Southern Iraq, outskirts of Al Amarah. August 2005.
The heat had teeth by 0600, and not the slow burn of English sun but a hostile, living thing that crept under plate carriers holding the bulletproof armour. It settled into the sweat-soaked waistband of fatigues. Raf adjusted his shemagh, checked his peripheral through sweat-smeared Bolle goggles, and exhaled through his nose like it might slow the heartbeat he refused to acknowledge. The wind carried dust and the familiar, sweet and sour tang of stagnant canal water, along with a metallic smell.
They were fifteen klicks from the last known friendly checkpoint, working east along a crumbled arterial road. It used to be a road, but now it looked like God had taken a hammer to it and then walked away. Raf’s boots caught on the edge of cracked concrete as they moved in single-file, staggered formation, deliberate. No chatter, just the rhythmic scuff and pause of four men who knew this wasn’t a patrol, not really. It was a retrieval. And maybe an apology.
“Compounds’ less than two hundred out,” Geordie murmured, his voice low and direct, dragged through gravel, barely audible through the whisper-mic.
“Still no sign of civvies. No ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) eyes. No rooftop heat.”
“Or they’re flatlining,” Smudge muttered, fingers tapping twice on the PRR (personal role radio) like it was a habit he couldn’t kill.
“Place looked rough even before the call.”
“You good, Beaker?”
“Just rechecking my six,” Raf replied.
Dogs somewhere. Flies. Nothing human.
He kept his eyes on the compound, a squat block of concrete in the near distance, pockmarked and sun-bleached, one wall blackened where something had cooked off. He let the wind speak.
Cal was rear watch, his L129A1 sweeping the top edge of the low skyline. He’d be seeing angles the rest of them couldn’t. Raf trusted him without having to ask.
They moved again.
The call had come down the night before; local fixer injured, possibly IED-related, holed up with a family in one of the outer compounds, bled out or bleeding still. No official escort, no air support. Command had tried to bounce it back up the chain. But Geordie had served with the fixer during early rotations, and when Raf heard the man’s name, he’d quietly started packing his kit.