If I Should Die (Joseph Stark) (33 page)

‘M’lord …’ tried the defence, desperately.

‘I’ve no grudge against the army,’ growled Maggs, visibly angry now. The barrister was winding him up. Stark silently pleaded for Maggs not to bite.

‘Your whole life is a grudge! You hate the world, you hate the army!’

‘No!’

‘They used you up and when you were broken they threw you away like a soiled rag.’

‘
That was the bloody MoD!
’

‘Language, sir!’ growled the judge again.

The prosecution hardly drew breath. ‘Yes, the Ministry of Defence. You hate them too!
Your whole life has been about nothing but hate, for thirty years!
Why, sir?’

No
, screamed Stark silently, as Maggs leant forward and planted his big fists on the dock.

‘Because they fucking lied to us,’ spat Maggs.

‘
Language, sir!
’ barked the judge.

‘They wave their precious Military Covenant but it’s just
bullshit
.’

‘Restrain yourself, sir,’ warned the judge.

Maggs paid no heed. ‘Every year the same news stories of woeful equipment, appalling family accommodation and shameful veteran support – every time met with MoD denials. Then nothing happens till the same story pops up again and everyone acts like it’s some shocking scandal, like it’s news. Where’s the moral fucking outrage?’

‘One more profane outburst and I will hold you in contempt!’ shouted the judge.

‘You already do!’ yelled Maggs, with a wild look in his eyes. ‘You, the MoD, the sleepwalking public, you “good people of the jury”! You already do! Whining about legality and lack of exit strategy while poor fucks like him are getting blown to hell.’ Maggs jabbed a finger towards Stark.

‘Sit down now, sir!’ shouted the judge.

‘Bleeding into the sand and mud, watching their mates die begging for help, and for what? For you, you thankless fucks!’

‘SIT DOWN NOW!’ bellowed the judge, beet-faced, slamming his leather-bound notes on the desk, gunshot loud. If this were an American courtroom drama he’d be banging his gavel like a man possessed, thought Stark, but contrary to popular belief, British judges didn’t use them. ‘Sit down! This instant! Confine your answers to the questions and not one stray word, do you understand?’

Maggs glared venomously round the silent, shocked room. ‘Ask yourself, all of you, would you fight for you?’

‘You are in
contempt
, sir!’ ordered the judge.

Maggs sat down, fuming.

‘No further questions, m’lord,’ said the prosecution barrister, smugly, casting a knowing look at the jury.

Stark’s head dropped into his hands.

The jury retired to deliberate. Fran spirited Stark through a side door into the judge’s antechamber where Groombridge had arranged to keep him away from the press.

‘That didn’t go well,’ said Groombridge, joining them.

Stark was still shaken. ‘Christ, Guv, I knew he wanted his say but I thought he might’ve been dissuaded since then. I could’ve dissuaded him –’

‘He had been, lad. I spoke to his barrister at great length. But the prosecution knew what buttons to press and that’s that.’

‘What’ll happen?’

‘Not guilty of murder. Guilty of manslaughter with provocation.’

‘Really?’

Groombridge nodded. ‘The CPS knew what they were doing. That’s what they wanted and they’ll get it. The rest is down to the judge.’

‘He hasn’t made much of a friend there, Guv,’ commented Fran.

‘No.’

‘What will he get?’ asked Stark.

‘Strictly speaking, with the high degree of provocation including violent assault, he should get no more than three years.’

‘But?’

‘But with military training, lack of remorse, his evident fury …’

‘Not to mention contempt of court,’ added Fran.

‘Indeed.’

‘Was he right?’ asked Fran. ‘Is all that stuff true?’

Stark sighed. ‘Up to a point.’

It was too big a conversation for now. The bottom line was that in peacetime people resented paying taxes for defence and, as Maggs himself had said, to the majority of voters modern wars felt no different from peace. The MoD had to prioritize spending, like any other ministry. That didn’t make it any more excusable, just perennial, and
Maggs knew the futility of railing against it. Despite thirty years of bitterness, his answer to his own question would always be the same as Stark’s and most other serviceperson’s. Would you fight for you? Perhaps not, but I will.

Two days later Fran drove out of the back gate of the courthouse, tooting her horn angrily at the photographers who tried to get in the way. ‘Five years, minimum three? For manslaughter with provocation?’ She shook her head for the umpteenth time. ‘While proper villains like Liam Dawson walk scot-free.’

‘As you said, Maggs did little to befriend the judge,’ said Groombridge, sadly.

Through his own dismay Stark was surprised by their sympathy for Maggs’s plight.

‘Grounds for appeal, Guv?’ asked Fran.

‘I think so, but will Maggs pursue one? What do you think, Stark?’

‘I don’t know, Guv. Not for his own sake, it seems. I suppose it depends on whether he’s done making his point.’

‘When’s
your
fifteen minutes?’ asked Groombridge, though surely he knew well enough.

‘Wednesday.’

‘You ready?’

‘No.’ As Pierson seemed to take morbid delight in telling him.

‘Scared?’

‘He’s immune to pain and fear, Guv, you know that,’ said Fran, sarcastically.

If only, sighed Stark silently.

On Wednesday Captain Pierson arrived at Stark’s mother’s with two burly Red Caps, Royal Military Police, who made short work of keeping the photographers at bay. Monkey Hangers, regular soldiers called them, shortened to Monkeys, a reference to an infamous incident in Napoleonic Hartlepool; the town’s residents had also suffered and embraced the term. As a policeman Stark shouldn’t have disliked them, but as a soldier it had been the standard sentiment. That little irony did not lift his spirits.

They drove sedately up the M3 and into Wellington Barracks on
Birdcage Walk, where Stark was led into a small, plain room to change into his brand new No. 2 dress uniform. It fitted perfectly even though several weeks of voracious eating had begun to fill him out to something of his former self, but one glaring error sang out.

Pierson knocked and came in. ‘There,’ she said. ‘I suppose that’s at least made you look halfway a soldier.’

‘But this tunic has three stripes,’ pointed out Stark, anxiously.

‘You were wearing three on the day so you’ll damn well stand up in three for this.’

‘But that isn’t right,’ he insisted.

‘That is not for you to say,
Acting Sergeant
Stark,’ she replied firmly. Stark recognized the tone: pushing his protest would not go well.

He had to admit Pierson’s tailor had done a grand job, but the crutches spoilt the effect. ‘How about that walking stick?’ he asked, giving ground to attempt a flanking manoeuvre – Acting Sergeant Sideways. Thus far Pierson had taken the same line as his doctors on this topic. Strictly speaking, the rules said no weight-bearing for another week.

‘I shan’t ignore common sense and medical advice to soothe your vanity.’

‘This isn’t about vanity and you know it.’

‘Don’t presume to tell me what I know.’

‘If you want me to stand up like a soldier you should let me face this on my own two feet,’ he insisted.

‘You’re as stubborn as you’re stupid.’

Stark wasn’t ready to concede the point but she was too intent on tutting and adjusting his uniform to listen. When her disdainful expression had eased into a mere frown, she led him to the waiting car, ridiculous for a journey of less than minute. Stark had hoped to walk it but the crutches and press hawks made that impossible.

They were shown in through an informal side door and led through a maze of intricate corridors and rooms to a large antechamber where Stark was separated into a small side room and left alone to stew. His mouth was dry. He stood there on crutches and one leg, feeling sick.

Pierson reappeared and wordlessly held out a handsome walking cane. The tip was silver, the tapering shaft fashioned from a rich
brown wood with a natural amber variegation, like tiger’s eye stone but wavier, warmer. There was a triple band of silver near the top and the curved silver handle, which seemed moulded to his hand, was fashioned in the shape of a leaping tiger.

‘Snakewood,’ said Pierson. ‘Gets its name from the grain but I think the stripes are more tiger-like. All rather apt.’ Stark’s regiment was known as the Tigers, due to its gold-on-blue Royal Tiger arm badge, a two-hundred-year-old honour for service in India by its Royal Hampshire Regiment forebear.

‘Where?’

‘Don’t ask,’ she said firmly. ‘And for God’s sake have a quick practice. If you fall on your scrawny arse I’ll have you shot. I can’t believe I’ve let you talk me into this.’

Stark was amazed, too, and grateful: this wasn’t about vanity, it was about pride. He tentatively placed his left foot down. The muscles were atrophied, but the physios had been manipulating his joints to keep the tendons limber and he’d been trying it out on the quiet. It felt like jelly and he had to take most of the weight on the cane, but he stood. He took a faltering turn around the room.

‘Jesus!’ hissed Pierson, as he half stumbled.

‘I’m all right. It’s not as bad as I thought.’ He took a few more turns and grew in confidence. ‘Will I do?’

She didn’t look happy. ‘Stand straight,’ she ordered, fussing over the uniform again. ‘You’ll have to, I suppose.’

A knock came at the door and an officer told them it was time. Stark was ushered past the milling faces to stand in front of a closed double door.

‘Thank you,’ he said quietly to Pierson.

‘Stand like a soldier,’ she whispered. ‘And don’t fuck up!’

The door opened, silent as a fanfare of doom. Then a voice boomed in the vacuum, ‘Sergeant Joseph Stark, Third Battalion, Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment!’

Pierson pressed the small of his back and he took five steps forward to stand beside a senior naval officer in full dress uniform.

To his right, in the huge, sparkling Buckingham Palace ballroom, hundreds of people watched in absolute silence. Somewhere back there his mother and sister were probably crying under their new hats.
To his left, behind a lectern, stood the Lord Chamberlain in full regalia. Ahead and to the left the Queen waited, flanked by two Gurkha orderly officers and five Yeomen of the Guard.

In a clear, powerful voice the Lord Chamberlain read aloud.

‘For services in Afghanistan: the Victoria Cross.’

Pain flared in Stark’s hip, leg and shoulder as those surreal syllables pierced his bubble of self-consciousness. There seemed to be no way to pin the flat, colourless words to those distant moments of frantic desperation, fear, pain and death, nothing to link them with the terrified mother and her child and how close he’d come to shooting them. How he’d stopped his trigger finger he’d never know; in his dreams he failed to again and again. He’d intended to fire, had begun to, all his fear and training screamed at him to do so, but in that last desperate millisecond another part of his brain had intervened. The thought made him shudder. Everything about that day made him shudder.

The IED had shunted the Snatch Land Rover six feet sideways, knocking him flat and very nearly tipped it over on him. Staggering up, he had shaken his head at the ringing in his left ear. His right was blown, adding to his disorientation. He felt something trickling down his face and neck, put up a hand and stared at blood on his fingers, confused, confused also to see half of his little finger gone where he still held the neck of the plastic water bottle, just the neck. There was no pain. He was told later that a piece of the shrapnel had pinned his Kevlar helmet to his skull but he’d felt nothing at the time.

He yanked open the door of the badly damaged vehicle. The IED had ripped into the far side of the cab. Walker must’ve died instantly. Smith lay sprawled across the bench seat, hardly less bloody. A quick check found a weak pulse. He groaned but didn’t stir.

Something made Stark look up, a noise above the ringing. Then another. Bullet, he thought absently. A bullet just hit the cab. Looking out through the blackened, crazed windscreen and wisps of black smoke leaking from the engine compartment, Stark noted his comrades ducking for cover. The sound of AK47 fire and yelling finally pierced his dulled wits.

Ambush!

He grabbed the radio handset to call in the contact but it hadn’t
survived the explosion. Cursing, he backed out of the cab and looked around for Collins. He was kneeling in a closed doorway across the street. Seeing Stark move towards him, Collins yelled and pointed wildly. On a rooftop fifty yards away three figures were firing into the street around him. Bullets rang into the panels of the Snatch and the ground just metres from him. The unmistakable shape of a rocket-propelled grenade peeped over the parapet of another house. Stark instinctively knelt and shot the man aiming it. Two other figures appeared, trying to wrestle the launcher from the dead man, but bullets knocked them both back. Stark couldn’t tell if he’d shot them or someone else had.

He backed hastily into the partial cover of the Snatch and bellowed ‘
Man down!
’ at the top of his lungs. ‘
Two men down!
Medic!
’

The call was repeated down the line.

‘Walking?’ Collins demanded, meaning walking wounded.

They locked eyes and Stark shook his head. ‘Alpha!’ The highest priority category for the Nine-Liner radio medevac request. ‘Comms down, boss!’ He pointed at the vehicle.

Collins nodded and screamed across the street at whoever had the hand-held radio.

Suddenly bullets hit Stark’s side of the vehicle. They were now taking fire from two directions, while at the far end of the street he saw a beaten-up white pick up truck being pushed into place as a roadblock-cum-barricade. Their position was untenable. Collins was shouting something but Stark couldn’t make it out. Others too. The gist had to be ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here!’

Hunkered against the vehicle, Stark could feel the engine still running. He tried what was left of the driver’s door but it wouldn’t budge. Running round to the other side again, he dragged Smith and Walker towards him and clambered over both into the driving seat, fought the stick into gear, stamped on the accelerator and let out the clutch. The heroic vehicle responded. He braked central to the positions the others had taken up each side of the street and yelled out of the imploded window at Collins. They didn’t need telling twice. Bodies were suddenly clambering into the rear, shouting, swearing. Collins appeared at the side door and froze, staring at Walker and Smith. Shoving them both towards the middle he just about got in and
slammed the door, shouting back for a head count. Eight: everyone, no more hit. Bullets were impacting like hailstones on a tin roof but the Snatch’s armour was enough for small-arms fire. It didn’t cover every inch of the cab, though, and the door beside Stark wasn’t up to much any more. He fought to find reverse but it was either damaged or he was trying too hard.

‘RPG!’ shouted Collins, pointing. On the roof another Taliban had picked up the fallen weapon. Stark fought it into first and did his best to stamp the accelerator through the floor. They lurched forward just as the RPG struck where they’d stood, the explosion rocking the whole vehicle forward on its suspension. Still taking fire, rattling and squeaking, as if half of the bolts were missing, the battered Snatch accelerated towards the roadblock, weaving despite Stark’s efforts to keep it straight. God help them if there were more buried IEDs ahead. Bullets impacted on the remains of the windscreen now, one right in front of Stark’s face, further restricting his view.

A pothole made the twisted vehicle judder with the grinding shriek of metal against metal. Smith groaned again as Collins called to him. Tyler was shouting into the radio over general yelling and the sharp retort of bullet strikes rattling through the din, all remote behind the monotone whine in Stark’s left ear.

Flames appeared around the buckled bonnet and then the dashboard. They licked across Stark’s hands but he gripped the wheel for grim death. Collins grabbed a hand-held extinguisher and put out the fire, filling the cab with white gas. Half-blind, Stark watched another RPG race across their path and explode against a building just ahead of them, showering the Snatch with rubble.

He gunned the accelerator, shifted gear, aiming for the little gap between the back of the pickup and the wall.

‘
Brace!
’ he yelled.

The Taliban beside the pickup dived aside as the Snatch crashed through into open ground.

‘
That way!
’ bellowed Collins, pointing diagonally across the wide square of wasteland.

But the Snatch was mortally hurt now, its steering clunky and unresponsive. It died less than two hundred metres further on, in the centre of the open stretch of ground with buildings dotted around
the perimeter. Stark tried frantically to restart the engine but the dashboard was on fire again and Collins was shouting ‘
Out! Out! Out!
’

Collins was already out, dragging Smith with him. Stark climbed over Walker, then dragged him out too.

Bullets were whipping past, the crack-thump of aimed fire passing close by. Collins ordered them to make a run for it in the direction of the combat outpost and away from fire. Stark bent to lift Walker but Gaskin shoved him aside and threw Walker over one shoulder.

And so they ran for it, jumping down a low wall, racing towards the nearest building, a house. Stark and Collins were there first – Collins kicked the door in and Stark came within a heartbeat of killing an innocent woman and her small boy. Instead, Collins hurried them out through a side door and away just as the others staggered in. Stark would always wonder what happened to the mother and child, but would never know. All he could do was try to picture them sitting beside the Helmand river enjoying a quiet moment, laughing together, fear forgotten. All he could do was hope.

Then came the hammer blow. They were a man short. Tyler. They could see him on the ground beside the smoking Snatch. He was moving.

Collins asked for volunteers and Gaskin and Stark stepped forward. Collins bluntly told Stark to piss off, but Stark pleaded that his injuries were superficial, hiding his hands from view. The two privates – only later did Stark learn their names, Lovelace and Khan – were frantically working on Smith so Collins reluctantly nodded. They ditched their superfluous kit and ran for it as the bullets whipped past. Terry Taliban probably couldn’t believe his luck.

Sustained fire and an incoming RPG forced them to dive the last metres to the low wall, roughly halfway. The RPG detonated to the right and Collins cursed in pain. Shrapnel had clipped his thigh, not bad, but enough that he had to stay put. Under his covering fire Stark and Gaskin counted three, clambered up and ran.

Tyler was no longer moving as they reached the relative cover of the Snatch. The cab was ablaze now, and somewhere in the back there was an unexploded IED. Stark began firing on the Taliban while Gaskin dragged the limp Tyler behind the vehicle, hoisted him over one shoulder and set off. He’d gone no more than ten paces before he went down with a bullet through his right leg.

Stark turned to help. Gaskin shouted at him to take Tyler but a quick glance confirmed the sergeant was already dead, so Stark hoisted the protesting Gaskin on to one shoulder instead and set off. Gaskin was a big, heavy man and Stark fell as he tried to jump down the wall by Collins, earning a flurry of vitriol from Gaskin. Ignoring his redoubled protests, Stark hoisted him up again and yomped back to the house where he dumped him unceremoniously, turned and set off back, passing Collins to get Tyler.

He wasn’t really thinking, just doing. Maybe it was shock of some kind but there was a strange, detached belief that he was invulnerable. And there was anger too. They were just trying to take their wounded and run away but the spiteful pricks were still shooting. It’s ridiculous to think of war in terms of fair play, but a line was being crossed and Stark was infuriated.

He grabbed Tyler by the body armour and dragged him back towards cover. He was about to lift him when he saw it. The Bowman radio, their only lifeline, on the ground where Tyler had first fallen. He ran towards it but bullets drove him back. He ran out again, snatched it up and dived back into cover, heart racing.

Kneeling in the cover of the burning Snatch, he called in a revised Nine-Liner and air-support request in case he didn’t get the radio to the others. Tyler was smaller than Gaskin but Stark struggled to lift him, fatigue setting in. Cursing it he set off, noticeably slower. Behind them the IED finally tore the Snatch apart, the explosion nearly knocking Stark down. At least the surprise stopped Terry firing for a moment. The wall drop caught him out again and he only just avoided falling. It seemed as if, with each trip, distance and height doubled. Collins shouted, ‘Get a
fucking
move on!’

He dumped Tyler beside Gaskin, who was shouting angrily in pain as Khan worked on him. Stark thrust the radio at Lovelace and turned to go back for Collins, only to find the major manfully hopping towards them, dragging his wounded leg.

By now fire was coming not just from behind but also from a building off to one side. Collins tripped and fell. Someone tried to grab Stark’s arm but he was already on his way. Collins was up in a kneeling stance returning fire calmly and efficiently as Stark reached him. He threw his arm around Stark’s shoulder and they set off
together, Collins hobbling and singing a ribald song between laboured breaths. Bullets whizzed by but they were half way – they were going to make it.

Then a warning yell, and the RPG exploded right beside them.

Stark tried to stand but his left side, thigh and hip had been peppered. One look at Collins and it was obvious he wasn’t going anywhere either. Stark managed to kneel and shuffle over to shield Collins from the increasingly accurate fire. Bullets were striking all around and another RPG whooshed overhead, exploding against an innocent house.

Unable to do anything more practical, Stark resolved simply to return fire.

Simple, but not easy. The Terry in the upper window seemed happy to just point his AK47 roughly in the right direction but the fruit of his minimal efforts spat dust not twenty feet from Stark. Stark literally had to force himself not to do the same. His body cried out at him to flinch, to fire madly and duck. At least these cries out-shouted the numerous screaming pains.

Relax, breathe, aim, hold half a breath, fire, he repeated to himself, just like back on the range. The figure with the AK collapsed from sight.

In another window an RPG launcher appeared. Relax, breathe, aim, hold, fire. The black turban snapped back and the RPG whooshed up at a steep angle into the sky as its erstwhile owner fell backwards into darkness. Stark watched it climb, trying to gauge where it would land. Off to the right, he guessed, and put it from his mind.

He felt a growing nausea. Firing in the kneeling position, his blood was soaking the left leg and hip of his combats, plus a dozen other places. Blood loss was beginning to dull his mind and he raged against it. He started mumbling obscenities, venting his fury in a tight, high-pressure stream.

The RPG landed far enough away but close enough for him to feel the hot, dusty shockwave.

As he paused to reload he was aware that Lovelace and Khan had broken cover and were dragging Collins away, shouting at Stark to follow. They had no idea he couldn’t stand. So he resumed firing, hoping to draw fire till they were clear, shooting at any Taliban who presented a target.

They were popping up in windows, doorways and behind walls now, 7.62mm calibre flying everywhere, dust popping up all around. From behind him the lads were sending 5.56mm calibre back the other way. Stark picked out targets one by one. Sometimes he missed, sometimes not; whichever, he remained finely balanced between hot anger and cold determination. His vision was beginning to tunnel, time stretching.

Then the line started towards him. In that split second he saw the Taliban off to one side in a first-floor window. This one was calm. This one was using his iron sights. If they’d been adjusted properly, Stark would have been on his back by now but the first rounds fell short.

Peck – the next one was closer. Peck, peck, each jet of dust closing in regular steps. Ignoring them Stark swung his sights, picked out the muzzle flash, picked out the man. Peck. Relax, breathe – peck: it made a particular sound, a bullet striking the earth inches from you. It had a synaesthetic quality, the feel of it through your boot, the jet of dust, the smell of your sweat, the metallic tang of fear in your throat all merging into one surreal, sensual stab. And even though you saw it coming, watched its predecessors erupt in a regular line towards you, there was no time to absorb the inevitable, inconceivable truth that the next one, already on its way, would fail to strike the earth behind you because you were in its path – aim, hold, fire.