Andy McNab - Crossfire

60 miles west of Jalalabad, Afghanistan 17 June 1986

Last light I didn't know the name of the village, though we'd been through there many times. It was just a collection of mud huts on a plateau, three-quarters of the way down a mountain, in a snow-capped range halfway between Kabul and the Khyber Pass. We had to be out again by first light, when the Hinds would be back to hand out the early-morning news. If they spotted us, the gunships would annihilate the place, and anyone inside. That was how they did things.

We were in-country because the Ivans were in-country, and the West didn't want them to be. It wasn't the invasion they objected to. It was Soviet troops massed so close to the oil-rich Gulf. The sheiks were flapping, so the bad boys had to be persuaded to fuck off back to the land of vodka.

The mujahideen – soldiers of Allah – had only put up weak resistance to start with. Fragmented, and armed with no more than rifles and pistols, all they had going for them was their lifelong knowledge of the terrain and an unshakeable faith in their God.

That was when dickheads like me were told to get the maps out and see where the fuck Afghanistan was, then get our arses over from Hereford and help. We came, we saw, we dropped bridges, attacked police stations, built IEDs, and blew up armoured convoys. I wasn't wild about living in a cave, but other than that, I'd been having the time of my life.

'See that?'

'What, Nick?'

'Over there, in the alleyway. Looks like a body.'

'It will just be a girl,' Ahmad grunted. He wore the kind of expression you use when someone's just pointed out the shit on your shoe. 'We go on, Nick. We need food.'

My new best mujahideen mate cut away and gestured to the others to sort themselves out before the long tab back to our holes in the rock above the snowline.

The girl's body was lying between two mud-walled shacks. At least somebody had had the decency to drape the charred remains of her clothes over what was left of her. Going by the scorchmarks on the ground, it looked like she'd set herself on fire in plain view. When the flames died down, the villagers had probably just dragged her here out of the way and got on with their lives.

I nearly hadn't come over. I'd seen it all too many times before. But this one was different – even in the fading light, I thought I'd seen movement. And, besides, the girl with the cheeky grin lived in one of these huts. I always looked out for her when we came this way. The landscape might be cold, harsh and unforgiving, but somhow her smile always made me think that what we were doing was worthwhile.

The people who scratched a living in these mountains didn't have enough even to feed themselves, but that didn't stop them sharing it with us. I'd never spoken to the girl with the cheeky grin. It would have been taboo. But she'd run up a couple of times and handed me a sliver of watermelon or a cup of water. She couldn't have been more than fourteen.

Not so long ago, the cheeky grin had disappeared, as if someone had thrown a switch. 'Yes,' Ahmad had said. 'Now she have husband.' Apparently he was nearly three times her age and from another band of muj. Ahmad seemed to think her husband was having trouble teaching her respect.

She'd looked a little more desperate each time I saw her after that. The last couple of times, I'd noticed the bruises.

I squatted down by the heap of blackened material. There was a terrible stench of singed hair, burnt meat and kerosene, like the smell that hung in the air after the gunships had called.

I laid my AK on a rock and took off my Bergen. I lifted the charred clothes away from her head and gagged. The scorched skin was peeling from her face and neck. Blisters were still forming. The skin round her mouth stretched back to expose her teeth in a hideous parody of her cheeky grin. It wasn't how I wanted to remember her.

She opened her eyes just a fraction, and when she saw me she murmured softly. There'd be no screaming out in pain for her. That stage was well gone. Her burns were so severe that even the nerve endings had evaporated.

Like Ahmad and his boys, I was in full Gunga Din gear and cowpat hat. I took off my waistcoat and tucked it gently under the back of her head to protect it from the rocks.

She had an hour at the most. There wasn't even a field clinic or a nurse up here. The nearest hospital was in Jalalabad, a couple of days away on foot, and the roads round the city were teeming with hammers and sickles.

I doubted she even had someone who cared enough to bury her. Treated like a slave, not only by the husband but also the rest of his family, I guessed she'd just had enough. Most of the women stuck at these shit marriages because that was the way things were. By tradition, every Afghan girl or woman had to be attached to some man – her father, husband, brother, son, uncle – and for all too many of them the kerosene trick was the only way out.

Boots scrambled towards me. 'Nick! We have hut – come.'

I looked up. Ahmad's beard was longer than mine, and he was proud of it. He hadn't shaved these last seven years, ever since the Russians had arrived to 'liberate' his country. He was a hard fucker, like the rest of the muj, a good Muslim, a good fighter, a good man. I enjoyed working with them, but I could never understand why they were total arseholes to their women. They treated them like shit.

He didn't even bother to glance at the girl. She might as well not have been there. 'Come, leave it. We're cooking.'

'Go on, mate, you get stuck in. But maybe bring me something, will you?'

I knew there was fuck-all I could do for her, but there'd been enough killing up on the mountain. It seemed such a waste of a young life for her to have done it to herself.

She'd probably been sold into her marriage. Some of the muj I knew had sold their own daughters when they were twelve or thirteen. They even claimed a bride price as payback for raising the poor little fuckers in the first place. Others gave them away to repay bets or settle arguments.

After the girls got palmed off and married, they were raped continuously. If they complained, they might find themselves flung into prison. The ones that could afford it took overdoses. The poorer ones cut their wrists, hanged themselves or chucked themselves into the nearest river. But this one, she'd had spirit. She wasn't going out with a whimper.

I pictured her sitting there, tipping the kerosene over her head and striking a match. But she'd fucked up. Maybe she couldn't afford a full can. Now she was lying in the dust, waiting to die.

Ahmad came back with half a big green watermelon. 'Nick, please, you not be long. The meat, he nearly gone…'

'Thanks, mate.' I took the melon off him. I couldn't understand why these guys didn't care. 'She hasn't got long. But I can't leave her, can I?'

He eyed me as if I was a lunatic. 'They say her name is Farah.' He turned to leave, then stopped. 'Of course you can leave her, Nick. This her choice. This what she want.'

He walked away.

I looked down at her. What she want? No, not really.

I pulled my AK bayonet from my belt and cut into the melon. The juice flowed down my fingers, which were black with weeks of grime.

'Farah, here…' I touched a sliver of the fruit to what was left of her lips.

She sucked it in. Her eyes flickered open again and I thought I could see something resembling a smile in them. She tried her best to swallow as the juice ran down the side of her ravaged face. Painfully slowly, she shifted her eyes towards me. She began to weep gently, but no tears fell.

I cut another slice of melon. I didn't know what else to do.

The late-afternoon sun bathed her face for a moment, then disappeared. As darkness fell, we both waited for her to die.