War Torn

Chapter Twenty-three

THE MAIL ARRIVED MINUTES BEFORE 1 SECTION LEFT FOR ITS PATROL and the boss delayed by ten minutes so that the men could read it before they jumped on the Vectors.Dave got a letter from his mother, a letter from Jenny and, ominously, a letter from Jenny’s mother too. He started the one from Jenny, then left them on his cot and went to count the men into the vehicles.‘We’re a decoy, so don’t let’s delude ourselves we’re a fire team,’ he reminded them.Sol was standing at his side.‘Just help me with my English, would you?’ he muttered. ‘What’s the difference between a decoy and a sitting duck?’Dave rolled his eyes.‘You don’t need any help with your English,’ he said. ‘Today there is no difference.’Sol’s ankle had healed and Dave had been relieved to have him back commanding 1 Section.He turned to the lads jumping on board the Vectors right now. Streaky Bacon and Jack Binns were still battle virgins. They’d been on patrol and escorted contractors and been caught in sporadic, low-key fire fights but they had not yet been involved in anything more serious. Although they insisted that they were ready and eager to do so, neither had fired a shot.‘You’re not going out for a fucking picnic!’ Dave barked at Streaky. ‘Sling your weapon, sprog, and get two hands on it.’Binns, climbing in behind Streaky, undid his sling clip rapidly before Dave could see. He looked sheepish when he saw Sol watching him.Dave jumped in beside the driver of the first vehicle as it pulled away. The boss sat with Asma at the front of the second.As they rumbled across the desert Dave felt on edge. His eyes scanned every ripple in the landscape. Ever since that goat had exploded so spectacularly right in front of him, he’d been forced to accept that IEDs had become impossible to spot. Before then he had tried to persuade himself that, if he was alert enough, he couldn’t be caught on the wrong end of an explosion.Nevertheless, he kept his eyes peeled for a pile of stones or recently disturbed earth which might hint at something beneath the surface. He stared hard at a young man watching the convoy from his motorbike whose mobile phone could be a detonator.It was common knowledge that the Taliban were stepping up their use of IEDs. Their explosives were getting bigger and better and the capacity of the Vectors to withstand their blasts was now in question because most of their armour was on top rather than underneath. Since 1 Platoon had arrived in Sin City, news had filtered in regularly of British soldiers elsewhere in Helmand Province who had been killed or injured by mines. There were antipersonnel mines and anti-tank mines and, if you managed to avoid all these, there were always the Soviet-era legacy mines.As they crossed the featureless desert they passed the first train of camels Dave had seen here. It was a biblical sight, the line of humped backs and long necks making slow and rhythmic progress across the sand.‘Could be two thousand years ago,’ the driver said.‘Except for the IEDs.’‘This route has been cleared.’‘Cleared last week doesn’t mean it’s still clear today.’‘You’re not your usual self, Sarge. Having a bad day?’‘I’m pissed off with being sent out undermanned. There’s just not enough of us. And one’s a woman and two are sprogs. The civilians are forcing us to spread ourselves too thin. So we’re a decoy and we’re supposed to keep going but the Taliban don’t know that. To them we’re just the enemy.’‘Well maybe we’ll have a nice quiet ride today,’ the driver said cheerfully.‘You don’t sound your usual self either,’ Dave said. The driver was famous for his gloomy predictions.‘I’ve got mail in my cot. One from the missus and one from my bird. What more can a man ask for?’‘Let’s hope you don’t meet your maker today, then, or everything you’ve got will get sent straight back to your missus unless I remember to pull it out first.’The man’s face clouded.‘Fuck it, I never thought of that.’ Then his expression brightened again. ‘But she can’t nag if I’m dead, can she?’The incoming fire began the moment they arrived in the Green Zone.‘Keep going,’ said the boss. The men on top cover returned fire.They passed the point where the platoon had dismounted last time they were here. They passed the cannabis field. Dave thought he could smell it and when a roar went up from the lads in the back (‘We know where we are! Too fucking right we do! Got everything you came with, Mal?’), he was sure he could smell it. They drove towards the river crossing and the firing suddenly and mysteriously stopped.‘I don’t like this,’ said Dave. ‘Go slow.’‘If we keep our heads down and get moving we’ll be through it in no time.’ The driver was a lot less happy than he’d been ten minutes ago.‘Oh, yeah? We’re supposed to have cleared this area. But they started firing the minute we got here. They’re telling us they’re back. Slow down so I can keep a sharp look-out.’The driver slowed. There was still no firing.‘The fuckers are behind us, so let’s just take a run at it,’ the driver said.‘No. Slow down more.’The driver barely slowed at all.‘Slower!’ Dave yelled, his eyes fixed on the track ahead. He could see it start to rise about two hundred metres in front of them where the track became a bridge over the mighty Helmand River. He could smell the pollen of cannabis and other plants mixed in with the hot dust. Big, floppy leaves tapped gently against the side of the vehicle as they passed. Dave’s senses were so alert they seemed to be screaming at him. He did not blink and his eyes were dry with the effort of scanning the dusty track.He thought: If I was a guerrilla fighter I’d let the army believe they’d cleared this crossing. Then I’d go back. I’d put an IED just before the bridge. I’d make sure no other traffic passed and pedestrians were kept away. An army convoy would come along and it would seem quiet here. The front of the convoy would be blown up. Everyone would stop. Then I’d ambush the rest from behind. So they’d be trapped . . .Until now there had been a lot of detritus floating around in his mind: fragments of last night’s dream, the knowledge of Jenny’s letter on his cot, the information that his knee was hurting for no reason, the worry that Steve Buckle might never recover his mind, a curt warning from Major Willingham that he would have to interview Dave about the death of one wounded insurgent in a ditch. All those thoughts stopped now. The sudden certainty that the Taliban would have planted an IED in their path and in a place where it would cause most chaos sliced cleanly through all the other voices in his ear.‘Stop!’ he yelled as they approached the bridge.The driver responded to the volume and urgency of Dave’s instruction by slamming on the brakes. Behind them, they could hear the second vehicle screeching to a halt too, and the third behind that.‘What’s going on?’ the boss demanded.Dave didn’t reply. The Vector stood still, ticking in the heat, smelling of fuel, clouds of dust circling around it. The firing which had met their arrival in the Green Zone had stopped. Everything had stopped. There were no kids gathering in a cluster to stare at them, no old men in the nearby fields holding their aching backs as they straightened, no small cars bulging with big Afghan families travelling in the other direction. There was only silence.Dave wondered if he should feel stupid. He had just halted a patrol which had orders to keep moving. He had done so on a hunch. He had no evidence for his suspicions.The driver was looking at him. ‘You all right, Sarge?’Dave stared ahead. It seemed to him that, between their stopping place and the rise where the bridge began, the dirt of the track lacked the patina of daily use.He reported: ‘Suspicious ground at vulnerable point ahead.’He looked hard at the track. If anyone was waiting to press a button at the other end of a command wire or a mobile phone, their only vantage point would be just inside the jungle on either side of them. There was visibility from nowhere else. He sent men down to search through the greenery. While they did so he leaned forward and stared at the track.‘I think I see something ahead,’ Dave said. ‘Have the engineers got mine detection equipment?’There was a groan from the engineers.‘I take it that means no?’ Dave listened to the sound of his own voice. It sounded rough, as though he was still bumping along the rutty track.‘No, we’ve got it, Sarge. Only we don’t have 4Cs any more.’‘And?’‘We’ve got an Ebinger but we’re not certain how to use it; we haven’t been trained on them yet.’‘I’m sure the combined brains of 1 Section can help you work that out,’ Dave said. ‘Quickly.’The men came back to the Vectors having found no trace of anyone close enough to both see and detonate a device. Dave began to have doubts. Then he heard the boss.‘Our interpreter has just picked up some enemy chatter which indicates there could be an IED . . .’‘Got the detectors sorted?’ Dave demanded. ‘Come on! We’re sitting ducks here! Just because no one’s firing at us doesn’t mean they’ve all gone home for a nice cup of tea.’The engineers dismounted and Dave sent men to cover them on the ground. The engineers stood arguing over how the machine worked but at last one of them put in an earpiece and began sweeping his way slowly forward.Dave watched him. He had a sudden memory of a beach on the south coast of England soon after he had met Jenny. The first time they’d spent the night together, they’d gone down to the sea before dawn and watched the sun come up across the ocean. They’d lain close, tired but relaxed, on sand which retained the coolness of the night. Then, suddenly, they were surrounded. Old men with metal detectors were sweeping the beach at first light for treasure.Dave sighed and turned from the memory. It had no place in this hot, hostile world.The engineers advanced slowly along the track. About five paces before the bridge, they stopped. The first passed the machine and earpiece to the second. He nodded. They began to dig with the machine, brushing the sand gently from side to side.‘Got something?’ Dave was hot and tense. Were they being watched? Or were the enemy firing positions right behind the Vectors, waiting to prevent their escape?After a few more minutes, the engineers shook their heads. ‘Just an old bolt buried in the track.’‘Can we come back now?’ asked the younger engineer.‘Nope,’ Dave said.‘There’s probably a hundred old bolts between here and the bridge. They probably dropped them when they built it.’‘Move ahead with caution,’ Dave said. ‘The bolt might have been dropped. Or it might have been planted there.’The engineers shrugged. It didn’t seem so surprising to them that an old bolt was buried in the track. But Dave had heard enough stories in Bastion to know that the Taliban could make men lazy with false readings so that by the time they reached the big one they were completely unprepared.After a few more paces, he saw that the engineers had detected something else.‘Another fucking bolt,’ they muttered, looking around anxiously.‘Careful, careful!’ Dave knew they felt vulnerable out there, despite the cover. He could see that they were digging less cautiously now, with the perfunctory attitude of men ordered to do an unnecessary job.The boss said: ‘Our interpreter is picking up a lot of chatter from the enemy. She thinks they’re close.’‘I’ll bet they are,’ Dave said.Suddenly one of the engineers stopped. He pulled the other over to look and they both peered down into the hole. There was a pause and then, simultaneously, they turned back to the Vectors. Dave couldn’t see their expressions, but something about the angle of their heads and the tension in their bodies told him all he needed to know.‘OK, get back in the vehicles. Now!’He reported to the boss: ‘They’ve found the IED ahead.’‘We’ll need EOD to clear it,’ the boss said.‘We’ll need to get out,’ Dave said. ‘Before the Talis trap us here.’But it was already too late.The engineers were nearing the Vectors when the first shots bounced around the vehicles. The men ran the last few paces and jumped aboard as the ambush kicked off. The enemy weapons, including first machine guns and then RPGs, started almost simultaneously. They had been in position. They had been watching. They had been waiting for this order.The weight of fire was so intense that it would not be safe to drive through it. The boss reported briefly while the drivers realigned the Vectors in a defensive position. Dave only wished they’d stopped further back. He guessed they’d be fighting here for a while and there were better places to do that than under a hundred metres from an IED waiting to explode.