Crossfire (2 page)

Andy McNab

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ISBN 9781407039466

Version 1.0

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CROSSFIRE
A CORGI BOOK

ISBN: 9781407039466

Version 1.0

First published in Great Britain
in 2007 by Bantam Press
a division of Transworld Publishers
Corgi edition published 2008

Copyright © Andy McNab 2007

Andy McNab has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical
fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
is purely coincidental.

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2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

This book is dedicated to the men of 2 Rifles and
2 Lancs, for their bravery and endurance. I was
privileged to spend time in Iraq with both of
these battalions, and without doubt they are
some of the most professional soldiers our
country has ever seen.

2nd Battalion the Rifles

Rifleman Daniel Lee Coffey
, aged twenty-one,
from Exeter, died as a result of injuries sustained
in Basra City on 27 February 2007.

Rifleman Aaron Lincoln
, aged eighteen, from
Durham, died as a result of injuries sustained in
Basra City on 2 April 2007.

Rifleman Paul Donnachie
, aged eighteen, from
Reading, was killed in a small-arms fire attack in
Basra City on 29 April 2007.

2nd Battalion the Duke of Lancaster's
Regiment

Kingsman Jamie Lee Hancock
, aged nineteen,
from Wigan, died as a result of injuries sustained
during small-arms fire against a coalition forces
base in Basra on 6 November 2006.

Sergeant Graham Hesketh
, aged thirty-five,
from Liverpool, was killed during a patrol in
Basra City on 28 December 2006.

Kingsman Alexander William Green
, aged
twenty-one, from Warrington, died as a result of
injuries sustained in Basra City on 13 January
2007.

Second Lieutenant Jonathan Bracho-Cooke
,
aged twenty-four, from Hove, died as a result of
injuries sustained by an improvised explosive
device (IED) attack on 5 February 2007.

Kingsman Danny John Wilson
, aged twenty-eight,
from Workington, died as a result of
injuries sustained in Basra City on 1 April 2007.

Kingsman Adam James Smith
, aged nineteen,
from the Isle of Man, died as a result of injuries
sustained by an IED attack on 5 April 2007.

Second Lieutenant Joanna Yorke Dyer
, aged
twenty-four, from Yeovil, died as a result of
injuries sustained by an IED attack on 5 April 2007.

Kingsman Alan Joseph Jones
, aged twenty, from
Liverpool, was killed when his Warrior
armoured fighting vehicle came under small-arms
fire on 23 April 2007.

60 miles west of Jalalabad, Afghanistan
17 June 1986
Last light

I didn't know the name of the village, though we'd
been through there many times. It was just a
collection of mud huts on a plateau, three-quarters
of the way down a mountain, in a snow-capped
range halfway between Kabul and the Khyber
Pass.

We had to be out again by first light, when the
Hinds would be back to hand out the early-morning
news. If they spotted us, the gunships
would annihilate the place, and anyone inside.
That was how they did things.

We were in-country because the Ivans were in-country,
and the West didn't want them to be. It
wasn't the invasion they objected to. It was
Soviet troops massed so close to the oil-rich Gulf.
The sheiks were flapping, so the bad boys had to
be persuaded to fuck off back to the land of
vodka.

The mujahideen –
soldiers of Allah
– had only
put up weak resistance to start with. Fragmented,
and armed with no more than rifles and pistols,
all they had going for them was their lifelong
knowledge of the terrain and an unshakeable
faith in their God.

That was when dickheads like me were told to
get the maps out and see where the fuck
Afghanistan was, then get our arses over from
Hereford and help. We came, we saw, we
dropped bridges, attacked police stations, built
IEDs, and blew up armoured convoys. I wasn't
wild about living in a cave, but other than that,
I'd been having the time of my life.

'See that?'

'What, Nick?'

'Over there, in the alleyway. Looks like a body.'

'It will just be a girl,' Ahmad grunted. He wore
the kind of expression you use when someone's
just pointed out the shit on your shoe. 'We go on,
Nick. We need food.'

My new best mujahideen mate cut away and
gestured to the others to sort themselves out
before the long tab back to our holes in the rock
above the snowline.

The girl's body was lying between two mud-walled
shacks. At least somebody had had the
decency to drape the charred remains of her
clothes over what was left of her. Going by the
scorchmarks on the ground, it looked like she'd set
herself on fire in plain view. When the flames died
down, the villagers had probably just dragged her
here out of the way and got on with their lives.

I nearly hadn't come over. I'd seen it all too
many times before. But this one was different –
even in the fading light, I thought I'd seen movement.
And, besides, the girl with the cheeky grin
lived in one of these huts. I always looked out for
her when we came this way. The landscape
might be cold, harsh and unforgiving, but
somhow her smile always made me think that
what we were doing was worthwhile.

The people who scratched a living in these
mountains didn't have enough even to feed
themselves, but that didn't stop them sharing it
with us. I'd never spoken to the girl with the
cheeky grin. It would have been taboo. But she'd
run up a couple of times and handed me a sliver
of watermelon or a cup of water. She couldn't
have been more than fourteen.

Not so long ago, the cheeky grin had disappeared,
as if someone had thrown a switch.
'Yes,' Ahmad had said. 'Now she have husband.'
Apparently he was nearly three times her age
and from another band of muj. Ahmad seemed to
think her husband was having trouble teaching
her respect.

She'd looked a little more desperate each time
I saw her after that. The last couple of times, I'd
noticed the bruises.

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.

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.