fuck themselves. Several cuts and scars stung viciously as he smoothed the soap over them. He watched the soupy puddle of dust and soot mix with the congealed blood into the familiar war cocktail that swilled around his feet. But he knew that even if he stood under there for a month, what had happened yesterday was never going to wash off. Is this it, he wondered, the moment when a man changes for ever?
When he’d walked off the Osprey back at the FOB everyone stared. Montes, who had just got the news, came jogging up and slowed when he saw him.
‘Man, you look like you came back from the dead.’
Only when he caught his reflection in a vehicle mirror did he realise why. His face and hair were completely grey with dust and soot, mixed with sweat into a paste which the sun had then baked dry. His T-shirt was stiff with his own blood and that of the dead girl. Montes threw his arms round him and several wounds protested in unison.
‘We’d wrote you out the script, man.’
As he marched Blackburn to the shower trailer, Montes gave him their end, how after Blackburn had followed the wires into the building they’d felt the first tremor and made for open ground, just as the big one hit and all the buildings collapsed around them. He outlined a mushroom with his hands. ‘Baboom. Hello Hiroshima. Place looked like out of some demented game your Mom won’t want you playin’. Next thing, they pullin’ us out.’
He was doing what all soldiers do after an incident — reprocessing it into an action movie, with all the dark stuff left out. That was for the chaplain or the psych. ‘Found the sniper who got Chaffin — had a fat boulder right where his dick used to be and a big look of surprise on his face. Gonna give him a big fucking problem with the virgins upstairs.’
Black looked like he was listening, but other scenes were playing in his head. He wanted the beheaded man ID’d. Montes quit talking. ‘Your turn.’
Black tapped his head. ‘All fuzzed up.’ If only.
When he exited the shower, he noticed things were already changing on the base. Frontloaders were filling a fresh set of Hesco bastions with sand and a truck-mounted jib was hefting them into place, doubling the height of the fortifications. A new guard tower was going up. The base, which had been all about peacekeeping and nation- building, was being put on a war footing.
Blackburn and Lieutenant Cole faced each other across a folding table strewn with maps. Not the familiar ones of their patch along the border, all dog-eared and stained with coffee, but fresh ones of another country — Iran. Cole had his laptop open. He was hunched over it, arms folded, peering at the screen, typing rapidly while he listened to Black’s report. Blackburn recounted the scene as it played in his head, as it would again and again for years to come, whether he wanted it to or not, the star exhibit in his gallery of unwelcome memories.
Only Cole seemed to be typing far more words than Blackburn was speaking. ‘Back up a second. How far away were you at the moment of the execution?’
‘Like I said, hundred yards, maybe more.’
‘Behind a slab of masonry.’
‘Yessir.’
‘You didn’t move.’
‘That’s what I said, Sir.’
Cole looked up from the screen.
‘I had no choice, Sir.’
Eventually Cole stopped typing. Read over his words and closed the document.
‘We got an ID. Private James Harker from Cody, Wyoming. Nineteen years old.’
A name.
‘Want to see how we ID’d him?’
A cold weight deep seemed to grow inside Black. ‘Let me look.’
‘You up to it?’
‘I was there.’
Cole turned the laptop towards him, clicked ‘Play’. The camera was a few feet from Harker’s face as his expression moved through relief at being discovered, to dismay, then fear, as he realised what was about to happen. Then it crumpled into helpless outrage.
‘Turn up the sound.’
‘That’s as high as it goes.’
Harker was getting a lecture, or more of a rant, of which only a few words and phrases were audible. ‘American pigs. . enter uninvited. . suffer the fate. .’ On the screen ran a separate statement rather than a translation.
For a few seconds neither of them spoke. Then Cole broke the silence.
‘Nothing you could do, right?’
Black stared, a surge of indignation rising, but then Cole nodded. It wasn’t a question there was an answer to. Cole put the laptop aside and shuffled the maps. Moving on. He smoothed his hand across northeast Iran. Blackburn became conscious again of the sound of the base. A convoy of trucks thundered past outside the tent. The air crackled with choppers stacked for landing.
Cole slapped the map. ‘We have one big fucking situation across the border.’
‘How bad?’
‘Bad-bad. Bashir’s taking full advantage of the chaos caused by the quake to consolidate his position. Parts of the south and east have been declared PLR territory. And in Tehran, no one’s in charge.’
‘You’re kidding.’
He drummed his fingers on the table. ‘No definitive confirmation yet, but there’s shit flying around that Al Bashir has a nuclear capability. If it’s true, we’re in a whole ’nother game now.’
Cole fixed Blackburn with another glare. Blackburn had been there before. He respected his commanding officer. Beyond that, he wasn’t sure. There was a coldness in him that meant he was either just that — cold — or he kept his inner self well-defended.
Cole nodded. ‘You did good yesterday, neutralising that IED. We got the casualties from Carter’s unit out and had your guys cleared. That wouldn’t have happened if it had blown.’
‘Just doing my job, Sir.’
‘Yeah, well, doing it that well means it doesn’t let up for you. It’s business as usual.’
‘I wasn’t expecting it to, Sir.’
Black felt stung. The last thing on his mind was some kind of reward. That was Cole all over. Pat on the back with one hand, slap on the face with the other. Cole stood up and grabbed the laptop.
‘Stick around. Briefing at 1300.’
They sat in two rows of folding chairs. The makeshift briefing room, fashioned out of a pair of refrigerated containers and inevitably nicknamed ‘the cooler’, was very far from cool. Cole stood, legs apart, beside a wall map of Tehran, tapping it with a pointer.
‘We got intel that Al Bashir is in the north sector of the city. His people have seized the Interior Ministry; that’s now effectively their HQ in the capital. Gentlemen, this one is ours. Our information is that the quake has downed their radar and entire sections of the country are without power. We are going in and we’re going to cut this thing off at the head and finish it before he gets dug in. But Al Bashir must, repeat
Cole tapped the map emphatically with his stick. The tension rose in the room.
‘PLR forces concentrated in the north will be kept occupied by ongoing air strikes. Assault element, call sign Misfit 2–1, will be flown in by Osprey to this location. They will have a sniper element consisting of Blackburn and Campo, call sign Misfit 3–1 as overwatch security. Designated LZ is a quarter mile from the Ministry. Once on the ground the assault team will proceed to the target building.’
Cole turned to another more detailed map of the area surrounding the bank. ‘Along the way, Black’s team will provide overwatch from these positions. Extraction will be by Osprey. Roger?’
