‘He’s one heck of a clever animal, Fulton,’ said Hazard, smiling down at Caesar. ‘But I’m afraid we got business to attend to.’ He looked around at Charlie, who was standing close by. ‘Grover, me and my people, we’re going out with this morning’s ANA foot patrol. I want to get a feel for this place. I need you and your Diggers to go out with the afternoon patrol. You got that?’
‘Roger to that,’ said Charlie, smiling to himself. The morning patrol would go out during the coolest part of the day, while the Australians were being sent out on the afternoon patrol when temperatures soared into the high thirties. As strike force commander, Hazard could pick and choose what he did and when, and he was choosing the more comfortable patrol time for himself.
‘If the bad guys are watching this FOB,’ Hazard went on, ‘they’re used to seeing foreign troops go out on patrol with the ANA, so we won’t look out of place.’
Charlie nodded. ‘Makes sense.’
‘And take your EDD along,’ said Hazard. ‘They don’t have much of a problem with IEDs around here but you never know. We’ll take Alabama with us.’
Charlie looked to Ben and Caesar. ‘Looks like you and Caesar will join Lucky, Baz and me on the afternoon patrol.’
‘Copy that,’ Ben acknowledged. ‘We’re both ready and raring to go.’
But there was something he had to do first. Ben walked toward Ibrahim and Ahmad. The brothers were surrounded by American Rangers and men of Strike Force Blue Dragon, who were giving them praise and wads of dollar notes for their impromptu performance. The brothers enjoyed the praise, but they needed the cash more. Ben, reaching into a tunic pocket, took out some Afghan money, the equivalent of fifty dollars. Handing it to Ibrahim, he said, ‘Thanks, mate. From both Caesar and me.’
Apart from the fifteen members of Strike Force Blue Dragon, there were a hundred members of the Afghan National Army at FOB Nero, plus twenty men from a US Rangers battalion. Each day, some of those Rangers went out with ANA men on the morning and afternoon patrols. This particular morning, Duke Hazard and his three American comrades from the strike force took the place of the Rangers on the patrol. Toward noon, as the day was heating up, the patrol returned to base. Their sweep along the district’s few roads and through lonely, silent hills had been uneventful. They hadn’t seen a single soul.
Later in the day, the Australians and Ali Moon joined forty Afghan soldiers for the afternoon patrol. The base’s deputy commander, an ANA lieutenant named Karzan, was leading the patrol. A handsome man with a neat moustache, Karzan was from the Hazara community. This was his home province, so he knew his way around. When the forty-five men going on the patrol had assembled, one of the base’s two iron gates opened a metre or so, and everyone stood aside to allow Ben and Caesar to go first. It was Caesar’s job to check for IEDs and mines buried beside the road and beneath the surface of the road itself.
‘Seek on, Caesar,’ Ben instructed, and with Caesar on a long metal leash, handler and EDD walked on.
Keeping his nose close to the ground, Caesar wagged his tail contentedly as they made their way down the road. To him, EDD work was like a big game – a game of ‘find the parcel’ that he could play all day if need be. Although Alabama and Corporal Lazar had checked this route during the morning patrol, it didn’t necessarily mean it was safe now. Insurgents could have snuck in to hide IEDs after Alabama and his handler had moved on.
Lieutenant Karzan came next in line, followed by an Afghan radioman carrying a heavy military radio on his back, with Charlie, Lucky, Baz and Ali close behind. ANA soldiers brought up the rear in a long, strung-out line as the patrol moved down the single dirt road that led to FOB Nero. All the soldiers were well armed, although mostly with light weapons. Ben carried a standard Australian Steyr 9 mm automatic rifle, a compact weapon that allowed him plenty of freedom of movement when working with Caesar. Charlie’s weapon of choice was an M4 carbine fitted with a grenade launcher. Lucky Mertz, an expert marksman, shouldered a SIG SAUER long-range sniper rifle and had a rocket-launcher slung on his back. Baz carried his regular F89 Minimi light machinegun, a weapon that was almost as long as he was tall.
Before long, they came to another road running through the swelteringly hot valley to the city of Bamiyan, which lay out of sight beyond the hills. As Ben paused to look to Lieutenant Karzan for directions, perspiration ran down his face. Karzan pointed east toward Bamiyan. Ben nodded in acknowledgement and quickly wiped away the perspiration with the back of his gloved hand.
After ten minutes, the road intersected with a more substantial sealed highway that ran southeast, linking Bamiyan with the Dragon Lake region. A heat haze shimmered from the roadway’s baking asphalt ahead. Deliberately walking away from Dragon Lake to conceal their interest in it, the patrol headed toward Bamiyan. So far, they hadn’t encountered so much as a bird in the sky, but they knew there was a chance they were being watched from the hills.
The patrol rounded the corner of a rocky bluff. They could now see the city of Bamiyan in the distance with a smoky haze hanging over it. A single traveller could be seen walking up the road toward them. When he spotted the patrol, the traveller stopped in his tracks.
‘If he runs,’ said Lucky, reaching for his sniper rifle, ‘I could drop him with a single round.’
‘Not so fast, Lucky,’ said Charlie. ‘If we draw a bead on him, we’ll scare him into running for it anyway. We keep walking toward him with our weapons low.’
‘Okay, you’re the boss, Charlie.’ Lucky lowered his weapon and slipped it back over his shoulder.
As the patrol continued along the road, the traveller also resumed his progress at a leisurely pace. Before long, patrol and traveller met on the road. The traveller, wearing dark clothes and a round Afghan cap, had a scarf covering the lower part of his face and a cloth bag slung over his right shoulder.
‘Show us your face, friend,’ Lieutenant Karzan said, pointing to the man’s scarf. ‘And tell me, where are you going on this deserted road?’
The man removed his scarf, revealing a long face and a thick, shaggy black beard common to Pashtun people and to members of the Taliban. ‘What is the problem? I am going to visit a friend,’ he replied in Pashto.
‘Where?’ Ali demanded.
‘At the lake,’ said the traveller. ‘My friend fishes there.’
Ali was sceptical. ‘What kind of fish does he catch?’
The traveller shrugged and smiled slyly. ‘Small ones.’
Ali translated the conversation into English for the Australians.
Lieutenant Karzan, who could speak Pashto, was suspicious. ‘Raise your hands,’ he instructed, pointing his automatic rifle at the man. Still smiling, the traveller complied. Karzan searched him and his bag for weapons, but found none.
‘I can go now?’ said the traveller.
Ben had brought Caesar to the seated position on a tight leash when they had first approached the stranger. But he now noticed that Caesar had come to his feet and was looking at the traveller intently. A low growl began to rumble deep in the labrador’s throat.
Ben dropped down to one knee beside him. ‘You don’t like this bloke, Caesar, do you?’
Caesar, refusing to take his eyes off the traveller, continued to growl. He knew this man very well. This was Abdul Razah, his former Taliban jailer. But Caesar had no way of telling Ben exactly who this man was.
Ben stood up again and loosened the leash. ‘Seek on, Caesar,’ he instructed.
Caesar trotted straight up to Abdul and sat down in front of him, looking up at him without flinching. This was Caesar’s typical signature which indicated that he’d picked up the scent of explosives.
‘This bloke is explosives positive,’ Ben declared, bringing his rifle to bear on the Afghan. ‘He’s been in contact with explosives recently. And Caesar seems to know him from previous contact. I think he’s a hostile.’
‘Arrest him,’ Lieutenant Karzan commanded coldly.
Charlie, Lucky and Baz immedi
ately moved forward to surround Abdul, whose smile quickly disappeared. They tied his hands behind his back. Abdul glared at Caesar, angry that the labrador had pointed him out. In response, Caesar let out another low growl. The prisoner was handed over to a group of Lieutenant Karzan’s men, who would take him back to FOB Nero for questioning. The rest of the patrol, including Caesar and the Australians, resumed their course. No one apart from Caesar knew that this was Abdul Razah. And not even Caesar was aware that Abdul knew precisely where Secretary-General Park and his party were being held.
When Ben, Caesar and the others returned to FOB Nero after dark, it was to receive several pieces of interesting news. As the traveller cooled his heels in the FOB’s jail – another shipping container – the fifteen men of Strike Force Blue Dragon assembled at the base’s briefing room, an area formed by a tarpaulin stretched between half-a-dozen posts, to hear the results of his questioning.
‘The prisoner is a Pashtun,’ Karzan began. ‘He says that his name is Mohammad Derz and that he is from a village in western Uruzgan. But he has no papers on him to confirm that. He has what appear to be old bullet wound scars. We suspect he is Taliban, though he denies it. Apart from a story about visiting a friend who fishes in Band-e-Azhdahar, he has no good reason to be in this region.’
‘Okay, thanks, Lieutenant,’ said Sergeant Hazard. He turned to Charlie and his companions. ‘While you Aussies were out on patrol this afternoon, we got a link from General McAvoy in Tarin Kowt. Gather round.’ Hazard opened a laptop, then faced the screen toward the men.
‘We’ve had a drone watching the only landward entrance to Deep Cave,’ said McAvoy, looking stern. ‘At dawn this morning we picked up a single man leaving that entrance. This is the highest resolution image of him we can get off the video from the drone. We have a tentative ID of this guy from the CIA’s visual-recognition database. We think he could be Abdul Razah, a low-level operative in the Taliban’s Uruzgan brigade, a unit commanded by our old friend Commander Baradar.’
The screen now filled with the blurry picture, shot from above, of a single figure emerging from white rocks and making his way toward a rough road. He had a cloth bag slung over one shoulder.
‘That’s our man!’ Charlie remarked with certainty. ‘That’s the bloke we picked up this morning on the road.’
Hazard nodded. ‘Now we know that this guy, Derz, or Abdul Razah, or whoever he is, was spotted leaving Deep Cave. And he was coming from the direction of Bamiyan when you found him. That tells me he went into Bamiyan to deliver something – a message, maybe – and was on his way back to the cave. This guy knows where the Big Cheese is. I’d bet my pension plan on it!’
‘Do we try to force him to tell us where the Big Cheese is?’ said McHenry.
Charlie shook his head. ‘He wouldn’t talk. And we don’t have the luxury of time for the bears to interrogate him back at Tarin Kowt.’
There was a frustrated silence before Ben spoke up. ‘What if we let him escape?’ he suggested.
Hazard looked at Ben as if he were mad. ‘Are you nuts, Fulton?’
‘Think about it. He could lead us straight to the Big Cheese,’ said Ben.
Hazard stroked his bearded chin and chewed a little harder on the gum in his mouth. ‘What if we do release him and he doesn’t lead us there?’
‘Chances are he will,’ said Charlie, coming around to Ben’s way of thinking. ‘I think we should give it a try.’
Hazard shook his head, troubled by the proposal. ‘I don’t like the idea of letting a Taliban prisoner go free.’
‘Do you have a better idea?’ said Ben, growing impatient. ‘Time’s running out for the hostages.’
‘And if the prisoner does lead us to the Big Cheese we’ll recapture this guy in the process,’ Charlie added.
Still Hazard hesitated as he tried to decide whether or not he should release their prisoner.
Later that evening, Lieutenant Karzan and several Afghan soldiers entered the shipping container that was being used as the FOB’s makeshift jail cell. They found their prisoner, Abdul Razah, on his knees facing east, completing his last prayer session of the day.
Lieutenant Karzan handed Abdul a white robe. ‘You must take off the clothes you are wearing and put this on,’ he ordered. When Abdul glared defiantly at him, making no move to comply, Karzan added, ‘If you do not take off the clothes, we will remove them from you.’
Reluctantly, Abdul undressed and exchanged his own dusty, grimy garments for the white robe.
‘Your headgear as well,’ said Karzan, holding out his right hand and clicking his fingers impatiently.
With a scowl, Abdul took off his cap and handed it to Lieutenant Karzan.
As the soldiers departed from the cell, Ali Moon turned back to the prisoner and said in a low, conspiratorial voice, ‘It is all right, my friend, they are only searching your clothes for anything suspicious that may be sewn into them. They will be returned to you shortly.’
Half an hour later, Abdul’s clothes were indeed returned to him. Nothing had been found on or inside them. As Ali handed him the clothes through the cell’s open door, bright lights lit up the helicopter landing pad a little distance behind him.
Abdul frowned at the sight of the lights. ‘What is happening out there? Is a helicopter expected?’ Abdul would not admit it to his captors, but he was fearful of being placed in a helicopter and taken to the government prison at Tarin Kowt. Abdul had heard rumours about the treatment of Taliban prisoners, and Commander Baradar’s own father had died there.
‘No helicopters are expected,’ Ali advised. ‘The for- eigners are preparing for a show.’
‘A show?’
Ali waved a hand. ‘There are two travelling Afghan jugglers and acrobats here. They are going to entertain the foreign troops tonight.’
‘Jugglers and acrobats? Humph!’ Abdul snorted. ‘All entertainments are the work of the Devil.’
‘I agree,’ Ali whispered, leaning closer to the prisoner. ‘But I cannot say that to the foreigners. There is much I cannot say if I wish to keep my job with ISAF.’
Ali withdrew, the door clanging shut behind him, and Abdul put on his own clothes. Disdainfully tossing aside the white robe that he had been forced to wear, Abdul spat on it – for the humiliation of being made to undress and put it on. ‘Death to all infidels!’ he cursed.
All thirty-five foreign troops at FOB Nero gathered to watch Ahmad and Ibrahim put on their regular show. Some of the local Afghan soldiers were on duty, manning the guard towers and peering out into the black night. Most of the other Afghan soldiers at the base went to their beds, uninterested in the brothers’ entertainment. Of the local troops, only Lieutenant Karzan joined the ISAF audience.
A large bedsheet had been strung across the side of the van. On it the words ‘The Three Brothers’ were painted in red. Tonight, in front of the backdrop, Ahmad and Ibrahim began their show by juggling balls, batons and knives.
Caesar was also in the audience, watching the performance with Ben. A smile creased Ben’s lips as he noticed that Caesar’s front legs were quivering. How Caesar would love to be up there with Ahmad and Ibrahim, jumping and catching balls.
Everyone watched on as the brothers progressed to acrobatics, with Ibrahim lifting Ahmad into the air using only one arm and then launching him into somersaults. At one point, Ahmad balanced on Ibrahim’s shoulders while juggling three balls, four balls and finally, five balls.
The trampoline featured in the brothers’ next tricks. Without Caesar’s participation this time, the brothers’ trampoline tricks were all about juggling. Ahmad juggled as he bounced, receiving the balls thrown to him by Ibrahim. Then both juggled, one on the ground and one bouncing on the trampoline, before they exchanged balls mid-juggle without dropping a single one. It was all very impressive, with the onlookers clapping and whistling, appreciative of any distraction from the tedium of FOB life.
Next, an ordinary ladder was placed horizontally between the t
wo stepladders. Encouraged by Ahmad, the black goat quickly climbed one stepladder and stood on the top. It nimbly walked across the ordinary ladder’s rungs to the second stepladder. This brought plenty of smiles and applause from the audience.
The goat, however, had had enough. Refusing to come down the second stepladder, it looked at the brothers and the audience, bleating. As Ahmad and Ibrahim had said earlier, goats can be very stubborn. There was nothing the brothers could do to entice their goat to come down. The more they tried, the more the audience laughed, with some young US Rangers rolling about in hysterics.
The door to Abdul’s cell opened slightly.
‘Come, my friend, quickly!’ urged a voice from outside.
Abdul, who had been lying on a mattress on the floor, sat up. ‘Who is it?’ he asked warily.
‘Come, while the infidels are enjoying their entertainment,’ Ali whispered. ‘I will help you escape. But we must not delay.’
Abdul hesitated.
‘Hurry, while the foreigners are distracted,’ Ali called impatiently. ‘I will let you out the gate. Or do you wish to be sent to the government prison at Tarin Kowt?’
Now that Ali had voiced his greatest fear, Abdul leapt to action. Coming to his feet, he hurried to the partly open door. The opening was just wide enough for him to squeeze through.
‘Follow me, my friend,’ said Ali, leading the way.
Around the well-lit landing pad to their right, the audience of soldiers was transfixed on Ahmad and Ibrahim’s act. In the darkness along the camp wall, Ali led Abdul to the base’s main gateway. A smaller pedestrian gate the size of a house door stood beside the large metal gates. Producing a key, Ali unlocked the padlock on the smaller entranceway.
‘From where did you get the key?’ Abdul whispered.
A sly smile came over Ali’s face. ‘For money, anything can be had in a camp where there are Afghan soldiers,’ he replied. Being careful not to make a sound, he slowly drew back the bolt and opened the door. ‘Hurry!’ he urged. ‘And may Allah protect you.’
Without a word of thanks, Abdul passed through the opening and disappeared into the night. Ali, smiling to himself, closed the door and locked it once more.
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