Andy McNab - Recoil

A couple of hundred years ago, the Chinese were as famous for repairing telegraph wires in America's Midwest as they were for inventing gunpowder and money. The method they used was called the Chinese pigtail. All I had to do was knot the first two wires as I would a shoelace, then push up the two ends and twist them together. If it was strong enough to take the weight and drag of a telegraph wire suspended between two poles, it was good enough for me.

Sam was hollering from the tents behind me. I couldn't hear exactly what he was saying, but I could guess. Something along the lines of 'Get a fucking move on!' Only without the 'fuck'.

I fumbled about, not letting myself be rushed, and finally got the two cables connected. I tested the joins and dropped them into the mud, then anchored the new cable round another rock and carried on shuffling backwards, towards the sound of Sam's voice.

The sun was now only just visible above the horseshoe, having lost its fight to burn completely through the clouds. The place the ANFO had been mixed was now in shadow, a scrapyard of empty drums, discarded sticks and torn fertilizer bags. A layer of red dust and a dozen or so cigarette butts floated on top of the one drum of diesel that remained.

I climbed through it, and up the track towards the tents. There was now a constant rumble of thunder beyond the river. Sam yelled an incomprehensible order and men stirred in the sangars.

He was on the edge of the knoll, pointing at the second fire trench. 'I want it here, with me.' I lifted and flicked the firing cable like a hose, to manoeuvre it round the front of the trenches. I risked it getting trodden on or kinked if I left it draped along the track.

I stopped Sam as he started to walk away.

'Where is she?'

He pointed to the first tent. It was dark inside the dirty, sagging canvas but I could see movement. Her face appeared briefly at the flap, and I was treated to the most fleeting half-smile before it disappeared back inside.

Sunday was still tethered next door, surrounded by sheets of paper. I guessed they must now be covered with drawings of stick men firing guns into stick-man huts, and more stick men lying down with very real blood pouring out of them.

Crucial bobbed up and down like a gravedigger as he grabbed RPG rounds from a stack at ground level and shifted them into the third trench.

Sam's had about ten RPG rounds in it, stored with the pointy bits facing up and a launcher in the corner, loaded, ready to fire. The bottom of the trench was lined with logs to keep the weapons mud-free. The RPGs were the closest we had to artillery, and that was why they were sited here. They wouldn't be very effective if fired directly, because we didn't have the fragmentation rounds that would throw out shrapnel with a kill area of more than a hundred metres. The anti-armour rounds we did have were designed to punch forward into armoured vehicles. They were killing American tanks in Iraq right now, by being fired in volleys. The weapon was easy to use, and very accurate if fired close up. The insurgents had been getting within eighty metres of their target before firing. The first round took out the outer plate of the tank's reactive armour. The second, aimed at the same impact point, penetrated the remaining layers of armour and fucked up everyone inside.

Here, if they were fired directly at the targets, the rounds would hit the mud and the main force of the explosion would be sucked into the ground. Sam was going to make use of their soft detonation. They self-detonated after about five seconds, and the further back they were fired from, the better the chance of them exploding above the ghat-munchers and killing them with an airburst.

If we were attacked from the high ground, they could be fired over the valley lip and would explode as they started to come down into the dead ground the other side. Not a good day out for anyone on the way up.

Standish and Bateman were hunched over the cooking pot. The fire was long dead, but there was still some congealed gunk in the bottom of the pan, and they were digging in like they hadn't eaten for days. Sam stood close by, not bothering to disguise his disdain.

For the first time in history, Standish was looking rough. His hair was flat against his head, and his face, neck and arms all had long thin cuts from running through the bush after the contact. They were both in shit state, covered with mud and soaking wet. Flies buzzed round their heads, not much caring whether they got to the food, the sweat or the blood.

The cicadas were going ape-shit now that it was getting darker. The only other ambient noise came from the river and the still-distant rumbles of thunder. No firing from the LRA, none of our guys making noise, nothing even from the Nuka mob in the dead ground.

Standish and Bateman weren't the only ones who were hungry and thirsty. I approached the huddle, the plunger still over my shoulder.

I lifted one of the four jerry-cans now by the fire. The nozzle was caked with rice from the last drinker, but that didn't bother me. The sterilization tabs made it taste like the council swimming-pool I used to piss in when I was a kid, but I wasn't worried about that either. I gulped hard and long, feeling the water travel all the way down to my stomach, and only stopped when I ran out of breath.

Sam waited for me to finish. 'Take it with you.'

Standish kept scooping rice from a burned tin can and shoving it into his face with the palm of his hand. He was a long way from the Guards Club. 'It was the skinny surveyor who went down, right?'

I lowered the jerry-can again, careful not to spill a drop. 'Yep.'

'We found the fat boy after we crossed the river. They'd taken his arms and legs off.' His face contorted with anger. 'All you had to do was get them out of here. What the fuck did you think you were doing? They're expensive to replace, you idiot. Which fucking Chinaman with even half his marbles will want to spend months on end in a place like this once word gets out?' He waved an arm across the skyline, then got back down to his rice.

Fuck him. It wasn't worth getting sparked up about. There was always time for that later, once we were out of here.

I got more water down me. This wasn't about enjoyment: this was a pit stop. 'What about the rest of the patrol?' I looked to Sam for an answer. 'The gunshot wound and the other guy?'

Sam pointed at the back of Standish's not-so-immaculate blond head, with the sort of expression that said he was one step away from cracking it like an egg. 'He killed them.'

I brought the jerry-can down again. 'What?'

'They were slowing him down so he shot them.' Sam was trying to control his anger. 'As you do.'

Standish glanced up. He didn't give a shit. 'Listen in, both of you. We were going to leave the gunshot wound anyway. The other guy wouldn't have wanted to… He was his brother, cousin, something like that.'

Sam bent almost double to face Standish out, but the fucker continued to give every last bit of his attention to his rice. 'Let me tell you something, Sam,' he grunted, between mouthfuls, 'death solves all man's problems. No man, no problem. Simple as that.'

'You think quoting a couple of words from Stalin gets you off the hook?'

Even Bateman wasn't impressed. He was sitting down, leaning over the pot, but his AK was resting carefully across his crossed legs. His body might have been in shit state, but his weapon wasn't. Whatever else he was, this guy was a professional.

'It was fucking outrageous, man, you know that. We should have brought them in. Don't ever do that again when I'm there, you heartless piece of English public-school shit. I will never leave a man out there to die, no matter who he is. If he's one of us, we take him.' Bateman stared grimly at the sangars. 'And if those fuckers get to find out, we've got a problem. An even bigger problem. They know no one else is coming to help them, man. They'll run as soon as they can, mark my words. Without kindoki on these fuckers you have no control.'