The Illuminations (9 page)

Scullion had the menacing look. And he never made anybody tea. ‘While you’ve been lying in your wank-pit, Captain Campbell,’ he said, ‘the boys and I have been arranging a party. A very private party, you understand. Private Lennox here, of the small stature, the ludicrous complexion and the ginger nut, has procured for the purpose of our evening entertainment a bag of the old Afghan sweet stuff.’

‘Dead on,’ Lennox said. ‘Proper clackie, so it is.’ He kicked the cement bag full of weed over the ground to Luke.

Another of the men in the platoon, a Paisley boy, chuckled like a monkey and peered with his mates over the top of a neighbouring tent. ‘Fuck sake, sir,’ he said, ‘you don’t even need cigarette
papers. Just spark up the end of that bag and ye’ll be toking a Superking.’

‘Be quiet, McKenna,’ Luke said.

‘Yeah. Shut it, McCrack-Whore. The captain here’s just getting his shit together after a small constitutional.’

‘That’s a walk, Doosh, not a sleep,’ Flannigan said.

‘Who cares? The captain will be joining the party in jig time. So fuck off, McCrack, and get on with unrolling your farter. And fuck off, Flange, with your
Oxford English Dictionary
.’

They were talking about food. It was usually girls or cars or watches or gaming, but tonight: food. Dooley’s girlfriend sent him packets of Super Noodles and a box of Dairy Milk and it made him glad he was marrying her because she knew the score. ‘Remember American Night?’ Lennox said. He was talking about the Thursday cookouts at Camp Shorabak when the Americans would pitch a scoff-house between the tents. ‘Gatorade. Chicken wings,’ Lennox said.

‘Beef jerky,’ Luke said.

‘That was proper plush,’ said Lennox. ‘You’ve never seen so many fucken rashers. American Night. I fucken love America. They’d have like Hershey bars and M&Ms to kill. Mounds of them. I’m talking chicken and beef motherfucker and those MREs falling off the truck, Meals-Ready-to-Eat. They were super-plush.’

‘And films,’ Dooley said.

‘That’s right. Lethal with the films. I love America. Stuff that isn’t even on at the cinema for like a year.’

‘Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream,’ Flannigan said. ‘Buckets of it. How do they even get that stuff over here?’

‘It was the same in Iraq,’ Dooley said.

After an hour it was dark except for lights in some of the vehicles. The reefer glowed orange as it went round but it was the moon that picked out the ridge and the low buildings along the track. Scullion said a few fires in the distance were oil-drums burning in Ghorak, nothing sinister, just elders playing chess probably or Terry twisting wires and making their wee roadside contraptions. ‘That’s the thing,’ Scullion was saying. ‘You all think you know the terrain ’cause you’ve seen it playing video games.’ Half his face lit up as he smoked the joint and sniggered. ‘But don’t give me points man; give me a body count any day.’

‘Same,’ Lennox said. ‘I came here to get my fucken gun on, not to sit watching hexi-telly.’

‘Speaking of which.’ Dooley bent down and lit the Hexamine tablet on top of the low stove. Quickly it burned blue and the boys all gave a whistle and some of them asked for whoever it was to hurry up with the joint. ‘You’re all going blind,’ Lance Corporal McKenna said as he walked into the camp. ‘Between staring at the hexi-telly and playing with your dobbers, you gimps will soon be applying for invalidity.’

‘We’ll have to join the queue,’ Flannigan said. ‘Behind all the pikey horror-pigs in your family.’

Luke just watched them. Scullion was right. Younger soldiers often thought they knew the battleground; they saw graphics, screens, solid cover and fuck-off guns you could swap. It wasn’t all they saw but it was part of their understanding. They saw cheats and levels, badass motherfuckers, kill death ratios, and the kinds of marksman who jump up after they’re dead. Luke knew they all struggled, from time to time, to find the British army as interesting as its international gaming equivalent. They had run important
missions with their best mate from school and called in air support, over their headsets, from some kid in Pasadena they’d never met, some kid like them in a box-room. They’d beaten the Russian mafia with the help of club-kids from Reykjavik and bodyboarders from Magnetic Island. They’d obliterated the
A-rabs
. They’d topped the board. They’d stayed up all night smoking weed and drinking huge bottles of Coke and ordering pizza before they cleared the civilian areas. The boys wanted action. They wanted something real that would become the highest level, the one they couldn’t reach on their consoles back home.

‘If they’re gonna hit us, I wish they’d just hit us,’ Lennox said.

‘Maybe it saves lives,’ Scullion said. ‘The war in Ireland might have ended sooner if those wee Provo kids could’ve blown up chip shops on screen.’

‘No, sir,’ Flannigan said. ‘It’s recruitment. I’m telling you. That’s the big new thing about it. Gamers are ripe. They’re fucken jumping to get out and stretch their legs. Every guy in this regiment has served time on
Call of Duty
. Every one. Am I right?’

‘Even the educated ones?’

Luke smiled. ‘We started it,’ he said. He took the joint off Lennox and walked up to the wall. A smell of rose petals was coming from the field on the other side. He could make out the furrows and a yellow hosepipe. ‘The MOD has a game now called
Start Thinking, Soldier
.’

‘Yep. That’s right. That’s recruitment,’ Flannigan said. ‘Grab the little fuckers by the thumbs.’

‘There’s always been that sort of thing,’ Scullion said. ‘I loved
Top Gun
. I loved fucken
Full Metal Jacket
. John Wayne before that. Little boys with their eyes wide, wanting a gun. It’s all recruitment.’

‘It’s different,’ Flannigan said. ‘If you’ve got PlayStation then you actually know how to drive a tank. Jesus. I’m not kidding. The manufacturers have changed the controls on the new Challenger to be more like a video console. It’s exactly the same.’

‘Fuck off!’ Dooley said.

‘Look inside one. It’s a fact. Walk up the line now and look inside one, Doosh. I’m telling you.’

‘It’s true,’ Scullion said, taking the joint. ‘The CIA are putting in money nowadays to start up gaming companies.’

‘They used to put it into brainy magazines,’ Luke said. The major looked up and his smile was nostalgic.

‘
Encounter
,’ he said.

Sergeant Docherty had taken off his boots while staring at the hexi-telly. ‘Your hoofs are fucken rank, buddy,’ Lennox said. ‘Jesus, Leper.’

Docherty ignored him. He was never going to endanger his peace of mind with too much talk, yet he caught the officers’ attention after he calmly put down his boot and spat into the fire. ‘You’re talking about simulators,’ he said. ‘I think it’s ironic that the people who flew those planes on 9/11 taught themselves on flight simulators in Florida.’

‘Ooh.
Ironic
,’ Lennox said.

Scullion nipped the end of his tongue with two fingers and offered a bleary laugh in the Leper’s direction. ‘Everything now is pre-experienced,’ he said. The men weren’t listening. Another burst of machine-gun fire went off in the valley and Docherty stood up holding one boot. Scullion then went off at him and nobody could work out why. ‘I can’t stand the way you fucken stink,’ he said. ‘The smell of you … it’s unbearable.’

‘What?’ Docherty said.

‘You,
personally
,’ Scullion said. He was suddenly over at Docherty and right up in his face, swaying in front of him. ‘You reek of sweat, the smell of you, what, it makes me fucking puke.’

‘I wash, just like everybody else, Major. I use deodorant. What do you want me to do?’

‘Nothing. You can’t do anything. You smell vile and it drives me mad.’ The sergeant just stared at him and then he went to arrange the night guard.

‘Put your boots back on,’ Luke said to the others. ‘We’re in a state of alert up here and I want everybody ready.’

‘Papers?’ Lennox said. He was talking to the group and fondling the cement bag and giggling. But the boys ignored him. They were too stoned and they just stared at the low blue flame. Time passed and Scullion stood up and came out with some complicated nonsense. They all wished the stars could lift them up or else come down to play.

‘I’m fucken stoned out my gourd,’ Dooley said.

‘No messing,’ Lennox said.

‘Champion weed,’ said Flannigan.

Luke just watched the soldiers and felt warm for the cold night, or cold for the warm night, lost in some little question about whether the world was round or made of putty. He smiled and felt his mouth go dry and then rootled in his pack for a stick of gum. Flannigan went over to the wall and took a piss then zipped up and looked down the edge of the plateau and saw bursts of green tracer. ‘They’re having a crack down there,’ he said. ‘Eat fire, you bitches! Eat metal, you Terry scum!’

‘Hey, wind it in. You’ll wake the babies,’ Scullion said, stretching out on a groundsheet and putting a bunched-up smock under his head. ‘Five billion stars and we still can’t find the knives and
forks. Get them a bloody knife and fork and they’re yours for life. People will believe in the transition if they feel their lives are getting better and that starts up there.’

‘The major’s talking pish,’ said Lance Corporal McKenna coming into the camp. He had two Afghan soldiers with him. ‘Talking pure pish. That’ll be the top-notch Asian
cigarettees
,’ McKenna added.

‘Drop dead, McCrack-Whore.’

‘Is that the price? Too dear. How about a Bounty bar and a packet of Turkish playing-cards?’

‘Done.’

They smoked and looked.

‘There’s a lot of fire down there.’

‘Who gives? If it’s not coming towards you, you don’t give a fuck,’ McKenna said.

The Afghans spoke not a word and smoked as if the weed was like a fresh supply of oxygen. Their teeth were knackered and they looked sixty but were probably thirty. ‘Dam is good at Kajaki,’ said one of them after his brain fogged over and the high settled in and the mellow scene shaped up like a welcome.

‘That’s right. We don’t give a fuck,’ Dooley said.

Luke examined the red returning fire – red was Allied, green was Terry – and thought of those strings of lights you get at fun-fairs. He followed the dots and thought of Ayrshire nights when the amusement arcade became the brightest thing on the coast. Lennox put
Natural Born Chaos
by Soilwork on his iPod. Usually he just listened with one earphone, but he had mini-speakers in the camp and he jacked the sound up. The guitars went off and everybody smiled, the Afghans too, not like their normal faces but actual smiles breaking out, and Luke stared up and
imagined the tracer fire was firing in time to Lennox’s stupid music. Yes, Luke thought, it was nice to be here with the smell of roses coming over the wall and the men showing the Afghan squaddies how to play air guitar and some of them falling asleep in their boots. Luke lay back giggling when he heard Lennox talking about the girl who was going to marry Doosh. He was rolling out the abuse, saying you’d think Dooley couldn’t pull the ring off a can of Red Bull but it turns out the girl’s as fit as a butcher’s dog.

LET THEM KNOW

The ambush came early that night. Docherty was up and talking to Bosh-Bosh the signals operator and sticking his fingers in a muesli pack when the radio went berserk. ‘Incoming on the crane side. Sniper fire. Over!’ McKenna had been on guard with the two Afghans, but the Afghans couldn’t be found. Luke was half awake. He felt he’d almost known it was coming, as if the enemy had been getting closer all day. His boots were on and he grabbed his helmet and smock and was zipped up in seconds. He never thought about how to distinguish himself in battle; that’s not what good officers think. They think about the men. And then they think about how to obliterate the threat.

Flannigan was tossing sandbags. ‘Over there, over there,’ he kept shouting. Lennox pulled the machine-gun off the wagon and soon they were directing fire into the trees behind the old wall.

‘Lennox, get your fucken helmet on,’ Luke said.

‘Over there!’ shouted Flannigan.

The snipers were few and quite far off but fear of snipers shrinks distance: they are on top of you. They are here. Luke’s eyes narrowed as if they were telescopic and his hands grew jumpy and his instincts made an instant grid of the ground. ‘Against the wall! Dooley, Lennox. Get the gun propped in that corner. Bosh?’

‘Captain?’ the signals man said.

‘What they saying?’

‘Incoming fire from below. Quite heavy. Here’s your set.’ Luke put his helmet on and fixed the earpiece and immediately heard the crackles and the news that several dozen insurgents were under the plateau trying to poke holes in the convoy. The men around him were still shouting and bawling and sending out a great deal of fire. That was the thing you always forgot later – the shouting, the noise, the great thunder of lads in your ears. Gunsmoke was spreading eerily over the land down there like mist on a childhood morning. Luke shivered to see it, the white smoke coming from the poplar trees.