War Torn

War Torn by Andy McNab, Kym Jordan Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: War Torn by Andy McNab, Kym Jordan Read Free Book Online
Authors: Andy McNab, Kym Jordan
tomorrow.’

‘There is something you can do . . .’

‘What?’

‘Phone Agnieszka.’

Before he left, Dave had particularly asked Jenny to look out for Jamie Dermott’s wife. Jenny liked Jamie a lot and knew he was worried about her. She was Polish, alone with a child who seemed to be handicapped and without family here except her snotty and unhelpful in-laws. But looking after a woman who wouldn’t join in anything had proved difficult. Jenny had asked her round and offered to baby-sit. But the one time she had come over and Jenny had tried to introduce her to everyone, Agnieszka had wrapped her long and beautiful legs around the bar stool in the kitchen and said little. She’d looked as though she wished she was somewhere else, with someone else.

‘Can I call her tomorrow? She’s only just got home, I saw her.’

‘Oh, sure. You sound so tired; you get all the kids into bed and then you go yourself, honey. We only need to make certain she hears the truth from us first and not some horrible rumour.’

Jenny put Vicky to bed and pulled out a couple of mattresses onto the little girl’s floor for the Kasanita kids. She stood looking at her daughter’s sweet, sleeping face. The rounded jaw, the pink cheeks, the wisps of hair curling around her forehead.

‘Don’t marry a soldier,’ Jenny whispered to her. ‘Whatever you do, don’t marry a soldier.’

She wished she hadn’t. She wanted to be Dave’s wife, but not an army wife. It was just too much. The intensity of living with all the other army families, the knowledge that their burdens were your burdens, the dull ache at the emptiness on the other side of the double bed where Dave should be lying. And beneath it all, the fear. The fear when you woke up and when you weren’t even thinking about it and when you were asleep. It wasn’t a surprise when there was a knock on the door one damp, dark afternoon and the Families Officer was standing on the step. Because in your heart you were expecting it all the time.

She decided now that she must persuade Dave to leave the army, and soon. Before there was a knock at her door.

Chapter Six

DAVE ROLLED HIS SLEEPING BAG OVER AND LOOKED AT THE SKY. The mountains, many kilometres away, were glowing a thousand shades of red and purple in the dawn. Everyone back in the UK calls this place Theatre, thought Dave. We are In Theatre. It is the Theatre of War. But no one ever tells you that the scenery’s bloody marvellous.

He lay still, watching the light change and the mountain colours lose their depth. He was thinking about Jordan Nelson, how his little brothers and worried mother would be sitting miserably under the strip-lighting of a hospital canteen while surgeons picked shrapnel out of his organs.

He got up and stretched. A Company and the civilians had first call on the washing area, the toilets, the cookhouse. He could see them moving around at the heart of the FOB. As soon as he could, he would try to find out if there had been any news on Steve or Jordan overnight.

But first, compulsively, he counted bodies. Twenty-six.

He stretched again and yawned. He looked up. And saw a vapour trail, bright orange against the blue sky. It was moving at speed and there was a smell of sulphur in the air. A rocket. It was going to land in the FOB before he could even shout a warning.

‘Incoming!’ he yelled, as it hit the ground with a thud deep enough to jolt his heart and enough noise to obliterate his voice. There was a small firework display at the heart of the camp thatwould have been spectacular if hadn’t been so deadly. But no one was near the rocket’s landing site. The closest building was the Cowshed and its thick walls stood up to the impact.

The sentries in the sangars were already firing. Civilians in shirt sleeves and body armour who had been eating breakfast were rapidly retreating to the mud-walled safe area at the heart of the camp. And A Company were leaping into action all over Sin City.

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