The Network (15 page)

I realise he’s working his way through his own version of a military orders plan at combat-team level. This is generally written up under several headings. The first is ‘Ground’, which identifies the physical terrain, both generally and in detail. ‘Situation’ details friendly and enemy forces in the area of the operation, as well as the political layout. ‘Mission’ defines the scope of the operation, summed up in snappy language: kill X or destroy Y. ‘Execution’ goes into the details of routes, movement, RVs, action on target and exfil procedures – how to get home again. ‘Service Support’ deals with weapons, rations and equipment and how to get them to and from where they need to be. There’s another standard heading, which I can’t remember.

‘ “Command and Signals”,’ says H. ‘Radios, mostly. Who talks to who, when and how. We won’t be calling in much air support. Just checking in with London from time to time.’ He waves a pen over the notes. ‘And we need to think of a cover story for our time in-country. Something short term.’ This is my task. He then explains how I should apply for a second passport, which can be left hidden in a safe place in case we’re parted unexpectedly from our things.

His wife has prepared a dinner for us in advance. We eat and then devote the evening to familiarising ourselves with the weapon that lies behind the whole operation.

‘Might want to study this,’ says H, putting a bulky manual in front of me. It’s the American DoD training documentation for the FIM-92. The pages are marked
secret
, and there are several hundred of them.

‘The Sovs would’ve killed to get their hands on this a few years back,’ he says, tapping the cover.

‘They were the first to find out the hard way what the Stinger could do,’ I say, thinking of the missile’s deadly effect on Soviet airpower in Afghanistan.

‘Not quite,’ he corrects me. ‘The Yanks gave us some of these when we were down south in the Falklands. There was only one bloke from the Regiment who knew how to use the Stinger, and he was on that Sea King that crashed in the South Atlantic. A trooper in D Squadron managed to shoot down an Argentine fighter, though he was bloody lucky. That was the first combat kill with the Stinger.’

Its portability and reliability make it one of the most desirable weapons in the world. It is strange to think of the most advanced anti-aircraft technology of the time being hauled around Afghanistan on the backs of donkeys and camels. The Stinger’s role in the final humiliation of the Soviet army was never really acknowledged.

The earliest Stinger models didn’t distinguish between enemy or friendly targets: anything in the Afghan skies was fair game. The long thin missile is fitted into a fibreglass launch tube, and then attached to an assembly made up of the trigger and the infrared antennae, which looks vaguely like a toaster. A small battery unit is clipped in place, and when the missile has locked onto its target, a small speaker gives out the signal to fire. In case there is too much noise for it to be heard, a vibrator buzzes in the cheekbone of the firer. There are a number of checks and sensors that indicate whether the weapon is serviceable.

We need to know these things, and we go over them in detail.

Several hours later H gathers up our paperwork and locks it in a small safe. Then, when it’s time to turn in, he waves a hand over his bookshelves and invites me to have a browse.

‘You might like this one.’ He pulls down a book about the Regiment and fans the pages until he reaches the chapter devoted to the campaign in Oman. There’s a selection of photographs taken at the height of the conflict, but the images of the soldiers don’t look like conventional portraits. The men wear beards, ragged-looking uniforms and frayed caps or Arab
shemagh
s; cigarettes dangle from their lips, and many of them look too old to be soldiers in any case.

H points to a photograph of a fearsome-looking bearded man with a sunburned face under a combat cap. A bulky general purpose machine gun and dangling belt of gleaming ammunition hang from his shoulder.

‘That’s the Ditch,’ says H, looking fondly at the photograph. ‘Gentle as a kitten. And that’s the Monk.’ There’s another photograph of a man wearing what looks like a monk’s hooded cassock. From the shadows of the woollen hood, a faint and enigmatic smile on the lean face does seem to confirm a contemplative temperament. Only the M16 assault rifle cradled protectively in his arms suggests a different calling.

He turns the pages again to show me a photograph of a young man peering over the sights of an 81-millimetre mortar in a dusty-looking sandbagged gun pit. His bare upper body is deeply tanned and he looks very fit. It’s H, twenty-five years earlier, up on the Jebel near Medinat al-Haqq.

‘We used to play with that mortar a lot.’ He smiles. ‘Just to let the Adoo know we could put down a round on a sixpence if we wanted to.’

It’s very strange. As a teenager I owned the same book and pored over its pages, never imagining that one day I might know the names of the anonymous soldiers who looked out from them.

‘Those blokes were the real deal,’ says H, nodding solemnly. ‘They don’t make them like that any more.’

We leave the house in the morning while it’s still dark. The Brownings are hidden in the go bags at our feet, and the AK under the rear seat. We’re heading for an abandoned quarry about half an hour west of Hereford, practising the anti-ambush drill on the way, throwing the car onto the verge and positioning it between us and our imaginary attackers. Then, as the sky is beginning to brighten, we turn from the main road onto an unsurfaced track. At the end of it the ground opens out into a wide flat stretch of chalky subsoil, criss-crossed by waterlogged bulldozer tracks. Beyond it rises a pale amphitheatre of stone about sixty feet high.

I cut the engine and H takes two rolled-up targets from the car. We walk across the open ground and fix the targets to the soft stone with tent pegs. We count a hundred paces and I stand on the spot we mark, while H takes the AK from the back of his car. He clears the mechanism, hands me the weapon and feeds three rounds into the magazine. From his pocket he takes a small box of yellow foam earplugs, which we squeeze into our ears.

‘Let’s zero the sights. Put three rounds on the black circle.’

The black circle, the size of a small plate up close, looks tiny. I line up on the speck of black and squeeze the trigger. The rifle bucks as if knocked by a hammer from below. I’ve forgotten how loud guns are.

‘One,’ says H. I fire again. ‘Two.’ And again. ‘Three. Clear it.’

We jog to the target. One round is a foot off to the left. This is probably the first. The other two are a few inches apart, in line with the centre but six inches too high. We jog back to our firing position, where H makes an adjustment to the foresight and feeds five more rounds into the magazine.

‘Centre of the target. Five rounds rapid.’

The AK rises and falls. I fire at the end of each downward lull and try to keep the rhythm even. My cheekbone, which I’ve been holding too close to the butt, is throbbing as if someone’s punched it, and despite the earplugs my ears are ringing.

‘Not bad,’ says H, grinning as we pull the pegs from the target. ‘Must be the quality of instruction.’ There are three small holes in the centre circle and two others within the second, all vertically aligned within a few inches. He looks at his watch. ‘Let’s see how you do with the other fellow.’

We walk to the car, put the AK back under the rear seat and retrieve the Brownings. H has also brought a plastic bag with a dozen empty beer cans, seven of which we now set on a sloping stone shelf running across the face of the quarry. We take ten paces towards the car and turn around.

‘When you’re ready,’ says H. ‘Double tap on each. Remember not to yank the trigger.’

I cock the Browning and fire at each can in turn. Four of the seven are sent spinning. Three remain stubbornly in place as little fountains of chalk erupt behind them.

‘Needs a bit of work,’ says H. We gather up the empty casings, then the cans, and fix them back on the shelf.

‘Show me how it’s done then,’ I say.

H cocks his pistol and tucks it into his belt above his left hip with the butt facing forward, and lets his coat fall in front of it. Then, in a single movement of astonishing swiftness, he draws his coat away with his left hand, pulls the weapon out with his right and begins firing with his knees slightly flexed. There’s hardly a pause between targets, each of which disappears as he works from left to right. By the time I look back from the targets to see him removing the magazine from his pistol, less than five seconds has passed. H says nothing but throws me a satisfied wink. Then he pockets the Browning and scoops up the empty casings.

‘We’d best be going,’ he says.

‘I enjoyed that,’ I say.

‘Me too.’ He looks at his watch again and gives me a pensive look. The sky has brightened in the east, but around us the land is silent.

‘I was just thinking,’ he says. ‘Shall we try the anti-ambush, and live-fire the Brownings? We could come from up there,’ he motions to the dirt track that winds upwards beside the quarry face, ‘drive in close, and retreat this way.’ There are some dips and mounds in the ground behind us, and roughly fifty yards from the quarry face is a long intervening ridge of bulldozed rubble about four feet high. It’s the perfect hiding place to retreat to from the car. ‘Just aim for the same place where the targets were. Imagine each one’s an Adoo with an AK. Let’s get those cans so we can scarper afterwards.’

We gather up the mutilated cans and hide them in the car. Then we sit in the front and H puts the box of 9-millimetre cartridges between us. We fill the magazines, chamber one round into the breech and add a final top-up round to the magazine, making fifteen. Then we slip the pistols under our thighs and I start the engine. In four-wheel drive we climb the badly rutted track, circle the rim of the quarry and turn the car around just before reaching the skyline at the top, from where we might be seen. With the engine running, we have a good look on all sides for any movement. It’s time to go.

‘Check chamber,’ says H. I ease back the top slide of the pistol and glimpse the brass casing nestling in the breech.

‘All set here.’

‘Right, take us down.’ I put the car into first gear and without accelerating let the slope carry us forward. ‘Come on, make it real,’ says H, and we accelerate, pitching hard across the braided ruts of the track. H braces himself with a hand on the dashboard grip. ‘I’ll say when,’ he growls.

As the track levels off we hit the flat ground with an almighty lurch. I floor it towards the quarry face, wondering how late H will leave the signal. As the tyres bite into the mud and gravel I can hear the debris from under us smacking violently into the wheel arches. Then, about sixty feet from the quarry face, I hear H yell.

‘Ambush! Ambush! Enemy front! Take the front!’

The brakes lock as I pull the wheel hard to the left. The tail end of the car swings to the right, and the front wheels grind to a juddering halt. H throws the passenger door open and somersaults out. He’s already firing as I hit the ground a couple of seconds later and take up a firing position across the bonnet.

H shouts, ‘Moving now!’ and I aim the Browning. It leaps five times. Beyond the foresight, puffs of chalk burst from the quarry face. Then I hear H’s shout from behind me.

‘Move! Move! Move!’

I sprint away from the car, cowering instinctively as I see the muzzle flash erupting from H’s pistol ahead of me to the left. An uncomfortable feeling. A watery dip in the ground appears ahead of me and I fling myself into it, bring the weapon up and fire another five rounds in the direction of the car. Its blue shape seems to be floating pointlessly against the light wall of stone beyond, and I think for a moment of how much it resembles a beached whale.

Then I hear H shout again and run another fifteen yards as he covers me a second time. I dive and fire as H sprints to our final position, then hear the click of the firing pin as the weapon seems to die in my hands. I make the final sprint to the ridge of rubble. He has both hands on his weapon as I dive in beside him and slither round to face our imaginary enemies at the far end of the quarry.

H ducks below the rim of the ridge and rolls onto his back to check his pistol. The air reeks of cordite and there’s a high-pitched ringing in my ears, which resounds at every heartbeat.

‘Alright?’ asks H.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Right, make safe.’

I check and pocket the pistol. Then we stand up and look towards the quarry face. The place seems strangely still after all the noise and movement. H’s eyes are fixed firmly on his car.

‘I’m glad I wasn’t stuck in there,’ he says quietly.

‘We certainly got out alright,’ I say, thinking he’s referring to our escape from fictional bandits. I haven’t felt such exhilaration for years and have a strong urge to laugh out loud. The low gruff tone of H’s voice brings me back.

‘It’s not that,’ he says, still looking intently in the direction of his beloved Range Rover. I follow his gaze. The car looks perfectly intact, only the normally transparent rectangles of window have turned a different colour, as if painted in the same chalky rainwater that’s splashed all over our clothes and faces. Then I understand what he’s staring at, and feel myself biting my lower lip.