The Hawk Is Dead

36

Helmand Province, Afghanistan, 2007

Three miles north-east from Camp Bastion, with its 20-mile-long perimeter wall and 2.2-mile runway. It was late afternoon going into early evening, and the searing sun was starting to power down. Jon Smoke had read that Australia has more creatures that can kill you than any other country. That might well be the case, he thought, but nowhere on earth had more creatures that could bite you than right here.

He’d spent two solitary days perched twenty feet up this dense tree, uncomfortably hot in his ghillie suit, but glad of the camouflage the gear afforded him — as well as grateful for the shade of the leaves. He might be concealed from the Taliban but not from the damned critter population of Afghanistan. No one ever told you that you had to fight two different enemies and that the Taliban was the lesser of the two. His camouflage concealed him from them. But not from the plague of vicious and eerily translucent camel spiders the size of saucers, which could and did regularly jump four feet straight at him, scaring the hell out of him. Until Scottie told him to relax, they weren’t attacking him, they just liked the shade that humans provided and wanted to be in it before anything else got there.

There were equally large and gross centipedes with a vicious and painful bite, as well as scorpions, sandflies, mosquitoes and ticks, all of which alternated between viewing him as Public Enemy Number One — and plat du jour.

‘The theatre of war’, he reflected. It was a weird description. Or perhaps not. There was no proscenium arch to define the stage. It was simply everything he could see that stretched out ahead into the far distance. The set was an arid desert landscape, with steep escarpments, patches of scrub and occasional clusters of trees like the ones he and Scottie were concealed in now. If you removed some props and just added a few cacti, Clint Eastwood might have ridden by on horseback with a cigar in his mouth, to the soundtrack of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

The set was decorated — dressed, they called it in the theatre world — with props: a burnt-out tank, a half-track detonated by a landmine, lying on its side. Skeletal vehicles from both sides haphazardly scattered by the roadside and away into the distance. Along with clouds of flies and other scavengers of the desert feasting on the corpses and scattered limbs and entrails of fallen fighters. Not fake props these, any more than the rotting cadavers inside the vehicles were, either. Certainly, not the kind you’d rent from a theatrical costumier, to take to a fancy-dress party.

Every few minutes, when what passed for a breeze wafted in their direction, he could smell it. The stench of death. It was like no other smell on earth. Heavy, rancid, cloying. Cigarette smoke masked it. He craved one now, but his supply of fags was running low. He’d had to ration himself to one every six hours. Three hours and ten minutes to go.

Breathing just through your mouth worked, also.

The light was definitely starting to fail now. Maybe the offensive would begin tonight. He had his night vision scope ready.

‘Curtain up in ten minutes,’ he whispered to himself and smiled. His mind went to strange places when he spent hours in solitude. He let it create scenarios. It especially helped get him through the long hours of darkness — which would be here imminently.

Occasionally he exchanged words — friendly insults mostly — with his fellow sniper and buddy Stuart Macdonald, Scottie, who was ensconced in another tree a short distance away. The banter helped keep up their spirits.

‘How you doing, wanker?’ Macdonald shouted in his thick accent.

‘Better than you, tosser! I’m in the jacuzzi with three naked ladies and a bottle of Champers!’ he retaliated.

Macdonald was a gung-ho, instantly likeable, Scotsman from Aberdeen. They’d passed out of the sniper course together, and two weeks later, seconded to the elite Parachute Regiment, found themselves both on the same military transport plane bound for Kabul, Afghanistan. And still together, helicoptered into the hotspot, Helmand Province.

Scottie ribbed Smoke incessantly about what wankers all Sassenachs were. Jon didn’t mind, he didn’t feel any loyalty to England. Being English — British — meant nothing to him. Scottie also told irreverent jokes, many of which crossed the line, which Jon Smoke liked, and they helped take his mind off what might lie ahead.

Not that he was afraid of dying, he was a fatalist. And, in truth, right now at twenty years old, with no family and no girlfriend, he didn’t actually have anything in particular to live for. Unlike his new buddy, who was crazily in lust and love.

Soon after they’d first met, Scottie had showed him photographs over a pint or two in a local pub of a beautiful nineteen-year-old woman, Effie, who was his fiancée. Smoke hadn’t been able to resist telling this short, stocky, pugnacious-faced man that he appeared to be punching above his weight.

‘Always, my friend! Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?’ Scottie had retorted.

‘What?’

‘Robert Browning.’

‘Who’s he? A politician?’

Scottie had shaken his head. ‘I always knew you Sassenachs were wankers — didn’t realize you were illiterate, too. He was a poet — only one of your most famous poets ever.’

He went on to tell Smoke that Effie was a beautician and that when he came home from this tour, with the money he had saved he was going to invest with her to set up her own salon, quit the Army and become her business partner. Oh, and that she was four months pregnant.

Smoke envied him his plan as much as he envied him his fiancée. He didn’t have any plan beyond what he was here to do right now.

They’d both been here for more than forty-eight hours now, in position to give cover to their platoon when it made its next advance towards a Taliban encampment 10 miles ahead. And also in a position to watch, and if necessary neutralize, any Taliban attempting to further mine the road ahead with Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) — homemade bombs.

The advance should have happened last night, but it hadn’t, and there’d been no word all day on his radio from his commanding officer, Brigadier Jason Finch. Now dusk was falling again. Falling fast. His supply of water was getting low and the artificial bladder he urinated into, painfully, via a catheter he’d inserted himself, was getting increasingly swollen. He needed a shit badly, but that was going to have to wait until—

He stiffened.

Voices. Faint.

But not coming from the right direction.

Peering through the dense leaves and the falling twilight, through his spotting scope, he saw — Jesus — a ragbag group of ten, maybe a dozen, heavily armed Taliban soldiers, some turbaned, marching straight towards them. Maybe a mile off. They would be here in about twenty minutes.

Keeping his voice low, Scottie told him he’d seen them too.

This wasn’t supposed to be happening.

Smoke did a quick calculation. He had three weapons. His L115A3 sniper rifle, fitted with a night-sight, his L85A2 semiautomatic rifle and his Glock 17 pistol. He had fifty rounds of .338 Lapua Magnum ammunition for his sniper rifle. But the bolt action was slow — he’d only pick a handful of them off before they began to return fire. And, as the AK47s the Taliban were armed with were capable of firing 650 rounds a minute, he and Scottie would be cut to ribbons in seconds.

He had a better chance with the semi-automatic, L85A2 rifle, strapped to his back. He had five magazines, each holding thirty rounds of 5.56 NATO ammo. That gave him a total of 150 rounds. The gun was capable of firing at a similar rate to the AK47 in automatic mode. But he and Scottie would need to make every bullet count. If not, they would both be in very big trouble.

He turned down the volume on his radio to its lowest setting, then radioed his lieutenant, and when he heard his calm, reassuring voice he said, ‘Sir, a group of estimated ten, maybe twelve Terry Taliban heading towards us. ETA twenty minutes. Do you want us to engage?’

‘Are you and Scottie well concealed?’ he asked.

‘We are, sir,’ he replied, then immediately regretted it. If they could have blasted the bastards to pieces, which they could have done with their combined firepower, they could have been back at base in an hour for a shit, a shower and some decent grub. And kip.

‘Hold station. I don’t want you to reveal your presence.’

Jon Smoke was to reflect, as he stalked the corridors of Buckingham Palace all these years later, on the impact that brief radio comms, which he shared with Scottie, was to have on his life.

When, fifteen minutes later, as both snipers held their breath, and the Taliban marched directly beneath them, Jon heard a loud crack. Then a yell. Followed by a yelp of pain.

Then a lot of shouting in a language he did not understand.

And despite the now poor light, he could see what had happened. He had a ringside view he would never want again for the rest of his life. One of the key branches Scottie had been perched on had broken and he’d plummeted to the ground. Straight into the middle of nearer fifteen — not ten — ragbag and angry enemy soldiers.

At first they began yelling at his colleague, and that was sort of understandable, sort of fine. And grabbing poor, helpless Scottie’s weapons, that was understandable too.

But not what happened next.