We were down to two teams of four. Two men left outside with sniper rifles sighted on the front of the building, and then four of us in each team. Ten men, eight if nothing happened outside, up against however many were in here.
The first shots fired were ours. Subsonic rounds fired from an MP5-SD. You can forget anything you might have seen on television, suppressed rounds don’t sound like that. If anything, it’s more of a tinny, metallic clack. Most of the boom of the bullet is gone—that’s dealt with by the suppressor, and the fact that the bullets don’t break the sound barrier. As for that high-pitched sound, like a chipmunk sneezing, that you hear in the movies? No, that’s just bollocks.
I followed Johnson to the slumped forms of the men he’d shot, checking the second as he crouched over the first. Neither would be much of a threat to us now, but silence was a commodity we hoarded. A moan, or a call for help at the wrong time, would have changed that night into something very different in moments.
I gave him a thumbs-up in the darkness, then followed him deeper into the house, moving along the hallway. The rooms to either side of us were empty, devoid of both occupants and contents. Already the place was bigger than it should have been—bigger than the plans we’d been shown in the briefing. Two of the rooms had walls that had been knocked through into adjacent buildings. If they’d done the same in those buildings too, then this place had changed from a small house into a rabbit warren.
A tunnel had been dug down through the floor of a room that might have once been a kitchen. Lights were strung along the length of its ceiling, bright enough to make our night-vision gear useless. I grimaced as I pulled the goggles clear. Night-vision wasn’t perfect by any means, but the lights in the tunnel would level the playing-field between me and whoever might be pointing a gun at me down there. I’ve never seen the point in playing fair if I don’t have to.
“What do you think, Roasties?” Johnson’s words were a whisper that barely made it through the throat-mic and ear-piece. Roasties was his latest ridiculous nickname for me. My name had taken him to roast dinner, and from there to roast potatoes. So ‘Roasties’ it was. The names never lasted long though, which was something, I suppose.
I scowled at the tunnel. If bin Shah was anywhere, then chances were he’d be down there. Climbing down into a tunnel with a team this small sounded like a stupid idea to me, but then so did searching the ground floor of this maze in a team of four. I nodded and motioned for Turner to take the rear.
“Two, be advised there’s a tunnel network down here. We’re going in.”
The coms clicked twice in my earpiece in acknowledgement.
The tunnel wound like a snake. If it had been intentional then it was genius—every fifty feet was a potential ambush point. I doubt that it had been, though. More likely, it was just built by men who couldn’t dig in a straight line.
I spotted the man a fraction of a second before he saw me. My gun was already up and he didn’t stand a chance. What I didn’t see was the second man further around the curve of the tunnel. He could have shouted, I suppose, but there isn’t much that carries better than the sound of gunfire. An AK-47 is loud at the best of times; inside the tunnel it sounded like a cannon was shattering the silence.
“Fuck!” Johnson always managed to break silence first, I guess it was just too hard for him to keep that big mouth shut. Not that it mattered now.
We took the shooter together, one high and one low. I think it was Johnson’s shot that took him. He was running anyway but that didn’t matter at this point. This was damage limitation, and it would mean one less gun to face.
“One? Report,” the voice sounded in my earpiece. I could hear the gunshots over the coms clearer than the distant reports that reached my other ear. They were obviously having as much fun upstairs as we were down here.
“Going to shit down here, Two,” I replied. “No sign of the asset.”
Shots rang out as I was saying the last word. The man must have been firing before he even rounded the corner. An AK-47 firing on fully automatic is a bloody horrible thing to try and hold on to, let alone aim, but somehow this guy managed it.
Pearson took him out. He was dead before his age really registered. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen.
I grimaced. “Fuck.”
My mutter came at the same time as Turner’s, but pain filled his voice, lending an urgency to it. He was halfway to the ground before I turned. The bullet had caught him in the thigh, passing through but making a bloody mess of it.
Turner was already seeing to himself before any of us managed to get there, jabbing a morphine shot into his leg. He wadded gauze into the wound while Johnson and Pearson kept watch and I dropped back to help tape him up. It must have hurt like hell. The morphine shots they give us work like an EpiPen—fast acting and pretty much idiot-proof. They don’t work miracles though, and Turner’s thigh was a mess. The morphine dose has to be low enough that the soldier doesn’t drift off to play with the fairies.
We should have bugged out at that point, or pulled back until Team Two finished their search. I knew it, Johnson and Pearson knew it. Turner didn’t know much right about then, but he would have agreed if he could. We didn’t. We pushed on.
Pearson guarded the rear while Turner moved in a pained hobble that wasn’t quiet or fast. Johnson stayed with him as I moved ahead, working my way around the curves of the tunnel.
We heard the footsteps first—rushing feet, and then calls in Pashto that told all four of us that there were more men coming than we were really equipped to handle.
I glanced back at Turner and grimaced before I dropped down to a crouch. We weren’t in any position to be running anywhere.
My gun fired in quick, controlled bursts, and the first three fell before they even knew what happened, but we didn’t have more than a breath before the tunnel filled with the roar of gunfire.
They issue you with ear protection for missions, but nobody uses it. It turned out to be a good thing none of us had, as we could barely hear each other over the damned AKs as it was. The coms were full of chatter from Team Two, and they clearly had their own problems. We ended up resorting to a mix of hand signals and shouting at each other as we fought a retreat. The tunnel had turned into a screaming mess of pain, blood and bullets. I’m making it sound more controlled and disciplined than it really was. The truth is that, when it came down to it, we tossed a flash-bang and a smoke grenade and then legged it.
Pearson had another man dead in the corridor by the time I made it out of the tunnel, and the building seemed as loud as the tunnel.
“One, where the fuck are you?” The voice in my earpiece demanded, the first hints of panic edging in. It was Richards, by the sounds of it.
“Coming out of the tunnel. Time to get out of here.”
“Understood.”
“Fuck this,” Turner spat. “Let’s move before I grow any more holes.”
I wasn’t about to argue with him, not when he was making sense.
We made it as far as the first rooms before things completely fell apart. A round tore into the wall by my face, missing me by inches. My weapon followed my head as I whipped around. Men were swarming out from a hole in the wall that led through to the adjacent house. I dropped one, grabbed Turner, and ran.
“One, this is Gabriel,” the sniper said through my earpiece. “Be advised your exit is compromised. There are trucks pulling up.”
“Fuck!” I screamed into the chaos of the hallway. “This just keeps getting better!”
There was no time to talk this through. If there was no way out the front then I’d rather be in a group of eight than two groups of four. We charged up the stairs as fast as Turner could go, tossing another smoke grenade and a flashbang as we went.
The place was as confusing upstairs as it had been below. Team Two had been as busy as we had and the enemy body count was up to five already as we moved toward the sound of their gunfire.
“Two, we’re coming to y
ou,” I said.
“Understood.”
Team Two were holed up in a small room at the end of a narrow hallway. I didn’t stop to count the bodies, the fact we had to climb over them was enough.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” I said as I put a wall between my skin and any bullets that might come down the hallway.
“We like it,” Richards grinned.
I’d like to claim the forced calm was a British thing, but really, it’s a kind of institutional stupidity, something you’ll run into just about anywhere in the armed forces. When things go to shit, we act like it’s nothing and make jokes about it. The Americans are more or less the same. Our jokes are better, of course. And we’re better looking too.
I glanced at the corridor. Johnson had taken up a position with Pearson and McCourt, one of Richard’s team, while Yates and Wilson saw to Turner’s leg.
I looked out of the small window. There was a twenty-foot drop to the ground, onto what looked like broken stone and rubble. Not anything I wanted to jump out onto if I had a choice. “Gabriel, what’s it looking like out there?”
“Like shit, Roasties,” Gabriel replied. “There are four trucks out here and more coming in. Shall we thin the herd for you?”
I thought about it for a minute. Two men with sniper rifles can make a sorry mess out of just about anyone. That said, it was dark, and the muzzle-flash would give away their position quickly. Snipers are for individual targets, not truck-loads of militants.
“No, hold off for now. Get on the horn and report back just how well things are going here though.” I glanced over at Richards. I was about to ask him about ammunition but Pearson was already firing. Johnson and McCourt joined in, and then we were back to it.
The hallway was long enough that we weren’t going to be mobbed unless they were really eager to die, but it was going to be a long, messy, stand-off unless something changed quickly. Right up until the point where one of the bastards brought an RPG up here and really ruined our day.
I peered around the corner long enough to judge the distance and tossed a grenade. I’d never been the greatest with those bloody things and it caught the wall at the end of the corridor before bouncing out of sight. The sound of the blast was almost as bad as the moaning and the high-pitched screaming that followed. You don’t forget noises like that. The moaning was worse for some reason.
I grimaced and cast my eye over the team. “Turner, how are you holding up, mate?”
“Got a hole in my leg, Roasties. I’m bloody marvellous.”
I grinned at that. “Yeah well, time to lose some weight then, you fat fucker. You’re too good a target.” I smiled along with the laughs—I wasn’t feeling it. I jerked my head toward the window. “Have another look outside for me, sunshine?”
His response was lost as more gunfire came down the corridor. And then the floor was gone, lost in a roar that made the gunfire seem like a sneeze in a hurricane.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Kabul, Afghanistan, early 2013
I came to when a boot caught me in the ribs, adding to all the fun I’d had falling through the floor. I’m not sure what language my new friend was barking at me in, but he managed to make himself understood. An AK-47 barrel jabbed in the side and a pointed finger is usually enough for most people to understand that they’re expected to move.
My hands were already bound behind my back. Cable ties by the feel of it. I scrambled up and made my way over to the others. Pearson, Johnson, and the rest of the team were on their knees, lined up against a wall, with three Afghan men guarding them. I did a quick head count and looked around the room.
Wilson was missing.
It took me a minute to spot his body in amongst the rubble. I grimaced and looked away. There are worse ways to go. At least his had been quick.
A glance up at the remnants of the floor we’d been standing on revealed what had happened. Unable to get to us along the upstairs corridor, they’d simply blown down the ceiling of the room below us. If I’d been anywhere but here, I might have had some grudging respect for the idea. As it was, I’d just fallen twelve feet onto broken stone, wood, and plaster. It was a miracle I could still walk.
A man in a chequered shemagh and sunglasses crouched in front of Pearson, barking questions at him as he jabbed the muzzle of his AK into his chest. All of our captors wore the Arab headscarf, pulled up over their faces so only their eyes were visible. I don’t know why they bothered, it wasn’t as if we would recognise any of them, or even if it would matter if we did.
I was going to die. I realised this even before I came around fully. What struck me was how calm I was about it. It’s kind of an accepted practice to save the last round for yourself in these situations. Even before the beheading videos started showing up on the internet, it was common knowledge that if you were captured, then you were in for torture and a bloody end.
Of course, using that last round required access to your gun, and whoever these guys were—Taliban, Al-Qaeda, drug-lords, or just pissed off locals—they had confiscated all our weapons. I didn’t know who these people were. They certainly weren’t the handful of guards we’d expected escorting bin Shah. They’d been thorough, too. Looking at the others, I saw that they were all bound and that our captors had taken our throat-mics. For now, at least, we were on our own.
There are a lot of things that go through your mind at times like this. Girlfriends I’d been less than nice to, friends I’d fallen out of touch with—lost opportunities. Rather than make me sad, or scared, it simply pissed me off. I don’t know what end I’d expected my life to have, but it bloody well wasn’t this.
Sunglasses made his way slowly along the line until he came to me.
“American?” he demanded in thickly accented English.
“British,” I told him.
He grunted with a nod. “Bush, Blair—very bad men. This is our country. You should not be here.”
I shrugged. He was out of date on his presidents and prime ministers, but I couldn’t really disagree with him.
“Why did you come here?”
“We were looking for someone,” I told him. “We were told Al-Fayed would be here.” I made the name up on the spur of the moment, and it was only days later that I realised I’d given the name of the old Harrods owner.
The days of only giving your name, rank, and serial number were long gone. These days we’re more likely to be fighting insurgents, or states who couldn’t care less about the Geneva Convention. The official line was, if captured, avoid giving away secrets, but cooperate, to a point, if it will help. The level to which we cooperated was down to individual discretion. There’s a lot of leeway in that. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that anything I said was going to help us. The best we could hope for would be to keep these guys talking until the cavalry arrived.
The cavalry could be anyone from the SAS, to the SBS, or even regular forces. Most likely it would be the SAS. They’d just love the chance to save a sorry squad of SRR boys and lord it over us until the end of time. There’s a level of rivalry between SAS, SBS, and SRR, but if something like this happens then the whole bloody regiment goes pounding on doors to try and get you out. Whether we would still be alive when they got there was another matter.
Giving them Al-Fayed’s name bought us some time, and the four of them argued back and forth in Pashto, far more quickly than I could follow.
Sunglasses was disagreeing with a shorter man, stabbing his finger at him. Any in-fighting or arguments could only be a good thing for us, I decided, and I took the chance to glance over at the others.
Turner was in a bad way. His leg was bleeding through the bandage, he’d lost his combat helmet, and his face had taken a battering on the way down. Either that, or they’d knocked him about before I came to. He had the beginnings of a lovely black eye and his lips were split and bleeding. I caught his eye, giving the briefest of nods as I tried to force a sentence into that one gesture.
“You all right?�
� asked that nod.
His answering nod was just as slight. “Yeah, fine. Fuck ‘em.”
To be fair, Turner was about as mad as they came. When you run across the stereotype of the practically feral Scot, it’s Turner they’re talking about. I’d heard rumours, more than once, that the only reason he joined up was because of some nasty business with the police in Glasgow after a night out.
He turned away from me and glared at Sunglasses and his mates. He probably would have taken on the lot of them if I’d given him the nod. Bound hands and a bullet wound wouldn’t have stopped him either. They call the headbutt a Glaswegian Kiss for good reason, and I reckoned Turner would have happily snogged the lot of them.
Sunglasses was done arguing. He crouched down in front of me again. “You lie. There is no Al-Fayed. Nobody is supposed to know about this place. You are looking for The Doctor. How did you know he is going to be here? Who told you?”
That shut me up.
The Doctor, or The Teacher, was a name that made anyone in this job sit up and take notice. Ayman al Zawahiri, The Doctor. One-time teacher and confidante of Osama Bin Laden, and now leader of Al-Qaeda. My thoughts tumbled over each other as I tried to make sense of it all.
Jesus Christ, what have we wandered into here?
Were these men Al-Qaeda? Or were they Taliban? What the fuck was going on?
“Who?” Sunglasses yelled the question into my face.
I’ve been through interrogation training. I’ve been yelled at by the best of them. But training, no matter how good it is, never really matches the real thing. There’s always a line you know won’t be crossed. In the back of your mind, you always know that you can stop the exercise with a word. Real life doesn’t work like that. There’s no safe-word with Al-Qaeda.
Focus, John, I told myself. It doesn’t matter who these guys are, just get through it.
“Nobody,” I replied. “We had no idea he was here, we were looking for someone else.”
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