Rain (10 page)

‘So, tomorrow, when they get here, you’re going to take the ATO to the IEDs you found today. And then he’s going to destroy them, sod off back to Bastion, and then all the militia are pleased. We then skedaddle ourselves, and everything here becomes a land of milk and honey. You know, I know, the world knows, it’s not going be like that, but that’s the mission. Suck it up. Right, go and get some scoff or whatever it is you perverts do to amuse yourselves around here. Full orders back here at 2200. Bring your threebars.’

They got up to leave, Jason still groaning in the corner, the room now reeking of vomit. ‘And we won’t have it in here either. We’ll let misery guts over there have this boudoir all to himself. And fellas –’ he paused to ram the message home ‘– as I said, it’s shades of grey here. Just keep the guys on the missions we get from higher. We can’t afford to be judge or jury out here. We’re just the blunt instruments of the state. Cheer up! At least we don’t have to think!’ The troop leaders filed out of the room. Frenchie waited for their low, excited story-swapping to disappear down the corridor and looked over to Jason. ‘You hear all that, Jase?’

‘Yeah. What a cluster.’

‘I know. I hope I wasn’t too hard on them, but you know what they’re like. When they’re that junior their moral compasses are so sensitive they make a Jesuit look like Jessica
Rabbit. Puritans, all of them. Just like the Taliban. Now there you go; if it’s irony you’re looking for, there you have it. And I bet you the boys have found out already about the gang rape. Jesus Christ. Well I for one can’t wait to get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.’

It was late the next evening, and 3 Troop were in a compound a hundred metres away from the one they’d been in the previous day, now with the REST. They lined the wall, peering over at the activity around the IEDs, which were about to be destroyed by the ATO. The militia were outside the compound, keen to see the explosion from as close as possible. Tom and Solly had long given up trying to look after them.

The ATO was lying over the second IED that Tom had marked, having prepared a circuit that would blow both of the devices simultaneously, and after putting the finishing touches to it he got up, dusted down his trousers and walked over to the two Mastiffs that had brought the
Brimstone
team down. Staff Sergeant Hotchkiss was a short man, a career-long bomb-disposal expert with a cleft chin, an easy if introspective manner and yellow teeth and yellow fingernails, who reminded Tom of the kind of person back home who would come and get rid of rats or mice.

He prepared his trigger and signalled a thumbs up at Tom, who was standing on a crate looking over the compound wall. ‘Ten seconds, lads,’ shouted Tom, who jumped off the crate and stood against the wall next to Jesmond and put his fingers in his ears – only halfway though; he wanted to hear how loud the bang would be. The seconds passed, and then even with the refraction of the wall the air shot out from Tom’s lungs as the device blew. The explosion was so much longer than the RPG blast had been, a great reverberating
boom as opposed to a quick crack. It almost felt friendly, a great big enveloping haymaker as opposed to the sharp jab of industrial explosives. Tom walked through the gate to look at the damage. A dust cloud was now dispersing, fifty metres up in the air. The ATO walked nonchalantly over to admire his art and whistled to Tom.

Tom followed the yellow spray-painted safe lane marked from the Mastiffs to where the two devices had been. Behind the two craters was the compound with the orange and blue gate. Hotchkiss was chomping on some gum and standing between the craters, each about two metres in diameter. All the dust had now settled, and they looked as though they had been there for centuries, like meteorite strikes on the moon.

Hotchkiss grinned. ‘Well there you go, Tom. That’s two less in this shithole. Only another five thousand to deal with. Nasty fuckers these ones. That first one had an anti-lift device on the pressure plate as well. Pretty fucking good, I’ve got to say. Ain’t seen handiwork as good as that before out here. Not even in Sangin, where they know their stuff. I mean, not Northern Ireland good, but still pretty damn hot. I got a lot of good int as well – DNA, eksetera, that kind of shit.’ He motioned to a clear plastic bag that held the pressure plates and battery packs that he’d disconnected before blowing the main charges.

‘Christ. Thanks, Staff. What was the second one like? How close was the pressure plate to the main charge?’

‘About a foot away from it. You say you were mucking about near it yesterday? Well, you were fuckin’ lucky, I gotta say. I mean, what was that one, about 10 kg? Yep, would have ruined your fuckin’ day, that’s for sure.’

‘Dead?’

‘Depends. Both legs at least. But it didn’t blow, Tom, so forget about it.’

Tom didn’t mind being called by his first name by Hotchkiss. The ATOs could behave almost as they wanted. There were stories of them squaring up to colonels. Everyone knew that their job was the most dangerous around and treated them slightly like rock stars. When they had first arrived in Bastion, and he, Jason and Clive had been having a coffee in the Naafi one evening, they were amazed when an ATO walked in and everyone in the room stopped and stared at him, before about eight people got up and offered to buy him a brew.

Tom, despite himself, was more amused by his escape than afraid. ‘Well, someone must be looking out for me. Fingers crossed they keep doing it.’ He offered his hand and the ATO shook it. ‘Well, Staff, thanks for today. I can’t promise you a proper drink, but what about a brew and some scoff back at SHQ?’

‘Sounds good, let’s do one.’

And so they began their move back northwards to the militia building, the huge Mastiffs trundling ahead of those walking. Tom looked back at the craters, again struck by the red glow that settled on the area at dusk. He glanced at the orange and blue gate, now ajar, of the compound they had been in the day before and noticed a shadowy figure peering out. Tom raised his rifle to look more closely through the sight. The figure was dressed in black, with a white
dish-dash
around his face. He raised his hand, very slowly waved it at Tom as though mocking him and then disappeared behind the gate. Tom frowned and took his rifle out of his shoulder. Whoever it was, the figure was the only Shah Kalay local he had seen all day. He turned back and carried on walking.

The next day Hotchkiss and the REST were called away to another task in Musa Qala while the squadron continued to patrol the village. The troops’ AOs were shifted clockwise around the village so they could get a feel for its different parts. Tom found the place more and more eerie as the days passed. They barely saw any locals at all, and if they did it was only snatched glimpses of them scurrying behind doors as the British soldiers and the militia appeared. The militia continued as they had started: wild, undisciplined, late, rude. One of them was caught by Brennan trying to steal a box of grenades from the back of a Mastiff. Another was found on the roof of the main building during the third night, flashing a torch towards the village. Frenchie told the troop leaders that they had to be prepared to react to the militia suddenly turning on them, either in a premeditated attack or in a drugged-up moment of fury at some minor altercation. The interpreters agreed with this warning; Solly had never trusted the militia since the start of the op. At first, Tom thought Solly simply looked down on the provincial Helmandis but soon realized he was afraid. Tom was starting to feel uneasy as well.

On the final night, news came over from battle group that a rogue policeman in Kajaki had shot and killed two American soldiers. The story rippled through the boys like every other tale of disaster from elsewhere in theatre, but this time with added piquancy brought by living with the militia. The
atmosphere, if not yet poisonous, was febrile. They couldn’t wait to leave.

That night a half-moon shone over the village as Dusty shook Tom awake at 0200 to go on stag up in the tower. ‘Sir, wake up.
Stag
. Sorry!’

Tom whispered jokingly, ‘Corporal Miller, don’t apologize when you wake someone up for stag. All the sorries in the world won’t stop the bloke being woken up from hating you for ever.’ Tom had been only dozing anyway. It was still too hot to sleep the whole night through, and he had been lying there looking up at the stars in his shirt, rolled-down sleeves his only concession to the slightly cooler night air. He put on his Osprey and helmet, both still damp with sweat, picked up his rifle and climbed the ladder at the side of the tower, where he found Jesmond scanning the village through a night sight next to the gimpy.

‘Evening, Corporal Jesmond. Nice night for it.’

‘I dunno, sir. This place is fucking weird. There’s just something about it.’

‘How do you mean?’ Tom looked out, the moon capturing in precise detail all the compounds as far as he could see, picking them out against the white sand and midnight-blue shadows.

‘I dunno, boss – I mean sir – just everything. We ain’t seen no fucking locals, and the militia are just fucking weird; they freak me out. And listen.’

Tom strained his ears. ‘What for? I can’t hear a thing.’

‘Yeah, exactly. Nothing. In every other Afghan village I been to on Herrick 6 – ask the sarge as well; he’ll say the same – in every village there was always stuff happening at night. Farmers going to look after crops cos it was the coolest time of day; dogs barking – not loudly or very often – but
there was always a bit of noise through the night. Here though, there’s fuck all. It’s like a ghost town. I reckon half these compounds aren’t lived in. It’ll have a lot to do with these crazy militia, sir. They’re fucking evil.’

‘Yeah, well, I agree with you. But we’re off tomorrow, and then we can forget all about these maniacs and start the joys of taking over the wagons. Before you know it, when we’re stuck into our umpteenth set of
vehicle docs
, you’ll all be wishing you were back here. Hey, look at that.’

Far to the east, over Loy Kabir, illumination shells cracked open as a firefight started. Faintly, very faintly, but accentuated by the unbroken night nearer them, Tom and Jesmond could hear the low beat of gimpys being fired and the crack of
illum
as the artillery fired off salvo after salvo. It looked beautiful, and they watched it and forgot all about Shah Kalay until Jesmond went to go and wake Ellis to take over from him. Tom sat on the roof, momentarily alone, and wondered about Cassie – where she was, what she was doing.

In the morning, the squadron prepared to leave as a column of Mastiffs started out from
BGHQ
to come and pick them up. As a parting shot, Frenchie sent 3 Troop south and 1 Troop north to show a bit more presence and pick up any final int. Clive went back up north, and Tom retraced his route south to the IED site, with the now familiar drill of immaculate patrolling from the lads and the militia mincing and smoking on the flanks.

The militia boy was up to his usual tricks, though this time with a pink rose in his AK, not a red one. He kept on coming up to the boys and stroking their faces, picking on Davenport in particular. His colleagues found it hilarious; the lads, who had found it amusing a couple of days ago, were now bored rigid by him. He was wearing more make-up than normal today, and his fringe, dripping with gel, was combed down to
cover one eye. His perfect white teeth, unusual for an Afghan, shone between sickly red lips. Tom thought he was grotesque, almost like a whore from a painting by Breughel.

When they arrived at the craters they kept their distance from the immediate area and took up fire positions in a long line to Tom’s left and right. It was only 0930 and already boiling hot. Tom could tell the boys were losing patience. Even Trueman and Jesmond, usually razor sharp and motormouthing banter at each other, were sullen.

Frenchie came up over the net: ‘Hello, One Zero, Three Zero, this is Zero Alpha. Collapse back to my location now. Blizzard callsigns twenty minutes out. Acknowledge over.’ Tom looked to the east, where he could see the pinpricks of the Mastiffs in the distance, the column raising a great cloud of dust.

Just as they prepared to leave, a pickup truck appeared behind them and joined the gaggle of militia sitting smoking under the shade of a tree. Evidently it was someone to impress because the boy ran over to the craters and jumped into one, shouting anti-Taliban slogans that Solly translated for Tom. The lads didn’t pay him any attention, and Tom only started to take any interest himself when the boy left the craters and ran at the orange-and-blue-gated compound, screaming at it.

‘Solly, what the fuck is going on?’ said Tom, his neck prickling.

Solly, bored, replied, ‘Oh, usual stuff, boss. He’s just saying that the guys in that compound are Taliban cowards. Saying that they planted the bombs that we blew up the other day.’

‘I don’t like this. Get him back. Now.’

Solly started shouting at the boy to get back. He was now kicking the gate and jumping around in front of it, completely lost in trying to impress his friends, who were howling
with laughter. Tom seemed to hear every bit of noise now flushing away from the area and swirling into the boy, whose screamed insults and boot clanging on the corrugated metal were then erased by the explosion that suddenly flung him five metres in the air and blew the gate off its hinges into the compound.

‘CONTACT! CONTACT IED!’ screamed Tom.

Miller, who had been lying prone, scanning the area with his GPMG, rolled over, dug into his trouser pocket for a pack of cigarettes and lit one. ‘Stupid cunt,’ he said, louder than he meant to, as he took a drag from it.

Tom stood rooted to the spot, not knowing whether to go and help or stay put. In the corner of his eye he saw the pickup truck drive to the front of the compound, some militia get out of it and scrabble through the dust to find the boy.
The lads, think of the lads!
He screamed out to either side of him, ‘Stay down, stay down, boys. Everyone OK?’

Already Trueman was running around them. He came up to Tom and said breathlessly, ‘No worries, boss; all ours are fine. Get a sitrep up to Zero, tell ’em a green casualty.’

Tom fumbled with the radio pressel-switch and spluttered out, ‘Hello, Zero, this is Three Zero. Contact IED compound 42. No ISAF casualties, suspected militia
Cat A
. Wait out.’ He didn’t know what exactly had happened to the boy, but he had to have been fucked. The militia were now inside the compound; he must have been blown over the wall. Soon they emerged carrying what from Tom’s location fifty metres away looked like a mass of pink pulp with a few blue rags of uniform hanging off it. They heaved it into the back of the pickup truck and with the driver flooring the accelerator screamed past them and back to the HQ building. They didn’t even stop to let Tom know what had happened, and
almost as soon as it had begun the episode was over, and the silence returned, filling the vacuum of the explosion’s echo.

Tom sent as full a sitrep as he could up to Frenchie, reassuring him that none of the boys had been hurt. During the exchange Frenchie interjected, ‘Jesus fuck! Sorry Three Zero for swearing on the net. Very unprofessional. The, er, casualty has just arrived at my location in the pickup truck. I don’t think there’ll be an open casket at that funeral … He is definitely dead … Return best speed to my location now. Tread lightly over.’

‘Three Zero roger. Collapsing now. Out.’ He briefed the troop. ‘Right, lads, collapse from here now. Let’s go back. The boy is dead.’

No one reacted to the news; everyone just seemed relieved to be going. Trueman went up and down like a mother hen checking them one more time, and Tom, not daring to go any closer to the compound, looked through his binoculars into it, through the gap where the gate had been. He could see the corner where four days ago he had walked among the chickens and the goat. They weren’t there any more. Even the straw on the ground had been raked up and removed. It didn’t look as though anyone had been there for years. Clearly the family had moved away, and someone had left the IED for them should they come back. He wondered how many more were in the compound. He did a final scan of the area. Far away to the left he thought he saw a black figure with a white headdress nip behind a compound wall but couldn’t be sure. He turned and led the boys back to the HQ building to get on the Mastiffs and leave Shah Kalay.

The next evening Tom chatted with Frenchie on the HLS in Loy Kabir. Again an orange sunset. It was the first of the heli moves to get the squadron back down to Bastion to take
over the Scimitars. Frenchie, now showered and immaculate again after the five days in Shah Kalay, said, ‘Well, Tom Chamberlain, your first taste of ops. What do you reckon?’

‘I don’t really know what to think. It all seems a bit of a blur, to be honest.’

‘I know. Don’t worry; that was pretty niche stuff out there. It won’t always be as complicated. It’ll get simpler when it gets more kinetic. That’s the rule I use. The more rounds fired, the easier for the boys to cope with it – in a funny sort of way. The trouble with those five days was that no one got off even so much as a shot, and yet it still felt very dangerous, very morally … well, as I said to you guys, grey. And as for having to work with those militia clowns …’ He looked into the distance, dragged on a cigarette and breathed smoke out through his nostrils. ‘Well, let’s just say I hope it’s the last time. Uh oh, here comes trouble.’ He turned away and shouted, ‘Right, lads, hustle up.
Heli
inbound.’

Brennan placed them all in their chalks as the Chinook appeared out of the sun, thrashing the humid air with its double-rotor
whack
. The boys crouched in their lines as it circled the HLS, dropped and gently touched down on the gravel, hurling up dust. Two
chalks
streamed out of it carrying bergens and mailbags, spare parts and an assortment of other junk.

The dust settled, and Tom waved at Jules Dennis, who came off the helicopter after the CO, himself just arrived in theatre to take over the battle group. Jules saw him and ran over while the Chinook was still being unloaded. He shouted at Tom over the noise of the engine, ‘Going already?! What’s it like up here?’

Tom yelled into his ear, ‘Good question. Pretty crazy, to be honest.’

‘That’s how we like it! See you when you get back up
here with the wagons!’ He ran off to join the CO, and the
loadie
on the back of the Chinook signalled for the boys to come on.

They rose as one and ran forward, refilling the old workhorse. Tom was the last one on. He clipped himself into his seat and glanced over at Frenchie in the seat opposite, who gave him a thumbs up. And then his stomach left him as the heli lifted off the ground, dipped its nose and rammed through the dust and heavy air, flinging out white flares either side of it against any RPGs, the heat from its exhausts skewing the ground with a shimmering, hazy film. Tom looked out the tailgate, mesmerized as the heli jinked along, hugging the folds of the earth as it headed into the dying sun.

My tent

A warm night in Camp Bastion

Dear Mum,

I hope this finds everything really well at home, and that Zeppo isn’t missing me too much. I miss him! There are some quite amusing dogs out here. One hangs around the front gate of
FOB
Newcastle. He has terrible scars on his face from the dogfights that the Afghan soldiers put him in. But he’s terribly friendly, and puts his head on your lap and looks at you with huge, sad eyes. The boys have called him Augustus. I hope I see him again when we get back up north in a few days.

It’s been great being back in Bastion this last week. It feels so different from when we arrived on the first night (Oh my God that feels an age away!). Back then you just felt so completely out of your depth, and the worst thing was that as you filed off the plane, getting used to the heat, and the dust that immediately infiltrates your ears and nostrils – which I don’t think I’m ever going to get rid of – a column of guys who are going home pass you in the other direction,
jeering at you and saying things like ‘Here you go, fellas. Six long months – enjoy!’ which was a bit dispiriting. But now we’re the ones who are doing that kind of thing to the new guys, who turn up every day. They are so easy to spot; pale skin, clean uniforms, blank faces thinking what on earth they’ve let themselves in for. Of course we are all wildly unsympathetic.

Loy Kabir is certainly quite amusing! It’s in the most beautiful scenery, almost biblical. The main town’s about five miles from north to south, but only about 800m wide at its widest point, enclosed by the sides of a wadi that must have been carved out of the rock back in the last ice age. The western side of the wadi is pretty shallow, but the eastern one is huge, soaring up to 80m high at one point. And the sunsets are amazing. The dust is so fine and light that it always lingers in the air about six feet up, so when the sun is low it bounces and reflects off these tiny particles to create the most vivid colours in a sort of prism effect. It really is amazing. Everywhere you go here you are constantly amazed by the weird shift from normal colours.

Anyway, all the boys are really well, and they LOVED the brownies you sent out. Lance Corporal Miller – you know, from Gateshead with the badger tattoo – has pleaded that I ask you for some more.

Please send any news at all about what’s happening back home; any gossip at all is awesome! Still don’t know when R & R is going to be, but Sergeant Trueman keeps on making noises about the troop trying to get the Christmas slot. Now that would be good. But don’t get your hopes up.

With all my love, Mum,

Tommy xxx

PS Give Zep a massive hug as well.

PPS Don’t worry, Mum; everything’s all right out here, I promise. And the boys are awesome, like I always said they’d be. Promise you, don’t worry! Tx