Harry Parker - Anatomy of a Soldier

It was a strange and foreign sound to him. They kept moving, disappearing behind the higher sections of wall and then coming back into sight.

Now there were four of them; he could hear the scuff of their boots and the sound of their machines. One seemed to look straight at him but carried on along the wall and he saw them push through foliage into the open field beyond. They were gone.

Latif slowly lifted himself up and looked at how close they’d been and wondered if they’d come back, or if more would follow. He breathed deeply and tried to control himself. His heartbeat shook his whole body and throbbed around me in his palm. He sat with his back against the wall and looked up at the sky and his hand relaxed. I slipped out into the grass. He wanted to sprint back to safety, but then thought of how angry Aktar would be; he thought of his violence. He twisted to look through the gap again and saw the men inching out from the crossroads towards the water pump.

Latif felt hatred now. He remembered Aktar, lit by the fire, saying they ruin the land and our systems, they unbalance us; that they are the infidel. And he thought of how well he’d been doing, how pleased Aktar had been. He remembered his family. He blinked the tears away, reached for me and turned back to the crack. His vision blurred and he wiped his eyes with his sleeve and saw them clearly. He clenched his teeth. God is greatest, he thought, and then whispered it aloud.

Four of them were spaced out in a square across the road, sweeping their detectors over the surface as if they were sowing seeds, searching for bombs. They looked like machines, encased in equipment and armour, with devices that let them see farther and weapons that could kill like magic. He thought of Aktar saying they did not fight fairly, that they were dishonorable, that they were not human.

The men moved forward and then one of them raised his hand and they all lowered themselves down until they were flat against the road. Latif watched as one of them started to dig down with his hands. He heard them calling to one another.

‘Go firm there, Rifleman Plunkett. Anything, Mac?’

‘Looks okay.’

Their foreign voices made them less real and Latif even angrier. ‘God is greatest,’ he said and pulled the wire towards me.

They hadn’t found anything and they slowly stood up. The weight of their equipment made them clumsy. They approached the broken water pump and Latif felt a new rush and shivered. Aktar had said that if it was God’s will, they wouldn’t find the bomb. Their large vehicle pulled out from the crossroads to follow them. Latif saw the heavy machine gun on top rotate and was afraid; its barrel pointed straight at him and then swept on.

‘God is greatest.’

They slowed. One of them approached the pump, stepped across the ditch to check around it and then knelt as the others continued down the road. Latif held his breath. They didn’t stop. They kept moving past the water pump.

‘God is greatest.’

And then they all knelt and the truck stopped only several paces short of the pump. He wanted it to be by the pump. Aktar had said we would damage them most if we destroyed the vehicle.

Another foreign soldier walked out from the truck and moved up to the four men. Their voices mixed with the rumble of the engine.

‘Get up front, Rifleman Davies, and guide us through.’

‘Will do,’ a man called back.

The truck crept forward and the man stood in front, directing it down the road past the water pump with waves of his hands. It edged along with squeals of its brakes.

‘God is greatest.’ Latif’s teeth were clenched as he pushed one of the copper wires against my cathode and held it there with his thumb.

‘God is greatest,’ he said again, concentrating only on the correct moment: when the large wheels of the truck rolled next to the pump.

The water still sucked through the culvert but Latif didn’t hear it. He positioned the other wire above my anode.

‘God is greatest.’

The vehicle jerked forward as the man beckoned it through where the road narrowed. And then it was over the pump and Latif said his prayer again, louder than he meant to, before pressing the wire down against my anode. I instantly created a circuit that ran through the wire under the field to the device, which erupted on the road.

In a silent flash, the truck was instantly replaced by a brown vertical smudge. A moment later the noise slapped through Latif’s chest and he ducked. Sand and rocks slipped from the wall.

‘God is greatest.’

He was breathing faster now and dropped me. The explosion was much louder than he expected and still reverberated across the countryside. He was shocked by its violence.

It took him a moment to realise there were other noises: the infidels shouting to one another through the confusion.

‘Cover your arcs.’

‘Plunkett? Davies, Davies? Rifleman Davies, are you okay?’

‘Medic, medic. Get a fucking medic up here!’

Latif raised his head to look through the gap. A solid fog of dust drifted across the road and transparent shapes staggered through it. Bits of debris still fell on the field in front of him. As the cloud thinned, he could see the outline of the truck. One wheel was gone, he couldn’t see where, and its front had been splayed upwards in shredded metal. It lay on its side, half in the ditch, crushing the water pump. The road was now a crater. Men ran up from the junction.

‘God is greatest.’

Latif picked me up and slid back from the crack but paused when he noticed the body lying in the field. It must have been the soldier who’d been directing the vehicle. Latif looked closely. The explosion had thrown him towards us. His helmet had disappeared and it was hard to work out which parts were human and which machine. Then Latif glanced down and understood that a part of the man was even closer, resting on the soil right in front of him. Latif looked at it and was afraid for himself. He knew he had killed.

He dropped me into his pocket and ran.

*

Latif was breathing hard when he heard the sound of a motorbike and stopped. It was Aktar.

‘Well done, Latif,’ he said. ‘Listen, one of their helicopters is coming. That means we have really hurt them.’ There was the thump of distant rotors.

‘I saw it,’ Latif said between breaths. ‘I saw that I hurt them.’ He reached down into his pocket and grabbed me. He thought of the body lying in the field and the part of it, separated and even closer. Then he thought of the men who’d walked so close to him and he was scared again.

‘Can we go now?’ he asked.

‘Have you still the battery?’

Latif passed me to Aktar.

‘They nearly found me. I was almost discovered.’

‘You did well. It was God’s will. Tell me later.’ Aktar looked down at me. ‘Get on, the others are waiting.’ And then he tossed me away.

I rotated end over end and plopped into an irrigation ditch. I sank into the silt at the bottom and started to corrode.

000001111001101. Switched on. Initialised. I was in an olive-green day-sack. BA5799 crouched over me. He looked at my screen as I recognised the encryption and my digital display changed to the time and date and showed the downloaded frequency. I am designed to digitally network soldiers, and the tone from my headset indicated I was ready to communicate.

BA5799 looked up at the men around him.

‘So, be ready to move at zero five hundred tomorrow. We’ll meet by the gate, and keep the noise down: we want as much surprise as possible,’ he said. ‘Everyone should be happy with the changes to the plan. Those who need to radio-check, let’s do it now.’

Some of the men started towards a row of tents in the corner of the camp.