Insurgency by Alex Shaw Page B

himself to an IED. He’s seen it happen, out on a patrol right in front of him. A friend shredded, scraped up and put in a bag and all the while jubilant chatter over the airwaves from the Talibs. He thought of Marcy, his girl back home and how every time they had a mail drop he braced himself for a ‘Dear John’ letter, but she stayed true to him, or at least her letters did. No she was ‘his love’ and he would marry her, once the tour was over. The question was would she accept life as an army bride or force him to quit and take a job with her father’s firm? Selling insurance was not his idea of excitement but then neither was sitting and staring at the desert for hours on end. He’d enlisted to make a difference, to take democracy and the rule of law to those who sought to terrorise the innocent and pervert religion. Yet he felt that he’d done nothing to aid this cause. Endless patrols and smiles directed at sullen locals, who would as soon stab him in the back, had left a bitter taste in his mouth. COIN was the official term for what his unit was doing here, ‘counterinsurgency warfare’ showing the Afghans that ISAF cared, that the international community cared about them, their mud huts and their goats. They were here to help these people, to rid them of the Taliban and their friends in low places, al-Qaeda. Anders shook his head. This wasn’t a war; it wasn’t even a fight as these cowards left their bombs and ran, hiding behind women and children. They took pot shots at the ISAF soldiers but would only engage if cornered. The people who did any good, to see any real action were the flyers and of course the ‘Delta Boys’. Even now they had a helo – ‘rotors hot’, ready for some ‘Black Op’ or other. Anders read a lot, now more than ever since he got his kindle and his books of choice were action and adventure, Alex Berenson, Vince Flynn, Jack Silkstone and Stephen Leather - anything where the Islamic fundamentalists got the wrong end of a 9mm round. He wished the reality of his life was more like the fiction. He wished he was about to head off in a helo…
    “Two o’clock, movement behind that second compound. Yeah, looks like a bunch of Talib trucks.” Private Errol Jinks excitedly held the NV enabled binos tight to his eyes. In the distance one of the innumerable peaks of an Afghan mountain contrasted against the desolate desert and scrublands that surrounded the firebase. Several Afghan compounds with their ten foot high mud and straw walls, hugged what green zone there was next to an all but dry irrigation channel. Barren and sparsely populated the province had been a haven for insurgents, the firebase taking incoming mortars and RPGs in the first few weeks of its existence, but after a couple of drone lead ops had seen the death of nine Taliban fighters and the capture of three more, the local Taliban had taken the wise decision to just ‘watch’ and leave the base alone.
    Anders looked through his own binos and in the uncanny green NV world counted a convoy of twelve wagons with what he took to be PKMs mounted on the back. “What the hell are they up to? They know they’ll never get within range.”
    “Crazy bastards, looks like they….” The explosion made Jinks drop his binos. “What the?”
    Anders spun round and saw the comms trailer ablaze. “Shit…”
     
    The explosion made Hakim’s eyes snap open. He tried to get up but then remembered his shackles. Chained to the blast-wall just outside the main ANA tent, Hakim slowly pushed himself back and up until he was standing. Captain Osman, emerged from his own tent rubbing his eyes as the unmistakable sound of gunfire rang out, barks from Kalashnikov’s followed by the heavy boom of .50 cal rounds from the watchtowers.
    “Untie me, Osman!”
    Osman blinked and reached for his belt, doing it up as he continued to pull his pants up over his stomach. “You are a prisoner. You shall stay there until we transport you back to