TARIN KOWT
Matt responded to the radio call and moved back into the motorcycle repair shop. The men of Yankee Platoon had gathered around the huge hole underneath the table and were busy discussing its possible contents. JJ came back out of the hole, his head wet with sweat and his camouflage uniform filthy from the dust.
‘Jesus, boss, you won’t believe it.’
Barnsley offered his hand to the big platoon sergeant and helped him up out of the entrance to the underground cache.
Matt peered down into the dark cavern. ‘What the hell is down there, JJ?’
‘Tonnes and tonnes of stuff – no shit, boss: tonnes of stuff.’ JJ could hardly contain his excitement. ‘I would say that the room under there is almost as wide as this building. It’s full of medical supplies, weapons, explosives, clothing . . . God knows what else. Go down and have a gander – seriously, you won’t believe your eyes.’
‘Sounds like we might have a Taliban supply store.’ Well, this changes things a bit, thought Matt. He grabbed his fist mic from his chest rig and pressed on the handset. ‘Team commanders in to me.’ Placing the handset back on its Velcro patch he pulled the Gerber torch out of one of his pockets and dropped down to the edge of the hole to have a look.
‘HOLY SHIT! You weren’t joking, JJ; it looks like Aladdin’s cave in there.’ Moving the powerful beam of light around, Matt could see all manner of boxes. There were ammunition crates, cardboard boxes, metal tins and, ominously, there were thirty yellow plastic water containers – the type favoured by Rapier himself when making IEDs. In one corner was a pile of neatly stacked rocket-propelled grenades and other weapon parts. Jackpot, thought Matt.
He stood up, brushed himself off and moved over to the team commanders who had all arrived while he was looking in the hole.
‘Okay, lads, this is the deal. Barnsley, get onto HQ, mate, and let them know we have found a huge cache of weapons, pictures to follow in fifteen minutes.
‘On it.’
‘Get down there, Joe, and video what’s inside this pit. Once we have enough footage I want your guys to grab all the pressure plates and any other bits and pieces – basically anything that looks like it’s of intelligence value – and chuck it all in plastic evidence bags.’
‘No worries, boss, it’s all coming with – understood.’
‘Make sure they’re wearing plastic gloves too, Joe, okay? I don’t want to mix our biometrics with the Taliban.’
‘Sure thing.’ Joseph Hammond took off his helmet and smoothed back his sandy hair while connecting the Kevlar to his chest rig.
Matt looked to his left. ‘Cinzano, get your guys up on the roof, please. We need to lock this place down and dominate it. The Taliban may want to bump us from here and we need to be ready to respond. Take Kiwi and the other snipers to assist your team. I know your guys are up for a good fight, so get them moving.’
‘No worries, boss. How long do you think we’ll need to lock this joint down for?’
‘However long it takes – I’d reckon a few hours at least.’
Cinzano left at a fast trot, talking to his team through the bone mic inserted in his left ear as he went. On the perimeter, his men responded to the radio calls and started to proceed to their areas of responsibility.
‘Nadeem,’ said Matt, turning to face his interpreter who had been following him around. ‘Get into the command vehicle, mate, and get on the loudspeaker. Send out some broadcasts telling the locals to keep their distance and that it is a military operation and it will be over in a few hours.’
‘Sure thing, sir,’ replied the Terp.
‘Oh, and Nadeem, do it in Arabic,’ said Matt, laughing.
‘Where’s JJ, guys?’ Matt looked around at the remaining team commanders.
‘I’m here, boss,’ JJ said, walking back in through the front doors. ‘That useless bloody explosive detection dog has shat in the back of my car again. I was just checking on the Bushmaster drivers to make sure they were informed of what’s going on and I found it curled up in its own filth sitting in my bed roll.’ JJ joined the small group.
‘That’s what you get for always feeding it your leftovers, mate,’ said Joseph.
JJ ignored Joseph and moved to stand next to Matt. ‘Boss, my close shave with a pile of dog shit made me think: perhaps we should send a combat engineer down there first to make sure it’s safe to move around. I mean, I just dropped straight down the stairs and didn’t move from the actual entrance, but there could be booby traps or anti-handling devices, who knows what else.’
‘Yeah, that’s a good point, JJ; I didn’t even consider that.’ Matt took a moment to contemplate what this would mean for their timeline. ‘Go get Greg to do a proper assessment.’ Matt looked around at the rest of the guys. ‘Looks like we might just have broken the back of the network today, lads – good result. If there are no more questions, let’s get this done.’
Matt sat on an old wooden crate just inside the front door. His body armour sat next to him on the ground, and his rifle and Kevlar helmet sat on top of it. Matt looked off into the distance, through the missing double doors and out past the vehicles. Large black thunderclouds were starting to gather on the ridgeline of mountains up the other side of the valley. He turned back to the entrance to the Taliban cache as Greg emerged from the hole. JJ helped him up out of the ground and the two of them had a discussion that Matt couldn’t quite hear. The radio sitting next to Barnsley’s leg squawked alive and Matt almost jumped at the sudden noise.
Barnsley picked up the handset and listened for a bit, finally replying in the affirmative.
‘What was that, Barns?’
‘That was the command centre just wanting to know if we’d be back before dark.’
Matt felt the dread wash over him. ‘I wouldn’t go back at all if I had my way, Barns. Still, it could be worse – at least we have a solid result to show for it.’
‘That’s me done, sir.’ Greg stood in front of Matt, visibly shaken. ‘It’s dangerous down there, boss. There were a few traps set and a heap of suicide vests. I cleared a small area for the guys to bring some stuff out, but we are going to have to blow most of it in place. Actually, I think you should get the guys out of here, sir; if we trigger something down there it will drop this building.’
‘You didn’t think to tell me that before you went poking around down in there?’ Matt didn’t give him time to respond. ‘Let’s get out of here then. Are the photos and video complete?’
‘Yeah, your boys are finishing that now. I have a heap of stuff in the back of my car that we took out; pressure plates and fuse switch assemblies, phones and stuff like that.’
‘That’s excellent, Greg – good work. I’ll get the guys moving then. What do you need to bring this place down safely?’
‘It won’t take too much. Some detonation cord, an M60 igniter and a slab of PE will do the trick. Sir, there was one more thing.’ He held up a hand, sneezed, then continued. ‘Just to the left of the stairs down there are boxes with ANA and police uniforms. They’re numbered one to a hundred and I noticed there was a single uniform missing out of each batch. I grabbed a box of each uniform so that we can check them to see where they were made.’
‘Really? That’s interesting.’ Matt thought about what this might mean. ‘It’s good to get them off the streets, in any case.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Greg sneezed again. ‘Sorry about that, I don’t know what’s wrong with me – I usually only react like that when I come into contact with Semtex.’
‘You think there’s Semtex down there?’ Matt asked sharply.
‘Huh? No, no – it’s just the dust. What’s down there is either homemade explosives or basic military munitions.’
‘Alright, Greg, get yourself sorted and get ready to drop this place. I’ll have Barns radio it in and in the meantime I’ll get the guys clear. Cinzano’s lads will come down off the roof and provide you with some protection until you get it sorted out and then we will head back to camp.’
‘No worries, boss.’
‘Good – and Greg?’ Matt placed his hand on Greg’s arm. ‘Great job, mate.’
• • •
Forty-five minutes later, Yankee Platoon’s vehicles were lined up four hundred metres down the street from the motorcycle repair shop. Cinzano’s team sprinted from the shop towards the relative safety of their Bushmasters, with Greg lumbering behind, barely making it into the back of his vehicle before the huge explosion shook the entire town. Windows in the house opposite Matt’s Bushmaster blew out into the street from the percussion.
‘Holy shit, boss.’ Barns laughed hard into his vehicle communications headset.
Matt was shocked. The blast was so massive it rocked the command vehicle from side to side. They both watched as a Volkswagen-sized piece of concrete from the shop was launched into the air and over their vehicles for another thirty metres, the impact as it landed shaking the earth for a second time.
Greg came up on the Yankee Platoon radio network. ‘Jesus, sir, I didn’t really expect that.’ The radio went silent for a minute.
‘Really?’ JJ said sardonically. ‘You’re a bloody explosives expert and you didn’t expect that? You didn’t expect that it would blow up after you set off a kilogram of plastic explosives among a huge stockpile of fucking bombs and rockets?’
Over the dull hum of the Bushmasters’ engines Matt could hear the platoon erupt in laughter over the radio.
‘All call signs, this is Yankee Alpha. Move now – out.’ Matt turned to look at Barnsley. ‘Time to go face the music, Barns.’
‘It’ll be alright, I reckon, boss.’
‘Really? What makes you think that then?’ Matt turned his attention to the small whiteboard on which he tracked the platoon’s order of march and recorded important grid references and events.
The signaller shrugged. ‘When I requested permission to drop the building, I had a response only a few seconds later to say that we could. In fact, since we found the cache they have pretty much left us alone the whole time except for asking when we are going to be back.’
‘I’m not really sure that you’re reading that correctly, Barns.’ Matt took off his headset to end the conversation and looked out the armoured-glass window. The big Bushmaster rolled effortlessly along the gravel track. Behind the line of vehicles, the locals were starting to come out of hiding and make their way to the burnt-out ruins of the motorcycle repair shop just as the first drops of rain started to fall on the scene. Without any context, Matt thought, it probably looked to them like just another example of the Australians destroying a business important to the local community.