War Torn

Chapter Twenty-four

INSIDE THE VECTORS, THE MEN LOOKED AT EACH OTHER AND HELD their weapons closer as the noise erupted around them and they were thrown around by the vehicles’ frantic manoeuvres.Streaky Bacon thought at first it was raining outside. Then he wondered if maybe someone was throwing money at them. Finally he realized it was raining rounds. Without warning he felt waves of nausea running through his body. He caught sight of Binns’s face, blanched white, and he realized that Binman felt like throwing up too.So this was it. A real fire fight against a real enemy. Streaky had played Call of Duty 4 often and well; he’d impressed his instructors at Catterick and if anyone had asked him what he was looking forward to in Afghanistan apart from rapping he would have said fighting.Since arriving he’d been on patrol and he’d heard the other lads’ stories and knew that men at other FOBs had been under fire daily. He’d been disappointed that so far he’d seen very little action. But now they were being ambushed by a real enemy whose object was to kill them. There was no screen between himself and the action and at the end of this game a dead man didn’t get up to fight again.The Vectors found their defensive positions and stood still. The engines were switched off. The firing intensified and, without the engines to mask it, the sound was more frightening. Binns and Bacon exchanged wide-eyed looks. They tried without success to hide their terror.The machine-gunners were operating at warp speed overhead.‘Section! Rapid fire!’ Sol said and their rate of fire doubled. The enemy responded in kind.Streaky saw Binman’s eyes widen still further. There were dark circles beneath them and below the dark circles Binman’s skin was so white it looked like a mask.Streaky would have liked to put his fingers in his ears but he closed his eyes instead. He could hear the thud of the enemy weapons. On top of one Vector was a GPMG and on the other were two minimis and if you closed your eyes and concentrated there was both a rhythm and a beat to the weapons. Streaky reached into his pouch for the stub of a pencil he always carried around with him and the creased piece of paper he wrapped around it and he tried to find some good flow.

fire liar cry die, retire to a nice quiet . . .

head dead sweat

scared . . .

What rhymed with scared? Did anything rhyme with scared?There was a massive crash and a flash that leaped out of nowhere and for a crazy moment Streaky thought they had been struck by lightning. Then he heard Dave’s voice in his ear. It sounded strangely cool and distant inside Streaky’s hot, sweaty head, as if Dave was directing operations from some beachside bar a huge distance away: ‘Get out and get down.’‘What happened?’ Another disembodied voice.‘RPG hit a corner of the truck and bounced,’ someone said.‘Everyone all right?’‘Get out, now!’ Sol yelled.And then men were piling out of the Vectors, their bodies crouching, slinking around the truck while all around them the orchestra of fire played in the theatre of war.Streaky, waves of nausea running up and down his body, got behind the Vector and ducked.

Scared . . . unprepared!That was it. Streaky felt for his pencil. Yes!

I’m scared, I’m unprepared man, for what may lie ahead man . . .He sat down in the dirt and watched rounds bouncing all around the vehicle. It looked as if the ground was cracking. Overhead, the trees were cracking.‘Fucking hell,’ Binman shouted.‘Wish you stayed at Curry’s now?’ Streaky hoped he sounded ice cool but he knew his voice had emerged high and splintered like a kid’s.They crouched down amid the flash and crack and thud of the battle.

Rapid fire, I’m not scared,

No I’m a liar, I’m unprepared

I want to cry, I start to sweat

Mama, I’m still a child inside my head,

Don’t want to show it, don’t want you to know it,

But if I shut my eyes I see me dead . . .