Bully (2 page)

‘Shut up Selly,’ I said, letting him walk past and then planting a gentle kick up his arse. Just to be friendly, like. He staggered forward a little. For a moment I thought he was going arse –over-tit, but he managed to correct himself. Then he started to walk on a little ahead of the rest of us, sulking.

‘The little arse-wipe,’ sneered Reynolds, ‘he’s just like a little rug-rat.’ And for one dangerous moment, he reminded me of someone in my past. Another shark that could scent the blood of a weaker animal from so many miles away. I had to bite back the urge to crack him one, but I also had to bite back the urge to join in with him. Because although Selly was my favourite, I also hated him for his weakness. And sometimes it paid to let people know that you knew
exactly
how weak they were.

‘This dust gets everywhere,’ moaned Delaney, and then all of us launched into him instead, knowing that he could take it.

Presently, Selly returned to the main group. He already looked to have got over his sulk; even looked excited about something.

‘I can see where they are,’ he panted, ‘the sarge and them…’ He paused to get his breath, gesturing towards a slight ridge in the distance. I shielded my eyes and peered off into the nothingness and then finally saw what looked to be a collection of medium-sized vehicles and a large group of men.

‘Nice one, Sells,’ I said, by way of thanks, apology and whatever else he wanted it to be. And there was a new spring to our step as we picked our way across the shit-tip towards Davis and whatever other regiment were there to offer reinforcements.

Now we could actually see our destination, the going was better. It seemed somehow less hot. But something was still concerning me. When Selly had first pointed out the camp on top of the ridge, all I’d seen at first was a mass of dazzling purple light, flickering like a fire shot through a purple lens on a camera. Only after screwing up my eyes had I picked out the individual figures and vehicles. Only after I’d convinced myself that it was a trick of the light or of the desert or of dehydration. Nevertheless, it worried me. It seemed like some kind of a sign that things were not as they seemed; not easy. The whole thing was making me uneasy, especially after I’d seen virtually the same light display in the faces of the old men by the roadside in the town. I gave an involuntary shudder and then furtively looked around the grunts to check whether they’d noticed. It wouldn’t do to be caught shivering out here in the scorched desert; it was a sign of weakness.

As we approached, I saw that there were about fifty men, arranged haphazardly across the ridge at the top of the gully in between five or six Wolf Land Rovers and a Challenger. Sergeant Davis and the man I took to be the sarge from the other regiment were the only ones standing; they were having an animated discussion. I didn’t envy the other sarge; Davis was one boring fucker at the best of times. The worst of times was generally when you first got to meet him; when he was trying to impress his iron will upon you like it was a job interview or something.

‘Look at them lounging about like they’re catching some rays,’ said Delaney. ‘They’re worse than the Septics, this lot.’

It always riled our boys that whenever we were engaged in some heavy menial task or other, Davis’s men or the Yanks or men in other regiments weren’t. He took it as a personal affront. What he didn’t ever seem to get through his thick skull was the fact that when
we
were on a bit of R & R, generally it would be Davis’s men or the Yanks or men in other regiments that were working, or policing the war-torn streets, or dealing with the civilians. Still, Davis’s grunts
were
resting. Leaning against their packs and smoking snouts. Looking for all the world as though they were in the middle of enjoying a nice, comfortable walk in the British countryside and they’d only stopped for a bite to eat. Only the fact that each man still wore their helmet and had one hand clamped on his SA80 told me that they were in any way concerned; but that, I suppose, is the monotony of fear. Something you get more than used to in the Kingsmen.

‘Have a rest yourselves boys,’ I said, ‘I need to go over and talk to the sarge and see what the plan is.’

My lads jumped at the opportunity and moved over to lean against one of the three Wolf Land Rovers and regain their breath. I noticed that they stood
as a four
, slightly away from the other grunts. Despite their personal differences, they still recognised the importance of standing tight as a group, especially when other eyes were on us.

‘Anything from the town?’ Davis barked over at me as he saw me approach.

‘Nothing, sarge’ I confirmed. ‘As per usual.’

I waited patiently for Davis to introduce me to the other sergeant, wondering whether he’d bother; wondering whether he’d yet again try to reinforce his own position by undermining everyone else’s.

‘So are we all set to go now, Davis?’ asked the other man. ‘The Second Yorkshire’s have been ready for twenty minutes now…’

They really were two peas in a pod. Apparently my duty was done and neither of them had thought it necessary to tell a grunt like me what we were planning to do. As I walked away, I heard them start to talk again. Something about the building being abandoned as suspected. Something about being on the lookout for trip-wires. Something about there being no need for snipers.

I walked back to my lads and nodded to them. I took a pull of water offered by Smith – which tasted overwhelmingly of cigarettes of course, but anything was better than the taste of the water purifier tablets - and wiped some sweat off my brow.

‘So what’s the plan, Lance Corporal Bull?’ asked Selly. And in that moment, he became my favourite again. He had seemed to sense the need to reassert my authority after the shambolic chat with the two sergeants, and yet he was as thick as two short planks which had been gradually whittled down into ashtrays. Through pure, numb luck rather than judgement, he always seemed to pull me right out of my bad moods. But then, whatever life you walk, it’s always comforting to know that there’s someone, somewhere that’s far, far worse off than you.

‘Fuck off, Selly,’ I said, already feeling back to my best. ‘You don’t need to know that at this stage of the game.’

I watched him flop back down by the Wolf and start to fiddle with the cap of his water bottle. Sand and dust would get in there if he continued the way he was going, but he didn’t seem to care. Reynolds flicked a bit of cigarette ash onto the lad’s lowered head, but Selly didn’t even notice because of the helmet. But there was something else too; he was lost in his own world; probably one in which big Dulux dogs like him frolicked in the sun and were rubbed on the stomach once in a while by their owners and betters; people like me.

One of the doors of the landie was open, and from the inside, the low, tinny sound of music could be heard. I tried to place the song. Knew I’d heard it before somewhere in the deep mists of time. I listened hard to try to pick out the lyrics which were fuzzy at best. But it was only when Private Smith started humming along that I realised what it was; Don McLean’s ‘American Pie’. Somehow, it seemed wildly out of place for him to be singing it here. But maybe that was because the song once meant so much to me; reminded me of long, hot summers back home. There was a reason I’d not listened to it for a while though, wasn’t there. And I didn’t want to think of that now; this could well be the day our music died.

Soon, the men were called to assemble and we started to walk down into the gully, picking our way through assorted debris and over sharp-looking rocks. It didn’t make for easy-marching. Again, I felt that uneasy feeling creaking up within me, only now we were coming so close to the building, it was starting to transform itself into dread. And so, when Sergeant Davis started walking alongside me, it took me a while to notice.

‘Lost in your own world, Lance Corporal?’ he asked, with this nasty little smile on his face. I could barely bring myself to look at him. He was a big man and he still wore a moustache, despite the fact that he probably knew all about how the privates ripped him for it behind his back. He had this annoyingly superior way about him as though he thought he knew everything in the world and it was his solemn duty to impart it to country-bumpkins such as me.

‘Sorry sarge,’ I muttered.

He waved away my apology and grunted as he climbed over a particularly large piece of rusted machinery. Why he couldn’t have stepped around it was beyond my comprehension.

‘This gully was most likely made by a tributary of the Helmand River that’s long since dried up,’ said Davis as he rejoined my path. Sometimes, I wished he could just lighten-up a little. This wasn’t a damn geography test. We weren’t supposed to think; not too much. ‘That’s maybe why we can’t see any opium fields round here… Or much of anything really.’

I grunted by way of response. What with the way that my scalp was itching so much from the pressure-cooker helmet, and the steepness of the slope down the gully, it was all I could do to stop myself from saying something I’d later regret. But sometimes, just sometimes, I thought about how delightful it would be if Davis wasn’t around any more. If I didn’t have to subject myself to his looming presence and his stony-faced disapproval of the way I handled the four men under me.

Stony was pretty much a good description of Davis, in fact. He was like a massive boulder that got in the way of all my plans. A man so set in his ways it was as though concrete had been set in his blood. Sometimes, I thought I could hear the rumbling of his joints when he walked with me.

‘Good terrain for training,’ he said. ‘The Taliban picked well. And even the Landies couldn’t get down to the building from this direction…’

‘We could have gone round the other way,’ I muttered. ‘Taken a Wolf.’

Davis looked at me sternly, shook his head and said: ‘But that would have taken away from the element of surprise.’

Dread was setting in strong now. Who was he hoping to surprise? What was he hoping to surprise? I thought he said the building was abandoned…

Soon, he started to sense my mood and my unwillingness to talk and he stepped up his pace to join another of the Lance Corporals – a renowned arse-licker that seemed to
just love
Davis’s geographical lectures - and I was again left with my only own thoughts for company, despite being surrounded by fifty men.

Thankfully, we reached flatter ground in time, and soon could pick out the low-slung building, which was in fact
two
buildings, separated by a small courtyard which was filled with overflowing bins and leftover equipment. Silence had crept up behind us and taken over us all, and now all we could hear was the lazy rattling of one of the shutters in the light breeze and the occasional heavy clump of someone’s boots on the turf. Even Selly didn’t feel the need to speak, for once. I watched him as he followed
exactly
in Private Smith’s footsteps as though it were some kind of superstitious game, like a child trying not to step on the cracks in the pavement. Perhaps it was his way of trying to waylay death; perhaps it was his way of trying to sneak
around
death and out the other side, into his own little world of Dulux dogs. Or maybe he was worried about landmines? For about the first fortnight he was here, he walked everywhere like a cat on a griddle-pan. Only after numerous complaints from the rest of the lads did I set him straight.

But here there were no landmines. They’d swept the area, hadn’t they? There were other worries though. We were in full view of the building now, but surely if there was some sniper inside, he’d have started to pick us off by now. There were lots of little cracks in the concrete walls through which an AK47 could have been poked, and yet there was no fire. I began to agree with the sarge; the place was dead; abandoned. We’d find nothing here just like they’d found nothing in so many similar places across the province.

I wasn’t scared of death, not then. But I suppose that I was scared of what would come next. What would be waiting for me afterwards. I knew I was going to hell, but then, what was this place if it wasn’t hell already? And it was these thoughts that
made
my stubborn legs keep going as we crossed a fence and into the scrubland out front of the buildings. And yet, still nothing.

In the courtyard, we stepped over feral cats that could barely even muster up the energy to glimp up at us. It was so hot that we could almost see them cooking as they lounged. I braced myself for the sight of Selly reaching down to stroke one of them, but he kept to his task wearing a pale mask of concentration that probably matched my own.

Davis took the lead, frantically gesturing for various divisions to approach the building in several different directions. There seemed to be four or five entrances – broken-down stable doors and the like – and apparently he wanted all of them covered. Which made sense, I suppose.

I led my men to the furthest entrance; one which was partially blocked by a large, rusting piece of corrugated iron. We slipped quietly along the concrete walls, just as we’d been trained. We kept low, but mobile; even Selly. When we reached the entrance, I looked each of my men in the eye. Somehow, I knew that it was important that I did this. Reynolds looked typically dead-eyed and keen to get on with it; Smith looked typically non-plussed by the whole situation; Delaney looked a little sulky. But Selly; Selly wore this look that scared the shit out of me. His face, which had been so pale on the approach, was now blazing hot. His cheeks looked almost purple.

And that look at Selly made my decision for me. Without another moment’s thought, I pushed the corrugated iron away from the door and we stepped into the building. The smell of decay was everywhere; nobody, it seemed, had been here in a long time.

And they hadn’t. Only, bombs can sleep for a long time before they go off. They don’t really care how long they have to stay awake. And depending on how well they are made, they can still be alert long after even the hardiest of soldiers would have lost patience. And Davis’s recon squad never noticed the bomb that the Taliban had left behind at the low-slung building. And when Davis or Selly or any of the other men stepped through the door, it was primed and waiting for them.