2
After their brief discussion, Raines waited in the main building while one of the men from the office showed his passenger around the rest of the compound.
He walked to a door at the back of the living area and went through it into his own private office space. He sat at the sparse desk and breathed deeply, feeling more tired than he ever had.
The drive up the track to the compound brought back the memories again: him and the other soldiers inside the Land Rover as it pitched and rolled over the rutted dirt tracks that passed for roads in Afghanistan.
They had waited at the site of the opium field for less than an hour, the splash of pink flowers almost surreal in the washed-out haze of the desert.
The soldiers kept mobile, not resting in one location and aware of their surroundings. Never straying too far from the track around the field for fear of wandering into an active minefield. Raines had seen two men from his platoon with traumatic amputations from mine blasts. They had survived, thanks to the swift treatment they received from the medevac team, but their lives would never be the same again.
After the local ANP contingent had set fire to the field and the blaze had well and truly taken hold, they went back to the Land Rovers. The temperature was now close to forty degrees and was taking its toll on them.
They took up the same positions on the rear bench seats as before. No one said anything as the Land Rover moved off, all of them watching the dark smoke rising from the poppy fields into the clear, blue sky.
They drove back through Lashkar Gah and Raines was again struck by how primitive the place was, although he had been there many times before. The buildings were almost invariably made from mud and bricks and the roads were no better than the track they had followed from the camp.
There were no women to be seen anywhere and men with lines etched in their faces watched the convoy pass by. Occasionally a group of children would run alongside, shouting and waving at the soldiers.
Horn turned in his seat and waved back at one particularly enthusiastic boy who kept pace with them for a good fifty metres. Johnson shook his head.
‘What?’ Horn asked, annoyed.
‘Nothing,’ Johnson said.
Horn stared at him.
‘Even after being here this long you can still relate to these people?’ Johnson said after a moment.
‘What else is it that we’re supposed to do?’
Raines sensed the animosity between the two men, but did not interfere. Soldiers have to learn by getting their hands dirty. Or bloody. And aggression was part of the job description. But he admired Horn’s resilience – wasn’t such a bad kid for a soft, middle-class boy who volunteered to go to war. Raines thought, not for the first time, that if his own son had lived past his sixth birthday he would have been proud if he had turned out like Matt Horn.
They passed through a more modern-looking part of town and the lieutenant asked why the rest of it was so primitive.
‘This is Little America,’ Raines told her. ‘We were over here in the sixties. Built some stuff and headed home again.’
‘No one ever stays in places like this for long,’ she said.
‘Is that what your job is about?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Trying to make it right with the locals. I mean, build their trust. Tell them we’ll be here till everything is all right. That it will be different this time.’
‘Yes. Don’t you have something similar?’
‘We do,’ Raines said, smiling.
A look of annoyance passed over her face.
‘And there’s something wrong with that in your mind, Sergeant?’
‘No. I mean, I recognise that the intention is pure.’
‘But …’
Raines shifted in his seat and turned to face her. He noticed up close how young she was – like a lot of the officers over here in both armies. Probably straight out of officer school and posted here with no in-theatre experience.
‘But it doesn’t help us much,’ Raines went on. ‘When we call in fast air support to drop a couple of five-hundred pounders on a suspected Taliban compound and go in to clean up the mess only to find children’s body parts and screaming women.’
The lieutenant’s eyes narrowed.
‘That’s what happens in a war,’ Raines went on. ‘We can’t avoid civilian casualties. How do you explain that to their mothers and fathers?’
‘We can only do what we can. But we still have to try. Or don’t you believe that?’
Raines turned from her and saw that Johnson was watching their exchange intensely.
‘I wanted to know what you thought of it,’ Raines said.
He looked back at the lieutenant, saw that she was staring at him, trying to figure out if he was testing her.
‘It’s a pity your tour is up so soon, Sergeant,’ she said.
‘Why is that?’
‘I think maybe I’d enjoy debating the finer points of our strategy with the local population some more.’
Raines saw a smile twitch at her lips.
‘She got you there, Sarge,’ Horn said, laughing.
He turned to speak to Horn and the front of the Land Rover disappeared, metal screeching as the IED in the road detonated under the vehicle.
Raines had a split second to see Horn’s right leg torn from him just above the knee and then everything went dark.