIDED TO TRY AGAIN, JUST IN CASE JEN HAD BEEN SLOW picking up. But a voice interrupted him.
‘Er, Sarge . . . you finished, then? It’s just . . . it’s my bird’s birthday and . . .’
You were never alone in an FOB. There was no privacy anywhere. He saw Rifleman Broom from 2 Section hovering awkwardly at the edge of the light.
‘Here you are, mate.’ Dave handed over the phone.
He strode back to the tent he shared with the sergeant major and the other platoon sergeants.
Sitting on his cot he joined in the talk about the day’s success. By the time the company had left the area all resistance had been silenced and Major Willingham was confident that they’d foiled any Taliban hopes of taking the river crossing. And they’d done it without air support.
‘So we won it for a day,’ Dave said. ‘How do we know they won’t be back tomorrow?’
The others shrugged. It was a question most of them preferred not to ask.
‘What was all that crap on the radio when you couldn’t move forward?’ asked Sergeant Barnes of 3 Platoon.
Dave groaned and told them how Angus had gone back for Mal’s shotgun.
‘I take it you’ve bollocked them both,’ Sergeant Somers of 2 Platoon said.
‘Yep.’
‘Why the hell did he do it?’
‘He screwed up on a foot patrol early on and he’s been trying to make up for it ever since. But that’s not the reason he gave me.’
‘What reason did he give, then?’
‘He said it’s what his dad would have done.’
Everyone groaned. There was no one in the company who hadn’t heard Angus McCall talking about his war hero father.
‘Actually,’ CSM Kila said, ‘I don’t blame McCall.’
All faces turned to him.
&nb
sp; ‘He was wrong, of course, and you had to bollock him. But all he did was use Taliban tactics against the Taliban. Unlike us, the choggies don’t move around in fucking great platoons with enough hardware to sink a ship. They don’t have men out there carrying eighty pounds of equipment. They run around in their sandals with a rifle slung over one shoulder and maybe a mobile phone, and one of them can halt seventy-five British soldiers just by planting a booby trap in the right place.’
Some agreed they could fight better in smaller, lighter units, like the Taliban. Others preferred the safety of a large company.
‘But,’ Iain Kila said, ‘the real difference between the way we fight and the way the Taliban fight is down to RoE.’
Everyone looked at Dave.
Kila said: ‘They aren’t going to let you get away with that bloke in the ditch.’
Dave had been questioned twice about the man Mal had shot.
‘That pretty monkey is still insisting to the OC that you ordered Bilaal to kill a wounded man. She wants you investigated,’ Kila warned.
Dave looked around the tent. ‘Would anyone here have casevaced out a bloke you’d shot and were body-searching for dead? If he was barely showing signs of life? And if carrying him back to the convoy would put your own men’s lives at risk? Would anyone here really have done that?’
Everyone shook their head except Sergeant Somers. The ensuing discussion was lively. Dave had meant to get back to the satellite phone and give Jenny one last try but when the talk at last petered out he fell asleep instead.
Chapter Fourteen
SERGEANT JEAN PATTERSON OF THE ROYAL MILITARY POLICE SHARED a room with Asma at the base. As soon as they had met each other they had both known it would be one of those friendships that would long outlast their time at Sin City. Today they were interpreting at a shura requested by local tribal elders.
‘We’re working with that blond platoon commander,’ Jean said in her soft Scottish lilt as they approached the convoy that was going to take them into the town. ‘And he can’t keep his eyes off you.’
‘Which one? They’re all blond.’
‘The one whose men need to pay a bit more attention to the RoE.’
‘Oh, whatsisname who’s learning Pashtu. You nearly made him cry the other night when you were going on about that bloke in the ditch.’
Jean grinned. ‘His name’s Gordon Weeks. And he wouldn’t turn down a few Pashtu lessons from you in private.’
‘I don’t teach Pashtu,’ Asma said. ‘And especially not to him. He’s the geezer who was moaning about the way we interrogated the detainees and he really pissed me off.’
They arrived at the convoy of waiting vehicles and were met by a smiling Gordon Weeks.
‘As salaam alai kum,’ he said enthusiastically.
‘Morning!’ said Jean, her voice friendly. Asma did not dignify his Pashtu with a reply.
They climbed on board the Vector. The Officer Commanding appeared with a Royal Engineer and the civilian oilman, Martyn Robertson.
When everyone was ready, the boss gave the signal and the convoy set off.
‘Now remember,’ Major Willingham said as they rumbled through the desert. ‘The tribesmen have invited us to this meeting and that is a very good sign. They want to hear exactly what you’re doing, Martyn, and you need to impress on them the benefits your work can bring to the area. But don’t let’s miss a chance for information-gathering.’ He glanced at Asma. ‘Any intelligence will be very welcome. Especially if they can help us pinpoint the exact location of that Taliban compound.’
The headman’s house was extensive. The entire complex, house and yard, was bounded by high, thick walls. Shady trees were visible over the top. It was a tantalizing sight from the hot, dusty world outside.
‘OK, dismount,’ Dave said. His soldiers positioned themselves around the walls.
Only one armed soldier was going into the meeting. Dave had chosen Jamie. He was to adopt an alert but non-threatening stance near the door.
Major Willingham and his team got out of the wagon. The boss held the door open for the two women. Dave didn’t miss the officer’s glance at the attractive girl from the Intelligence Corps, or the way she swept past him without looking at him or thanking him. Jamie followed the group closely.
Inside, Jean and Asma sat down on the carpet. As usual, just being here felt wrong. They knew that, for the Afghans in the room, their role in the men’s discussions was barely tolerable. Women where they shouldn’t be. Women negotiating with men. Women in trousers.
Asma lowered her eyes as she sat down and hid her legs. She had grown up hating burqas and all they stood for. Symbols of Islamic oppression. But whenever she sat on a carpet in her combat gear with the smell of sweet tea wafting around her, all she wanted was a burqa. She suspected covering yourself from head to toe in shapeless folds and creases gave you a kind of escape, even a kind of protection – not just from men, but from yourself.
Boss Weeks sat down next to her.
‘As salaam alai kum,’ he said to their hosts. Asma raised her eyebrows, Major Willingham stared at him, but the Afghans smiled and responded with a similar greeting.
‘Been learning the lingo, eh? Well at least they understood you.’ Martyn Robertson lowered himself creakily on Asma’s other side. ‘Had a guy called Boyle in the last company who kept trying to speak the lingo and the locals never understood a word he said!’
The head tribesman went through the usual welcome procedures but Asma felt he chose his words with unusual grace and sensitivity. As Jean translated Asma could not resist murmuring to the boss: ‘The way this man’s talking: he’s a cut above a lot of the others we meet.’
The man introduced his two sons, who also sat cross-legged on the carpet. There were other, older men alongside them who weren’t introduced. Standing at the edges of the room, leaning silently against the rugs that hung on the walls, were more men, most of them young, some still boys. And by the doors stood a tall rifleman. He balanced his weight evenly on both feet. From time to time Jean glanced at him. She never once saw him move.
Asma took over the interpretation. Major Willingham made a short speech which sounded as though he had learned it off by heart. He said that NATO was committed to supporting the democratically elected government of Afghanistan, and that the Afghan people should decide their own future and not let the Taliban tell them what to do. The Taliban were using and attacking civilians while Britain was committed to helping the Afghans create a stable, peaceful country which was true to its Islamic principles. Britain would fight extremism and do everything possible to help Afghanistan’s reconstruction and development.
Asma had translated similar speeches often before. This time, however, she found herself embellishing it a little. Afghanistan was a great country, she added, and it was time for such a country to take its rightful place on the world stage, something it could never do if the Taliban was in control. She glanced at Jean as she spoke. Jean raised an eyebrow. Asma wanted to giggle, until she saw the effect of her words on the Afghans present and knew she had said the right thing.
The elder son started to speak, thanking Major Willingham for his generous and noble words. Jean translated this with precision and the officer, who had no idea of Asma’s embroidery, looked startled.
The son now turned to Martyn.
‘I understand that you are in our area to look for precious oil and gas reserves. Please tell us more about this.’
Martyn grinned. His brown face was as wrinkled as the rock formations that fascinated him.
‘Well, we’ve found something interesting. I’m sure there are reserves here, but that isn’t enough. It has to be possible to extract the oil.’
‘And what would that mean for our area?’
‘A natural resource always means one thing: greater wealth and jobs.’ Martyn glanced at Major Willingham.
‘And that would lead to greater stability,’ the OC added.
‘If drilling starts h
ere – and it would only start with the full agreement of the Afghan people – then my company would certainly be making a substantial investment in this area,’ Martyn said.
The elder son smiled politely. ‘I have spent time in Saudi Arabia.’
Jean saw both the major and Boss Weeks lean forward with interest. She knew what they were thinking. How had this son of a tribesman travelled so far if not with the support of some outside group?
The son continued. ‘Are you suggesting we might have oil reserves like theirs?’
Martyn laughed. ‘I can’t promise to turn Helmand Province into Saudi. But there could be enough oil to make a difference around here. Where there’s oil and gas, roads follow and better housing, better sanitation, improved health care . . . all the things you and your government want.’