Battleground

Chapter Eighteen

They found Ben some body armour and a helmet. The armour was a bit big for him, and very heavy; but it felt good to slip it over his head and strap it tightly around his sides. Ben shook Major Graves’s hand. ‘Good luck, son,’ he said. The look on his face made it clear he thought this was all a very bad idea.

Ricki put one hand on his shoulder. ‘Ready, Ben?’ he asked.

Ben nodded. ‘Ready as I’ll ever be,’ he said.

‘When the gates open, Toby and Matt will go first. Then you. I’ll follow with Jack. Keep your head down and stick with us to the landing zone. If you hear gunfire, hit the ground. Otherwise your objective is to get into the Black Hawk as quickly as you can.’

‘All right,’ Ben said, a bit nervously. The body armour really was quite heavy.

Ricki smiled. ‘Don’t worry, son. It’s normally the guys with guns that attract fire.’ He held up his weapon. ‘Let’s go.’

The gates slid open and Ben ran out, flanked by the four-man SAS unit. It was a fifty-metre sprint to the landing zone, where Ben saw the chopper, its blades already spinning. As he ran, he did his best to ignore the great hunks of rubble that surrounded the military base, each one of them a potential firing point. The chopper itself was surrounded by green army soldiers, all of them on one knee and pointing their guns outwards. It felt good to get within the defensive ring they formed around the aircraft; it felt even better to climb into the Black Hawk itself.

The inside of the chopper was drab and uncomfortable. The floor was covered with a thick, rubbery material and the sides were plastered with hooks.

Two pilots sat up front with a bewildering bank of controls at their fingertips. Propped up on their helmets they had a pair of night-vision goggles: darkness, after all, was just around the corner. It seemed impossible to Ben that only that morning he and Aarya had left the green zone and gone into the caves. A radio crackled noisily. Just behind the pilots were the positions for two side gunners. The guns themselves looked like something from the Second World War, with long links of ammunition trailing out beside them. The rest of the unit bundled in. Matt and Jack took the side-gunners’ positions, while Ricki, instead of closing the side doors, just slung a piece of rope across the opening. He had barely taken his place before the chopper rose suddenly and swiftly into the air. Looking out of the window, Ben saw the military base grow smaller, before the Black Hawk tilted in mid-air and then swerved sharply. The next thing he knew, he was gazing down onto a huge river that stretched as far as he could see into the twilight distance.

‘The Helmand River,’ Ricki shouted above the noise of the chopper. ‘It travels the length of Helmand Province. The Kajaki dam is at the northern end. That’s where we think your man must be headed.’

Ben listened carefully. ‘How big is this dam?’ he shouted over the noise.

‘Big,’ Ricki replied. ‘And important. It’s the site of a hydroelectric turbine. When the turbine is fully operational, it can supply electricity to millions of people in Helmand Province. It’s a major piece of infrastructure and heavily defended. The enemy are constantly trying to attack it.’

Ben shook his head. ‘I don’t understand. Why would the Taliban want to destroy it?’

‘Not all of them do,’ Ricki shouted back. ‘Most of them just want to control the ground. But some of them don’t want there to be electricity. Some of them want life to be like it was a hundred years ago.’

Ben blinked. He seemed to remember Aarya saying something similar back in her village.

Ricki carried on talking. ‘It’s not just the turbine that’s the problem,’ he said. ‘If the dam gets blown up, it could flood the whole of the Sangin valley. There are settlements up and down the river that could just be washed away. We’re talking thousands of deaths, Ben — not just now, but in the years to come from the radiation. That’s why we have to stop this bomb.’

Ben paused for a moment while the reality of what they were doing sank in. Outside, it was almost dark; Ben thought he could see the lights of individual settlements dotted along each side of the river. He shuddered to think that, if Amir got his way, all those lights would suddenly — and permanently — go out.

‘The bomb,’ Ben asked Ricki. ‘Is it really big enough to take out the whole dam?’

Ricki exchanged a meaningful look with the rest of his crew. ‘If it’s what I think it is,’ he said, ‘then yes. I’ve heard of these suitcase nukes. We all have. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure if they existed — you know, just part of military folklore. The Russians made them back in the nineteen seventies, but they’ve all been lost.’

‘Or hidden,’ Toby interrupted.

‘Or stolen,’ added Jack.

Ricki nodded in agreement. ‘Whatever happened to them,’ he said, ‘rumour is they have an explosive capability of a couple of kilotons.’

‘Is that a lot?’ Ben asked.

Ricki nodded. ‘Forget the Kajaki dam,’ he said. ‘That’s enough to take out Niagara Falls.’

Ben couldn’t help feeling slightly sick at the thought.

The pilot was wearing his NV goggles now. Suddenly his radio burst into life. ‘Attention Alpha Three Tango’ — an urgent voice came over the loudspeaker — ‘Attention Alpha Three Tango. Do you copy? Over.’

The pilot replied with a calm, steady voice. ‘This is Alpha Three Tango. We copy. Over.’

‘We have an emergency situation, Alpha Three Tango. Forward Operating Base Jackson. Enemy advancing on the FOB. Several men down and one British civilian on the ground, a Dr Bel Kelland. All available helicrews diverted to assist. Over.’

Ben’s eyes widened and his blood ran cold. ‘That’s my mum!’ he screamed. ‘Ricki, that’s my mum. We’ve got to turn back!’

But Ricki said nothing. It was the pilot’s call to answer. ‘This is Alpha Three Tango. Currently on course for Kajaki. Priority one, repeat, priority one. Cannot divert. You must have other guys in the area.’

‘Affirmative,’ came the reply. ‘Alpha Three Tango, you are cleared to continue your operation. Over.’

‘Roger that,’ the pilot replied. ‘Over and out.’

‘NO!’ Ben screamed. ‘We can’t just leave her there!’ He got to his feet.

Instantly, Ricki pushed him back down. ‘No one’s leaving anyone anywhere, Ben. If your mum’s in trouble, they’ll be sending air crews in to extract her right now.’

‘But—’

‘No buts, Ben. Listen to me. If she’s at FOB Jackson, the most important thing you can do is stick with us. That base is right by the river. If the dam blows, she’ll be underwater before you know it.’

Ben stared at him. Everything seemed to be crashing around about his ears. First Aarya, now his mum. Amir’s face, with its one milky eye, hovered on the edge of his vision. The very thought of him made Ben’s lip curl.

The SAS man stared back at him. A cool, level gaze. He could tell there was no way he’d be changing his mind.

‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘Let’s go and sort this out.’ Ben looked out of the window, and watched the Afghan darkness slip by.

At FOB Jackson, a weird silence had descended. Weird and terrible. Darkness all around. The dead soldier lay in front of the gates, motionless. No one could get to his body because to do so would mean stepping into the enemy’s line of fire. There was an occasional burst from the GPMG, but Bel sensed that these were just warning shots. As if to confirm this suspicion, Mears hissed: ‘They haven’t got a fix on the enemy. They don’t know where they are.’

Bel closed her eyes and tried to get rid of the utter dread that was seeping through her body. She thought of Ben, and of Russell, her husband. Where were they now? Did they have any idea of what was happening? Would she ever see them again?

A noise in the distance, from somewhere overhead. Mears breathed out a heavy sigh of relief.

‘What?’ Bel asked.

‘Apache,’ he replied.

‘A what?’

‘An Apache attack helicopter.’

‘How can you tell?’

Mears shrugged. ‘You get used to the sound. It’ll be here any second.’

He wasn’t wrong. Before Bel knew what was happening, the noise became louder and she could discern the sound of rotary blades.

A flash of light from the sky, then the Apache flew overhead, incredibly low — only metres above the wall of the compound, like some huge spirit in the sky. The beams of light shooting from it lit up the compound, illuminating both the dead and the living. The noise of the blades pulsated through Bel’s body as it slipped over the compound and hovered just outside the gates.

And then it fired.

The noise of the attack helicopter’s weapons made the GPMG sound like a toy gun. It fired short bursts, and although Bel couldn’t see what was happening, she could well imagine how destructive they were.

She never thought a weapon of such destruction would bring her such relief.

She found herself holding her breath. Mears put his head over the top of the sandbags and Bel followed suit, just in time to see the Apache rise into view again above the compound walls. It hovered there for a few seconds.

And then it happened.

Bel didn’t hear the sound of the ground fire above the noise of the chopper. But she definitely saw its effects. A flash of red as a blast hit the Apache, just below the rotary blades, and the huge metal machine suddenly started to spin dangerously out of control. The beams of light flashed then receded like some terrifying fairground attraction. There wouldn’t be any candy floss tonight, though.

‘What’s happening?’ Bel shrieked. ‘What’s happening?’ For once, Mears didn’t have an answer. He too looked on in shocked astonishment as the Apache, twirling now like some sort of demented, shining spinning top, sank from view.

And then came the explosion.

It made the walls of the compound shake. A great ball of fire rose up into the air — even from where Bel was hiding she could feel the heat — and an enormous, dull red mushroom cloud billowed up into the sky.

‘Apache down! Apache down!’ Somebody was screaming the news at the top of their voice, even though there was really no need. There couldn’t have been a single person in the vicinity of that explosion who didn’t know what had just happened.

Suddenly Bel felt Mears pulling at her arm. ‘We need to get to the back of the compound!’ he shouted. ‘Away from the chopper.’

‘Why?’

‘Those Apaches carry Hellfire missiles. If one of those goes off, they’ll take out the front of the compound and who knows what else. Run, quickly!’

Bel did as she was told, and they weren’t the only ones who had that idea. Six or seven soldiers ran with them, and as they hit the back wall of the compound, they formed a protective ring around Bel with their rifles pointing directly towards the entrance. Through the blown-apart gates Bel could see thick black smoke and orange flames. Her thoughts turned to the pilot of the Apache. There was no way he could have survived that.

The body count, Bel realized, was mounting. ‘How many men on those things?’ she screamed.

‘Two,’ a voice replied.

Her whole body was trembling now. It was like the worst nightmare she’d ever had, only there was going to be no waking up from this. Mears was next to her, his own breathing heavy and trembling. ‘The enemy won’t want to approach,’ he said. ‘Not with the Apache burning between us and them.’ He sounded like he was trying to reassure himself more than Bel.

‘But… but…’ Bel was finding it difficult to speak. ‘Will they send another helicopter? We need someone to get us out of here. You said we were surrounded!’

Mears kept his weapon pointed at the entrance and didn’t look at her. ‘They’ll have to be careful,’ he said tersely. ‘Normally those Apaches scatter the enemy as soon as they appear — just make them run away. If that didn’t happen, it means they’re confident. I don’t know what they used to shoot the thing down, but our commanders aren’t going to want to send in another one until they know what they’re dealing with.’

‘But it’s night-time,’ Bel said. ‘How are they going to find out?’

Mears breathed out deeply. ‘I don’t know, Dr Kelland. I just don’t know.’

Fear and frustration almost overcame Bel. She felt her knees going weak. ‘Well, what are we going to do in the meantime?’ she hissed.

Graves turned to look at her. His young face was determined but serious. ‘The only thing we can do,’ he said. ‘Wait for reinforcements. And until they come, defend ourselves to the last…’