All change

His Orangeness has gone. Good-bye. Let’s hope we never see the likes of him again. You sense that, whilst the Biden/Harris combo might make mistakes and we might not necessarily agree with all of their policy decisions (I might, actually), morality and integrity have returned to the White House. Here … not so much. And that it really hurts.

it’s been a bit stormy here …

Nothing to add really. Our routine continues. I’m working hard on 12 x 360 degree reports for a school in Hampshire – 36 separate questionnaires. That will take two weeks to finish (I don’t think I charge enough). Other than that, we’re fine. Hunkering down …

As a result I thought it might be a good thing to share my Sam Green short story which I wrote a couple of years ago. It’s a prequel to the series, but it gives you a flavour of her … and my writing.

Jen’s pets – confused by the rain. They’re not the brightest …

Stay safe everyone.

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Sam Green Short Story

C Company Ops Room, Forward Operating Base (FOB), Helmand

It didn’t look right. It just didn’t. Sam raised a finger to the screen. She drew an imaginary circle around an area of the photograph. She stared. Worry lines on her forehead were amplified by the harsh, artificial light.

There’s something here.

She dropped her hand, turned and focused on a second screen to her right. It was smaller: 24-inch rather than 32-inches of the central monitor. Its image looked identical to the larger one. A top-down view of the same beige and brown landscape. Sand and rock. A few shrubs. A gravel road. A culvert helping a trickle of a stream under the road. About a kilometre square of unforgiving Afghan terrain. 

Sam raised her hand to her mouth and chewed on a knuckle. A bead of sweat formed in a fold in her neck, headed south and found its way under her combat shirt. It stopped where her already damp bra met her skin. She ignored the sensation. She ignored the heat. She ignored the enveloping tiredness of 14-hour days. She ignored the noise from the other operators in the room. The squawk of radios. The distant thump-thump-thump of the medevac Chinook landing.

She was totally focused. A touch of autism, mixed in with some OCD, enabled her to ignore everything but the task. She was an image analyst. No, she was a very good image analyst. Autism gave her an almost savant ability to see detail. And her OCD the doggedness to never give up; to find order when none wanted to be found. 

Her two screens were loaded with the same satellite image. Except they weren’t the same. One set was taken six days ago, at midday – the second from today at 8 am. A section of Route Pelican, a supply route between the FOB and Camp Bastion. Sam’s job was to assess the route. Look for where new engineering works might be needed as the gravel and tarmac had broken away after winter rains and the relentless pounding of Army trucks and escorts. And to find anything else that shouldn’t be there.

The pair of images were taken less than a week apart. The rainy season was over. There had been no military traffic on the route during that time. Nothing should have changed.

And yet …

Hang on.

Sam leant back on her chair so she could take in both screens with the slightest movement of her head. 

Wait.

She leant forward so her face was just a couple of inches from the left-hand screen. She could make out the LED’s pixels. 

Yesterday. Gravel road. Culvert. Trickle of water.

She moved to the right. Again she was close. 

Same road. Same culvert. Same stream. But this time … the stream didn’t enter and exit the culvert like the earlier image. This time there was a buildup of water, a large puddle, on the northern side and no water on the other.

No!

Six things happened at once.

Sam spun on her chair, her concentration on the screens broken. Her pulse rate shot up and the accompanying adrenaline joined the blood pulsating in her ears. Her pupils widened as she took in the view she had experienced day in, day out for over four months. Large tent. No windows. Canvas-facing desks and monitors. Maybe 20 staff. A large map table, with ink-scrawled symbols decorating the glass top. To one side of the map was a two-man trestle table: the boss and his signals operator. Black radio handsets and a green speaker. On the other side of the map table were three whiteboards displaying all manner of information. Above them, hanging from the tent’s metal frame, an analogue clock and a hand-made sign. It read: Think IED!

IED. Improvised Explosive Device. Terrorist made and planted. The scourge of the battalion. They’d lost two men already to Taliban devices. An armoured Foxhound blown over by a roadside bomb, killing the vehicle’s commander who had his head out of the top hatch, his neck snapped in the tumble. A second soldier lost as a remote-controlled RPG penetrated a Mastiff with a thin jet of molten copper, slicing the man in half. A lucky shot, missing the side armour yet finding one of theirs.

One of mine.

The sixth thing Sam did was scream.

‘Boss! Have we got anything on Pelican?’

Captain James looked up and across at her, and then shot a glance at the whiteboards.

‘Hang on. Yes. Three-Zero Charlie. Routine patrol. Three vehicles.’ He glanced back at Sam …

… who was ignoring him. 

She had to find the culvert on the map. Water either side yesterday. None today, but a pool upstream. The culvert was blocked. It was a small thing. Tiny. Could be nothing. 

But it might be …

‘Potential culvert IED. At …’ Sam was on her feet leaning over the map-table. Her eyes and her fingers desperate to find the grid reference of the culvert.

‘… grid, one-two-seven, four-six-six.’

She stared at the Captain, who now had a hold of a handset.

‘Hello, Mike Three-Zero Charlie, this is Zero. Over.’

He looked across at Sam. She was clenching her teeth; her heart bashing strongly against her ribcage.

Are we too late?

Nothing. The whole Ops room had turned, looking in. Their stares focused on the green speaker.

‘Hello, Mike Three-Zero Charlie, this is Zero. Over!’ Louder this time from the Captain. He was almost shouting at the handset, his knuckles white as he pressed the pressel on the handset.

Nothing. 

A crackle. 

Still nothing.

Then, ‘Mike Three-Zero Charlie, Roger. Send, over.’

As relief swept across the room, the Captain replied.

‘Zero. Potential culvert IED at …’, he glanced at his notepad, ‘Grid, one-two-seven, four-six-six, over.’

Nothing. Too long a pause?

‘Mike Three-Zero Charlie, Roger. We’re …’ And then a split second of terrifying noise. A shattering explosion and an accompanying cry. The speaker seemed to momentarily shake. 

Silence.

The captain looked across at Sam. Their eyes met. Hers were already filling with tears.

Oh, God. No …