by Jeff Gulvin
The boy picked up the headset. ‘Who am I calling?’
‘Everybody. I want to know exactly what’s going on. I want you to speak to the folk down the hill there, and tell them that the jeep went off the cliff and you’re hurt. This radio was made to bounce, so they’re gonna believe you. And, boy.’
The boy stared at him.
‘Think real hard about martyrdom.’
He stood with the action worked on the rifle and pointed it. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘I want you to speak with the mountain Taliban dialect.’
‘How do you know I can?’
‘Because I figure it’s your common language. I heard various dialects up at the camp, and I want you to use Taliban.’
The boy looked sourly at him.
‘Go on.’ The Cub said it to him now in the Taliban dialect. ‘I’ll be listening.’
Ten minutes later, they were rolling again. The Cub could only speak the few words he had picked up when they took Yousef Ramzi, but that was a long time ago and he had not had much call to use it since. But he believed he had said enough to convince the boy, and the ensuing conversation had been stilted and breathless. The boy was not bad: they must have given him acting lessons at that school in England.
Another ten minutes passed and The Cub saw the wash of headlights climbing the mountain road. He knew another truck would be coming down from the camp, but he ought to have enough time. He told the boy to slow and then stop, and then he waved the AK in his face. ‘Out.’
‘What?’
‘Get out.’
The boy climbed out of the driver’s seat and stood beside the jeep. All at once he looked small, scared and incredibly young. The Cub moved into the driver’s seat.
‘What will they do when they find you?’ he asked.
‘I’ve failed.’ The boy’s face was still. ‘They do not tolerate failure.’
‘They’ll shoot you, huh?’
The boy shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
The Cub looked forward again, one hand on the wheel and the other holding the Kalashnikov. He levelled it between the boy’s eyes, and they balled and stalked, and his mouth fell open. ‘I can shoot you right now. Make it easy on you,’ he said. ‘Or you can climb back in here and help me.’
The boy stood still, not speaking …
‘You’ve got three seconds. One, two …’
The boy got in and The Cub shifted across to the passenger seat again.
He could hear the engine of the truck labouring up the hill, moving slowly, much slower than they were. The road was narrow, making it very difficult to pass. The Cub was thinking hard, looking left and right as the road dipped and twisted, opening the hill on one side of them and closing it on the other.
‘There.’ He pointed into the darkness ahead, at a slight slope backing into the hillside away from the cliff edge. It was on the height of a bend in the road and would have to do. ‘Pull over and back up there,’ The Cub told him. The boy did as he was instructed, less sullen now, much more mentally malleable. The Cub watched as he backed and backed until they were at an angle, facing down on to the road. ‘Cut the engine.’
The boy did as he was told, and again stillness settled on them. The Cub lifted his head, like an animal hunting, to listen. Vaguely, far in the distance, he heard the sound of an approaching engine. ‘How many men are posted down there?’
‘Ten.’
‘How many will they send?’
‘Most of them.’
‘That’s what I figured. Maybe just a couple left for us to contend with.’
The boy looked at him, face pale all at once in the darkness. ‘What’re you going to do?’
The Cub just smiled at him. ‘Give me your belt.’
The boy looked a little quizzical for a moment, then took the rope belt that held up his trousers and handed it to him. The Cub tied him to the steering wheel, then took the turban from his head and tore off a strip, which he stuffed into his mouth. Then he took the rest of it, wound it freshly about his own head and slung the AK over one shoulder. He hummed softly to himself as he reached behind and picked up two grenades, then he climbed out of the jeep and moved down to the side of the road. He chose the cliff side, which was not sheer, but steep and loose with sand, broken shale and stones. His feet slithered and slipped as he sought a position behind a jutting chunk of rock, and, as he did so, headlights appeared down the road ahead.
He waited, pins pulled on the grenades with the fly-off levers pressed in, one in each hand, the rifle hanging at his chest. He kept low as the headlights washed over his rock and then disappeared again round the first bend, before reappearing and vanishing. The saliva dried in his mouth and all his senses were alive. His mind was fixed on what he had to do and he waited. The truck rolled nearer. Headlights again, and he ducked lower behind the boulder. Then the lights were gone, but the engine strained louder and louder. Slowly the truck came into view, first the lights, then the shadow, and it rumbled right by him, the canvas top swaying, yawning open at the back. He had kept his eyes away from the lights, and when he popped his head up now, he could see the shapes hunched with their guns in the back of the truck. He licked his lips and expertly lobbed the grenades, which sliced soundlessly through the air, one after the other. He did not hear them land. Seconds passed, then he heard a shout and then the explosions, a millisecond between each. Orange flames shot up and he saw the truck lift clear of the ground, land and swerve dangerously close to the edge of the cliff. It arced and teetered on two wheels, and then collapsed on its side, a mass of sharded burning metal.
The Cub leapt up, emptied two short volleys from the AK at the wreck, then jumped back in the jeep. With the stiletto, he slit the rope round the boy’s wrists and told him to drive. ‘Remember,’ he said, as the boy fired up the engine. ‘You’ve got nothing to hold your pants up if you run.’
They drove down the mountain and, without stopping, negotiated the second set of watchers with machine-gun fire and more grenades. Then they were on the valley floor, racing towards the border.
‘Will the plane still be at the airfield?’ The Cub demanded.
The boy stared at him.
‘This isn’t the time to start lying to me, boy. Will it still be there?’
The boy bit his lip, disgust mixed with the fear in his face. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘And the pilots?’
‘They’ll be there too.’
They flew into Peshawar. The Cub had sent a message on the ancient, but highly effective and unbreakable one-time pad to the back-up he had from the ISA. The kid was sitting in the only other passenger seat, in tears. The Cub had given the boy the interrogation of his young life—while sitting with a gun trained on the pilot’s back—and his particular war was over. He had spoken quietly and menacingly, and managed to extract the information he was looking for. It was not definitive, but it was a start.
‘They’ll kill me,’ the boy said, as the plane banked above the airfield. ‘They will now definitely kill me.’ He stared through at the cockpit, where the co-pilot still nursed an open gash on the side of his head. ‘They are witness to what I told you. They will kill me now.’
The Cub nodded slowly. ‘Probably.’
The boy stared at him coldly then. ‘You should have shot me back there.’
‘You had the choice, remember. You chose to live.’ He looked out of the window as the small airfield came into view and he wondered how successful the man on the ground had been. Money usually did the trick with officials in a remote outpost like this, but the town was a hotbed of anti-American rhetoric and he wondered if money alone would be enough. He still had his identity as Terry Morgan, the photographer, but knew that would not wash. The airfield got closer and closer: another country, passports and questions; and the fact he held a gun in his hand, and the boy and the two pilots. He stood up and stuck his head into the cockpit.
‘Fly over the airfield.’
‘What?’ The co-pilot twisted round to look at h
im, blood congealing above his eye where The Cub had whacked him with the rifle butt.
‘You heard me. Overshoot the runway and keep on south-west.’
‘But we’re low on fuel.’
The Cub grinned then, showing his teeth. ‘Good. The kinda landing I got planned, we need to be.’
‘We can’t do it. There’s nowhere else to land.’
The Cub worked the action on the rifle. ‘Trust me. There will be.’
He squatted behind them now, as they overshot the runway and flew over the sprawling slums of the town towards the mountains. They were heading for Bannu, where he figured he would have a better chance of survival, but he doubted they’d have enough fuel to get there.
Halfway across the mountain range, the co-pilot looked round at him again. ‘We’ve got the Pakistani authorities on the radio,’ he said.
‘Tell them to fuck off.’
‘They’re sending up a fighter to make us land.’
‘I tell you what, then,’ The Cub said, getting up. ‘Let’s not wait for it. The first decent stretch of ground we come to, I want you to put this baby down.’
The co-pilot swallowed, then nodded and translated to the pilot, and The Cub strapped himself in.
They landed on a stretch of open scrub desert at the southern crown of the hills, north of Kohat. The wings tilted badly from side to side as they swept in low, and the boy gripped the armrests of his seat. They came down with a terrific bang and the undercarriage was ripped off, the plane almost bucking into a somersault. Then they were airborne again for a few moments, and through the open cockpit door, The Cub saw the nose dip. The pilot yelled and they slithered along the ground, and the boy screamed as all the windows popped. The Cub sat where he was, gun on his knees, gripping the arm of the seat with one hand and the gun butt with the other. The slide went on for ages, and then the whole plane shuddered and span ninety degrees as the right wing was torn off. He saw the fear on the boy’s face and again he wondered how he had ended up with an outfit like Bin Laden’s. He was still staring at him, teeth gritted, jaws clamped together, when the plane lurched to a stop and the single engine died.
The sudden silence was chilling, like the lull before the storm, when the electricity gathers in the atmosphere before unleashing itself on the earth. The Cub scrambled his senses together and unbuckled the belt that fastened him into the seat. The AK47 was still attached to him by the sling, but the wooden barrel casing had shattered and the gun was useless. He had the 9mm he had taken from the pilot, however, and he took it from his belt, glanced at the boy and then into the open cockpit. Neither the pilot nor co-pilot was moving. Quickly, he checked himself for injuries, then got up and went to the air-locked door. The boy sat where he was, breathing hard; little flakes of blood bubbling up into his mouth. His ribs must have shattered and punctured a lung. He was bleeding internally. The Cub twisted the two-handled door and pushed it open. Hot, acrid air filled his lungs and he could smell the leaking aviation fuel. He did not look back, just adjusted the pistol where he had stuffed it back in the rope belt and leapt to the ground, buckled at the knees and rolled parachute-style, before rising and sprinting away from the stricken plane. The ground was rough, choked with stones, and he feared for his ankles. It was some kind of a crop field and in the distance he could see two peasant workers staring in incredulity at the plane. He kept moving, ducking low and working his way across the field to the thin line of broken tarmac, which was the road to Kohat. Halfway across the field, the plane blew up behind him.
He lay in the dried mud, with his hands over his head, as bits and pieces of debris showered him, shards of glass and metal and little bits of wood and burning foam. Hoisting himself to one elbow, he looked back and saw the flames—red, gold and black shooting up at the sky—then he got up and made it the rest of the way to the road.
He stood there, ignoring the fire now, and briefly he considered the local back-up in Peshawar. He was glad that no one had been compromised. Long after he was gone, they would have to live there and, when it suited their purpose, bribed officials have a habit of remembering who had given them money. He looked up and down the road. He was on his own now, but he was dressed like a local and his skin was dark enough to get away with most situations. Also, his grasp of the language had been greatly enhanced by a year in Islamabad. The year was over now and he was glad. He liked the food, but hated the humidity, and the whores had never been to his liking: so much for the Kama Sutra.
He sat down by the road and rested, amazed that he had made it through the crash landing without a broken bone. He needed water and rued the fact that the containers had been left in the jeep. There had been water on the plane, but no time to think about it and no way of carrying it either. But there was a road and there were people further up that field, and where there were people, there was water. He straightened, slipped the 9mm from his waistband and checked the action and the clip. Smooth enough, one round already in the chamber, no safety catch, just a hair trigger. He replaced it in his pants and wiped the sweat from his brow.
The road ran from east to west, and he stood shading his eyes from the sun and looked for traffic. Nothing moving, just the heat, shimmering like water in the distance. He walked east, the sun on his back, where it burned through the cotton of his clothing, and he longed for the mountains of Idaho. It was not often he thought of home, but he had been out of sight for a full year and this deal had gone to ratshit. It needed to be refigured and re-evaluated, and might have been aborted altogether if he had not taken the boy hostage.
He paused and looked back across the field to where the stricken plane had attracted quite a crowd of peasants. He could see them migrating towards it from hidden places of work in the fields. What he needed was a truck to Kohat, where he could disappear, establish fresh contact and get the hell out of this country. But there was no truck and he walked on for an hour without seeing anything. The plains here were still quite high and he thought it ought to be cooler, but no cloud broke up the sky and the blue was so perfect it became a haze. The gun chafed his skin through the thin cotton clothing, and he shifted it to the back and then the other side, and finally walked with it openly in his hand.
He heard an engine behind him suddenly, just a faint hum in the distance, and he turned round but initially did not see any vehicle. Then the heat deepened and he saw the unwieldy front of an ageing Ford truck gradually moving closer. It looked military green and, for a moment, The Cub wondered, but as he narrowed his eyes and squinted into the sunlight, the green became a dull grey coated with dust. He held his hand out, as he had seen local people do on these underused highways, when he had been doing early reconnaissance work last year. An old man was driving, both hands at the top of the wheel, and at first The Cub thought he was not going to stop, but then he suddenly ground the gears and slowed the truck without using the brakes. He did not look sideways, but brought the truck to a stop alongside him. The Cub opened the door. The man looked at him then, grinned a toothless smile and gestured for him to get in. The Cub asked him how far it was to Kohat, and the man muttered, gesticulated and nodded all in the same moment. He chucked over a water bottle and pulled away again. The Cub drank it dry, then settled against the door and went to sleep.
10
SWANN LAY IN BED with Logan in his arms and brushed his lips against her hair. ‘We’ve got Harada at a disadvantage,’ he said. ‘If some form of negotiation starts, that could be useful.’
Logan lifted her head, rested her chin on his chest and looked him in the eyes. ‘We do?’
‘Yes. He thinks he’s got the upper hand, which, of course, he has right now. But we know he’s ex-JRA and we think this may have something to do with the man you’ve got in custody.’
‘And that’s having him at a disadvantage?’
‘Well, it’s better than knowing nothing at all.’
‘Why should he want to warn us, Jack?’ she said. ‘And why the codeword?’
‘I don’t
know, unless he intends to make himself public. If he does that, he needs to use codewords that tell you it’s not a hoax.’ He sat up and placed his arms behind his head. ‘The threat of being able to do something is far more effective as a weapon man actually doing it. Fear becomes your greatest tool. The IRA proved it with twenty-five years’ attacking the UK mainland. Harada doesn’t want to kill civilians, Chey. We know that from the fact he phoned a warning in the first place and set his device in an area where no one would get hurt. Also, he believes he’s a warrior—a samurai. The samurai did not kill noncombatants in war, and he’s declared this to be a war of sorts.’ He sat up straighter. ‘He’ll contact you again when he’s ready and issue another warning. When he does, you’ll be armed with much more knowledge, much more information than he thinks you’ve got. That’s an advantage.’
Harrison had his black Chevy truck parked on Burgundy Street, with a police notice pasted on the windshield. On his bed he had laid his battered old army pack, which dated him to Vietnam. He had dug out his scuffed fatigue jacket with the name patch missing from above the breast pocket and poked his fingers through one or two of the holes. Then he had selected his oldest, most battered cowboy hat, with the sides curled up and a red-tailed hawk’s feather stuck in the sweatband. There was a bullet hole in each end, which he had stitched together with staples. Jean picked up the hat, watching him as he sat down on the bed and removed the pack of Marlboro from one pocket of his shirt and the Merit menthols from the other. He pointed to the small cabinet by the bed. ‘Jean, in that drawer, right there, is a leather tobacco pouch. Hand it to me, would you?’
She passed him the pouch, and he took the packet of hand-rolling tobacco he had bought, plus a tin of chew and some papers, and stowed them all in the pouch.
Jean was still fingering the hat. ‘This is a bullet hole, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, mam.’
‘Were you wearing it at the time?’