Apache

Trigger’s expression still didn’t change. His clear blue eyes burned with a peculiar intensity. ‘Look, I just want you to know that I’m backing all four of you – no matter what happens next.’

There was a silence. I was bewildered. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The CO has just got in from Kandahar on a Lynx,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you up top.’

He turned and walked away.

20. IN COMMAND: THE VERDICT

Carl signed in the aircraft while I went to wash Mathew’s blood off my hands.

I sat on the lid of a missile box in the bright sun and poured water from a jerrycan. I couldn’t bring myself to use the Portaloo handscrub.

I tried to fathom what the hell was going on. It couldn’t have been about our fuel levels – Trigger would have understood, given the circumstances. I had never seen him that bothered before. And we weren’t expecting the CO in Bastion today…

I joined Carl inside the Groundies’ hangar. We’d been delayed on the flight line while a technician examined my broken FLIR camera, so the others had gone ahead. We were both locked in thought. Okay, we’d broken a few rules that day. But anything we’d done wrong had been whilst trying to do something right. Our problem was that the road to hell was paved with good intentions.

The downside of the rescue didn’t bear thinking about. If both Apaches had gone down on the way out of the fort, we’d have been close to double figures dead. The very thought of that would have seriously scared a lot of important people, and the four of us had pushed hardest for the mission throughout. After twenty-two years in the army I knew only too well that a little hindsight could be a very dangerous thing. The more I thought about it, the more I understood what Trigger must have meant. Our actions were now going to be judged in the cold light of day, and it could go either way.

I swung open the door of my locker. The word ‘angel’ was still scrawled across the inside of it in black marker as a reminder not to leave home without her. Carl was absorbed in his own little ritual: he pulled a letter from his wife out of a drawer and gave it a kiss. My angel deserved one too, after this morning. I tore open the Velcro seal of my right breast pocket and dug in my hand. I could only feel my war ID card.

‘Mate, take a look in here and see if you can find my angel, will you?’

He peered in and shook his head. We scanned the smooth concrete floor beneath our feet, but there was no sign of her there either. My throat went dry. How would I tell Emily? She’d think it was an omen; that I’d die on my very next flight.

‘This is no joking matter,’ Carl said. ‘We might need her when the CO gets hold of us…’

He put a hand on my shoulder. His expression told me that he knew this was no time to piss about. ‘Shoot a basket for the brews?’

I hesitated for a moment, re-checking my pocket. Still nothing.

‘Let’s do it,’ I replied.

It was another of our sacred post-mission rituals, and nobody was going to stop us doing it. Carl won.

He drove us up to the JHF Ops tent in the Land Rover he had parked by the hangar five hours earlier. Billy and Geordie were already there, and neither could bring themselves to meet my eye. So they’d picked up the vibe too. Nobody in the room was saying much.

Trigger walked in. The look on his face was completely impenetrable. I had a bad feeling about this. ‘Can you four go through to the back, please? I’ll be in with the CO shortly.’

We made our way out of the tent and into the secure Tactical Planning Facility.

‘Make us that brew, Piss Boy,’ Carl said, in a bid to break the tension.

‘Yeah, make that a double, Piss Boy,’ Geordie chipped in. ‘You were also last back from the fort.’

But that was the end of the banter. I made four coffees in silence. Trigger reappeared as I handed them round, followed by the Commanding Officer. Trigger closed the door behind them. It was the first time I’d seen Colonel Sexton since his arrival in Afghanistan two weeks earlier.

‘Welcome to Bastion, sir.’

The temperature in the room dropped by ten degrees.

‘It’s the second time I’ve been here.’

The four of us sat in a row on the comfy seats. Trigger pulled up a couple of hard plastic chairs and he and Colonel Sexton took their places opposite us. As always, the Colonel looked freshly scrubbed. His dark, perfectly parted hair gleamed under the neon lights.

‘Right, gentlemen…’

He paused to eyeball each of us individually. I suddenly knew how those poor bloody apprentices must feel when Sir Alan Sugar was about to tell them: ‘You’re fired…’

‘What the FUCK were you doing?’

We stared at him in stunned silence.

‘You have advertised to the wider army a capability we do not have. People are now going to expect that this is a service we offer…’

He slowed right down, making every word sound like a threat.

‘I’m not sure that you are aware of the gravity of your actions. People are going to come down on us from a great height. The JHC and the Directorate are going to want some answers.’