Get Some (9 page)

I didn’t get long to talk to Tommy when he rang; he just said he was tired and ill. I asked him if he was ok. He didn’t answer and just said he needed some treatment and wouldn’t be home for weeks yet. He asked me to not to tell Emma straightaway. He said he had his reasons and I respected them, even though I knew Emma would kill me if she knew I knew without telling her.

Like I said it wasn’t a long call, I was just hyped that he was alive, although I was scared of what state my friend would be in. Did he have his legs and arms? Was he disfigured? I called myself an arsehole in my mind for thinking such terrible thought but I couldn’t help it, I just hoped he was ok. I couldn’t believe he was alive.

Before I left for my flight there was something Tommy said which caused me a little alarm.

‘
When you leave your house, and I mean as soon as you leave your house, go see Crazy Keller. He will give you a currant bun.’

It sounds innocent I know, but ‘innocent’ is not a word that you would associate with a man known as Crazy Keller (he tried to set Tommy on fire once) and for those of you who didn’t know the slang around these parts, ‘currant bun’ was not a tasty treat packed with calories, but something that rhymed with bun… packed with bullets.

After making a swift pit stop at Keller’s, I got on my way. It was actually quite surreal flying into Baghdad. I talked with some soldiers who had been on leave and didn’t want to come back. I also talked to a few young lads, one was 18, one 19, they looked too young for war, they were hardly men. Talking with them about what they expected made it dawn on me they never had many choices. That seemed to be the way of things, like Tommy, he opted for the Army and active service to get out of Hepshaws.

I remember Tommy’s first leave after his first tour in Iraq. He had a different look about him. Someone asked him one night that was it for queen and country, for freedom why he fought. He gave them a blank look and said ‘I fight for the man on my left, my right, behind and in front of me. Queen and country? Politicians? That’s all well and good but they don’t have AK’s firing at them do they? RPG’s flying above their heads. All I give a damn about are the men I serve with, I don’t think about the reasons. I know only orders.’

Once I landed at Camp Anaconda, the absolutely massive US Military Base, I was blown away with how quiet it was. I expected choppers flying everywhere, jets screeching in and out, tanks rolling past, but I suppose that’s a mix of me not knowing shit about the army life, and too much TV.

As I entered the base I was greeted by a Captain Walter Redman, I didn’t expect to be met by someone with such a high rank. I thought some medic would meet me and take me to the Military Hospital.

After introducing himself he said I could call him Walter or Captain. I called him ‘Captain’ because it just sounds cool, doesn’t it?

Walking with the captain he gave me the rundown of what the base did. He was friendly enough but was holding something back. I know people, and I have a gift of seeing straight through them. Maybe that was the lawyer in me talking but something was rotten in Denmark.

After all, a British Soldier had been rescued and / or found alive. Surely after all the debate over friendly fire, this was a happy story for the Americans to gloat over?

I wondered, why all the hush.

I was becoming restless with the guided tour by the captain. I wasn’t here to learn the history of the Second Recon Division. I wasn’t here to learn about the men from back in ‘Fort Hood Texas’, although I’m sure they were all great soldiers. I was only interested in one of them, Tommy.

After walking the halls and seeing the photos, we came to the captain’s office. He offered me a seat and a coffee and asked me if we could speak in confidence. He wanted my word. I couldn’t give it to him, as I had no idea what he was about to say. Adding to that I knew he wanted to tell me, and he did.

He explained the circumstances on how Tommy came to be at Camp Anaconda, and not at an English base. He had asked for my word not because it was classified per se, but he just didn’t want any public spats with the British Army, especially because of the recent friendly fire incidents.

I then gave my word, as I wasn’t interested in anything military, just my friend. We talked for over an hour.

When I got out of the office I felt shocked, not only from what I had just heard, but at what my friend Tommy had been through.

I was walked down a long corridor. There were men in pain waiting to be airlifted out of there, but more concerning were the men who said nothing. I dared not look either side of me as I walked through. These poor men, I felt sad for them, but I also felt proud that men could be so brave.

They were, they are, our fucking heroes.

When I got outside of Tommy’s room, the captain looked at me funny as I froze.

‘
It’s here, Mr. Graziano, your friends room is here. You can go in.

You ok, sir?’

I couldn’t breathe I was so nervous, I had flown thousands of miles to see him but I was afraid now. I didn’t know what I would say. My mind had frozen. How could anything I had to say possibly null the pain of what this man, my friend, had had to endure?

‘
Just give me a minute please, Captain, would you?’ I asked as I slowed my breathing down a little.

‘
Certainly.’

The captain walked off to give me some time but stopped about ten paces from me.

‘
You know, Mr. Graziano, when I asked him, asked him if he had any family to call, he said he had nobody, nobody but you and a girl called Emma, I believe. Gonna give you some advice. At the moment you’re all he’s got. He’s felt alone for a long time. Bottle whatever you’re feeling, sir. We call it ‘soldiering up’. Get in there and see him. The kid has been to hell and back. He needs familiar faces.’

I opened the door. Tommy was laid out wearing nothing but union jack boxer shorts. He had a Walkman on. I could hear the music – it was Lenny Kravitz’s ‘Are You Gonna Go My Way’. He was nodding his head to the music. I paused for a second as my eyes scanned all his scars. He looked like he had been tortured for years, not months. His body was a sight of bandages, stitches, cuts and bruises. I saw his hand, his left hand, it was minus two fingers.

What the fuck had happened to him? Who did this?

It was at that moment that I’m not ashamed to say my eyes just filled up.

Chapter Fifteen

Joey’s mother used to tell Joey off for having a go at me doing what I did. She was a great woman. She still tried to tell me not to do bad, which I could never promise her or Joey, but then she always would say it was all part of God’s plan and that things would come good.

I don’t believe in many things. People believe in shit their whole lives. Now I ain’t knocking them. Whatever your beliefs, if it gets you by and serves a purpose, then believe, and don’t let nobody tell you otherwise.

So what do I believe in? For one I believe you make your own luck in this world; you get out what you put in. Nobody ever gave me a handout. I know I went about shit the wrong way before Emma came into my life. Joey had tried for years, not that he had ever given up on me. Joey used to say what I could be, what I could do, but I could never see it. I think I took advantage of the fact that I knew he would always be there for me, no matter what I did.

When I met Emma she opened my eyes. I knew this girl had the answers. Eventually I said I would try and live my life right, leave this game behind. I don’t know if it was the Sociology degree which made

Emma more understanding of me or what, she just knew shit, shit I didn’t know. I don’t know if that was from books or whatever, I just think women do, they really know a lot of shit, shit us men just don’t get.

Emma never told me to get out of the game, not in so many words, but she told me the game would kill me, and after many a late night talking, and sometimes arguing, I saw the light.

The thing was the game didn’t want to let me go.

Reflecting on my life in that cell that morning did good and bad things to my mind. The good part consisted of plans for the future, you know? It may not sound big to some, but for me making Emma happy, doing right by my child to be, and getting an honest job, God damn that seemed like some good shit to me. Shit that would give me balance.

But what about the bad I hear you ask? Well, sometimes you have to do bad to get the good, and I’ll tell you, I was about to do a whole bunch of bad to some motherfukers. I’ve heard people before battles in my unit. I’ve heard them getting psyched up about ‘bringing the noise’ and ‘bringing the pain’, all the usual bravado before going in and getting some in the field.

Not me.

I wasn’t about bringing the pain.

Pain?

Hell no. I was about bringing death. I had my mind made up; I couldn’t die in some mud hut in Iraq.

No sir.

On this day I was all about bringing the death.

On this day I would have to become something else. Step outside of myself. If only for a while I had to become death. I shifted all my emotions, all my feelings of love for her, I couldn’t carry all that on this journey, I hid it deep inside, and I would save it for when the time was right.

Time was against me. But I was stronger now. Not only did I have food inside me, but now I had an AK47 and a combat knife…nice! But the real treat was the grenade, oh sweet Jesus I was excited when I saw that bad boy. It felt like Christmas.

You see there are grenades, and there are grenades. And then there are incendiary grenades, and they are beautiful.

An incendiary grenade basically fucks up everything onsite, period.

Designed primarily to destroy vehicles and artillery, they are the bad boys of the grenade family. These bad motherfuckers work using a chemical reaction which lets out crazy heat, a heat caused by the thermite inside, and when the thermite goes pow!, it produces heat in excess of 2200 C. Now that’s a lot of heat, enough to ruin anyone’s day.

So I got the gun, grenade and blade, but I also had the fucking body in my cell. I had a quick walk around before deciding what to do next, I had to think ahead, think clear. After killing the guard I had a few moments where I wanted to pull some Rambo shit, but I knew if I did I would be out-gunned and out-manoeuvred.

So I stalked my prey.

I crept downstairs and saw the other guard asleep in the truck. I could have slit his throat quite easily, but I didn’t. I looked outside from a downstairs window and there were around six men, all listening to a radio which was on low volume. They were all armed. The only way was to use the grenade, but I knew I had to be at a safe distance because these fucking grenades have way too much boom for me to have outrun them in my condition. I could walk fast but there was no way I was running anywhere. I couldn’t use the grenade inside either, no fucking way. I knew I would be incinerated. I really doubted whether these fucking idiots knew what these grenades could do because to carry one on a grenade belt in a country at war was like walking around with a fucking TNT necklace at a firework display. Not clever. Still, their stupidity was my gain.

Tiptoeing back up to my cell I knew what I had to do. Every morning these fuckers had a routine, I don’t know why but they did, and what they did was when Haircut turned up, which was every day. He would stand and shout shit at them, and they would go in a room downstairs. They would talk and after around ten minutes they would all fuck off and do different shit like head off in trucks somewhere or, if it was a ‘beat Tommy day’, they would come up here and randomly kick my arse while a few stayed on guard downstairs.

I needed a plan. I couldn’t act now; it would have to be in the morning.

Plan A was to hide the body, hope to God they didn’t notice, and wait until they went into that room to talk their gibberish. Upon their going in the room, I would quietly make my way down the stairs, head for the door, then out, sneak round the outside of the building, get a safe distance, then hurl that grenade like a fucking Olympian thrower, and hopefully that would do it.

Plan B wasn’t really a plan; it was the Rambo option. In simple terms, to go fucking postal.

One thing was for sure, there would be some fucking boom-boom at breakfast.

Chapter Sixteen

Opening his eyes Tommy wiped his eyes and face. His face was covered in soot and powder and his body was covered in rubble.

It was now light. He could smell fire and hear a few groans nearby.

The first thing he saw once he opened his eyes was a huge mass of smoke. He could breathe though. He tried to move his body and wiggled his toes to make sure he wasn’t paralysed. To his relief the toes moved perfectly. His body had seemingly come through the events relatively unscathed - there wasn’t even any huge pain in his body, apart from the odd pains of the torture,

Now Tommy had a new challenge, to see if he could free himself. His feet were free but his legs were covered with rubble. He only had one arm free and, quickly but carefully, started to move a few rocks and rubble from his other arm. Now he had two arms free. He sat up, slowly moving the rubble from his legs. He then dragged himself backwards away from the rubble and examined himself. He seemed ok.

It was time for me to get the fuck up on my feet. I sort of told myself cheesily ‘Get up soldier!’ You know what I mean. So I did. I rose to my feet. I was wobbly at first but stayed stood. I stood with a sort of pride, a sense of achievement that I had stayed alive. Ok so my plan didn’t work to the dot but fuck it, I didn’t give a damn how I was free, and alive was alive. The other thing on my mind was that I had to get up before anyone else did, because if Mr. Haircut or any of his fucking posse found me they would surely finish me off, and fuck that.