by Rob Sinclair
‘Turn round and go back,’ Cox said, as the Land Cruiser continued to crawl towards the scene.
‘Go back where?’ Jensen said. ‘Aleppo?’
‘Of course not. Just take us back and find another way round.’
‘There isn’t another way round,’ Hayes said.
‘Then what do you suggest?’ Cox asked.
‘It’s just an accident. I think they’re hurt,’ Jensen said, leaning forward in his seat as though the extra inches would give him a much clearer picture of what he was looking
at.
Cox looked again, and where the third man was kneeling she spotted the form of a person on the floor. Not a big person at all. A boy. The man was cradling him.
‘We need to help them,’ Jensen said.
‘Then call an ambulance.’
‘Around here? Hayes can stay in the car with you. I’ll get out and check. If it’s serious, I’m not leaving a young boy on the roadside to die.’
‘No!’ Cox shouted. ‘Do not stop this car.’
‘Sorry, Miss Cox, but I don’t follow your orders. There’re kids here, they’re hurt.’
‘Jensen, don’t be a fool. Come on, Hayes, tell him.’
‘We can’t go back,’ Hayes said. ‘Keep going forward, slowly. We can squeeze through on the left.’
‘You mean where the woman with her baby is standing?’ Jensen said, eyebrow raised at Hayes.
‘She’ll move.’
‘This is stupid,’ Cox said, but neither of the men reacted at all to her words.
They were soon just twenty yards away. With the Land Cruiser’s front beams lighting up the scene, the gaggle of people were taking notice and looking edgy. One of the women edged forward, waving her arms in the air.
‘They need help,’ Jensen said.
‘But we can’t help them!’ Cox said.
‘You don’t know that.’
Jensen slowed further and then pushed on the brake and the car gently rocked to a stop. Now that they were close up, Cox could hear the shouts and cries of the people outside. They were distressed, there was no doubt about that. But even if this was a genuine accident scene, what could they do to help?
‘Wait,’ Hayes said, before Jensen could even think about getting out. He was no longer looking at the crash scene, but out of his window, across the sand and into the darkness. Cox followed his line of sight. She had no idea what Hayes had seen out there, and she turned her eyes back to the woman who was now right in front of the Land Cruiser. She was crying and shouting.
‘She’s begging for our help,’ Jensen said. ‘It’s her son. He’s bleeding out.’
He put his hand to the door.
‘No!’ Hayes boomed.
Cox saw a glint of light somewhere out in the black.
‘Go!’ both she and Hayes screamed in unison.
Jensen must have sensed their genuine urgency, because all of a sudden the Good Samaritan in him was gone and he did exactly as instructed. He put his foot down and the 4x4, engine revving, lurched forward. The woman jumped out of the way, her desperation turning to anger in a flash. Jensen headed straight for the woman and baby, the gap beyond them just large enough for the Land Cruiser to pass, but as she cowered away, another figure jumped into view from behind the people carrier. A man, dressed in black, wielding an assault rifle.
He opened fire without hesitation and the bullets raked across the reinforced bodywork of the Land Cruiser.
‘Go the other way!’ Hayes shouted, pointing to the smaller gap on the opposite side, where the battered farm truck was just a couple of yards from the railings at the verge of the road.
Jensen jerked the steering wheel. Cox was thrown to the side and her head smacked off the window, sending her brain spinning. Through her blurred vision she could see the shapes of people as they quickly shifted positions for the attack.
A second armed man jumped up from the other side of the carnage, immediately pulling on his trigger. The people in front were still scattering as the Land Cruiser shot forward. One of the women wasn’t quick enough and there was a thunk as the speeding 4x4 flew past and clipped her. Cox whipped her eyes to the side to see the woman flying to the ground. She was lucky, only inches away from a likely fatal collision.
‘Hold on!’ Jensen warned.
The next second the front side of the Land Cruiser smashed into the corner of the farm truck, the momentum sufficient enough to shift the mass out of the way. Even with the heavy armouring, the Land Cruiser took a battering in the process, but they were still moving.
They sped away as the bullets kept coming, then Cox again noticed that glint, more obvious this time. She turned and saw the trail of smoke . . .
‘RPG!’ she screamed.
But by that point there really was nothing they could do. All three of them collectively braced themselves, and the rocket hissed past and exploded just yards behind them, sending a ball of fire into the air. It was pure luck that it wasn’t a direct hit, but the shockwave from the explosion was enough to lift the Land Cruiser into the air, back wheels first, and when it came crashing back down Cox was sure that the whole thing would break into pieces.
Somehow it didn’t.
‘Get us the fuck out of here,’ Hayes said, a few seconds later, sounding as surprised as Cox was that they were all still alive and in one piece.
Jensen said nothing as he crunched into third gear and thumped the accelerator. Within seconds the crash scene was fading into the distance behind them, and all three of them began to breathe more easily.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jensen said, looking straight ahead at the road.
‘It’s okay,’ Hayes said.
Cox didn’t quite agree it was, and didn’t say anything.
‘I thought it was just an accident,’ Jensen said, sounding bemused and just a little rattled. ‘There was a baby there. A kid too. Women.’
Cox huffed. ‘You may have been working in Syria longer than I have, Jensen, but I’ve a feeling I know its people better than you do.’
‘You reckon?’
‘I do.’
Jensen and Hayes knew the area well enough to know which rebel groups held which towns, but they clearly didn’t know the people like she did. Most likely Jensen and Hayes were seasoned ex-soldiers, possibly mercenaries. Used to fighting, used to war-zones even. But Cox knew the enemy out there was different to any other she’d ever seen. An enemy who had no qualms in using any advantage they could, even if that meant not just sacrificing women and kids in the process, but using them as pawns.
‘Really there’s only one rule to remember out here,’ Cox said.
‘Yeah?’ Jensen scoffed. ‘And what’s that?’
‘There are no rules. And there’s certainly no time for being a hero.’ Cox saw him roll his eyes. ‘Maybe next time you should just do what I bloody say. Now please, just get us to the airbase so I can leave this damn country behind.’
TWENTY-ONE
Bruges, Belgium
Leaving England turned out to be relatively simple for Aydin. Certainly more straightforward than how he’d got in. It was a plain matter of fact that it was much harder to smuggle into the UK than it was to smuggle out. Whatever people might have said to the contrary, the government and the police and the security services, and even the general public, really didn’t care much if terrorists were leaving for elsewhere, as long as they didn’t come back.
Employing all of his training to keep his trail clean, Aydin headed from London to the east coast where he managed to hide himself aboard a container ship heading from Felixstowe in Suffolk to Rotterdam, Holland; one of the busiest ports in the world.
Busy was good. It meant he wasn’t noticed at all as he left the ship and the port under the cover of night and began a trek across the small country towards neighbouring Belgium, through a combination of plain old walking, train and bus.
The Belgian police forces and intelligence services were undoubtedly on high alert; for obvious reasons, as t
he country had become a breeding ground for Islamist terrorists, but on entering the country, that heightened police presence would only be of concern to Aydin if he was going through an official border crossing, like an airport, which he wasn’t. Within continental Europe he could easily travel on foot or bike or by rail or road between any of the twenty-six countries party to the Schengen Agreement without the need to show a passport or identification.
Still, he had to entertain the very real possibility that he was still under watch. From Hidashar, perhaps, from others connected to their network. And really there wasn’t a big list of places of where he might head to next, so he had to remain vigilant. What he wanted was to get to the head – Wahid. But he had no idea where Wahid or the majority of his other brothers were located. That was out of necessity, no point in risking one of them getting caught and spilling all about their plans, however well-trained they were to withstand interrogation.
But there was one brother who Aydin knew how to find.
Even though he’d got out of England and into Holland without hitches, he remained ultra-cautious, as he was trained to be, and he wouldn’t take chances. For all he knew there could be a team of police or intelligence agents on watch close to the Belgian border, either routine, or even looking for him if he’d somehow made a mistake and left breadcrumbs for them to follow. So, before leaving Holland, he got off the bus he was travelling on five miles short of the border and once again waited for nightfall before heading on foot through fields and woodlands to reach Belgium. Only in the morning, safely inside, would he head back onto public transport.
He arrived in the small city of Bruges just before noon the following day, nearly forty-eight hours since he’d left London behind. Since he’d seen his mother being wheeled out of the family home in a body bag. He didn’t know whose hand had taken her life, but he knew who was responsible. For now his mission was simple. Track down his mother’s killers, his sister’s too. Find them. Kill them.
To do that, though, to find out where Wahid and the others were, he needed help.
He’d never been to Bruges before, never to the country before in fact, but as he walked alongside the canal in the quaint city centre, with the sun shining above him in a clear sky, he couldn’t help but be caught by its charm. The townhouses – all different shapes and sizes and colours – jutting up from the banks of the canal were well kept and many had ornate decorations to their stonework. Boats put-putted along the water peacefully, small waves lapping against the brick sides of the canal. Ahead of him, at the junction of the canal he was heading to, a church sat prominently, its Gothic spires rising into the sky proudly, above all of the other buildings surrounding it. Aydin had never seen the inside of a church, he probably never would, but he still appreciated the beauty of what he saw.
He walked down the streets not feeling any particular threat from either the people or the authorities, whose presence was seen but not felt. He wondered, if he’d been assigned to this place, would he have felt more satisfied with his role, more content with the path that had been laid out for him?
That, he guessed, was irrelevant now.
Despite the turmoil in his mind, it felt relaxed in Bruges, the people he saw were happy and . . . ignorant. That’s the best word he could find, because the reality was that despite appearances, this place was no more safe than anywhere else he’d been. After all, look how easy it was for him to come and fit in. Surely it was one of the many reasons why Bruges was chosen as a location.
Looking at the street signs ahead Aydin realised he was close to his destination, but for some reason, rather than carrying on he found himself stopping and sitting on a bench to take stock for a few minutes.
He watched people idling by on foot, on bikes and on canal boats on the water in front of him. It was hard for him to describe what he thought of the people he saw. He was supposed to hate them. Every single one of them. That was how he’d been brought up on the Farm, what the imam and the others had drilled into him and all of boys every day for years. These people – these heathens – were his enemy, the reason for the misery suffered by so many of his kind across the world. He wasn’t supposed to be able to look at the faces of these infidels without anger and resentment.
So why, after all these years, was it so hard for him to find those feelings now?
Back at the Farm it had all seemed so much more straightforward and clear cut to understand. Aydin and his brothers were from such very different backgrounds. That’s how the elders had wanted it. They’d wanted the boys to be different from each other because each of them was needed for a different role. They were unique, and were treated as such.
Propaganda in the West often portrayed child soldiers as little more than inghimasi – poorly trained troops sent into battle with assault rifles and suicide vests, dispatched in droves to the front lines to die. Aydin and his brothers weren’t like that. Yes, it was true that some of the boys had been snatched from orphanages or minority sects of enemies, but others like Aydin were taken from their homes by their fathers, who, like the elders, believed so deeply in the ideology the boys had been trained to uphold and protect.
Regardless of their roots, Aydin knew it was true that each of the boys represented easy prey for the elders – men who were so skilled at turning feelings of anger, exclusion and revenge into barbarity with their ultra-violent doctrine.
Which was why Aydin struggled to comprehend how he was falling apart so quickly. As he sat there on that bench in Bruges, plotting against his own, part of him wished he was back at the Farm, feeling the heavy but consistent hand of the Teacher. Perhaps what he needed most now was that strong hand to put him back onto the road that had been made for him.
No. He drove away that cowardly thought. He couldn’t ever go back there . . .
Feeling renewed strength, he got up from the bench and walked the short distance along the canal before he turned off and moved through a narrow, twisting alley with cobblestones underneath. Tourist-centric knick-knack shops were dotted here and there, postcards crammed onto spinning display stands, T-shirts and ornaments and flags emblazoned with the black, yellow and red of the Belgian flag, or with quaint prints of the pretty buildings that lined the canals. Still, the street was quiet of pedestrians, perhaps because of the time of day or year.
After a hundred yards, Aydin reached the wide wooden doorway to an ageing townhouse. It was one of the first dwellings he’d seen that appeared less than perfect. The paint on the outside was peeling profusely, and there were large segments of render missing, exposing the stone underneath. The wooden window frames were scarred and rotten in places. There was however a relatively modern-looking intercom by the front door, with eight buttons running down the panel – one for each of the dwellings inside. Seven of the buttons had little name tags next to them, neatly filled in with blue and black pen. One didn’t. That was the button Aydin pressed.
‘Oui,’ a man said after a few seconds.
Despite the crackly response, Aydin recognised the voice just fine. It was his brother, Itnashar.Number twelve.
TWENTY-TWO
‘Do you still think of your family?’ Aydin asked his friend as they lay on their bunks in the dark. He couldn’t sleep, and he knew Itnashar was still awake from the way he was breathing.
‘Yes, of course I still think of them.’
‘Why do you think they left us here?’
Even after four years it was a question Aydin still asked himself constantly, though this was the first time he’d ever repeated it to another person. Why tonight, he wasn’t really sure.
‘Because it is God’s will,’ said Itnashar, though his response had no real heart to it and Aydin wasn’t sure his brother really agreed with those well-drilled words. ‘We were chosen for this. We are blessed.’
Aydin snorted in disgust. ‘This is a prison.’
‘You know what will happen if they hear you saying that.’
Yes, he did. They were just children, and so o
f course they naturally pushed boundaries, and they had all crossed the lines at the Farm one way or the other. And they all knew what happened when they did. People learned by their mistakes, and they were no different. Aydin had long ago learned not to challenge the elders.
‘They can control what we do, but not what we think,’ Aydin said, defiant.
‘I’m not so sure about that.’
Aydin let out a long sigh. The room they were in was pitch black, even though the single window was uncovered. The sky outside was filled with thick cloud and with no moonlight there was nothing else out there to provide illumination.
It was just the two of them in the room. To start with, all fifteen of the boys had slept in one military-style bunker, but over the years they’d been moved about, siphoned off into groups depending on their strengths, weaknesses and the particular training they were enduring at any one point. The status quo never lasted for long, though Aydin had been sharing a room with just Itnashar for the last six months. They were close. Aydin had no idea when the next change around would come – it could be any day. He just hoped it wasn’t soon. He didn’t know what he’d do without his friend now.
‘The answer is yes,’ Itnashar said in a whisper.
Aydin didn’t say anything for a few moments, but his heart beat rapidly at what now felt like an illicit conversation.
He knew Itnashar’s family lived in Afghanistan, where the Farm was. At least that’s where Aydin thought the Farm was. He didn’t know much else about his friend’s background though, or that of the other boys. They’d been living together for years, but such was the level of control the elders had over them all.
‘Why did they send you here?’ Aydin asked. ‘What did they tell you?’
‘I . . . I don’t want to talk about that,’ Itnashar said and Aydin deflated a little at his response. ‘Come over here,’ Itnashar then said and Aydin turned his head to where he knew his brother was. He saw a small ball of smothered light from under Itnashar’s blanket.