back down here, both of you.’
Joe and Ricky edged backwards, then slid ten metres down the hill on their backs before standing and running back to the unit. They were still in a circular formation, each of them kneeling and with their guns pointing out into the desert. Joe approached Hernandez directly. ‘It’s a no-go,’ he said. ‘The wadi that leads into the town is fine, but the open ground around it is crawling. They’ll spot us when we go over the hill, no question.’
The American considered it for a moment. ‘OK, listen up. We’re going to re-route. Cut round, enter the town from the south.’ A bead of sweat was running down his face. It collected on his upper lip just where the scar was. ‘We move in pairs—’
‘Hang on,’ Ricky interrupted.
Hernandez stopped talking and looked at Ricky as though he’d only just noticed he was there. ‘You got a problem with that?’
‘You’ve seen the mapping, brudder. The area south of Nawaz is shit?ful of legacy mines and IEDs. That’s why we’re supposed to be heading in from the west…’
Hernandez took a step closer. ‘Well, here’s the thing,
‘I’m not walking into a fucking minefield.’
‘You’ll walk where I damn well tell you to walk.’
An ominous pause. In an uncomfortable instant, Joe realized there were three Colts pointing at him and Ricky.
It was Hernandez who broke the silence. ‘As you’ve studied the maps so damn carefully,’ he said, ‘you’ll know that bomb disposal teams have marked safe passage through the area. You’ll see the chalk lines on the fucking ground. Even you Brits aren’t so dumb you can’t follow the white line.’
Joe breathed deeply. It was true that he’d seen pathways through the minefield marked on the mapping. ‘He’s right, Ricky,’ he murmured.
‘What is it, friend?’ Hernandez interrupted. ‘Lost your nerve?’
‘Fuck you.’ Ricky looked in contempt at the others. ‘You can tell your homeys to point their rifles at the bad guys, Hernandez,’ he hissed, before turning back to Joe. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘If we’re going, let’s go.’
The desert was already a furnace, and Joe’s clothes clung to him. He took a pull of warm water from his Camelbak and surveyed his position. To his nine o’clock was the incline of the hill, a little gentler now that he and Ricky had covered 500 metres east from their insertion point. At their three o’clock, open, empty ground and the mountains in the distance. At six o’clock, two of the Yanks 400 metres back, indistinct in the heat haze. And at twelve o’clock, a fucking wasteland.
There were three derelict breeze-block buildings approximately 500 metres ahead. They delineated the edge of the town – about 200 metres beyond them were more buildings, though it was clear that this area was seldom visited. There was no sign of any human activity; just a thin, lame cat that limped towards them from the direction of the breeze-block huts, and stopped, 100 metres from their position, when it saw Joe and Ricky. It stood still for five seconds, before limping away in the opposite direction.
‘How many lives do you reckon Tiddles has used up?’ Ricky murmured.
More than nine, Joe thought to himself. The 500 metres of ground between them and the breeze-block hut was like a junk yard. The burned-out shells of cars littered the whole place. With his scope, Joe could make out the ravaged corpse of some unidentifiable animal, the size of a large dog, but headless. And, a few metres to its left, what looked like the remnants of a kite, knotted and tangled round a twisted chunk of metal, drooping in the windless air.
Five metres from where they were standing, the hard-baked earth was stained white. A straight line – it was only a couple of inches wide – extended twenty metres in the direction of the shacks, before veering left at forty-five degrees and straightening up again after another five metres.
‘Follow the yellow brick road?’ Ricky said.
‘I don’t like it,’ Joe replied, his voice low. ‘Maybe we should skirt round the whole area.’
Ricky shook his head. ‘We don’t know how far the frickin’ things extend. The Russkis mined this place to hell, you know. If the Yanks’ minesweepers have done the hard work, we should follow their line.’
Ricky was right. Thank fuck it hadn’t rained for six weeks, and the chalk line was still mostly intact, although it was scuffed out in places. The chalk lines marking safe passage through a minefield weren’t just good for soldiers. Local people and enemy militia used them too.
‘I’ll go first,’ Joe said.
‘Hey, brudder…’
‘Forget it, Ricky. We’re good now, OK?’
Ricky grinned. ‘OK.’ If he suspected that Joe didn’t want him taking the lead for any other reason, he didn’t show it.
‘Keep a twenty-five-metre distance,’ Joe said. Ricky didn’t have to ask why: that was the buffer he had to keep to stay out of the kill zone, should Joe end up stepping on a pressure plate.
‘Roger that, brudder. See you on the other side.’
They clapped palms, then Joe stepped onto the white line.
He wouldn’t have walked more carefully if he’d been treading a high wire. He took each footstep very slowly, placing his toes down first and feeling for anything unusual before allowing himself to release his whole weight on to his foot and take the next step. The dry earth crunched slightly beneath him, sounding almost as though there was a dusting of snow. No fucking chance. It was already pushing forty degrees and the sky was an intense blue. Sweat continued to ooze from Joe’s pores, and he had only gone ten metres before he had to stop and wipe the salt from his eyes so that he could see the way ahead.
Fifteen metres.
Twenty.
He reached the apex of the line where it angled off, forcing him to change direction. He allowed himself another sip of water to ease the burning dryness in his mouth and throat. All his attention was on the line ahead and it was only out of the corner of his eye that he saw Ricky starting out on it.
The shell of a Toyota on its side – it still had a few tiny patches of peeling red paint here and there – lay ten metres to his right. Joe’s skin prickled as he passed the shattered glass that lay all around, and spotted the rough hessian bag twisted around the remains of the front seat that had perhaps once belonged to the driver. He looked up to see that he hadn’t covered more than a tenth of the distance to the breeze-block huts.
Another slug of water.
Another step forward.
He looked over his shoulder. Ricky was about thirty metres back. A safe distance. Beyond him, Joe realized he could no longer see the Americans. In a corner of his mind he wondered why they weren’t still advancing, but he didn’t have the headspace to worry about it for long.
He took another step.
And another.
Movement up ahead. It was the cat, hobbling across the chalk line. For a moment, Joe considered shooting it – if it trod on a pressure plate, they’d all be fucked – but the animal, almost as if it knew what Joe was thinking, changed direction and scampered off in the direction of the breeze ?blocks.
Joe’s blood was thumping through his veins. His right foot crunched down onto the chalk line.
Then his left foot.
Then his right again.
He almost missed it. Had the feral cat still been diverting his attention, he would have done. It was a footprint to his left, about twenty centimetres from the chalk line and facing towards it. And a second footprint, half a metre – a stride’s length – beyond that.
Joe stopped.
He stared at the ground.
Something wasn’t right.
He crouched down and touched the footprint. The indentations of the sole had made a regular, symmetrical
