by Chris Ryan
'As I've said, we rather lost track of Latifa once the Taliban fell. A few days ago, however, word reached us of her whereabouts. When the Taliban were thrown from power, their supporters were scattered around the country. Since then, certain factions have regrouped and gained in strength. It seems that Latifa has been abducted by one of these resurgent factions.
'Why?' Will asked, suspiciously. 'Surely the Taliban have bigger fish to fry at the moment.'
'I don't know,' Pankhurst admitted. 'I don't know why the Taliban do anything. What you've got to remember is that they're a law unto themselves and they have all sorts of warring factions that we don't even know about. I'm sure that most Taliban members couldn't give a fig about Latifa Ahmed. But clearly there's one group that does. If you want to know why, perhaps you can ask her when you see her.'
Will's eyes widened.
'We have an informer in the area who claims he can lead us to her. And that, Will, is where you come in.'
'You want me to go back to Afghanistan?'
'Precisely. You'll meet our contact and your objective will be to extract Latifa Ahmed from wherever she's being held and to bring her back safely to this country for questioning. If she can shed any light on Faisal Ahmed's whereabouts, we have to know. He could strike any minute and, frankly, this is our only lead.'
Will chewed on a fingernail for a moment. 'How reliable is your source?'
Pankhurst shrugged. 'We think he's sound. But we're not following this up because our source is reliable; we're following it up because we don't have any other options. And we don't have the luxury of time: at the moment we've no reason to believe that Faisal Ahmed knows Latifa's location. But he'll find out and we're pretty sure he'll try to free her. We have to get our hands on the woman before that happens.'
Will stood up and walked to the window. He looked out over the Thames to see that a flurry of snow was falling. It would be snowing in Afghanistan, too, not like the last time he was there. It had been high summer then, 35 degrees at the height of the sun, dry and acrid. But the Afghan winters were harsh. There would be deep snow - difficult to move through, easy to be seen in. And Afghanistan - the 'Stan' as the Regiment guys called it - was just as bad now as it was then. Worse, even. All this for a lead that could very well come to nothing.
He turned back to look at Pankhurst. 'How sure are you that Ahmed's planning something?' he asked.
'How sure do I need to be before I act?' the Director General replied, quietly. 'Our intelligence is pretty concrete. The student we apprehended in Rome gave us the basics.'
'Can I talk to him?'
'No,' Pankhurst said quickly. 'No. You can't do that.'
Will nodded, tactfully. He knew what that meant. If the student had been taken to a black camp, chances were he hadn't survived the questioning. Unfortunate for him, convenient for the authorities - they didn't want anyone running around spilling the beans about what they had been through.
'He must have got his intel from somewhere, though,' Will insisted.
Pankhurst nodded. 'He was a regular at the Rome mosque. We've interrogated the people he was friendly with, but they've given us nothing else. Trust me, Will, you won't get anything out of them. Our people are extremely persuasive.'
Will fell silent again. The prospect of a return to Afghanistan made him feel sick. But what was the alternative? To go back to the flat in Hereford and pick up his life where he had left off, dividing his time between the graveyard and the pub? How could he, now that he knew the truth about his family's death? How could he, now that he knew their killer was out there somewhere? He stared out of the window over the London skyline. Maybe Ahmed was there, hiding somewhere, waiting to strike. Waiting to kill more innocent people. Waiting to make widows and orphans. Waiting to destroy more lives, just like he had destroyed Will's. How bizarre that Will should have to go all the way back to Afghanistan to find out this man's location. Still, if that was what he had to do . . .
He turned back to Pankhurst. 'I'm not going in alone,' he said firmly. 'I'll need a unit. SAS.'
Pankhurst's nose twitched. 'Out of the question. If I could simply deploy the SAS, I would. You're being brought in precisely because you've been out of play for two years.'
'Cut the bullshit, Pankhurst,' Will snapped. The Director General's face flickered with annoyance. 'You and I both know I'm being brought in because you've gambled that I want Faisal Ahmed dead more than anything in the world.' Will looked around him. 'It's a comfortable office, this,' he said a bit more calmly. 'I'm not used to this sort of luxury. You obviously are. And you've obviously never been on covert ops in the Stan. If you had, you'd know that only an idiot would lay siege to the Taliban in mid-winter. If this were a more straightforward op, you'd be deploying a squadron. I'm asking for three men and if I don't get them, I'm not going.'
Pankhurst fell silent for a moment. When he spoke, it was with the reasonable voice of a skilled negotiator. 'I'm sure we could arrange some NATO troops in Kandahar.'
'I don't want NATO troops,' Will insisted. 'And I don't want fucking Green Berets. I want SAS. I know how they work and I know they're the best. Christ, sir, these guys devote their lives to this kind of work. There's no more chance of there being a mole in Hereford than there is of there being a mole in this room as we speak.'
The Director General took a deep breath. 'All right,' he said, quietly. 'I've asked you to trust me, so I'm going to return the compliment.'
Pankhurst managed to sound almost gracious, but Will knew it was simply that he had the DG over a barrel, so he stopped short of thanking him. 'Don't you have any more precise information about where this woman's being held?' he asked.
'Nothing. Our source is very jumpy - when you meet him, you'll need to win his trust. But we can hazard a guess that you'll be heading south from Kandahar - that's the area where the Taliban insurgency is strongest.'
Will nodded, curtly. He knew how dangerous that part of the world was.
'Listen to me carefully, Will,' Pankhurst continued. 'Your unit are the only ones you reveal your objective to and even they cannot know why you are extracting Latifa Ahmed. Someone's been tipping this guy off and we don't know how deep their influence goes. I know you've been trained to trust everyone at Hereford, Will, but that's one part of your training that you need to forget. We can't afford to trust anyone. Do you understand?'
'Yeah,' he replied. 'I understand.'
'And you're willing to do what it takes to get Latifa Ahmed out of Afghanistan?'
He nodded his head.
'Good,' Pankhurst said. If he felt any sense of satisfaction in Will's acceptance, he didn't show it. 'We can't hang around. We're assuming Ahmed doesn't know Latifa is being tortured, but as soon as he finds out he'll be straight there to extract her. And that woman has a lot of nasty things to look forward to - I don't want the Taliban torturing her to death before we've had the chance to ask her a few questions.'
'Yeah, well my diary's pretty free.'
'I'm sure it is,' Pankhurst replied. 'I'll get in touch with Credenhill now, tell them you'll be there in a couple of hours. In the meantime, I need to give you further instructions . . .'
*
Three and a half thousand miles away, a woman lay on the floor. She did not want to shiver. She did not want to show any sign of weakness, but she could not help it. The snow was thick outside - it had been falling for days now, the flakes piling softly on top of each other, covering the warscarred ground of her country in a false blanket of purity. As a child, she had loved the coming of the snows. She and her brother would rush out of their small house to play in it the moment they were allowed, their parents watching them fondly from the doorway as they made snowballs and threw showers of powder at each other.
But it had been snowing, too, when the soldiers came; and now, she could not think of the whiteness of the snow without picturing the crimson of their parents' blood as it seeped from their bodies, melting the white powder with its warmth, before mingli
ng into mush. Her childhood delight in the coming of the first snows had ended that day.
The hut in which she was being kept had no floor - just the earth, hardened with the cold, which seemed to leech any of the remaining warmth out of her body as she sat there. She pulled the thin cloth they had given her to wear tightly around her, but it had been chosen more to cover her body than to keep her warm and it did little good. She even found that she was glad of the burka headdress they had insisted she wear - in that enclosed environment around her head, the heat of her breath at least staved off some of the chill.
She had not eaten for three days; even then the food had been filthy, but she had devoured it simply because she was famished. Every few hours of the day and night, one or two of them would come in. She had learned long ago with these people that it was better to let them do what they had come to do, rather than try to resist. They used thick wooden sticks, mostly, and beat her around the stomach and the back of her legs; she did not dare look at her skin for fear that it would revolt even her, and she had become used to the constant pain and the bruises that grew worse day by day.
One day, a particular man would come in. He was taller than the others and more quietly spoken. His face was scarred - a long scar, starting on his lower lip and finishing somewhere on his left cheek. No hair grew over the scar, which was red and angry, and it gave his face an ugly, gnarled look.
When she had seen that scar, she had known that her life was about to turn unpleasant, because she had been there when it was first inflicted. It had been a while before the Taliban had been overthrown and shortly after they had discovered that her brother - her foolish, reckless, beloved brother - was a double agent. He had come to warn her, to tell her to flee, but the Taliban were close behind. They had burst into her tiny house, knocking down the door - six of them, armed and with wicked, almost hungry gleams in their eyes.
The men were barking harshly in Pashto, shouting at each other to grab Latifa; but they soon fell silent when they saw Faisal Ahmed waiting for them. Her brother had pulled his gun on them. He fired it twice, with a deadly pinpoint accuracy: two Taliban members fell to the ground instantly, their foreheads exploding in a grisly shower of blood and brain; but the others, silent now though still with a terrifying fervour in their eyes, had continued to close in on him.
That was when he drew his knife.
It was a wicked-looking thing, its blade smooth and sharp on one side, hooked and jagged on the other. When he stabbed it into the belly of one of their attackers, the man's entrails came out with it. Latifa had watched as Faisal swung the knife, which still had human gore hanging from it, and slashed another of them across the face. The blade instantly ripped a gash across the man's lower lip and up into his cheek; he had roared in pain and raised his hands to his bloodsoaked face.
Faisal had almost overcome them, but not quite. No doubt if he hadn't come to warn her, he would have been long gone. But he had come to warn her and now he would pay the price. They would both pay the price for the path he had chosen to take.
That had been nine years ago. The man who held her in captivity now had never made any reference to the day her brother had scarred him so horribly. But they both knew what this was all about. And while he did not hit her or raise his voice to her, she was more scared of him than anyone. He asked her questions. He told her she would die if she did not comply. Despite her state, she had been fully aware of the madness and the thuggery that lay beneath those questions. To stand up to him was perhaps the most difficult thing she had ever done in her difficult life.
There were no windows in the hut, so she had to judge what time it was by the amount of light that peeped through a crack in the wooden walls. It was mid-morning, she guessed. About the time that he usually came. She huddled into one corner, waiting for the sound she so dreaded: her door being unlocked.
It came soon enough and when it did she started shaking through fear as well as cold. She heard the harsh voices first, then the scratchy sound of a key in the lock. Her eyes winced as the door opened, letting in the light, which was blindingly bright from being reflected off the snow. Two men appeared in the doorway, both of them wearing robes, turbans and long beards. One of them carried an AK-47 strapped around his neck - he stood guard outside the door. The second man carried no weapon. He closed the door behind him, then walked towards her. She remained cowering in the corner.
'Get to your feet, woman,' he said softly in Pashto.
She pushed herself up from the ground. Her legs were weak, and it was a strain to remain upright. She found she was glad of the burka - it hid the fear on her face as he looked at her.
'You shall tell us where your brother is,' the man insisted quietly. 'Sooner or later, you shall tell us. It is the will of Allah.'
She took a deep breath. How close she had been to crumbling on more than one occasion. How close she had come to persuading herself that her brother had brought all this on himself. She did not approve of how he was spending his life. She did not approve at all. But he was her brother. He had looked after her. She loved him. And whenever she found her resolve crumbling, she thought of him as a little boy. So earnest. How could she condemn him to the fate these Taliban monsters no doubt had in store for him?
'I do not know where he is,' she whispered.
The man remained expressionless. 'You are lying, of course,' he said. 'He has been in contact with you. This is not something we suspect; it is something we know. Your pain will not cease until you tell us where he is.'
She stared defiantly at him, though he could not see her expression. They stood there for a moment, face to face in that freezing hut, before he turned and walked out of the room. 'Beat her,' he said to the guard as he left.
She felt her knees buckle at those words, but she did her best to remain standing as the guard entered the hut. He was a huge man - burly and big boned - with a thick-set face and broad, heavy shoulders. He had a look of wild fervour in his eyes as he removed the strap of his gun from round his neck. A look that suggested he would take great pleasure in what he was about to do. Pleasure in carrying out Allah's will.
'Please,' she whispered, but her plea went unheard or at least unnoticed.
The guard made sure that the safety catch of his weapon was switched on. Then he put one hand on the barrel and the other on the handle. He approached her, waving the butt of the gun in her direction.
'Please,' she whispered again. 'Please, don't -'
The butt cracked down hard on the side of her head. She gasped with pain and started to fall; but before she could hit the ground she felt a heavy blow in her stomach as the guard whacked the blunt metal against her skin. It winded her so badly that she could not even make a noise; she just staggered slightly, trying, through her pain, to catch her breath.
And then it began in earnest.
Mostly the guard used the butt of the gun to beat her, though occasionally he used his feet, booted heavily under his dirty white robes. She huddled up into a little ball, like a hedgehog protecting itself, although she had no spikes to shield her from danger - only her damaged and brutalised skin, pulled tight over the bones of her thin body.
'You must tell him what he wants to know,' he would say occasionally. 'It is the only way to make this stop.'
But she said nothing. She even found herself wishing he would use the other end of his gun, to put an end to this. But she knew they would not allow her to die. Not yet. Not while they still had a use for her.
The beating seemed to last for an age - at one point she coughed up what she could only assume was blood into the veil of her burka - and it only finished when the guard himself seemed exhausted. He spat on her prostrate body, then left the hut without a word, locking the door behind him.
The woman did not move. She could not move. Freezing though she was, her body was too sore for her even to contemplate huddling up to try and keep warm, so she just lay there, her head spinning, her body pressed against the frozen earth.