by Chris Ryan
‘At night? When people are sleeping?’
Ben thinned his lips. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘or not sleeping. I get the impression we’re going to be hearing a bit more of that. Think about it, Aarya. They’ve got a nuclear suitcase bomb. If they’re going to use it, they’re going to use it where they can cause maximum damage. And if they need you and me as a human shield, it means they’re taking us somewhere they expect to come under fire. Some kind of battleground. If those flares are anything to go by, I’d say we’re pretty close.’
As if to highlight his point, in the distance they heard another muffled thump. Ben sensed Aarya shaking on the ground where she sat.
‘I want to go home,’ she said in a small voice.
‘Me too,’ Ben replied. ‘Me too.’ And then, because he thought he didn’t sound positive enough, he added, ‘We will.’
He knew Aarya didn’t really believe him.
They sat in silence for several minutes.
‘Ben?’ Aarya asked finally, her voice calmer than he had heard it for ages.
‘Yeah?’
‘If the British Army attack us, they would be less willing to risk a British citizen than a Pakistani girl, wouldn’t they?’
Ben felt himself tense up. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I think they would. I think it means that you are more use to these terrorists than I am. I think it means they would kill me if they had to.’
Ben took a deep breath.
‘That’s not going to happen, Aarya,’ he said firmly. ‘I promise you that’s not going to happen.’
But he only said it because he could think of nothing else to say. He watched quietly as his friend, her body trembling, settled down for her morning prayers. He almost felt like praying himself.
Bel’s first night at FOB Jackson was uncomfortable and noisy. Her quarters were little more than a thin bed covered with a mosquito-net tent, all propped up against a low wall. She had eaten ration packs with the soldiers — a sludgy mess of sausages and beans — then turned in early so that she could be ready for the shura that would happen early the next morning. All night, however, she was kept awake by the light of the flares being sent up into the sky, and by the booming sound of weaponry far and wide. Around midnight she had climbed out of bed and walked around the base. She had met Private Mears, who had explained to her what the noise was. ‘Enemy activity to the north,’ he had said. ‘We’re sending in mortar fire to suppress their movement.’
‘Enemy movement?’ Bel asked, alarmed. ‘That, er… that doesn’t sound very good.’
Private Mears winked at her. ‘Welcome to Helmand,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about it. Tonight’s no different from any other. The base is well defended — they’d have to be suicidal to attack us here.’
Bel took some comfort from Private Mears’s words as she padded back to bed. Some, but not much. As she lay there, she thought about Ben, and smiled. He’d been so keen to accompany her, but this was no place for a person his age. Come to think of it, it was no place for a person of any age. Bel absolutely could not wait to leave here and get back home.
Dawn arrived. Everyone in the camp who wasn’t on lookout duty rose with the sun. Bel washed her face using water drawn from a well in the middle of the camp, then went to find Mears. The young private was drinking a cup of tea with a few mates.
‘Morning, Dr Kelland,’ he said. ‘You look like you could use a brew.’
Bel could use a brew, but she didn’t get the chance to say so, because just as she opened her mouth there was a loud noise and something screamed over the top of them.
‘Get down!’ Mears yelled. ‘RPG!’ He threw his tea to one side, then wrestled Bel heavily to the ground like a rugby player. All the wind was knocked out of her lungs as the rest of the soldiers hit the dirt as well, their arms covering their heads while, only a few metres away from them, Bel heard something explode in the air, followed by the sound of shrapnel raining onto the ground.
‘That was close!’ someone shouted.
‘What’s an RPG?’ Bel gasped, her face still pressed into the ground.
‘Rocket-propelled grenade,’ Mears stated flatly. ‘Bit of a Taliban favourite.’
Bel looked up. The soldiers were pushing themselves to their feet, and there was urgent movement all around. ‘Get up!’ Mears instructed, and she felt him pulling her from the ground just as another rocket whistled over them. ‘We need to get you to cover. Now.’
‘I thought you said the enemy would have to be suicidal to attack us here,’ Bel shouted.
Mears gave her a grim look. ‘Yeah,’ he yelled back. ‘Trouble is, some of them are.’ He pulled her by the arm and they ran across the open ground of the base to where a high wall of sandbags had been constructed at right angles to the main compound wall. They threw themselves to the ground and pressed their backs against the sandbags while yet more rockets flew overhead.
‘Come on,’ Mears muttered to himself. ‘Come on. Come on!’
‘Come on, what?’ Bel demanded.
‘The enemy must be close if they can lob RPGs into the compound like that. We need to return fire, quickly.’ He peered over the top of the sandbags, then quickly sat back down again. ‘GPMG gunner climbing up to the compound roof now,’ he reported.
‘What’s a GPMG?’
‘General Purpose Machine Gun. You might want to cover your ears.’
Bel did what she was told, but the sudden grinding, thundering noise from the rooftop weapon seemed to go through her all the same, like a hundred tiny explosions in a line. Private Mears barely flinched — Bel supposed that he was just used to the noise.
The GPMG fire continued in short, sharp bursts, ringing out over the top of the compound. There was shouting all around, and every time Bel thought the firing had stopped, it would start up again.
‘Sounds like we’ve suppressed the enemy fire,’ Mears said. He had sweat pouring from his face.
‘What?’
‘The enemy. They’ve stopped firing. Guess they haven’t got quite the taste for a fight they thought they had.’ Mears was grinning and Bel realized that he was excited by the contact. She wished she could say the same.
‘Does that happen a lot?’ she asked, her voice trembling.
Mears shrugged. ‘Attacks on the base, no. Morning contacts, yes. When it gets hotter, the enemy all go inside to get out of the midday heat. Then things start to kick off again later in the afternoon. But I can tell you one thing.’
‘What?’ Bel was out of breath just from the sheer terror of it all.
‘After that little display, they won’t be letting the locals into the base this morning. I reckon your shura’s going to have to wait for another day.’ He smiled at her. ‘You might as well make yourself at home, Dr Kelland. Looks like you’re going to be here for a bit longer than you thought. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to clean my rifle. If the enemy are going to be bolshie, I’d feel a lot better knowing everything’s in good working order. Know what I mean?’
The man from the British Embassy who arrived in Kampur was stiff-backed and stern-faced. Even the teachers looked a bit scared of him. He was accompanied by two others — a man and a woman, who had the bearing of police officers, even if they didn’t have the uniforms. The Embassy man spent a good deal of time with the teachers, explaining the arrangements he had put in place to get them all back home as quickly as possible, as well as consoling Aarya’s distraught parents. It was up to the other two to interview the pupils.
Ed didn’t like the look of them. They were steely-eyed, no-nonsense types. He could instantly tell that pulling the wool over their eyes wouldn’t be like deceiving his friends, or his teachers. As they all lingered outside a classroom in the village school, waiting to be interviewed one by one, Ed felt the pressure mounting. His mouth was dry; he was sweating badly. Telling them the truth about Ben’s schoolyard antics was out of the question, of course. The lie was too deeply ingrained now. He was just going to have to see it
through.
The door opened. Rebecca, the first to be interviewed, walked timidly out with a slightly wild look in her eyes. The woman appeared, clipboard in hand. ‘Ed Hughes,’ she announced. ‘Ed?’
All the others looked at him. Ed drew himself up to his full height and walked confidently past them, though his fingernails were dug deeply into the palm of his hand. The woman stepped aside to let him into the classroom, then closed the door and took her place behind the teacher’s desk, alongside the man.
‘Sit down, Ed,’ she said, indicating a seat opposite them.
Ed did what he was told.
A silence as the two adults looked at him.
The woman peered over her half-moon glasses at him. ‘We just want to make sure, Ed, that there isn’t anything about Ben Tracey and his exchange partner Aarya that you’ve forgotten to mention.’
‘There isn’t,’ Ed replied quickly. Too quickly.
The adults looked at each other. ‘You seem very sure about that, Ed,’ the man suggested. ‘Been thinking about it a lot, have you?’
‘Not really.’ Ed did what he could to withstand the man’s stare. It took some doing.
‘Sure about that?’
‘Of course I’m sure.’ Ed’s body temperature was rising and he knew he appeared flustered. It didn’t seem to worry either of them, though: they both looked at him calmly.
‘I suppose we don’t need to tell you how serious this is, Ed,’ the woman pressed. ‘If we don’t find Ben and Aarya, you’ll be having interviews with people a lot fiercer than us. Sure you don’t want to tell us anything?’
‘I haven’t seen them, all right?’ Ed was half shouting now, and his face had gone very red. Both adults raised a single eyebrow, and suddenly Ed heard himself gabbling. ‘Tracey’s an idiot, OK? He’s probably just hiding somewhere. You shouldn’t waste your time on him.’
Another silence. ‘Do you really think we’re wasting our time, Ed?’ the woman said. ‘Or is there something personal between you and Ben?’
Ed looked at the floor. This wasn’t going well and he knew it. ‘No,’ he muttered. ‘Nothing.’ He heard the scratching sound of pen and paper as the two grown-ups each wrote something down. ‘What are you writing?’ he demanded. ‘Look, I don’t know anything, OK? I haven’t seen anything.’
‘No, Ed,’ the man replied. ‘It seems to me that you may have mentioned that once or twice before.’ Again, the two of them glanced at each other.
Ed felt a drop of sweat run down the back of his neck.
‘You’ll be leaving Pakistan tonight,’ the woman told him.
‘All of us?’
‘All of you.’
Relief crashed over Ed. He didn’t like it here. Back in England he could pretend none of this had ever happened.
‘We might want to speak to you again, though. Back home. That would be all right, wouldn’t it, Ed?’ They were looking directly at him now. Piercing.
Ed shrugged. ‘Whatever,’ he said.
‘Good. Well then, I don’t think we need to keep you any longer.’ The man’s words were friendly, but his voice wasn’t. Ed stood up and walked to the door.
‘Ed,’ the woman’s voice called softly before he had a chance to open it. He stopped and turned round.
‘What?’
‘We’ll know if you’re lying. You do realize that, don’t you?’
Ed frowned. He gave them a hard look, then dug his fingernails a little more firmly into the palm of his hand. Then he shrugged again, opened the door and walked out.
They were just trying to put the frighteners on him, he told himself.
They didn’t suspect anything.
Even if they did, they had nothing on him. Nothing at all. He just had to keep up the pretence. Do everything he could not to crack. And he knew he could do it. After all, there was no way he was going to let Ben Tracey, of all people, get any help from him…
Chapter Ten
The day passed slowly and uncomfortably. As light trickled into their new prison, Ben saw that they had indeed been put into a room that contained nothing they could use to their advantage: just a low bed with a thin mattress and very little else. He let Aarya take the bed while he lay on the hard, dusty floor. Sometimes he would fall asleep, only to be woken with a start by the booming of weaponry in the distance, or the occasional muttering of Aarya’s regular prayers. Whenever that happened he would look around, confused and not knowing where he was. But then he’d see Aarya’s terrified face and the locked door and it would all come back to him in a sickening flash.
Evening arrived and the door opened. It was Amir, his ever-present gun slung by his side. He placed another bottle of water on the floor along with a wooden bowl of food. ‘Eat this,’ he said with a glare at Ben, ‘then prepare to leave. We depart at nightfall.’ Ben noticed that he refused to address Aarya.
The water was welcome, as was the food — a strange, bland porridge which Ben might have turned up his nose at if he hadn’t been so hungry. As it was, both he and Aarya gobbled it down. And when they had finished, the waiting continued.
‘You think they will take us towards where the guns are firing?’ Aarya asked.
‘Yeah,’ Ben said. ‘I do.’
It was fully dark when the door was opened again. Nobody needed to tell them what to do. Ben and Aarya walked out, covered as always by men with guns, and were marched from the compound under the watchful eyes of the owners.
‘I don’t know why they don’t help us,’ Ben muttered under his breath.
‘Maybe they don’t want to help us,’ Aarya breathed. ‘Or maybe they know things will go badly for them if they do.’
One of their captors barked a command. It was not in English, but Ben understood its tone. Silence!
Amir was waiting for them, with some of the others, outside the compound; but instead of the three heavy armoured trucks they had used before, there were two much smaller Land Rovers. As Ben and Aarya stood under armed guard, they watched the suitcase bomb being lowered into one of them. Only then did Amir approach them. He pointed at Aarya. ‘You,’ he said. ‘Get into the front truck.’
Aarya meekly did as she was told. Ben made to follow her, but immediately felt a hand on his shoulder. ‘Not you,’ Amir snarled at him. ‘You get into the other vehicle.’ As Ben opened his mouth to protest, Amir interrupted him. ‘Forget about being a hero,’ he hissed. ‘The girl is no use to us. If you do not do what you are told, we will kill her first.’
Ben stared at him furiously, but the terrorist’s words had frozen his muscles. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a terrified Aarya being placed in the front truck; he was left with no option but to follow Amir into the rear vehicle.
The suitcase bomb was on the floor in the back of the truck; there were seats on either side. Ben sat down carefully, unwilling even to let his leg brush against it. Amir sat opposite him, along with another of the dark-eyed, bearded terrorists. A third man took the wheel and waited for the vehicle ahead to move away before following it.
It wasn’t long before another flare lit up the sky and Ben wasn’t surprised to see that they were heading in the general direction from which it came. ‘We’re moving into the battle zone, aren’t we?’ he quietly asked Amir. His captor made no response; he just continued to stare at him, the milky eye glowing eerily in the dark. So Ben persisted, wanting to keep the conversation going — not so much for tactical reasons, but rather to keep his mind occupied.
‘Why two trucks?’ he asked.
Amir narrowed his eyes, as though he didn’t understand the question.
‘You’re travelling at night,’ Ben said, ‘without any lights. You obviously don’t want to be seen. Surely one truck would be safer than two.’
Amir sneered. ‘No,’ he rasped. ‘One truck is not safer. In fact, one truck is a great deal more dangerous.’ He turned to his colleague and said something in his own language which made them both laugh.
‘Why?’ Ben demanded.
The
re was a glint in Amir’s eyes now, a kind of wild excitement. He leaned forward as he spoke, slowly and with a snake-like hiss to his voice. ‘There may be landmines on the road ahead,’ he whispered. ‘We drive in the tracks of the vehicle in front. So we know we will not hit one.’
A cold, prickling sensation went down Ben’s back. Landmines — he’d seen the damage they could do in the Congo. ‘But — but the truck in front. What if that hits a mine?’
Amir’s eyes widened. ‘In that case—’ He jerked his hands up, palms downwards, and made a low noise in the back of his throat. The sound of an explosion. Then he tapped the suitcase bomb at their feet. ‘That way,’ he sneered, ‘our weapon will be safe.’
Ben leaned over and looked through the front window of the Land Rover. The other vehicle was a good twenty metres ahead, travelling slowly.
‘But the people in there,’ he whispered, ‘don’t they…?’
‘They are honoured to take the risk,’ Amir said, his eyes still glinting. ‘They know that if they die, it will be in a good cause.’ The fire in his expression grew stronger. ‘And your friend? She is just a girl, after all…’
Ben didn’t know how to reply to such a statement. He thought of Aarya, exhausted and scared, sitting in the back of that truck. Did she have any idea of the danger she was in? Did she have any idea why she was in front or what might happen?
Ben hoped not. Sometimes, he decided, it was better not to know.
It was midnight, Ben estimated, when they hit a main road. By most standards it was a shoddy track, but it was a lot better than the ones he had begun to get used to. They didn’t stay on it long, however. The driver made his way north, back into the desert, carefully staying in the tracks of the vehicle ahead. Every second, one half of Ben’s mind expected to hear the brutal sound of the front truck exploding, while the other half argued: It won’t happen. It can’t happen. Aarya’s going to be OK.
He wasn’t sure that he was doing a great job of persuading himself.
There were moments of silence, moments when the distant boom of weapons disappeared and the night sky remained unlit by flares. They never lasted long. Whenever they started up again, they were always louder than the time before, and brighter. Ben knew that meant only one thing: they were getting closer to the hotspots.