War Torn (42 page)

Binns had already worked that one out. So far he hadn’t encountered many weeds but he worked carefully around them when he did.

It took hours and hours to move one inch. It took for ever. Binns concentrated so hard on his hands and the soil beneath them that days might have passed. The rest of his body didn’t exist. He had turned into sharp eyes and gentle hands. Every time one of the wounded let out a cry, he felt himself speeding up.

‘Ignore everything except your work, especially ignore the casualties!’ shouted Dave. ‘Don’t hurry. Are you hurrying, Binman?’

Binns shook his head but did not speak. He was squeezing the point of his bayonet into earth his fingers had loosened, and then easing his body forward a bit more. Then a bit more. And then a bit more.

He heard Mal behind him.

‘He’s working fast, Sarge, but he’s being well careful.’

To Binman, Mal said: ‘You’re doing a fucking good job. I just hope the Taliban don’t move this way. Because I’m feeling exposed out here.’

Binman heard Mal’s words but he was working patiently now on a particularly resistant mound of earth. He scraped at it very, very gently. The earth did not want to move. Was it caked to something solid beneath? He tried a new tactic.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ asked Mal.

‘Blowing,’ said Binns.

‘Oh. Thought you were just dripping your sweat on it.’

Binman became aware how hot he was. His helmet was a metal oven and his head baked inside it. His body was manoeuvring under a hot blanket.

‘Binns, have you had any water yet?’ bellowed Dave from the side of the clearing. He sounded further away now, but the casualties looked no closer.

‘He hasn’t, Sarge!’ shouted Mal.

‘Drink!’ ordered Dave. ‘Get your tube in your mouth and pause.’

Binman was blowing harder now on the resistant earth. This time it turned to dust and puffed up into his face. His eyes filled with grit. He shut them and kept blowing. When all the loose earth had gone he found himself staring down a steep indent. Just visible at the bottom was something hard and probably metallic. He stopped. For the first time since he had started this long, slow journey on his belly, he was still.

‘Use your Camelbak,’ Mal said.

Binns did not move.

‘Oy! You going to puke?’

Binns lay still, waves of heat rising from the hot soil around him.

‘Water!’ Mal prompted him. ‘Now!’

Jack Binns tried to speak. But the inside of his mouth was coated with dry soil. His throat was dry. His eyes were dry. The only water was his own sweat, dripping down his face and off his chin.

‘Eh?’ demanded Mal.

‘Something might be there.’

Mal said: ‘Might be. That’s enough for me, mate!’

Binns looked up then and managed to find the delivery tube of his Camelbak. He sucked on it long and hard. The water was
almost cool and it cleaned out his mouth and as it trickled down his throat he realized he had been concentrating too hard to notice his deep, deep thirst. The joy of the water was so intense that he did not know how long Mal and Dave had been shouting at him.

‘Back! Go back!’

‘I’m not going back.’

‘You have to fucking go back to go round it,’ Mal said, grabbing hold of his feet and dragging him.

‘I don’t want to go back!’ said Binns. But he was powerless as Mal pulled him a metre back along the path he had so neatly marked.

Binns sat up then to get a better view of the mine and how he should go around it. He saw the bodies of the wounded ahead. He had felt as though he was making no progress at all but now he realized he was a little over halfway to Broom. One of Broom’s legs disappeared into a pool of blood. Flies were gathering around it in swarms.

Binns remembered the golden hour. You had to get your casualties to Bastion inside the golden hour. How many hours had he already been here carving this route with his hands? And now he had lost one metre of the few he had gained.

Broom lay still. He was so quiet he might be dead.

‘He’s still breathing,’ said Mal.

‘Go left, Binman,’ shouted voices. A few said: ‘Try right!’ Jack Binns thought of his mother’s living room, how he and his mother and brother would watch TV game shows, shouting at the contestants what they should do.

Another voice cut through the others.

‘Binns! Cut left and you’ll link up with the path O’Sullivan cleared. Unfortunately it’s marked out in peanuts. You can eat them if you like, as long as you mark it properly.’

It was the boss. Binman swung his body to the left. The brief break had reminded him how hot he was and how dangerous the work. His heart thudded as he rounded the mine. Suppose it was enormous? Suppose he hadn’t swung wide enough? If it exploded under him his innards would be ripped out. There would be a few moments when you knew you were dying. He shut his eyes. Yes, for a couple of seconds, you’d know it was happening. He would feel pain and sadness and loss because he was leaving it all behind. He’d
think of his mother and Ally. Then it would all be over. Death would be a sort of blackness where nothing ever happened and he wouldn’t know or care. Ally would cry at his funeral and then marry someone else and have kids and grow old and he wouldn’t see any of it. Because he wouldn’t be there. He wouldn’t exist.

He felt sick. His hands became less systematic and then they stopped.

‘Binman!’ Mal sounded worried. ‘I know you’re going to sick up. I know it.’

Binns could not tell him that he was suddenly, halfway between a casualty and the edge of a minefield, paralysed by fear. Out of the corner of his eye was the distant line of Jamie’s Camelbak, with Angus’s following. They were heading towards Connor at a snail’s pace. Jamie paused and put his head up to drink. He looked over at Binman. His face was filthy. You could see sweat lines running through the dirt even from here. They exchanged distant glances.

‘How are you moving so fucking fast, Binman?’ shouted Jamie.

Binman summoned all his energy. ‘Hands. And blowing.’

‘Blowing. Good idea.’

Jamie lowered his body back down, his face distorted in pain. Binns remembered how this man had taken a machine gun round and just carried on working as though nothing had happened. He watched as Jamie disappeared behind some weeds. The field was full of bodies. The casualties were on their backs. And on their bellies, inching in their different directions, inching towards possible death, were Jamie, Angry, O’Sullivan and Kirk.

‘Binman!’ hissed Mal. ‘Don’t fuck up. You’re doing a great job. Don’t fuck up now, mate.’

Slowly, Jack Binns took his bayonet and pushed it into some soft ground ahead of him which his hands had already massaged. Nothing happened. There was no explosion. He was still alive. Heartened, he began his fast, concentrated work again.

‘Sarge!’ shouted Mal. ‘How did you know Binman would be so good at this?’

Binns turned briefly to glance at Dave, who was standing at the edge of the minefield. You could see his helplessness. He could yell, warn, cajole. But the situation was outside his control. His face was red with the heat, the effort of yelling instructions and the extreme
tension. He had even forgotten, Binns noted, before turning back to his worm’s eye view of the dry earth, to take off his Bergen. Next to him stood the boss. His face was anguished.

‘I watched his fingers when he was beatboxing with Streaky,’ Dave called back. ‘In another life, that lad would have been a concert pianist.’

Binns heard them talking about him but paid no attention. He felt as though he was inside his own hands as he scraped and prodded. He stabbed another little mine marker into the ground and crawled forward again. Mal was right behind him but he seemed a thousand miles away.

‘Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh, get me out of here!’ moaned Broom suddenly. The old blood was drying in the sun, new blood was still flowing, his wounds were sizzling and the swarm of flies around him was growing.

‘We’re nearly there!’ said Mal. ‘Go firm, Broom!’ As if Broom was thinking of making a run for it.

‘Tell Kylie I love her,’ said Broom.

‘You’ll soon be telling her yourself, mate!’

Suddenly Connor spoke: ‘It’s OK . . .’

‘Hello, hello, I thought you were unconscious, Ryan!’ said Mal.

Connor was lying still, staring up at the sky as if it was drawing him to it. He sounded calm. ‘It’s OK, lads. Just leave me to die. I just want to die.’

‘Fuck that,’ said Mal. ‘Don’t go dying on us, mate.’

Angus, behind Jamie, roared: ‘Fuck that, Connor, we’re nearly there and we’re not buggering about in all this dirt for nothing.’

‘Did you get morphine in you, Ryan?’ asked Jamie suspiciously, but Connor did not reply.

All four of the rescuers were closing in on the casualties now and they could have a conversation without shouting.

From the edges of the field, 2 Section was yelling.

‘Didn’t see him take morphine, don’t think he did.’

‘Come on, Ryan, don’t fucking give in now, mate!’

‘The boys are nearly there!’

‘And if they get blown up, there’s a helicopter with a winch on its way!’

‘Get your morphine in, Ryan. Go on, get your morphine in!’

‘No,’ shouted Dave. ‘If he’s in and out of consciousness, he shouldn’t take morphine now. Is he losing consciousness?’

Mal turned and nodded. He was close enough to see that Ryan Connor was in no state to join in this discussion. He lay, without moving, his eyes open, staring at the sky. ‘It’s his arm, Sarge. Still there, but not pretty.’

‘Mine!’ yelled Jamie suddenly.

He had frozen in his position on the ground.

‘Well, I mean, it could be a big stone. Or it could—’

‘Divert!’ Dave called. ‘Divert right.’

Angus, who had been working on widening Jamie’s path, sat up and glared.

‘It only might be! If it’s a stone, we’re wasting time diverting for fucking hours.’

The boss yelled: ‘And then you’ll have the rest of your life to think about how you took a short cut and lost your leg!’

Dave put his hands on his hips and his face reddened still more as he roared: ‘Plus let me tell you something about these Soviet mines, Angry . . . they weren’t all designed to kill a man. A lot were designed to take away what matters most. Which for some of us is our bollocks.’

There was a shocked silence. Every face turned towards the casualties. Angry stopped arguing and dragged Jamie back and Jamie continued working his way forward at a wider angle.

Binns was aware of all this as though it was a TV programme other people were watching. He was working his way through a weedy area now and the dry weeds smelled pungent. It was harder to feel the soil. He cut some down to ground level with his bayonet, being careful not to disturb the roots. But he was close to Ben Broom, close enough to see his boots through the undergrowth.

The crack of fire took him by surprise. For a moment he thought a mine had exploded. Then he realized that he had focused so hard on mines that he had forgotten that other threat: the ragheads. Maybe everyone had. He dared to take just one quick look around before he got his head down. There were rounds tearing up the ground all around him. Dust rose, weeds flew, earth shook.

From the lads at the side of the field there was a rapid, angry and intense response.

Mal, behind, said: ‘Fuck it, this could set one of them off . . .’

His voice was scared. Binns felt nausea rising up through his body. He was lying in a minefield. A round could hit him. A round could set off a mine. His hands could detonate a mine. The danger was immense. Death almost certain. So he might as well get on with his work. It was better than lying here doing nothing.

He did not raise his head but laid his chin on the gritty soil, placed his hands ahead of him and took some comfort from the familiar feel of the dirt as he ran his fingers over its surface.