Heroic

by Phil Earle

  The thought of it was enough to put steel in me, make me do whatever the boss asked.

  ‘What we don’t know, however, is the location of it. Where it’s been processed. Intel says if we find the plant, we find the gear. They won’t want to move it any more times than necessary. Our objectives today are to reach out to the locals, ask questions, gain trust. The majority of them don’t want the drugs in their town either. All we have to do is find one of them who’s happy to give the location up.’

  I heard a sigh from my left, disappointment from someone who wanted a livelier introduction to their tour. The boss had none of it.

  ‘Not dangerous enough for some of you, eh? Not enough that if we do find the gear, the Taliban will throw every grenade, bullet and rock they can find to stop you getting to it. They’ll set IEDs in our paths. Inside boxes, cans, spaces so small you won’t possibly believe there could be explosive inside. But they will be the ones to watch: strong enough to take your leg and leave you to bleed out in seconds. You hear me?’

  The boss left us with one more shout.

  ‘This all ties in to the hearts and minds conversation, gents. You’ve heard it at home as well as here. You know this war is about trust, about educating the locals, giving them opportunities to live without heroin surrounding them. But the first step has to be them trusting us, recognizing our aims are about their safety. It all starts with you, gents. Do your jobs, come back safe, come home together.’

  We dressed ourselves clumsily, like kids having to tie their laces for the first time. Tomm could barely get his helmet fastened, his hands were shaking so much. I had to fight the temptation to sort it out myself.

  As we stepped into the sun, we gasped as one. Immediately, I pulled my tube round to a better place. I’d need liquid on tap to get through this. Told Tommo to do the same.

  As the boss went through radio checks, I noticed Giffer going through the motions with his armband again, just as he had on the Chinook.

  ‘What’s that all about, Giff? Not superstitious, are you?’

  His laugh rumbled like gunfire. ‘No place for superstition this, Jamm. This is my gun arm, and this is my tourniquet ready, see? Any Taliban dares to shoot this arm, there’s no way I’m bleeding out. One quick pull, and I can take them down before they finish me. Simple.’

  At that moment I’m scared. Scared like I’ve never been in my whole life. And I know why. I’m never scared at home. Never, despite everything that goes off around me. Because there, I know the rules. If I make a mistake at home, I can get around it. Things might get tasty, but there’s always a way.

  But here? One mistake, one step too far left or right, and it’s over. I’m missing an arm, a leg, or worse. I bleed out.

  We paced to the gates as a pack. Armoured, tooled-up, but more naked than we’d ever been in our lives. Once the doors were pulled back we streamed out, two by two, arms lifting in turn to touch a single word painted in red above the gate: DAVENPORT. The name of the first soldier to walk through and not come back. We touched it out of respect, to show him he didn’t fall without reason, but we knew, all of us, that it didn’t make us immune to the same fate.

  I chanced a look at Tommo. He was holding it together – just. He was followed by Giffer, who already had his game face on.

  The armband idea might work for him, but it feels like there’s not a tourniquet big enough to keep me safe.

  We paced to the village in no time, driven down the hill by adrenalin and the naive desire to get things done. After the endless days at the base and Caffeine’s mindless banter, even the blandest landscape was eye-popping.

  I suppose all of it was exotic, in comparison to the estate.

  Days as hot as this back home led to a sea of discarded football shirts, exposed beer guts and the whiff of value burgers burning on disposable barbies. There were no such reminders of home here, although as the market place opened up in front of us we were bombarded with smells that I’d never be able to identify if I lived to be a hundred. It was a mental mix of sewage, then almost candyfloss sweetness, followed by spices so overpowering they blasted a path right through your goggles.

  I tried to think about how I’d describe it to Sonny and the others, but it was so dizzying I had to park it and concentrate on the job at hand. One look at the number of people swamping the square demanded that, as did the bomb-blasted windows of the towers above.

  ‘Eyes alive, gentlemen,’ buzzed the boss in our ears, ‘and remember, tits and teeth.’

  I couldn’t help but grin. Didn’t ever think I’d hear those words coming out of a ranking officer, but the boss loved them, it fitted his whole ethos of dealing with the locals. Charm them, win their trust, seize the initiative.

  Trying to ignore the looks from the townsfolk around us, which varied from fear to relief to contempt, we split into groups of four, sharing a local interpreter who was skilled in asking the questions we need answering.

  It was slow work, hard enough to make our own way through the crowds, never mind identifying and isolating individuals who we thought could help. Our questions were dismissed quickly by most with shrugs, blank gazes and often anger.

  Are we crazy, they’d ask? Sign up to sure execution for drugs that they doubted even existed? Why didn’t we concentrate on rebuilding houses flattened by our air strikes? Bring medicine for the kids hit by our shrapnel?

  We filled the terp with our words and he tried to calm them, but our notebooks remained as empty as when we arrived. Apart from the dust. That covered every inch of us.

  The boss demanded regular updates, the tension in his voice impossible to ignore, but no matter how many times we asked, pleaded or begged, the answer remained the same – nothing.

  I was losing the others in my group. Slasher and Guido looked increasingly frustrated, while Tommo’s attention was anywhere but on the locals we were questioning. Every time I checked him out, he was facing a different way, eyes skywards or flicking nervously over at the towers. He was pacing around too, jigging from foot to foot like a five-year-old who needed the bog. I left the terp to Slasher for a second and took Tommo by the arm, wheeling him to one side.

  ‘What is wrong with you?’ I whispered between clenched teeth. His eyes were wired, unblinking, like he was OD-ing on adrenalin.

  ‘Nothing.’ His gaze didn’t move, but no sooner was the word out than he changed his mind. ‘Everything. There’s people up there. I see ’em.’ He pointed the barrel of his rifle up at the windows. His fingers were blue with tension, gripping the trigger way too tight.

  ‘Chill out, will you? Of course there’s people up there. They live there. What do you expect?’

  His head shook, the barrel pointed again. ‘I don’t like it. It’s not safe. We’re wide open down here.’

  I grabbed his arm, not caring if we were seen. ‘What do you expect? People to roll over the second we ask ’em a question? Of course it’s not safe. You’re not at home any more.’

  ‘Well, I don’t like it.’

  ‘You don’t like it? Listen to yourself, Tommo. None of us like it. But it’s what we joined up to do. So focus on getting the info we need. Get that and we go home.’

  His eyes widened at the mention of home and I regretted the word instantly.

  ‘You know what I mean. Do your job.’ And with a final squeeze, I let go of his arm and went back to the others.

  An hour on and the market teemed with punters. They seemed to crawl from every crack and corner of the square like ants, and as a result Tommo’s fears were spreading to us all. We hadn’t a clue where the friendly locals ended and the Taliban started. For all we knew we were questioning the leaders of the cell, the very guys we were trying to bring down. We were sapped and confused, but knew we weren’t heading back to base yet, not without exhausting every opportunity there was.

  The boss’s voice jolted us upright, ears straining against our headsets. I wanted to tell the guy selling fruit next to me to shut up. Just for a minute – shut
up!

  ‘Gents – move carefully but we have something. Four men spotted humping boxes from building at south-west corner of the square. Slash, Giffer, move your boys over to assist. Move slowly, but with purpose – one whiff of us and this could all kick off.’

  My heart leapt as the four us threaded our way through the market, parting the crowd with difficulty, ignoring the pleas from the kids for the pens and sweets that littered our pockets.

  Was this it? Was the intel solid? I mean, there were lads all over the square moving things around. Why were these boxes special? How did the boss know it was gear inside rather than rice or veg?

  It was like Slasher read my mind as he looked back at me. ‘Trust the intel and the boss.’ He smiled. ‘And hope it is the drugs. It’s the only way this patrol will end before midnight.’

  With Tommo at the rear, we joined up with Giffer’s crew and the boss, all ten of us grouped in the shadows. I ignored the temptation to wipe the sweat off my face, and tried to match the others’ intensity, even though inside I was pure dust.

  The boss spoke quickly to each of us, searching our faces to check we were up for it. Desperate to please him, we gave him everything, even Tommo.

  ‘Listen up. They’ve been in and out twice now, each time with boxes. They’ve appeared at seven-minute intervals, meaning they’re possibly going up to the top to collect. There are stairwells at each end of the building. Giff, your boys take the southern stairs and cover odd floors. Slasher, yours to the north on even. Keep comms to a minimum, but clear. If these lads are the ones, we can’t afford to lose ’em now.’

  I waited for one of the boss’s sayings, a joke to put us all at ease, but it didn’t come. His face said it all. This was it. Big game time.

  Sonny

  There had to be a way out of this, but it was hard to focus when the only thing separating me from the ground were the hairy, clenched fists of a Cuda crew member.

  The wind pulled at my jumper, reminding me how many floors up we were. Twelve.

  My new hair colour might have fooled the police, but not these two.

  My head was swearing at me for climbing the stairs when I saw them coming. How stupid was that? At least if you keep your feet on the ground you don’t have far to fall. I was well into broken neck territory here, no way was I walking away if this gorilla was in a really foul mood.

  As it turned out, he wasn’t the talkative type. Maybe he didn’t have the gene pool to string a sentence together, because when a voice came, it came from behind him.

  ‘You must think we’re stupid or something, bruv. That right?’

  The accent was pure Ghost, drawling and slow, like some low-rent Bond villain. I expected him to appear stroking a flea-ridden cat.

  What he did have, when he leaned over the balcony and into my face, was the foulest breath imaginable. If his pal hadn’t been the only thing preventing my first and last skydive, I would’ve told him so. Instead I winced and said I had no idea what he was on about, adding ‘bruv’ on the end, just so he could hear how ridiculous it sounded.

  ‘Come on, Sonny. Everyone knows what went on with that van from the cash and carry. Word gets round, and know what? We was impressed, till you started dishing out the goods to our customers. Don’t reflect well on us when someone else muscles in, you hear me?’

  I didn’t bother denying it. There was no point. Maybe coming clean might see me pulled the right side of the railing.

  But it didn’t. Instead the chimp with the missing link lowered me backwards, daring to loosen his grip on my hoodie. I thrust my hands around his, desperate for some kind of leverage.

  ‘How much did you get for it?’ His voice was battling the wind in my ears.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The vodka and smokes. How much did you make?’

  ‘Forty quid. Something like that …’

  ‘Be more specific.’

  They leaned me out further.

  ‘Fifty! Fifty quid. That’s all. I’m telling you.’

  ‘Then you owe us five hundred. And we’ll leave it at that, long as you deliver within five days.’

  Ridiculous as the interest was, I wasn’t exactly in a strong position to barter, and as I toppled even further back, grappling with the air around me, I knew I had no option.

  ‘Five days. Five hundred. Got it.’

  ‘Right decision, bruv,’ and he hoisted me back on to the balcony, the ground spinning beneath my feet.

  I wanted to front up but could do nothing but fall on to my knees and try not to spew.

  ‘So we’ll see you back here then on Tuesday, six o’clock, yeah? And no coins neither. No raiding your piggy bank.’

  I was relieved enough to feel the fight seeping back into me. ‘Tens or twenties?’

  ‘We in’t fussy, long as it folds.’ They made to walk off, then stopped and looked back. ‘One thing,’ added the mouthy one. ‘You must have been desperate, to trade on our patch. What you need the money so quickly for?’

  ‘Flowers.’ The word came out before I could stop myself. It sounded so lame I wondered if I’d have been better to let them toss me over the balcony and avoid the embarrassment.

  It took a second for the word to register with them, but when it did, they lost it, nearly ending up on the floor with me. They leaned on each other and howled, pulling out their phones as they told me to repeat myself.

  ‘Flowers and that haircut? People will start talking. The boys have got to hear this.’

  I told him where to go. The meathead took a step forwards.

  ‘Say it again.’

  I refused.

  His trainer slammed into my ribs, knocking me on to my side, a thousand thunderbolts lighting up my chest. My fingers flew to my ribs, expecting to find his laces embedded in them. He must have cracked one. I hoped he hadn’t punctured anything.

  ‘You get that?’ asked the gorilla, still filming.

  ‘Yep. That’ll do. He won’t be too chatty for a while anyhow.’ He leaned over me, hoicked up a mouthful of spit and let it fall on to my face. ‘Five days. Five hundred quid. Six o’clock.’

  They gripped palms in celebration, moved into some elaborate handshake, then left me to make sense of where on earth I was going to get the money from.

  It wasn’t an easy conversation to have with the lads, not days after shearing them like sheep. And besides, they thought the only people after us were the coppers, they had no idea I’d been treading on Cuda toes too.

  I wanted to drop it in casually, without any big deal or fuss, but with the time deadline and the agony coursing through my chest, it wasn’t really an option.

  Wiggs had found me on the way home from my ‘meeting’ with the crew, slumped over a bench, thinking I was about to cough up a lung. He freaked out big time, got straight on the blower to Cam, who rang Den, who wanted to find those responsible and give them a sorting.

  Nice sentiment, but with me no use and Hitch predictably not answering his phone, we talked him down, sort of.

  ‘What is it with Hitch?’ he raged. ‘What’s the point of having a phone if he never has it on?’

  ‘When did we last even see him?’ asked Wiggs.

  None of us were quite sure. Could’ve been the scam, but that seemed too long ago to sit comfortably. Still it gave me something else to worry about apart from battered ribs and a painful death in five days’ time.

  By the time Dennis carried me home and Cam had strapped two carrier bags of ice to my chest, I was fit for nothing. Unfortunately the others wanted answers.

  ‘So what’s going on then?’ demanded Wiggy, cig burning in the corner of his mouth as ever. The directness of the question put me on the back foot.

  ‘About what?’

  He looked at me like I’d had a lobotomy.

  ‘Er … this?’ he pointed at me.

  I tried to play dumb and shrugged, which started him prowling around the lounge, lighting another smoke before his first was even finished.

  ‘Don
’t try and play it down, Sonny. Look at you. Look at the state of your ribs.’

  ‘What went on, fella?’ asked Dennis with a wry smile. ‘Who’ve you been upsetting this time? Been picking a fight with a pit bull again?’

  ‘Don’t bring that dog up. I did nothing to provoke it, you know that.’

  ‘Well it gave you nothing but a kiss compared to the state of you now. What happened?’

  ‘Got into a dumb argument with some Cuda lads. That’s all.’

  Wiggy snorted, a plume of smoke billowing from his nose. ‘What are you doing getting into a ruck with them? Don’t you know anything?’

  ‘Wasn’t my fault, Wiggs …’

  But he wasn’t having it. ‘Come off it, mate. Them lads shouldn’t even know you exist. You must have done something to be on their radar.’

  I blew hard from my mouth, about to come clean, when the door opened and Hitch walked in, looking rougher and paler than usual. If his feet hadn’t been touching the ground, I’d have sworn he was a ghost.

  ‘What’s occurring? Not picking a fight with that dog again, were you?’

  The other two idiots laughed their bits off, but not Hitch. His jaw was clenched hard, like he thought they were laughing at him. Cam clocked it too, taking his arm as she explained. It did little for his mood, so I moved the conversation on, painful as it was.

  ‘I had a bit of a chat with two of the Cuda lads. Turns out I might have sold some of that vodka we lifted on their patch.’

  The laughter stopped as all four of them shot me a look that told me I was mental.

  ‘What?’ I asked. ‘I was in a rush. Needed some quick cash.’

  It was Hitch who laid into me hardest, anger forcing some colour into his cheeks as he paced about, agitated. ‘Well, that was dumb, wasn’t it? What did you need money for in such a hurry?’

  ‘You trying to impress some bird?’ asked Wiggy. ‘Not that lass from Holtby House? I thought you’d kicked her into touch. She was rank. Looked like a shark, she did. More teeth than a Great White.’