I nodded. Hopefully I’d get some real sleep between now and then, or it promised to be a bloody long day.
Gharfour grunted and fell silent for a moment. “Are your rooms to your liking?”
“They’re excellent, sir,” I said, standing up. It was true. I’ve bunked down in places far worse than this.
Gharfour nodded, obviously pleased. “Good. I have a very talented team of cooks on the staff who will be happy to make any dish you desire. Or, if you prefer, you have a small kitchen in your own rooms. The staff will procure any supplies you wish, though I would appreciate it if you kept your alcohol order to a minimum. This is still an Islamic nation and alcohol is illegal, as I’m sure you know.”
I did know. I also knew it was a law that only seemed to apply to those that weren’t rich or in government.
“Of course,” Gharfour continued, “I’m sure you’d always be welcome to eat with Mujib and the rest of your men.”
My men? Something about that didn’t sound right to me. It had been a long time since I’d had men, or led any kind of team.
“That’s a good one, isn’t it, Carver? Your men?” The voice was Scottish. I didn’t need to turn my head to know it was Turner, he had been the only Scot in my squad. I ignored him. Gharfour was still speaking, and I’d missed most of it, but his meaning was clear enough. I nodded my acceptance of the dismissal, as Turner continued his rant, and made my way to the door.
“Because when you’re in a team,” Turner carried on, his voice rising to a hoarse shout as I walked away. “When you’ve got men, you look after them, don’t you Carver? You don’t fucking sit there and watch them get shot, do you?”
I closed the door behind me, taking a deep breath as I walked.
“I’ve got a fucking hole in my head, Carver!” Turner screamed after me. “A hole. In my head!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
I’m not crazy.
I am a little fucked up, but I’m reasonably sure that I’m not actually insane.
What I have is some kind of PTSD. Hallucinations brought on by trauma and survivor’s guilt. I’ve done enough research on my own, whilst avoiding support groups and therapy, to know that much. I know avoiding the help is a bad idea. Maybe I’m hoping it will burn itself out. Maybe I’m an idiot.
Blame it on testosterone. Blame it on stupidity. Hell, you could even blame it on the squaddie mentality—the stubbornness beaten into us in training. Blame it on whatever you want, but I’d spent the past few years hoping it would go away on its own, and knowing it wouldn’t.
But the visitors weren’t going away. They were loud. Louder than they’d been in a long time, drawn out by the mention of a team and my memories of what happened to the last squad I led.
The thing is, I’ve had my visitors for a couple of years now and, in terms of the guilt, I’m really starting to just not give a shit anymore. I did what I had to do. I don’t feel a lot of guilt about it. Because of that, I could really do with the lot of them fucking off.
I moved away from Gharfour’s office slowly, forcing myself to relax. Turner let me go, which was a rare blessing. More than once he’d followed me around for an entire day, screaming at me and bleeding over everything he could find.
I glanced down at my watch, though I didn’t know why I bothered. The sun alone could have told me it was mid-afternoon. Time enough to have a look around the place. I stopped back at my rooms for the rest of my kit. PPE and body armour are bloody annoying, right up to the point that you need them. I checked the M4 and the Glock and brought both. It might be overkill, but I’d rather have them and not need them than the other way around.
The main residence was larger than it looked from the outside. Lavish hallways lined with luxurious suites gave way to a ballroom, a cinema, and even a well-stocked library. The lower floors held a servant’s wing, disused drawing rooms, and a dining room large enough to host a state banquet, though I doubted it got used too often. I found the servant stairs, along with fire escapes and half a dozen different ways into the building. Most importantly, though I passed four or five servants, I only found a single guard; a bored man, who I was almost on top of before he even looked at me.
Gharfour, apparently, lived alone. There was no evidence anywhere in the house of a wife or children. That was a good thing so far as my job went—less people to guard. That said, it also made for an empty house with fewer eyes to spot things out of place.
I took the servant’s lift down to the basement and the main kitchen. The opulent paintings and statues vanished immediately, replaced with plain concrete blocks, painted a functional white. I followed the hallway through to the kitchen. Three men in chef’s whites glanced at me as I entered, but made no move to stop me as I made my way past the stainless-steel surfaces and stoves.
Three doors led off from the kitchen, one of which was clearly a freezer or cold-store of some kind. I picked one of the others at random, and found myself in a store-room with large double doors leading out to a loading dock. I stepped out into the delivery bay and swore. No guards here, either.
I spent the better part of an hour wandering through the compound. The mid-afternoon sun in Kabul is relentless, but it’s the dust that makes the difference. If I’m really honest it doesn’t actually get that hot in Kabul. It’s no worse than a really hot summer day in London; it just feels like it. The dust tends to cake your skin and lips, leeching the moisture out of you. Wearing full kit didn’t help.
I made a slow circuit of the compound, stopping once to fill a water bottle in the kitchen. Mujib was nowhere to be seen, though the three men at the gate pointed me in the direction of a low building close to the wall. ‘Pointed’ was the operative word here. None of them spoke much English and my Pashto was very rusty. I would need to brush up on it. A misunderstood instruction could easily be the difference between a safe client and a dead one.
I found Mujib sitting at a table at the end of a long bunkhouse, watching a small television and smoking. He glanced at me as I came in and muttered something to himself as he swung his feet down from the desk. He sucked a final drag out of his cigarette and reached for an ashtray, looking up at me as he stubbed it out.
“Mr Thompson. What can I do for you, sir?” There was a tone to his voice. Nothing so blatant as contempt or sullenness, just a flavour—an undercurrent that it would have taken an idiot to miss. It wasn’t anything I haven’t seen before. Nobody likes to be replaced, or have someone brought in over their head. It all comes down to how you handle it.
“I was hoping you could walk me through your procedures?” I asked him. “Mr Gharfour’s schedule, transport arrangements, the guard’s shift rotations; that sort of thing. It’ll probably take me a while to get up to speed with your arrangements, and I thought it would make sense to talk to you. I imagine you set up most of them.”
A bit of flattery never hurt in a situation like this.
He didn’t quite hide the smile as he scratched at his beard. “Of course.”
I spent the next few hours going over Mujib’s arrangements, walking the compound and poring over maps of Kabul. To be honest, I’ve seen a lot worse. Most of the problems were based on over-confidence and an over-reliance on physical barriers. It’s all very well to rely on a blast-wall to protect you, but you can’t really test them. Discovering that it’s faulty and that a mobile IED would blow right through it, is something that usually happens when it’s too late to do much about it.
Mujib hadn’t planned for an actual attack. His security strategy revolved around guards standing at the gates with guns, looking intimidating. I managed to talk the men at the gate into standing in front of it, though Mujib had to translate, and I suspect he threw in a few choice words about me as he did. I volunteered for the early shift and left them to it. I needed something to eat.
The kitchen staff were great. The head chef spoke excellent English, and was more than happy to throw some food together for me. I have fairly simply tastes; whatever I wanted he’
d have to cook from scratch anyway, so I had my pick. I took the pasta up to my rooms and ate as I worked with a pad of paper.
The main issue was the men. They might be capable of holding a gun and standing at a gate, but it didn’t look like they were trained to do much more than that. I was here to bring the security arrangements up to a decent standard, not to put these guys through basic training. I was going to have to talk to Gharfour and see what his budget was for security. It would be easier to just replace the lot.
I flicked on the television after a while, background noise filling the room as a welcome distraction to the Nokia sitting on the night stand. It should have been easy to ignore it. I probably should have. I ought to have mentioned it to Gharfour as well. Whoever left it in my kit knew who and what I was, and they wanted to talk to me without Gharfour knowing about it. Those two things were never going to add up to anything good.
The text had said 9pm. I looked at my watch. It was 8.45pm.
Curiosity killed the cat, or so they say. I repeated that to myself three times before I gave in, stalked across the room and put the battery and SIM card back into the phone. It began its glacial start up process as I went to my small kitchen and made coffee.
I checked my watch again. Three minutes to nine.
I hadn’t deleted the old text.
Secure the phone. Power off and remove SIM. Further instructions at 9pm local.
Instructions. That was an odd choice of word. Not contact. Not details. Just instructions. Whoever sent this thing clearly intended me to do their bidding. The phone buzzed at 9pm exactly. A new text flashed on the screen.
Is area secure for coms? Y/N
I stared at the phone and sipped my coffee for a few minutes. The area was as secure as I could make it. There was nothing more I could do. I was waiting just to wind them up, really. I thumbed a one letter response and waited.
The phone buzzed a few seconds later, ringing this time.
“Mr Carver?” A female voice. Soft, young, and American.
“Who is this?” I demanded. Might as well start off on the right foot. I was in control of this conversation, not her.
“Let’s not play games, Mr Carver. We don’t have time for that. You’re an intelligent man, you know who this must be.”
I paused, taking a deep breath before I spoke again. So much for my being in control of the conversation. At the very least I could stay in control of myself. My heart was already pounding. I hadn’t signed up for this, and I certainly hadn’t expected it. This was supposed to be a glorified babysitting gig. “What do you want?”
“I’d like to meet with you. There are some things we should discuss.”
“I’m a bit busy, Miss…?”
“Call me Artemis.”
A Greek goddess, and The Huntress at that? I rolled my eyes. Bloody Americans and their egos. I put a patronising edge on my voice. “Fine, Artemis it is. I’m a bit busy, darling. New job and all that.”
“You’re here for the money, Mr Carver, let’s not pretend otherwise. I’ll make it worth your while.”
She had a point. It takes a while to adjust to that new reality when you make the shift from being enlisted to being a security consultant. You’re not there for your country, for your squad, or, a lot of the time, even for your own career. You’re there purely for the cash. I might be a whore with a gun, but I’m an honest whore. Once I’m bought, I like to stay bought.
“I don’t need the money that badly, Artemis. You’re going to have to do a bit better than that.”
She sighed, impatience carrying through the phone. “I have credible intelligence that will impact your client.”
I pulled the phone away from my mouth to cover my sigh. She was probably full of it, but it wasn’t something I could just ignore. “Fine. When and where?”
“The Bird Market. Tomorrow at 3pm.”
I gnawed on my lip. “How will I find you?”
“I’ll find you, Carver. Just don’t make life too difficult for me.”
“Fine. I’ll be there for three, Artemis, but this better be worth it.”
I killed the phone, pulling the battery and SIM out. She had been pretty specific about making the phone unable to trace. The thing was, the Nokia was basically a dinosaur. It didn’t have GPS capability. It wasn’t a smartphone. The only way to trace or track this phone would be to triangulate through the signal towers. In another country that would require a level of government involvement. Here, it just meant someone with a lot of money.
*
My alarm woke me at 3am and I rolled out of bed and stumbled into the shower. I used to be able to wake and be up and moving in moments, sometimes your life can depend on it. It’s something that I lost when I left the army; something I need to get back.
Ten minutes later, I was sucking down the last of my coffee and checking my webbing. I gave my weapons a brief inspection and made my way out. The early morning air was cool on my face, probably only about ten degrees or so, but I was still waking up and it felt colder. I shrugged down into my gear and made my way over to the compound gate, waving a hello to the two men on watch. I frowned as I drew closer. One of them was Mujib.
“I thought you were on later?” I asked.
“I changed the rota,” he said with a shrug. “I thought it would make sense to take you in to the office myself, so I can answer any questions.”
I nodded. It did make sense, but helpfulness and initiative weren’t something I’d had from him so far, and it seemed at odds with the disdain he’d shown me. I couldn’t blame him for it. People like me were the reason his country was circling the drain. People like me had come here, guns blazing, and blown the place to hell in an effort to flatten the Taliban and get bin Laden. Then, after we’d fucked it up, we left without so much as a goodnight kiss.
I pushed away the creeping guilt and put a friendly tone into my voice. “Quiet night?”
“So far,” Mujib replied. “It usually is.”
I grunted, looking around. “When was the last patrol?”
Mujib looked at me blankly. “What?”
“The last patrol of the compound?” I repeated.
Jesus Christ, someone tell me they’re doing patrols…
It was probably the only thing I hadn’t already asked about, maybe because I’d assumed he at least had a basic understanding of securing and defending a position. Apparently, I was wrong.
Mujib shrugged. “We don’t do that. What would be the point? This gate is the only way in.”
I took a slow breath before I spoke. “What about the walls, Mujib?”
He gave me a look. The same look you’d give an irritating child. “The walls are twelve feet high and covered in razor wire, sir.”
“I could clear those walls and be inside the building in less than five minutes.” His expression told me he didn’t believe me. “Mujib, the razor wire isn’t live. There are no sensors on it, so you have no idea if or when it’s been cut. All it would take is a man who knew what he was doing, and some bolt cutters, and he’d be inside in no time.”
“Fine,” he snapped. “Then we patrol.”
“No.” I shook my head. “One man on the gate at all times. I’ll patrol with…?”
“Samir,” Mujib supplied, glaring at me.
“Samir,” I repeated. “Tell him to work his way around the left, I’ll go right. Tell him to take his time.”
I waited while Mujib relayed the orders. I didn’t catch everything he said, my Pashto wasn’t good enough and he was speaking quickly, but I did hear one phrase; da khar zoya. Loosely translated, it means ‘son of a donkey’.
I waited until he looked at me and sketched a smile. “I only got two things from my father, Mujib. One was being stubborn, and the other…” I paused and grabbed my crotch.
His laughter was slow to come as he grasped both my meaning and that I’d caught his insult.
“Now do your bloody job,” I growled, and left to patrol.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
Mackenzie sucked hard on the water tube, swilling it around in her mouth before she swallowed. The grainy paste clung to the inside of her mouth, sticking to the back of her teeth. She might have to eat the stuff to stay alive but, dear God, it would take a lot longer for her to actually enjoy it.
She’d lasted almost two days before she gave in and swallowed it down. For most of that time, she’d been too nauseous to feel hungry anyway. Eating had cleared away the last remnants of whatever drug she’d been fed, and the water had done the rest.
She figured she’d been in the room for about four days, but it was hard to tell with no windows to give her any reference. The lights came on right before she was blasted with water. She suspected they were on some sort of daily timer. It was impossible to know for sure, though. It could have been every eight hours for all she knew.
Sometime between the first water blast and the second, she’d given up screaming and started listening. Anyone within ear shot would have answered already if they were going to. Listening though; that had told her something new entirely.
The faint whine of electronics was just about audible through the walls, though she had to hold her breath to hear it. Once, she thought she caught the sound of footsteps, but the most important sounds didn’t come until the second day: the faint sounds of shouting.
The shouts were like hers to begin with, the words indistinct, but the tone was clear. Whoever it was passed back and forth between outrage and fear, alternating between screams of fury then, later, a quieter begging.
She’d shouted back until her throat burned, not realising the futility of it at first. She’d only heard them when she was holding her breath and utterly silent, and even then, she’d just caught the barest hint of their shouts. Whoever it was had no chance of hearing her unless they were as silent as she was. She needed them to adjust to their situation. To accept where they were for the time being. To stop yelling and start listening.
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