The Last Kestrel. Jill McGivering

he said. He started to sob. His nose was running with snot. ‘Where’s Mummy?’ His breath came in gulps. ‘I want Mummy.’

      Hasina stared. Behind him, the dark shapes of the two girls rose from under the cot.

      ‘What are you doing here?’ Hasina was beside herself. ‘Go. Get away. Run.’

      ‘Don’t make us, Auntie.’ Sima’s voice was already breaking into tears. ‘Please.’

      Nadira pushed past Sima and buried her face against Hasina’s thigh. Hasina ran a hand abstractedly over the child’s tousled hair. Outside, another shot. The soldiers sounded close to the outer edge of their land. She gave the children a shove.

      ‘Quick,’ she said. ‘Crouch down. Quiet.’

      They ran together, arms churning the air, and crouched in a line against the wall. Hasina turned back to the window, light-headed with fear. She focused her eyes on the veil of corn, feeling the foreign soldiers creep closer and fingering in her wet hands the two small bombs, the only weapons she had to keep them at bay.

       6

      The darkness was still dense when Ellen followed the young soldier to the convoy, led by a low bouncing shaft of torchlight. She leaned against the steel of the nearest military vehicle, her flak jacket crushing her shoulders, and watched the black shapes of the men move around her in silence as they checked kit and loaded up. The air was cool and dry against her skin.

      Major Mack sought her out as the men moved into position and pointed her to a Snatch in the middle of the convoy. She sat squashed up against the heavy back door. It was a tin can of a vehicle, its interior stripped bare. The Snatch shook itself into life and started to pitch and roll out of the camp gates and across open desert. She braced her legs and gripped the roof strap. Her helmet cracked against the metal struts behind her every time they banged into a hollow. She rode the impact, steadied her nerves and said nothing.

      She’d never liked Snatches. The rough ride didn’t bother her but they were poor protection, nicknamed ‘metal coffins’ for a reason. If they hit anything now, an IED or a mine, the flying shrapnel would slice them to mince. What was that expression the lads in Iraq used? Everyone gets a bit.

      They were wedged tightly into this one, thigh against thigh, knee scraping knee. She’d pushed the team over quota; five, instead of four in the back, sharing the same stale air. Packs and boxes were piled round their feet. The soldiers sat in silence, their faces tight with concentration. The young soldier opposite her, Frank, was looking everywhere to avoid catching her eye. He was barely twenty but thuggish, with the heavy forehead and thickset nose of a fighter. She wondered where in the UK he came from and how much military action he’d seen. Her eyes fell to the weapon, an SA-80, across his lap.

      Two more lads were riding top cover, cut off at the chest; head and shoulders sticking up out of the vehicle, out of sight. When she tried to look forward, her view was filled by their broad thighs. Their scrambling feet kicked out wildly for support every time the Snatch rocked and pitched. Dillon, the lad next to her, kept getting a boot in the groin as they felt for footholds. He swore under his breath. She squeezed herself further into the corner to give him more room.

      A sudden stink broke out in the hot air. Dillon flapped his hands in front of his face wildly.

      ‘Hold it in, Moss.’ Dillon gave one of the top cover guys a sharp poke.

      The young lad, Hancock, riding top cover with Moss, ducked his head down for a second, caught the whiff and gave a snorting laugh. Dillon kicked out at him before he straightened up again. Ellen watched the way they argued, jostled for position. They were only kids. She’d spoken to Hancock, the quietest in the group, in the darkness before they set off. He was eighteen, he said, keeping his voice low. He’d joined up in January and been sent out here right after training. He looked shell-shocked already.

      ‘Sorry, Ma’am.’ Frank, embarrassed.

      She shrugged. ‘Don’t be.’ I’m harder to offend than you realize, she thought. And I’ll be safer if you think of me as one of you. ‘And call me Ellen.’

      The Sergeant Major, invisible to her in the front, barked something into the radio sets. Frank sighed and started scrabbling under the seats, checking wiring or groping for a piece of kit.

      Dillon leaned towards her, knocking knees. ‘Sergeant Major says you’re famous. Like Kate Adie.’ His eyes were full of life. A cheeky lad, good humoured and excited.

      ‘Like who?’ Frank, pausing in his grovelling on the floor, had lifted his head to listen, watching her with new interest.

      ‘Nothing so glamorous,’ she said to Dillon. ‘I’m with a news magazine.’

      ‘He said you’ve covered more wars than he has,’ Dillon went on. ‘That true?’

      ‘I don’t keep count.’

      ‘Cool.’ Dillon looked impressed. ‘Which ones?’

      ‘Crimea?’ said Frank, and sniggered like a schoolboy.

      Dillon kicked out at him. ‘Don’t be so bloody rude, you.’ A vicious bounce of the Snatch knocked him off the seat onto the floor. He cracked his shin on the metalwork of the back door and swore. Frank doubled up with laughter. Dillon, trying to regain dignity, crawled through the kicking legs to a box and handed her back a bottle of water. ‘Don’t mind him,’ he said, nodding at Frank. ‘Tosser.’

      Ellen turned her face to the square of bulletproof window and watched the swirls of dust they were throwing up behind them, blurring the outline of the next heaving Snatch in line. There was a dull red glow in the sky beyond. The night was starting to bleed back into day. It was so cold, it was hard to believe that in a few hours, once the heat built up, they’d all long for the chill of night again. The stuffy darkness of the Snatch, with its swaying, crashing motion, and her nervous apprehension about what lay ahead, made her dull with sickness as they drove on across the desert and the light outside whitened into morning.

      They stopped. Frank unbolted the back door and climbed out over her, weapon readied. Then Dillon. A moment later they came back for her. She dropped out of the back, weighed down by her flak jacket and helmet. The dry desert air was a relief. She stood for a moment, enjoying the escape from the petrol fumes, getting her bearings.

      ‘What next?’ she said to Dillon. He shrugged, looked away. Frank was already walking towards a mud-walled compound where other soldiers were sloughing off their packs. Dillon turned and followed him.

      She put her hands on her hips, breathed deeply and scanned the terrain. They’d stopped just short of a natural ridge. Behind them, the way they’d come, lay a desiccated brown landscape of dirty sand, rocks and low scrub. Its lines were broken by simple mud-brick houses, each set apart from the others and enclosed in its own protective boundary walls. No people were visible. The only sign of life came from a pack of scavenging dogs. They were trotting, lean and mangy, across the plain.

      Ahead, far below, the slow snake of a river drew a glistening line through a valley. Beyond it, thickly planted corn waved from fields, scored through by the lines of trees that defined the green zone. She narrowed her eyes against the light. The outline of a village was visible a few kilometres in, high on the hill. That must be the first target.

      Thick dust, stirred up by the convoy of military vehicles, was billowing in filthy clouds all around her. More Snatches were pulling up, filling the air with fine grit, disgorging soldiers. The day’s heat was gathering. The men streamed towards the compound, bowed under the weight of the packs on their backs, shoving, talking in low voices, lighting cigarettes. She hesitated, watching them, then pulled off her helmet, as they had done, and followed.

      Dillon, Frank and the others were settling against a low mud wall, smoking, rucksacks dumped at their feet. They looked tense. Freshly arriving soldiers streamed past them, competing for a place in the shade.