War Torn

by McNab, Andy

  Asma shook her head with incomprehension. ‘I can’t believe it! His father spoke against the Taliban!’

  ‘It’s not so unusual for a father to have one son in the Afghan National Army and another in the Taliban. You told me that yourself. You told me that Afghans like to hedge their bets when it comes to taking sides. You said that, after so many years of war, they have to. But Asad was in more deeply than that. He was committed to the cause.’

  Asma looked away from him at the dust clouds billowing on all sides of the Vector. He could hardly bear the unhappiness on her face. He stopped short of pointing out what might have happened if the OC had accepted the wedding invitation.

  Neither of them said a word as they re-entered the base. When the wagon stopped and the driver got out, Weeks turned to her.

  ‘Asma, don’t be upset . . .’

  He was shocked to see that she was fighting tears.

  ‘I’m not fucking upset,’ she spat.

  ‘It’s a war. We have Rules of Engagement and international laws governing our behaviour but it’s basically a dirty game and you can’t trust anyone.’

  ‘You don’t understand! Someone who knows nothing about this country and its people thinks he had the right to judge Asad and find him guilty. And today those bastards put him to death! What fucking right do they have to decide who he is and what he thinks?’

  ‘They have the right to decide he’s dangerous and that he puts a lot of other lives at risk.’

  ‘I hope they know what the fuck they’re doing! Because if they’re anything like you, with your posh farmhouse and your polo and your private school, they don’t have a fucking clue! You don’t even know anything about England. Let alone Afghanistan!’

  Weeks did not reply. Asma did not get out. So they continued to sit in the hot Vector watching the men debus. Dave was running around with ammo. The drivers were sharing cigarettes in the shade. Weeks could not remember being more miserable. His wretchedness felt as though it penetrated to his bone marrow. Somehow, together, he and Asma had managed to develop an intimacy despite all the differences between them. And she had just ended all that.

  He wondered which gap was wider: the eighty miles between his family’s farmhouse and the flat in Hackney where she had been brought up? Or the gulf between England and Afghanistan? The distances seemed so great that they were insurmountable.

  She sighed into the silence. He wished she would speak. Apologize, unsay it, reach for his hand. He glanced at her and saw from her deep brown eyes that she would do none of these.

  ‘You fucking idiots don’t understand. You talk about the Enemy. But sometimes the Enemy is the Future.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘His beliefs were too complicated for you fucking morons to understand. He was no fundamentalist but he certainly had principles. If he was fighting for something it was probably Pashtunistan. What makes a bunch of fucking wankers think it’s OK to top anyone who believes in a cause? Maybe what he believed in had some value. Shit, I hate you all.’

  ‘All who?’

  ‘All you wankers who think you know. Well, now you’ll pay for being so fucking sure. We went into their house and accepted their hospitality and now we’ve shot their son. At a family wedding, for fuck’s sake. It’s OK for the SAS, sneaking in and out of here and then going off to kill someone else. We’ve got to stay here and face it when they take their revenge.’

  ‘Now you’re being dramatic.’ He heard his own voice, how his vowels had been honed in farmhouses and on polo ponies. He understood how it must irritate her. ‘The point of the Regiment’s op is that it didn’t look like any British Army operation the locals would recognize. The intention was to make them think a rival tribe had carried out the killing.’

  She rolled her eyes.

  ‘They’re not stupid.’

  She was getting out of the wagon now.

  ‘Gordon, I’ve already explained the Afghan code of honour to you. Now just you wait and see what happens.’

  She slammed the door.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  IN THE COOKHOUSE, FINN AND MARTYN ROBERTSON WERE TEACHING Angus to play blackjack. Dave always kept an eagle eye on these games but so far he had been unable to detect stakes that were anything higher than matchsticks.

  ‘I bet you earn a lot of matchsticks in a week, working for an oil company,’ said Finn as they waited for Angus to decide whether to draw another card.

  ‘More matchsticks than you could ever imagine, Huckleberry. But there’s not a lot of chance to spend it here.’

  ‘What do you do with it then?’

  ‘I got houses, I got ex-wives, that’s where most of it goes. But I’ve enjoyed our blackjack, and when I get out of here I think I might just take me to Vegas for a weekend.’

  ‘We do a thing called decompression when our tour ends. We all go to Cyprus to get drunk.’

  ‘Well, I’ll need a lot of decompression in Las Vegas after all these months with Emily the Enemy. I just wish she wasn’t coming to Jackpot tomorrow.’

  ‘But you’re a lucky bastard,’ said Finn. ‘Money to blow in Vegas. Any chance of a job when I come out of the army?’

  Martyn smiled wearily.

  ‘I get asked that every week.’

  ‘Not by people as clever as me, Marty.’

  ‘Maybe not . . . Come on, Angry, or we’ll have to set a time limit.’

  ‘All right, then,’ said Angus. ‘Give me another card.’

  Martyn dealt him a card. Angus looked at the face value and thumped his cards down in disgust.

  ‘Whooooar, that’s me out! Bust again!’

  Finn picked up the hand and looked at it.

  ‘You need to think a bit more, mate. If you’d stuck at what you had you’d probably have been quids in.’

  ‘He thinks way too much. It took him five minutes to go bust when others could have gone bust in five seconds,’ said Martyn.

  Angry got up.

  ‘Well, that’s me out of matchsticks. It’s a stupid game, anyway.’

  Martyn raised his eyebrows but said nothing and at that moment Taregue Masud arrived with a cloth to wipe the tables.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, I now ask you for permission to make this table very nice and clean for your game, sir.’ A demanding monster with his men, he had been instructed to treat the civilians with great respect.

  ‘Don’t make it damp or the cards will get wet,’ Martyn told him.

  ‘No, sir, they won’t get wet because I will use this towel, sir, to dry the table.’

  Angus was leaving. ‘I’m going to get my head down now because we’re off early tomorrow. So if Jamie Dermott’s recording that fucking hopping frog shit in our tent . . .’ He could be heard grumbling all the way across the cookhouse.

  ‘That young man needs to get over himself,’ said Martyn.

  ‘He’s not called Mr Angry for nothing.’

  ‘He’s just like his father,’ said Masud. ‘Yes, oh yes, his father was just exactly the same. His name’s McCall, I believe?’

  Finn stared at Masud as the man dried the table with unnecessary zeal, his face frowning with concentration.

  ‘You know his father?’

  Masud paused.

  ‘I knew that boy when he walked in here the first day and I’ve spent these months, many long months, racking my brains to know how I know him. Finally one day I realized. He looks just like his father and his father worked for me in the Falklands. John McCall, I think his name was, yes I’m sure it was John McCall.’

  Finn leaned forward, his face all acute angles and his eyes narrow.

  ‘His dad worked for you?’

  ‘John McCall was one of my cooks. We had a tent in a field, gracious knows how many ration packs, not one ounce of fresh food and we had to open all the ration packs and cook for hundreds of men every day. It was a difficult time, an exceptionally difficult time, to tell you the truth, probably worse than Iraq. Because it was very, very cold and we ar
e talking about very, very hungry men.’

  Finn said: ‘His dad was a cook?’

  Masud nodded extravagantly.

  ‘Oh yes, oh yes. We were Army Catering Corps in those days. Then we were the Royal Logistic Corps and then soon after that I was a private company. Doing the same thing for the same boys but as a private company. Well, I ask you, how strange is the world?’

  But Finn did not answer this question. He had one of his own.

  ‘So John McCall was a cook in the Army Catering Corps?’

  ‘Oh yes, certainly. He was guaranteed to serve your sausages with a scowl, that was John McCall.’

  A huge grin spread across Finn’s face.

  ‘So Angry’s dad was ACC. Not SAS. Did anyone ever go from being an army cook to fighting in the elite special forces?’

  Masud laughed. ‘I don’t believe that is very possible. To tell you the truth, I think John McCall was just a very grumpy cook, actually, and it seems to me his son is rather similar.’

  He wandered off to wipe down another table, chuckling to himself.

  ‘SAS. ACC!’ Even Martyn had heard references to Angus’s dad in the cookhouse. ‘Well, I can see how you could get those two mixed up. Leave out the Cs. Add a few Ss. Yes, I can see how Angus might think his pa was in the SAS.’

  Finn started to laugh. He flung down his cards and his whole body shook with laughter.

  ‘He was a fucking cook! I don’t believe it! What a Walt!’

  Martyn was laughing too, now.

  ‘I mean,’ said Finn, ‘Mr Angry’s dad wasn’t just in the Regiment. He was a war hero who won back the Falklands single-handed! And you should have seen Angry with those SAS snipers! “Do you remember my father, do you recognize his name . . .?”’

  ‘So is the father lying? Or the son?’

  ‘Definitely, definitely the father. Angry believes every fucking word. You should see him when we’re out there fighting. Doing things that are so brave they’re insane. And then he goes all solemn and says: “It’s what my dad would have done.” For fuck’s sake! What his Dad would have done is turn the sausages over in the pan!’

  Martyn laughed again.

  ‘I guess you’re not going to let him hear the end of this.’

  Finn’s face pulled itself back into something like its normal shape and he looked serious for a moment.

  ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Nah, I’m not going to tell him. Angry drives me insane with his dad talk. But he’s built his whole life on the back of his dad’s lies. I couldn’t take it all away from him.’

  Across the cookhouse, Asma was eating alone because Jean was saying goodbye to Iain Kila. Her friend arrived breathlessly and grabbed the last meal.

  ‘Won’t you see him in the morning?’ asked Asma.

  ‘They’re leaving at 0400. So I kissed him goodbye. In a sangar.’

  Asma raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Just a minute. Last time I asked you if you liked him you said yuck, yuck, yuck.’

  Jean blushed. ‘Well, I still think he’s a bit yuck. But they’re going away to this flimsy camp made out of barbed wire for a whole week. And right after we’ve shot the local warlord. So I thought I should kiss him in case he doesn’t come back.’

  Asma shrugged and said nothing.

  ‘You’re not saying goodbye to Gordon, then?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘He came in here earlier. He was looking around for you, I’m sure.’

  Asma stabbed her food with her fork.

  ‘He can look all he likes. I’m still fucking angry with him.’

  Jean caught her eye.

  ‘Asma. You’re angry with the British Army for shooting your bonny blue-eyed boy and you’re taking it out on Gordon. And why on earth did you have to bring farmhouses and polo into it?’

  Asma put down her fork and sighed.

  ‘I shouldn’t have said that. I really had a go at him just because he’s posh. So I expect he thinks I’m jealous.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t want his big house and all his fields and horses. What would I do with them? I can’t even imagine going home and meeting his mum. For drinks in the drawing room. I just couldn’t do it, Jean.’

  ‘You’re prejudiced,’ said Jean.

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘Has he invited you home to meet his mum?’

  ‘Well . . . yes.’

  ‘Asma, you’re a sad cow. He’s got over his prejudice. You just can’t get over yours.’

  But Asma shook her head.

  ‘I don’t buy into their crap. I don’t buy into who they are or how they think. I know he was a bit wahabi and probably a Pashtun nationalist and you thought it was suspicious the way he rubbished the local shrine, but you can say what you like about Asad, he probably had more in common with me than Gordon does.’

  In the night, when she woke up and heard the first men up preparing for their departure, Asma felt a small twinge of guilt and regret. She turned over. She tried to go back to sleep.

  Then she remembered that Asad was dead and she felt a renewed surge of anger. Someone who had never met him and didn’t understand his cause had ordered his death and the SAS had appeared from nowhere and shot him and had now evaporated back to Hereford.

  Probably the suspicious officers, Gordon Weeks among them, would offer a different interpretation but she knew that, in the meetings with Asad, human relationships nurtured on the carpet over cups of sweet tea had triumphed briefly over weapons. And what had they done? Shot him.

  She had not been inside a mosque for many years and she looked on Islam with the cold distance of a divorcee. She was a member of the British Army. No one had coerced her into joining. But the British Army had killed Asad. For the second time on this tour she had the uncomfortable feeling that she had personally shot her Moslem brother.

  She did not open her eyes but lay in bed listening for the sound of the departing convoy.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  DAVE DID NOT SLEEP. HE MANAGED TO GET HIS HANDS ON THE satellite phone when it was still only ten thirty at night in the UK.

  Sure that the hospital would have sent Jenny home by now, he dialled his own number first.

  ‘Nope. Still there.’ Trish sounded sleepy. ‘And she’s getting a bit miserable on that hospital food. I took her in something tasty tonight to tickle her appetite but she’s gone right off everything.’

  ‘That’s what she did towards the end when she was pregnant with Vicky,’ said Dave. But Trish, as always, knew better.

  ‘She had a good diet throughout that pregnancy. No, Dave, I’m afraid that something’s very wrong if Jennifer’s off her food like this.’

  Knowing that Trish would not be happy unless something was very wrong somewhere, Dave rang the hospital. This time he got through to the ward.

  ‘We don’t normally give the phone to patients after four in the afternoon,’ said the nurse. ‘This is extremely late to call.’

  ‘But I’m her husband.’

  ‘Most husbands get here during visiting hours.’

  She sounded prim and disapproving.

  ‘I’m not most husbands. I’m on the other side of the world. I’m in Afghanistan and I’d like to talk to my wife.’

  ‘Can’t you phone during our normal hours?’

  ‘Well,’ said Dave, ‘I suppose I could try having a word with the Taliban to arrange a little ceasefire during your visiting times . . .’

  ‘All right, all right,’ said the nurse. ‘But please try to respect hospital rules in future.’

  Dave gritted his teeth and waited a long time. Finally a small, sad voice he hardly recognized came on the line.

  ‘Daaaaave!’

  Oh, shit, she was crying.

  ‘Stop crying,’ he said. When soldiers cried, as they occasionally, unaccountably and ashamedly did while fighting, his policy was to grip them immediately. Stop crying, he would say in a brisk voice, get yourself together, focus and do a professional job out there.<
br />
  But with Jenny he couldn’t even manage the brisk tone. And the other stuff, about focusing and being professional, didn’t really apply. He stood out under the Afghan stars, the phone pressed to his ear, listening to a woman crying in Wiltshire. The base and his mates and the lads suddenly weren’t here. Just the stars and the sound of Jenny’s sobs.