TICK TOCK (EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) Book 1), Page 2

  For a moment, I thought about texting Vanessa, but then remembered that we’d broken up a month ago because she didn’t like being in a long distance relationship. She hated me being sent away all the time, bitching and moaning about cancelled dates and missed birthdays; complaining when she found ants in her kitchen and I wasn’t there to sort it out. What the hell did she think the Army was? A holiday camp where you could come and go as you liked?

  The Army was my home—the only one I had, so I did what I was told—mostly—and went where they sent me.

  I tried not to think about what I was going to do when I’d served my 22 years. Returning to civilian life at 40 didn’t hold any appeal for me. A few people stayed on after they’d done their full stint, but not many.

  I shook my head: I still had 11 years before I had to face that horror story.

  I settled down on my hard bunk with my hands behind my head and wondered what the Army had in store for me this time.

  Amira

  GRIEF GRIPPED ME, making it hard to breathe, hard to think.

  My lungs struggled to draw in the warm Californian air, and my whole body was clenched so tight, my bones might shatter from the pressure.

  Zada leaned against me, her sobs loud and hopeless; our mother was incoherent, wailing as tears tracked down her cheeks. Only our father sat tall, his pride keeping him upright.

  “Your brother will yield entry into Paradise on the Day of Judgement,” he said, his voice hoarse with pain.

  I couldn’t cry—I was too angry to cry.

  My brother.

  My baby brother who wasn’t supposed to die at 26.

  My little brother who died in Syria. Killed in a U.S. air raid while he was volunteering at a hospital in Raqqa, a city strangled by Daesh and battered by years of fierce, violent fighting. Whether it was an accident, or whether the U.S. government had believed the hospital was harbouring rebel forces, no one could agree.

  The newspaper reports from Syria showed harrowing pictures of bombed out streets, children numb with loss, staring blank-eyed at the cameras, and we all had compassion fatigue, wearied by war thousands of miles away.

  But not my brother. Not my sweet, generous, caring brother.

  Thinking of Karam crushed beneath the collapsed hospital walls brought a new wave of rage rushing over me. I was hot, I was cold, I was filled with fury. Assaulted by every emotion, I forced myself to concentrate on my family. My family needed me.

  “Whosoever saves the life of one person, it would be as if he saved the life of all mankind.”

  Dad was quoting the Quran like he’d been doing ever since we heard the news. His voice started strongly, then crumbled as his face distorted. His mouth stretched in a silent scream and his eyes were screwed shut. His thin shoulders shook as wordless sobs wracked his aging body.

  Parents aren’t supposed to bury their children. It’s wrong. It’s wrong.

  Rage drove my tears away.

  I was so angry with Karam. He had no business travelling to Syria during his summer break. He wasn’t even a qualified doctor—he still had years of medical school left. But he said he could help the people there. He said he could do good.

  Instead he was dead. Dead. And I hated him. I hated what he’d done to our family. We were torn apart from the inside out, hopeless and helpless.

  The hijab covering my hair and neck was stifling and confining under the August sun, and I felt sweat trickle down the back of my neck, blooming into damp patches under my arms, in the small of my back and at my crotch.

  Zada gripped my hand, crushing my fingers together painfully. I welcomed the pain, I embraced the pain. It was something to hold onto, something tangible.

  The words from the Quran echoed in my mind, but I wasn’t sure I believed anymore. If I ever had.

  In my mind, I saw my father rising to his feet, trembling and broken as he said goodbye to his only son.

  In his hand he held a symbolic fistful of soil to spread across his grave, and the Imam would quote another line from the Quran:

  “We created you from it, and return you into it, and from it we will raise you a second time.”

  I could see it all in my mind as grief and anger ripped into my broken heart, my shrivelled soul.

  “Damn you, Karam,” I whispered. “I love you so much, but right now I hate you. I hate you!”

  The mourners would pray, asking for forgiveness for Karam, to remind him of his profession of faith. I knew that my father would find it comforting, the way they still talked to Karam through prayer.

  My sister picked up the Quran and began to read, her voice gaining volume as if she gained strength through the words.

  I didn’t listen.

  And I didn’t believe.

  May Allah strike me down.

  FOR THREE DAYS, we mourned. Neighbours and friends brought food and condolences, but none of it could touch our grief, or my deep anger.

  I stared out of the window, watching another group of my mother’s friends leaving the house.

  “You haven’t cried yet.”

  Lost in my bleak thoughts, it was several seconds before my sister’s words sank in.

  “What?”

  I turned abruptly at Zada’s accusing tone, and watched, irritated, as her dark eyes filled with tears and she wiped her nose again with a damp tissue. I focussed on the broken capillaries that reddened the whites of her eyes, the eyelids swollen, the snot that she constantly wiped from her nose. Odd how grief makes us ugly.

  “You haven’t cried for Karam. Not once. Don’t you care?”

  Her mumbled words wrenched my attention back to her.

  “How can you ask me that?”

  She shrugged and looked away.

  “You act like all this is just an inconvenience, like you’d rather be at work.”

  She was right. And as she searched for truth, I’d give it to her, rough and raw.

  “Honestly, Zee, I would. I don’t see the point in this enforced grief—like after three days we’re supposed to be okay and go about our lives normally. It’s so false.”

  She stared at me, sniffing softly.

  “It’s to help us mourn. But … you seem so … so angry.”

  I rubbed my forehead, my fingers catching on the material of the hijab. It was just a headscarf to cover my hair during prayers—today my parents wanted modesty, so I had been modest in the way that they needed.

  “Aren’t you angry, Zee? He was killed while he was working in a hospital. American drones dropped bombs on a hospital! Doesn’t that make you angry? That he died for no reason?”

  Her eyes drooped to the tissue in her hands as she started to shred it.

  “He didn’t die for no reason—he saved a lot of lives while he was there. He said so in his emails, mashallah.”

  I held in a groan. Mashallah—as Allah has willed it. It sounded like a feeble excuse to me. But my younger sister had always been devout. I was the one who questioned everything, who constantly asked why, who was sent for extra religious instruction when I was nine, because my father didn’t know how to answer my myriad questions anymore.

  We came to America when I was six years old and Karam was three. Only the haziest memories of the old country remained for me, our previous existence a blur of colours and faces, a few phrases.

  In his old life, our father had been a university professor, someone important. But when he was accused of membership of an unauthorized political group, the accusation would have been enough to result in imprisonment and torture. My father’s friends warned him that his name was on a government list, so we fled with only the clothes on our back.

  For two years we were stateless refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, use whatever name you like. And then we were granted permission to stay in the Land of the Free.

  We settled in Southern California, and my father found a job cleaning the bathrooms in offices. He came home smelling of bleach and stale urine. He said it was honest work and that Pride was sinful, s
o he prayed every night, thankful to have this chance.

  Once I learned English and lost my accent, I was just another dark haired, dark-eyed penniless migrant. People assumed I was Mexican, and I was happy with that.

  I only wore the hijab on religious holidays.

  But Zada had been born here, an American citizen from birth. She willingly studied the Quran and always dressed more modestly than me. When she was 15, she started wearing her hijab full time. We were as different as day and night. I loved her, but I didn’t understand her, and I was always closer to Karam.

  Karam. My fun-loving, happy-go-lucky brother. The hipster, the surfer, always smiling, always generous. Never met a stranger in his life.

  Dead.

  For nothing.

  When I finally went back to my tiny, cluttered apartment near Scrips Mercy Hospital, Chula Vista, where I worked as an ER nurse, I wallowed in hatred and anger.

  I needed to do something.

  Karam’s death had to have meaning.

  It had to.

  James

  I’D BEEN EXPECTING some sort of military transport vehicle to pick me up, but instead a black Range Rover pulled up outside HQ. It didn’t have military number-plates either, but the guy driving it was American Air Force.

  “Staff Sergeant James Spears?”

  “Yep, that’s me.”

  He was probably wondering why I wasn’t wearing dog tags. In the British Army, we only wore dog tags on operational duty and even then inside our shirts. Besides, I had another reason not to wear them; I’d changed how I mounted mine because when I was wearing the bomb suit, they hung behind my armoured chest plate and stabbed into me. An Aussie AT I met used to wear his dog tags on his boots because he knew that if he got blown up, the boots would survive.

  “Senior Airman John Behrends. Good to meet you.”

  We shook hands and I chucked my rucksack onto the back seat, followed by my kit bag, closed the door and climbed in the front passenger door.

  We drove past the guard hut, and the duty soldier saluted as he raised the barrier and waved us on.

  Soon, we were driving through the rolling chalk downs of Wiltshire, the thin grass turning brown under the scorching sun, then heading up the A34 through Oxfordshire to our destination. It was a ninety minute drive, and we chatted about countries we’d both been deployed to and his opinion on the British weather. After that, we fell silent and I was fine with that—the strangeness of the situation was playing on my mind but I was also enjoying the peace and quiet. You have to find that silence inside yourself when you’re living on a base with thousands of military and civilian personnel. I found it easy to be alone with my thoughts in the middle of a crowd.

  When we reached RAF Croughton, an unassuming entrance on the edge of a small Cotswold village, my driver dropped me in front of a faceless grey building, pulled my bags out from the backseat, waved and then disappeared behind an empty hangar.

  Across the flat airstrip about half a mile away, I could see a Gulfstream C-20 sitting on the runway. And somewhere in the distance, I could hear the familiar chuck-chuck sound of a helo.

  As I walked inside the building, I handed my orders to a young Airman on duty.

  He was the stereotype of a corn-fed, blond haired, blue-eyed American, and snapped a sharp salute.

  “Yes, sir. We’ve been waiting on your arrival, sir. Would you like some coffee?”

  “Thanks. Do you have tea?”

  He looked at me uncertainly.

  “Sure, I think so. Yes, sir.”

  He left me sitting on a hard seat while he bustled around in a room at the back. Then he proudly handed me a plastic cup filled with tepid water, and dropped a teabag into it.

  “I’ve never made tea for a Brit before,” he said happily.

  I stared dubiously at the teabag slowly deflating in the lukewarm water. Nope, wouldn’t be drinking that.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome, sir.”

  He went back to his computer, happy with a job well done. I carefully placed the cup aside and checked messages on my phone. Nope. No one gave a shit, and even Noddy hadn’t replied to my email about where I’d left my bike and keys. Great. My Ducati had better be in one piece when I got back, or there would be arses kicked from here to Glasgow.

  After a few minutes, the young Airman’s desk phone rang and he listened intently, yessir-ing a lot. Then he leaped up and grabbed my kitbag which I took as my cue to follow him.

  He led me along a twisting corridor that housed a labyrinth of tiny, hutch-like offices, each with sweating USAF personnel sitting behind a bank of computers. A few looked up as I passed, their eyes following my progress until I was out of sight.

  Finally, the Airman stopped at a larger office, knocked twice, then opened the door.

  A gush of chilled air flowed out, cooling the sweat on my skin.

  Behind a slab of oak desk, I saw an older officer. His air of authority had me standing to attention and snapping a smart salute. I side-eyed the star on his shoulder, recognising a Major General of the U.S. Air Force when I saw one.

  “At ease, Spears. Take a seat.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  He leaned back in his chair, his eyes travelling across me dispassionately, and then he spoke.

  “You’re probably wondering what the hell you’re doing here.”

  “It had crossed my mind, sir.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “Well, Staff Sergeant Spears, I have my orders, too. And they’re to put you on that C-20 that’s being refuelled right now.”

  I waited for more.

  “And that’s all I can tell you, son. Good luck.”

  He stood up and held out his hand. I was so surprised, it took a second for my brain to catch up as I stumbled to my feet and shook his hand.

  “Thank you, sir,” I said automatically.

  The office door opened again, and a different Airman entered, threw a snappy salute, then picked up my kitbag and rucksack.

  Back under the brilliant blue sky, he tossed my bags into a Jeep and drove across the airfield at breakneck speed, bouncing over the grass and racing along the tarmac to the waiting jet.

  As soon as I’d pulled my bags out, he sped off.

  What was with everyone today?

  A man wearing jeans and aviator sunglasses stood at the top of the plane’s steps.

  “Climb aboard, Staff Sergeant. Got a lot of miles to cover today.”

  I squinted up at him, wishing I’d taken my own sunglasses out of my bag.

  “And where are these miles going to take me, exactly?”

  His smile was cool and condescending.

  “Need to know. I’ll tell you once we’re in the air.”

  I glanced behind me, but the Jeep I’d arrived on was already a blur in the distance.

  Resigned to the weirdness, I climbed up and squinted into the darker interior, my eyes adjusting slowly from the bright sunlight outside.

  The aircraft was much plusher than any military transport I’d been on before, with leather executive seats arranged around a small table, and it was totally empty.

  As soon as I was on board, the dude closed the doors, and gestured at me to take a seat.

  “Strap yourself in,” he grinned. “You’re in for a bumpy ride.”

  Somehow I didn’t think he was talking about air turbulence.

  The cockpit door shut behind him, and then I heard the engines roar into life. Minutes later, we were taxiing down the runway then lurching into the sky. I peered out of the window, the English countryside shrinking to toy-sized houses and patches of brown and yellow fields, until thin clouds hid the world from view.

  I leaned back in my seat wondering what the hell I was being dropped into.

  The dude with the sunglasses reappeared after twenty minutes, and tossed me a bottle of water and a bag of peanuts.

  “I hope you’ve got someone flying this kite,” I said, sounding like a gru
mpy bastard.

  He laughed lightly.

  “Yup, full crew—you, me and the pilot.” He grinned as he slid into the seat opposite me. “The name’s Smith.”

  “Uh-huh, and I’m Jones.”

  He opened his own water and took a long drink.

  “Yeah, you’re not the first person to say that, but it happens to be true: Nathaniel John Smith. My parents only got imaginative once. Call me Nate or Smith,” and he shrugged. “You’re wondering what’s going on. Well, I’m here to tell you.”

  “You’re not military,” I surmised, taking in the long hair curling at the nape of his neck and the scruffy beard.

  “I was: 101st Airborne, one of the Screaming Angels.”

  “And now?”

  He shrugged.

  “My talents lay outside normal military duty.”

  “So … that makes you, what? FBI? CIA? NSA?”

  He smiled.

  “Something like that.”

  We stared across the table, weighing each other up.

  He was older than me by maybe ten years, a few flecks of grey in his hair, but he was in good shape and obviously worked out. He had a scar over one eyebrow, and the tip of his left index finger was permanently bent.

  “I’ll never play the piano again,” he grinned, his eyes dark and unreadable.

  “Are you going to tell me why I’m here?”

  He smiled broadly.

  “An impatient EOD operator? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? Well, this is your lucky day, buddy, because I’m here to brief you.”

  He learned forwards, his gaze becoming serious.

  “Since ISIS began to lose ground in the Middle East, large numbers of their fighters have been dispersed but not captured, not neutered. Some have re-established themselves into the civilian population, but others have left the country. We suspect that a number have made their way to the U.S., radicalising where they can—disillusioned youth, that kind of thing. The people I work for are pretty unhappy about that.”