We lurched off again and my head rolled to the right.
Dom and Pete looked down at me. Pete was filming.
'You'll thank me for this later, mate. One for the family get-together . . .'
I sort of saw a smile behind the lens.
My head bumped on the steel floor and I realized I didn't have my helmet on. I couldn't remember it being taken off. Not that it mattered. My head didn't hurt. Morphine rules.
One minute, two minutes, five minutes, an hour later, for all I knew, the wagon stopped and the door was pulled open. Scouse voices echoed in the darkness.
'Get them out of there! I'm not fucking waiting out here all day, you cunts – get them out!'
The guy with the saline shouted back, 'This one first!'
Hands gripped me and floated me on to a stretcher. Red night-lights and dark shadows had been replaced by shot-to-fuck HESCOs and a sky speckled with stars.
My new best friend with the drip stayed alongside the stretcher as I jerked up and down. Dom and Pete were nowhere to be seen. Boots crunched over a stretch of rubble-strewn ground. Seconds later I was blinking under blindingly white light.
White tiles, white floors. Maybe six or seven others lying on stretchers, bound up with awesomely white dressings over filthy combats and body armour.
A medic with rubber gloves on swam across my vision. He was Ospreyed up and helmeted. Wherever I was, they must be taking incoming as well.
It had to be OSB. The place was permanently under siege from indirect fire, small arms and RPGs. One of their sangars held the record for having the most contacts in the whole of Iraq. The Chindits had even built earth ramps up to the HESCO walls so their Warriors' 30mm cannon could join in the firefights.
My stretcher was lowered on to a table. Within seconds somebody was cutting off Sonia's field dressing.
'It's OK, mate. It didn't hit a bone. Just a meaty hole, that's all.'
A mortar landed close by and I must have flinched. The guy doing the cutting was a Jock. 'It's OK. They'll get bored in a minute.'
Automatic fire kicked off from somewhere above me. Maybe it was that record-breaking sangar.
Through the blur, I could see Dom and Pete in the room.
The Jock was cleaning my left hand now. The liquid stank.
'Pete!'
They were busy talking to the guys, pointing at me.
'Pete!'
A burst of Scouse came from behind me. 'You'll be OK, la'!'
Rhett came into vision. He inspected the wound as Dom and Pete stepped up beside him.
Pete pointed at my Osprey. 'You copped this, mate.'
I looked down like a drunk to see a blurred couple of strike marks, almost indents in the front plate. I couldn't see the ripped material because it was covered with shit and mud.
Pete brought his camera up as Dom eased off my body armour and one of the medics cut along the inseam of my cargoes with a pair of scissors.
'Nick, they're going to clean you up here. As soon as the attack stops Rhett's taking you back to the COB with the other casualties. We'll see you there after they've sorted you out.'
'You'll soon be sound as a fuck'n' pound.' Pete's bad Scouse echoed off the tiles.
I tried to reach out to him with my good hand and was told to stay exactly where I was. 'Pete . . . thanks, mate . . .'
'Oh, fuck off.' He laughed. 'It's only 'cos I need you.'
I must have frowned.
'You're a witness in the case of the floating turd!'
I heard him laugh again, loud and long, and then the world grew gradually calmer.
The morphine took effect.
I felt myself floating.
My world became a drowsy haze of dim red light.
19
I felt numb and dumb, like a drunk bouncing off the furniture in some badly lit nightclub.
It was Dom, I was sure of it, shaking me, talking close to my ear. He was panicky, out of breath. Scared.
'Pete's gone . . .' He said it over and over. 'Pete's gone . . . It's all my fault . . . I'm so sorry, Nick. I've got to go . . . I've got to go . . .'
Was he crying? 'What the fuck you on about?'
'I've got to go . . .'
He was a blur, but it was definitely Dom. He sobbed something I couldn't quite hear. 'What you on about, mate?' I tried to push myself up but he stuck out an arm, told me to rest.