Rain (13 page)

From the rear of the column came Clive. ‘Four Zero roger so far. Understood over.’

‘Zero Alpha. One Zero, you will provide all-round defence around the stricken wagon, and SHQ are going to come up next to it and make that location our HQ until we can move. One Zero roger so far over.’

‘One Zero roger.’

‘Zero Alpha, Two Zero remain in your positions, and Three Zero push up to take SHQ’s place, where you’ll be the rear of the column. Spread your vehicles as you see fit to prevent us being contacted from the south. Three Zero acknowledge over.’

Tom, now feeling worse and worse, his guts rumbling and his forehead damp with sweat, replied weakly, ‘Three Zero roger. Understood over.’

‘Zero Alpha. OK, that’s the new plan. Move now to new positions. Out.’

And so the squadron reorganized itself according to Frenchie’s instructions, with the centre of mass reforming around the stricken One Two, with the hapless Ealham cursing himself and wilting under Brennan’s glare when his wagon parked up next to his. Tom moved 3 Troop up to where SHQ had been and fanned out the four wagons to face south. After half an hour everyone was in place, and Frenchie could breathe a bit more easily. They were still vulnerable, and he was sure that the Taliban would try
something, but at least they had secured their exit for when they could move again.

Over the course of the afternoon the weather got worse. A low blanket of cloud came in, and the hot dry wind changed into a damp one carrying tiny specks of water. The air became humid and close, and in the far distance a low growl of thunder provided a sinister backdrop to their efforts to get out of the cluster. The children still came up to the wagons, but with less innocence than before. Trueman had seen this before on his previous tour, and radioed Frenchie to warn him that he thought the children were now being used by the Taliban to get information on the cars from close quarters and then report back.

Shadowy figures popped up at the corners of compounds all along the column, which, although now contracted, was still spread over three hundred metres. Often these men would come into the open and eye the scene before them, taking it all in before slipping back behind the walls. It made the boys feel very vulnerable, and weapons were re-oiled and likely firing points identified by the commanders and gunners, who practised dry-run shoots on them. Each wagon could see the one before it and after it in the order of march, so they could support each other in contact and could make sure there were no blind spots where IEDs could be dug in between them, but it still felt to the boys as though the initiative had slipped to the Taliban.

Tom by this point had completely succumbed to D & V, and was in and out of his turret, vomiting and defecating by the side of the wagon. His clothes soon stank, and when he hauled himself after each bout into the turret he just sat there, sweating and then shivering, his clothes stained with filth. Dusty made sure Frenchie and Brennan knew, but there was nothing they could do for him. He was the least of their
concerns at the minute, and a few others in the squadron were coming down with the same thing. It was all, as Frenchie predicted it would, feeling as though it was unravelling very quickly.

Dusk came on and with it an increase in the cloud. Large raindrops fell and kicked up sand from where they bored their tiny craters. The wind picked up, whipping squalls of sand high in the air to mix with the rain into mud showers. The dust on the wagons turned into sticky paste, making the slick movement of machinery into a grinding mangle. Progress on the stricken vehicle was awful. The track took hours to tease off where it had been tangled in the running gear, and even with Brennan cajoling them on the boys were shadows of their usual selves after so long without sleep. Three had come down with D & V, and one of the boys even tore a hole in the seat of his trousers so he could defecate without having to take them down.

Night came on, still without any commitment from the Taliban. Frenchie sent round that there was to be no sleeping that night; everyone had to remain awake. He knew it would suit the Taliban perfectly to exploit the dark and the dust, using their knowledge of their own backyard to spring a complex ambush on the column. It was what he would have done in their shoes. So the boys sat in their turrets, trigger fingers poised for any movement. Although they were close to their friends, the gloom that separated them made each crew feel as though they were in the middle of nowhere.

Tom, now soaked from his own sweat as well as the steady rain, awoke with a start from a few moments’ captured unconsciousness. Dusty, who had let him sleep and stepped up into the role of vehicle commander with aplomb, was wide awake next to him, steadily traversing the turret and watching to the south, the thermal imaging sight able to see
perfectly through the rain and fog. ‘Fuck,’ said Tom, scrambling out of his seat. ‘I need to go again.’ He had barely lifted himself out of the turret before he puked again. His foot slipped on the vomit and he almost fell off the wagon, but he just caught himself on the bar armour at the last minute, ripping his hand open on a sharp edge. He looked at the gash, livid across his filthy palm, with numb acceptance. Tetanus, he thought, would be bliss compared to what he was feeling like at the minute.

He got to the ground and emptied himself in the hole he had dug at the side of the wagon. He had no energy left at all. The air fizzed with the dust and drizzle, wind howling between the vehicles. He stood, did his trousers up and saw shadows flit in the murk about twenty metres away. Curious, he walked away from the wagon into the gloom, soon being enveloped by it. The dust and rain swirled all around him, and he felt even colder than before. He felt he was stepping out of the war and into another world.

One shadow in particular seemed always in front of him, and with each step he took it receded back into the dark. He walked forward again, taking the pistol out of his holster. The shadow stopped. It was a man, just five metres away from Tom with his back to him. Tom raised his pistol, and just as his lips opened to challenge him, the figure turned. He was tall and thin, and dressed in black. On his head gleamed a white dish-dash, bright even in the dark. Tom couldn’t speak. The pistol felt heavy, and his arms groaned with illness. The figure fixed him with an unblinking gaze. Tom’s hand dropped and the pistol hung limp by his hip. The figure raised his hands to his dish-dash as if to reveal his face.

And then Dusty was next to him, and the man retreated into the shadows. ‘Boss, boss. Relax. Relax. Put the pistol down. Please put the pistol down.’ He felt Dusty’s hand on
his shoulder. He saw Davenport next to Dusty. ‘What’s happening, boys?’ he asked, bewildered. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Don’t worry, boss. Just come with us.’

Davenport put his arm around his shoulders, and they took him back to the wagon, where Trueman was waiting with a stretcher that he had laid next to it. ‘There you go, boss, there you go,’ he said as he helped Tom lie down, took his helmet off and wiped his brow with a damp rag. It felt good. ‘You’ve had a bad dream, boss. Christ, we were scared. You fucking off like that into the dark, what were you thinking? Dusty saw you go into the dark all on your own and came to get me from my wagon. Thank fuck we got you before you got lost in the compounds. If anyone got you there you’d be fucked. Christ, you gave us a scare.’

Tom barely heard Trueman but knew he had been saved from something by Dusty. He murmured thanks. Davenport sat by him all night. Mercifully the rain lifted, but the wind and the dust persisted. Tom kept soiling himself throughout the night, unable to move. Davenport took his trousers off for him, so he could shit at will. Tom seemed detached from his body. He felt no shame at all at his illness. He just wanted to die. His mind’s eye couldn’t escape the figure receding into the shadows and imagined its soft voice beckoning him into the darkness. Even when he closed his eyes he saw it on the inside of his eyelids, gently coaxing him.

Throughout the night they worked on the vehicle. The rain had turned the ploughed earth into shin-deep mud. The boys had to dig underneath the wagon to allow work to take place on the track. The more it rained the more the vehicle subsided into the mud. Slipping and sliding around it, their red head torches the only light in the dark, they moved with slow, lumbering steps, cursing their bloody and blistered hands as
they dug and grappled with the track. Brennan moved among them, lifting them out of the mud, taking their spades off them and hurling himself into a digging frenzy. He didn’t shout at them or swear and made sure there were constant brews coming from the
BV
in the back of his wagon.

Every effort to drag the vehicle out of the mire failed. At 0400 the REME
Samson
, trying to drag it out to allow the boys to work out of the field and on the slightly firmer earth at its edge, managed to throw its track as well. Staff Sergeant Prideaux, caked in mud and nearly crying with frustration, went to report to Frenchie in the back of the Sultan. Frenchie received the news calmly; he had personally prepared himself to be here for another week at least. ‘Right, Sergeant P. Just come in here and have a brew. If anyone needs one, you do.’ He poured a flask and watched Sergeant Prideaux, a bear of a man, slump onto the seat opposite him and drain the steaming mug.

Frenchie got onto the radio. ‘Charlie Charlie One, this is Zero Alpha. Sitrep. We will be here for a few more hours yet, I’m afraid. Five One has thrown a track as well.’ He could imagine the sighs from each of the turrets along the column. ‘So we’re going to be here for a while, and I reckon dawn is the time for the attack. Our
Widow
callsign,’ he looked over to the FAC, who nodded back, ‘assures me we’re going to have an
Ugly
on station in the morning, but we’re only going to have it from 0600 to 0800. And then who knows what will happen. I expect a running battle with shoot-and-scoot gunmen. Four Zero roger so far. Over.’

Clive, zombie-like, choked his response: ‘Four Zero roger so far. Over.’

‘Zero Alpha. All callsigns keep your sitreps coming in. As long as we have our route secured by Four Zero to the north
we’ll be fine. Keep your drills slick. Don’t expose yourselves unnecessarily. Watch your arcs. Out.’

As the darkness melted away from black into morning Tom was still lying next to his wagon. He had started, slowly, to lose the hallucinations and felt a tiny measure of strength crawl back into his bones. Davenport sat next to him, now and again holding a water bottle to his lips. The water had had three sachets of diarrhoea powder in it, to get his salts and sugars up. His trousers were still around his ankles. He felt as if he had nothing left in him. His head was a bit clearer, and he had regained his voice.

Davenport shook his shoulder. ‘All right, boss, we’ve got to get you in the turret. It’s dawn now, and we’re in the open here. Come on, let’s get you up.’ He pulled Tom’s trousers up and helped him off the stretcher. Groggy, as he steadied himself against the side of the wagon Tom looked over to the east where the faint shape of the sun had appeared behind the thick purple cloud. He just wanted to sleep. It was all he wanted. Then above his head the crack of a bullet whipped past. He forgot all his weakness and a thrill shot through him.

‘Contact! Fucking hell, Dav. Contact!’ Like a ferret Davenport slipped into his driver’s hatch in a single fluid jump as Tom scrambled up the side of the wagon, his hand, still oozing pus and blood, scrabbling for purchase on the congealed vomit on the bar armour. More rounds now winging over his head, he finally dropped into the safety of the turret, where Dusty was traversing desperately.

‘Fuck, boss, fuck. Where the fuck are they?’ Tom poked his head out the turret and looked to his left and right, the commanders of the other three wagons doing the same. Still helmetless, he strapped on his ANR. The net was going crazy. Trueman was sending a contact report up to Zero. To
his left Jesmond’s cannon roared, and tracer streaked from its barrel towards a compound two hundred metres away. ‘Dusty, traverse left, traverse left!’ The turret whipped around. ‘Steady, steady. On!
Compound
with green door. You got it, you got it?’ He looked through the sights to check what Dusty could see. Just over the lip of the wall a black shadow appeared, and then came a muzzle flash from it. The shadow dropped. He couldn’t believe he had actually been looking at a man trying to kill him. ‘I’m on, boss. I’m on!’ Dusty screamed. ‘Lasing. Two forty.’

‘Loaded fire. Smash it, smash it!’ Tom flicked the selector switch at the back of the gun from safe to automatic, and then poked his head out of the turret again. Dusty sent six rounds in a remorseless beat towards the compound as in unison Trueman and Jesmond both joined in, their cannons shredding the wall. Some rounds flew over the top, but most beat into it like pickaxes, dust and rubble flying. The guns pounded Tom’s head even through the headphones. He was amazed at the speed of their response.

No return shots came, and silence settled again over the wagons, the last of the rain steaming from their
Rarden
barrels. Fumes filled Tom’s turret and made him heady with adrenaline. His heart bounced up and down, and an ecstasy took him by the throat. His first contact. He heard a loud bang away to the north, and the net sprang into life again as Clive screamed, ‘Contact RPG!’ The first bang was followed by two more. It all fell into place. It was exactly as Frenchie had predicted.

For the next forty minutes the squadron came under concerted attack. Another gunman opened up at 3 Troop from the south but kept shifting his position before they could bring the turrets to bear. SHQ and the scene around the stricken wagons came under contact as well, rounds dancing
over the heads of the working party, who sheltered in the hole next to the track. The rounds bounced off the wagons with flat
claps
as Prideaux and Ealham lay in the watery filth at the bottom of their hole, but despite everything they passed out, unconscious with exhaustion.

It took forty minutes for the Apache to come on station, when all contact stopped, the gunmen melted way, and the boys started the painstaking work on the wagon again. But when the Ugly left, the attacks started again and continued all through the morning. From tiny murder holes bored through the compound walls overnight, snipers rained a sporadic, harassing patter of bullets at the wagons with impunity. Whenever the turrets swung towards them they just moved to a new position. The Taliban moved like bees attacking a great clumsy bear, shifting from compound to compound, sometimes firing from a hundred metres, sometimes from four hundred. Once they had fired from one
murder hole
, they would move by motorbike to the next location, always covered by other buildings. Around ten of them kept up this petalling movement, never allowing the column to rest.