Rain

by Barney Campbell

  ‘Sorry, yeah, Dusty, I’m OK. Just remembering something, that’s all.’

  ‘No worries, sir; this lack of sleep fucks you up. For a minute there I thought you’d lost it. Here, have some gum.’

  Tom brought himself back to the move; already it felt endless. They would be visible for miles and miles around; a pound to a pinch of salt the Taliban to their north could see the plume and were preparing to fight them. Forty minutes later they had their first dicker appear. To their left a pickup truck drove to the top of a low rise and parked, a silent sentinel. Frenchie called a halt, and as one turrets traversed as the car commanders used their sights to get a closer look at a figure in a dark purple robe, looking at them through binoculars. Quite obviously he was reporting on their progress.

  Frenchie came up on the net. ‘Charlie Charlie One callsigns, as you can see we have our first dicker. They know we’re coming. Let’s hustle up; expect contact.’ Tom felt his stomach drop away. ‘As much as we’d all love to give the good news to our friend on the hill, I’m afraid we can’t do anything. We’ll have to move on. One Zero, your ball. Out.’ The column started moving again.

  Dusty muttered, ‘For fuck’s sake. Why can’t we just waste that dickhead? One shot, all I need. Fucking rules of fucking engagement.’

  For the next four hours the journey continued its slow rumble in a now familiar pattern of driving for a couple of kilometres and then halting to clear a VP or to crest a rise and observe the area in front. They were still in the open desert, so Henry was enjoying the luxury of being able to pick a completely virgin route. Just on the horizon, though, Tom could see the low cluster of compounds that formed the town. Inevitably the Taliban were expecting them; the one thing they wouldn’t be anticipating though was for the column to steam straight through the middle of it. It was the kind of trick that could be pulled just once.

  Frenchie had cleared it with the CO two nights before, who thought it a good plan. Over the secure telephone link from Bastion to FOB Newcastle he had said, ‘Well, Frenchie, it’s ballsy, but if anyone can do it C Squadron can. Just don’t cock it up. Bravura looks good when it succeeds, but when it goes wrong you look like a muppet. So, don’t cock it up. Got it?’

  Even Frenchie, whose self-confidence and faith in his own and his men’s ability usually won through any moments of doubt, was chastened by this, and a sudden stop in his throat held him before he answered, ‘Got it, Colonel. Don’t worry. We’ll do it.’

  Slowly, inexorably, the column kept its course. For half an hour at midday they had a Lynx fly over them. The FAC in the back of Frenchie’s Sultan talked to it, and the pilot overflew the town and gave live feed of what he was seeing. So far activity was perfectly normal: on both the east and west of the huge sprawl people were going about their daily business. Farmers were in fields, couples rode on motorbikes and children played outside compounds. Frenchie relayed all this to the squadron and Tom was reassured, but he just wanted to get to Newcastle by dusk. He was starting to feel a little peaky and wasn’t sure whether it was lack of sleep or something worse. He hoped against hope that it wasn’t the chicken and withdrew into himself, and the banter in the turret dried up.

  The Lynx was then called away to another task, and they were on their own again. Out on one flank, about two kilometres away, a motorbike tracked their progress, betrayed by the plume of dust thrown up by its rear wheel. At least the desert’s neutral, thought Tom.

  Closer and closer they came to the compounds. The Taliban would be expecting them to commit to the eastern or western bypass route at any point now and must be surprised that still they kept on heading for the centre. Tom drank some more water; he was getting a low throbbing headache. The sun, now at the height of its parabola, beat upon the back of his neck. The water, cold earlier, was now horribly warm and seemed to scour and burn his throat. With just five hundred metres left before the town, Frenchie came up again. ‘Charlie Charlie One, Zero Alpha. This is it. Eyes peeled. Be prepared to engage enemy if fired upon. One Zero acknowledge over.’

  Henry replied, ‘One Zero roger. I’ll thread a route through with my One Two callsign. Hope it’s to your liking. One Zero out.’ And so the column plunged straight into the cluster, the open desert now giving way to another archipelago of compounds, all fifty or a hundred metres apart, separated by rough tracks and ploughed fields, Henry’s troop twisting and turning through the maze.

  Progress was surprisingly rapid. For four miles they jinked their way through faster almost than they had raced through the desert. Far from the village emptying of all activity, the wagons seemed to be the biggest draw in town, and the boys exploited this to the full, throwing from their turrets sweets and pencils at every opportunity. If there was a halt due to the lead wagons trying to work out how best to skirt around an obstacle, children would come up to the vehicles and the crews would lift them on board and have their photos taken with them, letting the children wear their helmets and putting on their little hats. Three Troop’s biggest draw was Trueman, who always had about twenty children clustered around his wagon. He entertained them by pulling faces and then pretending to be a monster chasing them away. Tom entered into the spirit of things only half-heartedly. He was now feeling really queasy, and could only raise a wan smile when Dusty started larking around with the kids. He was relieved when the wagons started rolling again.

  With only a quarter of a mile before the lead wagon broke clean from the cluster there was another halt. Corporal Ealham, who had led all of the way from Bastion, halted five metres into a ploughed field which lay between a little conurbation of compounds. Farmers were in the field, and one of them looked angry. Ealham came up on the net. ‘Hello, One Zero, One Two. I’m just going to reverse and take a route around this field. I don’t think this fella’s too pleased about me driving through it. Apologies. I’ll get back on track. Over.’

  ‘One Zero roger. Agreed. No dramas. Just get out of there and we’ll go around. Out.’

  The wagon was with its tracks parallel to the deep-ploughed furrows in the field, meaning that to its left and to their right were walls of soil. Ealham, exhausted after bearing so much responsibility for so long, looked over the side of the wagon and judged the depth of the furrows. He knew they should just reverse out but somehow found himself saying over the IC to his driver, ‘Right, Mikey, let’s get out of here. Neutral turn to the right.’

  The driver, also drained by the stress of the move north, the lead man of the entire squadron, automatically and with no appreciation for his surroundings immediately yanked back the right drive stick to perform a neutral turn.

  Behind them Henry could hear the splintering of metal on metal as the track was driven straight into the deep furrow, tearing it away from the wheels. ‘The fucking twat,’ he swore. ‘He’s thrown his fucking track.’ He ripped off his ANR and in a fit of rage jumped down on to the ground and ran over to the wagon, whose occupants were peering over the side of the turret in horror at what they’d just done. Henry lost it, all the angst and fear of the past hours boiling over. ‘Corporal Ealham, what the fuck have you just done?’

  Ealham looked horrified, his dull, exhausted eyes slowly realizing what a mistake he had made. ‘Boss, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I’ve just done that. I can’t believe it. My bad, my bad. I just got too tired.’

  Henry looked into his eyes, saw an almost dead glaze and knew he shouldn’t have kept him on point for so long; he should have changed around the order of march ages ago to rotate the burden of responsibility. But Ealham had never ever, neither on exercise nor on ops, made this kind of mistake before and took huge pride in being lead callsign. Henry softened his voice. ‘OK, OK. I know, Eals, I know. It’s going to be OK. We’ll get that track fixed back on again and then be on our way. I’ll get on to Zero Alpha and we’ll get one of the Samsons up here.’

  He jogged back to his wagon to get on the radio. He had an uneasy feeling. Everything had been going so well up to this point. Putting the t
rack back on should take all of half an hour, but somehow he didn’t think it was going to be that simple. As he clambered with seasoned agility onto his own wagon he remembered Frenchie’s dictum that the moment one thing went wrong, everything else followed.

  Frenchie heard the news and ordered one of the Samsons forward to bring some REME expertise to bear. He said to the FAC, ‘This is either going to be cured in two shakes or we’re going to be here till hell freezes over. And I reckon it’s the latter.’ Sure enough, when Staff Sergeant Prideaux reported back, all was not looking good at all. The force of the turn had not just taken the track off the wheels but also sheared off the rear idler. What could have been a half-hour job was now, at best, a five-hour one.

  ‘Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck,’ cursed Frenchie. This was not good. If this had happened in the desert, then fine. No one was going to attack them in the open. But here, in the midst of the cluster, anyone could get up close to the vehicles, strung out as they were over a kilometre.

  The Taliban obviously hadn’t yet realized what had happened, and children were still coming up to the wagons. Frenchie ordered everyone to redouble their ambassadorial efforts. He needed to come up with a plan to protect them all; in the meantime they would continue to use the children as de facto human shields. He knew he was up against it. The moment the Taliban realized their predicament they could lock them into the area by laying IEDs to their north and south, blocking their exit routes. Frenchie had to secure the route out; that was imperative. He also had to secure the recovery zone while the REME boys struggled in the open with the track and idler. He briefed the squadron over the net. ‘Charlie Charlie One, this is Zero Alpha. Here’s the plan. We have to secure our exit route as soon as possible. To that end, Four Zero, I want you to leapfrog from the rear, push north past the stricken wagon and secure the edge of the cluster. Four Zero roger so far over.’

  From the rear of the column came Clive. ‘Four Zero roger so far. Understood over.’

  ‘Zero Alpha. One Zero, you will provide all-round defence around the stricken wagon, and SHQ are going to come up next to it and make that location our HQ until we can move. One Zero roger so far over.’

  ‘One Zero roger.’

  ‘Zero Alpha, Two Zero remain in your positions, and Three Zero push up to take SHQ’s place, where you’ll be the rear of the column. Spread your vehicles as you see fit to prevent us being contacted from the south. Three Zero acknowledge over.’

  Tom, now feeling worse and worse, his guts rumbling and his forehead damp with sweat, replied weakly, ‘Three Zero roger. Understood over.’

  ‘Zero Alpha. OK, that’s the new plan. Move now to new positions. Out.’

  And so the squadron reorganized itself according to Frenchie’s instructions, with the centre of mass reforming around the stricken One Two, with the hapless Ealham cursing himself and wilting under Brennan’s glare when his wagon parked up next to his. Tom moved 3 Troop up to where SHQ had been and fanned out the four wagons to face south. After half an hour everyone was in place, and Frenchie could breathe a bit more easily. They were still vulnerable, and he was sure that the Taliban would try something, but at least they had secured their exit for when they could move again.

  Over the course of the afternoon the weather got worse. A low blanket of cloud came in, and the hot dry wind changed into a damp one carrying tiny specks of water. The air became humid and close, and in the far distance a low growl of thunder provided a sinister backdrop to their efforts to get out of the cluster. The children still came up to the wagons, but with less innocence than before. Trueman had seen this before on his previous tour, and radioed Frenchie to warn him that he thought the children were now being used by the Taliban to get information on the cars from close quarters and then report back.

  Shadowy figures popped up at the corners of compounds all along the column, which, although now contracted, was still spread over three hundred metres. Often these men would come into the open and eye the scene before them, taking it all in before slipping back behind the walls. It made the boys feel very vulnerable, and weapons were re-oiled and likely firing points identified by the commanders and gunners, who practised dry-run shoots on them. Each wagon could see the one before it and after it in the order of march, so they could support each other in contact and could make sure there were no blind spots where IEDs could be dug in between them, but it still felt to the boys as though the initiative had slipped to the Taliban.

  Tom by this point had completely succumbed to D & V, and was in and out of his turret, vomiting and defecating by the side of the wagon. His clothes soon stank, and when he hauled himself after each bout into the turret he just sat there, sweating and then shivering, his clothes stained with filth. Dusty made sure Frenchie and Brennan knew, but there was nothing they could do for him. He was the least of their concerns at the minute, and a few others in the squadron were coming down with the same thing. It was all, as Frenchie predicted it would, feeling as though it was unravelling very quickly.

  Dusk came on and with it an increase in the cloud. Large raindrops fell and kicked up sand from where they bored their tiny craters. The wind picked up, whipping squalls of sand high in the air to mix with the rain into mud showers. The dust on the wagons turned into sticky paste, making the slick movement of machinery into a grinding mangle. Progress on the stricken vehicle was awful. The track took hours to tease off where it had been tangled in the running gear, and even with Brennan cajoling them on the boys were shadows of their usual selves after so long without sleep. Three had come down with D & V, and one of the boys even tore a hole in the seat of his trousers so he could defecate without having to take them down.

  Night came on, still without any commitment from the Taliban. Frenchie sent round that there was to be no sleeping that night; everyone had to remain awake. He knew it would suit the Taliban perfectly to exploit the dark and the dust, using their knowledge of their own backyard to spring a complex ambush on the column. It was what he would have done in their shoes. So the boys sat in their turrets, trigger fingers poised for any movement. Although they were close to their friends, the gloom that separated them made each crew feel as though they were in the middle of nowhere.

  Tom, now soaked from his own sweat as well as the steady rain, awoke with a start from a few moments’ captured unconsciousness. Dusty, who had let him sleep and stepped up into the role of vehicle commander with aplomb, was wide awake next to him, steadily traversing the turret and watching to the south, the thermal imaging sight able to see perfectly through the rain and fog. ‘Fuck,’ said Tom, scrambling out of his seat. ‘I need to go again.’ He had barely lifted himself out of the turret before he puked again. His foot slipped on the vomit and he almost fell off the wagon, but he just caught himself on the bar armour at the last minute, ripping his hand open on a sharp edge. He looked at the gash, livid across his filthy palm, with numb acceptance. Tetanus, he thought, would be bliss compared to what he was feeling like at the minute.

  He got to the ground and emptied himself in the hole he had dug at the side of the wagon. He had no energy left at all. The air fizzed with the dust and drizzle, wind howling between the vehicles. He stood, did his trousers up and saw shadows flit in the murk about twenty metres away. Curious, he walked away from the wagon into the gloom, soon being enveloped by it. The dust and rain swirled all around him, and he felt even colder than before. He felt he was stepping out of the war and into another world.

  One shadow in particular seemed always in front of him, and with each step he took it receded back into the dark. He walked forward again, taking the pistol out of his holster. The shadow stopped. It was a man, just five metres away from Tom with his back to him. Tom raised his pistol, and just as his lips opened to challenge him, the figure turned. He was tall and thin, and dressed in black. On his head gleamed a white dish-dash, bright even in the dark. Tom couldn’t speak. The pistol felt heavy, and his arms groaned with illness. The figure fixed him with an unblinking gaze
. Tom’s hand dropped and the pistol hung limp by his hip. The figure raised his hands to his dish-dash as if to reveal his face.

  And then Dusty was next to him, and the man retreated into the shadows. ‘Boss, boss. Relax. Relax. Put the pistol down. Please put the pistol down.’ He felt Dusty’s hand on his shoulder. He saw Davenport next to Dusty. ‘What’s happening, boys?’ he asked, bewildered. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Don’t worry, boss. Just come with us.’

  Davenport put his arm around his shoulders, and they took him back to the wagon, where Trueman was waiting with a stretcher that he had laid next to it. ‘There you go, boss, there you go,’ he said as he helped Tom lie down, took his helmet off and wiped his brow with a damp rag. It felt good. ‘You’ve had a bad dream, boss. Christ, we were scared. You fucking off like that into the dark, what were you thinking? Dusty saw you go into the dark all on your own and came to get me from my wagon. Thank fuck we got you before you got lost in the compounds. If anyone got you there you’d be fucked. Christ, you gave us a scare.’

  Tom barely heard Trueman but knew he had been saved from something by Dusty. He murmured thanks. Davenport sat by him all night. Mercifully the rain lifted, but the wind and the dust persisted. Tom kept soiling himself throughout the night, unable to move. Davenport took his trousers off for him, so he could shit at will. Tom seemed detached from his body. He felt no shame at all at his illness. He just wanted to die. His mind’s eye couldn’t escape the figure receding into the shadows and imagined its soft voice beckoning him into the darkness. Even when he closed his eyes he saw it on the inside of his eyelids, gently coaxing him.