Insurgency Read Online Free PDF Page B

both operatives removed the poles and let the material act as a sheet. Eaton leant over Styles and looked at his face. The eyes were still closed, the sedatives working. Miller tapped Eaton’s shoulder, signalling that they should both leave.
    Outside Eaton lifted his mask. “Did you get what he said?”
    Both operatives knew some Pashtun but Miller’s was better. “I heard what he said but I didn’t understand it. He said ‘that man is Hadama…Hadama.”
    “What’s that, the Pashtun for ‘queer’?” Eaton grinned, his teeth reflecting the moonlight.
    “As I said I don’t know. The guy’s crazy, probably smokes too much of Afghanistan’s finest.”
     
    Dave Raymond sat in a corner of the tent on his cot and looked at ‘the rushes’, the unedited tape he had used that day. It had been a routine patrol with the 2nd Battalion, 5th Infantry of the US Army’s 25th Infantry Division (Light) who were normally based in Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. Raymond had asked where their ‘shirts’ were but the Yanks hadn’t seemed to get his humour. The patrol had entered the compound of a local Afghan leader who had been very vocal in decrying the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. The elder had gone on to state how safe he felt now with the new base in his backyard. He nevertheless however still employed AK wielding bodyguards. At first the locals found it insulting and then rather amusing to be interviewed by a woman, and Paige Turner was a rather gorgeous one. At five ten with natural blonde hair and a figure that even baggy combats struggled to hide she should have been a model, in the chauvinistic minds of most men she met, but was an award winning journalist turned documentary film maker. She had learnt Pashtun and taken up the plight of Afghanistan’s forgotten victims, the women who under the Taliban had been treated worse than dogs. She was asleep on the next cot. She was gorgeous but she snored. Raymond smiled, even Venus must have had her faults, probably farted like a trooper. He raised his eyes from the camera’s viewfinder and looked at her bum; the green fatigues cupped her buttocks as though made to measure. He let his gaze linger for too long. He wanted to sleep with her but the problem was that both she and his wife wouldn’t allow it. He smiled to himself, maybe he should ask them? He shook his head, it was late and he was fantasying again. Back to business. The documentary they were making was part of a series on the people of Afghanistan and how they had been affected and continued to be affected by the ‘insurgency’. In Raymond’s opinion ‘the Stan’ had been done to death, the locals had seen so many film crews that now most of them were eligible for their ‘Equity cards’. But, and it was a nice butt, Paige didn’t think so and as such the BBC had commissioned the documentary. Raymond came to the end of the day’s tape and then started to watch the fight at the canteen that had erupted after the arm wrestling. On film the American sat, looked like he was going to get beaten and then all but broke the Afghan’s arm. This satisfied Raymond, Hakim needed to be taken down a peg or two especially after he had made a lurid comment about Paige. Hakim had then stabbed at the American with his knife before being hauled away, but then something didn’t make sense. Raymond rewound and slowed the tape. He saw Hakim reach for his knife and thrust it deep into the chest of the American; it hadn’t been a glancing blow as he had thought. He watched the American stand shakily and then pull the blade out of his chest. Raymond paused the tape and wished he had his full editing suite with him to enlarge and enhance the frame, he hadn’t been as near as he had wished and the canteen lighting had not been the best. But then he also wished that they were more than a two man crew, however with the advances in digital technology he and Paige were all that was needed and the BBC had wanted the footage to have a