Dead Centre - Andy McNab [8]
I hadn’t seen HDRs (Humanitarian Daily Rations) since my time in Bosnia. Each pack weighed about a kilo and contained a day’s calories. They only cost the American taxpayer three or four dollars each, but the joke going the rounds was that, with door-to-door delivery, this was one of the world’s most expensive takeaways. They were designed to survive being airdropped, thrown out of an aircraft as individual packages – much safer than parachuting large pallets of rations onto survivors’ heads, and better for preventing hoarding.
The HDRs dropped in Afghanistan were yellow, like they’d been in Bosnia, before it was realized that the packages were the same colour and roughly the same size as American cluster bombs, which were being scattered like confetti. They changed them to orange-pink.
Inside would be a couple of meals like lentil stew and pasta with beans and rice. There were also fruit pastries that reminded me of Pop Tarts, and shortbread, peanut butter, jam, fruit bars – even boxes of matches decorated with the American flag, a nice moist towelette and a plastic spoon. For some reason, every HDR also included a packet of crushed red chilli.
The US Navy must have airdropped this lot. They were somewhere offshore, and their helicopters had overflown the camp now and again. Some of the packets weren’t so empty. Not even the Indonesian Army could flog pork and beans on the black market.
Mong clambered across the wreckage. Wriggly tin buckled and groaned under his weight. BB leant on the bonnet as he watched him, checking his watch like we were missing a crucial meeting.
Wrinkled pictures were pinned to wood on what was left of a wall on the other side of the road. Dolls, toys and picture frames were laid out on the ground. The locals had been putting together whatever personal effects they found for others to see. For some, it would be all they had to remind them of a dead family member.
Two rounds kicked off deeper in the city and there was a faint wail of sirens. BB looked at his watch again.
‘It’s all right, mate, we’ve got another five hours until first light. It’s only going to take him ten minutes.’
11
I COULD TELL things weren’t good as soon as Mong reached the cockpit. ‘For fuck’s sake …’ He stuck his head out of the smashed window. The leg dangled beneath him. ‘I’m going to need a hand here.’
BB pushed himself off the bonnet. ‘The kid’s alive?’
Mong ignored him and disappeared inside. I climbed the crumbling concrete blocks and hauled myself onto the boat. The deck was clear. The waves had taken everything away.
Mong was easing the leg gently out of the window frame. It didn’t belong to a child but a young woman. And crunched into the opposite corner of the cockpit was a man. A wedding ring glinted on a hand that was twisted up around his shoulder. His head had been crushed on the metal shelving just above him. There was no blood. The sea had washed him clean. The wound looked like a Hallowe’en makeup kit without the ketchup.
It was the same for the young woman, and the newly born boy who lay between her legs, umbilical cord attached and placenta still inside her.
BB followed me onto the deck, face screwed up in disgust. No way was he going to enter the cockpit. ‘This is fucking gross …’
Mong didn’t look up as he pushed aside the tangle of kit covering mother and child.
BB put his hand to his mouth.
The husband’s head twisted a little and fell forward as Mong tugged out a sodden blanket and laid it on the deck as best he could. ‘While you were fucking about at the Carphone Warehouse we were surrounded by shit like this. Women desperate to give their babies a chance before they died themselves …’
‘I don’t give a fuck. Let’s get out of here. We’re going to catch something.’
I knew Mong was talking about the Balkans. Muslim women in the villages who knew they were going to get raped and killed went into premature labour as the Serbs advanced.
He gathered up the tiny body, pruned from its prolonged soaking,