Crossfire Page 2

  I squatted down by the heap of blackened material. There was a terrible stench of singed hair, burnt meat and kerosene, like the smell that hung in the air after the gunships had called.

  I laid my AK on a rock and took off my Bergen. I lifted the charred clothes away from her head and gagged. The scorched skin was peeling from her face and neck. Blisters were still forming. The skin round her mouth stretched back to expose her teeth in a hideous parody of her cheeky grin. It wasn't how I wanted to remember her.

  She opened her eyes just a fraction, and when she saw me she murmured softly. There'd be no screaming out in pain for her. That stage was well gone. Her burns were so severe that even the nerve endings had evaporated.

  Like Ahmad and his boys, I was in full Gunga Din gear and cowpat hat. I took off my waistcoat and tucked it gently under the back of her head to protect it from the rocks.

  She had an hour at the most. There wasn't even a field clinic or a nurse up here. The nearest hospital was in Jalalabad, a couple of days away on foot, and the roads round the city were teeming with hammers and sickles.

  I doubted she even had someone who cared enough to bury her. Treated like a slave, not only by the husband but also the rest of his family, I guessed she'd just had enough. Most of the women stuck at these shit marriages because that was the way things were. By tradition, every Afghan girl or woman had to be attached to some man – her father, husband, brother, son, uncle – and for all too many of them the kerosene trick was the only way out.

  Boots scrambled towards me. 'Nick! We have hut – come.'

  I looked up. Ahmad's beard was longer than mine, and he was proud of it. He hadn't shaved these last seven years, ever since the Russians had arrived to 'liberate' his country. He was a hard fucker, like the rest of the muj, a good Muslim, a good fighter, a good man. I enjoyed working with them, but I could never understand why they were total arseholes to their women. They treated them like shit.

  He didn't even bother to glance at the girl. She might as well not have been there. 'Come, leave it. We're cooking.'

  'Go on, mate, you get stuck in. But maybe bring me something, will you?'

  I knew there was fuck-all I could do for her, but there'd been enough killing up on the mountain. It seemed such a waste of a young life for her to have done it to herself.

  She'd probably been sold into her marriage. Some of the muj I knew had sold their own daughters when they were twelve or thirteen. They even claimed a bride price as payback for raising the poor little fuckers in the first place. Others gave them away to repay bets or settle arguments.

  After the girls got palmed off and married, they were raped continuously. If they complained, they might find themselves flung into prison. The ones that could afford it took overdoses. The poorer ones cut their wrists, hanged themselves or chucked themselves into the nearest river. But this one, she'd had spirit. She wasn't going out with a whimper.

  I pictured her sitting there, tipping the kerosene over her head and striking a match. But she'd fucked up. Maybe she couldn't afford a full can. Now she was lying in the dust, waiting to die.

  Ahmad came back with half a big green watermelon. 'Nick, please, you not be long. The meat, he nearly gone . . .'

  'Thanks, mate.' I took the melon off him. I couldn't understand why these guys didn't care. 'She hasn't got long. But I can't leave her, can I?'

  He eyed me as if I was a lunatic. 'They say her name is Farah.' He turned to leave, then stopped. 'Of course you can leave her, Nick. This her choice. This what she want.'

  He walked away.

  I looked down at her. What she want? No, not really.

  I pulled my AK bayonet from my belt and cut into the melon. The juice flowed down my fingers, which were black with weeks of grime.

  'Farah, here . . .' I touched a sliver of the fruit to what was left of her lips.

  She sucked it in. Her eyes flickered open again and I thought I could see something resembling a smile in them. She tried her best to swallow as the juice ran down the side of her ravaged face. Painfully slowly, she shifted her eyes towards me. She began to weep gently, but no tears fell.

  I cut another slice of melon. I didn't know what else to do.

  The late-afternoon sun bathed her face for a moment, then disappeared. As darkness fell, we both waited for her to die.

  PART ONE

  1

  Tuesday, 27 February 2007

  0015 hrs

  North-west of Basra

  The noise and heat, gloom and sheer fucking claustrophobia in the back of the Warrior were oppressive enough, but now the armour was suddenly clanging three times a second like the world's strongest madman was using it for sledgehammer practice. We were taking rounds. It could only mean we were closing in on target.

  The engine roared and the tracks screeched over the rock.

  The front end dipped hard.

  'Fuck!' the Scouse driver screamed over the radio net, as he stood on the anchors. 'There's a fuck'n' bastard tank!'

  The commander yelled back so loud I had to lift the PRR pad from my ear. 'Go right, you cunt – you'll hit the fucker!' Until a few years ago, the only way troops could communicate with each other was by shouting or hand signals, but every man and his dog now wore a personal role radio. It had revolutionized the infantry. Just four inches by six, with a headset consisting of an ear pad, Velcro strap and little boom mike, PRR acted effectively as a secure chat net between troops.

  The Challenger's thundering growl had come from our left. The tracks squealed and we gripped whatever we could get hold of to stop ourselves being flung from our seats. We took more small-arms fire into the hull, and then there was a much louder bang two feet away from my shoulder.

  'RPG!'

  Rocket-propelled grenades could punch holes in concrete walls. I knew it would just bounce off the skirt of bar armour surrounding us, but I still felt like I was trapped in a locked safe while people on the outside were fucking about with blowtorches and gelignite.

  It wasn't simply that I couldn't see what was happening. It was having no control that bothered me. I was at the mercy of the driver, the gunner and the commander in the turret. He was a platoon sergeant called Rhett or Red – I didn't catch it when we met, and then we got past the point where I could ask again.

  Our Warrior was part of the battle group's recce platoon. Dom, Pete and I were embedded. 'Entombed, more like,' Pete said. He'd been a tankie himself once upon a time, and even he didn't like the lid coming down. We were jammed shoulder to shoulder in the eerie red glow of the night-lights. Rhett's scuffed and dusty desert boots were level with my face. The gunner was up there on his left, frantically feeding rounds into the 30mm cannon.

  The wagon took one final hard right and came to a jarring, gut-wrenching halt. The stern reared up under the momentum, then crashed down like a breaking wave.

  'Dismount! Dismount!'

  Rhett's shout was drowned by the cannon kicking off above us.

  Dom got a punch from one of the Kingsmen and hit the button above his head. The rear-door hydraulics whined. I could see stars, hear the roar of gunfire and heavy machinery.

  The four recce guys tumbled out into the inky blackness. Pete shoved a hand over his lens and we followed.

  My Timberlands slid and twisted on the rubble as I ducked down against the bar armour, gulping fresh but dust-laden air. Oil wells blazed out of control on the horizon. Gases and crude were being forced out of the ground under phenomenal pressure, shooting flames a hundred feet into the air.

  The night was filled with the thunder of 30mm cannon kicking off across the dried-up wadi bed that separated us from our target – the buildings no more than a hundred away. It had prevented the drivers going right up to the front doors.

  I was hungry for more air. My nostrils filled with sand, but I didn't care. I had my feet on the ground and I was in control of them. And, thanks to the mortar platoon, I could see what was happening. Their 81mm tubes had filled the sky with illume
. Balls of blazing magnesium hung in the air above the town before beginning their descent, casting shadows left and right as they swung under their parachutes, silhouetting the two massive Challengers rumbling left and right of us.

  Bright muzzle flashes from four or five AKs sparked up from the line of houses that edged the built-up area.

  Our gunner switched from the 30mm Rarden cannon to the 7.62mm Hughes Helicopter Chain Gun to dish out a different edition of the same good news.

  Two Warriors lurched to a halt alongside us, throwing up a plume of dust. My nose was totally clogged now. Guys spilled out of the back doors with bayonets fixed.

  Pete adjusted the oversized Batman utility belt round his waist where he stuffed his lenses and shit, and raised his infrared camera to his face. He was like a kid in a sweetshop as the mass of armour surrounding the town spewed infantry into the sand.

  Dom got ready to do his Jeremy Bowen bit to camera. He rehearsed a few soundbites to himself as Pete sorted the sound check.

  'The Kingsmen of the Duke of Lancaster's Regiment are halfway through their six-month tour. They have been shot at twenty-four/seven by small arms, RPGs and mortars, but ask any one of them and they'll tell you it's what they signed up to do.'

  Tonight they were about to kick the shit out of the insurgents who were within spitting distance of taking over Al Gurnan and starting to claim the ground as their own. They had to be broken. An insurgent stronghold soon became another link in the supply chain from Iran, just ten clicks away.

  The Kingsmen's mission was to do the breaking, and ours was to report it. Dom talked, Pete filmed him, and I had to make sure the two didn't get shot, snatched or run over by a set of tracks sent screaming across the desert by a bunch of jabbering Scousers.

  It wasn't easy. When Dom started playing newsman, he seemed to think there was a magic six-foot forcefield standing between him and any incoming fire. Sometimes he thought he didn't even need to wear a helmet. But in this war the enemy didn't give a shit whether you were a journalist or a soldier. If you were a foreigner they wanted you out, preferably in a body-bag. If they could get you alive, so much the better: you'd be the new star of The Al Jazeera Show, and all you could do was hope your next appearance wouldn't end with them slicing off your head online.

  The chain gun ceased fire. The Kingsmen swarmed down into the wadi.

  Dom made to follow, but I grabbed him and pulled him on to his knees. Another flurry of illume kicked off over the town and the cannon opened up again. I had to scream into his ear: 'They said not to go forward until they call us! Wait. Let them get on with it.'

  The Kingsmen vanished for a few seconds in the dead ground of the riverbed, before reappearing on the far bank, screaming and shouting all sorts of Scouse shit they probably didn't even understand themselves.

  They kicked their way through a series of old wooden doors and into whatever chaos lay the other side.

  2

  0805 hrs

  The sun had risen enough to chuck out a bit of heat, but not enough to coax me out of the oversized fleece I had on over my body armour. I ran my tongue over my furred-up teeth and gave my greasy, stubbled face a rub.

  Dom and Pete sat among steel ammo boxes, day sacks and general wagon shit the other side of the idling Warrior. Pete fucked about on his Mac laptop, editing the bulletin Dom had made during the attack. He wasn't one of those bunker journos who gave their action-packed report from the safety of a Green Zone balcony. And that was my big problem. I spent every waking hour either pulling him down or away from someone or something that could kill him.

  Paul, one of the recce platoon, was top cover with a Minimi; he had to stand between us with his head and shoulders sticking out through the open mortar hatch. Sand and all sorts showered down each time he moved.

  I brushed some desert off my fleece. It got cold out here at night and I was a bit of a lizard. I liked to keep warm, even if it meant wearing something Pete described as the colour of shite after a bad vindaloo. I hadn't got it from an outdoors store; I always ended up throwing my kit away every few weeks because it got so minging, so I'd treated myself to a trip to Oxfam. Three and a half quid as opposed to thirty; a bargain whatever the colour.

  Last night had produced an insurgent body count of eighteen, at a cost of two wounded Kingsmen. Now a Challenger and our three recce-platoon Warriors had been tasked with setting up a vehicle checkpoint on the eastern road out of town to see what got caught in the net.

  Looking out of the open rear door, I could see the wadi the guys had run through during last night's attack. It was littered with carrier-bags, dog shit, drinks cans, water-bottles; all kinds of trash that wouldn't be washed downstream until next year when the rains came.

  A pack of scabby old dogs were kept at bay by the heat blasting from the grilles of the Challenger's massive turbo-charged diesel engine. Like the Warriors', its hull and tracks were caked with mud and dust. No call for spit and polish here: they were fighting a war. The bar armour surrounding the lower hull and tracks looked like a series of buckled and scorched farm gates. That was because it was doing its job, deflecting RPGs.

  Now it was light, I couldn't see too much flame from the blazing oil wells, just thick black pillars of smoke on the horizon. It was going to be a long time before this place was stable enough for the conglomerates to come and start sucking out black gold.

  The Challenger pointed its big fuck-off barrel at the town like it was giving the locals the finger. Come and have a go, if you think you're hard enough. It wouldn't take a genius to get the message.

  A helmet jutted from its turret. Tank crews wore dark green covers to blend in with their vehicles; light desert camouflage would make a perfect target for a sniper or any half-decent shot who'd bothered to zero his weapon.

  The Kingsmen had five VCPs covering all the roads in and out of town. After last night's attack they dominated the area. At first light they'd started searching and questioning every male of fighting age. Notionally that was fourteen to sixty. The reality was that if you could lift a weapon you could fire it, so the guys had massaged the age bands. Terrorists, insurgents, whatever the government had decided to call them this week, to the Kingsmen it was academic. Out here on the ground, politics meant nothing. Even kids and old men were firing AKs and RPGs at them, and they were firing back.

  There was never any doubt who was in command. I could hear Rhett right now, out on the VCP, giving shit to the platoon.

  It was easy to tell the guys at the sharp end from the rest of the army, even though they wore the same uniform. They were in shit state. Their boots were hammered and fell apart before they ever got a clean. Their uniforms were dirty and ragged, their camouflaged helmet covers and body armour so worn and ripped it was hard to see the pattern.

  The Challenger wasn't the only one with its engine running. All three Warriors had theirs idling so the big square boiling vessels inside could heat water.

  I pushed the button at the bottom of our BV and made three brews.

  'Here, mate.'

  Pete took his white, no sugar. Fuck knows why, but this lot called it a Shirley Temple. I passed the mug to him round Paul's legs.

  He took it without looking up and settled it on the steel floor beside him, pausing only to blow sand off his keyboard.

  The Kingsmen thought Pete was weird for not taking sugar. 'He worried about his figure or something?'

  Dom took sugar, but as far as they were concerned he was still from a completely different planet, not because he was a Pole but because he drank only three brews a day.

  To make up the shortfall, I threw Pete a Yorkie bar from the ration packs. He glanced at the wrapper and gave a little chuckle. Where it normally read 'It's Not For Girls', the army ration pack version had 'It's Not For Civvies'. Now that he'd been let in on the joke, it never ceased to amuse him.