A Palestinian AMCO volunteer walking to the shit pit up the hill had triggered a booby trap.
The earth and debris were still spattering down around us as Amica sprinted towards the gates. Before I knew what I was doing, I was running after her.
A knot of AMCO mine clearers and Taliban soldiers stood around the wounded man, who lay on his back screaming. Gouts of arterial blood spurted from his leg, and his face was a mass of bloodied lacerations.
Amica dropped to her knees alongside him and began to cut away what was left of his trousers to expose the wound. I heard an angry shout from behind me and recognised Salan’s voice.
I turned to a Taliban soldier. ‘Please tell your leader that only the woman has the skill to treat this man’s wound. If she does not, he will die.’
The wounded Palestinian was yelling over and over again in Arabic, ‘My eyes! I can’t see. My eyes, I can’t see!’
Amica shot a glance at me. ‘You speak Arabic, don’t you? Talk to him. Tell him it’s flash blindness, it’s only temporary.’
‘Is it?’
‘Sometimes.’
I began to talk to him, mumbling reassurances, as Amica jerked a tourniquet tight around his thigh and put on a shell dressing, then scanned his pupils, her long slim fingers gently probing his skull for fractures and testing his stomach for internal injuries.
She placed another dressing over his damaged eyes, took his pulse and blood pressure, and scribbled a few notes in her pad. Then she pulled a syrette of morphine from her pack and injected him. ‘Keep talking to him until that takes effect,’ she said. ‘Then get a couple of the others to help you carry him.’
She hurried away. By the time the man’s cries and groans had subsided into morphine-fuelled babbling, she had cleared the floor of one of the rooms at the compound, spread a sterile sheet, laid out her suturing kit and fixed up a saline drip.
‘Shouldn’t we get him to a hospital?’ I asked as Dexy and I laid him down.
She gave me an amused look. ‘This is Afghanistan,’ she said. ‘There’s more kit in this medical pack than in most of the hospitals.’
She checked his pulse and blood pressure again, frowning as she glanced at her watch.
‘Need any help?’ I asked.
‘If you know what you’re doing.’
‘I’ve done the basic medic’s course.’
‘Then yes, thanks. You can put in the drip while I start tying off the bleeders. We’ll have to release the tourniquet in a few minutes.’
She kept half an eye on me as I fixed the drip, then swabbed the wounds while she sutured the arteries, veins and torn muscles. Once again her work was calm and methodical, but very fast.
At length she tied off the last suture and released the tourniquet. A couple of bright drops of fresh blood oozed from the wound, but there was no sudden spurt.
Satisfied, she packed the wound and applied a dressing, then stepped back and stripped off her surgical gloves.
‘Great work,’ I said, ‘you saved his life.’
Her face was hidden by the burka, but the elation showed in her eyes. ‘Thanks for the help.’
‘What now? Do we fly him out?’
‘Once we get permission from the Taliban. From previous experience, that may take anything up to a week.’
As I walked back down the corridor I heard a low, urgent voice. Dexy was standing in the shadows of his room, talking into a satphone. As soon as he saw me, he broke the connection.
‘A satphone, a hundred grand for a helicopter pilot – how much money do AMCO have?’ I said.
‘Enough to do the job,’ he replied. He pushed past me, his expression grim.
‘Bad news?’
He didn’t reply. A few moments later I heard him call to Amica and saw the two of them pacing across the compound, deep in conversation.
Chapter Five
I got up at dawn the next morning, but Amica and Dexy were way ahead of me. When I walked out into the compound I found them already loading the cameras and other equipment into the heli. ‘Either you guys are prodigiously early risers,’ I said, ‘or you haven’t been to bed at all.’
Dexy just smiled and carried on loading.
‘So what’s up? Are we back at work or are we cleared to fly the injured guy out?’
‘Clearance is being obtained,’ Amica said. ‘We need you to work out a route through Pakistan and Oman to Jordan.’
I looked from her to Dexy. ‘In the heli?’
‘In the heli. Dexy and I will also be flying with you.’
‘We’ll need to refuel at least twice.’
‘Arrangements are already being made. Fuel will be available at Bangur in Pakistan and Masirah in Oman.’
‘But why take him all that way? What’s wrong with a hospital in Pakistan?’
‘He’s Palestinian.’
‘So get him treated in Pakistan and then send him home.’
Amica gave Dexy a glance. He hesitated, then nodded. ‘Get Jeff out here, will you?’
I had to drag him out of bed, but returned with him a couple of minutes later.
Dexy glanced around the compound. There was no one in sight apart from the Taliban guard on the gate. ‘You’re both being recalled,’ he told us.
‘What? Why?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘They can’t recall me,’ Jeff said. ‘I left the Air Force. I’m a free agent.’
‘You’re still on the reserve list, aren’t you?’ Dexy said. ‘They can recall you any damn time they please.’
‘But why us? If they want a heli crew there must be at least a hundred others as good or better than us. Why bring us all the way back from Afghanistan?’
‘I can’t tell you any more than I already have. You’ve got sixty minutes to pack your bags and work out a route. I suggest you get to it.’ He turned away, ending the discussion.
‘What the hell is going on?’ Jeff said as we threw our few possessions into our bergens and began sorting out a route for the journey.
I glanced around and lowered my voice. ‘Work it out for yourself,’ I said. ‘It makes sense of a lot of stuff. We’re working with a guy who’s got Special Forces written all over him, and who keeps going walkabout in the valleys north-east of here. My bet is we’re going to be tasked with flying Dexy and some more of his pals into Afghanistan. We’ll find out what the mission is when we get to Jordan – if that really is our destination.’
‘But the SAS have got their own heli flight; why the hell would they want to use us?’
I shrugged. ‘I’m not sure I want to be used; but we know the terrain and can fly the Hydra, and we speak Farsi – at least I do; you can’t even speak English.’ I paused. ‘What I really want to know is where Amica fits into this.’
‘I can’t tell you that yet.’ Amica was standing in the doorway. She gave an apologetic smile. ‘I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.’ She paused, holding my gaze. ‘But I heard what you said about not wanting to do the mission. I’m sure you’ll reconsider when you understand its importance.’
‘Amica,’ I said quietly, ‘you know I don’t want to be responsible for any more people dying. I want to save lives, not take them.’
She studied me for a moment, measuring her words. ‘And if I told you that what we are about to do will save more lives than a lifetime’s work for AMCO?’
‘I –’ I hesitated. ‘I don’t know.’
She laid her hand on my arm. ‘I think you do.’
She turned and walked back down the corridor.
We took off an hour later. Dexy and Amica sat in the cab alongside the prone figure of the Palestinian. He lay on the floor, a saline drip hooked on to one of the bare steel cross members of the cab roof.
We made the usual steep, spiralling ascent, scattering flares in our wake, then turned south-west, following the line of the river down towards Kabul. I kept clear of the scene of the fighting we had overflown on our way to Konarlan. Though the dark shapes of tanks were
still visible in the distance, their guns were silent.
We passed well to the south of Kabul and flew on over the barren, treeless mountains, their slopes burned by the sun to muted shades of ochre, brown, khaki and grey.
At their foot was a dark smudge – the city of Qandahar. As we drew closer, the glint of sunlight from the minarets and domes of the mosques pierced the dust-laden haze ahead of us.
I swung the heli due south, over the desert towards the frontier with Baluchistan. As we cleared the next summit I saw Jeff’s white knuckles relax on the flare lever for the first time since we had taken off.
As soon as we landed at Bangur to refuel, Amica walked over to the shack. She took a look inside, shook her head, and began to shrug her burka over her shoulders where she stood, keeping her back to us. Her black hair cascaded around her shoulders and the olive skin of her back glowed in the sunlight as she wriggled into a pair of jeans. She pulled on a white T-shirt, then turned and saw me watching her. ‘If you knew how I hate this burka,’ she said. ‘I wish I could burn it.’
‘So do I. This is much better.’
She flushed, then stooped to pick up the burka from the dust where she had thrown it.
As we waited for the tanks to fill, a brown van with a red crescent on its side pulled up by us. I glanced at Amica. ‘So your patient gets off here?’
She nodded.
‘And our destination?’
‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ Dexy said.
We carried the Palestinian to the ambulance and, oblivious to his change of transport, he was driven away.
We took off again and flew on to the south, parallel with the Iranian border and out over the Arabian Sea. Once beyond the limit of Iran’s territorial waters, we turned towards the distant coastline of Oman.
The long flight stretched the day and we landed at the giant airbase on the island of Masirah in the fading light of late afternoon. I shut down the engines and glanced back at Dexy. ‘What now? Another refuel?’
He shook his head. ‘Journey’s end.’
‘And the flight plan on to Jordan?’
‘Just cover.’
I took off my helmet and wiped the sweat from my eyes. After the thin, arid mountain air of Afghanistan, it felt as if I could have squeezed handfuls of water from this hot, humid atmosphere.
Troops in unbadged combat fatigues surrounded us as we clambered from the heli. We were hustled into an olive drab bus and driven across the field to a separate compound, ringed by a triple fence of razor wire. Armed guards boarded the bus and scrutinised our faces and ID before waving us through.
We passed through three further security checks as we made our way into a squat, reinforced concrete building. The entrance was a narrow passageway, screened by huge concrete blast shields. I walked inside, shielding my eyes for a moment as they adjusted to the harsh neon light.
The only way in to the building was through an airlock. Behind its smoked glass I could see the dim outline of figures.
An unseen watcher interrogated me in Dalek-speak through the entry phone, I dropped my ID into a steel box that slid out of sight with a pneumatic hiss, then I stepped into the airlock.
I heard the outer door click shut behind me and felt a tremor of claustrophobia in the few seconds’ pause before I felt the outrush of pressurised air as the inner door swung open.
The lobby beyond the airlock was guarded by half a dozen armed men. A lean, wind-burned American walked towards us, his boot heels ringing on the concrete. He had the clean-cut looks and hard-eyed certainty of a Mormon missionary selling Jesus door to door. His eyes flicked to the name badges on our flying suits as he shook our hands.
‘Sean Riever, Jeff Parsons?’ Though his speech was clipped, there was a trace of a southern drawl. His olive drab fatigues were unbadged, but he had the air of a man who was used to having his orders obeyed.
‘That’s us.’ I stretched, easing the stiffness from my limbs.
‘I’m Dave Regan. Welcome to Masirah.’
Dave led us through a decontamination room, filled with racks of charcoal-lined NBC suits, and through another open airlock into a smaller lobby. Two more armed guards stood at either side of the grey steel doors of a lift, which we entered. My knees buckled at the rate of descent.
The doors slid back to reveal a larger lobby, from which radiated four identical, featureless corridors. The floors were angled so steeply that I had to stoop to see more than a few yards up each one. When I did so, they seemed to stretch away for ever.
We walked along one of them, its harsh fluorescent lighting softened by the dove-grey paintwork and carpet. I could hear the faint whirr of air conditioning and the sound of muffled voices from behind closed doors.
We were shown into a tomb-like, subterranean briefing room. Four floors below ground level and shielded by a massive concrete carapace, it was protected – in theory at least – even from a direct hit by a nuclear weapon. The featureless walls were broken by only two doors and a projection window at the back. Ranks of steeply tiered seating were arranged in an arc facing a screen that covered the entire front wall.
About fifty men were already waiting in the room. We were obviously the last arrivals, for I heard the doors locked behind us as we moved towards some empty seats.
Dave walked to the raised platform at the centre of the stage. ‘The film you are about to see was compiled from amateur footage – mostly plane spotters and holiday makers with VCRs. Technicians at Langley have edited it so that you will also hear the cockpit flight data tapes in real time. They record the last flight of British passenger jet, flight number BZ169, outward bound from New York to London three days ago.’
The blank screen filled with a grainy colour image of a 747 rolling along a taxiway, through a haze of heat rising from the tarmac. A nasal, slightly bored Brooklyn voice crackled from the loudspeakers. ‘BZ169 heavy, this is New York Center. You have traffic at one o’clock and seven miles southward, one thousand feet below you.’
‘BZ169 heavy, no contact.’ There was a pause. ‘Center, BZ169 heavy, requesting clearance to climb to one five thousand feet.’
‘Roger that, BZ169. Climb and maintain one five thousand feet.’
‘Roger, New York. Leaving one three thousand. Transferring control to Boston Center. Thanks, see you next time.’
I imagined the pilot, gaze never still, moving restlessly from the instruments to the sky around and ahead. Once at cruising height he could set the autopilot and sit back for a few hours, but here, in one of the busiest air traffic corridors in the world, he would be on full alert.
The viewpoint abruptly changed again to a camera somewhere on the Long Island shore. The CIA technicians had highlighted the jet with an arrow. There was a sudden vivid flash from the ground and a trail of fire and smoke blazed up into the sky towards the jet.
I stiffened in my seat and imagined for an instant that the pilot was talking to me, not to his co-pilot ‘Relax,’ he said. ‘It’s the Fourth of July.’ As he spoke the firework exploded in a starburst of gold and silver. ‘They’re putting on a good show for us tonight.’
‘They can afford it.’
‘One four thousand.’
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 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, which 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.
I knew one of those voices. He had been among the veterans on my squadron in the days when I flew fast jets. He had served three front-line tours on Tempests before retiring to the
quieter life of commercial aviation. Now he was dead.
The other figures lining the benches also sat motionless. I shuddered, trying to clear from my ears the lingering echo of that doomed voice.
Dave broke the silence. ‘Over four hundred people died, including eighty-four children. Not a single person survived. Those not already dead hit the sea with such force that it fractured every bone in their bodies. One six-foot man hit the water upright. His corpse was identified only by a wedding ring; the body’s height was four feet two.’ He paused, scanning the rows of faces in front of him.
‘Apart from the President and the Prime Minister, the people in this room are the only ones in the world to have seen that film or heard those recordings. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, the black box flight data recorders have still to be recovered from the sea off Long Island.
‘The seabed is so littered with debris that the divers can’t even walk on it. It’ll take months to bring it all to the surface. When the black boxes are officially recovered, they’ll show only routine exchanges between the cabin crew and New York Center, followed by an abrupt and inexplicable silence.
‘As usual, the National Transportation Safety Board and the FBI are conducting their own rival investigations and jealously guarding their information from each other, and anybody else. Conspiracy theories are filling the void, particularly on the Internet, but we’re holding the speculation in check and redirecting anything that gets too close to home by holding off-the-record press briefings. While not ruling out a bomb or missile as a potential cause, these briefings are pointing the finger of suspicion at a mechanical fault.’ He paused. ‘This is a US election year after all, and terrorist acts do not play well in presidential politics – they make the President look powerless. If a mechanical fault appears to be the cause, the blame is diverted to the airline companies.’
‘And the reality?’ A rangy, grizzled looking US soldier wearing sergeant’s stripes stood up. ‘Film evidence, particularly of that poor quality, can be misleading. Is there any doubt this was a missile attack?’
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