Free Battleground by Chris Ryan Page B

Mears yelled over the noise of the engines. ‘They’re just countermeasure flares.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘ Countermeasure flares ,’ he bellowed back. ‘We fire them from the back of the Chinook as we go. They confuse any heat-seeking missiles that are fired in our direction.’
    Bel blinked. ‘Right,’ she said, feeling herself going a bit green. ‘And does that happen a lot?’
    Mears smiled at her. ‘Not when we fire countermeasure flares it doesn’t,’ he said.
    They hadn’t been cruising for more than fifteen minutes when the Chinook started to lose height, again sharply and quickly – too quickly, Bel couldn’t help thinking. The soldiers didn’t look worried, though she noticed that the gunner at the back was still crouched in the firing position, ready to shoot at anyone who dared attack them from the ground.
    And then, as suddenly as they had taken off, they landed, surrounded once more by dust and sand. The soldiers ran down the tailgate into the fierce, burning heat. Bel followed. Once she was a few metres away from the chopper, she stopped to take in her surroundings. They were just outside a high mud wall with rolls of wicked-looking barbed wire perched on top. In the distance she could see high, craggy peaks and over to her right there was an entrance gate made from huge, solid sheets of corrugated iron. The men from the Chinook were already disappearing through the gate and as Bel watched, she felt someone pull on her arm. It was Mears.
    ‘Come on!’ he shouted at her. ‘We can’t stay here. The landing zone could come under attack. Let’s get you into the safety of the base!’
    That sounded to Bel like the most sensible thing anyone had said all day. She nodded at the soldier, then followed him at a fast run through the iron gates. They closed behind her just as the Chinook rose once more into the azure sky above.
    Back at Camp Bastion, Major James Strickland had gone distinctly white. He held the satellite phone to his ear with one hand; with the other he wiped a trickle of sweat from his brow.
    ‘Disappeared?’ he said. ‘What do you mean he’s disappeared?’
    ‘Just that,’ replied the voice at the other end – an official from the Ministry of Defence in London. ‘The village is being scoured as we speak, but there’s no sign of him.’
    Strickland closed his eyes. This was all they needed.
    ‘You need to inform the boy’s mother,’ the official continued. ‘Rotten job, I’m afraid, but as you’re the liaison officer—’
    Strickland interrupted him. ‘For crying out loud,’ he said briskly, ‘I don’t mind telling her. But I can’t. Not now. She’s not at Bastion.’
    ‘Where is she?’
    ‘FOB Jackson, north of Sangin on the other side of the riverbank. She’s there for forty-eight hours. Maybe longer. I can try and get her back sooner, but frankly the choppers are flat out.’
    A silence. When the official spoke again, his voice was grim. ‘Can you get word to her?’
    ‘Negative,’ Strickland replied. ‘It’s too dangerous.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘If she thinks something’s happened to her son, she’ll go ballistic. We need our people to be thinking clearly and acting rationally. I can’t guarantee that she’ll do that, and I can’t risk her being a liability to our troops on the ground. I’ll give her the information about her son when she’s back in Bastion, not before.’
    Another silence. And then, ‘Roger that.’
    Strickland sniffed. He didn’t like it when non-military people used military language and there was something about this official, safely behind a desk in London, that brushed him up the wrong way. ‘What you need to do,’ he said, as if he was addressing a very junior soldier, ‘is make sure you find that kid.’
    ‘Don’t you worry about that, Major Strickland,’ the MOD official said rather primly. ‘You deal with things on your side of the fence, we’ll deal with things on our side. Is that clear?’
    Strickland took a deep