by Chris Ryan
Held at gunpoint, their hands were tied behind their backs with lengths of roughly made rope.
'It was that fucking informant,' Kennedy gasped under his breath as they were being tied up. 'He sold us down the fucking river.'
'I know,' Will said, quietly. He glanced over to the corner of the square to see if Ismail had reappeared, but there was no sign of him. For now they had other things to worry about. Their Taliban captors began talking harshly to them in Pashto, jabbing them with guns and pushing them in the direction of one of the buildings they had been trying to storm. The three of them were marched through the main door and into a dark room. Their packs were taken from them and the door was locked from the outside.
The moment they were alone, curses started to fly around the room - most of them from Kennedy and most of them aimed at Ismail. 'Little raghead bastard!' he fumed. 'All that bullshit about his wife and kid. Anderson was right about the fucker all along.' The fact that his face was cut and his body was bruised seemed to worry Kennedy far less than Ismail's treachery. Will, too, was less concerned about the physical injuries that had been inflicted on him, choosing instead to feel his way around the dark room, searching for a way out.
As soon as Anderson's name was mentioned, however, they all fell silent. What a great Christmas present for his family back home this was going to be. They wouldn't even have a body to bury - just a plaque somewhere in St Martin's, Hereford, and a few kind words from someone in authority. Will tried to put from his mind the thought that must have been going through the heads of Drew and Kennedy too - that unless they experienced a sudden and remarkable change in their fortunes, that plaque in St Martin's would be joined by three more.
The door opened and they were blinded by the light of a couple of torches shining in on them. A man walked in, his body silhouetted in the doorway. Will could tell that he was aiming a gun in their direction.
This is it, he thought to himself. Strangely, he found he didn't much mind the idea of his impending death. All he felt was a vague sense of remorse that he would not be laid to rest alongside his wife and daughter.
The man spoke. Slowly and in deeply accented English, he addressed the SAS soldiers.
'You were foolish to come here.'
No one replied.
'Your friend is dead,' he continued. 'At first light, his body will be dragged to the outskirts of the village. The wild animals will be glad of it. The rest of you have until dawn to consider the grave insult you have inflicted on Islam in coming to this place. Then you will be executed and you will join your friend.'
Without another word, the man stepped backwards into the darkness and the door was firmly locked once more.
'Happy fucking Christmas to you, too,' Kennedy said, under his breath. But there was no mirth in his voice.
Their room was windowless and pitch black. In the darkness, Will edged towards the door. Standing with his back towards it, he gave it a rap with his bound hands. It sounded solid. There was no way they'd be able to break that door down, not in these conditions.
It was freezing cold, too, although their snowsuits offered them some protection. The cold wasn't their biggest worry, though. The chilling words of their Taliban captor rang in Will's head.
They were stuck in this place.
There was no way out - not even for men of their ability.
All they could do was wait until sunrise and the horrors that it would bring.
*
Her feet were ravaged by the branding she had received earlier. She would have had difficulty standing up, even if she had wanted to. Instead, she remained huddled on the cold, hard ground, foetus-like.
She was beyond hunger now. Her stomach, which for days had shrieked at her to satisfy it with food, had withdrawn into a dull ache that seemed always to be there. Her exhaustion caused her to exist in a semi-drowsy state, somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, a half-coma from which she was only roused when they came in to question her or to inflict more brutality upon her person.
But suddenly, from outside, a noise caused her bruised eyelids to flicker open. A gunshot rang out through the air, the harsh bang sending a shock through her as if she herself had been shot.
And then there was a voice: 'Anderson!'
The woman blinked. The name meant nothing to her, but the voice that shouted it did.
It was English.
She had not heard any foreigners in this village. It was full of ordinary Afghans and the brutal Taliban insurgents. No British or American troops, as far as she could tell, had come this way. Not in this weather.
Until now.
A tiny flame of hope sparked up within her and like a small candle in a dark room it seemed to bring warmth and light.
But as quickly as she was filled with hope, it drained back out of her again as she heard the harsh voices of her captors.
'Bind his hands,' someone said in Pashto. 'And imprison them in the schoolroom. We will deal with them at first light.'
There was a scuffling, then the banging of a door. The woman felt sick. Then she felt numb. Then she closed her eyes once more and for the first time since she had arrived in this hellish place, she wept. And as the tears finally came, she felt for all the world as though they would never, ever stop.
*
When death comes, it is best that it comes quickly.
Ever since he had started in the Regiment, Will had been of this point of view. And when his family had died, he had comforted himself in some small way that at least they had known nothing about it. At least the end had come quickly.
The end had come quickly for Anderson, too. A bullet in the back of the head. If you were going to buy it on an op, that was the best way to go. No torture. No anticipation. It wouldn't be much consolation for Anderson's family, but it was true. In a weird kind of way Will wished he had been in Anderson's shoes. At least he wouldn't have to go through this. The waiting. Waiting for the inevitable.
In the darkness, it was impossible to tell how much time passed - three hours, Will guessed, maybe four - but once they had established that there was no way they could undo the ropes binding each other's wrists, the three SAS men were silent for a good deal of it. A deep, impenetrable silence, broken only by the occasional sound of the Taliban guards talking outside their building. Will wondered if the same things were going through the heads of Drew and Kennedy as were occupying him. The dog that they had heard on the other side of the village barked a couple of times, but then all was still. Midnight? One o'clock? Their captors had taken their watches and time meant nothing. None of them could tell whether it was passing quickly or slowly.
It was strange to think that Latifa Ahmed, the one person who could lead Will to his family's killer, might be no more than a stone's throw away. Strange and unspeakably frustrating. There were moments when it was all he could do to stop himself from roaring with anger; at other times he felt hopeless, helpless.
And then, as he closed his eyes in the darkness, in his mind's eye he saw the photograph of Faisal Ahmed that the Director General of MI5 had shown him only yesterday. Ahmed's calm eyes seemed to stare out at him. Will had never met this man and Ahmed probably didn't even know that Will existed; yet their lives were inextricably linked. Ahmed had taken everything from Will; and now, because of him, Will was going to lose his life, while Ahmed would be free to conduct his acts of terrorism on London. And yet, Will had come here to rescue the one person in the world Ahmed seemed to have feelings for.
His thoughts were interrupted by the opening of the door. He looked in that direction, but all he saw were the silhouettes of their Taliban captors. Three of them, maybe four. It was difficult to make out in this light. Surely they hadn't come for them already; surely there were a few more hours of night-time yet. He got to his feet, just as the Taliban threw something into the room. It flew past Will's head and bounced against the back wall, hitting the ground with a dull thud. They threw something else in - heavier this time - and it fell just i
n front of the door, which they closed without saying a word. Will heard them lock it.
'What the fuck—?' Kennedy started to say.
Will had already turned and was on his knees in the darkness, trying to find the object they threw in. His hands felt blindly until they came across something. It was icy cold and damp in patches. It was only when he felt the short-cropped hair that he realised what it was.
'Jesus!' he spat. 'It's a fucking head!'
'Anderson,' Drew replied almost immediately. 'It's his body here.'
'The fuckers cut his head off, just to put the shits up us,' Kennedy raged. Will heard him stand up and kick the solid wall violently.
There was a silence as they absorbed what had happened. The Taliban were giving them a message: this is what you can look forward to.Will felt his jaw clenching. He was fucked if he was going to give them the chance. But they were without weapons and there was no way out of this room.
'I've got an idea,' Drew said in a soft voice.
'What?'
'Anderson. He carries a buckle knife. They might not have seen it.'
Will felt a surge of hope. Buckle knives, which slid inside the protective leather of your belt, were difficult to notice if you didn't know they were there. If Anderson had one on him, they might be in with a chance.
Instantly the three of them headed towards where the body lay. In the darkness, Will could already sense that Drew was on the ground with his back to Anderson's headless corpse, unzipping his bloodied snowsuit and feeling for his belt. 'Bingo,' he said after a minute.
'You got it?'
'Yeah, I've got it.'
Drew stood back to back with Kennedy first, so that their tied hands were next to each other. Slowly, he started slicing through his colleague's ropes. 'Mind my fucking wrists!' Kennedy complained more than once; but minutes later he was free and it was easy then for him to cut the ropes from Drew's wrists, then Will's. Once they were free, Will sensed a new determination in them. They had nothing to lose. Will was fucked if he was going to give in to these Taliban scum without a fight.
'How many guards do you think we have outside?' he asked.
A pause. 'Don't know,' Drew said, quietly. 'A couple, maybe. They're not going to be expecting much from us, so it'll be light.'
'That's what I thought. Reckon we can take them, if we can get them into the room in the first place?'
'Don't like our chances much,' Kennedy said. 'But I don't fancy hanging around waiting for them to give us the fucking Marie Antoinette treatment.'
'Me neither.'
Will ran through his idea a couple of times - it was straightforward, but they needed to be sure they were fully familiar with it, because if this went wrong, the Taliban outside wouldn't wait until morning to shoot them. They'd do it there and then.
'Bit risky,' Drew observed when he had heard what Will had in mind.
'Fancy waiting till dawn?'
'Not really,' Drew replied, calmly.
When the impromptu briefing was over, they put the plan into action.
Kennedy took Anderson's corpse and, standing in the middle of the room, held it in front of him so that it acted as a shield should the guards get a chance to shoot. In his hand, he clutched the buckle knife. Will and Drew stood on either side of the entrance. When everyone was in position, Will started scratching on the inside of the door, trying to make it sound as if he was tampering with the lock. It was better than making an obvious fuss, he had decided; this way their guards would be more likely to investigate.
Sure enough, after only a moment of worrying away at the door, he heard voices outside, then the noise of a key in the lock. He stepped aside, feeling his blood suddenly pumping heavily through his veins.
If this was going to work, they'd have to move quickly.
A Taliban guard appeared at the door and shone his torch directly into the room. Immediately Kennedy was illuminated. The guard shouted something in Pashto and strode towards them. His gun was in his arms, but it was not raised.
That, Will realised, would be his mistake.
It all happened in seconds. A second guard entered and they made their move. Silently Will and Drew stepped behind the two guards and each wrapped a single strong arm around their necks. Will squeezed as tightly as he could, feeling his biceps bulge against his victim's flesh. With his other hand he grabbed the guard's gun and moved it away so that he couldn't shoot randomly. A strangled sound came from his throat and from that of Drew's man. Kennedy dropped Anderson's body, which fell heavily to the floor, then approached the now captive Taliban. Using the knife, he started stabbing them in the eyes with a kind of frenzy. Each time the knife went in it made a sucking sound and he gave it a little twist. Blood was everywhere and for a few brief seconds Will felt the limbs of his man flailing uncontrollably. He squeezed tighter.
Then, suddenly, his man fell still.
Will let the Taliban guard fall and about twenty seconds later, Drew did the same.
The Taliban guard's torch had dropped to the floor and was shining away from them. It illuminated the shattered remnants of Anderson's head.
'Make sure they're not going to wake up on us,' Will breathed.
'My fucking pleasure,' growled Kennedy.
He bent down to the ground next to the Taliban guard that Will had floored and without hesitation he plunged the knife deep into the neck of the fallen man. With a swift, silent, lethal efficiency, he moved over to the other guard and repeated the operation.
By this time, Drew had picked up the torch and was shining it on the two corpses. Will grabbed their Kalashnikovs and gave them to Drew and Kennedy. For himself, he took the knife, still sticky with the warm blood of the Taliban guards, from Kennedy, then took the key that one of the guards was still gripping. He unstrapped Anderson's belt and put it on himself, then resheathed the knife. He also took his dead comrade's watch: 00.57. They'd been in there for hours. Patting one of the guards down, he found an extra torch.
'Torch off,' he told Drew, who extinguished the light, plunging them back into sudden darkness. They crept out of the room, which now resembled a bloodbath, and locked the door behind them.
The main square of the village was deserted. At some point during their incarceration it had started to snow again and the flakes had begun to cover up the footprints that both they and the Taliban had made. The moon was still high in the sky, brightly illuminating the village. Good thing too, Will thought to himself. Their weapons and packs had been taken and they only had two antique-looking Kalashnikovs between them. Time was of the essence. Someone could come to relieve the guards they had killed at any moment. The instant they realised what had happened, the whole village would be lit up like a Christmas tree and the Taliban would be crawling all over the place. There was no time to locate their own guns - it was more important to find their target and get the hell out of there before it all went tits up for a second time. And if they happened to come across Ismail while they were looking, Will was sure they'd find time to avenge Anderson's death.
Still, he felt naked without a gun. What was more, one shot from an AK-47 would wake the whole place up. He'd feel much more comfortable with a suppressed weapon. On a whim, he looked over to where Anderson had fallen. Remnants of the poor bastard were still there, the snow spattered with brain matter, bits of skull and hair fragments. But Will paid no attention to that: he was just relieved to see that the Taliban, foolishly, had left the man's gun propped up against the wall. He grabbed it, then turned and went back to the others.