True Colours ss-10

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Not together, though,’ said McIntyre. ‘I’ve had bad experiences with Jimbo in the shower.’

  Harper laughed. ‘Where’s the soap?’

  All four men joined in, laughing louder than the poor joke merited. It was a way of releasing tension, Shepherd knew. On the surface they all seemed calm and collected with no reservations about what they were planning. But taking the life of a human being was never done lightly and Shepherd knew that they would all be worried about it at some level or another. He waited for the laughter to die down. ‘Footwear is the most likely to carry traces, so no short cuts there. Don’t just throw them in the rubbish. Burning is best, or soak them in bleach and toss them, but again not in your household rubbish, somewhere miles from home. Same with any clothing you decide to throw away.’ He looked at Harper. ‘The van will need cleaning, too, inside and out. Best to use bleach on the inside, then take it to a car wash. Make sure the wheels are well clean because if they do get the van they’ll be taking a close look at the tyres. They can pretty much match mud in the way that they can fingerprints and DNA. So twice through a car wash, then up to you. If you want to sell it on, do it outside London. If you want to torch it, same applies.’

  Harper nodded. ‘Sounds as if you’ve got all the bases covered.’

  ‘It has to be this way, Lex. The smallest thing can follow you around the world. A speck of DNA is all they need. And the phone we use to track the hole, I’ll dispose of that and the SIM card. And remember that your own mobile phones always give your position away. I know Lex is covered, but the rest of you, you need to get pay-as-you-go throwaway mobiles. We use them for this operation and then we ditch them. And whenever you’re out, you leave your identifiable mobiles at home and switched on. Got it?’

  The three men nodded back at him. Harper slapped his hand down on the table, hard enough to rattle the mugs and whiskey bottle. ‘The bastard has had it coming,’ he said. ‘He’s finally going to get what he deserves.’

  AFGHANISTAN, 2002

  Ahmad Khan and the three paratroopers drove most of the way to the site of the rendezvous in silence, punctuated only by the terse directions that Ahmad gave them and the Paras’ radio transmissions back to base; if they failed to send the correct signal every thirty minutes, the alarm would at once be raised.

  The road climbed steadily towards the mountains, its surface increasingly rough and pitted with crudely repaired craters where shells, mortar rounds or IEDs had blasted holes. Their progress was slow, but after driving for an hour and a half they reached a dead-end valley flanked by steep-sided hills. There the road dwindled to not much more than a narrow dirt track, running alongside the bed of a river that a few weeks before had been a roaring torrent of meltwater but was now just a dried-up jumble of rocks.

  Ahmad told the driver to slow down still more as they approached the site of the RV with his men, and his keen gaze raked the road ahead and the hills on either side, alert for any danger, anything out of place. As they crested a low rise, he saw ahead of them a group of men wearing Afghan robes, standing at the side of the road in the shade of a clump of pine trees. He frowned. He was an hour early for the rendezvous, but his men were already there.

  His frown deepened as they got closer to the group and he realised that most of the dozen or so men were strangers. The only face he recognised was Ghulam, his second-in-command.

  One of the men held up a hand in greeting, but Ahmad felt the rising tension from the three Paras and heard the metallic click as the man alongside him slid the safety catch off his M16. ‘It’s all right, drive forward slowly,’ Khan said, but just as the words left his mouth he caught a brief flash of reflected light from the hillside out of the corner of his eye. His heart began to race. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. He reached inside his shirt, undid his money belt, and shoved it down the back of the seat behind him until it was out of sight. Ignoring the questioning look from the soldier alongside him, he told the driver to stop.

  They were still some fifty yards short of the group of men, who emerged from the shade and began to walk towards them as they saw the Land Rover pull to a halt. ‘Wait here,’ Khan said. ‘Let me do the talking.’

  He got out and walked up the road, calling out the traditional greeting, ‘Salaam alaikum’.

  Ghulam returned the greeting. He was smiling but his eyes were hard and Khan began to fear the worst. He stared at Ghulam’s face, trying to get a read on the man. Ghulam was tense; that much was obvious.

  He slowed as he saw that there were two men among the group who weren’t his followers. One he recognised as the commander of another Taliban company. His name, Wais, meant ‘Night Wanderer’. The name suited him well, for he was a dark and elusive character, at home in the shadows and on the margins, seeing everything, saying nothing. The other man was a stranger, but the AK-74 he carried, including a laser sight, and the way the others deferred to him as he stepped forward, suggested he was a powerful figure. ‘Alaikum salaam, Ahmad Khan,’ he said. ‘I am Piruz.’

  ‘And what wind has blown you here?’ Khan said.

  ‘We heard that you were bringing friends with you,’ said Piruz, waving an arm towards the assembled men. ‘We wanted to meet them. Will you not introduce us?’ He began walking slowly along the track towards the Land Rover.

  Khan’s brain was racing. He glanced towards the Paras, who were showing increasing signs of agitation. ‘The faranji are no friend to any true Afghan,’ he said. ‘But just the same, they may have their uses sometimes.’

  Piruz showed his teeth in a smile. ‘Then let us see what use we can make of them.’ As he neared the Land Rover, he raised his hand in greeting. ‘Welcome, English,’ he said. ‘Please lower your weapons, you are our guests and we mean you no harm.’

  The gazes of the three soldiers flickered between Piruz and Khan, clearly uncertain what they should do. Still smiling and affable, Piruz leaned into the back of the Land Rover, resting his arm on the back of the seat that Khan had vacated. ‘You use the M16, I see,’ he said. ‘Do you find that …’ His voice was drowned by the roar of his weapon. Blood and brains sprayed into the air as the soldier in the back slumped over the side of the vehicle. Without a pause, Piruz swung his AK-74 through a short arc and shot the front-seat passenger through the back of his head. The windscreen shattered as the rounds smashed through it and Khan saw the blood-red smear from what was left of the soldier’s head as it slid down the windscreen.

  The engine roared as the driver stamped on the accelerator in a frantic attempt to escape, but Piruz’s rifle barrel was already swinging towards him and the next shot hit the driver, punching a hole through the back of his seat. The Land Rover swerved and crashed nose down into the ditch at the side of the road, and though the driver, badly wounded, managed to stumble out of his seat, another burst from Piruz killed him stone dead before he had taken three steps.

  As Khan brought up his own weapon, he felt a gun barrel in the small of his back and heard a voice hiss, ‘One more move and you will be as dead as those faranji scum.’ His weapon was taken from him and the next moment blows, kicks and rifle butts began to rain on him. As he sank to the ground, he was dimly aware of Piruz standing over him and he heard him say, ‘Hold his arms.’

  There was a momentary pause and then an agonising sensation in his cheek and he smelt singeing flesh as Piruz forced the end of his gun barrel — burning hot from the rounds he had just fired — into Khan’s face. ‘That’s enough for now,’ Piruz said. ‘There will be time later to deal with the traitor as he deserves, but we need to get away from here before the faranji troops come looking for vengeance, and we need him to be able to walk.’

  Khan was pulled to his feet and his wrists were bound tightly behind him with electric cable which bit into his flesh. Most of the Taliban group moved away from the road, heading up into the mountains and dragging Khan with them, but he saw that a few men were remaining behind, some digging an IED into the ground alongside the Land Rover,
others running out a command wire towards a copse of wind-stunted acacia trees a hundred yards away, while still others tracked them, brushing dirt, leaves and gravel over the wire to hide it from view. Khan saw no more as two Taliban fighters took his arms, forcing him along the path that climbed the ridge towards the next valley.

  He stumbled on, filled with despair. Even if British or American troops turned up and even if he wasn’t killed in the ensuing firefight, the Westerners would assume that he had deliberately led the soldiers into the ambush that killed them all.

  He was dragged through the mountains, half conscious and disoriented. They climbed one ridge and descended into a rocky valley only long enough to begin scaling the next ridge beyond. Night had now fallen but still the forced march continued and at every pause along the way Khan was subjected to a fresh beating.

  They eventually stopped, an hour before dawn, and laid up to rest for the day in a pine wood near the head of another desolate valley. Through the tree canopy high above him, Khan caught occasional glimpses of the vapour trails of military jets etched across the skies, and once there was the distant clatter of a helicopter’s rotors, but the noise grew no louder. He looked around for Ghulam but his friend was keeping his distance. If he was his friend, of course. Khan had no way of knowing for sure.

  While most of the Taliban slept, Piruz made sure that Khan had no rest at all. Two Taliban fighters forced him to stand upright and stood guard over him, and whenever he tried to lean back against the rock face or his head sank on to his chest, they kicked him or whipped him with the electric cables they wore as belts around their waists.

  The torture began in earnest after Piruz woke up, apparently refreshed after just a few hours’ sleep. Sharp splinters of wood were jammed under his fingernails, caustic liquid was forced into his eyes and he was then dragged to the mountain stream running down the hillside, thrown down and held under the water while his feet beat a tattoo on the rocky ground, the blood roared in his ears and his lungs filled with water. Just when he was about to pass out, he was dragged from the water and revived, coughing, spluttering and gasping for breath, only to be interrogated and then forced back under the water again. They wanted to know who he was working for and what information he had given to the British.

  He came to rely on the torture to keep himself focused, using the pain to blot out Piruz’s questions and his own urge to tell him something, anything that would end his ordeal. The more they hurt him, the more determined he became. He would die without telling them anything.

  When the near-drowning failed to loosen his tongue, Piruz had him flogged with the cable-whips until strips of his flesh hung from his back. Eventually he was thrown in the dirt at Piruz’s feet. ‘You are a traitor,’ Piruz said, for what seemed like the thousandth time. ‘Confess and by the Prophet’s holy name I will be merciful.’

  Khan knew that he could not win. If he talked he would be killed and if he did not he would also be dead. The truth would not save him, and nor would silence. His only hope lay in a lie.

  ‘I am no traitor,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘You saw for yourself that I led the faranji into a trap where I knew my men were waiting. If I was going to betray my men there would have been many, many faranji soldiers with me, not just three, and those little more than boys. But I know who the real traitor is. Free me and I will tell you.’

  Piruz silenced him with a blow to the mouth that loosened several more teeth and his men then brought their gun butts down on Khan’s feet and hands. Piruz had him tied to a tree, the rough bark agonising against the open wounds on his back. Piruz then produced a knife with a wicked, curved blade and held it in front of Khan’s eyes. ‘I shall castrate you, traitor,’ he said. ‘You will talk now or you will be no man at all, you will be less than a woman.’ He cut through Khan’s belt and a moment later Khan felt the bite of the knife-edge and hot blood trickled down his thigh. He knew real terror then and for the first time his resolve weakened. That cut might not have been a deep one, but Piruz was ready to cut him again and again, a cruel smile playing around his lips.

  Wais the Night Wanderer had remained on the sidelines while Khan was tortured, but as Piruz raised his knife hand again Wais stepped forward. ‘Don’t kill him, Piruz,’ he said. ‘Not yet. He will talk, I am sure of it. And when we do kill him, Fahad will want to make an example of him. It will be a lesson that none can ignore. Whether they are warriors or cowards who hide behind the skirts of women, those who turn aside from the path of jihad, no matter what feats of arms they may have done in the past, will feel the holy wrath of Allah — may his name be praised — upon them.’

  Khan saw Piruz hesitate and he waited, his heart pounding. Fahad — the Lynx — was the Taliban commander for the whole region, and one of Mullah Omar’s closest advisers. Piruz would surely not dare risk his wrath. There was a long silence, but then Piruz lowered his hand and strode away, his jaw clenched tight.

  As he also turned away, Wais caught Khan’s eye for a fraction of a second. His expression was unreadable and yet Khan felt a sudden surge of hope. Perhaps there was still a way that he could survive.

  The Taliban group moved on that night, crossing a final mountain ridge, even steeper than those before, and fording a river that was deep enough to reach to their chests and so cold that Khan let out a gasp as he was herded into it by his captors. The rushing water reignited the pain from his shredded back, but he bit his lip and made no other sound. To complain would only reawaken Piruz’s cruel desire to inflict more pain, he was sure. As he climbed out of the water he saw Ghulam farther down the riverbank. They made brief eye contact and Ghulam gave him a slight nod, a small gesture but one that filled Khan with hope.

  In the middle of the night, Khan woke from an uneasy sleep to find Ghulam standing over him with a bottle of water. Khan’s wrists were bound behind his back so Ghulam had to hold the bottle to his mouth. ‘Piruz found out that you had gone to see the Brits. I managed to warn your men but it was too late for me to run. I don’t know what I can do to help you now.’ After the few snatched words, Ghulam hurried away.

  The next morning, the Taliban arrived in a village that they still controlled despite a year-long concentrated effort by the American and British forces to dislodge them. The village dogs set up a chorus of barking as the Taliban fighters approached. Khan was paraded through the streets at the head of the column, covered in dried blood and dust, his clothing torn and his wrists bound behind him.

  The frightened villagers peered from behind their doors and shuttered windows as the column of men moved past, too frightened to show themselves in the open.

  They came to a halt in the dusty square in the centre of the village, where two Toyota Landcruisers were already drawn up. Standing in front of them, flanked by his personal bodyguard, was Fahad the Lynx, with his ten-year-old son at his side.

  Piruz paid his respects to Fahad and he presented the AK-74 he had taken from Khan to Fahad’s son. The boy darted a nervous glance at his father and then, at his nod, gave a grave bow of thanks. He began turning the weapon over in his hands, squinting along the sight towards Khan and pretending to pull the trigger. His father gave an indulgent smile and Piruz roared with laughter.

  The Taliban fighters then went from house to house, rousting out the villagers and forcing them to assemble in the square. As they watched silently, Khan was methodically kicked and beaten before he was dragged in front of Fahad.

  Piruz puffed out his chest, revelling in the moment, his voice carrying to the farthest reaches of the village. ‘I accuse Ahmad Khan,’ he said, stabbing the air with his finger as if plunging a dagger into Khan’s heart, ‘of the grossest treachery, the betrayal of the faith, his country, and the nation’s protectors, the Taliban, charged by Mullah Omar himself with the sacred duty of guarding the Islamic Emirate from its enemies. I demand death for the traitor, who is not even man enough to confess his crimes.’ He spat in the dirt at Khan’s feet.

  A few of the villagers a
pplauded or shouted ‘Allahu akbar’ but most remained silent.

  ‘Ahmad Khan, you have one final chance to confess your crimes, before Allah, whose name be praised, sits in judgement upon you,’ Fahad shouted. He signalled to the guards flanking Khan to untie his hands.

  As he rubbed some life back into his wrists and hands, Khan let his gaze travel over the faces of his persecutors. They all stared back at him with undisguised hostility, except for Ghulam, who was looking at the ground. At last he began to speak and, despite his exhaustion and the pain from his wounds, his voice was steady and clear. ‘Who among you has done more for our country than I? I have fought the Russians, the Americans, the British, the Afghan army and the Pakistani army. I have risked my life scores of times and I bear the scars on my body to prove it. Yet this is how you treat me in return?’ He pointed an accusing finger at Fahad’s son. ‘You take the weapons from heroes and you give them to children. And now you even accuse me of treachery? Give me a weapon and I’ll show you the real traitor.’

  ‘Liar!’ Piruz shouted, and raised his weapon ready to shoot him, but Fahad placed a restraining hand on his arm. He stared at Khan in silence, his eyes hooded, then reached into his robe and pulled out an old Makarov pistol that had been taken from a dead Soviet soldier many years before. It was so old that parts of the gunmetal had been worn to a shiny, silver patina. Fahad emptied the magazine into his hand, then put a single round back in the chamber, pocketing the rest of the ammunition.

  He threw the pistol to Khan, while several Taliban covered him with their weapons. ‘Because you fought well for us in the past,’ Fahad said, ‘I am giving you this last chance to preserve your honour. Kill yourself now like a man, or we will kill you like the dog you are.’

  Khan stared down at the weapon in his hand, then suddenly whipped it up to the firing position and shot Wais with a bullet between the eyes. As Wais slumped to the ground, already dead, Khan screamed, ‘He’s the traitor. Search him, if you don’t believe me.’