The War Within

by Rosanne Hawke

  Sohail stalked around the curved stones, washed smooth by years of lapping water, to scout for another passageway. Jasper sank down where he stood, and leaned his head back, looking weary and pale in the dim light.

  Liana and I stayed with Sonya; she seemed to want us to. I still couldn’t make her out. Maybe her behaviour when we first met could be explained by her worry at being caught giving information to Mr Kumar, but her quietness in the village was strange. It could have been shyness due to the presence of Sohail’s family. Looking back on it, I wondered why I never caught on there was some understanding between her and Sohail, even though they never spoke. It was the times when she said nothing or didn’t look at him that gave it away.

  She started the conversation, another point of interest. ‘I am glad Jasper has found his father. I thought as much but I did not want to give false hope.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘In the beginning, when you told me about him, I thought his father might still be alive. Many European doctors have volunteered their services to help the wounded of any party or side. They are greatly respected and there are always wounded.’

  ‘Sonya, I’m sorry about your mother being killed here. It must be difficult.’

  She sighed, but it wasn’t her usual irritable tone, rather that of facing the inevitable. I was surprised when she began to tell her story. ‘My mother was like a princess, I was told. The family had hoped she would marry an important Afghan man. When my father wanted to marry her, Uncle Kumar’s family was displeased, although they allowed it. Because of the Soviet invasion, their marriage was a great embarrassment. For you see, the war was not one of those where there were love matches or friendships struck between individuals of the two nations. Afghanistan is not like that. This country has a very harsh code of life. Death was preferable to disgrace.’

  ‘Why—’

  ‘My mother was seen as a traitor to her faith.’

  ‘So you are still related to the people here in the fort?’ I found it hard to believe.

  ‘Not now. I doubt whether there are many left. Most became refugees. The fort is run by these terrorists now—always causing trouble, bombing girls’ schools and taking boys from villages to fight with them. They even kill other Muslims like Sohail’s father if they won’t join them.’

  I held my breath, not wanting to break the spell that she seemed to be under. In all the weeks we’d been together, I’d never heard her speak so much about herself.

  ‘I only came here once. I had never been to the village until this time. I was brought up in Kabul. Even Moscow I have only seen a few times. These last two years my father has been working in the Russian Embassy in Islamabad. That was when I met Uncle Kumar in the carpet shop. He knew me; he’d kept some contact with my father. Father was always so busy that I began to spend more time with Uncle jan. I started telling him things, simple things at first.’

  I didn’t want to ask what those things were; I sensed she’d stop talking altogether, so I asked another question instead. ‘And you hadn’t met Sohail before?’

  ‘Only when we were children. Later, he was usually at school. At times he went to Pakistan to help with the carpet business in his holidays. That is why he was there with Uncle jan this winter.’

  ‘I wonder how we got ambushed at the waterfall.’

  ‘It could have been Nazira.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘She was jealous of me. She may have thought she would be considered to marry Sohail, and then I arrived.’

  ‘How would she have known about us being out?’

  Sonya regarded me. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Jasper sent a note but he wrote it in English so no one would understand what it said.’

  ‘Nazira was a good student in school. Her written English was much better than the spoken.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It is what the war lord said to Sohail when we were being interrogated. He said someone from Sohail’s household had betrayed him.’

  ‘But if it was Nazira, she would have meant to betray you, not Sohail.’

  Sonya inclined her head. I thought of the anguish she would have felt when she realised that Sohail was with us.

  Then Liana said, ‘I hope she confesses.’

  ‘I, too, hope this,’ Sonya said, ‘Otherwise my uncle will think I am with my father. It was the plan to meet him after you had gone with your contact.’

  Then I asked the question that was forming in my mind. I shouldn’t have, for it broke the spell, but I couldn’t help myself. ‘Those carpets, the ones made in Pakistan, isn’t there something strange about them? The patterns on the borders are never quite right.’

  Sonya shrugged. ‘It is hard to find good artists now.’

  ‘There must be more to it than that,’ I probed.

  ‘I really could not say,’ she said, and the evasion in her tone made her sound distant again, like when we first met. I realised then there were still more secrets, and maybe she would never tell them all.

  We were startled as Sohail suddenly shouted, ‘There are two passageways. Come and look.’

  Both were as dank and evil-looking as the one we’d come from.

  ‘How will we choose?’ Sonya asked.

  ‘Precisely.’ Jasper didn’t sound precise, only cautious. ‘We don’t want to be led back to another room.’

  ‘It shouldn’t matter.’ I tried to sound confident. ‘I think all the ones at Rohtas led to the surface.’

  ‘The one we came out of didn’t come from the outside.’ Jasper was watching me, waiting for what I’d say next when Sonya suddenly gasped.

  ‘What is that noise?’ Her eyes widened with fear. We stood and listened. The sounds were unmistakable: heavy and fast footfalls in the passage behind us, angry and excited shouts.

  ‘Razey! There is not the time to lose. We must go!’ Sohail urged, mixing Pakhtu with his English.

  Panic made Sonya’s voice sound like a wail. ‘Which way?’

  ‘Throw a coin,’ Jasper said.

  Dr Pembley looked unconvinced but Liana pointed down the closest tunnel. ‘Let’s go that way.’

  With the sound of the chase growing louder behind us, we quickly agreed. It was satisfying at first to find the passageway steadily rising, but it made me wish I was fitter. Soon we turned a corner and unfolding before us were hundreds of steps reaching up to the ground. When I first saw them, I wondered how Jasper would make it. They looked so steep. He leaned against the wall for a quick breather, holding his arm.

  ‘C’mon, Jas. This is the last bit.’ I paused when I saw the red oozing through his fingers but I knew it wasn’t the time to make a fuss. ‘You can do it, Jas,’ was all I said as I started up the steps. I heard him take a deep breath to follow me, then I saw Sohail turn around to check on him. Jasper began counting the steps to keep himself going, and by the time he got to 167, it sounded as though he’d gained his second wind because he managed to keep in time with me.

  ‘I used to do this in the dentist’s chair when I was a kid,’ he puffed out between steps. ‘Count all the squares on the ceiling—or the fly spots—there were always so many fly spots, I never noticed the flies buzzing, only the drill …’

  That was when I screamed.

  28

  Jaime

  I’d been willing Jasper to keep climbing and listening to his counting, so I didn’t hear the step behind me. Suddenly, an arm grabbed me around my neck and I was dragged backwards. To the side I could see the angular barrel of an assault rifle held in the man’s other hand. Jasper swung around the instant I screamed, took one look at me, and lunged at the man’s middle. I don’t know how he did that with his damaged shoulder, but it worked. The guard, none other than Vacant Eyes, dropped the gun in pained surprise and I wrenched myself free.

  Jasper stooped to pick up the gun bu
t Vacant Eyes pushed on his wounded shoulder to reach it first. Jasper gasped with the pain and we watched the gun clatter down the steps with a despairing finality. Jasper shouted at me to run. I knew why. If the guard got hold of me again, he wouldn’t be tricked into letting me go a second time. With me caught, Jasper would be defenceless. I retreated further out of jumping reach.

  Vacant Eyes leapt down a few steps and was reaching for the gun but Jasper followed and stunned him with a punch that made blood ooze out of the guard’s nose. I knew I was supposed to be out of there, but I had to see what happened. I stood like a sparrow on a perch, almost mesmerised but ready for flight. The man threw himself at Jasper and they teetered on the step, then fell, rolling over each other with groans and grunts. Half of me wished I could help, the other half poised between gruesome awe and fear.

  Jasper was bigger than Vacant Eyes, and if he had been well, he could have beaten him to a pulp, but Jasper’s strength was waning. Vacant Eyes was astride him then, forcing Jasper’s head down over the step and I had the fleeting impression that the guard could have broken his neck right then, but maybe the belief that Jasper was a doctor made him slower to act. That slight hesitation gave Jasper time to grope for the gun, and as Vacant Eyes tried to reach for his belt, I shouted for Sohail.

  I saw the knife flash at the same time as Jasper finally pulled up the Kalashnikov with his good arm. But it didn’t happen as it does in the movies; none of it did. The gun didn’t even frighten Vacant Eyes. Instead, he plunged the knife down and, at the same time, took a lunge for the gun. Jasper twisted, the knife missed, but the Pakhtun’s onslaught must have jarred Jasper’s finger on the trigger for there was a deafening explosion and Vacant Eyes was flung backwards.

  Dirt dribbled down the walls as if there’d been an earthquake. The fight must have only taken seconds as Dr Pembley and Sohail were suddenly there, picking Jasper up, while I could hear gunfire reverberating in my head.

  Dazed, Jasper looked behind him. ‘I didn’t mean to kill him—only frighten him, to get him off me.’ He was shaking.

  Sohail took a swift look at Vacant Eyes sprawled on the ground. ‘Do not worry, my friend. He is not dead. Put this behind you now—there are more where he came from. Come, we must hurry.’ Then he picked up the gun.

  Jasper and I stumbled after him. The steps were deep, the passage widening as it neared the surface. Ten men could have walked up it, side by side. That thought made me step faster, yet there was a part of me that was too weary to move. There was no doubt in my mind that Jasper had saved my life; he’d been there for me but I couldn’t feel the thanks or wonder that heroines in movies show. I’d had enough of guns and the fanatical philosophy of some Afghans in the face of danger. Sohail never seemed afraid, as if it were a game—you win or lose, but hey, wasn’t it fun playing? I just felt like going home.

  Jasper’s chest heaved and his arm bled freely no matter how hard he tried to staunch the blood with his good hand. We reached the others lying on the second step from the outside. They were staring out and I couldn’t understand why they didn’t flee. Surely they knew the danger. Didn’t they hear the gunfire behind them?

  ‘Why are you still here?’ Jasper said between gasping breaths. ‘There’ll be more guys in the tunnels. We need to get out of here.’ But he stopped when he saw the stunned look on his father’s face.

  Dr Pembley looked as though he’d landed on the moon and found it was overrun with Martians. I rushed forward to see.

  The air was filled with the clamour of automatic rifle fire and the battle cry of the mujahideen. Smoke and dust drifted in, past the few shrubs that were half concealing our hiding place. I couldn’t keep the panic out of my voice as my brain finally decoded what my eyes were registering.

  ‘We’re still inside the fort.’

  Jasper collapsed beside me, disbelief and pain making lines on his face that he was too young to have. We were so close—only thirty metres from the outside wall. The huge ancient gate that we’d come through at night was battered, a log lying beside the splintered carved frames. That explained the pounding noise we’d heard earlier. Had the fort been attacked?

  ‘We’re near the front gate then?’ No one answered me and I glanced behind us. I had visions of Vacant Eyes, dead or not, looming up behind us.

  ‘Could we make a run for it?’ I asked.

  Everyone watched the Pakhtuns outside, running into the fight, long shirts flying and the tails of their turbans swinging in the action. Between the automatic fire, I heard the chanting, ‘Allahu Akbar, God is great’, and wondered which side He’d favour. Every man there seemed to be shouting to Him. Even the screams I heard were not from fear, just surprise at being hit.

  ‘This is a full-scale battle!’ Jasper sounded weary, but Sohail’s tone was excited when he answered. ‘Ji.’ I almost expected him to say, ‘Isn’t it great?’

  ‘My father is here, and I recognise mujahideen from the neighbouring valley. Do not fear, my father will win. He was once a great commander.’

  ‘What about us?’ Sonya took a look behind us.

  Jasper was almost on his haunches, straining to see. ‘We can’t get caught again.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘Wouldn’t that change the scores? If we were still hostages?’

  Sohail became brisk then. Maybe he heard a noise from behind us because he began edging us out further. ‘The fighting has moved down that way. If we can reach the archway, where the food stall is, across there …’

  We all nodded, ready to run. Sohail seemed to be measuring the distance to the archway and then to the wall with narrowed eyes. Then he swiftly scrutinised the fighting beyond us. ‘Za, we must go. Now is our chance while the fighting has moved away from us.’

  Then suddenly a shout from below us put wings to my legs. A stream of bullets whizzed past our heads as we ran towards the archway. Liana was right beside me, holding my hand as we ran when all of a sudden she fell. My hand dragged and I dropped to my knees beside her. ‘Li? Get up, we have to run.’ I screamed her name. ‘Li!’

  I heard Sohail empty the Kalashnikov into the darkness of the passageway, before he bolted after us. Liana still wasn’t responding and instantly Jasper was there just as Sohail reached us. Between them they carried Liana to the archway and I ran with them.

  I could only think of Liana, and if she was all right. In my mind I could see her the day I first went to boarding school. She’d been there, helping me find my under-pillow present after Mum and Dad had gone; she had held me that first night when I cried for Mum, though she was only three years older.

  When we reached the safety of the archway, Dr Pembley examined her. She was pale—a trickle of blood dripped onto the ground behind her ear and the doctor was grave.

  ‘She’s alive,’ was all he said, but she didn’t look so alive and nobody else said a word. All my questions were drowned out by the stillness of her lying between us; even the battle didn’t seem so loud.

  Then Sohail shattered the calm by shouting at us to get down. ‘Quickly!’ And as we flattened ourselves to the ground, we saw two militants emerge from the entrance to our passageway. Not Vacant Eyes either. I glanced at the wall behind us—how on earth would we reach it without being seen?

  29

  Jaime

  ‘Do you think we should make a run for the wall?’ I said. ‘Imagine if the fighting came this way again. We’d be right in the middle of it.’

  Then I grabbed Sonya’s arm. ‘Isn’t that your embassy car—behind the jeep?’

  She followed my gaze and gaped in surprise. ‘Yes, it is the official car. My father—’ She rose to her knees, but Sohail pulled her down again gently, as though embarrassed to touch her.

  ‘It is not safe,’ he explained, averting his head from her as if in apology.

  ‘But that’s where we should head for,’ Jasper urged.

  ‘I know it,�
� returned the young Pakhtun, his voice a hiss. ‘But at the right time—not now!’

  Suddenly, there was even more commotion than before on the battleground. An old tank was rolling in through the gateway and turning towards the mass of men.

  ‘That is our tank!’ Sohail was jubilant as a shattering explosion tore through the air, sounds of crashing stone and screams following in its wake.

  ‘Your tank?’ If I hadn’t been so worried about Liana, I would have been impressed.

  ‘My father and his men captured it years ago.’ There wasn’t anything else to say. Why some government hadn’t claimed it back, I didn’t know, nor did I care. I just wanted to be out of there—to get Liana and Jasper to a hospital.

  Jasper scanned the distance through the gate, no doubt gauging how far we’d have to run before we’d be spotted, when suddenly he froze. Sohail’s shout, ‘Now we go!’ stirred all but Jasper to action.

  ‘No!’ Jasper was almost frantic. ‘It’s a trap! Get down!’ We all obeyed, nerves jangling, thinking he’d seen something we hadn’t. ‘See that guy. There he is, standing by the car—I saw him one night. I’m sure he’s the same one, Sonya. You met him. I saw you.’

  With a sinking feeling, I watched Jasper’s face. He looked as if he were about to accuse Sonya, just as he had done in the village, and for a moment, I couldn’t work out why he was worrying about incidentals when Liana was lying so still on the ground. Then I realised he was in his ‘I’ve got to save everyone’ mode again. He’d been close to Liana too, and seeing her shot would have affected him more than he showed.

  Sonya took one look at the car and smiled back at Jasper.

  ‘It is my father, Jasper. He is here for us. Yes, I met him one night, but he came to help us escape. I was to join him, since you had your route worked out. I even had the horse hidden, ready to go when we were at the waterfall, but then we were ambushed.’