Dead Centre - Andy McNab [9]
‘Yeah? Well, fuck you.’ BB spun on his heel and disappeared over the side. The corrugated iron buckled and creaked as he made his way down to the wagon.
More shots kicked off in the distance.
Mong laid the baby on the mother’s breast and started to tuck a corner of the blanket around him like a shroud.
I lifted her legs so we could get the blanket underneath her. ‘Mate, we won’t be taking them with us.’
Mong raised the mother’s head and placed the blanket around it.
‘We’ll leave them here, mate. Tell the army or whoever when we get back. They can come and mark them up.’
He was vibrating with anger. ‘She shouldn’t have been left like that. Leg hanging out. It’s not right. That fucker would just have left her …’
‘Mong, mate, you need to calm down. BB’s on the team, and we’ve still got a job to do.’
I went over to the husband. The meat on his legs was squidgy. It wouldn’t be long before his body started to decompose.
Mong got out of the way so I could drag the poor bastard next to his wife and his child. Somehow it seemed important to have them touching. He tucked the woman’s hair into the blanket so she and the child were totally shrouded.
We both stood there silently for a minute or two.
He looked across at me. ‘Feels good, doesn’t it, doing something halfway decent for once, instead of arsehole jobs like this?’
I put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Mate, the arsehole job’s still waiting.’
12
BEYOND THE FLOOD line, every football field was crammed with refugees – thousands of them – in makeshift camps. The city had suffered the magnitude nine ’quake and was now trying to cope with the magnitude six aftershocks.
There was no electricity, and therefore no light. More fires were dotted about in the darkness. Haunted eyes peered out at us from the shadows, unsure of who lurked behind our headlights. At this time of night it wouldn’t be aid workers, which left looters or the army, both bad news.
We eventually hit the main bridge crossing from west to east. The mood in the wagon wasn’t good. BB was expecting to go down with cholera, measles or some other fatal disease at any minute because we’d had physical contact with the family.
He had a point. It was monsoon season and rained for a couple of hours every day. The mosquitoes were out in force, raising the risk of dengue fever and worse. Thousands of corpses, hanging in trees or washed up on beaches, were rotting in the tropical heat. With open wounds and no food or clean water, the survivors wouldn’t survive for long.
‘Shit!’ BB slammed on the brakes.
Our headlights had picked out a pair of Saracen APCs, six-wheeled monsters that had probably been bought off the Brits. BB kept us tight in to the right as they rumbled across the bridge towards us.
Mong and I exchanged a glance. As young infantrymen we’d both done too many tours of Northern Ireland stuck in the back of those fuckers.
‘Three times I was blown up in one of those, Mong. Three IEDs in two years. You?’
BB’s knuckles went white as he clenched the wheel. ‘Fucking hell.’ He swung his head round. ‘Shut up, both of you. I don’t want to hear your old war stories. I’ve had enough of that shit.’
‘Calm down, mate. It wasn’t a dig.’
Mong looked as though he was about to join in but I shook my head. We had to cut away from this shit. I was glad BB was going to bin it after this. With luck I’d never have to share a vehicle with him again.
The Saracens were closing. They bristled with 40mm grenade launchers and .50 cal machine-guns, Tannoy systems and searchlights. Lads in olive green stuck out of the mortar hatches, armed with M16s. In this part of the world they would have been Singapore-made, under licence from Colt. The searchlights burst into life and played across us.
We waved and smiled in the blinding light. I pointed at my armband. ‘British! Aid workers!’
I knew that wouldn’t necessarily guarantee us membership