by Eric Meyer
Suddenly, a new sound intruded, just as the storm of fire from outside began to die down. It sounded like cheering. She ran up to her office to get a better view. More men had arrived in a battered yellow bus. She counted twenty of them, and her heart sank. They were pointing and cheering at the flag she’d hung out of the window. Which could only mean one thing. They were Shiites, Mazari’s men. They could only be here for one reason, and thoughts of victory turned sour. They’d come for her. Another vehicle drew up, and she felt a chill as she recognized the man who climbed out.
Ali Mazari!
He chatted to the new arrivals standing outside her wall. It looked like they were having an argument. The men glanced at the bodies piled in her front yard, and their conversation became even more animated, arms waving, men shouting. One stabbed a finger repeatedly into Mazari’s chest, and for a few moments, she thought he was about to attack him.
With any luck, they may kill him, but why?
The Sunni fighters had fared badly, and most of them were dead. They had to decide whether to avenge the insult and attack the Shiites, or come to an agreement with them. Mazari would be desperate to prevent them killing her. He wanted her as his wife. Afterward, he would throw her to the wolves.
Seconds later, she watched them shake hands, although Mazari didn’t look happy. Evidently, they’d come to an agreement. The man in charge pointed a finger at the house, and one of his men nodded and ran to their bus. He returned moments later with a long, dark tube. She heard Bob curse.
“Fuck it, an RPG. Now we’re screwed. Jesus Christ, nail the bastard before he draws a bead on the house and blows a hole in the wall big enough to drive a truck through.”
Sebastian Koch took careful aim, before she dragged the barrel of his rifle away.
“Don’t do that.”
He looked shocked. “Why not? If we let him live, he’ll kill us all.”
“You kill him, and they’ll send another to replace him, and another. It’s time I took charge of this operation. I don’t know what you think you’re doing here, but you’re getting us nowhere. Bob, bring all your men to the rear of the house. We’re leaving.”
She ignored the angry shouts and ran out of the room, with Akram at her heels. The rest of them followed. Bob Crawford caught up with her, his face angry.
“Lady, I don’t know what you have in mind, but it better be something good. Those guys are about to blow this house apart, and if we’re still in it, we may as well say our prayers now.”
They reached the kitchen, and she wrenched open the door. She stopped before she went inside. “Listen, Mr. Crawford. I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know how good you are. All I do know is that so far you haven’t done very well. From here on in, I’m taking charge. There’s a door that leads to the root cellar my father had constructed when they built the house. We’ll shelter down there from the missile.”
“Shit, so we can eat fresh vegetables while we wait for them to come for us.”
She frowned. “There’s a way out of the cellar, of course.” She held up her hand to block the interruption, “I know there’re armed men outside, but when the missile hits, there’ll be a great deal of smoke and dust, enough to cover the area in a kind of fog, is that correct?”
He nodded. “That’s about the size of it, last time I checked. If we’re still in here, there’ll be pieces of flesh mixed in with the brick dust as well.”
“We’ll be safe in the cellar. It’s very solid. As soon as the blast hits, we’ll leave through the trapdoor into the orchard and head for the airfield. Joseph Chow flew Stoner and Blum out of here in one of the Otters. I have two more on the airfield. There’s no reason we can’t do exactly the same. All we need do is get to the airfield under cover of the smoke, and we can get away from this place. We can make it.”
Bob looked at Malik and Sebastian, and each man inclined his head in agreement.
It’s a good gamble. Besides, Stoner and Blum did it. Why shouldn’t we? When the RPG rocket hits the house, all eyes will be looking at the impact site to see what damage they’ve done. We’ll have a better chance than staying inside the house and waiting for the Islamists to kill us.
She started down the stairs, with Archer at her heels, and trailed by Akram. Crawford’s men followed them down, and Koch fastened the door with a heavy bolt. They waited for less than two minutes in the darkness before the massive impact of the rocket strike shook the house through to the foundations. Dust and debris showered down on them from the ceiling, and at one stage Lena thought she may have miscalculated, and the building was about to collapse.
It didn’t collapse. Ten seconds after the missile impacted, she unbolted the hatch that led out into the garden and raced out into the thick fog she’d anticipated. Archer seemed to have adopted her, and he ran at her heels as she raced to the airfield. There were two Otters on the stand, and they hesitated for a moment to make sure none of the fighters had spotted them. They hadn’t, and she made for the nearest aircraft. They were halfway there when Bob caught up with her.
“Miss Stori, your plan worked, and for a moment I thought you’d got us out of this mess. Now I know different.”
They were racing along, and she had to work to reply as she sucked in oxygen to keep up the frantic pace. “What you mean, different?”
“There’s something you didn’t think of.”
“There is?”
“Yep. Just a small point, who’s going to fly this thing, seeing as the pilot flew out earlier with Stoner and Blum? We’re fucked, lady. Totally fucked.”
Chapter Six
Greg slowed the Hilux a few hundred meters from Khan’s mosque. It had been a close thing. The guard said something to the driver like, ‘We’re home, honey.’ At least, that’s what it sounded like. Both men took the opportunity while their attention was diverted, and Stoner worked feverishly to unfasten the last of the knots. A crowd of people milled in the road, and it was obvious some kind of street market was in progress. It was enough to shift the guard's attention even further, and he lowered the passenger window to shout at them to move out of the way.
They recognized the vehicle as belonging to the most senior Mullah in Panjab. The Toyota had started to inch forward again as they cleared the road, when the knot finally gave, Greg didn’t hesitate. He brought his right hand around, snatched out the Colt, aimed at the passenger, and pulled the trigger.
The sound was loud inside the vehicle, a high-pitched crack, like a sheet of plate glass had smashed. Still, the crowd scattering from the Mullah’s vehicle failed to notice anything wrong. Until Greg’s second bullet hit the driver in the center of his head, just as he was reaching to grab his weapon. The Toyota swerved, and his foot stamped down on the gas pedal.
Now they noticed. People screamed as the heavy SUV picked up speed and plowed into the dense mass of crowd. Stoner was powerless to do anything, his hands were still tied, but Greg leapt over the seat, pushed the body of the driver to one side, and grabbed the wheel. He wasn’t able to move the man’s foot off the pedal but managed to steer the out-of-control Toyota away from the innocent bystanders.
The screams became louder as at least two people went down beneath the front wheels. People melted away from the path of the charging Hilux, and then an opening appeared in front of them, a side street. They were still picking up speed as he hurtled into the turn, banging on the horn to make people get out of the way.
Women were sitting on chairs outside their homes, chatting to their neighbors. Men sat on the roadway, most of them smoking opium and staring vacantly into space. A few children played, but they all responded to the urgent warning of the Toyota’s horn. This was Afghanistan, a nation bred to war, used to war, and responding to the threat of war. They moved as if the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had descended from the heavens to devastate their street. When the Toyota reached the end, the only damage they’d done was to a couple of plastic chairs, torn to shreds beneath the racing wheels of the SUV.
Blum finally managed to drag the foot of the dead driver from the pedal, and the Toyota began to slow and then halted. He moved into the back and unfastened the cords that tied Stoner’s hands, glancing at the bodies of the men he’d killed.
“What do we do with them? As soon as they appear in the street, someone’s gonna notice, and Khan’ll know.”
Stoner ignored him and snatched up the guard’s Makarov, together with his AK-47 assault rifle. He grimaced at the shocking state of the metalwork, thick with corrosion, and ejected the magazine.
“Full load, we’re in luck. Check the driver for a gun. He’s sure to have something stashed in his robe. Not that he needs it, the stink of body odor is enough to knock down an opponent.” He chuckled, “What was that about the bodies? It’s no problem. We’ll take ‘em to the guy who owns them. Our good friend, Mullah Khan, who’s about to pay the price for killing my fiancée. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find Lena’s gold stashed under his couch.”
“If he took it.”
“Who else? It wasn’t Ivan. We’re pretty sure about that. And she’s convinced it’s not an inside job. It had to be either him or Mazari. I say we take the fucker down, and before he breathes his last, drag the truth out of him.”
They moved the bodies into the trunk. Across the road, an old man watched without expression, smoking a pipe that gave off clouds of thick smoke, Opium or maybe something even more addictive. It was a quick way to get to Paradise in Afghanistan; addicts had short lives, as they did in any of the other so-called Islamic shitholes. Pakistan, Turkistan, Kurdistan, or Whogivesafuckistan.
The man was a symbol of what was wrong with the whole country. He probably hadn’t reached his fortieth year. His skin was lined and leathery, his eyes rheumy and probably infected with some nasty disease, maybe with cataracts to add to his woes. Either way, he’d go blind before too long. He was emaciated, and doubtless found it hard to get one square meal a day, let alone three. When he removed the pipe from his mouth, there was a single tooth in evidence. Even his clothes would have been tossed out and burned in any self-respecting thrift shop in the Western World.
The guy needed work, a job he could go to every day and collect a salary check at the end of the week to buy clothes, and pay for medicines and dental treatment. Yet there were no jobs, and no employers. The factories were either bankrupt or had been destroyed by the Taliban and their al-Qaeda buddies. No dentists, most of them murdered or escaped to a safer climate. No doctors, no hospitals, save for a pitiful few, manned by frightened and overstretched staff. All this man had was the mosque. Braying preachers exhorting men, women, and children to go forth and die in the name of Allah. The merciful.
They slammed the tailgate closed and climbed back into the vehicle. Greg started to turn around, and they passed the old man. He looked up briefly and looked down again to concentrate on his pipe. Greg accelerated slowly.
“You sure about this, going to grab Khan?”
Stoner nodded and was about to reply, when a plume of smoke rose in the sky less than two kilometers away. He had the window wound down, and he felt the faint shockwave of the explosion even though it was far away. He said one word, “RPG.” Blum had already slammed on the brakes, and both men jumped down to the street and ran up a nearby stone staircase to the roof of a two-story building. They couldn’t see beyond the outskirts of the town, but there was no need to locate the area of impact.
“Lena’s place,” Greg murmured. Smoke was still rising up into the clear blue of the sky, “They’re in bad trouble. We should go back. They can’t withstand that kind of an assault.”
Stoner cursed inwardly.
It’s like everything in the world conspires to rob Madeleine of justice. I want Khan. What is it about that turbaned fucker, he always seems just out of reach? But the Russian’s right. Lena needs us, and Bob’s group is in trouble.
He nodded. “Let’s go.”
They raced down the stairs and leapt into the Toyota. Blum stamped his foot down on the gas pedal, and they lurched away toward the Stori compound. The streets were crammed with vehicles. Pedestrians running they knew not where. The word of the firefight outside the town had spread, yet where could they run? The major employer was in trouble: Stori was subject to a fatwa. It would be tantamount to suicide trying to save the wreck that Stori was fast becoming.
Greg cursed as they halted again, blocked by teeming crowds of fleeing people.
“What’re we going to do? I can’t run these poor bastards down, and we’re never going to get there in time to do anything to help out.”
“We’ll have to abandon the vehicle and make a run for it.”
The Russian looked scathing. “They’ll tear us to pieces. You must be out of your mind.”
Stoner looked out through the glass and considered.
Blum’s right. It’s no place to be an infidel out in the open. Not without fast wheels.
It was at that moment they heard the sound of an aircraft overhead, and they looked up. It was flying low and had just taken off from the Stori airstrip. Someone had escaped from the battle they knew was still raging at Lena’s place, but who?
* * *
They were only fifty meters from the Otter, and she looked at him with astonishment.
“I thought you’d be able to fly it. You were military, Special Forces, don’t they train you to fly an aircraft?”
“Not everyone, no. Only some operators, and I wasn’t one of them. Before you ask, neither can Seb pilot an aircraft, and Malik doesn’t even have a driver’s license.” He looked at Akram. “You ever fly a plane?”
“No.”
“Shit.” He looked around in desperation, searching for a solution. As if a pilot would somehow parachute out of the sky. Lena remembered something Ivan had said.
“Akram, call your boss. He said you could contact him if we were in serious trouble. It doesn’t get much more serious than this.”
He shook his head miserably and delved into his inner pocket and fished out a mass of broken electronics. “It was a bullet, meant for you, I guess. I saw the man fire, and I went to push you to the floor. The bullet hit me instead. No, not me, my satphone.” He tossed the mass of broken plastic and wires to the ground, “Junk. They should make them stronger.”
They looked at her, and she knew what they wanted. She’d assumed the mantel of command, the businesswoman in charge. It was also her property and her aircraft. The fear and uncertainly vanished; she was Lena Stori, and she had a business to run.
“I’ll fly the Otter. Get inside, and get ready for take-off.”
She started running to the waiting aircraft, and they followed. Even before they reached it, Bob caught up with her. “You sure you can fly that thing? Really fly it, I mean. Get her off the ground and back down in once piece?”
She didn’t turn as she panted, “Of course I can fly it. I own it, what else would I do?”
Bob got there first and wrenched the starboard door open. He stood aside, and she stepped into the cabin and went forward to the left-hand seat. Without a word, Akram took the right-hand seat. Archer positioned himself on the floor between them, his tongue hanging out, panting with thirst and excitement. Crawford and his men were in back, watching through the windows for any sign of pursuit.
She stared at the controls and took a breath. She hadn’t flown before, not properly. A few years back on her eighteenth birthday, her father had taken her up in the Otter, and he’d let her operate the controls, even to the point of landing.
I think I can do it again. Maybe.
She tried to recall the complicated procedure and turned to Akram. “You’ll have to help me. I want you to call out the pre-flight checks, and I’ll confirm each step. Here’s the checklist.”
She gave him a clipboard, and he looked at it blankly, shaking his head.
“What is it?”
“I can’t do this.”
“Why not?”
“I never learned to read.”
>
Bob leaned forward and snatched it out of his hands. “Give it to me. I’ll read it if it’s in English.”
“It is. Start calling the list.”
“Parking brake.”
“Set.”
“Throttle.”
“Idle.”
“Battery switch.”
“Off.”
She waited for the next step, instead she got was a collection of curses, “Lady, there ain’t time for this shit. Get this fucking crate off the ground before they realize what we’re up to and shoot the shit out of us!”
She stared at him for a moment. “Are you sure? I’m supposed to do a…”
“Get the fucking plane in the air. Now!”
Her jaw dropped open, astonished at his violent language. She opened her mouth to deliver a sharp retort. Then understanding came to her, and she gave him a quick nod.
“Of course.”
She worked from memory, fuel on, ignition on, generator on, and she pressed the starter button. After a few spins of the propeller, the engine coughed and then roared into life. The Pratt & Whitney Wasp 9 radial ran ragged for a few seconds and then settled into a regular beat. She wanted to wait until the temperature gauge climbed into the green, but there was no time. Men with guns were only a few hundred meters away, and the smoke hiding them was already starting to disperse.
She pushed the throttle forward to the stop, released the brake, and the Otter surged along the runway. She watched the ground speed indicator, struggling to recall the speeds for V1 and V2, and then she saw the marks on the dials. They’d gone past V1. The Otter was designed to take-off from a very short runway, and she’d already used up most of the airstrip. A line of bullets punched through the air, and she saw three holes appear in the starboard wing. They were shooting at the aircraft.