now better known as Snakeman because he crawled all the way here on his fucking belly. He was chosen for the job because he’s got the smallest belly in the whole platoon. You should have seen him slithering up the minefield . . .’Broom did not respond.‘OK,’ said Binns at last, and Mal moved in to the bloody mess where Broom’s leg should have been.Binman sat still for a moment and watched Mal in action. Despite his haste, Mal’s movements were smooth and experienced. He used the tourniquet with strength and wrapped dressings with a rapid professionalism. He ignored the flies swarming all around him.The nausea that always seemed to be waiting inside Binns swept up through his body to his throat again.‘Write on his forehead that he’s had his morphine, will you?’ said Mal. Without looking up, he added: ‘And if you puke all over the casualty, I’ll cut you, Binman. I mean it.’Binns swallowed and said shakily: ‘Come on, Ben, wake up, mate. We’re going to get you out of here now . . .’There was no time for Binns to be sick because Mal had shaken out the stretcher. Broom looked small and light without his kit but when they lifted him Binns thought his arms would fall out of their sockets.‘He doesn’t look this heavy!’‘Deadweight,’ replied Mal shortly.‘But he’s not dead!’‘Doesn’t matter. Still a deadweight.’Binns tried to take Broom’s Bergen but Mal rescued him and handed him Broom’s weapon instead, a rifle with UGL. They lifted the stretcher carefully and carried it gingerly around the taped mine.Afterwards, Binns remembered the journey back down the path with the stretcher in slow motion. It could only have taken a few minutes. But with Broom’s weight breaking his arms, the heat suddenly blinding and the flies following them, it felt like an hour.Many hands were waiting at the side of the woods for the stretcher. Kirk and O’Sullivan, covered in dirt, were the first to grab it as soon as it was clear of the minefield.‘Fucking good job, you two. Fucking fantastic work, Binman.’Gasping for breath, Binman was clapped on the back by Dave. He blushed and nodded. He looked for Streaky who was covering across the minefield. Streaky gave him a big smile of approval and a thumbs-up.The boss was there, talking on the radio.‘We’ve decided to get this casualty off now,’ he told Dave, ‘and bring the Chinook back for Connor.’‘How far away is the HLS?’‘Five minutes,’ said the boss. ‘Let’s get Broom moving there now.’‘What happened to the Black Hawk?’ asked Dave.The boss gave a snort of humourless laughter.‘How many men can I have to cover the stretcher team?’‘Take 2 Section, they’re not doing much good here.’Binman watched Jamie and Angus at work. They had just found another mine and were diverting once more.Dave said quietly: ‘Binman, relax now. Just sit down and drink!’But he was too late. Binman was already walking back up the cleared mine path.Dave yelled at him to come back but Binman knew he had to continue his work because in the time Jamie could work his way around this mine, Binns was sure he could connect his own path to Connor.He lay down in the place Broom had lain, avoiding the huge bloodstain, now feasted on by flies. He started his work again. This time his hands hurt. He realized they were blistered. It was worse than cracked heels but he could ignore the pain if he concentrated. He rubbed his palms over the soil with a touch that now felt light and experienced, the way Mal had been with the dressings.He realized someone was behind him.‘Don’t rush, mate.’ It was Mal. He had ignored Dave’s warning and come back too. Binns suddenly felt happy. He did not know why. ‘Just get your water tube in your mouth. And don’t listen to Sarge doing his nut down there.’Binns silently, doggedly, worked his way towards Connor. There was a lot of shrapnel from the two exploded mines here, glass and bits of metal. He twice cut his hands and Mal yelped in pain as he knelt on something sharp. But nothing could stop Binman now. As the unmoving shape of Ryan Connor got closer, he speeded up.‘Fuck it, I can’t see him breathing,’ said Mal.Angus had his hands on his hips. ‘Hey! You’re going to get to him first!’Jamie barely looked up. He was working like Binns, face close to the dirt, hands just in front of his face, bayonet used only for the final prods before he advanced. He said: ‘We could all be too late.’Dave had stopped yelling at Binman and Mal for returning to the minefield and wanted to know the state of the casualty.‘If he’s alive it’ll be mouth to mouth as soon as we get there,’ called Mal grimly. ‘He’s in shreds. I mean, his arm. Down to the bone. And there’s a lot of shrapnel just below his body armour . . . Not sure about his foot . . .’‘Clear the position before you touch him! Remember!’But Binman had already begun his slow shuffle around Ryan on his belt buckles. He was almost all the way round and Mal was ready with equipment when Binman’s long, thin fingers felt the strange thickening of the soil which told him something lay beneath. He was a few inches from Ryan Connor’s shoulder.He stopped.‘Oh fuck!’ said Mal. ‘Tell me no!’‘Maybe.’ He blew very gently on the earth and saw buried metal.‘Don’t mess with maybe,’ said Jamie from ground level. He was close to them now.‘We could clear a wider position over your side,’ said Binns. ‘Then we can pull him over away from this mine.’Jamie had reached Connor’s feet. Binns circled back around his head. He and Jamie worked towards each other, widening the cleared area around the unmoving body when simultaneously they both found something. Two more mines, within a metre of each other. They stopped. They knew this must be the heart of the minefield.‘What a load of shite,’ said Jamie. ‘We can’t move him this way. Or that way.’‘If I have to do mouth to mouth I could just about kneel over there . . .’ said Mal. He reached across from his safe spot and found Ryan Connor’s wrist. He felt a very faint pulse.‘He’s alive!’ he shouted down the field. ‘Just!’‘You’re not doing anything to him six inches away from an unexploded mine, mate,’ said Jamie. ‘All we can do is get him onto a stretcher and out of here. Even that’s going to be fucking dangerous.’‘There isn’t room for four people,’ said Binman. He was staring at the bloody mess which was Ryan Connor’s body. He remembered how Ryan had flown out from Bastion with him and Streaky and how they had arrived in the FOB and everyone had been looking at the colour of Connor’s hair for some reason Binman had never discovered. Ryan’s hair didn’t look so red now that it was surrounded by the surreal red of his own blood.‘There’s not even room for two,’ said Jamie. ‘Especially if one of them’s Angus.’‘I can pick Connor up by myself,’ said Angus.‘Yeah, gorilla, but can you pick him up without putting any weight on the ground there, or here, or here?’‘Yeah, I can do it,’ said Angus.‘You can’t,’ Binns told him. ‘We didn’t come all this way for you and Connor to get blown up.’ He spoke as though he had travelled a hundred miles.Jamie said: ‘Two of us can probably do it. We lift him straight out of this area and onto a stretcher over there.’Binman knew one thing. He would not be lifting Connor.‘I’ll take his Bergen,’ he said. He was starting to shake. Four men and a casualty were standing or lying within a metre of three mines they knew about and maybe more they didn’t. He felt as though all his nerve endings were shredded, like the tree Streaky said had turned into lettuce. Maybe he’d used up all his good luck and there was none left for the near impossible extraction of Ryan Connor.‘We’ll have to lift him with his kit on, too fiddly to get it off here,’ said Jamie.Mal and Jamie discussed which of them would help Angus pick up Connor. Finally they agreed that Jamie was in a better position. Mal took Connor’s gimpy. Binman followed him back along the mine path.Binman was aware of all the faces looking at him from the woods as he neared. Embarrassingly, inexplicably, he wanted to cry. But their eyes were drawn away from him. Now that Binns and Bilaal had cleared, Jamie and Angus were attempting to lift the heavy body of Connor and remove it with surgical precision.‘What the hell is going on?’ Dave asked Mal as soon as he and Binman reached the edge of the field.‘Three mines. Two on one side and the other by his left shoulder. No room to get his Bergen off, no room for a stretcher. So they’re lifting him out and—’‘No!’ yelled Dave up the minefield. ‘Christ, no, no, no! Are you fucking crazy? Stop right now!’Binman had just stepped into the woods when the flash of an explosion, bright enough for him to see it without turning around, lit up the world.
WHEN THE PHONE RANG, JENNY GRABBED IT INSTINCTIVELY AND clasped it to her ear. She moved instantly from a dream to awake. She recognized the thickness of the dark in the room: it was the middle of the night. The house was still. There was only one person who would ring at her at this hour.‘Dave? Dave!’‘Jenny. Is Agnieszka.’There was a pause while the name registered. Agnieszka almost never called. At any time. Let alone the middle of the night.‘Agnieszka! Christ, what’s happened?’She heard a sob at the end of the phone. Then Agnieszka replied. But her English had disintegrated. She spoke too loudly, with the emphasis on the wrong words, the vowel sounds muddled.‘What, Agnieszka? What? I can’t understand you . . .’‘Something not nice happen!’‘But . . . what?’‘I get text message from I don’t know who.’‘From a stranger?’‘Yes.’Jenny was relieved that the problem was so trivial. Then she began to feel angry. Agnieszka had woken her up at . . . she glanced at the clock . . . 2 a.m. To tell her about some text message.‘Well, take no notice, there are shedloads of crazy people out there, Agnieszka. They send random messages to strangers.’‘No, no, no. This one know me.’‘Oh. So what does it say?’‘It say . . .’ Agnieszka started to cry. Her words were choked by tears. Jenny had to ask her to read it three times. Finally on the fourth try, she understood.‘It say: Jamie is dead.’Jenny was shocked into silence. Her head was filled by the sound of Agnieszka’s sobs.‘Christ,’ she said at last. ‘You’ve no idea who sent this? Did it come from . . . how could it have come from . . . well, none of our boys at the FOB have mobiles, do they?’Agnieszka was wailing now. Eventually Jenny understood her words.‘It come from Jamie’s number!’Jenny pulled her swollen body upright on the bed so she could concentrate more easily. She bent her legs and the bump banged against them.‘Jamie’s phone? Did he leave it behind in the UK?’‘No!’‘But if he took it to Afghanistan he would have handed it in at Bastion.
