12 Seconds (#1 in Military series)

Chapter 30

Chapter 30

The day had arrived when they had to say goodbye.

Julia was putting it off as much as possible, trying not to think about it.

She occupied herself as much as possible. When she first heard the news, she packed and re-packed her pack, as the first tendrils of anticipation gripped her body. She was anxious to get home after such a volatile time.

With so little time left of their tour, the Commander had scratched off all their names from patrol duties. It was great news and they had a weekend to themselves when they realised what the catch was to their no-patrol-holiday.

They had to help pack up the base and begin to shift the controls over to the AA; Afghan Army.

Julia was happy at first but it soon reminded her of Kazeem, getting patched up in a bombed hospital a few kliks away.

The injustice made her angry so she had been transferred from AA to inventory. She was counting the ammunition they had left, tallying it up with their expenditures.

At first she felt anxious, eager, to go home but as she got to know the children more she felt guilty.

She got to go home, which she was only mildly excited about, to a peaceful country where no one was bombing each other, but they didn’t.

Those who had parents still alive had been tracked down to a refugee camp near the border and were being returned to their family; a happy ending, at least as happy as they could get in a refugee camp.

However, those without a family were going to an orphanage.

The commander assured Julia it wasn’t in the capital but there was something in the way he said it that meant the place they were going to wasn’t much better.

Safia clung to Jules’s side; she was one of the girl’s going to the orphanage. The translator informed Julia that her parents had been shot for assisting the British Army. Julia hugged her close and they had been inseparable ever since.

Julia’s woman quarters were empty apart from her so she invited the girls into her tent until it was time for them to leave. Safia slept in the bunk beside Julia, often waking up in distress from another nightmare.

Jules got the sense that she had witnessed her parent’s death but she did not press the matter. She simply cradled Safia in her arms until she fell back asleep.

But soon those midnight hugs were going to vanish and Julia couldn’t bear to think about who would hug Safia when she woke up crying.

An idea was forming in Julia’s mind but it still had to come to fruition.

Carlos and Twitch also helped to distract her of the impending doom with their constant nonsensical arguments that seemed more hilarious to everybody else than themselves who took it completely seriously.

And Marc- Marc was brilliant. He did not complain that when he came to be with her, there was a small girl tucked tightly against her leg, refusing to budge.

She had been spending the last few days before their departure teaching Safia, and a few of the others, how to read and write.

Jules stole a wad of paper from command when no one was looking and pens from Carlos’s stash – the man seemed obsessed with every colour and style of pen under the sun; fountain, ink, ballpoint, marker. The list was never ending.

Jules did not realise how many types of pen there were until Carlos roped her into a conversation about them. That was thirty minutes of her life that she was never getting back.