by Chris Ryan
I closed the main door, knowing that Dusty and Rabbit would cover our backs from outside. Only then did we lower our weapons and turn our attention to Malouf.
His eyes darted between us. ‘I thought you would be here sooner,’ he said in thickly accented English.
‘Did you have somewhere else to be?’ Voodoo asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Malouf shook his head nervously. Sweat poured from his face. The old lady stood behind us in the corner of the room, her head bowed. She was saying something underneath her breath, but it was impossible to tell what. Voodoo jerked his thumb at her. ‘She speak English?’
Malouf shook his head. ‘No. Only me. Since a child I…’
‘OK, Malouf,’ Voodoo butted in. ‘Let’s hear what you’ve got to say.’
Malouf licked his fat lips. ‘You want Al-Zaranj? I know where he is.’
‘Oh yeah? Why should we believe you?’
Malouf’s lip curled. ‘You do not know what it is like to live here,’ he said.
‘From what I heard,’ I interrupted, ‘it sounds like you and your man Afridi do pretty well out of it.’
A flicker of annoyance crossed Malouf’s face. ‘I do what I need to make a living for my family. If it hadn’t been me, Afridi would have found someone else. It does not mean I love the Taliban, or their Al-Qaeda friends.’
Malouf looked over at the old lady and issued a harsh instruction in Pashto. She shook her head and shrank into the corner, but then Malouf gave her a dangerous stare and she stepped towards us. Slowly she pulled her black robe off her shoulder. Her body was thin and bony, but it wasn’t this that caught our attention. It was the deep red scars that ran through her skin.
‘My mother,’ Malouf said. ‘The Taliban beat her for walking outside with her head uncovered. The wounds became infected and she nearly died. You think that makes me glad? You think I want the Taliban to remain? This Al-Zaranj, if he and his Al-Qaeda associates are not driven from my country, it will only make the Taliban stronger and crueller. Everybody knows that. But you Americans, you can change all this.’
Malouf sat back. He looked exhausted from his little speech and his skin was sweatier than ever. Voodoo and I exchanged a look, then turned back to our informant.
‘All right, Malouf,’ said Voodoo. ‘Let’s have it. Where’s Al-Zaranj?’
Malouf’s piggy eyes narrowed. ‘You have money for me?’
I felt myself sneering. ‘So much for his morals.’
Voodoo shrugged. ‘Money talks, bullshit walks,’ he said. ‘And that’s true in Boston and Bagram.’ He pulled out a wad of American dollars from his ops waistcoat and slapped them on the table. For a fat man, Malouf moved pretty fast, grabbing the notes like a greedy kid snatching the last cake and secreting them somewhere inside his grubby dishdash. Somehow his greed made me feel a bit better about the whole thing. Now we knew he was grassing up Al-Zaranj for money it all seemed a bit more on the level.
‘OK, friend. You’d better start talking,’ Voodoo told him. ‘Where is he?’
‘Here,’ Malouf said. He suddenly looked very pleased with himself.
Voodoo and I shared another look. ‘What do you mean, here?’ I asked.
‘Here in Pajay. Tonight. I can tell you where.’
This wasn’t what we were expecting. Intel had never suggested Al-Zaranj was in Pajay itself. Our mission was to find Al-Zaranj’s position, then extract immediately. If he was here, though, there wasn’t a man among us who wouldn’t want to go after him. All of a sudden, the whole nature of the operation had changed.
‘Dusty, Rabbit, you getting this?’ Voodoo spoke into his radio.
‘Roger that,’ came Dusty’s voice. ‘I say we smoke the fucker out.’
‘Rabbit?’
‘Count me in.’
‘Jock?’
I wasn’t so sure. I stepped up to Malouf – close enough to smell his sweat and his breath – then kneeled down and looked him straight in the eye. Malouf returned my look with a stony stare of his own. ‘If you’re shitting us,’ I whispered to him, ‘you’ll be planting the old lady before dawn. That’s the way you do things out here, isn’t it?’
Malouf glanced over my shoulder to where his mother had retreated back into the corner.
‘I swear,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘I am telling you the truth.’
I stood up and turned back to Voodoo. ‘He comes with us,’ I said. ‘If we’re going after Al-Zaranj now, I want to know where this piece of shit is at all times.’
Malouf shook his head. ‘No,’ he stammered. ‘If the Taliban see me out after curfew, I will be punished. My mother will be punished.’
I ignored him. ‘I mean it, Voodoo. Leave him here and fuck knows who he’ll send after us.’
Malouf was ringing his hands. ‘I beg of you, do not make me leave. If they suspect me…’
Voodoo gave it a few seconds’ thought. ‘You’re right,’ he said after a moment. He narrowed his eyes. ‘Malouf, you’re coming with us.’
01.30 HRS.
We’d put the call through to MacDill, explaining what was going down and requesting official permission to go after Al-Zaranj. Two minutes later the word had come back. ‘You’re the guys on the ground. It’s your call.’
We all needed to hear Malouf’s instructions from the horse’s mouth, so Dusty and Rabbit had joined us in the house. ‘Al-Zaranj is in a compound on the northern outskirts of the village,’ Malouf explained. His eyes were a little wild and he couldn’t avert his gaze from our weapons.
‘I thought all the compounds outside the village were clapped out,’ I butted in.
‘Clapped out?’
‘Destroyed.’
‘Most of them are,’ Malouf agreed. ‘But not this one.’
‘Describe it.’
‘It is large. Maybe thirty metres by thirty. But only one entrance. There are guards there – two of them, Al Zaranj’s people. Inside the compound, I do not know how many. But not a lot, I think. Al-Zaranj came down from the mountains yesterday. He had only a few men with him.’
‘What’s the approach like?’
‘Mountain slopes at the back, fields on the other three sides. Poppies. At this time of the year, very low. Maybe this high.’ He lowered his hand to indicate a height of about half a metre.
‘High enough to crawl through,’ Voodoo observed. ‘What else, Malouf?’
The fat man shrugged. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘It is all outside the village.’ Then he inclined his head. ‘Wait. There is a farm building on the other side of the field, opposite the front of the compound. But it is crumbling, like most of the other places. There will be no one there.’
‘We can take your word for that, huh?’ Dusty said under his breath.
Voodoo turned to me. ‘Guards on the door.’ He jerked his thumb in Malouf’s direction. ‘If we’re going to have to fight our way in, we can’t have him with us.’
Dusty narrowed his eyes. ‘Damn right. I ain’t clearing a compound with him draggin’ ass behind us.’
Malouf was nodding. ‘You are right – it is better I stay here. If they see I am gone, they might know something is wrong.’
Voodoo sniffed. ‘Shut up, Malouf. We ain’t leaving you anywhere. Dusty, you and me can head north; Jock, Rabbit, you take Malouf back to the quads. We’ll take out this Al-Zaranj fuck, then RV with you back there.’
Voodoo turned to Rabbit and me. ‘You good with that?’
‘Check,’ we said in unison. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to go after Al-Zaranj ourselves, but we knew the security of the unit was the most important thing. I stepped over to where Malouf was sitting and pulled him up by the scruff of his dishdash. ‘OK, sunshine,’ I told him. ‘Let’s boogie.’
We couldn’t take the old woman with us – she’d just slow us down. But I wanted to leave her with something to think about. ‘Malouf, tell your mother that if anyone comes after us, you’ll be first person we kill.’
‘Please let me stay…�
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I put my gun to his head. ‘Just do it.’
Malouf’s eyes widened, but he murmured something to his mother, who stared at me like I was a monster. I gave her a fierce look back to make her believe I meant it.
‘All right, Malouf,’ Voodoo cut in. ‘When we get outside, you do exactly what we say. Don’t make any of us nervous. You start going off-piste and we’ll shoot you off the slope.’
Malouf looked confused. ‘What is off-piste?’ he asked.
‘Just do as you’re told, OK?
He gulped nervously.
It was still eerily quiet outside the house. Even the dog that had been barking during our approach had grown silent. The moon was higher now, and cast shadows on the stony ground of the village. Voodoo and Dusty melted away along the darker side of the street, heading the opposite way to that from which we’d arrived. I nodded at Rabbit, who hurried to the other corner of the street before waiting for us to leapfrog him.
Nudging Malouf between his podgy shoulder blades with the barrel of my rifle, I told him, ‘Walk.’
‘What if we see someone?’ he hissed.
‘You’d better hope we don’t.’
I walked five metres behind him, weapon at the ready, looking around me for any unexpected movement. There was none. Pajay was as dead as a spent case. It took us ten minutes to get back to the deserted watchtower on the outskirts, and another twenty to force the stumbling and scared Malouf back to the wadi, where the quads were waiting for us, untouched. Twice he begged me to let him go back home. Twice I forced him on.
Just as Rabbit was forcing Malouf down on to his knees so he could keep guard over him, the radio crackled into life.
‘Jock, Rabbit, this is Voodoo. We’ve located the compound. Repeat, we have located the compound.’
‘Copy that,’ I replied. ‘Everything like Malouf described it?’
From the corner of my eye I saw Malouf nodding his head as Voodoo said, ‘Bang on. We’ve checked inside the farm building. Empty. We’re on the edge of the field, low down. Compound gate fifty metres from our position, over open ground.’
‘You got company?’
‘Just like the man said. Two gizzies, leaning on their fucking rifles. We’re going in now.’
‘It is how I described?’ Malouf asked. ‘You let me go home now…’ One look silenced him.
I didn’t like not being there with Voodoo and Dusty, and from Rabbit’s face I could tell he didn’t either. Doesn’t matter who you are – any sprint across open ground is dangerous. Sure, they could take care of themselves, but four guys were better than two, no matter what the operational scenario. Nothing we could do about it, though. We just had to wait and listen in.
Sixty seconds later there was a low thud over the radio, followed by a second. Suppressed gunfire. ‘Guards down,’ I said to Rabbit. He nodded, and I felt Malouf’s eyes on me, hungry for more information about what was going on.
We waited in silence. A shuffling sound in my earpiece – Voodoo and Dusty covering the open ground, then another couple of suppressed thuds as they blasted their way into the compound.
‘We’re in.’ Voodoo’s voice was low and tense.
‘What is happening?’ Malouf asked.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ I told him. ‘When you need to know something, I’ll tell you.’
Malouf gave me a sour look and kept his gaze on me. I noticed his hand trembling. Good job we hadn’t taken him with us. If he was all shitted up just listening, what would he be like close to the action?
The next two minutes felt like two hours. The silence on the radio was broken only by the occasional crash of a door being knocked in. No voices. No gunfire.
‘What is happening?’ Malouf asked again.
I didn’t reply this time. I just gave him a look at the barrel of my weapon.
Finally I heard Voodoo’s voice. ‘Compound clear. It’s fucking empty.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘How many ways do you want me to say it, Jock? Malouf’s full of shit. There’s no one here.’
I bore down on the sweating Afghan. He could obviously tell something was wrong, and there was fear in his eyes.
‘What is it? What is wrong?’
‘There’s no one there, Malouf. The compound’s empty.’
He looked genuinely astonished and started shaking his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, it is not empty. I swear it is not empty.’
I had to make a call in the heat of the moment. Did I believe him or not? Either he was a fucking good actor, or he was telling the truth.
‘Malouf says there’s someone there. He looks kind of convinced.’
‘You know what I’m thinking?’ Dusty’s voice came over the radio. ‘I’m thinking you don’t put two armed guards outside a compound with nothing to guard. There’s something else going on here.’
Dusty was right. This didn’t add up. ‘I say you exfiltrate,’ I told them. ‘Get the hell out of there. We can come in mob-handed, deal with it then.’
But Voodoo and Dusty weren’t the exfiltrating types. It was what made them what they were.
‘We’re going to check again,’ Voodoo said. ‘If we don’t find nothing on the second sweep, we’ll bug out.’
‘Roger that.’
Another silence. A minute. Maybe two. And then…
‘We got something,’ Voodoo breathed. ‘A door behind a carpet on the wall. Missed it first time round.’
Rabbit and I exchanged a glance. ‘I don’t like it,’ I murmured. I turned to Malouf. ‘If you’ve got anything else to tell us, now’s the time.’
Malouf shook his head. ‘All I know is Al-Zaranj is there,’ he said.
Silence again. Then the sudden, violent sound of a door splintering. I could picture Voodoo and Dusty entering this room, most likely with their NV on and IR beams from their weapons cutting through the darkness like lasers. I tensed myself for the sound of gunfire. None came. Just Voodoo’s voice, slightly breathless.
‘We’ve got a guy in here,’ he reported. ‘Strapped to a chair, looks unconscious. Jeez, whoever got to him did him over pretty bad.’
‘What the hell do you mean, strapped to a chair?’ I asked. ‘That can’t be Al-Zaranj.’
It was as I spoke these words that I saw it. It wasn’t much, just the ghost of an expression on Malouf’s face. A tightening round the eyes. A thinning of those podgy lips. He looked around, as if getting ready to run…
He was expecting something to happen.
‘Get out!’ I yelled into the comms. ‘It’s a trap! GET OUT!’
Everything happened so quickly. The moment I shouted into my radio mike, I heard another noise over the headset: the faint ringing of a mobile phone in the compound. My heart was in my throat. We knew only too well how easily a mobile could be used to detonate an explosive device. Simply a matter of dialling the number.
A millisecond after the phone rang, I heard Dusty’s voice. ‘GET DOWN!’
And then came the explosion.
I heard it through the headset first: a burst of white noise that almost deafened me. A second later the sound waves reached us: a low thud travelling across the desert and into the wadi.
Rabbit shouted, ‘Dusty! Voodoo!’
Silence.
‘Dusty! Voodoo! Come in!’
Still nothing. Rabbit and I looked at each other. We both knew this operation was rapidly going to shit before our eyes.
02.05 HRS.
When stuff goes wrong in the field, the important thing is to keep your head. Start to panic and you make mistakes, and we sure as hell couldn’t afford any more of those.
Rabbit continued trying to raise Voodoo and Dusty. I turned my attention to Malouf. He’d got up to his feet and was backing away from me, looking like he might run. So I strode towards him and knocked him back down to the ground. I pulled my Sig from its holster and pressed it into his jowly neck. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ I hissed.
The guy looked like he might
piss himself with fear. ‘He made me do it,’ he rasped. ‘He made me do it.’
‘Who?’
‘Afridi. He discovered that I was talking to the Americans. He took my daughter. He said he would…’ Malouf looked away, as though ashamed. ‘He said he would have her raped by all his men, then killed. Only if I did what he told me when you arrived would he free her.’
I had to breathe deeply for a moment to stop myself being consumed with rage. Damn it. Malouf had told us what we wanted to hear and we’d fucking fallen for it. We’d been played, and as a result, Voodoo and Dusty were… well, God alone knew what kind of state they were in.
I took Malouf by the throat. ‘If my friends are dead,’ I whispered, ‘your daughter gets orphaned tonight.’
Malouf’s eyes went wild. In another part of my brain I could hear Rabbit’s urgent calls: ‘Voodoo! Dusty! Do you copy?’
I tried to focus on the job in hand. Was Malouf telling the truth? Impossible to say, and we didn’t have time to fuck around with him. Dusty and Voodoo needed our help – now.
‘Do you really know where Al-Zaranj is?’ I hissed. ‘Or have you been fucking with us all along?’
At first Malouf didn’t answer, so I squeezed his throat harder. ‘I mean it, Malouf. I’ll fucking kill you here and now.’
‘Voodoo! Dusty! Come in…’
‘Please,’ Malouf begged in strangled tones through the confusion. ‘My daughter… my mother… please…’
‘Where’s Al-Zaranj?’
‘In the mountains.’ He pointed vaguely back towards the village. ‘There is a…’ – he struggled to find the English word – ‘a valley. North of here. It is called Bakharov. A stream runs through it, and there are caves. Al-Zaranj and his people are there. Afridi sends him food. The Taliban tell him to. They have been hiding for many weeks…’
I pushed him back down to the ground in disgust, and turned my back on him as he huddled up into a pathetic, frightened little ball. I hurried over to where Rabbit was crouched down, one finger to his earpiece. He gave me a severe look and shook his head. ‘Either the comms are out or they’re…’