Chapter Eleven
The British base at Sangin. One hour before dawn.
Platoon commander Andy Bishop groped in the dark. By his bed – if you could call it that – lay his helmet, to which he had strapped a head torch. He switched on the torch. The area around his bed became flooded in a dusty red light. No white light allowed here – too easy to see from a distance.
Immediately there was the sound of the men around him stirring and groaning. ‘Morning, campers,’ Andy said in a voice made gravelly by the Afghan dust. ‘Rise and shine. Time for a stroll on this lovely Thursday morning.’
His gear was neatly squared away beside him and he started to put it on. Desert fatigues, body armour, SA80 rifle which he had meticulously cleaned only hours before. All around him the members of his platoon arose; in that red light they looked like zombies, but Andy knew that in two minutes they’d be transformed from sleepy men to highly alert fighting machines. And that was what they needed to be if they were going to patrol deep into the green zone of Sangin.
Minutes later Andy was boiling water on a small stove and making a much-needed cup of tea. As the water bubbled he heard the sound, on the opposite side of the base, of some vehicles starting up. That would be the fire support unit. It was their job to take position in the high ground nearby and keep watch over the green zone with their high-powered viewing devices and heavy, accurate weaponry. If Andy’s platoon got into trouble, the fire support guys would be able to use their guns to hit the enemy. Not a bad insurance policy to have, Andy always thought.
They had been briefed the previous evening at 1730 hours. From the base they would head north, directly into the green zone. This area was an enemy stronghold and there had been a lot of activity there over the past forty-eight hours. The purpose of their operation was to quell that activity. To make the enemy know that their presence would not be tolerated.
In other words, they were out looking for a fight.
It was still dark when they prepared to leave: twenty men, heavily tooled-up with weapons, communications systems, ammunition and litres of water. There was a low buzz of conversation. Not nervous, exactly. Just prepared for any contact that came their way.
‘Ready, Andy?’
It was Major Graves, the commanding officer.
‘Ready, sir.’
‘All right, then. Let’s take it to them.’
The wide metal gates of the base slid open, and the men stepped outside into the town of Sangin, all their senses hyper-alert.
The darkness could go only halfway to blanketing the destruction all around them. Buildings had been flattened; there were great craters in the streets where artillery shells had landed. Once, Andy knew, this part of town had been lively and bustling. Not any more. It would be impossible to live here – impossible because of the constant fighting, and because all the houses had been destroyed. No wonder so many of the townsfolk had fled.
They walked steadily north, their boots crunching on the stony earth, taking care not to wander too close to each other. Bunch up and they would present an easy target for any brave sniper that might be hidden behind a mound of rubble. Andy kept his gun ready. You seldom got any warning that a contact with the enemy was about to start, so you had to be constantly vigilant.
Somewhere, a dog howled. The sound disappeared eerily into the night sky. The men continued to march.
Dawn. Just a glimmer of light in the sky at first. To Andy’s right, the shell of a building that was once a school. The only thing you would learn there now would be about the destruction of war, and that was something the people of Afghanistan knew enough about already.
It always surprised Andy how quickly the green zone arrived. It was as if someone had drawn a line: on one side of the line was the bombed-out remains of the town; on the other side were thick green fields, trees and trickling streams. It made Andy think of mermaids – beautiful creatures who entranced sailors and tempted them to their deaths. The green zone was beautiful too, in its way. But set foot inside it and you’d be taking your life in your hands.
In the grey light of morning, Andy saw a small group of Afghans in a field perhaps fifty metres away. They stared at them as they entered the green zone. They might be peaceful, ordinary villagers; or they could be enemy spies. Their gnarled, weather-beaten faces gave no suggestion that they either welcomed or disliked the soldiers. Either way, there was no sign that they were carrying weapons, so the soldiers could do nothing but walk past them and continue into enemy territory.
They walked in single file along a line of trees. Between the soldiers and the trees was a ditch; to their right was a field of low dry stalks. Andy recognized it as a poppy field – he’d seen enough of them during his time in Helmand, after all. He felt vulnerable. Beyond the poppy field were two compounds; between the compounds and the soldiers there was nothing but open ground.
And open ground, as they well knew, meant they could easily come under fire.
Still, Andy thought to himself, they’d come out here to pick a fight. Some kind of sixth sense told him that a fight was exactly what they were going to get . . .
Ben awoke from a half-sleep to the sound of voices outside. He pushed himself up from the ground. Aarya was already by the door, her ear against the lock.
‘What’s going on?’ Ben whispered.
‘Shhh!’ she hissed, waving a hand at him in irritation and keeping her ear pressed to the door. ‘I’m trying to listen.’
Ben joined her by the door and pressed his own ear against it. There was definitely activity in the compound. ‘What are they saying?’ he breathed.
‘I do not know,’ Aarya replied. ‘I heard them say the word “soldiers”, but I cannot hear anything else.’
More activity outside. Muffled voices. ‘I think we can safely say they’re not getting ready to leave,’ Ben muttered. ‘Not during daylight.’
Aarya shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘They are arguing. Some of them want to fire their weapons. Amir is telling them not to.’ A pause. Aarya looked like she was going to say something, but as she opened her mouth there was a very different kind of noise from outside. The unmistakable sound of a gun being fired.
‘The weapons!’ Ben hissed. ‘The ones they had against the wall. They’re using them to attack someone. Aarya, we’ve got to do something.’
‘What
can
we do?’ Aarya demanded. ‘We’re locked in.’
Ben banged his fist angrily against the wooden door. ‘Let us out!’ he shouted. ‘
Let us out!
’ His words, however, were drowned by a sudden burst of fire. ‘You said they were talking about soldiers!’ Ben yelled. ‘They must be firing on them!’ He took several steps back, then ran at the wooden door, barging it with his shoulders. The door rattled, but it remained locked.
It was just as he was preparing to bash his bruised shoulder against the door for a second time that Aarya grabbed him. ‘Don’t be foolish, Ben!’ she scolded. ‘We are safer in here than out there.’
‘But we’ve got to stop them.’
‘
They
are men with guns, Ben. We have nothing. We need to take shelter.’
With that, she tugged at him. Ben, reluctantly realizing she was right, didn’t resist. The two of them ran to the far side of the room. Ben upturned the thin mattress from the only bed and propped it up in front of them. It was hardly robust, but it made them feel a bit better as they listened in horrified silence to the sound of their captors’ guns, and wondered what kind of devastation was going on outside . . .
There was a stillness in the air. The sun had only spent fifteen minutes in the sky, but already Andy could feel its heat. He wanted to drink some water, but that would mean stopping. And there was no way he was going to st—
‘
GET DOWN!
’
Andy heard the barked instruction from one of his men just as a bullet whizzed over his head. Just inches away? He couldn’t tell, but it had been very, very close. Andy threw himself to the ground, then rolled heavily into the ditch. He felt his clothes becoming soaked with water, but just now that was the least of his worries. The enemy had opened fire, and all of a sudden the air was alive with rounds. Keeping himself pressed down against the oozing mud at the bottom of the trench, he loosened his rifle and prepared to return fire.
All his muckers had performed the same manoeuvre. As a single body of men, they had taken cover in the ditch. ‘Is anyone hit?’ Andy shouted as he propped the end of his rifle against the edge of the ditch. ‘
I said, is anybody hit?
’
‘
Negative!
’ came the reply. And then: ‘
They’ll have to do a bit better than that!
’
A wave of relief crashed over Andy. He was responsible for the men in his platoon. If any of them died, he’d live with the guilt for the rest of his life.
The British soldiers returned fire, and for a moment the air sounded like Bonfire Night. Andy’s ears went numb from the sound of his own weapon and everybody else’s.
A minute of sustained fire from both, and then the guns fell silent.
Andy was out of breath; sweat poured from him. The shooting might have stopped, but they were still in the enemy’s sights. Moving out of that ditch was a no-no – they were pinned down, easy pickings for any snipers in the enemy compound. Keeping his head low, he crawled on all fours, past six of his men to where the commanding officer was stationed.
As he crawled, however, there was a screaming sound in the air.
‘
RPG!
’ someone shouted, and Andy pressed himself face down in the ditch once more. The grenade exploded somewhere behind him – too close for comfort. Andy stayed put as he counted five more grenades being fired, one after the other in quick succession. By some miracle, none of them found their target.
Andy pushed forward another twenty metres. Major Graves had his back against the wall of the ditch, a map of the area opened out in front of him. To his side, a radio operator was speaking coordinates into his communications system.
‘I’m calling in an artillery strike on the compound,’ Graves told Andy.
‘Roger that,’ Andy replied. He turned to the radio operator. ‘Time till impact?’ he asked.
The radio guy held up one finger as he listened to his earpiece. ‘Forty-five seconds,’ he said.
They waited. In one corner of his mind Andy found himself praying that the artillery shells hit their target accurately. The enemy compound was only a hundred metres away. It didn’t leave much room for error.
A boom in the distance. Then another.
Andy held his breath and covered his ears.
Impact
.
The whole ground shook as though a sudden earthquake had hit them, and from the direction of the compound there were two terrible explosions.
‘
Three more coming in!
’ the radio operator yelled. Andy tensed up and waited for them to hit. The shells slammed into the compound with three brutal booms just as the acrid smell of cordite drifted towards them.
Then, silence.
Major Graves spoke. ‘Andy, we’re going to advance on the compound and clear it. Your platoon to flank round to the south; we’ll take the north.’
Andy nodded. He pushed himself to his feet and then, keeping his head low, ran back down along the line, gathering his men and preparing to advance on the enemy – or at least what remained of them.
When the artillery shells had hit, Amir was a long way back from the front wall. He had been in enough battle situations to know how it would go. They would exchange fire for a while, then the hated British soldiers would call on their more powerful assets to bring the contact to an end, like cowards. It did not make his brothers any less eager to fight, but Amir feared for their weapon. If some kind of ordnance hit it, the explosion would be bigger than anyone expected. Amir did not care about losing his life – that was in the hands of forces greater than himself anyway; but the green zone of Sangin was not where anyone wanted the bomb to go off.
They had different plans for that weapon. Very different plans.
So it was that he had strapped the suitcase bomb to his back and was preparing to leave the compound when the stunning blast of the first artillery shell threw him to the ground, knocking the wind out of him and causing a shower of rubble and shrapnel to fall painfully onto his body. He gasped as a big hunk of metal, twisted and contorted into a lethal weapon, landed inches from his head.
A second shell thumped into the ground. From somewhere in the compound he heard the sound of screaming. Amir pushed himself up with difficulty – the suitcase bomb was weighing him down – and looked towards the other side of the compound.
He counted three dead men, and one more who looked like he wouldn’t last more than a minute or two. The man’s arm had been blown off and was lying on the ground, metres away, while blood gushed from the open wound. The screams – bloodcurdling and fierce – came from his strangled throat. They were growing weaker, though.