Andy McNab - War torn

He stopped.

'Oh fuck!' said Mal. 'Tell me no!'

'Maybe.' He blew very gently on the earth and saw buried metal.

'Don't mess with maybe,' said Jamie from ground level. He was close to them now.

'We could clear a wider position over your side,' said Binns. 'Then we can pull him over away from this mine.'

Jamie had reached Connor's feet. Binns circled back around his head. He and Jamie worked towards each other, widening the cleared area around the unmoving body when simultaneously they both found something. Two more mines, within a metre of each other. They stopped. They knew this must be the heart of the minefield.

'What a load of shite,' said Jamie. 'We can't move him this way. Or that way.'

'If I have to do mouth to mouth I could just about kneel over there…' said Mal. He reached across from his safe spot and found Ryan Connor's wrist. He felt a very faint pulse.

'He's alive!' he shouted down the field. 'Just!'

'You're not doing anything to him six inches away from an unexploded mine, mate,' said Jamie. 'All we can do is get him onto a stretcher and out of here. Even that's going to be fucking dangerous.'

'There isn't room for four people,' said Binman. He was staring at the bloody mess which was Ryan Connor's body. He remembered how Ryan had flown out from Bastion with him and Streaky and how they had arrived in the FOB and everyone had been looking at the colour of Connor's hair for some reason Binman had never discovered. Ryan's hair didn't look so red now that it was surrounded by the surreal red of his own blood.

'There's not even room for two,' said Jamie. 'Especially if one of them's Angus.'

'I can pick Connor up by myself,' said Angus.

'Yeah, gorilla, but can you pick him up without putting any weight on the ground there, or here, or here?'

'Yeah, I can do it,' said Angus.

'You can't,' Binns told him. 'We didn't come all this way for you and Connor to get blown up.' He spoke as though he had travelled a hundred miles.

Jamie said: 'Two of us can probably do it. We lift him straight out of this area and onto a stretcher over there.'

Binman knew one thing. He would not be lifting Connor.

'I'll take his Bergen,' he said. He was starting to shake. Four men and a casualty were standing or lying within a metre of three mines they knew about and maybe more they didn't. He felt as though all his nerve endings were shredded, like the tree Streaky said had turned into lettuce. Maybe he'd used up all his good luck and there was none left for the near impossible extraction of Ryan Connor.

'We'll have to lift him with his kit on, too fiddly to get it off here,' said Jamie.

Mal and Jamie discussed which of them would help Angus pick up Connor. Finally they agreed that Jamie was in a better position. Mal took Connor's gimpy. Binman followed him back along the mine path.

Binman was aware of all the faces looking at him from the woods as he neared. Embarrassingly, inexplicably, he wanted to cry. But their eyes were drawn away from him. Now that Binns and Bilaal had cleared, Jamie and Angus were attempting to lift the heavy body of Connor and remove it with surgical precision.

'What the hell is going on?' Dave asked Mal as soon as he and Binman reached the edge of the field.

'Three mines. Two on one side and the other by his left shoulder. No room to get his Bergen off, no room for a stretcher. So they're lifting him out and-'

'No!' yelled Dave up the minefield. 'Christ, no, no, no! Are you fucking crazy? Stop right now!'

Binman had just stepped into the woods when the flash of an explosion, bright enough for him to see it without turning around, lit up the world.

WHEN THE PHONE RANG, JENNY GRABBED IT INSTINCTIVELY AND clasped it to her ear. She moved instantly from a dream to awake. She recognized the thickness of the dark in the room: it was the middle of the night. The house was still. There was only one person who would ring at her at this hour.

'Dave? Dave!'

'Jenny. Is Agnieszka.'

There was a pause while the name registered. Agnieszka almost never called. At any time. Let alone the middle of the night.

'Agnieszka! Christ, what's happened?'

She heard a sob at the end of the phone. Then Agnieszka replied. But her English had disintegrated. She spoke too loudly, with the emphasis on the wrong words, the vowel sounds muddled.

'What, Agnieszka? What? I can't understand you…'

'Something not nice happen!'

'But… what?'

'I get text message from I don't know who.'

'From a stranger?'

'Yes.'

Jenny was relieved that the problem was so trivial. Then she began to feel angry. Agnieszka had woken her up at… she glanced at the clock… 2 a.m. To tell her about some text message.

'Well, take no notice, there are shedloads of crazy people out there, Agnieszka. They send random messages to strangers.'

'No, no, no. This one know me.'

'Oh. So what does it say?'

'It say…' Agnieszka started to cry. Her words were choked by tears. Jenny had to ask her to read it three times. Finally on the fourth try, she understood.

'It say: Jamie is dead.'

Jenny was shocked into silence. Her head was filled by the sound of Agnieszka's sobs.

'Christ,' she said at last. 'You've no idea who sent this? Did it come from… how could it have come from… well, none of our boys at the FOB have mobiles, do they?'

Agnieszka was wailing now. Eventually Jenny understood her words.

'It come from Jamie's number!'

Jenny pulled her swollen body upright on the bed so she could concentrate more easily. She bent her legs and the bump banged against them.

'Jamie's phone? Did he leave it behind in the UK?'

'No!'

'But if he took it to Afghanistan he would have handed it in at Bastion. Everyone does.'

Only a high-pitched wail could escape through Agnieszka's tears. Finally she spoke.

'Jenny, don't tell Dave. Please, please don't tell Dave. Don't tell anyone. Promise.'

She sighed into the darkness. 'All right.'

'Jamie give in his phone with other boys. But he have another, I give Jamie another little phone. My old one, to keep private. Sometimes he text me.'

Jenny felt her body tense.

'So… Jamie's been texting you.'

'Listen, he not text army secrets. Just stuff for me, private words.'

Probably every wife in the camp hated the confiscation of their husband's mobile in Afghanistan. Maybe some had argued. Probably a few had suggested taking a secret phone. But the men all knew that using a mobile in that hostile world was opening yourself and your mates up to the Taliban. And surely any wife would have thought her husband's safety was more important than getting a few text messages? Except Agnieszka.

'He never say what they doing or where or anything like that. Just personal things.'

So maybe I'm an idiot, Jenny thought. Maybe all the other wives had given their husbands a secret phone and maybe they all received secret, loving texts. All except the sergeant's wife. Who barely got a call in two weeks, and then it was so rushed it was meaningless. Even though the sergeant's wife was about to have a baby.

But Agnieszka was crying enough for both of them, with huge sobs. Jenny knew what it was like when the sobs felt bigger than you were.

She said: 'So… what do you think has happened?'

'I scared maybe Taliban take Jamie. And maybe kill him. And take mobile and use to text me.' Her words ended on a wail of despair.

'OK,' said Jenny briskly. Her brain, which had not been making its usual quick connections recently, suddenly became an ordered, logical entity again, like one of Vicky's toys where everything snaps into place.

'Does he really carry the mobile around with him? When he leaves the FOB?'