Dirty Deeds Done Cheap by Peter Mercer

boss said. The Yank smiled and jumped back into his big fuck-off machine of destruction and gave the order.
    We all watched with anticipation as the three Strykers trundled off down the main road until they were level with the apartments. We could all hear the AK-47 rounds, fired by the insurgents, just bouncing off their armour. That was fucking ace! The twats in the flats were going to get one hell of a shock. You could see the missiles’ homing system targeting the flats, and then, in an instant, there were two whooshes and we followed the trail of smoke from the missiles hurtling towards the apartments. These missiles were awesome and in a split second three floors of the block were no longer there – just dust and rubble. Lo and behold – no more incoming firing! Fucking excellent!
    It was pure poetry in motion. Killing another human being is not something to relish, but the fact was that these insurgents were trying and doing their damnedest to send us to a better place (or worse) – that made them fair game. I laughed my head off. I definitely have my own set of morals.
    The apartments were no more – just dust. Our wheel was fixed and there were not so many insurgents left – none who could fight anyway. Life was peachy. Now that the Yanks had done our dirty work for us, there was pretty much no resistance left. We were all on a bit of a buzz now and all of us were laughing our heads off at what a bizarre situation we’d just been part of.
    It was lovely to see the guys smile. They were always in the thick of it and, although they were tough bastards, a bit of relief never came amiss. Now this was something that could have come right out of a movie (a crap one, admittedly) – little guys fixing a wheel while under quite intense enemy fire. Even some of the hardened, veteran ex-SAS/SBS found it hysterical. It added a whole giggle factor to the totally fucked-up situation we had just survived; but, on the other hand, we were all deadly serious – we had to be.
    In hindsight we should have just blown the damaged Toyota to pieces, left it for dead and carried on; but, as I said, the energy in the area was ugly and violent. However, there was no bloodshed this time apart from the bad guys. When those missiles hit they wouldn’t have known anything about it. They would have just been taken out. There would have been nothing left.
    In situations like this you have to think on your feet and, as I’ve said, at the end of the day I was responsible for four of these brave little fuckers in my truck. If one of them had died or been maimed … Well, does anyone know how to write in Nepalese to one of their loved ones to say sorry? Because I fucking don’t. The British forces in these war zones have to be in these danger areas. I have the utmost admiration for these people and, time and time again, they are bound by duty to be there getting their arses shot off, but we, as private contractors, were are all there by choice. Sometimes not the smartest thing to do.
    Now, back to those wheel-changing nutters. After taking stock of our tactical miscalculation (fuck-up, basically) we decided to get the hell out of Dodge ASAP and, because of the kind support of the Yanks, we had little resistance. We screeched off with the Gurkhas. The one driving us in our vehicle was using a booster cushion. I’m not kidding you, this guy was tiny, only about 5-foot-nothing, but he had balls as big as an elephant. Because of the intensity of the situation, he ended up driving like Lewis Hamilton, so we were now going through Tal Afar pretty fast. This little Gurkha could drive like the wind (I was, personally, bricking it) even if he could hardly touch the pedals.
    Tal Afar was truly mental. I’ve never been through such a place. The local people seemed to wear vacant expressions on their faces, but as there was so much fighting in the city – in fact, there seemed to be fighting everywhere – I guess they were just numb to their