Danger Close

by Charlie Flowers

  At 15,000 feet the diamond formation separated as the team checked their altimeters. Seconds later Swallow’s AOD went and our main chute deployed. THUMP. It was like being on the end of a bungee. We seemed to rush to a halt in the sky and the howl of air stopped. The harness bit into my thighs. Now we would all glide in a series of long curves in the air, down to the landing zone. Above me, I could hear Swallow putting on his night-vision goggles. He’d be looking for the firefly sparks of the other team members’ infra red strobes and watching his chest-harness GPS display, tacking left and right as we went to the little blip of the landing zone, many miles ahead.

  ‘Got ‘em.’

  We trailed down through the night sky, gently forming up into a stack, Swallow and me on the top and bringing up the rear. I tried to relax and enjoy the ride as Swallow had said. I looked around. It was just past three in the morning local time. The moon had just set. We had a good twenty miles to fly and it could take over an hour, depending on the winds.

  ‘Get ready, Tel. Remember the drills.’

  The scented ground of Afghanistan was coming up to us, and then it started to rush.

  ‘Stand by, stand by… bend ze knees…’

  I laughed. I raised my arms and gripped his wrists as he got ready to land. Swallow pulled down on the risers and the chute flared. Below us our packs hit the ground with a small thud on the end of their three-metre line, and then THUMP.

  We were down.

  Swallow ran us forward a few paces and turned so the lines folded around him. He extracted himself from the chute and unstrapped us. First things first. Swallow cleared and cocked his AK, and patted my shoulder. I unstrapped my AK and tore off the protective taping. We both dropped to one knee and tuned into our surroundings.

  Immediately in front of us the rest of the team had landed in puffs of dust, their packs thudding in ahead of them, and they’d done the drills we had. Their chutes and lines were gathered in and they were facing outwards in a loose semi-circle. And now we waited, waited for the night air to envelop us and ambient noises to return. Nothing.

  After five long minutes had passed Swallow and Dinger made slow hand signals and we gathered on them. They took fixes of our position on their GPS sets. We took off our flightsuits and laid them in a pile along with the parachute rigs, headgear, goggles, and oxygen masks, and stashed them in a dry culvert nearby. Swallow and Dinger got some brushwood, piled it on, and then laid down something extra we’d brought with us. Desert camouflage netting liberally dressed with local thorns and leaves over it, that the team had spent a day or two making and painting back at Credenhill. We fussed with it for several minutes then stepped back and checked. Invisible for now. Eventually, the gear would be discovered by an ISAF sweep, but that would be after the event. We walked one hundred metres away, regrouped, and took the time to check each other over. We were all dressed Taliban-style, with turbans and scarves to conceal our faces. We looked at each others’ beltkits and I was shown the first aid pack. We then checked our AKs again and moved out north, beginning the walk to the cache, Bagram, and then our attack point.

  After an hour’s slow, careful march Swallow held up his hand and we stopped and all dropped to one knee. The team leaders checked with their NVGs, sweeping slowly from left to right.

  Before us, like a pale ghost in the pre-dawn gloom, was the hull of the wrecked car we had viewed from the overheads. Swallow came and murmured in my ear ‘we dig the packets in now, under the car’, and then went and muttered the same in Dinger’s ear. We edged forward to the car body and began digging with two entrenching tools. After ten minutes we had a good hide - hole and they placed my two kitbags inside and covered them with earth. But not before Dinger placed a two - kilo PETN explosive charge on top of them and hooked a tripwire into the nearest tyre with some fishing line and hook attached to a ringpull-fuze.

  Dinger looked at me and nodded downwards. He had my attention. Any random person investigating this cache would be blown into the stratosphere, and with the amount of unexploded ordnance lying around the Afghan countryside, it would fade into the background.

  Swallow took another GPS fix, then took a reading on his Silva compass to be sure and gripped my shoulder. He spoke quietly in my ear again. ‘The cache is 2,110 metres south east of Bagram airbase’s southern fence line corner, heading 2755.5 mils… which is 155 degrees, that’s one-five-five degrees. I’ve already reversed it for you. When you break out, get a fix, and tab two klicks and a bit south-south east.’

  I nodded. We moved out again. Every now and again I turned and walked backwards, to look the way we’d come, burning the terrain into my memory as much as I could. The sky was beginning to lighten in the east.

  We walked slowly and carefully north alongside irrigation ditches for half an hour. All I could smell was the pervasive stink from the ditches. Ahead of us was a bright glow on the horizon that became a brightly-lit fence line in the distance. An airport, no less. As we watched, a plane came in to land, blacked-out and silhouetted against the base lights.

  Swallow spoke. ‘The Emerald City, lads. Here we are.’

  He looked at me.‘Now we start the attack on the Septics, mate. OK, stay low, here we go.’

  We jogged towards the target until we were roughly three hundred metres away. Close enough to cause a ruckus, not too close to trigger alarms.

  I handed my AK to Swallow and hit the ground. I knew what was about to go down. The team ran forward in ragged order, dropped, and opened up on the fence line. I put my hands over my ears to preserve my short-term hearing. Bursts of flame lit up the night. We were go. To my right and left, the RWW guys started shouting fire control orders as they engaged the watchtowers. I hugged the dirt. They doubled back, in a haze of fire and smoke, as planned, and there I was. The sacrificial goat.

  I buried my face in the grit and started counting. I counted... and counted. The echoes faded. Like wraiths, they were gone.

  And then the noise from the Bagram perimeter started up.

  I hugged the dirt. I kept hugging it.

  Ten minutes later there was an approaching whine, like a mosquito. It got louder. I felt a touch on my shoulder. I rolled onto my back like a good Taliban insurgent. A robot was inspecting me. This would have to be the US Army. A flare fired from the back of the robot, and within seconds an alsatian was standing over me and barking like it was Doggy Christmas. Three minutes later and a Hummer screeched to a halt to my left in cloud of dust. I heard boots. Flashlights settled on me. I winced. A Specialist First Class was standing over me. She said one word as she aimed the Taser.

  ‘Motherfucker.’

  And then the lights went out.

  13

  The sacking was pulled off my head. I was sitting on a chair and my hands were cuffed behind my back. I looked down at my shirt, at the two little rips where the Taser barbs had struck. I looked around. I was in your typical interrogation room and going by the insignia, I was looking at a US Army major.

  He was glaring at me.

  I glared back. I was Taliban, wasn’t I?

  He suddenly started jabbering away at me in some harsh Asian-sounding language. What the…? It wasn’t anything I spoke so I was lost. He stopped then started again, louder this time. Nope, sorry mate, no idea, I thought.

  Suddenly the Major threw his hands in the air in disgust and stood up.

  ‘Dumb haji doesn’t even understand Pashto. OK, give the ANA guys a call. He’s all theirs.’

  It looked like they were washing their hands of me and I was on my way to Gary Swallow’s fabled madhouse. He rattled more gobbledegook at me.

  A voice from behind me. ‘Whatchoo sayin’ Sir?’

  ‘I’m telling him that we didn’t strip-search as we are now preevented from doing so, so as not to offend their cultural sensitivities.’

  He looked disgusted and bored at the same time. He glanced at the Specialist who’d zapped me.

  ‘Can you get me some coffee. Proper coffee. And Ruth? Conta
ct INSCOM on-site and tell them I want to know why the power grids have been dropping off in the area. We can’t have power-outages on base. Especially at the detention centre. Kabul’s one thing, but not here.’

  ‘Sir.’ She saluted and left, just as two ANA guys walked in and clocked me and my dishevelled state. They spoke to the Major in that language. He nodded.

  They grabbed me by the arms and marched me out into the desert night. I immediately started coughing on the outside’s miasma of acrid shit, dust and diesel fumes. I was flung unceremoniously into the back of their Hummer, and off we sped across the airbase. I wriggled about until I could see out of the window. I was trying to commit as much to memory as possible. Good grief, this place was huge. Lines of planes of every description. Combat planes, transport planes. Squadrons of fully bombed - up F16s, A10s, ranks of C130s, Transalls. A solitary grey Air Truck. Hangars, vehicles, lights, buildings. We drove along a runway past a sign saying “Welcome to the home of the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing”. More hangars. Fences with five rolls of razor wire apiece. After some time, we stopped in front of a set of hangars lit as harshly as a baseball stadium and another sign, in squiggle and also in English that read “Parwan Detention Facility/ BTIF”.

  I was dragged out and up to the main doors. They were talking at me in that strange language again. In we went.

  They put me up against a wall and took my photograph and then me and three guys struggled manfully with a fingerprint kit and a handheld retina-scanning device. The software crashed halfway through my left eye and they gave up. I was handed an orange jumpsuit with a stencilled number on the back and it was made clear by sign language that I should put it on over my clothes. I did. It was too sizes too large so that didn’t prove a problem. I was then marched down a corridor with cinderblock bunkers on either side, another set of doors were unlocked and opened, and they pushed me through. To a scene of utter chaos. The doors slammed behind me and I took a look at my new lodgings.

  I had never imagined anything like this.

  I walked into a combination of a circus and a day at Walthamstow dog track. It was a vast hangar, full of cages and corridors, with men hanging out of every door. The noise was indescribable. The smell reminded me of prison back home- disinfectant, unwashed men, bad cooking. I veered right, and meandered along the opened holding pen doors. An old insurgent instinct told me that if I wandered long enough among the prisoners, I would hear something. And within two minutes I was proved correct. I heard English, and an accent you just couldn’t mistake. Brummie. I looked to my right.

  A man with a fist-length beard was having a stand-off with two other men. He was shouting at them but they weren’t deterred in their efforts to get something from him. ‘Geroff it, this is moi jacket and oi’m ‘avin’ it!’

  I walked over and stood by him. He caught my eye.

  ‘New here?’

  ‘Yep. Name’s Rizwan. Salaam Aleykuum.’

  He laughed as he cottoned on to the English. ‘Waleykum Salaam, akhi. Name’s Mo. So you’re a Brit Salafi too? You see, that’s the kind of stuff that landed me in ‘ere.’

  We both cracked up. The nearest Taleb made another grab for the denim jacket that Mo was arguing about. I socked the Taleb in the jaw and he stumbled back into two guys sitting down. And then the biggest fight broke out around us. We went in swinging back to back. A massive roar went up and every cellblock piled in. Suddenly a klaxon sounded and in walked another US Major and two ANA top brass. We all stopped punching each other for a bit. I stood and got my Taliban opposite number to his feet and we brushed each other down and turned to see what the staff had to say. Mo sidled up next to me and murmured ‘Ere we go. Looks like Ze Chermans are annoyed.’

  This major, on closer inspection of his tabs, turned out to be US Air Force. He looked really pissed off. All three brass were wearing safety goggles. I poked Mo and nodded at them.

  ‘Oh yeah, the goggles. Some of our long-termers in here like to throw their shit at them.’

  ‘Yuck.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The major drew himself to his full height and started addressing us in English. One of the ANA officers next to him started translating. Obviously me and Mo could get the original draft and it was hilarious and surreal.

  The major was declaiming, ‘Attention enemy combatants. Yes that means you guys. We have just undertaken an inventory of this site’s materiel affects and we have found the following items to be missing.’

  He paused then resumed reading.

  ‘6,000 bed boards. 111 pillow cases. 52 twenty-man tables, 10 single tables, 34 chairs, 76 benches, 1,212 bed bolsters, 1,219 knives, 478 spoons, 582 forks, 69 lamps, 1,000 feet of electric wire, three sets of discotheque lights, 1,200 feet of rope. 49 blankets. Ten sewing machines. Three Humvee batteries. And 3,400 industrial-size cans of Heinz beans!’

  He stopped and glared at us over the clipboard.

  ‘Don’t think I don’t know you guys are up to something! And don’t be crying to Amnesty International when I shut your little playhouse down!’

  He turned and stalked out. The ANA officer finished translating and a ripple of giggles went round the vast hangar.

  The Taliban lad next to me said ‘Da lombrha Shahzadgai’ under his breath and laughed.

  I looked at him. ‘What was that?’

  Mo nudged me. ‘He said “The Fox Princess”’.

  I did a double take and he registered my confused and shocked look. ‘Yep. This is the talk. Up at the far north end of the site, in the women’s section, there’s a crazy girl called the Fox Princess, and they say she’s planning a prison break. Although that’s debatable. Could be the rumour mill on overdrive.’

  I sat down on a bench. Oh, my, God. I looked to the ceiling lights and laughed. Could it be?

  Mo glanced me up and down again. ‘So our new boy gets an orange jumpsuit. You jammy get. Thought they’d run out. They’re prized in here, makes people think they’ve been in Gitmo.’

  I looked back at him. ‘Mo. If you can get me into the far north end where the crazy people are, it’s all yours.’

  He grinned. ‘My man! You’re on.’

  14

  The next morning Mo, now proudly wearing my orange jumpsuit, took me for a guided tour round our section of the facility. He’d winked at me earlier and I’d inferred that he had a contact somewhere here. A fixer, maybe.

  We inspected the classrooms and the library, chatted to some inmates in the prison garden and then Mo haggled some cigarettes from a guard on the gate. Our wanderings took us back to the chow hall and we got served some unidentifiable vegetable slop and some crusty bread. The afternoon passed. Mo took me to the infirmary and I got my dressing changed. The bullet scar and livid rainbow bruising got a quizzical look from the nurse in charge, and I got a top-up shot of antibiotics. We did a walk of the razor-wired inner perimeter and ended up at the basketball court, where the southern Taliban guys were having a bounce-about against a team of what I was informed were common thieves from Kabul’s suburb of Shar-e Naw.

  The ball lazily smacked off the concrete and rattled off the wire fences. There were narrow walkways and serried rolls of concertina wire for as far as I could see in all directions. Mo fished out some fags and lit two. We smoked and watched the game. Mo spoke. ‘Hope your TB jab is up date, mate. It’s rife in here. That’s one thing me and you have got going for us, being Brits an’ all.’

  After an hour or so, there was a commotion at the blockhouse nearby. A guard snapped to attention and out came a big old bearded senior officer. Without any preamble he came and sat next to me and Mo. Mo stared straight ahead, suddenly deeply engrossed in the match.

  I studied the new arrival. Nicely-shaped beret. Mirror shades. Trimmed grey beard. Smart, pressed, digital-pattern fatigues.

  He spoke in perfect English. ‘You are Rizwan?’

  ‘I am.’

  He removed the shades, turned and smiled. ‘I am General Farukh, commander of Parwan Detention
Facility.’

  Holy shit.

  He continued. ‘Mo tells me you have some crazy urge to get into the northern hangar to find some even crazier girl, is that correct?’

  I nodded.

  Everyone was quiet for a while. Someone in the court scored a slam-dunk and there was a cheer from the bleachers.

  ‘This crazy girl of yours has already killed one of my deputy commanders. You knew this?’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘Yes. Mind you, he was an asshole.’

  We all laughed.

  ‘Let me tell you something about my command here, Rizwan. On the 10th of this month, the US military officially handed over control of this prison and its 3,082 occupants to me. And yet - when I arrive for work, the Americans on the perimeter take my phone from me. If I want to bring in a prisoner, I need American permission. That can take days. In fact for captured Pakistani or foreign national fighters, it’s almost impossible, and therefore I’m surprised you are here. When I conduct interviews, two American “advisors” sit with me. It is… a nonsense.’

  He seemed to be weighing things up. Finally he spoke. ‘Mo. Please could you take Rizwan to the northern guardhouse between eight and ten tonight. And Rizwan. Two things. First. The Americans found some parachutes south of here in a dry culvert earlier today. It’s only a matter of time before they join the dots. Second. Tell your girl I know she is tunnelling, and to stop it. Just because the Taliban managed it at Sarpoza last year doesn’t mean she can try. That is all. Good luck.’

  He then gave a letter to Mo and left.

  Mo handed the letter to me. It was a handwritten note, signed at the bottom. I couldn’t read the writing. I looked at Mo. He beamed at me. ‘Don’t laugh. He knows my mother’s side of the family.’

  15

  At 8.30 that night Mo walked me down the ubiquitous high fencelines to the northern guardhouse. There was the smell of diesel and the hum of a generator. Two guards sat on plastic garden chairs by a set of open hangar doors. A queue of what looked to be laundry-women were waiting to go in to the hangar. We tagged onto the back and waited our turn.