by Dan Fox
Marcel just played the straight man assistant and kept out of the way. In truth he was too interested in Faisal Sherzai’s whereabouts to play much more of a role in Jean’s charade. They had probably been at the hotel for forty minutes now and he’d seen no sign of him. If he hadn’t located him in another twenty minutes or so they’d have to re-think the plan. If Steve and Jackson had been successful on their mission, for which no one would really doubt for a second, they were probably on their way back to the farmhouse already.
Faisal Sherzai walked through the foyer with the supreme and arrogant confidence of someone who believed themselves untouchable. He’d had it his own way for far too long and had lost his edge. He didn’t believe anyone in particular would be looking for him specifically and he had his own men to call upon if there was any trouble. Whilst he didn’t overtly think about it, his subconscious brain had decided he was invincible. He was therefore not really careful enough. He had well and truly dropped his guard.
Marcel had already found out the toilets of sorts were out of the rear of the hotel which backed onto a few square yards of waste ground. That led to a narrow road which turned and twisted and then joined up with the wider one that fronted the hotel. Seeing Faisal Sherzai head for the toilets, Marcel tipped Jean the wink and she immediately started to pack up her gear. She was helped to carry it out to the car by several of the inmates and the hotels’ entire focus was on her whilst she loaded up careful to put most of the equipment on the back seat. She was a clever and resourceful girl.
Marcel had waited a few more seconds to ensure that Faisal Sherzai was in full flow and went out to the toilets. Jean’s diversion was most effective. No-one else was using the toilets. Marcel had a photograph in one hand and a knockout spike concealed in the other. He closed in on Faisal Sherzai from the side and the Afghani noted him abstractly having already seen him in the hotel foyer. He held the photo out for Faisal Sherzai to see and as he bent to look at it more closely Marcel stuck the needle point in the back of his neck. The effect was instant. Faisal Sherzai’s eyes rolled up and his limbs went weak. Marcel supported him and led him out the toilets and across the waste ground. He heard the car a couple of seconds later as Jean backed into the narrow road. She pressed the boot opener and the lid sprung up. Marcel tossed Faisal Sherzai into the boot. He’d already checked for weapons but Faisal Sherzai wasn’t carrying. Marcel couldn’t understand that.
Jean drove past the front of the hotel waving at the assembly who were still on the pavement outside. How long would they have, maybe five to ten minutes before the balloon went up. They should be well on their way to the farmhouse by then. Faisal Sherzai would be out for an hour or two or maybe a little more. He’d have a bit of a sore head when he awoke but that would be the least of his troubles. Marcel started to think of a new plan for them as he now believed they were compromised and couldn’t return to their own hotel. The car was now a liability. It had to go. He didn’t think the airport was now a good bet either. He’d talk to Steve about it when they met up at the old farmhouse.
They made careful progress through the centre of Kabul and reached the farmhouse about an hour after leaving the hotel. Jean had followed the prescribed procedure and drove down the track with the lights off and keeping off the brakes. Marcel removed the courtesy light bulb as an extra precaution. They unloaded Faisal Sherzai and dumped him on the floor in the kitchen area. He was breathing okay but there was no sign of him coming round yet. Jean stuck some tape over his mouth in case he woke up noisily.
They raided the field rations and sat there waiting patiently for Steve to arrive. Marcel looked around the house outside to satisfy himself they were alone and returned inside to sit and wait. Jean was dozing. He couldn’t blame her. They were all dog tired.
They had been waiting for nearly two hours before they heard Steve’s car approaching. Steve nodded his apologies and asked Marcel to help him. They carried Karuna into the kitchen and dropped him on the floor by Sherzai. They were bound, taped and subdued. They best get prepared for them waking up. It was show time.
Steve told them about Jackson and introduced them both to Robert Adams the translator. He asked Robert to find somewhere out of the way whilst they sorted things out. That was fine. Steve and Marcel got some extra bits and pieces from the rear seat of their car. He then fashioned a couple of makeshift window blinds from black bin liners and taped them into place. He then used a number of old and broken pallets to cover the window areas to help dampen some of the noise and then covered them with old sacks and tarpaulin.
Marcel fired the generator and put water on to heat first of all. It would be tea first then torture. This would be fast, brutal and not for the squeamish. Jean rigged up an overhead light and ran a spur off the electric cable and hooking up the pair of crocodile clips. As they all knew and expected, Jean was very much up to the job in hand. Steve’s dilemma was letting her go too far, corpses after information, not the other way around was what was needed.
He took her on one side and spoke quietly into her ear, ‘Jean, be careful, we only have this one shot at these guys and we need to know what they know before we finish them off.’ Jean scowled. ‘You do the right job and you can finish them anyway you like’ said Steve. Jean smiled.
Sherzai was starting to come round and struggled to free himself. He only succeeded in making his head ache more. They ignored him. It was important to wait for Karuna, maybe another ten or fifteen minutes. They relaxed and drank their tea. Steve then went for a scout round outside. He couldn’t hear the generator from out there and couldn’t see any light escaping either. A pat on the back for that he thought. Back inside Jean was getting anxious.
Eventually Karuna started to stir. He’d had the same treatment as Sherzai after he’d come around from the pistol crack on his head and would have a really bad headache as well. The more the merrier. When he and Sherzai were more fully awake they had a nice dose of déjà vu as they recognised each other. It didn’t take either of them very long to realise what a pile of shit they were in.
Steve and Marcel yanked Karuna to his feet, led him over to the work surface along the back wall, laid him on it and taped his arms and legs to it after stripping him buck naked. He struggled violently but he was in a greatly weakened state and Steve and Marcel were much more of a match than he could ever cope with. Sherzai had seen this and reacted even more violently. Perhaps he knew what must be coming whereas Karuna would not have believed what was to happen even in his worst nightmare. The kitchen table that they strapped Sherzai to was old but made of heavy hard wood and long enough to hold his main body with his lower legs hanging over the edge. He was stripped as well. All Sherzai could do was stare into the rigged up light above him. Maybe he was praying. Who cared?
Chapter 24
The Afghanistan Mission - continued
Steve explained to Robert what was about to happen, but he had seen this and probably much worse before. He knew only too well that you had to get the information you were after as quickly and effectively as possible. Lives were constantly at stake. A nice comfortable prison cell with TV did not quite measure up to digits being severed when it came to information disclosure.
Jean went over to Karuna and ripped the tape from off his mouth. She then pricked the top of his eyelid above the eyeball with the point of her knife letting the blood trickle down into his eye. Karuna screamed and pissed himself. She then moved over to Sherzai, removed the tape and stuck the knife through the fleshy part of his left ear. He squealed. Ears hurt a lot. It also bled a lot as it was supposed to. Jean then picked up an old bucket, made sure Sherzai had seen it and placed it on the floor where it would catch the dripping blood. Having got their attention she asked Robert to get them to confirm their names and their ‘occupations.’ Robert went to Karuna first.
‘I want you to tell me your full name, where you live, where you work, what you do at work, who you report to and why you have been meeting with this man’ he said pointing at Sh
erzai. ‘If you tell us the truth, and we will know whether it is the truth or not, and you tell us everything we need to know, you will be taken back to Kabul, not harmed any further and released.’
He paused for a moment, ‘If you lie to us or don’t give us all the information we want, you will be tortured until your screams can be heard a thousand miles away. There will not be enough of you left to bury. Do you understand?’ Karuna nodded, absolutely petrified.
Sherzai shouted out for Karuna to say nothing and received a hefty smack in the mouth from Marcel for his trouble. ‘Right’ said Robert, ‘let’s start with your name and address.’ Karuna hesitated for a moment and Jean seized the opportunity to wave her knife over his other eye.
‘My name is Assim Karuna and I live at Apartment 2, the Rose Buildings in north Kabul about half a mile from the centre.’
‘Good’ said Robert, ‘now tell us who you work for and what you do.’ Sherzai was now apoplectic and Marcel stuck another piece of tape over his mouth.
‘I work for the government as a clerk.’
Robert shook his head and got a little closer to Karuna’s face and said ‘Now we know that what you have said isn’t true. We know many but not all the things we want to know. You have just lied to me. Now what do we do to people who lie to us?’ and he beckoned the ever anxious Jean to approach. She held her knife for him to see. Robert then said, ‘Do you want her to blind you because she will if I let her? Do you want to walk around Kabul forever with a white stick?’ It was important that Robert kept Karuna believing that if he told them the truth they would release him.
‘So, are you going to tell me the truth or be blind for the rest of your days?’
Karuna screamed ‘I will tell the truth, I will tell the truth.’
‘So tell me then’ said Robert. Karuna then spilled the beans about his role for Maahir Kermani and it was unfortunate that he actually believed in his own importance. He hesitated for a moment and looked at Jean’s knife and then continued to divulge information which was crucial to the US Military’s movements around Afghanistan for the next six months at least. Taliban forces were building up in the remoter areas, they were getting a shed load of heavy armaments from somewhere but he didn’t know where from. There was a significant influx of volunteers from over the Pakistan border. Their training had intensified. They had many more bomb makers and the materials with which to build them and they we being overrun with brainwashed young men and a few women who were dying to be suicide bombers.
Robert asked for names. Again Karuna hesitated and Jean quickly nicked the eyelid of the other eye. Karuna screamed again and from that point on they had to slow him down so that Robert could translate the details for the rest of them to get them onto the laptop for onward transmission.
It was perhaps fortunate that Karuna had capitulated so quickly for they all knew that their next task was going to be a little more difficult. Finally Robert asked Karuna who the other man was. Karuna hesitated for a moment, not enough for Jean to dive in, but enough for her to wave the knife.
‘His name is Faisal Sherzai, he is the Taliban commander for the Kabul region and second in command overall.’ That was something they didn’t know.
‘Where does he operate from, where are his headquarters?’
‘I’m not sure’ said Karuna and went on to say that he thought they must be in the region of Charikah up in the hills some thirty or so miles north.
‘Where does he stay when he’s in Kabul?
‘He uses a small hotel to the east of the city. Some of his key personnel also stay there.’ They were now getting useful information out of Karuna and confirming things they already knew which helped to make the rest of his story believable. Steve beckoned to Robert to stop for a while. They then huddled together outside to work out how to proceed next. Robert said it was imperative that Karuna was not killed yet. Whilst Sherzai would not believe for a second that they would let him live, the longer Karuna survived the more that instinct to survive would creep in. Steve asked them to carry on whilst he scouted around outside for a while.
Robert now turned his attentions on Sherzai. ‘Do you like pain, excruciating pain?’ Sherzai did not respond. Robert then found a skull pressure point and squeezed hard with his thumb. The scream that came through the taped mouth would have woken the dead. Robert repeated the question, again no response. He repeated the trick. After Sherzai had stopped screaming he asked him again. This time Sherzai shook his head. Bingo, thought Robert, we have started on our journey.
Eventually all men will crack under torture which is why it is so effective. The brain must say something to the body that means enough is enough, and eventually Sherzai cracked before he lost too many more parts of his body, or the effectiveness of his sexual equipment. Jean was good, very good, but probably quicker than she would have liked.
It took another two hours to get all the details they thought they could get from him before they started going round in circles. All the time this was going on they were looking after Karuna. Jean cleaned and treated his cut eyelids and Marcel gave him some tea. Assim Karuna must have believed in the tooth fairy as well. Steve had gone outside again to check the lie of the land. When he returned several minutes later he looked very concerned. They all looked at him intently.
‘Gag them. I think we have visitors coming at us from the north on the blind side of the property. There are maybe ten or twelve, all in combat gear. There’s at least one RPG. They are eight hundred yards away and coming very slowly, not crawling. We have to assume it’s Sherzai’s men come to get him. Somebody has told them about the cars coming down this track, or saw me at your hotel. We need to let them think they’re going to surprise us. Keep well out of sight. I’ll get behind them and when they’re in range I’ll take out the RPGs and as many of the rest as I can. Then it’ll be up to you. We need to survive but we have to despatch them all as quickly as possible or the noise will have everybody in the region on the alert.
The generator was switched off and the lights dimmed and went out. They unplugged the laptops and put them away. Marcel doped Karuna and Sherzai again to keep them quiet which was highly dangerous and could prove to be fatal but he had absolutely no concerns about their future welfare. If they survived they survived. If they didn’t he wouldn’t even blink an eye.
They loaded all the incriminating stuff into the rear of Steve’s car and waited fully armed and tooled up. Even Robert had a silenced MP5. They blacked up and took up defensive positions around the outside of the house spreading out a little. Once their eyes had become acclimatised they would be able to pick out movement in the faint moon light. They couldn’t afford for any reflections to bounce off the lenses of night vision goggles. There were times when you had to choose the more risky path because the apparently safer one could get you killed. Steve had taken the sniper rifle and gone off to fight the bad guys.
He belly crawled about two hundred yards to the east. There was the odd patch of scrub there which would give him a little cover. With some luck the bad guys would all be concentrating on the house. He continued to flank them and gradually came level with them. They were not looking at who might come from the side or rear. They were the ones who were poised to mount a surprise attack. Steve continued his slow movement north while they did the same to the south. Clouds had covered the moon for the last few minutes and allowed him to move a little quicker. Through his light enhancing binoculars he could see that none of them had any night vision ability.
Marcel’s ear piece buzzed and Steve said ’twelve of them spread a hundred yards wide coming due south. Two RPGs, no snipers, no night vision. They’re going for awe and surprise, let’s surprise them instead.’ After a second he added ‘If they get too close kill the prisoners.’
Steve slowly got into position and moved to within a hundred yards of their rear. He primed the rifle and adjusted the sights for that distance and checked that he’d got the full fourteen rounds available and the silencer was fir
mly screwed on. When they’d got to within a hundred and fifty yards of the farmstead, they stopped. Steve was pretty sure that their commander would be giving them the last minute instructions. Who should go where, what should happen first etc. Steve thought they would use a barrage of RPGs and then storm the place, after all life was cheap and plentiful in this damned region. An RPG landing as a direct hit would simply demolish the remaining building and fry anyone inside unfortunate to be alive at the time. Multiple RPGs would be absolute carnage. They would kill and mutilate anything within a ten yard radius, which was a lot more than the building’s dimensions.
The foot men would advance a little first, maybe to within a hundred yards. The RPGs would be coming overhead in an arc anyway. As soon as they had advanced another twenty-five yards, Steve took aim at the first RPG man. A head shot would be best, less noise with all that turban stuff wrapped around their heads. More difficult. Yes. Impossible. No.
He aimed for just above the nape of the neck and squeezed the trigger. The guy went down without a sound, even the RPG made no discernible noise as it dropped onto the soft sandy soil. Two seconds later the second RPG man went down in a similar fashion. Only then did the Commander look round. He took a bullet through the mouth and out through the back of his head and slumped stone dead onto the sand. The foot soldiers had seen and heard nothing. They were just waiting for the first RPG to fly over. They were ready and waiting. No RPG came and one of them looked around and couldn’t see any of his colleagues. He assumed they’d dropped to ground because they’d seen or heard something. He turned back and waited for the first RPG.