12

CHORA VALLEY

Crawling out of his swag Matt looked around the perimeter. Another cool dawn that would soon give way to a sweltering day. The sky was light blue with bright orange traces just starting to emerge on the horizon. The surrounding mountains kept the plateau in shadow.

Matt grabbed his body armour and his M4, ready to go patrol the perimeter.

The rest of Matt’s six-man command team had slept on the other side of the vehicle. Daniel Barnsley, Matt’s signaller, was sitting up in his sleeping bag. Looking off into space and scratching his head, Barnsley looked like he had not slept in a month.

‘What are you doing, Barns?’ Matt asked as he walked past.

‘Nuthin’, boss, just waking up,’ replied Barnsley, his sandycoloured hair matted in the shape of a witch’s hat.

‘Mate, why didn’t you get your swag down last night?’ said Matt, not at all surprised to find Barnsley, yet again, roughing it on the hard ground in only his sleeping bag.

‘Dunno.’ Barnsley yawned.

Matt continued walking. Lying next to Barnsley in their swags were the command vehicle driver and the Air Force JTAC, who talked to coalition aircraft and vectored them in to dump thousands of pound of munitions onto targets. Matt’s JTAC had been so successful that there were times he truly felt sorry for the Taliban sitting up in the rocky escarpments. The next vehicle along was JJ’s, and he was already up. JJ had the Jetboil on and was making his morning coffee, as was his ritual.

‘Want one, boss?’

‘Yeah, go on then. All quiet last night?’ Matt asked.

‘Yep, all quiet – other than the Spectre dropping bombs up and down the valley for an hour. I got some sleep and then woke up at about two and checked the security piquet. Cinzano’s guys were still up playing poker in the back of their gun car.’

‘What, the guys on piquet?’

‘No, boss – the whole team.’

‘Seriously? Did you kick their arses? We have a big drive today and I need them on their A game.’

‘Yeah, boss, I rolled the lot of them. Rennie led the last hand with a pair of aces and I had a full house, took the whole kitty. You should have seen Cinzano’s face when I collected.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’ Matt slung his rifle and took the coffee from JJ.

Walking around the perimeter in the morning helped Matt to collect his thoughts. He would visit each team in turn and talk with the guys while they cleaned their weapons or sat around having breakfast. It was a good chance to make sure that everyone knew the plan for the coming day and their part in it. Matt believed that this was the type of discipline that won wars. No matter how tired or stressed he was, Matt made the conscious decision to see every guy every time they had a halt of more than an hour.

When he reached Cinzano’s team they were all crashed out next to the vehicle.

‘Rob,’ Matt called, kicking Cinzano’s feet. ‘Get up, mate. Get your guys up and get your vehicles ready.’

A mumble came from within the swag and Cinzano unzipped the outer vestibule. Around him, his team started to stir and unzip their swags.

‘On it, boss.’ Cinzano sprung out and started to hurry his men. His show of enthusiasm did not fool Matt.

‘Come and see me when we get back, Rob, I think we need to have a chat. It’s twenty past six and you guys are still holed up in your swags.’ Matt walked away before Cinzano could respond in earnest. Things had always been strained between them. Cinzano had the type of personality that irritated Matt: he had no ability to self-reflect and did not learn from his mistakes, both major weaknesses in Matt’s books. Matt decided that he would have it out with him when they were back in TK. This past year Cinzano had actually got worse, not better. It was beginning to become apparent that Rob’s future with the platoon was in doubt.

• • •

An hour later and they were ready to go. Matt’s driver kicked the Bushmaster into action and they set off behind the lead cars.

Matt sat in the left passenger seat with his Toughbook computer and a small whiteboard that he used to keep track of information. Matt wrote down the order of vehicles in his platoon as they headed off. He turned on his GPS and noted their platoon patrol base grid reference. He had already selected a rendezvous point that they would use should they come under attack and he was now looking at his map to analyse the route home. The Toughbook contained aerial mapping and Matt had a digital overlay of concentric range rings for different weapons that he would superimpose over the lead vehicle. This was so that he could assess where the enemy might place an ambush.

Matt looked around. His platoon was strung out over a kilometre and they moved cautiously forward along the desert plateau. They had to cover fifteen kilometres before they were required to drop down into the green belt for a few kilometres. The lead vehicle carried the engineers. They stopped at every crossing point to check the area with metal detectors and the military working dog.

Cinzano’s Team Two vehicle was directly behind it and then Ben Braithwaite’s Team One vehicle behind that. Matt’s command vehicle was fourth in the order of march, followed by Eddie Butcher and Joseph Hammond, leaders of Teams Three and Four. The last two cars were JJ’s gun car and the snipers’ Bushmaster. Matt had lead sniper Jensen Pharris’s vehicle last as they had done the bulk of the navigating over the last two weeks and deserved an easy ride home. Jensen was Maori. He talked very little but heard everything. Matt was never sure if the other man actually liked him or barely tolerated him; either way he was happy to have him in his platoon. The guy was a jet and his snipers were often the deciding factor in combat.

Up ahead, the lead vehicle drew to a halt.

‘Boss, we have something here.’ The engineer warrant officer’s voice sounded nervous over the radio.

‘Roger – how long?’ Matt enquired while looking down at his map and making note of the location.

‘I’m not sure, it looks complicated. Maybe an hour?’ This was delivered as more of a question than an answer. Matt hated that about these guys. While the engineers had more than proven their worth, the fact that they didn’t have a robust selection course was always clearly evident to him. Matt felt they were softer than his guys, more easily rattled and concerned for their own welfare rather than the team’s mission.

‘Okay, Greg – do what you need to do.’ Matt looked in his side mirror; he could already see JJ storming his way down the side of the parked vehicles.

Oh God, what now? thought Matt.

JJ stopped at the vehicle behind his and started to talk to the driver. Matt could see he was becoming animated.

Matt got out of his seat and moved through the back of the Bushmaster. He leaped out the back door and closed it behind him.

‘JJ, what’s doing, mate?’ Matt asked.

‘Nothing, boss – just pointing out to this dickhead that he isn’t following your tracks and that he’s going to get himself and everyone else killed.’

This seemed a bit dramatic to Matt. Looking up at the Bushmaster driver he could see that he was upset. JJ was terrifying when he decided to take someone to task.

‘He gets the point, mate,’ said Matt. He turned and headed towards the front vehicles. Greg was another hundred metres forward, lying on his stomach and, presumably, dismantling an IED. Matt decided not to distract him and returned to his own vehicle.

An hour passed and then word came from Greg that it was safe to continue. The vehicles started forward again at a slow pace. Losing an hour was all par for the course in Afghanistan and was already factored into the overall plan.

‘Yankee Alpha, are you there, boss?’ Greg’s voice came over Matt’s headset.

Seriously, what is it now? Matt grumbled to himself. Another IED? ‘Yes, mate,’ he said aloud, ‘I’m here. What have you got now?’ ‘Nothing, boss, I just wanted to let you know about that last IED.’

‘Go on – what about it?’

‘Well, it had no metal in it. We only found it because of the dog. It was mega sophisticated and there was also a tamper switch inside the bucket with the homemade explosives.’ Greg paused and then continued. ‘Boss, the battery was flat, otherwise it would have blown me apart.’ Greg sounded upset now; he was only alive due to the hinge factor, pure luck: a battery that was flat on its insertion into the device or that had just died after being left in the ground in the heat. Either way, it wasn’t Greg’s skill that saw him live to fight another day and he knew it.

‘Okay, understood, mate – let’s just move on and learn from it.’ Matt looked off into the distance, waiting for the response. Nothing came. Matt knew he would need to talk to Greg on their return. Some things did not need to be said for everyone on the radio to hear. Greg’s confidence had taken a huge blow and Matt would need to counsel him, showing him that everyone survived Afghanistan by a small amount of luck. Greg could get over this.

The vehicles continued on and came to the edge of the high desert area where the track they were following dropped down into the valley and out the other side. Matt positioned the Bushmasters to provide fire support across the ravine and, after a quick check by the dog, they crossed the bottom of the valley and rumbled through the shallow creek. This was a narrow piece of green belt, about three hundred metres wide, and had been the site of many an IED discovery. Today, to Matt’s relief, there was nothing.

The vehicles reverted back into their order and edged forwards, except for Cinzano’s vehicle, which swapped places with Braithwaite’s to provide fire support as the other vehicles crossed. Cinzano’s Team Two Bushmaster was now directly in front of the command vehicle. One by one they moved up into the wide-open desert. They were now on track to reach Tarin Kowt in the next hour. Matt unbuckled his harness and crawled through the roof hatch. His driver was used to him riding on the roof through town. Matt liked to look at everyone as they drove through. Looking through the windscreen didn’t offer the same perspective as being on top of the vehicle and eyeballing the locals.

It was the sudden change in air pressure that hit him first, even before the almighty BOOM! registered in his mind.

The noise of the blast was huge, the sound deafening. No one could have survived it if you based survivability on the sheer violence of the explosion. A huge amount of earth was dislodged and sent skywards. Cinzano’s vehicle was picked up and spun one hundred and eighty degrees. The front wheel zipped past Matt’s head and straight over the next car.

‘Shit!’ Matt ducked.

The Bushmaster disappeared in a cloud of dark brown dirt. The vehicle came to rest, minus its side storage bins and front wheels, facing back in the direction it had come, a fine layer of dirt settling on it.

Matt could see through the front windscreen that the Team Two driver was screaming, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water trying to take a gulp, but there was no noise as the vehicle was locked down.

Behind Matt the platoon quickly conducted their IED drills and Matt dragged his eyes away from the incident itself to focus on the security of the platoon. JJ and Matt had talked at length about this very situation and they knew what to do. This was administration not tactics. He had to make sure the platoon was ready for combat if it was a complex ambush. The most important thing now was not to be caught up in the emotion of the event.

Matt jumped out from the top of his vehicle and started to direct cars into their positions to ensure they had all-around defence. There was a small mound that overlooked their position to the east and Matt ordered the snipers to move off and set up their positions on top of it so they could scan for threats. JJ was down at the IED site and Cinzano’s own guys were dealing with the casualties.

‘Yankee Alpha, this is Yankee Bravo, request CASEVAC – over,’ JJ mic’d.

‘Ack, no worries. Barnsley is already on it and there is a bird in bound.’ Matt had foreseen that there would be casualties and Barnsley had likewise foreseen that Matt would request it. The platoon HQ was working as it should.

‘What’s the SITREP, mate?’ Matt asked.

‘Boss, wait out!’ Over the radio, JJ sounded stressed – not annoyed or angry, but under stress. Matt didn’t like whatever that meant.

‘Boss, we have one KIA and at least a priority two.’

Silence followed. Matt stood with the handset for his radio pressed hard against his forehead. He finally sat down on the back step of his vehicle.

‘Matt,’ said JJ, ‘it’s Johnno. There’s nothing we can do for him. He was standing in the back and he wasn’t strapped in; his head was split in two.’

Matt heard JJ let go of the handset. He chewed on his thumb and thought for a second. ‘JJ, stop talking, mate.’

The whole platoon had fallen quiet around the perimeter and was looking towards his Bushmaster.

Matt cleared his throat and put the handset to his lips. ‘All call signs, this is Yankee Alpha. We have one confirmed KIA and one confirmed priority two. Maintain the security, let’s get them evacuated and then let’s get out of here. Yankee Alpha out.’

• • •

The CASEVAC helicopter arrived twenty minutes later. JJ had organised the work party and Johnno was loaded into the back of the bird inside a green rubber body bag. The RSM was with the medics. Matt looked up at him as the bird took off with Johnno’s body and the other critically injured commando on board. The RSM supported the green body bag in his arms. His face was serious and he gave Matt the thumbs-up as the bird took off. Everyone there saw the RSM holding Johnno the way a father holds a small child. Seeing this helped them all. It humanised the inhumane green bag. It was if someone was now caring for him.

Matt felt a heavy weight descend upon his shoulders. Johnno was Lance Corporal John Lewis, a commando who had been in the unit for six years. Quiet and competent, he had already completed four tours of Afghanistan as a sniper and had just been moved back to a commando team; he was about to be promoted to full corporal. He was only twenty-four.

Matt watched the bird lift off. He walked slowly out right into the middle of the landing zone. The dust engulfed him as he took off his helmet and squinted up into the brown sky, gazing in silence as the helicopter disappeared from view. The other commandos all sat in silence, watching from their vehicles. They had made a protective ring around the LZ. As the dust lifted Matt turned back towards his vehicle.

‘Okay, let’s get going,’ he ordered. The crippled Bushmaster was already hooked up behind another vehicle. They had hit that IED way off the marked tracks, out in the open desert, and now one of the key guys in Matt’s platoon, someone he had completed selection with and whom he considered a friend, was dead. How many more of those were out there? The whole area had to be riddled with them, Matt figured. For the first time in his life, he resorted to prayer. I’ve never asked for anything before, but God, if you’re there, please let me get the rest of these guys safely back to base.