sounded just like the curly-haired scouse geezer in Hollyoaks.
‘Mate, you’re right. They’re heading for our bit of wall by the looks of it.’ His voice rose higher as he realized quite how close they’d got.
Flash reloaded his weapon with a fresh thirty-round mag without looking down. We all needed to stay focused on the darkness for any sign of movement. ‘Keep switched on, Briggsy. They’re trying to take one of us alive. They’ve been trying for weeks now … let’s make sure we don’t let them.’
There was a muzzle flash about twenty metres in front of us. We all gave it a five-round burst. The Taliban didn’t fire back. All the same, all three of us kept on firing into the darkness to make sure they never would.
Flash was another mate in my patrol. He was called Flash only because he wasn’t. He was much older than the rest of us, even older than my mum, I think, but he was sound. His hair was totally grey and he had a chin big enough to balance a mug of tea on. All he needed was a dance partner and he’d be Bruce Forsyth’s longlost twin brother.
Flash was in the Territorial Army, so of course all the patrol gave him a hard time for being a part-time soldier. Even I, the new boy, was allowed to join in. He came from way up north, near some big car factory. They’d made him redundant and then he’d lost his house. So with a wife and two boys older than me, he was out here aggressive camping with us lot just to pay the bills.
Flash glanced down at the mags in his chest harness and jerked his head round to the right. ‘They’re getting closer. Toki, we need more ammo. More ammo!’
Toki’s voice boomed over to us above the sound of gunfire, ‘Stand your ground! John’s coming with the ammo. He’s coming!’
I looked over my shoulder and could just make out John’s massive body as he staggered through the mud, his boots sinking deeper with every step. He was trying to run but was almost doubled over with the weight of the ammo boxes. John was a good laugh. He was from Peckham like me, only from a different estate.
More muzzle flashes kicked off in the darkness as the Talis tried to shoot at us. I raised my rifle back over the wall, aimed at the burst of light and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
‘Stoppage!’
I needed to let everyone know I couldn’t fire before I took cover and sorted out what had happened. I landed on my arse, cocked the weapon and tried to get my finger in to free up whatever was stuck in there. The hot metal of the working parts burnt my fingers, but I kept on digging. Rounds were slamming into the other side of our wall as the Talis kicked off again.
There was a piercing scream and a dull thud as a body fell into the mud behind me. I already knew who’d been hit before I spun round.
‘Man down, man down,’ I yelled into the air. It was John.
He screamed out in the darkness, his arms and legs jerking about in the mud as he fought the pain. Toki’s voice came over as calm as ever, taking control of the situation. ‘Get that weapon going, Briggsy! Cover us. Flash, with me. Get John.’
Flash broke into a run, bending down low for cover as more rounds slammed into the wall, while Si returned fire from just above me. My fingers kept fumbling with the empty case that was blocking the weapon. I told myself to slow down and stay calm, but it wasn’t working. All I could hear or think about was the sound of John screaming. I knew the screaming was good. So long as he was screaming, he was breathing, and that meant he was still winning!
Toki was on the radio, calling in MERT, the Medical Emergency Response Team. I willed the Chinook to come quickly, lift John out and get him to hospital in Camp Bastion.
The screaming started to die down a bit. Flash must have pumped some morphine into John after plugging up any holes and getting more fluids in to replace lost blood. I could hear Toki clearly as he gave MERT a sit rep (situation report).
‘Confirm. We have a T1 casualty, Tango 1. We need MERT now.’
That wasn’t good. T1 meant we were losing him. He was critical. Flash was thinking the