Relentless

I’d made a mistake that was going to cost me my life.

Behind the steering wheel, I turned to the man beside me. He was an Afghan, we called him H, and he was the only passenger in the beat-up local car. The air around us was stiff with heat and tension, the vehicle almost rocking as the press of humanity outside began to shove and point towards me. I kept my eyes down, not out of fear, but so that they didn’t get a good look at them through the dirty glass.
I knew exactly what had happened. How they’d spotted me. I was dressed head to toe as a local, from flip flops to a turban. I had a dyed beard, my skin colored so that I looked like that bloke from Bargain Hunter, but what I hadn’t added to my disguise was my brown contact lenses, and now my bright blue eyes were drawing the locals in to point and stare. I knew it was only a matter of minutes before the local Taliban started slipping out of their hiding holes, and tonight I could look forward to an orange boiler suit. The last thing the world would see of me was the image of the special forces soldier about to meet his fate courtesy of an enemy unfamiliar with the Geneva Convention.
Bollocks.
I wanted to talk to H. I wanted the local man’s opinion, but if the people outside saw my lips moving in a funny way, then we were truly fucked. And so instead I raised an eyebrow and hoped that people would just think I was commenting on the traffic that had packed us into the bustling marketplace. H gave a shrug back, as if to say, ‘what can you do?’
What can I do? Get my head chopped off or go out fighting. Those seemed to be the choices. I knew which one I’d choose if it came down to it, but I couldn’t help but hear that voice in the back of my head. The voice that had told me ‘you’ll never last two minutes in the army.’ Well, if this was the end, then I’d show them how wrong they were there.
I’d been showing them for years.
This wasn’t my first mission inside Afghanistan - that had been a historic raid that was everything a soldier dreams of - and I hadn’t come to be sitting in a local car in the middle of Kandahar because I was scraping by in the green army. I was a Special Forces soldier, and as such, I’d had my mettle tested again and again. I tried to remember that as yet another local pointed at me and began waving towards my door. I pretended to be busy looking ahead at the traffic and checked my mirror behind me.
No sign of our second car.
I knew that he couldn’t be far behind. There were three of us, one in each car, each accompanied by an Afghan Special Forces soldier. Though the local operators were brave and competent, they hadn’t received the level of training that we had as members of the Special Boat Service, and that’s why it was me behind the wheel. Now, if you’re wondering why a Special Boat Service frogman is driving a car and not out diving or riding the waves, it’s because we complete the same selection, training, and missions as the SAS, and this year, in a stinking hot summer, it was our turn to be out in Afghan’, kicking in bad guy’s doors, and dragging them back to camp. Of course, if they resisted then we did what needed to be done, and as we were lifting these guys from the hornet’s nests, a lot of the time it went noisy. To be honest, it was everything that I had pictured and wanted when I’d signed on the dotted line, but this? Sitting in a car, near enough alone, and with my appointment for a boiler suit fitting getting closer by the second?

‘I’ve been compromised.’
That would be the last thing I’d say over the net. Every answer now would be given by depressing the send button for a second, a kind of morse code. Two beeps for yes, one for no.
My mate Sam came on the net from the second vehicle. He was out of sight of me, but I was sure that he couldn’t be more than a hundred meters away.
‘Are you compromised, over?’
Beep-beep.
‘Are you happy with the immediate action drill, over?’
I knew that drill off by heart - the key to special forces soldiering is that we train and drill relentlessly, putting in the repetitions just like a bodybuilder does in the gym - but was I happy with it?
Was I happy with the immediate action plan? Fuck no. But I’d be even less happy without a head, so what else was there to do?
Beep-beep.
Sam came back on the net. ‘Roger, mate. Your call. Out.’
My call. When it comes down to it, the biggest moments in our life always are.
I thought about letting out a deep-breath but looking ice-cool in front of H was important to me. Fear is contagious, and so I put mine on a shelf until I’d gotten clear of the situation.
I looked to H. Gave him the slightest of nods. He was probably sending up a prayer to that point. Maybe more than one. In my own mind, I sent a thought to my wife and children. If someone wanted to stop me seeing them again, then I promised it would be a fight like they’d never seen before.
And then, with the thought of my family piping like fire in my veins, I reached below my seat, and took hold of my weapon.