Noel stopped and breathed deeply. He began to speak in more measured tones. “The Americans immediately deny any act where little evidence is left behind. They have a phrase for it. They call it ‘plausible deniability’. Our media know all this, of course, but say damn all publicly. You’ll only get it on channels like Al Jazeera. How the Americans hate that channel. They bombed the Jazeera offices in Kabul back in ’01. Their Baghdad office later got the same treatment. ‘Plausible deniability’ – the fog of war. You would have thought there would have been an outcry then, or when the USAF rocketed John Simpson, in a convoy covered in allied flags and red cross signs. Killed his interpreter among others. Reported, yes – outcry, no chance. Christ, there’s even film of an American Apache helicopter shooting a couple of Reuters guys dead in the street. Did you hear the media shout that from their ivory towers?”
“Last night was bad,” Alex repeated, “you sounded really angry. You were in the pink mist.”
“Last night was the two Afghan soldiers dying in the road. One of them was my interpreter. Poor bastard, all because I never really got the hang of Pashto.”
“Are the dreams still as vivid?” Alex stared at him. “Does talking help?”
“I don’t really know. Perhaps a little,” Noel said quietly. “It’s the only therapy I’ve got. I reported the whole thing, every detail, complete with corroborating statements. That might have been cathartic, but some tin star buried it. With my eyewitness report, their denials were no longer plausible, so the report went nowhere. My CO got a rocket for helping me pursue it. We did try, we tried like hell, actually. I’m bloody sorry I woke you, Randy.”
“That’s okay,” Alex said. “I went back to sleep like a good chap.”
“It was mostly for show, in my area anyway; for local morale as much as anything. To justify our existence we patrolled during the daylight hours. The Taliban owned the night.” Noel smiled, shifted his weight onto one elbow, and helped himself to his sandwiches and soup. “What am I chuntering on about? You’ve heard all this before.”
“Hang on,” Alex said, pushing himself up, “that’s smoke over there.”
Noel stood and turned to the direction which Alex was facing. A column of air shimmered faintly. Thin dark trails were rising beyond the nearby low ridge that formed their horizon. They heard shouting then and began to run towards feathers of smoke that were already becoming a plume.
Silas appeared on the reverse slope of the ridge shouting for the others to come quickly. Below him, a boulder strewn hollow, circumscribed by the plough, was burning. Patches of scrub oak blazed fiercely and the flames were spreading over surrounding heather.
The ganger arrived, and turned at once to Noel and Alex.
“Get your planting spades. Use them as beaters. Alex, bring everyone up here. Noel, Silas, leave the fire alone until the rest arrive. How the devil did this get started?”
“One minute was a little smoke, next thing…,” Silas gestured.
“This fire cannot go anywhere. It’s surrounded by dreels. Little enough to burn.”
Indeed, that was true. The fire was confined to an island of vegetation in a huge expanse of ploughed moorland and the breeze was light. They had been fortunate, this time. The ganger decided to let the patch of greenery burn itself out. There was no point in risking injury. The squad could beat out any residual flare-ups. He pulled out his field telephone and extended the aerial.
“We have a small outbreak here. It’s isolated, and no problem. Somebody might spot the smoke and phone in. Sign of things to come.”
The fire died on itself and a black cloud drifted away. The men stepped forward to beat at a fringe of smoking heather with their spades. Thirty minutes later they were trooping, strangely buoyant, from the moor, the fire extinguished.