by McNab, Andy
He stood up in the tower surveying the endless flatness of the desert. He liked to stare at the Early Rocks in the distance; they looked like something that had been there since the beginning of time. He also kept an eye on the antics of the civilians. They’d brought a lot of equipment in separate wagons, including some kind of drill.
‘They’re never drilling for fucking oil already!’ he said to Streaky, who was on stag with him.
Streaky yawned. He was not interested in the oil exploration. ‘I am so fucking bored. At least back at Sin City there was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing and stuff in the town to look at. I even got to like that geezer calling from his tower every five minutes.’
‘Moslems have to stop what they’re doing and pray about twenty times a day,’ said Angry knowledgeably. ‘That geezer’s telling them to get down the mosque.’
Streaky yawned again. ‘I used to think he was a noisy bastard but at least he kept me awake.’
‘Don’t you write rap in your head when you’re on stag?’
‘I’m so bored I can’t even write nothing,’ said Streaky. ‘I just want to go back to the FOB. And so does everyone else. I never seen so many miserable soldiers. There’s the boss was fighting hammer and tongs in the wagon with that Intelligence woman and now he’s gone sad, there’s Dave worried because his missus is having a baby, there’s Jamie in a strop about something. Even Mal’s not his normal self.’
‘I’m my normal self,’ said Angry.
‘Me too. And Binman. I reckon it’s because we’ve been out here a long time but we’ve still got a couple of months to go.’
Angus said: ‘I could do another six months. I don’t want to go home.’
Beneath, the contractors were burying something that looked like a bolt. They had drilled a hole and buried three so far. Emily and Martyn argued about the exact location of each hole. The last bolt had been buried and then, after a heated argument, dug up again.
‘Streaky . . .’
‘Yeah.’
‘I saw something move over there.’
Streaky looked. ‘Emily?’
‘No! Up in the hills.’
They both stared at the rugged and scarred landscape. Where they rose out of the flat sand, near the perimeter fence, there were prickly, moisture-starved bushes that looked as hostile as the desert itself. Huge boulders, which geological eons ago might have cascaded down from the mountains, lay like pebbles on the hillside.
‘Where?’
‘See Three Boulders? See Red Bush? In between.’
Streaky creased up his eyes to peer at the landmarks.
‘I can’t see anything. Nothing’s going to fucking move in this heat.’
‘I saw a shadow or something!’
Streaky stared and stared.
‘You imagined it. Everything looks as though it’s wiggling about a bit in the heat.’
Angus was stubborn.
‘I saw something . . .’
‘Well, nip down to the boys at the entrance and tell them to get on the radio,’ said Streaky, yawning. ‘And I’ll keep looking.’
Angus ran down to the men from 2 Platoon on stag. They looked anxious and immediately radioed the tent that had been set up as an ops room. Angus ran back up to Streaky.
‘Seen anything else?’
‘Nope.’
‘Have you been looking? Just to the left of Red Bush?’
‘I’ve been looking but there’s nothing out there.’
Word was now spreading around the camp. A few people came out of their tents with their weapons. Everyone was staring towards the hillside. Even the contractors realized that something was up and stopped work. The OC emerged, pen in hand, hands on hips. Dave came up to the sangar.
‘What did you see, McCall?’
Angry began to feel embarrassed.
‘I don’t know, Sarge. Just movement.’
‘What sort of movement?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did you see anything, Bacon?’
‘Nope. And I’ve been looking.’
Angus described again where he had seen the movement and Dave stood still watching for some minutes.
‘It was probably the wind,’ he said at last. ‘Look.’
He gestured out across the desert behind them to the Early Rocks where a sandstorm was visible. A hot breeze had begun to bluster against their helmets and throw sand onto their faces. It was approaching.
People went back to their tents and closed them up against the sandstorm. Only the contractors worked on.
‘Can’t you stop until the storm is over?’ asked the OC.
Martyn looked astonished.
‘Why would we do that? We’re just getting to the exciting bit.’
The OC did not share his excitement. ‘Which is?’
‘Dynamite!’
Even Emily looked pleased.
‘For many years now, for environmental reasons, dynamite has been rarely used. But because we are working under exceptional conditions here we have been given permission.’
Martyn grinned happily. He did not seem to notice the sand in his hair, teeth and ears. He wore sunglasses but it was probably in his eyes too.
‘In my view, dynamite’s always been the best. See, we send a charge down into the shot hole over here . . .’
‘It will be over there,’ corrected Emily.
‘And the geophones we’ve planted will give us seismic readings. Now, if we’ve got them in the right place and if Emily can get her signal and imaging processing right . . .’
‘It will give us a sort of picture of what lies beneath the surface,’ finished Emily excitedly. She walked off to the group of waiting engineers. When she was out of earshot Martyn leaned towards Major Willingham.
‘Which we don’t need because when you’ve been in this game as long as me you know from the aerial photos, some elementary surveying and the gravity readings exactly what’s under there. But I’d hate to put these guys out of a job.’
There was another radio message from the sentries.
‘Excuse me,’ said the major. ‘We have a keen rifleman who’s insisting once again that he can see something moving in the hills.’
‘Which keen rifleman?’
‘McCall.’
Martyn smiled. ‘Angus. He’s too darn keen. Probably just wants something to do.’
Anyone prepared to brave the sandstorm came out to look at the hills. But there was noticeably less interest this time.
‘Where was it?’ Dave asked Angus patiently.
‘Same place!’
‘Did you see it, Streaky?’
‘Nope.’
‘It must have been something big if you saw it in a fucking blizzard.’
The hot wind lashed their faces and threw handfuls of sand at them. The sky was turning orange.
‘Yeah, it was something flapping. Like, in England it would be washing on the line. But here it’s probably someone’s clothes.’
Dave watched the hills.
‘Angry,’ he said at last. ‘Either it’s gone or you’re imagining things. Now you two get down off this tower and send Jamie Dermott up. We’ll finish your stag for you.’
Streaky looked grateful but Angus said, as he climbed down: ‘I definitely saw something, Sarge.’
Jamie arrived.
‘Thanks, Sarge. Stag in a sandstorm is every soldier’s dream.’
‘They only had another ten minutes to go and McCall kept seeing things.’
‘He just wants something to happen.’
Dave told Jamie where Angus claimed to have seen movement but now there was so much sand you could barely see the hills at all.
‘I wanted to talk to you, Jamie,’ said Dave. ‘Anything up?’
Jamie did not look at him.
‘No.’
‘Don’t piss about with me. You don’t have to tell me but I wish you would. I’m getting sick of seeing you slope about like a sore prick at a stag party. What’s happened?’
‘Is it Agnieszka?’
Jamie swung to look at him.
‘What have you heard about her?’
Dave tried to appear startled by this question. He shrugged innocently. ‘Jenny’s in hospital so I’m not getting any gossip. Have people been telling you things?’
Jamie sighed.
‘No. But Niez’s changed. She’s sort of . . . cut herself off from me.’
‘Why would she do that?’
‘She might just be pissed off with me being away. Seriously pissed off. Or she might have met someone else. Or both.’
‘Got any evidence?’
‘Not really. It’s just the way . . . Well, she used to be really pleased to hear from me. You could tell by the end of the call she felt better about everything. And now it doesn’t make any difference when I ring. That’s how it feels.’
There must be rumours flying around camp, Dave thought, about Agnieszka and this bloke. And the rumours must have reached Jamie.
‘We have to trust our wives,’ he said. ‘Because that’s all we can do.’
‘Yeah,’ said Jamie miserably. ‘Yeah.’
‘I wish I could ask Jen to go over and talk to her . . .’
Jamie looked embarrassed. ‘Your problems are worse than mine. Jenny’s ill and she’s having a baby and you can’t even phone her.’
‘Know how I cope with that one?’ asked Dave. ‘I don’t think about it. I could worry about Jen all day but what’s the point? There’s nothing I can do and worrying about it’ll mean I can’t do my job properly here. That’s what a professional soldier has to do, mate, and you’re a professional soldier. He has to leave home behind.’
Jamie gave the ghost of a smile. ‘It’d be easier to leave home behind if we had a bit more to do here. I mean, I can understand why Angry keeps seeing flipflops under every boulder. At least that’d mean there’s a chance of some action.’
They finished the duty in silence. Dave was thinking that, despite his claim, he hadn’t managed to cut Jenny out of his thoughts. At any random moment in the day, no matter how busy he was, he would suddenly hear, as though in a dream, their last phone call, punctuated by her sobs. At night he tried not to give in to the panic he felt because he was in the middle of the desert, unreachable, while Jenny and the baby lay in hospital in a life-threatening state.
When they came down from the tower, Dave was about to busy himself with his next sand stew when the OC called him over. Boss Weeks was already there, smiling. Dave hadn’t seen him smile since his pretty friend from Intelligence had sat at the front of the Vector bawling him out.
‘Good news,’ announced the major. ‘I’ve had word from Bastion that Broom and Connor were stable enough to leave Afghanistan yesterday. They’ll be landing shortly in the UK.’
Dave smiled too.
‘They wouldn’t have sent them on stretchers if they thought they could hang on and send them in body bags!’ he said.
‘Exactly!’ The OC was beaming. ‘There are so many long faces around here that I’m hoping it’ll cheer everyone up.’
Chapter Fifty
BEN BROOM HALF OPENED HIS EYES. THERE WAS A STRONG POSSIBILITY that he was dead. He did not try to remember the event that had led to his death but images floated through his mind. A blue, blue sky, the colour burned away to one side by the white heat of a massive sun. His mates shouting to him but never coming near him.
There were other, darker images, of people standing over him and talking to him. But he didn’t know any of these people. They weren’t in his platoon or in his family. No one he loved was there. So death was full of strangers.
A stranger was standing over him now.
Broom thought that probably the dead didn’t speak to each other but he decided to try anyway. He was surprised by the sound that emerged, of a wheezing, clanking old motor.
‘Come again?’ said the man.
‘Am I dead?’ repeated Broom.
‘Nah. You’re not dead. This isn’t heaven. And I’m no angel.’
Broom stared at the man and gradually he felt his life and his past taking shape inside him. He had been blown up in a minefield and taken here to Bastion where the surgeon had told him he’d lost the lower part of his leg. He felt sad as the weightlessness of not-knowing left him and was replaced by the burden of this knowledge.
‘Funny, you look like a bloke I used to know.’
‘Who would that be then, Ben?’
‘He was in our platoon. But he got casevaced back to England.’
The man grinned. ‘You don’t say.’
‘His name was Steve.’
‘That’s a coincidence, then,’ said the man. ‘My name’s Steve.’
‘Steve . . . Buckle.’
‘Fucking incredible! The same! That’s my name too!’
Broom blinked. He raised his eyebrows so they disappeared somewhere under the cover of his bright red hair.
‘Hello, Steve.’
‘Hello, mate.’
‘So . . . did they fly you back out? To pick up your leg from the cookhouse?’
‘My leg! In the cookhouse! Now you’re really talking crap, mate. They’ve had you drugged up to the eyeballs. They didn’t fly me back to Afghanistan, they flew you back to England.’
Broom looked at him trustingly.
‘Where am I then, Steve?’
‘Selly Oak. Just look at the telly and you’ll know you’re in England.’
Broom did not move but his eyes swivelled to the screen. Two glittering bodies, strangely linked, cavorted in unison across a lit stage.
‘I was watching it while I waited for you to wake up,’ said Steve. ‘And know what I was thinking? Could I be the first amputee on Strictly?’
Broom’s eyes moved from the TV, with its swirling, complete human beings, to Steve Buckle.
‘Must be Saturday then.’
‘You’ve got it, Ben! I’m at Headley Court now but they brought me up here for a long weekend to see the docs and to see you and a bloke called Ryan Connor who took over a gimpy after I got blown out of the platoon.’
‘Ryan’s really been poorly,’ said Broom.
‘Yeah, right. Not like you, Ben, you picture of good health, you.’
‘The bottom half of my leg got blown off by a landmine. Fuck me, Steve, am I going to be explaining that to people for the rest of my life?’
‘Yeah. See, it’s not, like, a temporary thing.’
Broom felt his eyes go wet. He had lost a leg. He had lost it for ever.
Steve Buckle sat down.
‘Go on then, cry. I fucking cried, mate.’
Broom’s arm was bandaged and so was part of his face. He was lying flat and had no idea how to move. He lay crying quietly until Steve placed a tissue in his good hand. This was a revelation. Broom had forgotten he had a good arm. Very slowly he closed his fingers on the tissue, bent his elbow and aimed the tissue at his nose.
‘Well done, mate,’ said Steve.
‘Oh, fuck it,’ said Broom. ‘What’s going to happen now? What’s happening with my bird?’
‘Your mum’s outside with the bloke from BLESMA. He’s getting her prepared to see you without your leg.’
‘What about Kylie?’
‘Dunno,’ said Steve dully. He had heard about Kylie from Leanne.
‘Is she out there?’
‘Dunno, mate.’
‘Shit, what will I do now? What can I do without my leg?’
‘Well, it took me a long time to understand this, or maybe a long time to believe it. But you can do pretty much everything. And it’ll be easier for you than me because I’ve got a short stump and it’s a fucker for fitting a socket. Yours came off below the knee. That’s much easier.’
‘
I won’t be good enough for the Paralympics. I won’t be good enough for anything. I won’t be good enough for my bird. Buckle, why did I have to be in that minefield? There are a hundred and twenty men in R Company, I don’t see why it had to be me.’