‘Even the toughest soldier only promises that he’ll try and give the others twenty-four hours to get away before he starts to talk.’
‘I don’t know if I could even last that long.’
‘If you have to, you will.’ I touched her arm. ‘And don’t let Rami hear you talking that way. He’s looking for an excuse to dump us as it is.’
She smiled back, despite herself.
Dexy stood up, folded the maps and looked over the pickup. ‘It’ll have to do.’ He glanced at Jeff. ‘If we hit any checkpoints, leave all the talking to Sean, and if any shooting starts, hit the deck and leave it to the experts.’
He whistled to Tank who moved up the slope to the edge of the road. He remained motionless, listening for two or three minutes, then raised his arm. We jumped in and I gunned the engine and set the pickup racing up the slope. I slewed out on to the road, paused a moment while Tank and Boon jumped on board, then put my foot down and sent us speeding back towards Kabul.
I threaded my way through the back streets, making a loop around the west and north of the city, keeping well clear of the area around the AMCO compound. Once beyond Kabul, however, there was no real choice of route, only the pitted dirt road leading through the mountains to Konarlan.
The heat was ferocious. There was no shade to be found anywhere on the broad valley floor as we headed east. A thick pall of dust surrounded us, covering my clothes, face and hair, choking my mouth and nostrils. I had a scarf wound around my face and chewed the end between my lips to try to stop them cracking in the heat.
I drove flat out, bucketing over the ruts and potholes. The guys remained on maximum alert, one peering through the window of the cab, scanning the road ahead, the others raking the hillsides to either side or watching the rear, though at the speed we were travelling the road behind us could largely be left to look after itself.
Chapter Eleven
It took three hours to reach the shelter of the hills, veering around bomb craters in the road surface, still unrepaired ten years after the last Soviet air raid.
As we left the worst of the heat and dust of the plain behind us and began to climb into the foothills, we stopped in the shade of a grove of trees, by a ford across the river. The rusting skeletons of a convoy of Soviet vehicles lined both banks.
All the usable metal from the vehicles had been removed, but the twin barrels of the machine gun of an armoured car still pointed at the sky. Built to withstand the intense heat of continuous fire, the tempered gun barrels had been twisted and blackened by the white heat of the explosion that had consumed them.
Shell casings, water-cans and even an old seat still protruded from the sand on the far bank of the river. ‘I’m surprised the Afghans missed them,’ I said. ‘They seem to have taken everything else.’
Amica shook her head. ‘It’s safer to leave them. The Soviets often booby trapped them. Unfortunately, children are always the most curious. They’re usually the ones who suffer.’
The remains of the convoy were part-buried, as if sinking slowly into quicksand. Each year’s snowmelt and monsoon floods carried a fresh tide of sand and silt down from the mountains to bury them a little deeper. The doors of one truck gaped open and sand had filled the interior to the line of the bonnet. Stunted shrubs and grasses had taken root there.
In the fields near the river, I saw stepped mud-brick towers and pyramids crumbling slowly back into the earth. The faces of them were pierced with small rectangular holes.
‘What are they?’ I said. ‘Forts? Watchtowers?’
Amica shook her head. ‘Pigeon towers. Farmers used to eat the birds and collect the droppings for manure.’
‘What happened to the pigeons?’
She shrugged. ‘The men were killed and most of the irrigation system was destroyed. Until the fighting stops it will never be rebuilt, perhaps not even then.’
A few miles along the road we came to a halt at the first of a succession of checkpoints. They were manned by villagers, not Taliban, and marked the border of rival domains.
At each one I showed our documents and the forged pass purportedly issued by the Taliban, with crossed Kalashnikovs beneath an inscription from the Koran. A bribe of a thousand Afghanis also changed hands at each checkpoint. In return we were issued with another scrap of filthy paper, decorated with more Koranic inscriptions and the thumbprint of the local warlord, enough to guarantee us safe conduct as far as the next checkpoint.
As we climbed higher into the mountains, the sides of the valley closed in around us and the debris of battle became more and more frequent. The ditches at the foot of the steep hillsides were littered with the rusting remnants of trucks and tanks.
At one former Soviet outpost, overlooking the point where two roads met, a dozen shipping containers had been buried three-quarters deep in the ground. There were rows of narrow, blackened, vertical apertures near the top of each one.
Dexy grinned and pointed to them. ‘The Sovs thought they could use them as miniature forts, but that thin metal couldn’t withstand anything, machine guns, grenades or rockets. The Muj used to blast them apart with rockets, or they would pin the defenders down with gunfire while one man ran up and dropped a grenade inside. It opened them up like a tin of beans.’
A few miles further on, the valley walls receded and we drove on across a broad flood plain alongside the river. The fences or low mud walls dividing the fields had collapsed. In places a few had been repaired using pieces of armour plating, some still with fading Soviet markings.
But the fields flanking the river were still green and fertile. Boys and a few old men worked in them, cutting the last of the wheat with sickles. Others goaded on bony mules, dragging wooden ploughs and harrows across the cleared earth. Others still diverted water down the few remaining irrigation channels, using wooden shovelfuls of mud to stem or direct the flow.
We climbed higher. Through the suffocating fog of dust that surrounded us, I could smell the resinous tang of cedar wood as the forest closed in around the road. The sweat began to cool on me as the heat of the day faded and we climbed the first of the chain of passes that stood between us and Konarlan.
The shadows were lengthening and the sky growing dark. ‘It’s almost curfew,’ I said.
Dexy nodded, his eyes flickering between the map, his GPS and the hillsides around us. ‘Not far now.’
A few minutes later he checked his GPS again and pointed to the entrance of an overgrown track – little more than a path – into the forest. I pulled off the road and paused as Tank and Boon again jumped down and obliterated our tyre marks.
The grassy track curved around the hillside and opened into a clearing. Around the edge stood the ruins of three houses. After I cut the engine I could hear the whisper of water; the river was somewhere among the trees below us. It would have been an idyllic scene had the houses not been scarred by shells and bullets, blackened by fire.
‘Tank, Boon, take the first watch till we get sorted,’ Dexy said. ‘Rami and Jeff will take the second one, and Sean and I the third.’
‘I should do my turn as well,’ Amica said.
‘You don’t need to; three won’t go into seven. You can get some sleep.’ He paused. ‘It’s not because you’re a woman. You’re not trained for this.’
Tank and Boon were already moving back up towards the road, taking up firing positions among the trees overlooking the junction with the track. Jeff had begun to walk towards the only house with some semblance of a roof when Dexy stopped him. ‘These places may have been empty since the Sovs left. There could be mines, booby traps, anything.’
Jeff blanched as Dexy moved slowly towards the house, parting the undergrowth to scan the ground. He felt around the door frame for wires, then disappeared inside. We waited in the silence of the gathering dusk.
He showed himself again fifteen minutes later. ‘All clear,’ he said. ‘We’ll get a brew on and eat some food, then get what rest we can. From tomorrow we’ll be travelling by
night and lying up by day. Make the most of this, it could be the last decent sleep we’ll get until we hit Pakistan.’
The unspoken thought, ‘If we hit Pakistan,’ showed on every face. The interior of the house was covered in dust and rubble, but it was dry and offered some protection from the cold. Dexy left it to us to get a brew on, while he tried to contact the rest of the assault team on the net.
We cleared a sleeping area, then made black, sweet tea and sat sipping it in silence with our backs against the wall. I looked around the room. Jeff was sunk in introspection, tracing an endless pattern with his finger in the dust at his feet, his jaw moving slowly as he chewed at the inside of his cheek. Rami seemed hot-wired, starting at every small sound, his dark eyes darting everywhere. Only Amica looked calm and poised, as motionless as stone, her hands folded on her lap.
There was a faint noise from outside. Jeff stiffened and Rami slipped the safety catch off his weapon. Amica merely turned her head to watch the door. A moment later Dexy slipped inside.
‘All right?’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Dave and the boys were out last night. They’ve recced to within a couple of miles of the target. I told them to lie up where they are tonight and we can push on together at last light.’
We shared the fresh rations we had brought and drank some more tea, then Rami and Jeff relieved Tank and Boon and the rest of us settled down. I winced as I bumped my gashed shin against a piece of broken timber, then lay still. The silence was broken only by the sound of our breathing and the whine of mosquitoes. I closed my eyes and fell asleep almost at once.
* * *
I was back in the Q-shed in the Falklands. I could hear the rumble of aircraft, faint at first like distant thunder, but swelling to a deafening roar. Bombs began falling. The line of explosions marched towards us, growing louder and louder, shaking the ground. The roar of the aircraft and the blasts of bomb-bursts merged into a continuous wall of noise. I clapped my hands to my ears but could do nothing to stop the sound. My body was jerked, lifted and thrown sideways against the wall.
* * *
I woke and lay for a second, staring into the darkness. It was a familiar nightmare, but this time it did not fade. I tried to get to my feet, but my legs seemed unable to obey me and I stumbled and fell.
I saw a blacker shape in the darkness, the archway leading to the ruined interior of the house. I tried to reach it but the ground seemed to shake and buck beneath my feet. My foot caught something soft and I heard Amica cry out. I reached down and pulled her to her feet, dragging her with me, my arm around her shoulder.
‘Incoming!’ I heard Dexy yell. ‘Get down! Get down!’
A torrent of rubble was crashing down around us. I moved Amica into the doorway and we cowered in the shelter of the lintel, pressed together. Dexy flattened himself against the other side of the door frame a moment later.
A battery of sharp, snapping, explosive sounds was undercut by a thunderous roar, an avalanche of sound so deep it seemed to come from the bowels of the earth. The ground jerked upwards.
‘What the hell’s happening?’ Dexy shouted, his voice almost buried in the din.
Amica’s voice was close to my ear. ‘It’s an earthquake.’
As she spoke, the ground gave beneath my feet again and there was a massive crash. The roof was torn apart and the jagged, broken end of a huge beam speared downwards, impaling the blanket on which Amica had been lying. A wall of dust blotted out everything except the noise. All I could hear was the rumble and crash of falling rock and the explosive crack of huge cedars snapping like matchsticks.
As suddenly as they had begun, the tremors faded and died. I was still pressed against Amica’s trembling body, shielding her as I clung to the door frame as if it were a life raft.
The silence seemed almost as oppressive as the noise that had gone before it. The dust began to settle around us, but I remained where I was, too scared to move. Then I felt Amica’s hand on my arm. We both looked up.
The roof had disappeared and the room lay open to the stars. I stepped away from her and began to pick my way uncertainly through the mounds of fresh rubble. ‘Dexy?’
‘I’m all right.’ He stepped out of the shadow of the lintel. I saw movement in the outer doorway and Tank took a few cautious steps away from his sanctuary.
‘Where’s Boon?’
There was a muffled reply. Half-buried by rubble, he was lying face down on the ground, his arms in a protective cradle over his head.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I will be when you get this shit off me.’
Relief from the fear and tension made us laugh. Then I remembered Jeff and Rami. I ran outside and saw a figure coming down the slope towards me. ‘Jeff?’
‘Rami.’
‘Where’s Jeff?’
He spat. ‘Up there, crying like a baby.’
I could hear the tremor in his own voice and fought down the urge to punch him. I stumbled up the hillside, clambering over toppled trees and fallen rocks. Jeff was sitting at the base of a huge cedar, which was now leaning precariously down the slope.
He was facing away from me with his arms wrapped around the trunk. His face was pressed into the bark, his shoulders shaking.
His rifle lay on the ground, half-buried by debris. I picked it up and brushed the dirt from it, then put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Come on, Jeff. It’s okay, it’s over.’
He didn’t move.
‘I nearly shat myself there,’ I said. ‘I thought our time was up.’
He turned his head to look at me, ‘I’m going to die here.’
‘Don’t talk crap. It was just an earthquake; they happen all the time here.’
I took hold of his hand and prised it away from the tree. ‘Now get a grip. We’ve a job to do.’ I took his arm and led him back down to the clearing.
A fine dust still hung in the air, softening the pink light of dawn. Pale-lit, the clearing had been transformed. A torrent of rock had scythed down the hillside, sweeping away almost everything in its path to the river. I could see the silver glint of water among the tangled boulders and shattered trees. The other two houses had collapsed completely. Only a single wall still stood, like a gravestone above the mounds of rubble.
The pickup was where we had left it, but a fallen cedar had buried the rear of the vehicle to the axles.
The others were grouped around it. ‘The quake could be our ally,’ Dexy said. ‘Taliban communications aren’t that good at the best of times. After this they can only be worse, and most of their soldiers will be on rescue duty. We can turn it to our advantage, if we can get this bloody tree off and the suspension hasn’t collapsed completely.’
‘Even if it hasn’t,’ I said, ‘how are we going to get it back to the road?’ I pointed along the track. It was blocked with boulders and fallen trees.
Dexy looked towards the scar on the hillside. ‘We’ll get it up there.’
‘And how do we get the tree off?’ Amica said. ‘We’ve no saws or axes.’
‘We don’t need them,’ Dexy said. ‘You guys dig our kit out while Tank and I fix some charges.’
We dug our bergens out of the rubble, then I watched as they laid two necklaces of small charges around the trunk on either side of the pickup and ran a detonator cord back to the shelter of the ruin. ‘What if the Taliban hear the explosion?’ Jeff said.
Dexy smiled. ‘We’ll be long gone before anyone gets round to investigating, and I think they’ve enough to worry about right now.’
There was a roar as the explosives detonated and splinters whistled through the air above us. The tree had been severed as neatly as if it had been cut by a circular saw, but a six-foot section still lay across the back.
Boon and I climbed in behind it and pushed and shoved, our feet struggling for grip on the dusty floor of the pickup. We moved the trunk a little, then it stuck fast. Tank lashed a rope around it and we lined up like a tug-of-war team and began to heave on it. The trunk roc
ked and fell back again a couple of times, then toppled off the back with a crash. The pickup rose a couple of inches on its springs.
‘Thank God for that,’ said Dexy. ‘We’re in with a chance.’ He grabbed a broken branch and began to lever the twisted bodywork away from the tyres while Tank and Boon dug away the soil. Then Dexy gunned the engine as we pushed against the back, choking on the dust as the wheels spun and then gripped, and the pickup lurched clear.
Dexy paused, revving the engine as he studied the path of the landslide, looking for a way up. It had scoured the soil down to the bedrock in places; in others boulders and tree stumps littered the slope.
The rest of us watched from the clearing as he let in the clutch and sent the pickup careering up the slope. It hit each bump with a dull thud and a groan of tortured metal. A third of the way up, as he fishtailed between a tree stump and a huge boulder, he lost momentum and slid to a halt. He revved the engine hard, but the wheels spun and he could get no higher.
As he slid back down for another run, I again felt the earth shift beneath my feet. There was a deep bass rumble and I swayed, rocked and dropped to my knees. As the aftershock began to fade, I saw a boulder further up the slope jolt free and roll downhill. It gathered speed, taking a small avalanche of rocks with it.
Dexy was still reversing down the hillside. I yelled a warning, even though I knew he could not have heard it above the noise of the engine and the rumble of the quake. The boulder smashed into a ridge of exposed rock and took off, cleaving an arc through the air towards the pickup.
Still oblivious, Dexy spun the wheel to take him back across the clearing. I saw his face change as the shadow of the boulder darkened the cab. There was the crack of metal and shattering glass as it struck the corner of the cab above his head. It hurtled away, smashing its way down the hillside to shatter in a thousand pieces as it hit the rock face on the other side of the river.
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