Free War Torn by Andy McNab, Kym Jordan

some.’

Dave pulled at the first body. He was surprised by how light it was. This man was a lot thinner than any British soldier, Dave thought, as he pressed his knee into the bony back and turned the corpse over.

‘Clear.’

Jamie Dermott: cool, efficient, focused. Dave liked to work with a man he could rely on.

He began a systematic search from the head down. When he reached the feet he found they were bare. He looked in the water and the bank for shoes. There were none. He felt the man’s feet. Still warm. And the soles were hard and leathery as sandals. These were habitually bare feet. The man had been barefoot with an AK47.

He turned the body over. Man? He was scarcely more than a boy.

He extracted a mobile phone from his pockets and folded papers and some beads which looked as though they might have religious significance. There was a laminated ID card, too, with a photo and indecipherable script. Dave didn’t waste a second examining it. The sound of their rounds would certainly draw the enemy and it was just a matter of time before they came under fire again.

The second insurgent had been dragged down into the ditch by the weight of his ammo belt. As Dave pulled up the soaking body, he heard Angus.

‘He moved! Christ, he’s fucking alive!’

Dave stared along the ditch. ‘Get his weapon away!’

Angus had failed to clear the weapons before starting his search. Mal moved rapidly from the bank to swipe the AK47 out of arm’s reach.

‘Get on with it!’ Dave said.

‘I lifted him and he moved!’ Angus had dropped the body back into the ditch and was now staring at it, his face horrified. The man was covered in blood and showed no apparent signs of life.

‘
Get on with it!
’

Angus did not move.

Mal raised his SA80 and fired twice at the man’s chest. Blood appeared like a fast-blooming flower. The weapon’s report was followed by silence.

Angus remained motionless.

‘
Now search him!
’

Dave’s roar finally seemed to wake Angus from his dream. He grabbed the body and started to search it correctly but his face remained blank.

Dave watched. His men had done this often enough in training, but searching a real body methodically and professionally – without thinking destructive thoughts about how the man had a mother and maybe a wife and small kids and a bunch of mates he’d been to school with all waiting for him to come home – was something else again.

He heard a nearby volley of fire. Their own shots had certainly drawn the enemy, who must now have found the convoy. He wondered how long it would take them to discover that a small group from the Vectors was in an exposed field with the bodies of four of their fighters. And all because of an old geezer with knobbly knees.

His second body was bigger and stronger. The man wore more serious kit, solid sandals, and had a Pakistani passport in his pocket. This was not a local, but a professional Taliban fighter.

He slipped the passport and personal effects into his evidence bag and, when Angus had finished, they climbed out of the ditch and ran back to the cover of the woods.

‘Firing from all sides.’ Boss Weeks’s voice crackled in Dave’s ear. The column of men advanced slowly and quietly through the trees. Dave told the convoy to move forward for them. They remained hidden as they waited for its slow advance. Dave saw the thin, anxious faces of his men, looking for the enemy on all sides. Angus looked up.

‘Fucking hell, Sarge . . .’

Almost directly above them was a foot. The foot was attached to a thin, brown leg. The leg was attached to a man and the man was attached to a weapon. The weapon was trained on the path of the oncoming convoy.

They understood the man’s stillness with one glance. From the rigid position of his head, his neck frozen like a frightened animal’s, they knew that he was unable to disengage his weapon from the branches to aim it at them. He’d turned to stone in the hope they wouldn’t look