War Torn

Chapter Sixty-seven

THE LADS WERE QUIET WHEN THE CONVOY LEFT THE NEXT DAY. Nobody wanted to screw up in front of the SAS men and the wagons were peppered with them.Dave, in the front, expected them to go into the Green Zone. He had thought it very likely Martyn was held in one of the maze of compounds near the river. But instead they swung towards the desert. His heart sank as he realized they were heading back towards Jackpot. So they were returning to the camp. He’d hoped it would be dismantled by now. They were in the dusty bowl of the desert that led to Jackpot when the convoy suddenly swung left.‘Christ!’ said Dave. ‘We’re not going to a compound. Or the camp. We’re going to the Early Rocks.’As they drew closer he began to understand how massive the rocks were. They had looked like stark, strange shapes jutting from the desert sands in the distance but close-up they were more complex. There must be water, because bushes and small trees sprouted all around. And running around the base of the rocks was a ring of earthworks at least two metres high. So the mysterious shrine was a natural fortress.The massive rocks towered over them as they reached the entrance to the shrine. Built around one rock as though it had grown out of the sand was a tiny gatehouse. The wagons slowed as they reached it and threw out some of the SAS men. The wagons speeded up again and the boss passed on the orders: ‘In sixty seconds we will have the rock circle very loosely surrounded. You will dismount and close in on the circle, scrambling over the bank at the base of the rocks. We don’t know exactly what we’ll find inside except probably underground tunnels and, we hope, Topaz Zero. Your job is to suppress the enemy so that our colleagues can locate him. The enemy will be positioning now. So take advantage of their confusion to debus fast and close in rapidly on the rocks.’Dave said at once: ‘Fix bayonets, lads.’The drivers were told to stop one hundred metres from the rocks.‘Go closer!’ Dave ordered his driver.‘But the boss said—’‘Closer! You can move back when we’re all out.’The driver screamed towards the rocks and stopped about sixty metres away.‘Everybody out, go, go, go!’ Sol yelled at 1 Section.The men began to rush towards the rock circle. The weight of their kit was oppressive. It bounced on their backs and their pouches rattled on their bodies. Binns, the lightweight, had been fast as a school kid. Now he was a lumbering animal, staggering and doubled over as he ran.‘I wish I could take this fucking shit off and really run!’ he shouted to Streaky. But Streaky could not hear him over his own heaving breath.Angus was still back at the wagon. In addition to his normal rifle, pistol, kit and ammo he had mortars and the sniper rifle too. By the time he had staggered down from the bus the others were halfway across the open ground. He knew he was carrying too much weight but wasn’t sure what to leave. He paused and, before he could decide, the wagon moved off. Shit! Now he would have to take it all. And the others had nearly reached the rocks.Fire erupted from all around the massive circle simultaneously, in a blaze of light, noise and smoke. The men who were still in exposed positions threw themselves onto their belt buckles on the desert sand, easy targets for the enemy.All of 1 Section had reached the shelter of one of the massive stone pillars except Angus. They looked back now and saw him.He lay still, head down, as though he’d already been shot, thinking, Shit, shit, shit. He could feel something like rain, and knew it was rounds. The rough sand bit into his cheeks. He dared to half look up once. All round him the desert danced with bouncing rounds. He put his head back down and knew that one of the rounds must hit him. They could not all miss him. His body was rigid with expectation. He wanted to yell and shout against his helplessness.He heard helicopters overhead.‘Thank Christ! Where have they been?’ roared Angus on PRR.Dave responded.‘Don’t get excited, McCall. There’s nothing much they can do to help us, not with a hostage trapped inside.’‘Move forward, Angry,’ shouted Sol’s voice into his ear. ‘It’s just as safe as lying there.’‘I shouldn’t have carried so much weight,’ he moaned. He heard his own voice, whimpering a bit. He was going to die. So he might as well die courageously. The Families Officer might as well stand in his dad’s hallway and say that Angus had died a heroic death. He began to stagger to his feet but the mortars he was carrying pulled his left side down and the rest of his body with it. Ping. A round whistled just over his shoulder. Good thing he hadn’t stood up, then, or that one certainly would have got him. Except that now he was stuck here, giving the ragheads some easy target practice.A few moments later he felt someone tugging on his arm.‘Get up, you lazy bastard, stop sleeping on the job.’Jamie Dermott. Pulling him to his feet, grabbing some of the weight off him and firing the gimpy while the pair of them staggered across the desert together.Angus didn’t have time to think, feel surprise or be grateful. His whole body and mind were focused on running in Olympic time to the rest of the lads by the rock. It wasn’t until they arrived safely and he slumped down, his mouth open, the breath never enough to fill his empty lungs, sweat pouring down his body, that relief began to seep from every pore. And then he understood that Jamie had saved his life.He said: ‘Fuck, Jamie. I mean, fuck.’Jamie was red-faced and gasping too.‘Don’t mention it,’ he breathed.‘I could feel the fucking rounds scrape against my helmet! One missed my shoulder by that much . . .’‘You must have been just outside the flipflops’ arcs of fire,’ said Mal. ‘I didn’t think you could get here alive.’Angus stood up, still red and panting, and reached for his water tube. He let out a roar.‘What’s the matter, Angry?’ asked Sol. ‘Are you all right?’‘My fucking Camelbak’s empty!’Sol took a look.‘A round went through it,’ he reported.‘Fucking, fucking hell! I’m thirsty!’Sol handed him a bottle of water.‘There isn’t anyone else in this whole platoon, Angry, who would moan about a round hitting their Camelbak instead of their vital organs.’The heavy machine guns on the WMIKs were pounding at the other side of the shrine and the mortar men were busy. Sol’s section put down fire where they saw muzzle flashes. But most of their rounds were bouncing off rock or getting lodged in the bank.Dave was pinned down back at the Vector. The boss spoke to each of his section commanders in turn and confirmed that they had all their men up against the rocks. Sergeant Somers of 2 Platoon, on the other side of the shrine, was not so lucky. His Vector drivers had stopped further back and the men in one wagon had been too slow. They had debussed right into the contact. The bank was highest here and the enemy had taken advantage of this to feast on them. Dave saw CSM Kila rushing off in a wagon to deal with the casualties.‘I can see what’s happening from back here better than you can,’ Dave told his corporals. ‘The choggies are firing through cracks in the rocks so you can forget firing back at them. A few insurgents are exposed on top of the ridge . . . See how many you can get.’‘Just look up there,’ came the boss’s voice.Dave looked up. High on the top of a rock, like a man who had just taken the elevator to the roof of a skyscraper, was the silhouette of an insurgent with a weapon that was probably a Kalashnikov.‘Did he fly there? And with that weapon, too?’‘Ropes. Or they’ve carved steps up the back of the rocks.’The man was kneeling down and lifting his weapon, capitalizing on the natural advantage of his position. Dave guessed he was aiming at Kila’s casualty evacuation. He jumped out of the Vector with his SA80. It took just three shots. The body did not fall but remained slumped over the machine gun.‘Rule One,’ Dave told it. ‘The chances are that the best firing positions are the most exposed. Now let them try getting you down from there.’1 Section edged cautiously around the rock to the base of the ridge, checking for figures at the top of it. They reached the place Sol had chosen for them to breach it. Now they were close it looked steeper.‘Fucking hell, they can just pick us off one by one as we climb up,’ said Finn.Sol paused, frowning.From out by the Vector Dave could hear firing from all around the rocks but the acoustic was as strange as the place. It echoed back across the desert until it was impossible to pinpoint where the noise was coming from or to estimate the size of the enemy inside.‘I’m going to move closer in with the Vector and cover you as you go up the bank. I’ll deal with any of them waiting for you at the top. But only you can see what’s on the other side.’Sol said: ‘Everyone fixed their bayonet?’The driver turned to Dave.‘Did you say something about going in closer again?’‘Yeah. Shit, I wish I’d thought of keeping the sniper rifle back here with me. That’s what happens when you don’t get proper information on an operation beforehand.’‘Do I have to move forward?’‘Just a bit. Turn it sideways on if that makes you feel safer.’The Vector’s move brought a hail of fire.‘Fucking hell,’ said the driver, as he swung the vehicle round. ‘Did you save me from those IEDs in the Green Zone just to get me shot up out here in the middle of nowhere?’‘OK, then, stop.’‘I’m watching you,’ said the boss from the next wagon. Dave glanced across the desert. The next wagon was far away.He leaped out, went to the side of the vehicle and got himself into a good position. He drew so much fire from the enemy that he was forced backwards. He tried again and there was more fire. The third time he told 1 Section: ‘Let’s get on with it. Up the bank now. Fast.’He had to steel himself against his own instinct to duck back behind the Vector as rounds tore up the desert around him. He watched Sol go up first, followed by Mal.A bearded man appeared with an AK47 at the top of the rim, his back against a rock to optimize his arc on the soldiers as they scrambled up the bank. Dave fired off ten rounds and the man fell.‘Wrong weapon, wrong place. You’d have done better with a pistol at that distance,’ said Dave, falling back for a moment with relief.The next time he looked, another insurgent was standing at the top of the bank holding a pistol. Dave shot him.‘Right weapon, wrong place,’ he told the dead man.Sol, Angus, Mal, Jamie and Binman were flat on their belt buckles on top of the bank now, firing into the shrine, while Finn and Streaky, who had been covering from below, were scrambling up behind them. Beneath them, a man with an AK47 appeared. He was at ground level and had emerged from 1 Section’s previous position around the rock.‘Shit, how did you get there?’ asked Dave, as he fired. ‘We’re supposed to be surrounding you, not the other way round . . .’Sections 2 and 3 were also fighting their way into the shrine just around the rock circle, covered by a WMIK. The company was closing in at all points, tightening the net on the insurgents within the shrine, increasing the rate of fire until the noise and its echo sounded like one long, continuous blast.Dave knew he would soon have to get his platoon more ammo. He told the reluctant driver to move closer. The boss was giving orders to the men inside the rock circle now. He was instructing them to use grenades to move forward. Did this mean that Martyn had been rescued already? Or were they so heavily outnumbered by the enemy that they had been forced into a risky strategy?The fighting advanced into the heart of the shrine and Dave was able to make his way to the rocks and up the ridge unimpeded. Inside the circle were bushes and hillocks and ridges and giant boulders but mostly there were soldiers. Dave could see how rapidly they were pushing back the Taliban fighters. He could see some of his men in good firing positions. 3 Section were well situated around boulders, 1 Section were back a bit but Jamie with the gimpy was perching on a ledge where he could just drop machine-gun fire into the insurgents’ line.‘You’re doing well, Dermott, but you’re a bit exposed . . .’ Dave began.He stopped speaking because he saw the RPG. After that everything fragmented into a series of snapshots. The Taliban grenade, tearing through the air like a deadly dart, cutting a path towards Jamie. The grenade appearing on the other side of Jamie and exploding thity metres beyond against a rock in a mass of flame and smoke. Jamie continuing to blast away for a few seconds on the machine gun. Jamie staggering. Jamie falling, Bergen first, at the side of the ledge.Dave let out a roar. Standing on the ridge he was one of the few soldiers high enough to see what had happened. The roar of battle and the roar of his own denial echoed around in his head as he heard his voice, crisp and clear, reporting the incident. He ordered McCall and Sol Kasanita back to help carry the casualty outside the rocks where CSM Kila and the medic were waiting.The next snapshots were out of focus. Sometimes he replayed them in the wrong order. McCall’s white face. Sol loading the bleeding body of Jamie onto the stretcher: ‘He’s still alive, Sarge!’ Dave’s own hand shoving Jamie’s autojet of morphine into his leg. Staggering down the ledge and up the bank with the stretcher, feeling that his arms would break with the weight and knowing that something was breaking inside him. Jamie’s body moving with each jerk and bump of the stretcher as though deeply, deeply asleep.‘C’mon, Jamie, for fuck’s sake, c’mon!’ Angus McCall. His face a horror mask. ‘You didn’t run out into the desert to save me just so this could happen to you . . .’

The enemy’s main escape route was past the gatehouse and across the desert to the hills but Finn picked up talk of a tunnel system. And as he watched the number of insurgents diminish, he knew this must be right. The noise level was dropping. The air had been thick with cordite and smoke but it was thinning now. The Taliban couldn’t be seen surging across the desert. So there must be some other way out of the shrine.‘We’d drop a five-hundred-pounder if it wasn’t for Martyn,’ he told Streaky and Binman, who happened to be close by. ‘Let’s hope they haven’t got him down in a tunnel with them.’‘It’s just like they’re melting,’ said Streaky.‘Maybe they’re all dead,’ Binman said hopefully.But Finn and Streaky shook their heads.The soldiers were ordered to start looking for a tunnel system. Finn and Streaky searched in the great shadows of massive boulders but the earth was hot, dry and solid.‘I just want to kill the fuckers!’ said Mal. ‘They’re like rats, running down a rathole. I want to go after them and kill them.’ He had the hungry, alert look of a man for whom the fighting had ended too soon. A lot of the men did. A few were fighting each other. But Finn didn’t feel that way. He felt tired and defeated.‘This operation was Marty’s last hope. And we fucked it up.’Mal glared at him.‘We did our best.’‘What’s the Jedi here for? Why haven’t they sorted this out?’‘What do you want them to do? Pull the poor old bastard out of a hat along with a white rabbit?’There was a shout. A tunnel under the rocks had been found and officers were developing a plan to send men down.‘Hold firm, 1 Platoon,’ came the boss’s voice. ‘It sounds as though you’re going to be covering from up here.’Finn lit a cigarette while he waited for orders. He decided to check out the gatekeeper’s vegetables. When the doors on the wagons had slowed so that the SAS men could hit the ground on their arrival here at the shrine, Finn had got a clear view of a vegetable garden in the gatekeeper’s compound. It had been well watered and well ordered and there was probably something good to eat. Could you grow carrots in Afghanistan? Finn loved raw carrots and had stolen many from allotments.‘Where you going?’ demanded Streaky, appearing at his side.‘I feel like a little snack from the garden out there. Care to join me in a bit of thieving, Streaks?’They sneaked around to the small, solid house. It looked deserted. Outside there was a thin irrigation channel, which fed the vegetable garden. There were no carrots but there were grapes. Finn picked a couple.‘Mmm, Streaky. Just try these.’The grapes were small. Sweetness exploded in their mouths.‘Oooh, juicy!’ Streaky picked some more.A goat hung its head in one corner and nearby was the doghouse. There was no barking from inside it.‘What do people do with their dogs in this country if they never put them in their kennels?’ asked Finn. Streaky was busy munching and so he answered his own question. ‘Put their hostages inside.’He walked towards the small ornate kennel.‘The Jedi will have searched there,’ said Streaky, reluctant to leave the grapes.‘I know,’ agreed Finn. ‘I’m just nosy.’He approached the house carefully in case one of the huge Afghan fighting dogs he had heard about was asleep in there. Crouching, in case the dog bounced out on him, he pulled open the door.The first thing he saw was a pair of legs. He thought they must belong to a dead body since they did not move at his arrival. His heart thumping, he squatted down and peered up the legs and saw they were attached to Martyn Robertson.‘Fuck me! Marty! I was looking for you. But I didn’t think I’d find you.’Martyn lay with his eyes half open.‘Oy! You alive, mate?’He still did not move. Finn felt for a pulse.‘Shit, Marty! Don’t be dead!’‘Hi, Huckleberry Finn,’ Martyn said weakly, without surprise.‘Hey! They’ve all gone looking down a hole for you!’‘Uh-huh. Well, I’ve been down a few holes.’Streaky looked over from the vines.‘Finny?’Finn turned and gave him a thumbs-up.‘Go and get someone!’‘Is it him? Is it Topaz Zero? I know this is a joke, Finny!’‘Find someone. They won’t believe me if I put it out on PRR.’Streaky ran over to the doghouse to make sure this was no wind-up. Then he rushed out of the garden and back inside the rock circle. The first person he saw was an SAS man with a mug of tea in his hand.‘He’s here! He’s fucking here!’The man smiled at him kindly.‘Oh, yeah? And what’s your name, kid?’‘Bacon, sir. Streaky Bacon.’‘You must be the only fucking bacon in Afghanistan. Got a mate called Pinta Lager?’‘He’s here. Martyn! Topaz Zero! The hostage! He’s over here!’Back in the doghouse, Finn was trying to help Martyn to his feet.‘Shit, Martyn! They were going to kill you in two days’ time.’‘I sort of hoped I’d die soon anyway, just to ruin their fun.’‘While we’re waiting for the others, let’s talk about that job you were thinking of offering me . . .’Martyn’s face creased itself into something that might have been a smile.‘What odds did you give on finding me?’‘Hundred to thirty at the beginning, shortened down to fifteen to eight when we found your last doghouse in town. Then this morning on the way here I was offering eleven to eight! That was generous but nobody took me up on it. Ha! In five minutes they’ll all be kicking themselves, eh, Marty?’Martyn said: ‘You’ve got yourself that job, boy.’Finn looked round and saw Streaky advancing with a disbelieving SAS man still holding his mug of tea.‘It’s all over. You’ll be all right now, Marty, old mate and future boss. The cream of the British Army’s come to save you.’

The stretcher was red, painted with Jamie’s blood. Two medics seized it and were almost immediately working with a tourniquet and dressings along his left side, where his arm and his leg should have been, except there wasn’t an arm and there wasn’t much of a leg and Dave wasn’t even sure there was a lot of left side.‘Jamie, Jamie, the fucking bastards got you again – they got you again! Don’t let them finish the job this time! Come on, Jamie, for Chrissake!’ Whose voice was that? His own?He wanted Jamie to open his eyes. He wanted it with a desperation that took over his whole mind and whole body as if he could will Jamie’s eyes to open if he wanted it hard enough. He was Jamie’s sergeant. Now he was ordering him to live.‘It’s not over till it’s over,’ said one of the medics, without looking up, as he reached for another bandage.Dave was certain it would soon be over but he refused to look at that certainty. He clung to the medic’s words instead. His hand held Jamie’s wrist and searched for a pulse. He couldn’t feel one.‘It’s there but it’s very, very faint,’ said a medic. ‘Did you see what happened?’‘RPG. Went straight through him.’‘No one can survive that,’ said Iain Kila.‘It didn’t detonate,’ Dave said.‘Well, fuck me!’ said Kila.‘It certainly touched him but it went straight on and then hit some rocks about thirty metres later.’‘He’s in with a chance, then.’‘This man survived a round from an AK, he survived a round from a machine gun . . .’The other medic said: ‘The grenade sliced his left side off but there’s a chance it missed his vital organs. He must have been squatting over the gimpy because it went through the top of his leg and the bottom of his arm. But he can live without an arm and a leg . . .’‘A few centimetres further left and he’d certainly be dead,’ said the other.‘MERT will be here in four more minutes,’ reported Kila. ‘He’ll be at Bastion inside the golden hour.’Dave leaned over the stretcher, looking at the unmoving face.He tried to imagine Jamie without an arm, a leg and God knew what other body parts. Always trying to hide the pain. Making the best of it. Loving Agnieszka as she pushed him around in a wheelchair. Some people can live like that, Dave thought. But Jamie can’t.If Jamie heard what the medic just said, then he can hear me now.Dave moved close to the thin face. Eyes closed, it showed no pain. He grasped the still fingers.‘Shit, Jamie Dermott,’ he said softly. ‘You’re the last man I can afford to lose. But I know that you’re a soldier through and through. And, Jamie, you’re the best. You’ve lost half your body. But you could never be half a soldier. I understand if you want to go now. So go, if you must, mate. You’ve done a great job soldiering. You’ve got a lovely kid. You’ve got a wife who does truly love you – I know that for a fact, whatever you think. So, if you want to, go peacefully. Good luck. I’ll never forget you.’Of course Jamie did not respond. He couldn’t.‘Not looking good!’ said one of the medics suddenly.‘Are we losing him?’‘Can’t be . . . but we are.’Dave closed his eyes and fell back to let the medics do their work.‘No! No way!’‘See for yourself!’‘Shit! I thought we had him!’‘Resuscitate.’‘Clear, everyone, please.’Dave turned his back, walked away and stared out at the endless expanse of desert. His face stung. His eyes stung. Sand in his mouth, sand in his eyes, sand in his heart.

A Chinook had already arrived for the casualties. Another arrived for Martyn almost immediately and the hostage was taken aboard by the waiting medics.The OC was there.‘Martyn is very important but since he is a T3 we must ask him to wait while we load a T4.’Finn could not stop grinning. He had been clapped on the back by everyone around him and he and Streaky had already told the story again and again of how they had gone to steal grapes and found Martyn.He heard that there was a T4 and wondered briefly who it was, but he was really looking for Dave. Where was he when Finn was enjoying a bit of glory for once? And it would be nice to have Sol, Angus and Jamie here offering a few words of congratulations, too.The group of soldiers around the Chinook fell suddenly silent. Finn turned to see his mates approaching. They were carrying a stretcher. The body on it was covered. So this must be the T4. Even then it did not occur to Finn that there had been a death in his own section. It was only when they were close enough for him to see their faces that he suddenly felt cold. His buoyant, triumphant mood turned inside out and left all the raw places exposed.Dave and Sol were covered with blood. Dave looked bruised, as if he’d been in a fistfight. Sol’s white eyes were red. Huge tears spilled down Angus’s face.Finn looked at the men who surrounded him. Among them were Streaky, Mal and Binman.That left one man.Billy Finn’s mouth fell open, his eyes sprang out, his body was drained so that he swayed a bit. He saw the boss, features frozen, white-faced.‘No. No. Not Jamie, no,’ he shouted.Boss Weeks closed his eyes. He nodded.The body was loaded onto the helicopter in silence. There must have been the ground-shaking thump of Chinook rotors and the roar of its engine. But afterwards not one man could remember anything but silence.