Last Night Another Soldier (2 page)

‘Confirm. We have a T1 casualty, Tango 1. We need MERT now.’

That wasn’t good. T1 meant we were losing him. He was critical. Flash was thinking the same as me. ‘Where the hell is that Chinook!’

I got the empty case out of the weapon and was back in action.

‘It’s clear, Si!’

‘I’ll get the ammo. We need more ammo!’
Si ran over to where John lay screaming and jerking about as if he was getting electric shocks
.
I scrambled onto my knees just as a three-round burst of Taliban fire hit the wall. I leant my chest into the mud bricks and got the weapon back into my shoulder. I never got to take aim, though. My rifle jolted skywards and a dark mass rose up from the other side of the wall.

Two large hands glued themselves to the front of my weapon. I tried to pull back but lost my footing, and a Tali the size of a house started to climb over the wall. He was using my rifle to help lever himself over.

As his feet inched higher up the wall, he pulled the barrel down hard onto his shoulder, the hot steel singeing the cloth of his shirt. He took no notice as the heat burnt through to his skin. The stench of sweat, cigarettes and burning flesh hit my nostrils, and within seconds the giant hands flailed out again, this time grabbing hold of my chest harness.

I scrambled backwards to escape his grasp, but he was quicker and stronger. He pulled me back towards the wall, trying to force me over with him. My helmet crashed into his head as I tried to headbutt him, but he took the pain and kept on pulling. I don’t know what I shouted, but I yelled and screamed into his face as I butted him
again, using all my body weight to stay on the right side of the wall. We were so close I could feel his beard scratch against my face. His spit sprayed into my eyes as he screamed back at me, his eyes fixed on mine.

I clung to the butt of my weapon as I tried to heave back against the pull on my chest harness. Getting rounds off was my only chance. I tried to curl my finger around the trigger, but couldn’t make it. He pulled down heavily again, and my feet left the ground. My body inched forward over the top of the wall. I arched my spine backwards, resisting with everything I had, but it was no good. I was hooked like a fish.

I heard Toki shout something again and again. His voice grew louder as he ran towards me, but still I couldn’t make it out. He kept on yelling and then finally it sunk in. ‘Pistol, Briggsy. Pistol!’

I’d forgotten I had one in my thigh holster. I let go of my weapon with my right hand and the Tali felt the change in pressure. He leant back once more, putting all his weight into toppling me forward. I felt my hip bones pressing into the ridge. I could hear myself breathing loudly as I pushed my hand down my leg, feeling for the pistol grip.

My fingers closed around the hard steel and
I pulled the weapon out of its holster. I raised my arm, brought the pistol round in front of me and shoved it in the Tali’s face. As soon as the barrel made contact with skin and bone, I squeezed the trigger hard. One shot straight to the head. His giant hands let go of me and his body dropped like a stone, crashing into the darkness on the other side of the wall.

I pushed myself off the wall just as Toki reached it. He grabbed hold of my body harness and half dragged me over to where Flash and Si were crouched down beside John. I didn’t know if I was looking for praise or comfort from my two mates, but I could tell by their bowed heads and motionless bodies that the two of them had other things on their mind. John was no longer screaming … or breathing.

It was just after seven o’clock when we got back to the Forward Operating Base (FOB). There was no time for breakfast, we were straight back to our patrol’s eight-man tent to clear away John’s kit. You’d think you might get a bit of time off to take it all in, but maybe that was the point. Best just get on with things and not think too much about anything.

The four of us sat around John’s bed space. Or at least the other three sat. I stayed standing as my arse was killing me. We were all going through John’s kit, stuffing his gear into bin liners so it could be shipped home to his wife.

Si had switched on John’s radio while we worked. I reckoned we were all glad of that as it saved us having to say anything to each other. Well, there wasn’t really much to say. When the news came on at half past, we all stopped to hear the report on Afghanistan. As usual, the news girl kept it brief:

‘Last night in Afghanistan, British Forces continued their military offensive against
the Taliban. Over three thousand British troops are currently taking part in Operation Condor. Their aim is to take control of the Taliban poppy-growing region in Southern Afghanistan. The MoD’s spokesperson, Major Jennifer Dufton, said that British ground forces were encountering small pockets of resistance, but that good progress was being made …’

Si got really pissed off and hit the Off button. ‘Good progress my arse. I can’t listen to any more of that crap.’ He leant forward on the bed and pulled out John’s patrol pack from underneath it. Toki nodded his agreement, and pointed at a pile of thin blue airmail letters sticking out of the top.

‘Flash. Those blueys. Sit down and read ‘em. Check they’re all from John’s wife, will you? Or his mum and dad. If not, burn them.’

Flash shook his head as he bent down for the blueys. ‘The man’s dead. It’s not right.’

‘I know, but do you really want his wife reading letters from some other woman? They could just be from a sister, but we can’t take that chance, mate. It happened in Basra when a guy from A Company got hit by a sniper. His wife got all his personal kit, and in there was a pile of blueys from another woman. John’s family
have enough problems as it is.’ Toki scanned our faces as if searching for clues. ‘That goes for all of us. Let’s get John’s stuff sterile. If we see anything dodgy, bin it.’ Flash quickly started sorting through the blueys while we got back to sorting out John’s kit.

I kicked a pile of magazines with my boot.

‘What about these, Toki?
FHM
,
Zoo
…’

‘Cookhouse. Julie won’t want those. Anyone know if he has any porn on his laptop?’

I started to pick up the magazines. ‘I know he was making a music video using all the film he’d been taking.’

‘I’ll check it out while you lot are on fatigues. Don’t want Julie seeing us chewing up Taliban either.’

Red flecks appeared on Si’s cheeks joining his zits like some crazy dot-to-dot quiz. His eyes flashed between us. ‘He’s dead, and for what? For nothing, that’s what. Three days aggressive camping just to get a good kicking? We should have stayed and smashed ‘em up big time.’ He brought his fist down hard on the bed. ‘At least John would have died for something. Where are the pencil necks giving these orders? I didn’t see any of them out there last night.’

He was right. No one from HQ ever came to our FOB. I started rolling up John’s sleeping
bag. ‘Probably sitting in those air-conditioned Portakabins in Kandahar, never even been in the Green Zone. Why did they rip us out, Toki?’

Toki was checking out the rest of the patrol pack, pulling out dirty socks and dark-green sweat-stained T-shirts. ‘D Company were getting hit big time last night. They needed all the Apaches and support up north. Once they’ve cleared and are holding their area, we’ll be going out on the ground again.’

I put the pile of magazines on top of three bags of boiled sweets, which were all destined for the cookhouse. ‘Better had! Makes us look like right wimps.’

Si wasn’t finished yet. ‘Why ain’t we got loads of helis and all the gear like the Yanks got?’

Toki sighed, raising his legs and plonking his desert boots on John’s camp bed. ‘No money, I guess. Never is.’ We all nodded as we knew it was the truth.

A calm female voice came over FOB’s loud speaker system. ‘Standby. Standby. Firing. End of message.’ Sure enough, the rattle and whoosh of two massive rockets kicked off into the sky. We called them 70km Snipers, because they could still reach their targets from that far away. At least this time it was our guys giving the Talis the good news.

Toki shoved everything he’d been sorting through back into John’s patrol kit. There was nothing to be found. ‘D Company must still be getting a hammering,’ he said.

Toki wasn’t wrong. D company were getting smashed up big time on the other side of the valley. It was taking all our helis to keep the Talis down. Another rocket kicked off, forcing Si to shout above it as he picked at a new zit on the side of his neck. ‘Hey, Briggsy, heard you did a touch of the old Kung Fu Panda with a Tali this morning, right before you head-jobbed him. Good one, mate.’

‘Yeah. Sort of.’ I wasn’t sure if I wanted to talk about it, so I stared into the bin liner I’d just put John’s iPod into, in the hope that we could just carry on packing the kit away.

‘And?’ Si wasn’t going to let it go that easily.

‘Mate, what happened? Cough up.’

‘Well …’ I revved myself up to tell the story as best I could.

Si nodded with excitement as I explained what had happened. I tried to tell it as dramatically as I could, because I knew that was what he wanted to hear. ‘All I could hear was Toki yelling, “Pistol. Pistol.” I was flapping so much I’d forgotten about it. So I reached down to my leg holster and jammed my pistol into his
nut and slotted him. Job done. Cheers, Toki.’

‘No biggy. I’d have done it for you if I’d been able to get near enough. You were too close to him for me to be able to fire from that far away. Anyway, you did well. Have a dig about for his laptop lead, will you, Briggsy? It might be in with all that stuff in your bin liner.’

I dug around in my sack and pulled out the only lead that looked as if it might work. Si kept looking in my direction, waiting for more of my story. When he realized that was it, he gave me a big thumbs up with both hands.

‘Good one, mate. Like you said, job done. Big time!’ He beamed at the three of us like he was over the moon I’d killed someone, but maybe he was just pleased that he’d finally burst his zit.

I hoped that would be the end of the conversation, but I should have known he wouldn’t leave it there. ‘Mate, just think what would’ve happened if they had, you know, got you? We’d be watching you online getting your head cut off.’ Si slid his index finger across his throat. ‘Cos you know they’ll get one of us one day, don’t you? They keep trying. I just hope it ain’t me.’

It went quiet for a bit as we all thought about what would happen if one of us got taken by the Talis.

‘Hey, Briggsy.’ Si still wasn’t done. ‘You think they’ll, you know, give you one before cutting you up?’

Flash lowered the bluey he’d been opening and rolled his eyes. ‘You’ve been watching too much TV, mate.’

Then I remembered something I’d seen on Dave TV about Afghanistan. ‘I watched a thing about them playing rugby, but on horses using human heads instead of balls.’

Flash pointed the bluey at me like a school teacher with a ruler. ‘It’s called buzkashi and it’s a game like polo. They usually use a dead goat instead of a ball, but they decided to use Russian squaddies’ heads when they were at war with them back in the eighties.’

Si gave a low whistle. ‘See, Briggsy, you’re lucky.’

I thought Toki would shut them all up at this point. It wasn’t really something I wanted to think about. But Toki stopped what he was doing and looked towards the tent flap as if he was going to tell us something he didn’t want anyone else to hear.

‘They won’t stop until they do get one of us alive. If I get cornered, I’m going down fighting. No way are my parents going to see me ripped apart on a computer screen.’

We all looked at the tent flap, too, mostly because we didn’t know what to say to that. As usual, it was Si who broke the silence. ‘Hey, Briggsy, you gotta keep that as living history.’ He jabbed a nicotine-stained finger in my direction. I hadn’t a clue what he was on about.

He pointed again. ‘Mate, your shirt. You’re covered in Tali blood. You got to keep it as a memento.’

I looked down, dropping my bin liner and spilling its contents all over the plastic floorboards that kept out the dust. The right sleeve of my shirt was stained a sticky brown where the Tali’s blood had soaked into it. I tugged at my cuff to get it away from my arm, to get the man off me. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed it before. I felt sick.

‘Jesus!’

I started to rip the thing off my back when Sergeant MacKenzie stuck his head through the flap.

‘No, not Jesus. Sergeant MacKenzie to you. But I like your thinking, Briggsy.’

All I wanted to do was get into the shower and scrub the blood off, but I knew there were no showers until just before evening scoff that night. So I was stuck with it. ‘Yes, Sergeant.’

I saw MacKenzie look down at my shirt, so I
tried a pathetic joke to make myself feel better. ‘Better his blood than mine, eh, Sergeant?’

Sergeant MacKenzie didn’t miss a beat. ‘I’d say there’s still some debate on that … Right, listen in, you lot.’ He looked at each one of us in turn. ‘I want the whole platoon in the cookhouse now. Corporal Tokibaku, get this lot moving.’ He turned on his heel and was gone.

Flash gathered up John’s stash of blueys. ‘You got a cynical mind, Toki. They’re all from Julie, right enough. Well, aside from the stack from Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie, of course …’

Flash gently returned them to John’s kit bag. He didn’t want them all crumpled up for John’s wife, who would probably keep them for ever. ‘I never met Julie or the kids, but me and John were going to get our wives together after this. You know on holiday.’ He looked close to tears and could hardly get the destination out without his voice breaking. ‘Tenerife.’

The rest of us looked down, pretending we hadn’t noticed, and I got real busy with the bin liner. But the truth is we all felt the same. Flash knew it and made a half-hearted attempt to lighten the mood. ‘Si, throw those combats over.’

Flash held them up for all of us to see. ‘Look
at the size of that waist. No wonder it was tough carrying all that lard onto the MERT heli, eh? Bet those doctors thought they’d never get airborne again!’