3
Raines picked up the phone from his desk and dialled a number for a house back in Denver. It rang for a while and he waited, aware that it could take some time for the owner of the house to answer.
‘Yeah,’ the answer came eventually.
‘I met the guy today. You know the one?’
‘How did it go?’
‘He’s getting the full tour.’
‘You’re still up there, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t like the idea of working with this guy.’
‘So you said. We’re not in this to make friends. I told you that already.’
‘But it’s not necessary. I mean, for what we want to achieve. You haven’t lost sight of that, have you?’
Raines hated the pleading quality he heard in the man’s voice.
‘I haven’t lost sight of anything. I can see for miles. And this is the way we’re going, so quit whining about it already. You think there’s some other way, something more noble?’
The man on the other end of the line was quiet. Raines pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers.
‘I don’t want to have this conversation again,’ Raines said, angry now. ‘We’ve done it more than once.’
‘Sorry. It’s just that—’
‘Just nothing,’ Raines snapped. ‘This is the way it is. We get this guy on board and we do what’s necessary. After that, we’re outta here. And I’m never coming back to this goddamned country.’
There was a pause on the other end of the line.
‘Is this what they’ve done to us?’ the man asked. ‘To you.’
‘You can get out any time you like. Just say the word.’
‘What happens to me then, Seth? Tell me that. The same thing that happened to Johnson?’
Raines didn’t need to tell him.
‘That’s what I thought.’
Raines wasn’t sure that he could trust the man any more. Wondered if he would have to do something about that.
‘Come see me when you get back, okay?’ the man said.
Raines said that he would and ended the call. He sat quietly for a moment, looking at the framed photograph on his desk. It was a shot of Charlie Company the day after they had arrived in Afghanistan.
He picked the photograph up and looked at the faces of the young men who had been in his charge. He counted, for what seemed like the thousandth time, the faces of those who had not come back.
He stopped when he got to Matt Horn’s face – closed his eyes and remembered.
He’s back in that British Land Rover, opening his eyes and choking on the smoke billowing from the ruined front section of the vehicle. The two British soldiers who had been there were gone.
Something sticky clogged up his eyes. He wiped at them, looking down at his hands and seeing his own blood there.
He felt panic start to rise in him, patted himself down and felt that everything was intact. His head throbbed from the concussive blast of the explosion. Didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious.
He figured the device must have been a mine triggered by the front tyre of the vehicle on Matt Horn’s side. It was the only explanation why Raines had survived intact.
He looked at Horn. Not so lucky.
Tonk-tonk-tonk
Bullets impacted the armour of the Land Rover.
Raines looked back, saw that the soldiers in the vehicles behind them were out and returning fire, using their own vehicles for cover. Dirt kicked up around them where bullets hit the ground.
Horn had lost most of his right leg and was bleeding heavily from the wound. His right arm hung limp by his side, the sleeve of his uniform in tatters and blood staining what little cloth was left.
His left foot was a mangled mess.
Horn watched Raines, his eyes blinking and breaths coming in short gasps.
Andy Johnson was in shock beside Horn, his eyes wide: staring at the female lieutenant opposite him.
Raines turned to look at her and saw that her helmet had been split in two by a piece of shrapnel. Maybe a part of the vehicle shorn loose by the explosion. The shrapnel had done the same to her head. Raines looked away.
Tonk-tonk-tonk-tonk
Have to get out of here.
Raines got up and went to the rear door. Couldn’t get it open. The armour had warped in the blast preventing the doors from opening. He kicked at them, made a little daylight. Kicked again.
He heard the whoosh of a rocket-propelled grenade, flinched instinctively. The explosion was loud and he saw that it had landed twenty metres in front of the Snatch immediately behind them.
He grabbed his rifle, forced the butt into the gap between the door and the frame of the vehicle and used his weight to lever it. The door resisted and then burst open. Raines staggered forward, almost falling out. Dirt kicked up in the ground and he heard the crackle and fizz of bullets in the air.
Johnson was still staring at the lieutenant so Raines stepped in front of him and grabbed his face with both hands.
‘We need to move, soldier,’ he shouted. ‘Now.’
Johnson looked at Raines. Looked out the open rear door at the soldiers behind them.
He turned back to Raines, nodded and grabbed his rifle.
‘Give me cover fire while I get Horn out of here, okay?’
Raines realised that he was shouting everything at the top of his voice to be heard over the din.
Johnson stepped down out of the Land Rover, turned to go around it to get cover, and started firing.
Raines shuffled back to Horn, grabbed him by his body armour under both arms and heaved him to the back door. When he got there, one of the soldiers from the other vehicles ran up and helped take the weight as Raines pulled Horn free. Raines knew that they were exposed to the enemy now but there was no choice. He couldn’t leave Horn in there.
They managed to get Horn around behind the vehicle and sat him on the road, his blood leaking out rapidly and staining the ground.
Raines pulled his belt free and wrapped it around what was left of Horn’s right thigh in a makeshift tourniquet. Horn’s eyes fluttered and he shouted out in pain. Raines pulled the belt as tight as he could and was pleased to see the flow of blood ease. Still, he knew that they needed a medevac as soon as possible if the boy was to have any chance of surviving.
‘Where’s the support?’ Raines shouted at Johnson as another RPG whooshed above them and exploded in the desert.
‘There’s an Apache on its way,’ Johnson replied, still firing. ‘It’ll torch those f*ckers.’
Raines reached into one of the pockets in his trousers, pulled out his morphine needle and stuck it into Horn. He motioned for Johnson to give him his morphine too and gave Horn the second dose. Horn’s face muscles slackened as the drug took effect.
Raines stood, went to where Johnson was standing and joined him in firing at the enemy position.
An Apache gunship swooped overhead and its thirty-millimetre cannon roared. The pilot of the helicopter fired two missiles at the enemy position and sprayed them again with his cannon. Raines stopped firing his weapon and watched in awe at the devastation the Apache wreaked.
A bullet ripped into his combat trousers and went straight through the flesh and muscle of his leg, clipping his shin bone on the way.
Raines fell, more bullets thudding into the dirt around him.
Above, the Apache’s cannon continued to roar.