War Torn (40 page)

They both nodded at Sol and then at each other. It wasn’t much but it was enough. They jumped on board and sat at opposite ends of the wagon.

Asma had climbed up beside the boss at the front and this had put Gordon Weeks in a very good mood despite the day that lay ahead. He had barely slept but now he felt wide awake and alert.

‘I hope you won’t have to fire one at the Taliban this time,’ he said. ‘They won’t be more lenient on you because you’re a woman.’

Asma sighed and yawned. ‘You don’t understand the Taliban.’

‘Does anyone? Do you?’

‘It’s not like being in the army. It’s not one bloody great organization. It’s a bunch of smaller groups all arguing among themselves. A few are fundamentalists, most aren’t. Some are part of a big machine, some aren’t. Some people hedge their bets and join because they think the Taliban will be here for ever and the British will go. Or they join because they’re made to. Or paid to. Or because they’re angry at civilian deaths. Or because they think the British are bad for the opium crop . . .’

Her voice disappeared inside another yawn and she closed her eyes. Weeks sneaked a long look at her. She was beautiful in the
early morning, too, but it was a different beauty from the Asma who smoked under the stars every evening. In this light she looked more fragile. He started to imagine waking up next to her and then remembered abruptly that he was supposed to be discussing the Taliban.

‘Today the enemy isn’t disaffected local farmers. We know that a lot of the men in the compound are committed international fighters who want to control Afghanistan.’

She shrugged. ‘We’ll never eradicate the Taliban or drive them out.’

‘Are you telling me we can’t win today?’

‘What’s to win? All this fighting won’t bring peace. But I’m sure we’ll clear the compound and kill a lot of them.’

Too soon they reached the edge of the Green Zone. The boss told his platoon to debus and then jumped out himself. Asma was to be driven forward behind the inner cordon fighting and he smiled at her before he slammed the door.

‘Be careful today,’ he said softly.

DAVE STOOD COUNTING THE MEN BY EACH VECTOR AS THEY JUMPED
out into the dawn.

‘Two hands on your weapon, McKinley!

‘For Chrissake, Gayle, how many times do I have to tell you to unhook your sling clip?

‘Do your pouches up, Bacon! Get a grip.

‘Two hands on your weapon, Mara! Get a grip.

‘Sling clip, Broom. Get a grip.

‘I hope there’s water in that fucking Camelbak, Binns.

‘Two hands on your weapon, you. And you! Get your finger out of your arse.

‘Switch on, O’Sullivan, your pouches are a mess, sort yourself out.’

Maybe he should count the number of times he told lads to get two hands on their weapon and, when he reached a million, leave the army the way Jenny wanted him to.
Jenny.
He watched the section commanders lead their men off and then followed them into the orchard.
Jenny.
He hadn’t told her he loved her. He had just talked about Steve and Leanne, his mind on his ammo. And then he had put the phone down with a sense of loss.

They proceeded in silence, waiting for the enemy to know they were there, waiting for the first shots. Within five minutes, the shots came, peppering the silence. But they sounded far enough to the right to allow the men to continue without changing direction. No one fired. They continued to stumble into the half-dark along a
field’s edge, against the cover of a treeline, listening for the next shots.

After a long pause there was more firing. It was still to their right and this time it was much closer. 2 Platoon reported that they would take cover and open fire.

Dave and the boss had a brief conversation and decided to keep going. As the shots got louder, Dave wondered if they were moving towards the enemy or the enemy was closing in on them.

‘We’d better take cover,’ he told the boss as they emerged from the field and reached some crumbling walls, pink with age. Previous fighting, perhaps with the Russians or maybe more recently, had turned this building, whatever it had once been, into a ruin. You could see the holes of previous explosions.

The lads seized the chance to get down with their weapons and fire back. There had been rumours about today’s operation long before it was confirmed. It was a relief to end the long period of anticipation by firing at last.

‘Keep something back for later, lads,’ Dave said.

He looked along the ruined walls at his men. Angus and Finn were so intent on their jobs that their argument was forgotten. Streaky and Mal were focused too but they were both giggling insanely. Men sometimes heard laughter in contacts but they seldom guessed it was coming out of their own mouths. Just nerves, thought Dave, as the first contact of the many they expected today kicked off.

‘Tell your boys to slow their rate of fire,’ he told Sol, ‘or we’ll be low on ammo before we get to the big fight.’

In the distance was the unmistakable thump of helicopters. Chinooks. Bringing Paras. At the sound, enemy fire eased. 1 Platoon seized the chance to advance.

Corporal Baker, the commander of 2 Section, asked to take his men further out than originally agreed. He had identified an enemy position and wanted to outflank them.

Boss Weeks agreed to this. 3 Section, which was nearest to the target compound, pressed forward with 1 Section to join the Paras, who could be heard landing now. The helicopters were attracting not just light arms and heavier machine-gun fire but RPGs as well. As if the Taliban had been expecting them.

Apaches must be guarding the Chinooks: Dave could hear their chain guns putting down some 40mm cannon rounds to help the Paras get out. From the deeper thud of the Chinook rotor blades Dave estimated that they were on the ground for less than thirty seconds, just long enough for platoons of Paras to stream out of the back. And then they took off into their own dust. They flew right over Dave’s head towards the desert, an Apache hovering high on either side. He knew the Chinooks were scheduled to return to base while the Apaches were staying around for this operation but the sound of the disappearing rotor blades left a deadly silence. It was broken only by distant fire.

Maybe the enemy had moved now, converging on the newly arrived Paras. Which would trap them nicely in the cordon. Except that Dave knew better than to underestimate the Taliban.

They crossed a ditch and then a field of dried-out poppies, their pods cracking and dry stalks breaking as the men passed. The fighting continued but it still seemed far away. 1 Platoon was wrapped up in a local silence which was broken suddenly by the sound of an explosion nearby. A loud, dull thump. Dave barely had time to recognize it before the screaming started. He could hear it in his earpiece, a hideous backing to the voice of 2 Section’s Corporal Baker reporting, breathless with horror, that there was a man down. And he could hear it in his other ear, more faintly but for real: deep, primal roars of pain just a few hundred metres away.

‘Fuck, it sounded like a mine . . .’ Dave was saying as he turned towards the explosion, his heart sounding louder in his ear than the far-off contact.

He was point man now: the boss had pulled 1 and 3 Sections around behind him. He moved rapidly, stumbling sometimes, once nearly falling into a ditch, his Bergen banging on his back. All the time he was getting garbled reports in his ear from Corporal Baker that they were under mortar attack. Then someone else was shouting: ‘Keep back!’ In the confusion, it became clear that the man screaming was Broom.

Dave was breathless now but he kept running, following a drainage ditch half-filled with dirty water. His mind was focused on getting to his men but he could not help remembering a dark Afghan night and Ben Broom stealing away with the satellite
phone: ‘
I like to keep an eye on my bird, Sarge. If I don’t keep calling her, she might fly
. . .’

Dave, his breath short and his heart thudding, reached 2 Section just in time to see the second explosion. He saw the smoke go up with bits of debris inside it. Shrapnel. Or – and he tried to keep his mind from going there but the thought kept coming anyway – the body parts of a victim. He could hear more screams of agony.

‘Another man down.’ Shock had leached all expression from Corporal Baker’s voice.

Another voice, the boss’s: ‘Are you under mortar fire, Baker?’

‘Don’t know. It could be mortars . . .’

Dave was still gasping for breath. ‘It’s a fucking minefield!’

The men were clustered at the edge of a large weed-infested clearing in the woods. It might once have been a field but no one had farmed it for a long time.

‘Freeze!’ ordered Dave. ‘Everyone freeze! And don’t anyone try to get near the casualties, however much they scream.’

The boss organized 1 Section and 3 Section to cover the clearing as Dave reached the group. Most were at the side of the field and those who were close enough now leaped to the edge. Lying about fifteen metres into the clearing was the body of Rifleman Ryan Connor. About five metres beyond him was Ben Broom. They were both screaming, shouting, roaring for help, which no one could bring them.

‘Don’t anyone go near!’ yelled Dave as he saw their mates wavering, faces contorted with agony for their friends. Two had frozen in positions halfway towards them. They looked ready to try to bolt the rest of the way.

‘Kirk, O’Sullivan, stop!’ shouted Dave. ‘I said freeze! Don’t move a foot, don’t move a fucking inch.’

He worked his way through the trees around the edge of the field, over dense undergrowth.

‘My leg, my leg, I’ve lost my fucking leg, I looked down and my fucking, fucking leg was gone!’ shrieked Broom.

‘Help, God help me, holy Jesus,’ screamed Connor in a voice that sounded full of Afghan earth.

2 Section stood at the edge of the clearing, watching hopelessly and helplessly, longing to run to their mates, faces blanched. A few
tried to call encouragement to their friends but their voices were robbed of strength and depth so they sounded like a voicemail message.

Dave looked at the casualties and saw that Broom had certainly lost his lower leg and maybe an arm. Blood was pouring from his body. Connor was surrounded by blood too, but it was hard to see from here where he had been damaged.

‘Mine strike. Two tango one casualties. Out,’ the boss reported.

Dave could guess what had happened but he let Corporal Baker tell him anyway: ‘Ben was cutting across the field and suddenly, bang! He was lying there screaming so Ryan ran over to him and, bang! I thought it was a mortar attack. I didn’t stop Ryan because I thought it was a mortar . . .’

Dave said: ‘It’ll be a legacy minefield. Soviet. The Russians picked a spot and scattered them everywhere. That’s why this place isn’t cultivated, the locals all know about them.’

‘I’ve lost a fucking leg, my fucking leg’s gone, my leg, my leg, my leg . . . fuck it, fuck it . . .’ shouted Ben Broom.

‘Can you get some morphine into yourselves?’ called Dave but neither Broom nor Connor could hear him over their own roars of pain.

‘
Heeeelp
, fucking
heeeelp
, I’m dying . . .’ screamed Ryan Connor.

The men, faces ashen, waited for Dave to tell them what to do.

‘Chinook’s coming,’ came the boss’s voice.

‘No room for it to land here,’ said Corporal Curtis of 3 Section.

‘The Chinook can’t land in a minefield,’ snapped Dave. ‘And let’s hope it’s got a very long winch. Because the downdraught could set the whole fucking field off.’

The boss said: ‘There aren’t any winches on the Chinooks.’

‘What! Someone nicked them all?’

‘They had a design fault. So they all got packed off back to the UK and the replacements haven’t arrived yet.’ The boss’s voice was small and miserable.

‘Well, what good to us is a fucking Chinook without a winch?’ demanded Dave.

‘We’ve asked the Americans for a Black Hawk.’

‘Will that have a winch?’