War Torn (27 page)

Streaky ran across to the back of the other Vector. He glanced behind him at the woman and saw the boss trying to persuade her to return to the wagon. Then he slipped into a firing position and started again. He let round after round rip into the nearby trees and undergrowth. If there was any living thing there, it must soon be dead.

What rhymed with
enemy
? Absolutely nothing. It was impossible to find a word in the English language that rhymed with
enemy.

He saw an RPG flying high overhead. He stepped behind the Vector, watching the grenade’s bright, graceful arc. It had a sort of beauty. Dave saw it too. He knew, from its height and its trajectory, exactly where it was going to land. He shouted: ‘Cover!’

Some firing continued but everyone who’d seen the RPG sailing towards the river, including the enemy, stopped and waited. And then came the explosion.

Streaky felt the heat of the blast wave and the force of its punch in his chest. He was blown against the side of the Vector. The ground rocked, the world rocked and, when he looked up, the sky was rocking too. It was breaking into a thousand tiny pieces and falling on their heads. Some men were flung to the ground, others threw themselves there. A few grabbed the Vectors for security, but the Vectors were rocking with the shock too.

Streaky was on his stomach, helmet down.

Enemy . . . destiny
! Yes! It wasn’t perfect but it would do. The two words worked well together.
Enemy, destiny
, yes.

Branches, leaves and plants were still flying through the air, smoke rose upwards in a steady column from the riverside, and it felt like minutes before the world began to steady itself. Even the enemy was quiet.

The silence that followed the blast brought with it a small window of calm. And then the firing started again and most of 1 Section understood at once that the enemy had used the distraction to move still further forward.

Dave shouted: ‘Fix bayonets!’

Streaky’s heart sank. Bayonets were what you used when the enemy was just a few metres away. Bayonets were what you plunged into people’s bodies while you looked into their eyes. He fumbled with his, trying to imagine what it would be like to run at a man and shove a bayonet into his chest. He thought he might not be able to do that.

He tried to scramble to his feet, fighting against the weight on his back which kept dragging him back down. Finn, who had managed to remain standing through the blast, grabbed his hand to help him. Streaky saw the boss helping the woman to her feet. The blast had thrown the boss on top of her. Or perhaps he had thrown himself there to protect her.

‘We now have a way out,’ the boss said to Dave, his voice full of dust.

‘No,’ Dave said.

‘There’s a bit of a crater but we can get round it and over the bridge!’ Weeks insisted.

‘No!’ Dave repeated. ‘There’ll be more.’

‘More what?’

‘IEDs. On the far side of the bridge.’

‘The enemy is now extremely close. I mean, I think there are some only twenty metres away,’ the boss said. Dave didn’t reply. He kept on firing. Streaky did the same. But a few minutes later, he heard Dave and the boss arguing again. It seemed they had been told an Apache was arriving and the boss wanted to put down smoke now.

‘No!’ Dave said.

‘The pilots will need it,’ the boss insisted.

‘Too soon!’ Dave said.

‘But surely we—’

Dave interrupted him. ‘No, no, no! If we put smoke down now we’ll just get a load more incoming. I don’t have time to explain!’

The urgency in his voice made Streaky increase his rate of fire.

‘How many times,’ the boss roared in his ear, ‘do I have to tell you we’re running out of ammo? Use less, for Chrissake!’

‘Oh yeah . . .’ Streaky slowed his rate a fraction.

At the sound of a rhythmic, distant thudding, he felt relief flood through his body. It was almost over. He’d been both surrounded and outnumbered in an ambush and it was almost over at last.

Enemy fire was ceasing a little. 1 Section immediately eased their firing too. The bonds that had glued them to their weapons began to loosen.

‘I’ve never been so fucking happy to hear a rotor blade,’ Finn said, his voice filtered through dust.

‘OK, now smoke,’ the boss said, glancing at Dave.

‘Wait . . .’ Dave said. ‘Mini flares are a lot better.’

Sol explained: ‘Smoke hangs around for too long.’

‘It gives every Tom, Dick and Harry Taliban our position,’ Dave said. ‘Just make sure you’ve got the pilot’s attention . . .’

When the helicopter was chopping up the air overhead, they sent up a flare.

Remaining alert to catch any fleeing insurgents, the men watched the massive metal bird begin its hunt from the sky. Two scrambling,
anxious figures jumped from trees that were only ten metres from the Vectors.

‘Too fucking close,’ Dave said.

Before they could run, Angus McCall took aim without hesitation and killed one. Mal took the other. Angus could not resist turning to catch Dave’s eye. Dave nodded at him. Whatever had held Angus back before had evaporated in this fight for his life.

‘We were lucky. They didn’t have many RPGs and they weren’t very handy with them,’ Dave said. ‘If they’d had mortar we wouldn’t have stood a chance.’

‘And if we’d had mortar it would have helped,’ the boss said quietly.

‘An HMG would have been good, too.’ Dave went over to Jamie. ‘I wish you’d sit down, mate.’

‘I’m all right,’ Jamie insisted.

‘You don’t look all right; your face is a weird colour.’

The medic appeared. ‘We’ll have to get you to Bastion. We need to check for internal injuries.’

‘You can forget that,’ Jamie said. ‘No one’s taking me away from my mates for no good reason.’

Sol said: ‘I really don’t want to lose you, but you have to be checked out. You know the score.’

Jamie sighed. ‘Listen,’ he said to the medic. ‘I’m OK. I’ll let you know if I’m not OK.’

The medic shook his head. ‘We’ll have to give you a proper examination back at the FOB, then.’

‘OK,’ said Jamie, ‘but I’m not going anywhere. Unless it’s in a body bag. And someone else can carry the machine gun back on top for me now.’

Angus heard this and picked it up at once.

Before following him on board the Vector, Jamie said: ‘You have to admire the flipflops. They don’t give up, do they? They must have known that air support would come sooner or later and try to finish them off. But they didn’t stop.’

The boss said: ‘They don’t care if they die. That’s the most frightening thing about them.’

Asma nodded. ‘We’ve been fighting for our lives. But they’ve been fighting for Allah.’

‘If you don’t mind me saying so,’ – Finn turned to her with admiration – ‘I never would have expected a lady to get a grip in a fire fight like that.’

Asma raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m no lady,’ she said. ‘I’m from Hackney.’

Finn laughed and held out his hand.

‘That explains everything.’

They were still shaking hands when the boss appeared.

‘Please stay alert, Finn,’ he said briskly. ‘The second AH is arriving shortly and insurgents may flee too close for the Apache to fire at them.’

Dave turned to Asma. ‘Well done. Nice one.’

She looked pleased and glanced at the boss. He turned away.

The second helicopter arrived and they sent up another flare. One Apache put down fire along the treeline. The other flew over the adjacent fields, targeting leakers as they ran away from the scene.

The soldiers watched for any who tried to seek protection from the helicopter by lying close by. It was a relief to be still at last and not to feel hot metal burning their hands. Streaky knew he’d thought of some good lines during the fire fight and was now scribbling furiously, although he’d already forgotten some of them.

Binman, colour returning to his cheeks, crawled from the Vector with the medic to see the Apaches hunt the insurgents from the sky. The boss and Asma stood side by side, watching.

Dave sat down and leaned his back against a wheel of the vehicle and closed his eyes. He drank some water and waited as the Apaches did their work.

About half an hour ago he had reached for some gun oil and found Jenny’s letter in the pouch next to it. He had thought he had left it with the other mail, since bringing anything personal out of the base was strictly forbidden in case of capture. He must have stuffed it in the pouch without thinking. But, now it was here, he wanted to read it.

With his eyes shut, he tried to pretend for a moment that today had just been a training exercise on Salisbury Plain. He tried to imagine that he’d be home this evening to find Vicky in her high chair and Jen manoeuvring her belly around the little kitchen. But
the image had the unreality of a dream. For an ugly moment the woman with the belly was a figment of his imagination. She was nothing to do with him. She barely existed.

Alarmed by this, he reached into his pouch for her letter.

Dave read the words but they did not penetrate. He knew that this was a letter from his wife, whom he loved, about the baby, whom he also loved although it wasn’t even born yet. But there was a disconnect between this world of bumps and kicking and kitchen tables and this world that was Afghanistan.

Dave glanced over at Jamie. He was back up on top now with the machine gun, watching the Apache’s high-precision operation intently. His face looked a deathly white and battered and bruised as though the round had bounced off his cheeks. When it seemed that the helicopter had found an insurgent hiding at the edges of the track, Jamie got ready to fire if the man tried to escape by running towards them, but the Apache pilot fired first.

Here was a man, thought Dave, whose heart and soul was concentrated in the work he’d been trained for. He must be in a lot of pain right now but his commitment was undiminished. Agnieszka’s antics with some bloke in Wiltshire could never hurt Jamie the soldier. But she could destroy Jamie the man, who was made of marshmallow.