Crossfire Read Online Free PDF

plenty had changed within me.
    I stood in the cold and dark and drew deeply on a cigarette, cupping the glowing end in my hand so that it wasn’t visible. Not that anyone would be looking; it was just a force of habit.
    I didn’t really consider myself a smoker, and I’d never had a cigarette until I first went on ops to Iraq. Then that had changed. Somehow the threat of possibly developing lung cancer in the future was a minor one compared to the risk of having one’s head blown off in the morning.
    It had seemed that almost everyone smoked in Afghanistan. It had helped to control the fear, to steady the hand, and to relieve the pressure when a cold beer, or any other alcohol, for that matter, was strictly against standing orders. At least I hadn’t smoked opium like the locals. That was also against standing orders.
    I leaned against the corner of the house and drew a deep breath into my lungs, feeling the familiar rush as the nicotine flooded into my bloodstream and was transported to my brain. Finding the opportunity for a crafty smoke in the hospital had been rare, but here, now, I was my own master again, and I reveled in the freedom.
    A light went on in the first-floor room above my head.
    “Why the bloody hell did he have to turn up? That’s all we bloody need at the moment.”
    I could clearly hear my mother in full flow.
    “Keep your voice down, he’ll hear you.”
    That was my stepfather.
    “No, he won’t,” she said, again at full volume. “He’s gone outside.”
    “Josephine,” my stepfather said angrily, “half the bloody village will hear you if you’re not careful.”
    I was quite surprised that he would talk to her like that. Perhaps there was more to him than I thought. My mother even took notice of him, and they continued their conversation much more quietly. Annoyingly, I couldn’t hear anything other than a faint murmur, although I stood there silently for quite a while longer, just in case they reverted to fortissimo.
    But sadly, they didn’t, and presently, the lights in the room went out.
    I lifted the leather flap that covered the face of my watch. The luminous hands showed me it was only ten-thirty. Clearly, racehorse trainers went to bed as early as hospital patients, even on Saturday nights. I was neither, and I enjoyed being outside in the dark, listening and watching.
    I had always been completely at home in darkness, and I couldn’t understand those who were frightened of it. I suppose it was one thing I should thank my mother for. When I was a child, she had always insisted I sleep with my bedroom lights off and my door firmly closed. Since then the dark had always been my friend.
    I stood silently and listened to the night.
    In the distance there was music, dance music, the thump, thump, thump of the rhythm clearly audible in the still air. Perhaps someone was having a party. A car drove along the road at the bottom of the driveway, and I watched its red lights as it traveled beyond the village, up the hill and out of sight.
    I thought I heard a fox nearby with its high-pitched scream, but I wasn’t sure. It might have been a badger. I would have needed a pair of army-issue night-vision goggles to be sure, or better still a U.S. military set, which were far superior.
    I lit another cigarette, the flare of the match instantly rendering me blind in the night. Out in Afghanistan I’d had a fancy lighter that could light a cigarette in complete darkness. Needless to say, it hadn’t accompanied me on my evacuation. In fact, nothing I had owned in Afghanistan had so far made it back to me.
    An infantry soldier’s life at war was carried around with him in his backpack, his Bergen. Either that or on his body in the form of helmet, radio, body armor, spare ammunition, boots and camouflage uniform. Then there was his rifle and bayonet to carry in his hands. It all went everywhere with him. Leave a Bergen unattended for even a second and it was gone, spirited away like magic by