Andy McNab - War torn

'Now just a minute…'

'See, I'm the youngest in my family. I've got all these brothers and sisters and they're much older than me, and they get attacked, they keep their heads down. They're like that Taliban dude we shot. Sitting up in the tree with his weapon wedged there, keeping very quiet hoping we wouldn't notice his fucking legs dangling in front of our faces? That's my family! Keep quiet and it'll go away. But we shot that geezer, didn't we? Keeping quiet doesn't do anything! My family don't know you have to fight people.'

Mal drew breath and Dave was able to interrupt him at last.

'You came here to fight people. You're fighting the Taliban in a professional way as part of a disciplined army sent here by a democratic government-'

But Mal would not let him continue.

'Back home in Wythenshawe, no one knows those words, Sarge! They don't know about democratic and disciplined and-'

'You joined the army to fight and that's what you do out here and that's what you're paid for. You're not paid to take your fights home to Wythenshawe.'

'Sarge, if I didn't go to Jackpot today, I could maybe just go home for a week instead, maybe bring my R amp;R forward and-'

'And make matters worse there? Mal, I can refer this one up the chain if you want me to. And they might say yes. But it would be a mistake. And they wouldn't say yes before we take off in the wagons this morning.'

'But maybe if you ask them now, it could all be agreed by the time we get back.'

'I will if you want. But take my advice and don't do it. Your family's older and wiser than you and they're dealing with it. You're here and your job is to be a soldier.'

'But if I just had a week I could-'

'We all have troubles we'd like to fly home and sort out. But we have to concentrate on doing our job.'

He could not see Mal's face clearly.

'It's terrible what's happening to your family. But you can't do anything from Afghanistan and that's probably a good thing. If you go back and get into a fight, it won't help your family and it won't help you.'

'I dunno,' said Mal.

'You'll have to come to Jackpot, it's too late to change that.'

Mal was silent for a long time.

'Think about it. Let me know if you want me to kick it upstairs. But if you take my advice you'll let your family handle it back at home and you'll do what you came here for.'

Dave heard his voice, strong and sure. He should take his own advice. Only a few minutes ago he'd been considering asking for permission to fly home himself. His thoughts reverted to Jenny again. She had probably already calmed down from that angry, emotional phone call and by now she would be regretting it. So her blood pressure would fall. So she wouldn't have pre-eclampsia any more. And then everything would be OK.

EVERYONE, EXCEPT MARTYN, EMILY AND THE ENGINEERS, HATED Jackpot on arrival. One glance at the flimsy defences made the soldiers uneasy.

'This'll be good in a mortar attack,' they said miserably.

The sangars were solid enough, built up on hesco, but the rest of the perimeter was trench and wire with, in places, sandbag protection. The civilian zone was marked by a low wall of sandbags but they, too, had to use the exposed oil drums for toilets. Except for Emily. She had a small, private area with sheeting around it.

'Can't I use that too?' demanded Martyn.

'No,' said Emily. 'This is the Ladies.'

'I don't want to take a crap in front of everyone in this camp,' Martyn complained to the OC.

'You'll have to,' said Major Willingham, 'unless Emily agrees to share it.'

Otherwise the camp consisted only of a collection of tents and the perimeter wire.

Martyn studied the wire.

'Nick,' he said to the OC. 'Think we could move it about twenty feet to the right? Seems to me that part of our exploration area is just outside the fence.'

The OC said, in a voice that was many degrees lower than the ambient air temperature: 'No, Martyn.'

Martyn burst out laughing.

'Just kiddin' you, Nick!'

The OC did not smile.

The camp sat at the base of the hills which swept up to the huge, looming purple mountains. The hills were to the north and so gave it no protection from the desert sun, which was even more merciless here than at the FOB. A constant hot wind created dust devils, tiny tornados that span purposefully across the desert, through the wire and straight into the camp. In the distance, the Early Rocks rose out of the flat plain like weird and lonely skyscrapers.

The wind distributed the sand everywhere. It got into people's clothes, their tea, their ration packs, their boots, their ears.

Dave and Sgt Somers of 2 Platoon did not keep their men on boil-in-the-bag; they had resolved that every day they would boost morale by cooking something from the ration packs. Dave liked to think he could turn virtually any ration pack into a presentable meal: he'd trained as a cook when he first left school, before he'd been seduced by the army recruitment ads. And he had persuaded Masud to let him take some fresh food and a few spices from the kitchen to Jackpot.

But the men's reaction to his first concoction was unenthusiastic.

'Delicious, Sarge,' they said, digging their plastic spoons into his stew. 'Tastes of sand.'

'Oh shit,' said Dave.

'No, Sarge,' said Finn. 'Sand. That's better than shit.'

'I can sense that you've attempted to include a subtle blend of herbs and spices,' Boss Weeks told Dave. 'But I'm sorry to tell you that the predominant taste is definitely sand.'

'If we had to stay here and eat sand for a long time,' said the OC, who had heard Dave was a good cook and so was eating with 1 Platoon, 'our teeth would be ground down to almost nothing. That's precisely what happened to the Native Americans. Ancient skulls show that, by the end of their lives, desert dwellers had no teeth left.'

The men looked at him miserably.

'We could just swallow without chewing,' suggested Jamie. 'That way we'd fuck up our intestines but we'd keep our teeth.'

Dave laughed at that. It was relieved laughter because this was the first time he'd heard Jamie speak since they'd left Sin City. He walked around looking so miserable that his eyebrows were knitted together. It could only be something to do with Agnieszka.

The soldiers were soon bored. All they could do was keep watch and stare in disbelief at the wild enthusiasm of the engineers for this desolate and empty place. Even Emily stalked around the camp in her sensible shoes, rubbing her hands and smiling happily.

'I told you. This is R amp;R for us, while the civvies do a bit of work for once,' said Finn, dealing another hand of cards to a group of lads from 2 Platoon, who he assured Dave just played for cigarettes.

Angus preferred to be busy. He volunteered for any job going, helped the engineers carry their kit and did other people's stag for them while they slept or played cards.

He stood up in the tower surveying the endless flatness of the desert. He liked to stare at the Early Rocks in the distance; they looked like something that had been there since the beginning of time. He also kept an eye on the antics of the civilians. They'd brought a lot of equipment in separate wagons, including some kind of drill.

'They're never drilling for fucking oil already!' he said to Streaky, who was on stag with him.

Streaky yawned. He was not interested in the oil exploration. 'I am so fucking bored. At least back at Sin City there was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing and stuff in the town to look at. I even got to like that geezer calling from his tower every five minutes.'

'Moslems have to stop what they're doing and pray about twenty times a day,' said Angry knowledgeably. 'That geezer's telling them to get down the mosque.'