Stinger
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Foreword
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Copyright
Endnotes
Foreword
The CIA covertly supplied hundreds of Stinger missiles to the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan during the war with the Soviet Union. The SAS trained the Mujahedeen in the use of the Stingers, which wreaked havoc among Soviet helicopter gunships, military and civilian aircraft.
At the end of the conflict an estimated three hundred to four hundred missiles remained unaccounted for. The US originally offered $3 million to buy them back. This was increased to $30 million when US Intelligence received information suggesting that Libya was attempting to purchase them. The ransom has never been paid and the whereabouts of the missing Stingers remain unknown.
One of the reasons for the panic that engulfed the US government after the downing of TWA Flight 800 in July 1996 was the fear that it had been shot down by Fundamentalist terrorists armed with Stingers1.
John Nichol
May 1999
Prologue
I sat silent as the blank screen of the briefing room filled with a grainy colour image of a 747 rolling along a taxiway, through a haze of heat rising from the tarmac. Side-lit by the setting sun, it thundered down the runway and rumbled into the air, its jet wash rattling the chain-link perimeter fencing and stirring a storm of dust and litter from the waste ground beyond the wire.
The camera tracked the jet climbing into the darkening sky, the smoke trails from its engines merging with the pall of smog hanging over the city. The towers of Manhattan were framed beneath the wing for a moment, then disappeared as the jet began a long turn south and east.
The neat grid of street lights flared into a brief, dirty smudge of light at Coney Island before the jet was clear of the land. Still holding the climb, it banked further east to follow the shore of Long Island out towards the open sea.
To the north of the jet I could see the twin tracks of the airport’s main runways and the navigation lights moving across the sky with military precision, one line of jets dropping towards the north runway as another procession lifted off from the south.
The viewpoint abruptly changed to a camera somewhere on the Long Island shore. The rays of the sinking sun reddened the upper atmosphere, glinting from another aircraft wing in the distance ahead of the jet. Thousands of feet below were the winking navigation lights of a slow-moving transport aircraft and the lights of ships moving across the dark water.
The gathering darkness over the Long Island shore was pierced by the glow of bonfires at Fourth of July parties. Fireworks flowered in brief flashes of vivid colour, then faded to black.
There was a flash much bigger than the others and a white streak sped upwards towards them, bridging the distance to the jet in a heartbeat before exploding in a vivid ball of orange flame.
The jet was ripped apart in an instant, the cabin walls shredded by the blast. The heavier nose section broke away immediately and began a long tumble downwards. Still driven by the bellowing jet engines, the rest of the fuselage canted upwards and climbed a further two thousand feet into the sky. The camera jerked wildly as the cameraman tried to follow the path of the jet, and the image was blurred by the shaking of his hands.
At around sixteen thousand feet the jet stalled and went into free fall. The camera lost it, overshot it, then tracked it again as it hurtled downwards. The sheer force of its descent ripped off the wings, and thousands of gallons of kerosene fuel ignited as they gushed from the ruptured tanks. What remained of the aircraft disintegrated as it hit the water and fifty thousand gallons more spread in a burning slick across the water, as if the sea itself were on fire.
The crew in the severed cockpit survived the initial blast and remained alive throughout the three and a half minutes it took to fall the fourteen thousand feet to the sea.
Their terrified voices, almost drowned by the clamour of the cockpit emergency warning sirens, underscored the horror unfolding on the screen. I could hear the co-pilot repeating over and over again, ‘Oh, God. Oh, Jesus. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.’
The pilot began to recite the Lord’s Prayer. After a few words his voice faltered and died. The only other words he said were ‘Fuck it,’ just before his voice was cut off by an avalanche of sound.
The screen went blank as the final, thunderous concussion faded into the sibilant white noise of static, and I dragged my eyes away from the speakers relaying that cold, dead sound.
Chapter One
Three weeks earlier – Afghanistan
Beyond the mountains to the north I could glimpse the beginning of the steppe, an ocean of grey dust that seemed to stretch into infinity. To the east there were only mountains and more mountains. The brown, parched summits below us were mere pygmies of a few thousand feet compared to the rank upon rank of serrated peaks that lay in the far distance, at the very limits of my vision. Permanently capped with snow, they towered far above the ten thousand feet at which we were flying.
As we cleared the next ridge I saw a few stick figures – shepherds, traders and nomads, following the threadlike tracks over the dusty hillsides towards the capital. It was now in sight, a mud-coloured sprawl that lay like sediment in the bottom of a bowl of hills. Across the valley floor lay a river of dust that ran to nowhere, disappearing into the sands of the great desert to the west.
The pilot glanced at me. ‘We’ll be on finals shortly. It’s a rather steep descent.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Thanks for inviting me up here. It makes a change for me to be able to admire the view while someone else does the driving.’
I went back to my seat, passing the only two other passengers on the aircraft. A few minutes later the wing dipped and we began a steep, spiralling descent towards Kabul airport. From the corner of my eye I saw fierce white star fires drifting away from us as the pilot punched out flares to decoy any missiles.
He levelled at the last possible moment and touched down with a jolt that rattled my teeth. The engines bellowed under reverse thrust and the aircraft slowed, its landing gear juddering over the cracks and ruts in the runway.
There were no announcements over the Tannoy as we pulled to a halt outside the terminal. The Pakistani steward threw open the door, gave a half-apologetic smile and disappeared into the flight cabin. I picked up my shoulder bag and walked to the exit. There was no flight of steps, only a wooden ladder held against the side of the aircraft by two impassive men in greasy overalls.
I climbed down and collected my other bag, which had already been taken out of the hold and dumped on the concrete. I glanced around. The airport looked as desolate as the battered city that surrounded it. A single Pakistani transport plane stood near the terminal, but the rusting remains of Migs and Tupolevs still littered the perimeter, a decade after the end of the war against the Soviets. Only one hangar remained standing and part of its roof had collapsed. Wooden scaffolding surrounded the remainder, but I caught sight of three helicopter gunships through the open hangar doors.
The terminal building was windowless, and its rust-stained, peeling walls were pocked wit
h the marks of shell bursts and bullets. I walked inside. The baggage hall was unlit and the carousels and conveyors were silent and shrouded in dust.
At the far end of the baggage hall three soldiers armed with Kalashnikovs lounged around a table. They straightened at my approach, gave my passport a cursory glance, then began to go through my bags.
It was my first sight of the Taliban soldier monks. They were all young – in their late teens or early twenties at a guess – and all bearded. Their black turbans were folded into elaborate shapes like cockscombs, with a long-forked tail of cloth trailing down their backs. Their expressions were neither welcoming nor hostile, but the thick rim of black kohl around their eyes gave them a forbidding look.
I was carrying no magazines or tapes and my only books were a couple of dog-eared paperbacks – Bleak House and Great Expectations – but the soldiers seized them just the same. They exchanged comments in guttural Pushtu as they passed the copies between them, then threw them into a box at the side of the table. ‘Forbidden,’ one said.
I opened my mouth to argue, then thought better of it, shrugged and bowed my head. He handed back my passport, and I pushed open the sagging doors to walk into the harsh sunlight.
As I shaded my eyes I heard a familiar voice. ‘Late as usual, Sean.’
Jeff’s round, pale face was creased in its permanent expression of slightly pained surprise. There was a sheen of perspiration on his forehead, and as we shook hands his plump fingers felt clammy.
‘What the hell are you doing in Kabul?’
‘The same as you – flying a heli.’ He turned to make the introductions to the two people flanking him. ‘Sean Riever, this is Dexy Turner.’
Dexy was a couple of inches shorter than I, but powerfully built, his arms rippling with muscle. ‘Good to meet you, Sean. Don’t let Jeff’s proprietorial air fool you, he’s only been here a few days himself.’
The accent was English – south London – and his smile was warm, but his eyes were perpetually alert. ‘We’ll be working together a fair bit. I head up one of the mine clearance teams.’
I turned towards the other member of the welcoming committee, a woman clad in an all-enveloping mauve burka. I could see only the glitter of her dark eyes through an embroidered mesh visor. ‘And I’m Amica,’ a disembodied voice said. The accent was local, but there was a trace of something else in there too. ‘Welcome to Afghanistan.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’m looking forward to working here. Is that an American accent I can hear?’
‘I spent some years there, yes.’
‘Why did you come back?’
The visor of the burka swung back towards me. ‘America was too materialist.’
Dexy laughed. ‘That’s not a problem you’re ever likely to find here.’ He led the way to a white pickup with a local driver sitting at the wheel. ‘Afghan Mine Clearance Organisation’ was painted in red letters on the side. Beneath the name was the AMCO logo and a picture of a Kalashnikov with a red line through it.
‘We allow no one inside bearing arms,’ Amica said. There was the faintest hint of a smile in her voice.
‘I didn’t realise you and Jeff already knew each other,’ Dexy said as we drove away from the terminal.
‘I was paired with him when I transferred from fast jets. He nursed me through my first few months of flying helis.’
Jeff laughed. ‘Not really. I just sat alongside him, shut my eyes and prayed.’
‘But how come you’re working for AMCO?’ I turned to Dexy. ‘He’s the only man I’ve ever met who wears a home-made poppy on Remembrance Day.’
Despite the sledging, Jeff s smile didn’t fade. ‘How much are you getting paid to work here, Sean?’
‘What do you mean? I’m seconded; I’m getting my normal RAF pay just like you.’ I paused. ‘Aren’t you?’
He shook his head. ‘More fool you. I’m here for one reason only – the money. I’m on a hundred K, tax free, with a fat gratuity at the end of my three years.
I glanced at Dexy. ‘And are you a mercenary too?’
Dexy’s tone was cold. ‘I’m here to do a job that the Afghans either can’t or won’t do for themselves. I clear mines and try to train others to do so. I’m a soldier and I get soldier’s pay, but no more than I could earn in the UK without risking my life every day to earn it. That all right with you?’
‘Of course, I didn’t mean to,’ I paused. ‘It’s just I assumed everyone here would be a volunteer. I hadn’t even realised AMCO had the budget to pay fat fees.’
‘We don’t,’ Amica said, ‘but if people have skills that we need and there are not enough volunteers to do the job, we have to find the money to pay the market rate for them.’
‘And what’s your job with AMCO?’
‘I’m a medic, specialising in trauma. There’s no shortage of that kind of work here. And I help with the administration.’
Dexy interrupted her. ‘Amica runs the whole operation, but since the Taliban refuse to acknowledge the possibility that women might be capable of anything more than living inside a portable tent, we have to do the talking when they’re around.’ I shot an uncertain glance at the driver.
‘Relax,’ Amica said. ‘He’s no friend of the Taliban. He used to run a teahouse and hostel when Kabul was on the hippie trail. He sold them food, a room for the night and the best marijuana in Afghanistan. Isn’t that right, Panna?’
The driver grinned. ‘Number one, far-out hash. Blow your fucking mind, man. You want some?’
I smiled. ‘I’d never have guessed you’d spent time around hippies, Panna.’
‘They were good times, man,’ he said. ‘Then the Russians ruined everything, and the Taliban are worse.’ He hawked and spat out of the window. ‘When they go’ – he drew a finger across his throat – ‘the hippies will come back and I’ll be rich.’
‘Are the Taliban that bad?’
The cool voice emanating from the mesh of the burka took on a harder edge. ‘If anything, they’re worse; but don’t blame it all on us. They were formed in the Muslim seminaries in Pakistan, encouraged by the Islamic government in Pakistan, but funded and weaponed by their paymasters in Washington, London and Riyadh.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Please don’t judge all Afghans by what the Taliban do.’
I looked out of the windscreen as we jolted over the scarred and pitted road. On every side was a scene of utter devastation. For block after block, houses and buildings had disintegrated into piles of dust and rubble.
‘This place is called Jade Maiwand,’ Amica said. ‘It’s the worst area; the destruction here was almost total.’
‘It’s like Beirut,’ Jeff said.
I shook my head in disbelief. ‘It’s more like Hiroshima.’ Nothing had been spared in the fighting. Schools and hospitals lay in ruins, and even a mosque had been destroyed, its broken tiles and mosaics of lapis lazuli littering the ground like fallen petals.
Amica pointed to the wreck of another ancient building from which the stumps of huge stone pillars protruded through the collapsed roof. ‘The Kabul museum,’ she said. ‘It had a fine collection of Buddhist relics. They’ve all been looted and sold by the Taliban.’
Beyond the wreckage I could see row upon row of roofless, fire-blackened houses climbing the hillsides, their walls pocked and pitted by gunfire, their empty windows framing only the sky.
The devastation was less severe near the city centre, but there were no grand buildings or broad avenues, just a jumble of shoddy buildings – drab concrete shells interspersed with rows of mud-brick shanties, propped one against another, like books on a shelf – and a cluster of footbridges spanning the muddy waters of the Kabul river at the city’s heart.
None of the traffic lights worked, and the red and white booths from which police must once have directed the flow of vehicles were empty and abandoned. There was little traffic to control: only a few lorries and buses and a handful of ramshackle bicycles stirred the dust in the rutted and cratered st
reets. The only new-looking vehicles were the red Toyotas of the Taliban. They passed with their horns blaring incessantly, as pedestrians and other traffic took cover, pulling to the side to allow them through.
We took the road to the east, through another cluster of devastated buildings, but as we rounded a corner Panna braked suddenly. A rough barrier had been erected across the road, next to a dead, bomb-splintered tree. Six black-robed figures stood in front of it, Kalashnikovs at the ready.
Panna had been playing Indian movie music on the tape player, a surreal soundtrack to the vision from hell unfolding around us. As soon as he saw the roadblock, he jabbed his finger on the eject button and slipped the tape under his seat. He shoved in another cassette and martial music began to blare from the speakers. ‘Checkpoint music,’ he said.
Amica shook the sleeves of her burka over her wrists and slid to the far side of the seat. ‘If they ask questions, I will try to speak for us, if they allow me to do so,’ she said. ‘Some Taliban treat me as an honorary man, others refuse to acknowledge me. If they ignore me, it will be a chance for you to practise your Farsi.’
I’d been on a six-week intensive course in the language, but was far from fluent in it. My uncertainty must have showed, for Amica hurried to reassure me: ‘Don’t worry, it’s a foreign language to them too. The Taliban are almost all Pushtuns. Show their leader the papers and give him every respect, however idiotic his requests or questions. To make him lose face in front of his men would be a very serious error. Don’t react, and above all don’t get angry.’
As the pickup ground to a halt the leader of the Taliban group gestured with his Kalashnikov, ordering us out. His hair and beard were grey, but he was a powerful and imposing figure. The puckered line of a scar ran across his bony, hooked nose and through one eye socket. The milk-white pupil stared sightlessly at us, but the other eye was hazel and hawk-sharp.
We stood in a row at the side of the vehicle as the Taliban searched the car. Amica was a couple of paces behind us, her head bowed. With the exception of their leader, none of them looked more than eighteen years old. They stared at us with baleful hostility from peasant faces with kohl-rimmed eyes and thin straggling beards.
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