The Death That Wasn't

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I focused on the old man dressed in heavy clothing to ward off the biting wind. He sat on the ground, huddled against the building wall and appeared harmless enough. Still, I studied him for a while, taking in his weathered features, the beard with strands of grey, the narrow eyes, squinting into the distance, shadowed under a heavy turban. He was on his haunches, his knees bent upwards, almost reaching his hunched shoulders, and he clasped them with bony hands.

The tiny village of less than twenty houses was typical for the arid region, except that it had been deserted for months. Who knew, or even cared what had happened to the villagers. Perhaps a raid by some neighbouring tribesmen intent on taking the young women, and goats or any other livestock. Perhaps they had just left after a particularly harsh winter without feed for the animals. Or a crop failure. They had gone, and the village was just a remnant of a previous life where families had mingled and children had played. It was a shell. A dot on the map. Neglected. Now we sat in our surveillance post in the hills above it, watching, and waiting.

A year of training and this was now my third month in the field. Three months of conducting surveillance, gathering intelligence, learning how to be patient, to control urges of the bladder, to focus, above all, to concentrate and never lose sight of what you are doing. I knew that this was part of my induction. First the watching. Noting and reporting everything that happened. Three months of this, and then I would be allocated to a combat platoon. This was my last posting. Then the real action, and I was ready.

The position of the surveillance post had initially been selected from images collected by a high flying drone. The hill was ideal, sufficiently distant to avoid being spotted, and high enough to provide a good overview of the village and its surrounds. That is where we wanted to be. In the early hours Corporal Doug Denning and I had been choppered into a valley about eight kilometres to the east. Using night vision goggles we had worked our way across two roads, through a knee deep stream, avoided eroded areas and climbed two smaller hills to get here. It was fast progress, as all we carried was our standard kit. No combat, so no non-standard weaponry. By sunrise, we had located the best position, with a clump of trees providing some shelter, and with good visual of the village and all access routes. We made ourselves as comfortable as possible, and waited. And watched.

Denning had been around for several years, and I assumed his function was to provide some report back to the base on how I conducted myself. After five years he had made corporal, and was highly experienced and well liked. He looked the part. Rugged, clean shaven, handsome features with a strong jaw line, thick curly hair and an equally thick covering on his chest. He was quiet spoken, never saying much. A good, dependable companion in a surveillance situation.

From our position we had a good view of the village less than two kilometres away, and of the surrounding area. All approaches were covered. Before we settled down for the long wait, I called in our coordinates to give Base our exact location. The beep, signifying message received, followed almost immediately. Then we settled into position. Me on my stomach, lying on a cushion of flattened scrub, with the binoculars trained on the village, and Denning sitting cross legged, watching the approaches as well as our rear. It amazed me that he could sit like that for hours on end. I couldn’t. It would have been pins and needles or cramp within thirty minutes.

Base had received intelligence that one of the local chieftains used the village as a stopover point on his monthly tour of the region, where he drummed up support, and collected funds for the local Taliban branch. He was expected to arrive during the day, and our job was to alert Base as soon as he put in an appearance, and they would call in an air strike. It was important that the tribal chiefs understood who they should support. This type of surveillance was a key strategy in finding the right targets. And today, Denning and I were the ones who were going to make it all happen.

We were the observers, the reconnoitrers, the surveillance and the watchers. For three months, this had been my role in the army. No combat, no contact with the Taliban, just watching and waiting. Although kept out of danger, lying on your stomach for hours at a time, not moving, hardly talking, keeping focused is not fun at all. It is not for the fragile or the fidgety. Or for those who cramp easily, We had to see but not be seen for hour after weary hour. This was endlessly tedious.

When I joined up, I had no burning patriotic desire to fight for my country. In some ways it was an escape. My Mum died when I was still a youngster, and after my Dad died a few years later, I was pretty much on my own. My grandparents took me in, but I always felt that I was an intrusion into their lives, and I did much as I pleased, and tended to drift. I left before finishing my schooling, finding my way into a variety of casual jobs. Brickie’s labourer, lawn mowing, helping in Council parks, and finally, selling advertising for a men’s adventure magazine.

I surprised myself by being quite persuasive and good at what I did. Success came quickly, and I rose through the ranks to become their number one sales person. With my excellent sales figures, came the perks, and there were times when I was able to join a photo shoot where some ruggedly handsome man would spend hours posing with a female model, acting out some highly masculine scene. One that was meant to convey the idea that all horse riders, or mountain climbers, or hang glider pilots always had an attractive partner. Because they were so removed from real life, I thought that they fell flat. But the editor liked them, and so apparently did the readers.

I met many women and discovered that they enjoyed my easy banter, which soon moved from chatting to dating. While I enjoyed their attention, I never settled long with any of them. Yes, we had fun, but I knew that somewhere there was the perfect woman for me. I had a top job, I was able to make things happen, and I was good at charming and bedding. I deserved someone special.

I had adopted as a mantra, the final two lines of the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley . . “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul”. These words resonated with me as a constant reminder that I should always be in control of my own destiny. I resolved to live my life accordingly, and had them tattooed on my wrist, where they would be hidden beneath the watch strap.

My time with the magazine came to a sudden end, when I was badly let down by the management. Several advertisers discovered that the magazine had far fewer readers than they were led to believe, and cancelled their contracts. I couldn’t work under those conditions, and left.

I decided that it would be good to be out of the workforce for a while, and joined the army as a form of escapism. The thought of hard physical training and the thrill of facing the danger of combat, was what appealed to me. I knew that I could make an outstanding soldier and be a credit to my country.

The longer you focused on a village like this, the more you became aware of its distinctive features. The shape and size of the houses, the drab colour scheme that blended with the sparse and sandy landscape. The surrounding wall, more an attempt to define a boundary than trying to keep strangers out. The open sewers. The total absence of trees. A corralling area for the livestock. A communal square where the children would have played, and people met. Houses that had lost their doors, leaving dark interiors that my binoculars could not penetrate. Houses with boarded windows. Shutters that moved with the breeze that occasionally swirled along the dusty, abandoned roads. Nothing moved, not even the old man on his haunches. Except for the shadows. They slowly inched their way down steps and across streets, without purpose, and without speed.

I returned to the man. Was he a vanguard for the expected arrival of the target? Or was he a sentry, and our target was already there? Or was he just a traveller, here for a day or two? Was he a threat? What was he thinking, in his silent pose so far away? At the moment he was a feature that I could not ignore. As motionless as me.

It took a few more hours, then he moved, standing in a fluid motion. Perhaps he was not as old as he appeared. The sun accelerates aging features in this harsh environment. In no hurry he turned and with slow long strides, he walked to the end of the road, turned away from me along a narrow foot path that led to the far side of the village. He turned again, and I could see his head above a low wall, before he disappeared behind one of the houses. I expected him to reappear around the other corner, but he didn’t. I waited. Still nothing, and alarm bells started ringing.

“Old man has disappeared behind the last house, third on the left,” I announced in a soft voice to Denning. “About two minutes ago.”

Still sitting cross legged, Denning twisted his body to bring his gaze over the village. ‘Everything else OK?’ He queried, his eyes squinting through his binoculars.

When straining to focus for hours on end, eyes sometimes played tricks. Was that a movement in the darkened interior of the house next to the one where the man had last been seen? Or was it just a shadow? Where was the man now? In the scheme of things it probably didn’t matter, as our tribal chief had not yet arrived. But you could never take anything for granted. And I was certain that we had not been spotted. The sun was still behind us, so there was no question of reflection off any shiny surface. No, we were secure, and our main target had not yet arrived. Perhaps the man was innocently sitting in a new position that allowed him a better view of one of the approaches to the village. Perhaps, like us, he was waiting for the arrival of the local chieftain.

We went back to watching. Denning returned to scanning the area to our rear, and to watching the approaches. We had no idea whether the target would arrive by vehicle, on horseback, or on foot. Although sparse in parts, there was still enough vegetation cover to make a cautious foot approach difficult to spot, until he was almost within the protective walls of the village - particularly if he came on his own. It would be a cautious approach, as his survival as a chieftain depended upon continual alertness and suspicion. Here, life was hard for everyone. More so for those in a position of some power or influence. Invariably, by supporting one group you would antagonise another. And where almost every male who reached adulthood carried a weapon, differences were easily and quickly settled. A chieftain who was not wary, suspicious or ruthless, seldom survived.

Still all was quiet. No movement down below. The shadows continued their slow creep across the yellow, dusty houses. The old man remained hidden. As I continued to scan each house, a wisp of brown smoke drifted above the same house that had concealed the old man.

“Bit of smoke above back house,” I reported to Denning.

Almost at the same moment there was a faint, unmistakable, dull thump, and we both froze. We had heard it before, but this time, we were f****d. First the smoke, then the thump, then the bomb. Before I could move, my head exploded in agonising sound as it went off behind me. A truck like force smashed me, knives shredding my legs; my lungs compressed and squashed by the blast of the mortar bomb. Lying down meant that most of the pressure wave had passed over me. I was dazed from the air blast. The shock, the pain, and the ringing in my ears was overwhelming, as I struggled to breathe through the smoke and the rancid smell of the explosive force. I eased myself into a kneeling position, my head pounding and dazed. I staggered upright and was reasonably stable on my feet. My legs were on fire from the piercing of the shrapnel, but that seemed to be the worst. I thought I was OK.

Denning, received the main force of the blast. Fortunately, the bomb had been slightly off target, otherwise there would have been little of him left. The blast had kicked him backwards, and now he lay awkwardly, one leg at an unnatural angle beneath his body. His face was a b****y mess of hanging flesh, one eyeball blown out. Clothing had been ripped away and the silvery sausage of his gut glistened as it oozed from his torn body. At that moment something in my head snapped. I had to run. To get as far away as possible. And fast.

I should have dealt with this as I had been trained to do, but all the simulations and set-ups had not prepared me for this. Not for the shock. Not for the pain. Not for the fear that another bomb might be on the way. Not for the reality and horror of seeing my mate, spluttering blood, moaning with pain, unrecognisable with an eye and his gut hanging. I was trained to handle this, to administer morphine, to radio for help, to try and move the wounded to a more secure position, or at least away from here, in case of a follow-up blast. But I didn’t look for the radio. Even as Denning, groaning from the effort, turned towards me, his good eye begging, pleading for assistance, for the injection, for me to do something, I turned, and fled.

A switch had been thrown. I forgot my duty. I forgot my pride. I forgot Denning. I ran, as fast as I could, ignoring the pain in my legs. I ran down the hill, tearing through shrubs, not knowing where I was headed. Terror propelled me. I ran, with only one thought. Get as far away as possible. I stumbled over some thick undergrowth, recovered my balance, and then stumbled again . . head first into a suitcase size rock, and mercifully, I passed out.