Ghosts

Pope and the others were out of sight on the other side of the escarpment. They had raised their own small sun screen and were sheltering beneath it. Milton felt the sweat on his back, on the back of his legs, on his scalp. He felt the wooziness in his head and reached down for his jerrycan; the water was warm but he gulped down two mouthfuls, closing his eyes to savour the sensation before replacing the cap and putting it back in the Bergen. The small amount that was left had to last him all day. He scrubbed the sweat out of his eyes with the back of his hand and stared through the scope again.

He knew the sound the instant he heard it. A low, rumbling groan, still ten miles out. He put down his rifle and grabbed his field glasses, sca

He fumbled for the radio, opened the cha

There was the squawk of more static and then the pilot’s voice, enveloped by the sound of his engines: “Manilla Hotel, this is POPOV35. I’ve got a canal that runs north/south. There’s a small village, and there’s a launcher under camo in the middle.”

He hadn’t heard Milton or had been told to ignore him.

Forward air control responded: “Roger that POPOV35. Clear to engage.”

“Roger that, Manilla Hotel. POPOV35 is rolling in.”

Milton threw his rifle down and sprinted for the village.

What happened next was unclear and, in the years that had passed since then, he had dreamt it so many times and in so many different ways that it was difficult to separate the truth from his fevered imaginings of it. He was ru

Milton ran past them in the opposite direction.

The children had stopped playing now. They were looking at him in confusion. Their ball rolled gently in the wind, bumping up against the side of the yard fence. One of the boys had trotted over to get it and he was closest to Milton. He was five or six.

Milton would always remember his big, brown eyes.

He screamed at them in Arabic to run.

The confusion on the boy’s face would stay with him for the rest of his life.

Too late.

Much, much too late.

Milton looked up at the pale underbelly of the Hog as it boomed overhead, a thousand yards above; the wing pylons were empty. It had dropped its bomb three hundred yards earlier and now half a ton of high explosives fell in a neat and graceful and perfectly judged parabola that terminated at the launcher. Milton couldn’t remembered what came first: the blinding flash of white light or the roar that deafened him. The blast picked him up and tossed him back twenty feet in the direction that he had arrived. The scorching hot pressure wave rolled over him, and then the wave of debris: the remains of the wooden huts, shards of metal from the launcher, the storm of grit and pebbles. He had been dropped on his back and as he opened his eyes he thought that he must have been blinded. The swirling cloud of black fumes was parted by the wind, revealing the same perfectly clear sky overhead. Debris was still falling from the sky around him. Pieces of cloth fluttered down, soaked in blood. The mushroom cloud unfurled overhead. He could smell the explosives. He could smell burning flesh. He rolled and pushed himself onto his knees. A wave of pain swept over him and he had to fight to prevent himself from fainting. He looked around: no launcher, no huts, no madrasa. No children. He looked away to his right, to the skidded splashes of red across the dun brown, and to the ribbons of bloodied flesh that had been strung from the branches of a nearby, newly leafless tree, as if left there to dry in the sun. He looked down at his chest. His shirt was bloodied. He dabbed his fingers down the centre of his sternum, further down his ribcage, to the start of his belly. He felt the rough edge of the shrapnel that had lodged just above his navel.

He didn’t remember very much of what had happened after that. Pope said later that he and the others in the Unit had been disturbed by the approach of the Hog and had seen him ru

It was trite to say that Pope had saved Milton’s life. He had, though; that much was unquestionable. There had been times in the years that followed when Milton had wished that he hadn’t, that he had left him to die in the smoking ruins of the village, because that would have meant that none of what followed would ever have happened. No Group. No Control. No blood on his conscience. Recently, he had started to feel different. He had found the Rooms and the Steps and he felt, for the first time in as long as he could remember, that he had hope. Not the hope of atonement, perhaps, but the chance of a little peace.