The Illuminations

HEAT

‘It doesn’t flood the valley because there’s a good old dam holding it back.’

‘What you talking about, Major?’

‘I’m talking about the Helmand river.’

Scullion breathed out and nipped his cock. If you nip your cock in the wrong place you get piss on your boots. This was one of the helpful, sometimes philosophical facts that the major could retail at random. ‘What in the name of fuck is that noise?’ he said.

There was a guy peeing beside him. ‘Don’t worry,’ said the guy. ‘You’re cool. Stick with the programme. That’s not incoming fire, it’s just the rations truck choking on its Corn Pops.’

‘Its what?’

‘Corn Pops, dude? Don’t you eat breakfast in that dump you come from?’

‘We eat porridge, like the best human beings.’

‘Not us, Daddy. Not the Canadians. I’m talking Reese Puffs. I’m talking

Froot Loops

.’ The colonel laughed and it was one of those laughs that worked its way into a grunt.

‘That shit you people feed your children should be banned,’ Scullion said. ‘It’s toxic crap. No wonder those kids have two fucken heads and a massive need for semi-automatic weapons.’

‘That’s America, dude. Keep us out of it.’

‘You’re just America-on-ice.’

‘Whatever.’

Scullion stared at the mountains and thought about the dam while the sun sparked off the convoy’s mirrors. He peed into the bushes and spoke again. ‘But there’s drought and poverty down there, corruption like you’ve never seen and Terry bandits in their mud huts, begging to die for Allah. In time people will forget about the dam.’

He licked his lips and thought of R. White’s lemonade. In his memory he could see a whole crate of it in the cellar of a pub in Dominick Street, Mullingar, in the old, grey days before the heat. The colonel put away his dick and turned round to face Scullion.

‘But we can’t forget it. We can’t forget nothing because we’re running a mission here.’

‘The good thing is we’ll be giving those kids electricity once the turbines are installed,’ Scullion said. ‘That’s if we can pay enough bribes to the Taliban to let the power flow.’ A giant Mitsubishi crane roared past behind them. ‘That’s the job. And if we can haul all this kit up the valley and get the machines turning, then the Kajaki operation — this whole fucken thing right here — will have been the biggest public relations coup of the entire war, my dear boy.’

‘I ain’t your boy.’

‘You’re all my fucken boys.’

‘I’ll have you remember I’m a colonel with the 1st Royal Canadian Regiment.’ He smiled at Scullion: he knew his type. Everybody knew everybody’s type and they mistook it for experience.

‘Telling you straight. This operation’s a PR megaphone,’ Scullion said.

The colonel licked the salt from his middle finger. ‘Well, fuck

that,’ he said and poked the air twice. ‘Fuck all that. If it’s all about giving the ragheads a bit of hydro, that’s cool with me. But if you’re telling me we’re risking soldiers’ lives just to climb up there for a photo op, so our armies can justify the Yankee dollar. Fuck that.’

‘It’s all in a day’s work,’ Scullion said. ‘That’s our mission, that’s our task. So don’t knock it, Sookie. You’ll be back in Hog Town whacking pucks before you know it.’

As they rumbled along, Scullion tried to imagine Alexander the Great riding into the land of bones. Weren’t the brown plains and jagged mountains a hostile shadowland, a place of dark minds filtering the light? He saw old armies coming with their cigars and their bagpipes to slay the enemies of civilisation. He saw men with mules and brass bands dying of cholera in the boiling wastes of the southern desert. In his mind he pictured Alexander’s handsome face, young and fair with a cut lip, a hero driving his units through the snow-filled passes of the Hindu Kush, leading other men through clouds of mosquitoes and over the rapids of the Oxus, and greeting them with handshakes one by one as they arrived at the place of battle, their sarissas already crusted in blood.

Earlier that morning, Scullion had sat on the short wall of an abandoned compound to speak to Rashid. He considered the Afghan a good soldier: just the sort you want to be teaching to protect his country. Scullion imagined Rashid to be like the local helping hand in colonial life, a smiling

khitmutgar

from the golden period, a child-man, subject to sentimental affection from the clubbable men of England.

‘But don’t forget I’m Irish, Rashid,’ said Scullion. ‘I’m probably more like you, when all’s said and done.’

‘You are tired, sir,’ said Rashid.

‘The boys are fine. They have each other. A senior officer has to stand apart.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Though some officers don’t know it.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You know who I mean?’

‘You are speaking of Captain Campbell, sir? I see you do not like each other as you once did.’

‘He’s the judge and jury, my friend,’ Scullion said. ‘But you see he knows nothing about life. He thinks we are all just characters in his drama. He can’t see any more why we are fighting. Such men lose faith and then they blame their brothers. I’ve seen it before.’

‘And you, sir. You still have faith?’

‘I have a task, so I do. My task is to help push the operation to a successful conclusion.’

‘But you are tired, sir.’

‘That’s true.’

‘Very tired.’

‘Luke has read some books. That’s something. Shame that it makes him see sickness everywhere.’

‘But you are sick, sir.’ As he said this, Rashid raised his patch to itch the skin around his eye and Scullion saw a gnarled, ragged hole. And, right there in the open air the major felt sick: he looked into the dead socket and his mouth went dry. Scullion knew finally that his nerve had gone. The years of shredded bone and sudden cries and blood on the grass were behind him, and he was lost, not knowing what to say or how to be. Just this blank disgust holding him there and sapping his spirit. He spat

a plug of chewing gum onto the ground between them.

‘Pick that up,’ he said.

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘Pick it up.’

Rashid was silent. Scullion always liked the way he took his time to talk, searching through the concept before lighting on the word. ‘I want to learn how to speak more like you,’ he said. ‘In pictures.’

‘You will, Rashid.’

‘For my own people.’ Rashid picked up the piece of gum and put it in his mouth and he stared at the major with an unreadable expression. ‘Dust,’ he said. ‘I like the taste of my own land.’

It was hotter than usual and Scullion gave orders and checked supplies among his group and at various times that day he shivered with a secret revulsion. He didn’t know why.

A commander in Bosnia once told him he had no politics. It was the day after a young fellow Scullion was mentoring got shot in Vitez. ‘You’re a typical modern soldier,’ the commander said, ‘partly because you trust nothing. Everything’s doable and everything’s bullshit. You think like a flame-thrower, Scullion. You want to burn away the enemy and scorch their minds, without knowing what their minds are.’

‘Is there another way?’

‘We need to find one,’ the commander said.

‘Well,’ Scullion said, ‘you’ve slept peacefully in your bed for fifty years.’

‘Peacefully? I don’t know about that, Charlie. Any peace we’ve had is because we’re not really thinking. If we actually understood what we were doing in the world we wouldn’t ever sleep again.’

Around midday, Scullion poked his head out the top of the Vector and spat down on the road. ‘Fucking A,’ he said. As they

moved up the track a flock of partridges scooted over the wall of an orchard. Scullion’s eyes followed the birds as they flew into a field and then a larger bird dived down to a puff of feathers. You couldn’t be sure of anything because of the heat and the way reality was bent by the temperature.

‘Hawthorn sixty-eight. This is zero.’

The radio was loud in the Vector and he could hear the boys crapping on. ‘Shut your gobs,’ he shouted down. ‘If it’s hot weather you want you should try Kuwait in July.’

‘What?’ asked Lennox.

‘Our fucken rifle grips were melting out there.’

He ducked back down and saw Captain Campbell sweating on the bench with his shirt off. It was a furnace and the heat’s weight was dragging down their eyelids, but Luke stared at the major with a face full of accusation. He couldn’t empty his mind of how Scullion had missed the ambush. It made him sick to think of it and he could still see the major climbing from the Vector after the firing stopped, that look, as if fatigue and horror had taken over at the end of a long march.

CULVERT

They came to a farmyard that was known to Luke. He hadn’t seen it before but it existed in his head, grey stone walls, a run of trees by the road and a covered ditch hewn from the farm into the field. A man and a small boy were walking away from the building and the boy carried a helium balloon on a red string. ‘That’s weird,’ Dooley said. The farm was bombed out and the boy didn’t look over at the soldiers.

‘The Yanks give them out to the kids,’ Scullion said. ‘Why the fuck are we stopped here?’

Luke watched the child going off, a large Disney princess in an aqua-blue dress floating above him. ‘I want these rifles clean,’ Scullion said. ‘Get your wire brushes out.’

‘It’s forty-eight degrees, sir,’ said Luke.

‘I don’t care if it’s the fucking

Towering Inferno

I’m sick watching this section sit on its arse.’

Luke turned to the boys. ‘Open your kits. I’m taking a radio and we’re going to check out this compound. Okay?’ He looked back at Scullion. ‘You and me, sir. We’re going to check the safety of this shed.’

Scullion put on his helmet and raised his rifle and followed the younger officer into the farm. Rashid walked from the vehicle behind and Luke noticed his shirt was soaked in sweat. ‘It is okay,’ Rashid said. ‘This farm is safe, you can go in.’

‘And how do you know that, Rashid?’ Luke turned and squared up to him by the broken stones in the yard. ‘Would that be your fucken sixth sense or is it your priceless contacts with the enemy?’

‘This building has been cleared.’

‘By whom? Not by me.’

‘We have the surveillance plan.’

‘No, Rashid. Your head is a surveillance plan. I don’t fucken trust you as far as I could throw you.’ Rashid stepped back and put up his hands and shook his head like a professional.

‘We are the same rank. I will not be disrespected.’

‘No? Well, you can take your one beady eye and fuck right off over there, Captain. I am having a private meeting with Major Scullion of the British army. Fuck off, I said.’

The boys liked it. They liked his style. And they liked nothing

more than sudden anger directed at a local. They thought Rashid was all right but a bit of a crawler, and the captain’s way of sorting him out had them enthralled over in the Vector. Rashid just walked away and none of them turned their heads as he passed. When Scullion and Campbell went inside, the boys just fiddled with their rifles and then dropped onto the road. They started a game at the edge of the field with a few Royal Scots, playing football with some empty water bottles in a plastic bag.

There was chicken shit on the floor. Scullion flicked a gum wrapper and turned at the wall to look up at his young friend. ‘He’s one of us,’ he said. ‘You should be nicer to our allies.’

‘He’s irrelevant.’

‘A little keen, maybe.’

‘He’s got nothing to do with our section.’

‘He’s with us,’ Scullion said. ‘Mainly, he’s with us. And you can’t blame them for having maybe a … heightened sense of desecration, what, with everything that’s going on?’

‘It’s not the 1840s,’ Luke said. ‘And this is not your private army.’

Scullion made a show of listening carefully to him and then he walked to the far end of the room. Light came from the internal courtyard and he seemed to absorb the light and draw strength from it.

‘Listen, Luke. Are you homesick?’

‘Don’t make this about me.’

‘But, are you?’

‘I’ve been homesick all my life.’

‘Good. That’s a good answer. You’re an intelligent man and you should pay attention to these facts.’

‘I’m not your pupil any more.’

‘That’s right. Your contempt has run ahead of your wisdom. And you no longer have a use for me.’

‘This unit … this regiment has need of a senior officer in the field, sir, who does not absent himself during a major firefight. Can you explain yourself?’

‘As a matter of fact … I can’t.’

‘They said you fell asleep.’

‘I wasn’t asleep, Luke. I was in the Vector. I was on the floor of the Vector, to be accurate.’

‘And you decided it would be a good idea to leave a group of your own soldiers, average age eighteen, to survive and then recover from a heavily armed ambush by unknown enemy forces? You decided this was the best way to deploy your experience, did you? The best way to exhibit your leadership?’

‘I didn’t decide anything, Luke. I was frozen to the spot and that is simply what happened.’

‘You’re a fucken coward!’

‘So it would appear.’ Scullion didn’t flinch. He didn’t move. And as the seconds passed he seemed almost relieved.

‘I find that hard to believe.’

‘So do I. But it happened. Plain as that. I couldn’t move.’ He spat his gum onto the ground and looked at it. ‘Do you know how many countries I’ve fought in, Captain?’

‘I couldn’t guess.’

‘Just about all of them. Wherever we had a decent amount of hostility. And here’s my hand on my Northern Irish heart to tell you I was never scared in any of them. In fact, I was overjoyed.’

‘That’s what they say.’

‘You know the phrase, “They have blood on their hands”? Well, I have blood on my hands, comrade, buckets of it, all in the

cause of something good and something noble. Democracy.’

‘So you decide to launch your new career as a white feather just at the very moment when my boys are in danger? You leave them to a firefight in the dark, do you? Exposed on a hill? What the fuck is happening to you, Charlie? Are you losing your mind?’

‘I might be. It might be that.’

‘Not on my fucken watch.’

He sniggered. ‘Little Luke Campbell, who joined the army to find his daddy. Ends up confronting real-life danger and real-life fear. Shall I phone your mammy, Luke — get her to come up and turn your Xbox back on? Get you back to your nice wee world of video game combat, eh, my friend? Piling up the points. Topping the leader board. This nasty world of real people and unexpected turns doesn’t really suit you, does it?’

‘You’re sick, Charlie. That stuff with your wife has made you mental or something.’

‘Oh, we’re all mental. You think all this fighting was making me wise? Making me braver? Here’s the lesson, brother: it wears away at you; there’s less of you every day.’

‘There’s less of what?’

‘Less life. Less cause. Less morality. Less belief. Less judgement. Less energy. Less fucken hope. Just less. Know what I mean?’

‘You know what, sir: I don’t fucken think I do.’

‘Well, you should. Captain Sharp-as-a-Needle. Mr Up-at-the-Crack-of-Dawn. Where’s your fighting spirit now? It’s not just about me, all this. When you joined this regiment you wanted to police the world. What a sight you were. You wanted to arrest every bad guy with a mobile phone. No territory was too hostile for Private Ego and his wish to shape the future. That’s what made us friends. What happened to all that?’

The major’s words burned into him as they had in the days when he felt ideas could make him a better soldier. ‘Your private troubles,’ he said, ‘are threatening the lives of my men, and I won’t stand for it.’ Luke stepped forward and was up in the major’s face. ‘I’ll destroy you first. Soon as this mission is over, I’m reporting you.’

‘You’ve waited all your life for this, little Luke. I hope you’re enjoying your moment.’

‘The boys needed you …’

Scullion was shaking and blinking and as he turned sideways he put his hands under his armpits. ‘And I needed them. I did. But I wasn’t available and it makes me sick to my stomach.’ His face flushed when he said those words and he looked as if he might vomit on the farmhouse floor. He bent over, taking deep breaths with closed eyes, and when he looked up thirty years of humanitarian fatigue was on his face. He opened his mouth to say something but didn’t say it and then tried again. ‘I don’t sleep,’ he whispered, ‘and I may never sleep again. Those pills you gave me — I need more of them. I need to stop my insides turning.’

‘You need to leave, Charlie.’ They could hear the revving of vehicles outside.

‘I don’t think I can. They’ll have to kill me.’

‘Don’t be daft, Major,’ Luke said, suddenly younger again. It made him sad to see how willingly Scullion accepted blame. ‘The whole point of what I’m saying is you’re not fit for the boys. They need you. All your experience and what you have to offer.’

Scullion slung on his rifle. ‘All my experience,’ he said, laughing in Luke’s direction and twisting his mouth. ‘All my terrific experience and all the army’s experience, too.’

‘There’s life after this,’ Luke said. Then he turned from Scullion

and walked out of the compound, leaving him. He didn’t look round and just marched out through the door as if there would be a parade ground out there on the other side, a place of flags and proud families instead of a culvert spewing dirty water into a poppy field.

CONSTITUTION

When they weren’t on duty Flannigan called him Luke and sometimes Jimmy-Jimmy, a joke on his Glasgow accent. The two had got to know each at the barracks in Salisbury and grown close at Camp Bastion. Luke tended to look towards Flannigan for basic back-up. During the second day of the Kajaki mission, while the boys bantered in the moving Vector, Flannigan looked over and remembered what Luke had said after the fighting had stopped on the ridge. He said his father had died because of an ambush in Northern Ireland. He said he’d hardly known him but had always lived with the idea of his bravery. Flannigan saw how mortified Luke was by Scullion and the way he’d hung back from the action.

‘It doesn’t matter, lad,’ Flannigan said. ‘He was stoned and he’s probably not used to weed like that.’

Flannigan was ten years younger. He was clever in a way that had nothing to do with books. Like Luke, he was two guys, the guy in the van and the one in his head, but Flannigan had a stronger army constitution than the captain. He knew that great people often turned out to be rubbish and he thought it normal. That night up on the ridge, after the guns stopped, after the tracer went dead and the Apaches disappeared, the platoon stood around

in a state of mellow disbelief. The smoke still hung over the camp and the stars, good God, the crazy stars were out for real.

THE SOUNDS

The convoy had stopped again. It was an improved part of the road, so the sappers and ordnance guys didn’t trust it and were out checking for roadside bombs and tripwires. The boys in Luke’s group didn’t move when Scullion opened the passenger door and jumped down. Lennox had

Now

magazine down his shorts and was chuckling and saying something they’d heard before about a tattoo he wanted.

Luke was filling in a form. ‘What’s your Zap number, Lennox?’

‘LA104,’ he said, still laughing at his own antics. He pushed the magazine down further but made a serious face. ‘My last wish is to be buried with the Mondeo. Please make a note. You can drive it into the sea off the Ballygally Holiday Apartments. That’s where I was happiest.’

‘The Real IRA will do that for free,’ Flannigan said. ‘Though I think we’d rather hand you over to the Fundie Jundies. They will eat you and your Ford fuck-up live on the interwebs for everybody to watch.’

Lennox burped and made a face.

‘Stop crying, bitch,’ Dooley said. ‘You’ll get a funeral. They’ll say: “The ginger cunt was much missed by his comrades. Much saddened by his death but pleased as fuck to see the end of the plank’s shite car. They were also delighted never to hear another word about his moose back home who was stinging him for cash-money every week. Duracell dobber got her up the duff and the

whole family of lazy tink bastards screwed the benefits system for ever more. The End.”’

‘A beautiful story,’ Flannigan said.

‘Very moving,’ Lennox said.

Luke folded the form and got to his feet. He pulled on a brown T-shirt and screwed up his face at Lennox. ‘I thought you had a child?’ he said. ‘How can you be responsible for a fucken child when you’re such a chozzie bitch?’

‘Happens all the time,’ said Lennox, removing the magazine from his pants and grinning. ‘It’s nature, innit?’

Captain Rashid of the ANA was sitting in the other corner with a small book in his hand. Half of the banter went over his head. ‘Roll another fat one, Rashid,’ Dooley said, looking over. ‘Another giant bifta for the tea-break.’

Rashid just smiled at him. Luke thought there was something un-adult about the Afghan soldiers, disorganised, smiling at nothing, not really caring. The only thing they really knew was fear, the threat of reprimand, the anger of their commanders. And Luke found it hard to imagine what such men said to themselves. Rashid only had one eye but they imagined he’d put it out for the boys if they said it was routine. ‘He’s not your average arse-licker,’ Flannigan said. ‘There’s something extra going on with him. He listens. I think he believes in the surge more than all our officers put together.’

‘He’s like a child,’ Luke said. ‘He does what he’s told.’

‘You don’t like him, Captain, do you?’

‘No, I don’t. He plays at being loyal.’

‘Ah, he’s all right,’ Flannigan said.

Later, Scullion was up-top on the vehicle behind. The sun really seemed to pulse that day and give out harm. They were

over the mountains and an emerald-green lake had appeared on the other side. Ibex were drinking at the water’s edge and several old men waited by the halted vehicles, men with few teeth but much knowledge, Scullion reckoned. What were they waiting for, the future, the past, ammo, or money? The major had no authority and his attention was parched by the heat and the dust. When they waved at the convoy and held out their hands, Scullion couldn’t rightly see if they were holding pomegranates or grenades.

He climbed into the Vector and grabbed a book from the dashboard. He had been avoiding Luke but now he smiled over at the captain, one of his old smiles. ‘I think we should cheer things up around here,’ he said. ‘You know where we are? Near one of the ancient sites.’

‘Does it have a strip joint?’ Lennox said.

‘Wind it in, bumboy,’ the major said. ‘I’m talking about ancient ruins. Get your ginger nut into thinking mode, soldier.’ Scullion threw the book to Luke and moved to expel the whole day’s tension. ‘This’ll be a good one, Captain. You’ll get a buzz. Ever since Trinity I’ve wanted to see these places out here. Footprints. There are certain things war and wives can’t put down. And one of them is curiosity.’

‘Tappeh-ye Mondi Gak,’ Luke read. It was too humid to think and Luke was feeling miserable about the argument. He knew the major wasn’t fit but Luke was shopping for a quick resolution, something to tide them over until the mission was done and he could think straight. Scullion was off his head but at least he seemed proactive, wanting to do something, and Luke reasoned it might be better not to fight him. There was no point stewing in the sun and mulling over what they’d said.

‘Come on,’ Scullion added after a moment. ‘We can’t sit here. I’m going down to see what’s what with the ordnance crew. If the work’s going to take hours we’re off on our holidays. Pack your bags, girls.’

The major trooped off and Luke tried to swallow his doubts. Flannigan looked at him for assurance and he just shrugged. ‘It’s madness to leave the convoy,’ Luke said, ‘but what the hell, Flange.’

‘He’s the boss,’ said Flannigan.

‘Well,’ Dooley said. ‘Let the madness commence. The major’s right. We’re fifty miles from the dam and a fuckload of bullets. Things are in dog order round here, sir, and I for one can’t sit boiling my spuds off waiting for a pack of greasers to sort out the vehicles up front. If we’re here for hours, let’s follow Emperor Mong into the land of Ali Baba. You never know. We might find a Coca-Cola out there.’

Scullion’s insistence was a feature of the weather that day and not open to change. He came back with the news that a big IED scan was under way and that the Royal Engineers were fixing the axle on the truck carrying the crane. They wouldn’t be moving for three hours. Scullion called in Bawn and Kilbride, two privates from the next vehicle, and ordered them to man the Vector. ‘Leave your shit here,’ he told Flannigan and company, but Luke insisted they take their rifles and two radios.

‘I don’t want guns,’ Scullion said. ‘This is a cultural outing.’

‘Nice distinction, Major,’ Luke said. ‘But either we take our assault weapons or we’re not moving an inch away from this convoy.’

‘I’ll remind you, I’m in charge,’ Scullion said.

‘You’ll be wanting to protect your section, then,’ Luke said.

The two men stared at each other for a moment and then Scullion smiled.

‘All right, girls,’ he said. ‘We’re taking a trip. Look lively and bring your bang-sticks like the good soldier says.’

Scullion commandeered a jeep and steered it off the line. He drove onto a patch of desert and Rashid came with extra water. When Luke said there might be flak about them absconding from the convoy, Flannigan pointed to other servicemen wandering free. A team of Canadians and Dutch were already setting up a makeshift volleyball net. ‘The line is two kilometres long, Captain,’ Flannigan said. ‘Jesus, it’s fine. Remember in Basra we used to go sightseeing all the time. The boys get sick waiting.’ A second jeep carried two of the Royal Caledonian boys and a couple of the Canadians and Scullion waved the vehicle alongside. He hadn’t been so keyed up at any time since the platoon left Camp Bastion.

‘What’s with the wheels?’ asked Lennox.

‘They’re the bomb,’ Luke said.

‘Seriously the bomb,’ Flannigan said.

‘White motherfucken Land Cruisers,’ said Lennox. He rolled his tongue and spat on the ground. ‘Brand new.’

‘Bought for the ANA by the Americans,’ Luke said.

‘No way.’

‘Yes way.’

‘Holy mother of Jesus,’ Flannigan said.

The major had his hand on a map. Rashid was rolling another joint and kept indicating places of interest. At one point, Rashid wetted his hand with saliva and dampened the area under his eyepatch. Scullion saw it and it made his stomach heave. It was a new thing: Rashid now did that to him, made him anxious, revolted.

But as usual with the regiment, events moved faster than thoughts, and the quartet of 1st Royal Western Fusiliers, Flannigan, Dooley, Lennox and Campbell, climbed into the back and all felt rewarded when the air-conditioning kicked in and went turbo and seemed to blow the heat and the dust from their brains.

Dooley put his rifle on the floor and pulled out a CD. ‘Stick this mother on,’ he said, handing it over. Scullion looked round when the music filled the car and he grinned the grin of a middle-aged man finding freedom again in the sound of a metal band at full pelt.

‘What the fuck is this?’ Luke shouted.

‘For your musical delectification,’ Dooley said, holding up the case.

‘Delectation,’ said Luke.

‘Whatever,’ Dooley said. ‘Brain Drill. Featuring the fastest drummer in the world, Marco Pitruzzella.’

‘Turn that off, our kid,’ Flannigan said. ‘It’s fucken unbearable.’ The car bumped over the road and white dust billowed at the second Land Cruiser coming at the rear.

‘Jack up the volume,’ said Lennox.

Luke dropped his shoulders. Everything was cool and the boys were happy. It was irregular to go off-site but stuff happens and it wasn’t his job to commandeer everything. Scullion knew they were close to the kind of holy ground where lapis lazuli lies under the dirt. They passed a man on the road who was holding up a fistful of windscreen wipers.

Rashid said a few words to Scullion and then he closed the map and stared into a group of trees. Looking back on that day, they’d understand that Rashid had been in charge, he’d planned everything, directed it, without ever seeming to be other than

his usual subservient self. He had the gift of patient belief and the habit of silence. They were three miles from Tappeh-ye Mondi Gak and Rashid felt the coming simoom, a red mist of hot sand. The Land Cruiser was like a bubble of air in the local bloodstream, and he hoped the mist wouldn’t mess with the car’s radiator or upset the plan to get to the ancient site and from there to Bad Kichan. The music was loud and Rashid looked towards the mountains beyond the bank of trees, the mountains plain and beautiful and dark blue in the crags. In the foothills of De Mundagak Ghar a boy in brown scarves stared down at the road. Rashid saw him and rolled down his window, and, putting his arm out, tapped the door twice. Rashid glanced round at Scullion and saw he was miles away and beating the steering wheel in time to the drums and the boys were singing in the back of the vehicle. When Rashid lifted his eyes again to the hill the boy had gone. Luke later understood that this had been the ANA captain’s gift to his people, to let them know, as promised, here and there along the way, that the British soldiers were making progress towards the village.

THE PROPHECY OF THE PETROL

‘What is that?’

‘An old water wheel,’ Rashid said. They walked past it and away from the vehicles to see the ruined fort. It stood alone in the desert, a doorway, a piece of wall, an arch maybe, a rampart like a broken tooth. Scullion felt he saw sand blowing off the white ruins and it excited him. The poet Shelley came into his mind and he wanted to talk about that with his young friend, but, when he

turned, he saw Luke was remote. Some fellows get eaten up by the army and forget what it’s all about.

He climbed up to the fort and stroked a wall and looked through the remains of an old window. ‘The lone and level sands stretch far away,’ he recited, and when he stood back he felt his stoutness, a sudden feeling of increase, next to all this thinning beauty. When he looked again through the hole he saw a lone camel walking in a daze.

The Scottish boys from the second jeep came up the dirt track to the fort looking stoned. ‘Hey, Dooley,’ Flannigan said. ‘Here come the Jocks and one of them’s got a shite Gucci leg-holster the same as yours.’ The soldier he was talking about carried a six-pack of bottled water and had a T-shirt wrapped round his head. Luke recognised him as the lance corporal who had sat in front of him during the briefing in Maiwand, the boy who spoke about Scullion’s reputation.

‘Any you diddies want a beer?’ the boy said, smiling up. He had a Browning pistol in his leg-holster and an SA80 rifle over his shoulder. Luke turned round when he heard the accent and caught a bottle of water. Rashid passed a new joint to Lennox and walked down to the vehicles.

‘Where you from?’ Luke asked.

‘Ayrshire,’ the boy said. ‘I’m Mark.’

‘Whereabouts in Ayrshire?’

‘Dalgarnock.’

‘My gran lives in Saltcoats.’

‘Just up the road,’ Mark said. ‘I went to St Andrew’s. They pulled it down to make way for the new school.’

‘And my mother lives in Troon,’ Luke said.

‘That’s mad. I used to go to the Pavilion in Ayr, the raves up

there. Do you ever go to the Metro?’

‘The club in Saltcoats?’ asked Luke.

‘Aye. I got a knock-back from there, man. I’m like, “You can fight for your country but you cannae get into a club …”’

Lennox passed them the joint and Luke and the boy smoked it while Dooley set up some of the water bottles. ‘Target practice,’ Dooley said.

‘You shouldn’t waste water, dude,’ said the Canadian. He had driven with the Scots boys in the second vehicle.

Scullion came down from the fort and he seemed high. ‘I reckon everybody drinks too much water, anyway,’ he said. ‘In Ireland when I was a kid nobody drank water. I can honestly say my mother never once set a glass of water down in front of me.’ He sweated as he said it and the sweat ran into his eyes. He dragged his hand wearily down his face and wondered if the fort had anything buried around it. He would kill for a little Hellenistic carving or a bracelet to take home.

Luke’s eyes locked on to the bottles. The light was coming through them and caused a rainbow stripe to appear on the white wall of the fort. The boy Mark tipped the rifle off his shoulder and took aim, the joint dangling from his lips as he crinkled an eye. ‘Die, motherfuckers,’ he said and looked pleased as the water exploded. Scullion enjoyed the boys’ laughter and felt nauseous again at the metallic smell and the echo in the valley. He hoped he’d remembered to put a 355 radio in the car in case he got lost or the convoy moved or something.

‘It’s fucken boiling out here,’ Lennox said, wiping factor thirty on his neck and shoulders.

‘Twos up on that,’ Mark said. Lennox squirted sunblock in his direction and they all laughed.

‘Cumshot,’ said Flannigan.

‘I’m totally wasted,’ Dooley said.

The blue sky above the fort, the blue sky, thought Scullion, throwing a stone down into the gully. ‘Alexander the Great dug wells near the Oxus to get fresh water,’ he said, ‘and the water was bad. You know why? There was thick black liquid seeping into the water.’

‘Black liquid?’ said Flannigan.

‘Oil. The general’s advisers said it was a bad omen. The advisers. They said it warned of troubled times.’

‘Did they get rich?’ Lennox asked.

Scullion ignored him. It was a sign of leadership: knowing exactly when to ignore people and for how long. ‘It’s the first mention of oil in literature,’ he said, and Luke, the younger officer, his former pupil, turned briefly out of interest but let his interest die. Luke lay on his back with a hand over his face, palm open to the sun, and felt sure that whatever happened after the tour he might never again see a day like this. An entire version of himself was moving into the shade and he experienced the mild distaste that comes before a change, the fear of nostalgia.

‘They don’t build them like this any more,’ said Flannigan. He looked at the ruin and spat in the dust.

‘We don’t build anything,’ Scullion said. ‘That’s part of the problem out here. Even the Soviets built apartment blocks. All we do is help bring in metal containers. Drop them from the sky, promise to helicopter them out at the end. Life’s complicated, boys. Look over there: the ancients had windows, ventilation. You won’t see that in a shipping container. We’re all just part of a transit area nowadays.’

A WEDDING FEAST

The elder had a fistful of gambling chits and he squatted down with his brothers to flick quails. They all looked up when the soldiers came into the village in their loud jeeps. Scullion drove to the end of the only road and stopped on a humpback bridge, next to a school where children could be heard chanting in a study circle. The CD stopped when Scullion turned off the engine. He rolled down the window. They could hear the water running. A woman spread a light blue burqa on the grass.

The village was fresh, Luke said later, green like an oasis, and after the hilltop the air seemed soft. Maybe it was the children’s voices and the noise of the quails, a life not to do with heat. Everything in the desert emerges from heat and goes back to heat, but in Bad Kichan there was water and activity and tins with labels on them. ‘Keep your eyes open,’ Scullion said. One of the local men came to the vehicles with his hands up. He spoke rapidly and Dooley released the catch. The major turned to find Rashid. ‘Is he speaking Dari? Tell him to fuck off.’

‘A wedding today,’ Rashid said. ‘The man offers you blessings.’

‘That’s some crazy-ass mumbling,’ Lennox said.

Scullion looked nervous. ‘Tell the old fox to back off. I can speak a little Pashtun if he wants to bless.’

‘He is younger than you,’ said Rashid.

‘I don’t care if he’s sweet sixteen, Rashid. I want him to get the fuck back from this squad. That’s an order.’

‘An order, sir?’

Rashid’s good eye was clear. He was the only one of the group not feeling nervous and his sense of command, his entire presence, had altered when he spoke, and it altered further as he stepped

through and touched the shoulder of the local man. Whatever he said made the man tap his chest and walk down the track to where the villagers had gathered. Rashid turned to the boys and put out his hands and smiled. ‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘This is a feasting day and custom says you must join to celebrate.’

Children followed them and Scullion handed out packs of coloured pencils from his thigh pockets. He laughed as they grabbed them and he gave them sweets when the pencils ran out. He was feeling good because you only get worried when there are no children, when the place is quiet and the people are inside. Luke had the same thought. As they walked up, Scullion could see past rickety doors into the low mud dwellings. One house revealed a huddle of eyes, men sitting on a red carpet, and he stopped at the door to examine them. They were around a television set, watching an old tennis match between Borg and McEnroe.

The street was busy and there was music outside the

hujra

, the guesthouse, where three chickens’ heads lay in a puddle of blood. Rashid handed a case of water to Scullion to give to the elder and as he placed the water at the man’s feet Scullion said, ‘

As-salaam alikum

.’

‘

W-alikum-as-salaam

,’ the man said.

‘

Khair Yosay,

’ Scullion said. The ANA captain turned to Scullion and a smile creased the contours of Rashid’s short, dark beard as he said, ‘Your accent is very strange.’ Luke peered into the pomegranate grove at the side of the guesthouse and saw a group of boys there, all dressed in brown. Some of them touched their breasts as he looked and he did the same. There was a wall around the grove and Luke could see a cart loaded with fruit. Silently, he heard co-ordinates and radio crackle in his head and he imagined an aerial shot of the village. Calm the fuck down, he

told himself. Stay on it. He counted heads. He couldn’t be sure but he thought one of the boys in the grove, the one in the long waistcoat, was holding a mobile phone. Luke tried to work out what was going on and he wanted to be friendly but he hated the phone and how they all stood still.

‘Let’s not hang about here,’ Flannigan said.

‘You’re fine,’ Scullion said. ‘Listen, guys. It’s cool. This is how we bring peace to these people.’

‘What, by barging into a private wedding?’ said Luke.

‘Showing face,’ Scullion said. ‘Taking an interest. A wee bit of civilised banter. A glass of tea.’

Luke saw a heap of cartons against the wall labelled Nestlé Fruita Vitals. ‘We need to get out of here.’

Rashid stood still. Scullion looked again at the leader of the village

shura

and bowed to him and wished he had a cigar he could offer him. Whatever Scullion said, the sweat was pouring off him and his mouth was dry, yet he believed, deep at the centre of all this rising alarm, that something existed in faith or memory that would serve them well. Whatever it was, he believed in the code. He was from County Westmeath and he knew about gangs and he knew about boys who wanted to be the big man. He’d known them for thirty years and they didn’t piss on their own doorstep. He looked over at the soldiers in his party and felt they were each a version of himself. ‘Let’s not insult this gentleman’s hospitality,’ he said.

Mark looked at a low wall where a row of skewered kebabs were cooking on a grill. Beside it, on the dusty ground, were several basins of stew and rice. A bowl of almonds caught his eye as he stood up straight and looked at the sky and thought of a Chinese restaurant back home. He and Lisa Nolan used to go

there for curry and chips and he thought of good times and a trip they made with their friend Father David. He never expected to see a sky this blue or almonds in a copper bowl.

The young bride came down the road wearing a white headscarf and a dress of many colours. Dooley thought of his sister’s wedding in Skibbereen. Lennox moved out of the way and followed the sound of clapping into the house where the people danced. For a moment, standing there, Private Flannigan felt that everything tilted in the direction of these people, because of their happiness and the young groom’s way of looking at his wife. The soldiers went in and out of the house with their rifles up and Luke noticed the boys in the orchard had stepped closer to the road. Scullion was clapping his hands to the music, beaming and nodding, and when he turned he saw Luke moving towards him and swiping the air, saying, ‘We have to get the fuck out of here right now.’

The boys in the orchard started throwing rocks. One of them struck Scullion in the chest and he turned open-mouthed to see a smear of men shouting and flailing in the first seconds of panic. He grabbed Rashid’s arm to stop the gun but Rashid held it straight out and it was pointing at Mark, the Scottish soldier, who was standing in the middle of the road facing them, shouting

‘Come ahead ya dirty bastard!’

Rashid shot him point blank in the face, blood gushing from the man’s mouth. Rashid shouted a name and instantly the kid with the mobile phone rushed forward screaming and Luke turned his rifle and shot him dead. At the same time, Dooley lunged out with a bayonet and stabbed Rashid in the neck. Lennox saw the Scot fall in the road with his face covered in blood and he saw Rashid collapse on top of him, then he turned and opened fire into the orchard. In a second

or two they were all shooting into the orchard, and Luke joined them, his heart going mad as he shouted over the noise.

An old man wearing pink came out of the

hujra

with his hands clasped together in supplication, crying. Was that crying, thought Dooley, or was he laughing? The bowl of almonds seemed to explode next to him as Dooley opened fire again and the old man spun and fell backwards through the door where the screaming seemed to swallow him. Scullion dragged the body of Rashid along the road and fired into him. Then he took out his service revolver and shot him in the eye, standing over the body and staring down. By now the Canadian colonel was bent over Mark, the young lance corporal, blowing into his mouth and after a minute or so the colonel looked up with blood on his face and shook his head because it was no use.

At the edge of the orchard, among shattered pomegranates and grey rocks and blood, the boys of the village lay in a heap. One wasn’t yet dead and he opened and closed his mouth. Luke would remember the whiteness of the boy’s teeth as he opened his mouth to breathe and dropped his small hand to the ground. The women wailed. They wailed everywhere. Scullion was now bent over the mangled body of Rashid, speaking to him, asking him why. Flannigan dragged Scullion off the body, shouting, ‘Got to go, sir. Luke, take charge. We’ve got to get away from here.’

‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ Lennox said, looking at the mess on the ground.

‘Luke!’ shouted Flannigan. ‘We’ve got to get Charlie out of here. We’ve got to go!’

‘Bosh!’ Dooley said. ‘Fucken killed the bastards. Dirty Taliban scum. See ye! Fucken see ye!’

‘Holy Christ,’ said Lennox.

Scullion was looking at the dead ANA captain and Flannigan tugged him by the arm. ‘Just leave it, sir. A no-use traitor bastard.’

There were rose petals on the road. Luke saw them and the blood running into the dust at the edge of the orchard and his eyes were stinging with sweat. Suddenly he came up and pushed Scullion nearly off his feet. He grabbed his shirt and pulled him in and locked eyes with him. ‘You caused this. You fucken caused all of this.’

‘Leave it, sir,’ Dooley said, pushing the captain back and separating the men. ‘Let’s go.’

Scullion was wild in the eyes. ‘This is

yours

,’ Luke said, walking away from him. ‘Good fucken work.’ He waited a moment. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Moving out!’ There was screaming coming from the

hujra

and the women appeared in the road beating their chests, raising their hands. Dressed for the wedding, they cried for their sons.

The Canadian and Private Dooley walked ahead to secure the retreat and Luke ordered a couple of the others to carry Mark’s body. The dead soldier’s hair was matted with blood and white dust and his pal from the regiment was holding his hand and weeping. Dooley opened the passenger door for Scullion and he got in without a word. He wasn’t there, Dooley said later. ‘The lights were on but nobody was at home.’ Luke and Flannigan walked back up the road from the

hujra

, their rifles pointing at the village. And when they reached the bridge Luke cast his eyes at the school and saw a line of children’s faces at the open window.

‘Charlie base. This is call sign 722. Over.’

AIRLIFT

Beside the whop-whop of rotary blades, Luke stood with the commander at the edge of the convoy. ‘There will be a full investigation,’ Emory said. ‘Questions. Big fucking questions.’ But Luke wasn’t listening. The camouflaged underside of the Lynx lifted away, creating a wind that blew the dust into a dense cloud. ‘You chose to leave his body,’ said the commander. ‘He was Afghan National Army.’

‘He was not one of us.’

‘We are all one of us, Captain.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘We are forging on. Nobody’s going back. We are fifty-nine miles from the delivery point and that is where the action is. Major Scullion will stick with the platoon and we can discuss his jolly outing into bandit country back at the base.’

‘As you wish, sir.’

‘It’s not as I wish. What I wish is that the British army did not harbour such fucking idiots.’

‘Yes, sir.’

BANN RIVER

The operation had to be completed that night and they were in the Vector moving towards Kajaki. They said little, feeling everything, eyeing one another and hanging their heads as they breathed in the hot aftermath. They would remember Scullion sluicing himself with sterile water, but was it fury, confusion or regret that dimmed his eyes and made him grunt and rub his

sodden hair until it tufted into spikes?

The old life was over and Scullion knew it. As the vehicle bumped along and then rejoined Highway 611, he recalled that he’d once imagined the world could be put right and made whole. He had been a man who liked the era he lived in and was well suited to it. He loved the metaphysics of the new wars, where one spoke of freedom, of delivering security, but as he put down his head and meshed his trembling fingers he pictured slain Bosnians by a shopping precinct in Srebrenica. He saw corpses in burnt-out cars on the Basra Road and rebel soldiers lying dead by a runway north of Freetown, their eyes open to democracy. He saw those boys in the orchard. And it was all a mystery to him now, all at an end, the resolutions, agreements, interventions, because the people who police the world are never ready for the world’s ingratitude. Eight construction workers in Teebane, blown to pieces by the IRA. His first acquaintance with gore. A culvert bomb on the Drum Road. His platoon got to the crossroads in minutes from the barracks in Omagh. That’s what the journalists don’t see. That’s what the politicians and the mothers never see.

Luke was staring the other way.

‘You all right, Charlie?’ Flannigan said.

When he turned his eyes they were clouded with failure. ‘People let you down, son. They do bad things.’

Luke had come to the end of his own dark corridor in the mountains and Charlie Scullion was merely a name he would give to the mistakes that led him there. He had suspected in Maiwand that the major, despite his stories, his reputation, was not up to the job, and he had looked away as the enemy made an opportunity of their weaknesses. Luke and Scullion were not so different as either hoped: they ran their battle from the centre of

some persistent idea of themselves as good men, and, in this way, they resembled the politicians who paid for their boots and gave them their language. Luke wasn’t sure how a life works, how your story accumulates and regresses, how it speaks, how it hides, but he’d know it eventually. As the vehicle rumbled on and the daylight dwindled, he knew he had played his part in the disaster at Bad Kichan.

‘It sounds bad,’ Lennox said, ‘because I feel sorry for the Scottish lad, but I’m just glad it wasn’t one of the platoon.’

‘It was bad luck, that’s all,’ Dooley said. ‘The soldier stepped forward at the wrong time.’

‘It was more than that,’ said Flannigan. ‘It was bad everything. It was just bad.’

Scullion stared at the ground. It was Operation Grapple. The Croats were trying to cleanse the Bosnians from the Lašva Valley. Three hundred people were murdered in a cinema in Vitez and the boy next to me, Second Battalion …

‘How old was the kid today?’

‘He was twenty-one.’

The convoy joined the decoy units for the final push. They went past canals and villages and climbed to the high fields around Kajaki Sofla. Crossing the Helmand, they took turns to look out and see the beautiful green of the river and the many sunflowers growing on the banks. They got their full battle kit on and Scullion looked up and told them to affix their radios and bring out the light machine-gun.

‘The Mini-Me?’ Dooley said.

‘There’s two here,’ Scullion said. ‘Let’s get this over with. Docherty brought in two after the last stop.’

Kajaki was one big choke-point, a lot of vehicles waiting to

go in and a lot of Terry down there. This was the fight they had come for and it had to be over quickly. Night fell and Luke could hear the Chinooks moving ahead of them, softening up the gun positions around the hills. The men fixed their bayonets and checked their ammo outside under a hanging herb that smelled of peppermint. Scullion came with information about Taliban gun-mountings in the town but he didn’t offer any speeches. He just looked into the desert.

Scullion put his hand on Luke’s shoulder. He didn’t respond, but when he looked up he hated the expression in the major’s eyes. It was dark now and a burst of red and orange appeared over the tops of the trees. Scullion clapped Luke again and the younger officer widened his eyes. ‘Please fuck off, Major. It’s my only request.’

‘We have a battle to fight,’ Scullion said.

‘Then fight it.’

Luke climbed up and examined the scene from the top of the Vector and thought of the little town of Bethlehem they knew at school, the white buildings on the hillside and the stars. Except this was godless territory and the night ahead would be brutal. ‘We better get a few rewards after this,’ Dooley said. ‘A few shakes of the choccy-tree. The lads have been through the mill today and a few beers might be in order.’

Scullion led his own platoon over the hill. They could see the floodlit dam and he wanted to press home. ‘If you haven’t got a wife or a child, follow me,’ he said. The boys turned to Luke and he shrugged and stared into the poplar trees and the centre of Kajaki Sofla. It was either a slow or a fast descent but you had to get there. A commander came up and a mortar brigade and they took up positions and started shelling. The directive was to

repel incoming fire, then to shell into enemy positions and move forward, taking the fight down to the insurgents who controlled access to the dam. Within seconds of the rounds going over, the return fire was brutal. There was smoke on all sides and bullets tearing past or thudding into the ground. Out there, somewhere in front of them, a machine-gun was being fired so furiously by one of the Canadians it glowed orange in the dark. Scullion feared it might give away their position, but the enemy was too chaotic. He snapped down the night-vision goggles on his helmet and assessed the activity on the road and around the buildings. He spotted a gap and began firing tracer rounds towards it, which gave the platoon a bead on where to direct their fire.

‘Go on, my son,’ shouted Lennox to the Canadian. ‘Go on. Give the fucktards a pounding.’

‘I’ve got disco-leg over here,’ Dooley said. ‘Fucking dizzy I’m tellin’ you. Let’s go!’

‘Don’t move forward yet, Doosh. Wait for the signal.’

‘What we waiting for?’

‘An order, Dooley.’

Red tracer fire streaked across the hills and fell prettily into the town. The arcs of red and green appeared more sluggish than they were, like an illusion of movement, a strobe, out across the hills and into the static night. But down there in Kajaki Sofla the bullets arrived as a hail of ripping metal. Car windscreens exploded and copper bowls ricocheted down the alleyways. The enemy manned its own batteries from the rooftops and their rockets scudded over the inclines, shearing the trees, falling short for the most part and lying phosphorescent in the fields. He looked up, they all looked up, and suddenly the pattern in the air was not a light show but a constellation of death. Luke wasn’t a gamer as

he watched the fire but a man seeing action in real time, a miasma of efforts and consequences. He met the realisation calmly on the hillside as the guns blazed and the boys shouted into the dark. He looked up and experienced a short invasion of mortality and a surge of adrenalin. He was just a man and he faced what was coming with a singleness of heart. He knew standing there that the string of lights began and ended in fear.

He took his soldiers down the irrigation ditch and found cover behind the rocks. Enemy mortars were exploding just in front of them and they held fast, while troops from other regiments ran ahead and took up position. Luke knew where he was. A sense of documentary reality came over him as he pressed his face into the rock and waited his turn to take the boys forward. His breath was short and he saw jackals scattering higher up. He heard the shouts of the other soldiers as they stormed into the gully, moving in formation according to their training, and as he heard them he thought of the geography around each man.

They were near the street. Every soldier had his rifle raised and was picking off targets below. With goggles down, Luke could see the enemy scurrying from one building to another. Fire appeared at the windows of the engine house above the dam. In the final push off the hill, the enemy had a clear shot into the ground in front of the allied soldiers, the last 200 metres leading down to the road and the end of all hope for that day’s insurgents. The allies were all over that part of the hill, shelling the hell out of the engine house and rocketing the vehicles on the ground. At the final clearing, Luke was making ready to go forward, listening to instructions from the commander on the radio, when suddenly, without warning, on his left-hand side, Major Scullion came dashing out from behind a clump of rocks. He was firing

his assault weapon and roaring in a blur. ‘Charlie!’ shouted Luke. ‘We can’t cover you from there, get back.’

‘Major!’ screamed Flannigan.

‘What’s he doing?’ Dooley said on the radio.

‘Hold back.’

‘Jesus fucken Christ,’ Flannigan said.

The radio was going mad. ‘What’s the fucken matter?’ a voice said. A mortar landed a short distance in front of where Scullion ran and Luke saw the shrapnel tear up a tree and Scullion was down. The shouting increased and suddenly the ANA troops led by Docherty and the 1st Royal Western team surged down onto the road. They pushed forward and the explosions were massive and the sniper fire cracked out, then the Apaches came in and suddenly the engine house was gone. The whole platoon tumbled over the rocks like a body of water, except for Luke and Flannigan, who held back and took advantage of the air cover and the Terry batteries going silent to rush into the clearing. They found Scullion sitting as a child might sit in a sandpit, planted on his bottom with his legs out, except that his right leg was severed and lying apart from him. The other leg was a mess. He sat with his eyes wide open to the scene before him, smoke rising from the rags of his trousers and his hands down flat.

‘Jesus, mother of God,’ Flannigan said.

‘You’re all right,’ Luke said. He rubbed the blood out of Scullion’s eyes and reached for his meds. Fingers were missing on Scullion’s right hand but he continued to stare out and pick at the rags of his trousers. He was shaking as he saw the leg a few feet away and touched the sheared, bloody bone of his knee. The bullets had stopped coming and it was weirdly quiet up there, the dark about them and Scullion murmuring, which seemed a good

sign, while the men tried to keep him from passing out. ‘Look,’ said Flannigan, ‘Jimmy-Jimmy’s here. We’re all here.’

‘What’s the score with these trees?’ Scullion said.

Luke stabbed the morphine needle into the major’s stomach. He returned from some place in his head and was again the boy in training. He took charge and had the old logistical zeal, the clarity of thought. He pulled out the field dressing and ripped it open with his teeth. Scullion looked up at him and smiled. ‘You’re a bad soldier.’

‘Come on, sir. You’re going to be all right. Hold my hand ya auld fucken wanker that you are.’

‘Come on, Charlie. Keep your eyes open,’ Flannigan said. ‘We’re not having a kip out here. Come on.’

Scullion had stopped feeling around his knee and his smile continued as Luke radioed for a stretcher. They were down from the convoy in minutes and the medic from the parachute regiment said one of the boys was religious and good at prayers. ‘Don’t be fucken daft,’ Luke said. ‘He’s going to be fine.’ One of the guys lifted Scullion’s torn-off leg by the boot and wrapped it up in a piece of plastic.

‘You’re great, now. Okay, fella. Just keep the head,’ Flannigan said. ‘Keep it together, sir. Jimmy-Jimmy’s here and the boys are coming up for a fucken smoke in a minute. Dooley wants to tell you about that moose of his, the bird he’s going to marry because she’s a staff nurse.’

Scullion was lying on the stretcher and his face was grey. Luke wiped his brow and tried to say everything was cool, they’d soon be out of the zone. The major’s smile went cold after a moment and he started whispering. ‘

Or had I but riches and money in store

.’

‘Come on, sir.’

‘Cop on!’ Flannigan said. ‘Give us one of your songs. Give us a few verses, ya mean bastard.’

‘It’s there on the banks of the lovely Bann river,’

spoke Scullion.

‘Keep going, Charlie.’

‘Oh, fuck,’ he said.

A bit of a tune came into it, nothing much, but Flannigan picked it up and Scullion got the words out.

‘In all kinds of splendour I’d live with my dear.’

‘Go on, lad. It’s a beauty.’

‘My name is Delaney, a name that won’t shame me.’

They had to make it to the top of the hill because there was nowhere for the chopper to land. Luke and Flannigan stayed at the side of the stretcher on the way up.

‘And if I’d had money, I’d ne’er had to roam,’

Flannigan sang. His eyes had filled up and he wiped the tears as they jogged. Over his shoulder Luke could see that the convoy had broken through and was at the gates of the dam and the trucks were rolling down.

‘But drinking and sporting,’

whispered Scullion,

‘night rambling and courting …’

‘Go on, sir,’ said Flannigan.

‘Keep it together, Charlie,’ said Luke.

‘Are the cause of my ruin and absence from home.’