by Andrew Smyth
Grave Island
Andrew Smyth
Copyright © 2018 Andrew Smyth
The right of Andrew Smyth to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2018 by Bloodhound Books
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
A Note from Bloodhound Books:
Prologue
Chorjah, Afghanistan
Things are hidden beneath the surface in Afghanistan. The ubiquitous dust covers everything, concealing friends and enemies alike and if you swept it away, you would find the remains of a bombed-out clinic, landmines or bodies. They all looked the same. The monochrome landscape hid the shifting patterns of alliances where danger lived side by side with refuge. Where nothing is what it seems.
I could see the dust eddying up ahead and I slowed down. There was no point in hurrying; the battle was over and the settling sand covered the inevitable bodies like a shroud merging into the featureless background. Yet another blameless village, with little left standing after yet another battle. Blameless? I’d given up seeking blame; the loyalties and motives of these people changed like the sands that surrounded them and were as difficult to pin down.
I pulled into the village and skidded to a halt in front of what looked like the village well. I turned to Ali; we’d both been assigned to this sector. ‘What do you think?’ He turned to the interpreter in the back seat who simply shrugged. We looked around at the by-now-familiar desolation. Everything was brown: from the rocky hills surrounding the village to the mud walls of the huts – even the sky was cast brown from the dust blowing across the valley. It was like an old sepia print from a previous century and little had changed in that time. I pulled my neck scarf up across my mouth, but it made little difference. The dust got everywhere, even into the spirit – particularly into the spirit.
This was what defeat looked like. Defeat not just for our forces, but for the entire country. There weren’t any winners here – even containment was precarious. As the dust settled, we looked at the torn scraps of clothing scattered around us, some still attached to the remains of body parts that had been blasted across the street. In a doorway a medic knelt by a casualty, bandaging his leg. I walked over to him. The boy couldn’t have been more than eleven, an age when he should have been out in the fields, protected from care, but here was advanced to the equal of a man. There was no sign of growth on his smooth brown chin.
I looked questioningly at the doctor who shook his head. There was little more he could do until the back-up ambulances got here. I watched as he walked back to a long, low building off the main square. I assume that this was the clinic – such as it was – but I heard a smashing sound inside and ran across to the entrance. Although we’d been told that the village was cleared of local fighters, I wasn’t going to take any chances so I went down onto my knees and crawled in through the doorway with my gun over my shoulder.
It was dark inside and I waited for my eyes to adjust. I couldn’t see the doctor but across the room a man was running his gun butt along the shelves and smashing the medicines onto the floor. The advance guard couldn’t be sure that they’d cleared the village and it might have been another cock-up, but this was different. The villagers had been through enough without having their clinic trashed. I watched for a moment as the fighter started on another shelf and then I stood up and shouted to him to get his hands in the air. ‘And I mean high in the air, as high as you can reach.’
I kept my back against the wall and edged sideways into the room. The Taliban fighter opposite had stopped and was looking at me nervously – I could see in his eyes that he was weighing up the chances of turning his gun on me. For a moment, I wished he’d try it but as I went over to him, he dropped the gun and raised his hands. I was damned if I was going to let him get away with it and swung the butt of my gun against his jaw and he fell to his knees.
The shelves were now almost empty with the broken glass lying everywhere. These were medicines that could save lives and all this bastard wanted to do was destroy them. I kicked out at him and sent him sprawling over the broken glass. He was still holding onto his gun so I stood on his hand and leaned down into his face. I felt as much sympathy for him as I would a cockroach – shooting was too good for him.
I put his gun into my waistband and pulled him up by his collar and he offered no resistance as I punched him with my elbow and then kneed him savagely in his balls. I could see him gag with pain but still he said nothing – if he thought he was being a hero I could show him how wrong he was.
I knew there was still fight left in him – he was waiting for me to make a mistake, but I wasn’t going to give him the opportunity. He went limp and, taken unawares I pulled at him, only for him to jump up and pull free. I crouched and circled him. I was angry and I wanted him to know it. ‘Those medicines mean nothing to you, do they? And these people are nothing to you. What little they have, you take away.’
I don’t know whether he understood. He smiled and spat out one of his teeth. ‘Western medicine,’ he grunted and at that, I lunged forward and kicked at his heels until he went down again. I jumped on him and dragged him to his feet and punched him again and again until there was no fight left in him. And still I hit him. I pushed him against the wall and smashed his face against it. Blood spurted out of his eye socket but through my eyes I could only see a red mist.
‘That’s enough. Let him go!’ Ali had his arm around my neck and was pulling me away. ‘You’ve done enough. You’re going to kill him.’
There was the familiar pounding in my ears. I didn’t really care if I killed him. In fact, I wanted to kill him. I started to wrestle with Ali but suddenly realised that it was pointless. We had a prisoner – we might even get some useful information out of him but killing him would achieve nothing, however much I wanted it. I relaxed my grip and he slid down onto the floor. ‘Okay, okay. I’ve stopped now. Get him out of here before I start again.’ Ali let go of me and pulled out some cable ties to secure the prisoner – not that he looked much of a danger anymore but I really didn’t care. I looked across the room as the doctor came in. ‘Everything under control?’ he asked cheerily. ‘I was thinking of giving you some help but you seemed to be managing on your own.’ He looked down at the prisoner who was groaning on the floor. ‘I suppose I’d better patch him up. You made a pretty thorough job of him, didn’t you?’
‘Did y
ou see him smash those medicines?’ I asked. ‘As though the village doesn’t have enough problems.’
The doctor shook his head. ‘It’s not just the soldiers we’re fighting. That kid out there has signs of malaria on top of his wounds. They’ve peddled these drugs which are manufactured in some shed in Kabul using little more than talcum powder. Only another way of fighting battles.’
I left him and went back outside, putting on my sunglasses against the glare. Ali went off to the east. I beckoned over my interpreter and he followed me across to the west where the alleyway into the centre of the village became narrower the further in we got.
We moved slowly, the pathway was blocked in places by the rubble of destroyed houses. We saw few signs of life – it was only the women who were left after such a bombardment and most of them didn’t want to show their faces to our soldiers. Many were simply mourning the loss of their menfolk – husbands and sons only a few years older than the injured boy lying by the wall.
As we walked past an open doorway, we saw a woman inside and stopped. The interpreter started talking to her, but after a while he turned to me to say that she had nothing to tell us. This was our job; to try to find out who had attacked them; whether they knew any of the soldiers or could tell us anything about where they came from or where they went to.
We were clearing up after the fighting, but it had to be done. The extremes of intelligence were apparent here: on the one hand, billions of dollars of high-tech equipment, satellite surveillance, vast banks of subterranean computers searching for clues, monitoring mobile phones and the Internet; against that, on the ground, the Stone-Age technology of a few people like me and Ali trying to talk to people who didn’t want to talk to you, who held you responsible for the war that had been unleashed on them and who saw no friends, only enemies.
We came to an opening in the alleyway; a space with a couple of makeshift football posts propped up at either end. Opposite, on the other side of the pitch, I heard the woman before I saw her. She was prostrate over a boy and her body shuddered with racking sobs. Her son – it must have been her son – was lying in a mangled heap, half propped against the wall. I pulled out my mirror from inside my tunic and held it out to see what was around the corner. I thought I saw someone suddenly disappear down towards where Ali was coming through. There was nothing I could do to help until I’d made sure the place was safe.
Looking back towards the woman, I saw movement in an adjacent doorway. I crouched and lay flat with my rifle pointing towards it. As I watched, a figure edged his way out into the open. He was carrying a Kalashnikov but it didn’t seem to be giving him much confidence and I could sense his indecision. Finally he decided to make a run for it. I aimed carefully – I didn’t want to hit him – and loosed off a couple of rounds and watched as he scrambled for cover and disappeared from view behind the crumbling houses. At least he now felt as unsafe here as I did.
I stood up and kept my rifle ready when I heard someone else behind me, and it wasn’t the interpreter. I waited and Ali finally came up. ‘I heard shooting,’ he said and looked across to the body on the other side. ‘Jesus, did you have to do that?’
I shook my head – there didn’t seem any point saying anything. Looking around, I couldn’t see anyone else, but I pressed myself against the houses surrounding the football pitch and started to manoeuvre myself closer to the woman. The advance party was supposed to have neutralised the village and made it safe, but they couldn’t be sure. No one knew what safe meant in this place where acting out God’s will was supposed to be the salvation, but to me was the only the eternal sentence.
Ali followed me as I worked my way to where the twisted body lay. He was a boy, barely older than the one I’d first seen lying against the wall. I bent down and checked his pulse, but there was nothing. I swallowed the familiar bile that rose in my throat. Could I ever get used to a place where peace was so fleeting? Ali stared down at the boy. ‘How old is he?’ he asked and then turned to me. ‘Why did you have to shoot him? You can see he’s not even got a weapon.’
I looked up at him. ‘It wasn’t me,’ but as I said it, I realised how weak it sounded. But dammit, he was only my partner – I wasn’t answerable to him. I started to explain but thought better of it. He’d have forgotten this by the time we got back.
I gestured to the interpreter to speak to the woman, but it was sometime before he could get any response. He finally managed to persuade her into her house and gestured us inside. I held up my hand to stop him and waited by the doorway, indicating that he should stand on the other side. If this was a trap, then it was my responsibility to spring it without injury. I took off my sunglasses and crouched low and rolled inside, bringing my rifle up ready to fire, but apart from the woman, there was no one else there.
I rose slowly to my feet and called out to Ali and the interpreter. I could now see the woman more clearly. She was young – perhaps in her early thirties although women aged quicker here and it was difficult to tell behind her copious robes. She had stopped crying and appeared calm, but I could see the emptiness in her dark eyes. How often had she imagined this fate for her son and now that it had happened what did she have left to live for? The interpreter said something to her but she appeared not to hear and just stared across the room. He tried again and hesitantly, she turned and started to tell him what had happened.
‘She says her son was only thirteen, he was too young to be caught up in this… “murder” she called it. His name is Shamir.’
Hearing the name, the woman wailed again and rocked backwards and forwards. I wished the doctor could be here to give her a sedative, but we had to see this through and could only wait until her sobs subsided. Eventually she started again, but in a low voice that we could hardly hear and I turned to the interpreter.
‘She was born in this village,’ he translated, ‘but she managed to get sent to a local college after the Taliban were driven out by the Americans.’ He paused to let her catch up. ‘But it lasted less than a year until she was forced back here. She says she learnt a little about the world outside and doesn’t understand why she’s forced into a life she didn’t choose.’
‘Is she married?’ I asked.
‘Of course.’ He didn’t even need to ask. I could see the small beds lining the walls and wondered how many children she’d had. She started talking again. ‘She says she recognised one of the young men. He used to live here in the village before going away.’
‘Does he have a name?’ I asked, although even as I said it I realised that a name probably wouldn’t get us far.
I waited for the translation. ‘She has a name, but there’s also a photograph.’
This was something else, perhaps a breakthrough. ‘How can she have a photograph?’
I waited again for the reply and he paused before translating the answer. When he finally did, it was clear he was now struggling to control himself. ‘The boy outside,’ he paused before starting again. ‘The boy outside, her son, he was shot in the back as he was trying to get to safety. But she says he’d taken a photograph on his phone.’
No one said anything for a few moments. What was there to say? A thirteen-year-old boy, on the threshold of manhood, had been killed in sight of his mother. Another death anonymous to the rest of the world but at the centre of hers.
There was little I could do. ‘Does she have someone who can come over and stay with her? We can’t leave her like this.’ As I said it, I realised that she had started talking again and as I watched her I could see a look of resolve cross her face.
The interpreter listened for a while before turning to us. ‘She wants you to do something for her. She wants you to find her eldest son and tell him about Shamir. She hasn’t heard anything from him and thinks he might have left Afghanistan as a refugee a few years ago. She thinks he might be in England. His name is Sayed Alam. She has a picture for you.’
I was aware that she was looking inside a large bag and then she looked up and held
out a photograph and waited for an answer. What could I say? What were the chances of finding someone in a place that had no structure and no laws? I took the photo. ‘This is Sayed?’ I asked. She nodded – it didn’t need translating, and I mumbled something about doing what I could. Rarely have I ever felt so useless in the face of such grief, but I had to go on. ‘About the other boy? You say she has another photo?’ The least I could do was to offer some kind of reassurance that I would help, however hopeless it seemed.
The interpreter spoke to the woman for a few moments then turned back to me. ‘Before the fighting started she could see her son talking to this man. She watched as he took out a phone and took a photograph of them together.’ I waited for the woman to say more. ‘When the first attack took place the son rushed back but dropped his phone. It’s still out there.’
I left them and walked outside to where the body lay, and Ali followed. One of the boy’s legs stuck out at an unnatural angle and I could see the edge of a phone underneath it. I picked it up and turned it on and immediately I could see the boy as he’d been in life, a few moments before, smiling at the camera held by the young man next to him. I handed it to Ali who nodded sombrely as he looked at it. He still wasn’t saying anything but this wasn’t the time to talk about it. I turned and saw that the woman had followed me out and was looking down at the picture on the phone. She collapsed to the floor and wailed, helpless in her grief.
‘Does he have a name?’ I asked the interpreter. ‘‘The other boy?’