Andy McNab - War torn

Dave didn't reply. The Vector stood still, ticking in the heat, smelling of fuel, clouds of dust circling around it. The firing which had met their arrival in the Green Zone had stopped. Everything had stopped. There were no kids gathering in a cluster to stare at them, no old men in the nearby fields holding their aching backs as they straightened, no small cars bulging with big Afghan families travelling in the other direction. There was only silence.

Dave wondered if he should feel stupid. He had just halted a patrol which had orders to keep moving. He had done so on a hunch. He had no evidence for his suspicions.

The driver was looking at him. 'You all right, Sarge?'

Dave stared ahead. It seemed to him that, between their stopping place and the rise where the bridge began, the dirt of the track lacked the patina of daily use.

He reported: 'Suspicious ground at vulnerable point ahead.'

He looked hard at the track. If anyone was waiting to press a button at the other end of a command wire or a mobile phone, their only vantage point would be just inside the jungle on either side of them. There was visibility from nowhere else. He sent men down to search through the greenery. While they did so he leaned forward and stared at the track.

'I think I see something ahead,' Dave said. 'Have the engineers got mine detection equipment?'

There was a groan from the engineers.

'I take it that means no?' Dave listened to the sound of his own voice. It sounded rough, as though he was still bumping along the rutty track.

'No, we've got it, Sarge. Only we don't have 4Cs any more.'

'And?'

'We've got an Ebinger but we're not certain how to use it; we haven't been trained on them yet.'

'I'm sure the combined brains of 1 Section can help you work that out,' Dave said. 'Quickly.'

The men came back to the Vectors having found no trace of anyone close enough to both see and detonate a device. Dave began to have doubts. Then he heard the boss.

'Our interpreter has just picked up some enemy chatter which indicates there could be an IED…'

'Got the detectors sorted?' Dave demanded. 'Come on! We're sitting ducks here! Just because no one's firing at us doesn't mean they've all gone home for a nice cup of tea.'

The engineers dismounted and Dave sent men to cover them on the ground. The engineers stood arguing over how the machine worked but at last one of them put in an earpiece and began sweeping his way slowly forward.

Dave watched him. He had a sudden memory of a beach on the south coast of England soon after he had met Jenny. The first time they'd spent the night together, they'd gone down to the sea before dawn and watched the sun come up across the ocean. They'd lain close, tired but relaxed, on sand which retained the coolness of the night. Then, suddenly, they were surrounded. Old men with metal detectors were sweeping the beach at first light for treasure.

Dave sighed and turned from the memory. It had no place in this hot, hostile world.

The engineers advanced slowly along the track. About five paces before the bridge, they stopped. The first passed the machine and earpiece to the second. He nodded. They began to dig with the machine, brushing the sand gently from side to side.

'Got something?' Dave was hot and tense. Were they being watched? Or were the enemy firing positions right behind the Vectors, waiting to prevent their escape?

After a few more minutes, the engineers shook their heads. 'Just an old bolt buried in the track.'

'Can we come back now?' asked the younger engineer.

'Nope,' Dave said.

'There's probably a hundred old bolts between here and the bridge. They probably dropped them when they built it.'

'Move ahead with caution,' Dave said. 'The bolt might have been dropped. Or it might have been planted there.'

The engineers shrugged. It didn't seem so surprising to them that an old bolt was buried in the track. But Dave had heard enough stories in Bastion to know that the Taliban could make men lazy with false readings so that by the time they reached the big one they were completely unprepared.

After a few more paces, he saw that the engineers had detected something else.

'Another fucking bolt,' they muttered, looking around anxiously.

'Careful, careful!' Dave knew they felt vulnerable out there, despite the cover. He could see that they were digging less cautiously now, with the perfunctory attitude of men ordered to do an unnecessary job.

The boss said: 'Our interpreter is picking up a lot of chatter from the enemy. She thinks they're close.'

'I'll bet they are,' Dave said.

Suddenly one of the engineers stopped. He pulled the other over to look and they both peered down into the hole. There was a pause and then, simultaneously, they turned back to the Vectors. Dave couldn't see their expressions, but something about the angle of their heads and the tension in their bodies told him all he needed to know.

'OK, get back in the vehicles. Now!'

He reported to the boss: 'They've found the IED ahead.'

'We'll need EOD to clear it,' the boss said.

'We'll need to get out,' Dave said. 'Before the Talis trap us here.'

But it was already too late.

The engineers were nearing the Vectors when the first shots bounced around the vehicles. The men ran the last few paces and jumped aboard as the ambush kicked off. The enemy weapons, including first machine guns and then RPGs, started almost simultaneously. They had been in position. They had been watching. They had been waiting for this order.

The weight of fire was so intense that it would not be safe to drive through it. The boss reported briefly while the drivers realigned the Vectors in a defensive position. Dave only wished they'd stopped further back. He guessed they'd be fighting here for a while and there were better places to do that than under a hundred metres from an IED waiting to explode.

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…