Recoil

1

We’d been snaking across the open scrubland for an hour, caught in a thunder and lightning show Ozzy Osbourne would have been proud of. The torrential rain never let up, blurring my vision, but our biggest problem was underfoot. The ground had turned into a bog.

The sun would bake the thick, sticky mud dry again by midday, but that was of no help to us now. With a six-inch layer stuck to our boots we slid more than walked. These guys were really earning their Cutty Sark and condoms. Patrolling is hard graft when the mud sucks at your boots, your clothing’s wet and weighs a ton, and when visibility’s down to no more than a few metres and you’re straining your eyeballs to see the enemy before he sees you.

I’d stopped momentarily to make another adjustment to my bergen when the two front guns suddenly opened up. I dropped to my knees, got the AK in the shoulder, flicked safety down to first click – automatic – and squeezed the trigger.

‘Contact! Contact! Contact!’

Bright yellow muzzle flashes speckled the darkness just fifteen metres ahead. Then more, from maybe a hundred, hundred and twenty. It was hard to tell through the rain.

The gunners stood their ground and kept firing from the hip, doing their job, keeping the enemy’s heads down.

Sam had already raced forward, keeping well left of the gunners as they were rocked back on their feet by the recoil. I followed.

He was static in line with the gunners when I caught up with him, weapon in the shoulder, emptying a magazine into the flashes ahead. I stopped left of him. My AK kicked in my shoulder as I loosed off a five-round burst, then another and another, into the muzzle flashes ahead.

Within seconds the volume of our fire stepped up as guys arrived right and left of the gunners – just like in rehearsals.

I squeezed the trigger again. The working parts went forward, but nothing happened. ‘Stoppage!’

The AK had a couple of Achilles’ heels, and this was one of them. I fell to my knees again. It took an eternity to change magazines on these things and I wanted to present as small a target as I could.

I pressed the magazine-release catch at the back of the housing and rocked the mag forwards until it fell out of the front lip and into the mud. Screams of command and fear echoed in the brief moments of darkness between almost continuous bolts of lightning. I could feel pressure waves from both the thunder and the weight of fire. Rain sizzled on the hot barrel.

I grabbed a replacement from my chest harness, jammed the small notch at the top of the mag into the lip at the front of the housing, then rocked the mag until it was fully home and pulled back the cocking handle to force a round into the chamber.

AKs cracked all around me. Incoming rounds thudded into the ground. A string of tracer zinged off a rock and up into the air. Like me, everybody wanted nothing more than to dig the world’s biggest hole and disappear into it, but the sergeant-majors were on top of them and drills were happening quicker and slicker than many Western infantry would have managed.

Sam shouted to his team to form a fire group. We needed to suppress the enemy fire with ours. Whatever Sam wanted to happen next, we still needed to win the qualifying round.

‘Nick! Nick! Nick! On me! On me! On me!’

I ran towards his voice and saw Crucial and his group coming up from the rear.

‘Guns up front! Get your guns up front with the fire group!’

While Crucial relayed the order I threw off my bergen and pulled out the link. Sam was screaming at everyone who moved, ‘We’re going left flanking! Left flanking!’

Crucial’s guys were all gathered in, on their knees. He translated, and they immediately dumped their bergens too. Their streaming faces shone in the lightning. They were set in stony resignation: they knew something had to be done or both sides would just sit there and fire at each other until one lot’s ammo ran out. Then they would die.

Crucial grabbed my link and headed towards the fire base. Sam shouted to me, above the rain and gunfire, ‘Platoon attack.’

‘Porters?’

‘Not my problem. We tell ’em to sit tight. If they’re stupid, they’ll run. You don’t have to come forward.’

‘Jesus, Sam, I gotta get to Nuka . . . Let’s get on with it.’

His face hardened, and he stormed off to the left of the fire group, yelling a warning so the guys on the flank knew we were passing. I followed with the rest of the assault group, all of us slipping and stumbling in the mud. Crucial shouted fire control orders. He’d want to make sure they conserved ammunition at the same time as keeping heads down in front of them. That way everyone didn’t just cabbie off all their rounds in the first few seconds.

Our attack was going to be straightforward. It had to be, because of the language problem and lack of comms. Crucial’s fire group needed to keep the enemy’s heads down so we could move up on their left flank to the FAP (final assault position). We’d attack the enemy from there and fight through their positions. Once that kicked off, the fire group would either switch direction or stop altogether so we could avoid getting the good news from our own guys. It was the recipe for a Gordon Ramsay-scale gangfuck, even for well-trained infantry, especially in the dark and rain, but it had to be done. We had to kill all of them before they did the same to us.

I kept close behind Sam, and the rest of the guys kept close behind me. This wasn’t a tactical move, it was all about speed. We moved as fast as we could through the mud towards the FAP. I looked around me. I was among guys I didn’t know but might end up dying alongside.

We drew level with the enemy fire to our right. Rounds from Crucial’s fire group punched into the mud and ricocheted off rocks.

Sam waited a couple of seconds for the next sheet of lightning and signalled for everyone else to stay put, but for me to go with him and recce. I dropped into the mud and crawled beside him. My OGs soon rode down to expose half my arse.

We got to within fifteen metres of their positions. It looked good: we could form up here and attack. But Sam seemed to want to get even closer. I grabbed his leg and crawled up beside him, my mouth against his ear. ‘What the fuck? This is good, Sam!’

He shook his head. ‘I need to know who they are. I’m not killing kids.’

He broke away from me and carried on crawling. There wasn’t much I could do but follow. Tracer from our guys drifted high over our heads. The claps of thunder were so loud they drowned the enemy’s gunfire, but I didn’t have to hear it. We were so fucking close, I could smell the cordite.

7.62 from the fire group stitched along the ground just metres ahead. I could actually feel the ground tremors as our GPMG rounds slammed into the mud.

At last Sam seemed to get the message. He paused. Two bodies were suddenly silhouetted by lightning as they got up and ran to another stretch of cover not ten metres away. They held their AKs high and loosed off wildly in the direction of the fire group.

Finally Sam had seen what he needed. The silhouettes had been man-sized. We headed back.