Fire Force(54)

‘Let’s eat,’ announced Steve. ‘And then we rest.’

Dan and Newton had cooked up a basic meal of grilled pork, beans, salad and rice. All the men were hungry from the day’s labours. Nick had brought an iPod with him, loaded up with Bruce Springsteen, Coldplay and Snow Patrol. ‘Stick to Bruce,’ said Steve, as Nick attached the MP3 player to a speaker system in the officer’s mess. ‘None of us blokes likes any of that modern rubbish.’

Steve chewed on his food as a rousing chorus of ‘The Rising’ boomed out of the speakers. He thought briefly about Jeff. He’d loved The Boss, carrying his complete works around with him on his iPod, along with Stevie Wonder and Prince. He looked towards the sky, swallowing hard on his grub, and washing it down with a glass of water. Another hell-hole, listening to Bruce, with all of us getting wound up because we’re nervous about going into battle, he reflected to himself. At moments like this, it’s hard to understand why we do it. For the excitement - or because none of us know how to live a normal life any more?

Dan was talking about his bar in Majorca, and Maksim was saying that he’d definitely bring some Russian builders down for the summer to finish the place off. But the conversation was desultory. Steve could feel the anxiety in the air. Men were always nervous before a battle, it was part of soldiering, but this was different. None of them minded a fight, so long as it was a fair one and there was a chance of coming out alive. But the assault on the fort looked close to impossible. Fifty men against ten. Those weren’t odds anyone could face calmly.

We should never have taken this job, he thought. It was Ollie’s fault. If that useless tosser didn’t drink and gamble so much, none of us would be here.

‘I want to be on the chopper,’ said Nick, sitting down next to Steve.

Ollie was sitting a few yards away from him, with Dan and Newton at his side. Dusk was starting to fall, and out in the forest you could hear the wails of an animal on the prowl. At the front entrance, half a dozen wounded men were being dumped off in a truck and hurriedly carried inside the fort. It was clear that up on the front line, about five miles from here, the Government forces were taking a terrible beating. A couple of the men being carried through on stretchers looked like they’d had half their faces blown off, whilst another pair had taken heavy shrapnel wounds to their legs. The medical facilities were rudimentary: one tent, staffed by a single nurse, and a doctor who’d long since run out of most of the medicines you needed in a field hospital.

‘You want to do what?’

‘The chopper,’ said Nick firmly. ‘I want to come with the guys in the chopper.’

‘Then you’re sodding crazy,’ snapped Steve. But he could tell from Nick’s face that he desperately wanted to go. He was reddening, not with embarrassment the way he usually did, but with anger.

‘You left me behind the last time,’ said Nick. ‘This time I want to be right in the thick of the action.’

‘And you know how to jump out of a chopper?’

‘I did it in the Territorials. I’ll be all right.’

‘This is under fire, mate, when your life depends on it. You need experience.’

‘Like Ian? He’s just a Provo.’

Steve thought for a moment. ‘That’s different. We need Ian to bomb the bastards.’

‘I can drop the stun bombs,’ said Nick.

Steve shook his head from side to side. He admired the boy’s guts. Nick was probably the only man among them whose insides weren’t churning at the thought of the drop tomorrow. Coming in by parachute was bad enough. Dropping off a rope into enemy fire was among the most terrifying experiences soldiering had to offer. If Nick knew what it was like, he wouldn’t be volunteering. But he was young, he had no sense of danger, and although everyone was like that once, once you’d had some battles under your belt, you knew that sending a man without experience into a fire storm like that was just throwing away a life.

‘You can have my place,’ shouted Maksim, grabbing hold of his crotch. ‘There’s too many girls haven’t had a taste of these yet to get them shot off in the morning.’

‘Deal,’ Nick said immediately.

But Maksim had stopped joking. ‘Sorry, no way,’ he muttered.

Ollie had already stood up and was walking across to join them. He put his arm around Nick’s shoulder and steered him towards the medical tent. One of the wounded soldiers had been slung across the rickety operating table. The nurse was lying down on his chest, trying to keep him still while the doctor hacked off his left leg just above the knee. The man was swaying, blood foaming from his mouth. They’d pumped him full of morphine, but had no proper anaesthetics to knock him out before they started the operation. If the wound didn’t kill him the trauma might well do the job, realised Ollie grimly. He had seen it happen before - men so psychologically damaged by being operated on in the field they lost the will to live.