War Torn (2 page)

‘Zero Alpha, this is Romeo One One. Grid . . .’ The boss paused. He was at the front of his Vector, his nose probably buried in his map. Dave noticed that his voice was perceptibly higher than normal. And no wonder. The boss had walked more or less straight out of Sandhurst into this shitstorm.

‘Grid 883 492. Taking fire. Light weapons. Rocket-propelled grenades. No casualties. Request air support. Wait. Out.’

Far away, in an air-conditioned cabin in the sprawling NATO
base at Kandahar,
Troops in Combat
would be flashing up onscreen. Dave hoped his mate Sam Chandler was on duty and not lounging around in the base coffee shop or beating up a treadmill in the gym. Once a
TIC
showed red on the plasma, Sam or one of his colleagues would be legging it in his flying suit into the wall of heat outside, straight to a waiting Harrier. Dave had watched Sam do this only a few days ago, when R Company had first arrived in Afghanistan. It was a reassuring image.

A voice from HQ, crisp and low-key: ‘Roger that. Air support. ETA eight minutes. Out.’

The Vector jerked forward again and the dust thrown up by its wheels thickened into dense clouds. He could smell cordite and hear the ceaseless percussion of gunfire but couldn’t see further than the end of his nose. He couldn’t see the enemy. And now he couldn’t even see the flash of their weapons.

The brown dust seethed between the brown Vector and the brown walls. Dave was firing into a brown void. He paused. Behind him he heard the crackle of the other Vectors’ machine guns, fast, urgent, high-pitched against the more sporadic chatter of light weapons. Next to him was the deep thrumming of Rifleman Nelson’s GPMG. What the fuck was everyone firing at? Could any of them see anything? Or did it just feel better than not firing?

He listened to the crack of the bullets and the thump as they landed, gauging the gap between the two sounds. He estimated that the enemy were mostly within 100 metres, some very close indeed. But the roar of the Vectors and the echoes around the walls could distort your judgement.

He searched the blank clouds of dust for a target. The Vector rumbled on. And then, without warning, the dust curled in a new direction. Suddenly there was a crack in the brown cloud and he could see through it. Low shop fronts loomed close by him, their metal shutters rolled down, then a narrow side street. Empty. No, it wasn’t empty. A figure. Several doorways along, half hidden in the shadows.

Dave took in two things about the man: the way his pale blue robes flowed around him like water, and the fact that he was carrying an RPG. Dave raised his weapon until the optic sight cut into his line of vision. He focused into the post sight. He was
aiming at the target’s centre of mass: the man’s chest. He squeezed the trigger just as the Vector jolted.

Shit.

The man dropped his RPG but did not fall to the ground. He grasped his leg. Then instinct overcame pain and he hopped towards his weapon. Dave’s finger curled around the trigger again but the moving parts of his SA80 were suddenly stubborn.

‘Stoppage!’

He slid down into the other world inside the Vector, tilting his weapon left as he did so, pulled the cocking handle back and saw the empty case.

Fourteen stone of combat gear at his side moved to take his place. Rifleman Steve Buckle. Capable, fast, reliable.

‘Get up there!’ Dave yelled. ‘RPG down that side street!’ The barrel of his weapon was scalding hot. He had brought the smell of scorched metal and cordite into this small, burning space. It clawed at the back of his throat. He blinked. After the blistering light of Helmand Province, midday, it was midnight in here. The enemy rounds bouncing off the Vector’s armour sounded as though someone was throwing their money around.

He bent over his rifle. With the working parts back he stuck his finger into the hot weapon. He felt his skin burn as he eased out the empty case and let the working parts slide forward again. Fixed. But too late.

He could make out the faces of his men now. Their bodies were dirty, their necks, their clothes were sculpted out of dirt. Sweat had carved river deltas through the dirt on their faces. Dirt encrusted their lips.

Above, Steve’s silhouette was firing in the direction of the RPG.

‘Did you slot him?’ Dave asked on PRR. Instead of a reply there was a bang. The loudest fucking bang. The most agonized scream. The world’s scariest roller-coaster plunging off the tracks. A superhuman force threw Dave to the front of the Vector. His shoulder smashed against the side of the vehicle. He looked up. The sky was a deep, deep blue. Its beauty was punctured by shards of metal.

There was a rag doll flying through the air. The doll looked like Steve Buckle. His body formed a perfect arc, an arc of helplessness. He flew slowly, like an empty suit floating through deep, blue
water. When his leg came off, its trajectory had a peculiarly graceful beauty. Then the body was hurtling towards earth and there was another body falling too. Dave had time to register that this was Jordan Nelson before he took cover from the hail of fire now directed at the exposed men in the shattered Vector.

He looked around. How many more men had he lost? But they were all there, faces bloody and dirty and shocked, looking at him, waiting for him to lead them.

‘You two, get out there, sort them out.’ Dave shoved Mal and Angus towards the casualties. Moments later, blue smoke was billowing around their twisted bodies. One of them was screaming in agony. Through the roar of pain, Dave could hear the rage to live. It had to be Steve.

‘3 Section, cover the casualties. 2 Section and the rest of 1 Section get down that street, clear it and find the bastard with the RPG; he took a round in the leg.’

Led by Corporal Sol Kasanita, the men headed off down the alley where Dave had pinged the RPG.

The boss was telling HQ: ‘I have times two tango one casualties. Repeat, times two tango one casualties.’

Dave hoped there was a Chinook ready to go at Bastion. The emergency team would have to move right now if the casualties were to make it back to the field hospital inside the golden hour. Outside that hour, their chances of survival turned from gold to dust. Just like everything else in this fucking place.

Riflemen Angus McCall and Mal Bilaal were poised over Steve’s body. Where Steve’s left leg should have been there was just a massive, blood-covered cauliflower. Blood flowed from it, blood covered everyone’s clothes, blood soaked the fine brown dust of the street.

‘Shut the fuck up, you wanker!’ Mal shouted at the screaming victim, who happened to be one of his best mates. He had opened Steve’s thigh pocket now and Dave could see him pulling the big morphine syringe from it. Angus was holding Steve down.

‘I said fucking shut up!’ Mal roared over the clamour of the fire fight. He was shoving the autojet into Steve’s remaining leg. Almost instantly, Steve fell silent.

Steve’s body armour was covered with blood and shrapnel. His clothes were torn, his face lacerated and his helmet pushed back off
his head. With the morphine in, Angus and Mal went to work. Mal’s hand found the artery inside the hideous bloody gap at the top of Steve’s left leg, scissor clamp at the ready, while Angus tightened the tourniquet.

A medic had reached Jordan Nelson. The rifleman lay still in the dusty street. He looked as though he’d fallen asleep on duty, except that most of his clothes were missing and his lower body was charred almost beyond recognition. A couple of lads from 3 Section and the medic were leaning over him and they were strangely still too. Dave wondered if it was possible to survive burns so severe.

The zap numbers of the casualties had been relayed to the Medical Emergency Response Team at Camp Bastion where the doctor would already be in a Land Rover heading for the helicopter, maybe already receiving details of the casualties’ blood groups and allergies on his hand-held. But for the Chinook to get here, the contact had to be over. And it showed no sign of ending. If anything, now that the convoy had been halted, the ambush was more intense.

Dave had found a good firing position inside the ruined hulk of the Vector. He had also found Jordan Nelson’s machine gun wedged between a slab of armour plating and a brown mud wall. He grabbed it without hope and was amazed when it worked. Far away, in a second-storey window, across two walls and the yard which they protected, he caught a glimpse of movement. Feeling a surge of satisfaction, he fired. A body slumped from the window.

He glanced up, wondering where the air support was. Eight minutes must have passed by now and the casualties needed to get out of here. The boss had also requested help from A Company, who were currently installed at the FOB and scheduled to leave this evening. Maybe they were too busy packing.

Dave moved around to the side street just as Sol and the lads emerged from it, pushing two prisoners. Jamie Dermott had the RPG – with the grenade removed – and an AK47, mag off and made safe.

‘Get those fucking bastards moving,’ Dave yelled.

One of the fucking bastards wore long blue robes, now clotted with blood. The man’s leathery face was twisted in pain and fear.
His leg dragged. His left leg. A leg for a leg, Dave thought. Fair one.

The firing was deafening now. The enemy seemed to have trebled in number.

A couple more lads followed with a second prisoner. He was younger than the first and more resistant. He treated Dave to a sullen glare and he dragged his feet deliberately slowly through the fire fight, confident of his own safety and exposing his captors as long as possible.

‘Get on with it,’ Dave roared. He jammed the prisoner in the back with his weapon. He felt angry. In one second Steve’s life, Leanne’s and the kids’ lives had all been changed. Nothing would ever be the same for them. He wished he could shoot the man. Feeling the weapon in his back, the prisoner jumped forward, as if he’d read Dave’s mind.

Suddenly, the air support emerged from an empty sky and flew so low that Dave could see the helmeted pilot at the controls. He’d been jumped by Harriers before but it was still impossible to prepare yourself for the intensity of the noise, for the sheer violence and physicality of such a massive tonnage of metal moving at the speed of sound only metres above your head.

Then, when the head and heart of every man on the ground was fit to burst, the Harrier evaporated as suddenly as it had appeared. The roar of its engines melted into the thudding heartbeats of those beneath.

Dave continued to watch the sky. The Harrier was no bigger than a distant bird of prey now, hovering over the faraway hills. Dave waited. Sure enough, after only a few breaths, it was right above their heads again, dimming the sun, screeching over the town in a vengeful fury, cracking the mud walls and shaking the ground.

And then it was gone.

It left a deep silence. Wherever the enemy was hidden, they did not move and they did not fire. The soldiers were still too. The whole town was motionless.

When rotor blades beat the air, the boss talked the Instant Response Team down into a square, maybe a market place, just ahead of them. Before it had touched the ground Mal and Angus were running Steve on a stretcher, two men from 3 Section close behind them with Jordan, to the hot tailgate of the Chinook.

The doctor and his team were waiting. A rear gunner watched over them with a GPMG. Once the casualties were handed over, the medical team’s focus was immediate and total and there was nothing for the lads from 1 Platoon to do but return to the convoy. The platoon watched in silence as the thudding blades hauled the big machine into the air. They glimpsed the doctor at work as the Chinook rose and turned for Kandahar.

The A Company team appeared. Dave wanted to say something sarcastic about their late arrival but they were leaving today after countless similar contacts and he guessed thoughts of home must be overwhelming their will to rush into battle. They towed out the mangled Vector and the rest of the convoy started to follow them to the FOB.

Dave was about to jump on board when he saw something lying in the dusty street. Something familiar. He grabbed Steve’s leg, tucked it under his arm and leaped into the back of the last Vector as it pulled away.

Except for the boss updating HQ on the net, nobody spoke. Finally, as they neared the FOB, Dave asked about the casualties. He was relieved to hear that they were still both T1s. If either had reached the point where no one could help them, they’d have slipped down the emergency agenda to T4.

He remembered the way Steve’s leg had sailed so gracefully through the air. It must only have taken a few seconds but he remembered it in slow motion, as though it had taken an hour. And at the end of the hour, two bodies lying in the street.