Stinger

by Stinger (retail) (epub)

  The building was a ramshackle stone hut with a lean-to at one end. The roof was made of twigs and branches, weighted down by large flat stones. A battered tin trough nailed to the wall served as a sign.

  We paused just outside the door. ‘Keep your ears open in here,’ Amica said. ‘If Salan has passed this way we may get word of it, and if we meet anyone who has come down from further up the valley, we can certainly find out about the checkpoints ahead.’

  The door was salvaged from a truck, riddled with bullet holes and still emblazoned with Soviet markings. As I pushed it open, an acrid stink filled my nostrils. The room was low-ceilinged, filthy with smoke and smelt of damp wool and hides, dirt and dung. A score of sheep and half a dozen mules were penned at one end of the room and a handful of people sat around the stove in the middle. A small boy sat by the fire, feeding it with branches and dried animal droppings. The blaze under the samovar flared and subsided as the wind whistled through chinks in the walls. It blew fine snow into the room, forming miniature drifts which melted slowly in the heat.

  A half-partition, again made from cannibalised Soviet truck panels and topped by a torn curtain, divided off the women’s area. Amica immediately walked to it, while Daru and I took our places near the stove. The conversation stopped and every face swivelled to scan the new arrivals. There were perhaps a dozen people, but there were no Taliban soldiers, just the usual collection of old men and young boys.

  A shrivelled, toothless old man with a jagged scar running down the side of his face laid two cups before us, ladled sugar into them and filled them with black tea. He slopped down two tin bowls containing some grey rice, a piece of gristle and a lump of fat, laid some naan bread alongside them, then stomped back to his place by the fire.

  I ate slowly, my eyes fixed on my plate, as the hubbub of conversation resumed. Daru kept up a stream of chatter with those around us. He flashed me a cheeky grin as he explained that I was a mute, then tapped his forehead and rolled his eyes, winning laughs from his audience.

  There were two shepherds bringing their flock down from the mountains for winter, a couple of refugees making their way towards Peshawar, and a Blue Man and his two armed guards returning to Peshawar with a consignment of lapis lazuli. He sat with a proprietorial hand resting on a sack at his side. At Daru’s prompting, he opened the top and let the flakes of brilliant blue cascade between his fingers, shimmering in the glow from the fire.

  ‘Are you not worried?’ Daru said. ‘I have heard many tales of robbers and foreigners.’

  The trader shrugged. ‘All I am worried about is that every new Taliban checkpoint costs me another hundred Afghanis. Each one gives me a pass that will take me to the border, or so they say. Each time the next one tears it up and sells me another.’

  ‘And is the border open?’

  The owner of the teahouse stirred himself. ‘I hear not,’ he said. ‘A great Taliban commander and his men honoured my chai khana today. They are hunting for faranji kafir.’

  ‘What have they done?’

  ‘They destroyed a mosque and killed many people. I should like to have them here.’ He drew a finger across his throat. ‘We would do to them what we did to the Soviets.’

  I felt my heart begin to beat harder, but I kept my eyes downcast. I relaxed again as the conversation turned to the earthquake and the scarcity of rice and sugar. The old man refilled our cups a couple of times, the tea tasting increasingly bitter the longer it steeped. The warmth of the place was heightening my weariness.

  When I had finished my meal I huddled down to sleep on the pile of filthy mats and torn sacking piled against the wall. There were no mosquitoes at this altitude, but I could feel the bites of fleas as soon as I lay down. Still scratching, I fell asleep.

  I jerked upright, suddenly alert, as I heard another sound beneath the murmur of conversation. The talk faltered and died as the others strained their ears to listen.

  The noise of vehicles grew louder. They were labouring on the steep gradient, the engines whining in low gear, the wheels slipping and crunching on the ice.

  They stopped outside. One of the drivers gunned his engine once or twice, then we heard the slam of doors and feet stamping through the snow. The door banged open. Six black-clad figures, dragging a bound and manacled man, stooped under the low doorway. As they straightened up I saw the black turbans with long-forked tails and the black, kohl-rimmed eyes of the Taliban. Two of them wore the insignia of officers.

  I raised my eyes and once more found myself looking into the face of Salan. He glanced from me to Daru. ‘This is not the way to Qandahar.’

  ‘I – My uncle wished to join his brother on the haj,’ Daru said. ‘I am taking him to the frontier before returning to Qandahar.’

  Salan’s one good eye continued to fix us with a baleful stare. ‘Then you must make sure he is on that flight.’

  I thought of the Stinger, unattended on the back of one of the Toyotas outside, and got to my feet.

  ‘Nobody leaves this building,’ Salan said.

  I mimed taking a piss.

  ‘Sit down or I will do to it what I almost did to your tongue.’ He turned to the other officer. ‘Two men will come with me to the frontier. Take the prisoner back to Qandahar. But keep him alive; when we have finished this business, I shall have more questions to ask him.’

  His captive’s head remained down, staring at the ground between his feet, his shoulders sagging. His face was a bloody, bruised pulp and there were ragged holes caked with blood on either side of his head where his ears had been hacked off. The nails of his filthy hands were also torn and bleeding.

  The owner of the teahouse hurried to grovel before Salan, pushing some other customers aside to clear the cushions nearest to the fire. Salan ignored him, took a handful of naan and hurried out into the night followed by two of his men. A moment later I heard his vehicle drive off up the pass.

  The other officer surveyed the room. He shouted at the women beyond the dividing curtain, waited no more than a moment, then pulled it aside and hustled them through to join the men. They stood huddled together, their faces averted, staring at the wall.

  ‘Your papers,’ he said.

  Some of the old men began rummaging in their pockets or the folds of their garments; others started to stammer explanations. The officer silenced them with a gesture. The two soldiers began moving through the room, checking each person’s papers. Those who had none were kicked and punched to one side.

  While pretending to search for his papers, Daru was inching away from me. My rifle was propped against the wall behind me. There was no way I could reach it. Hidden by the table, I put my hand down and eased my knife from my belt.

  The soldiers were working their way fast around the room. I heard Amica answer a question from one of them and point towards Daru and me.

  The captive raised his head at the sound of her voice. I saw the spark of recognition flare in Rami’s eyes as he saw me. He pointed his hands towards me, mumbling through his broken teeth. ‘Those are the ones,’ he said. ‘They are the Americans. The terrorists.’

  There was a moment’s silence. Then I heard the roar of a gun and the front of Amica’s burka was punched with holes. I yelled in rage and despair, throwing the table upwards and outwards. It struck the nearest soldier and the burst from his Kalashnikov smashed into the roof.

  I launched myself and was on him before he could fire again.

  I hit him under the ribs with my shoulder and he grunted as the air was driven from his lungs. He crashed backwards on to the ground with me on top of him. I drove my knife in under his ribcage, twisted it and pulled it out.

  As I rolled clear I heard another burst of fire behind me. I was looking straight down the barrel of the second soldier’s rifle, but he had not fired. His body was convulsing, jerking and twisting, as Daru emptied his magazine.

  I hurled myself back towards the wall. My fingers curled around the butt of my rifle, expecting the impact of shots from the
officer behind me. I threw myself into a tumbling roll across the floor and swung up my rifle to fire a burst. There was no target to be seen.

  The officer and Rami lay flat on the ground. Amica was standing over them. She had fired the first shots, using the Browning pistol hidden under her burka, the rounds ripping out through the fabric. Both men were dead; Rami’s eyes rolled up, showing the whites.

  I got to my feet. Daru was herding the customers into a corner, threatening them with his rifle. I stood alongside him. ‘Great work, Daru, but change the magazine. An empty rifle is no threat.’

  He laughed, his eyes wild with excitement, and tossed the empty magazine away. He took another from the soldier he had killed.

  I walked over to Amica. ‘Are you okay?’

  She shrugged. ‘He abandoned us and betrayed us. He deserved to die. Now let’s get out of here.’ There was a tremor in her voice.

  ‘Daru, get the rest of the ammunition and weapons,’ I said.

  He draped himself with the soldiers’ bandoliers and picked up the three Kalashnikovs. ‘What about the others?’

  ‘Take theirs too.’

  ‘We can’t take men’s rifles.’

  ‘We’ll leave them in the snow outside.’ I glanced back at Amica. ‘We’ll take the Toyota.’

  ‘What if there’s a checkpoint further up?’

  ‘Then we’ll just have to ram it. Daru, tell these people to stay here until dawn. If anyone tries to leave before that, we’ll shoot them.’

  He banged on a table with the butt of his weapon to get everyone’s attention. It was a superfluous gesture. Every frightened eye was fixed on us. ‘Leave this place before dawn and you will die,’ he said. ‘When the Taliban come, tell them a true warrior – Daru, son of Agha Shah Azuin – did this.’ He spat on the officer’s body to emphasise the point.

  ‘I think they’ve got it, Daru,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’

  I took the keys from the dead man’s pocket and we backed out of the door. As I closed it, I fired a burst into the ground to deter anyone from following.

  ‘I’ll drive,’ Daru said.

  ‘Like hell you will. Twelve-year-old Afghan kids can do plenty of things but driving isn’t one of them. Get in the other side. If anyone tries to stop us, start shooting.’

  We kept the soldiers’ Kalashnikov rounds but dumped the other weapons and ammunition in the snow. I let in the clutch and drove fast up the track, jolting over the ruts and boulders. The beam of the headlights was reflected by the particles of snow whirling around us, reducing visibility to a few feet.

  ‘We’ll get as far as we can in this,’ I said, ‘then ditch it and track Salan to the border.’

  Amica shivered. ‘The Taliban will follow us.’

  ‘I know, but we’ve got a good start.’

  The track wound across screes so steep that the Toyota seemed certain to roll over and tumble down the slope into the river far below us. Beyond the screes, it crossed a rock ledge clinging to a sheer cliff face. The ledge was barely wider than the vehicle and we crawled across in first gear, my heart pounding.

  The way grew still more rugged and perilous. Boulders gouged at the underside of the truck, and even in four-wheel drive we slewed and slid on the icy surface. The bumper would strike sparks from the rock face as we skidded against it, and the next instant I would be fighting the wheel as we snaked towards the outer edge of the track.

  At last the beams of the headlights stopped stabbing into the sky and swung downwards as we cleared the summit. We slalomed down the track, careering over the ice-filled ruts in a barely controlled slide towards the bottom. Almost at once the Toyota slewed sideways on a patch of ice and a sharp rock pierced the offside rear tyre. I heard the scrape of metal on rock and braked.

  It was hard to imagine a worse place for a puncture. The gradient was steep, the ground rocky and uneven, and my fingers were clumsy with cold. More in hope than expectation I looked in the back of the pickup and found a wheel brace, a jack and a spare wheel whose tyre, although bald, was inflated. Daru and I packed the other wheels with boulders, then I stood the jack on a flat stone and began cranking it upwards, my hands sticking to the frozen metal.

  The wheel nuts were so tight they seemed welded on. Only by standing and jumping on the arm of the brace could I move them at all. Three came free but the fourth was stuck so tight that I was about to give up and abandon the vehicle when the nut gave with a crack like a pistol shot.

  I spun it free and Daru threw the old wheel into the ravine. I sent the jack and the wheel brace after it – if we had to abandon the vehicle I had no wish to leave anything behind that might help the Taliban.

  It had taken an hour to change the wheel, and dawn was breaking by the time we reached the bottom of the mountain and began to cross the plain. There was one more pass – the highest yet – between us and the border.

  In the distance on the other side of the plateau I saw a wisp of smoke. As we drew closer I saw it was coming from a tent as black and leathery as a bat wing. There was no sign of Salan’s red Toyota, but black-clad figures hurried from the tent as they heard the sound of the engine.

  I put my foot down. ‘Amica, duck your head. Daru, get the window open and the safety catch off, but don’t fire until the last minute. Give them no warning.’

  As we sped towards the checkpoint, I kept the headlights full on and began blaring the horn. I was praying that the barrier would be less substantial than the gun barrel that had blocked our way earlier.

  Armed men stood at either side of the track, but their posture showed their indecision.

  Daru laughed. ‘They don’t know whether to shoot or salute.’

  I kept silent, my eyes fixed on the thin line of the barrier. It bridged the gap between two huge boulders flanking the track and rested on an oil barrel in the middle. If the barrel was empty, we would smash it aside. If it was full of oil or concrete, we would go through the windscreen. ‘Brace yourselves,’ I said.

  The soldiers had realised we were not going to stop. I saw them bringing up their gun barrels. Daru cursed me for spoiling his aim, but as the pickup steadied he loosed off a burst. The soldier on his side dived for cover and the shots passed over his head.

  The other one was taking aim when I jerked the wheel again. I saw him freeze for an instant, then there was a crack and a thud as one wing caught the oil drum a glancing blow and the other crashed into him. He tumbled over the bonnet, thudded against the corner of the windscreen and dropped to the ground behind us, leaving a red smear on the glass.

  I heard more shots. Daru put his gun out of the window and fired a blind burst, more to spoil their aim than with any hope of hitting them. The gun jammed and he cursed, banging at the magazine to try to free it as bullets cracked around us.

  I risked a glance in the mirror as we hit the rising ground and began to climb, and saw other figures spilling from the tent and putting their guns to their shoulders, but the firing died away as we passed out of range. ‘I hope to God they don’t have a vehicle,’ I said, ‘or we’re really in the shit.’

  The track became rougher. We took off over a ridge of rock and the suspension bottomed as we landed. We slid sideways as I fought the wheel and dropped my speed.

  As the gradient increased, the surface deteriorated still further, forcing us close to walking pace. The pickup ground upwards and the stench of hot oil and burning metal filled my nostrils as the engine laboured in the thin air.

  Barely a third of the way up the pass I saw Salan’s Toyota. It was empty. Beyond it the track narrowed and petered out, shrinking to the width of a footpath as it rounded the shoulder of the mountainside above a sheer drop.

  I swore, banging the steering wheel with my hand, then jumped out. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘They can’t be far ahead.’

  I leaned in through the window and released the handbrake. Gathering speed, the Toyota rolled back down the track, then plunged over the edge and disappeared from sight.

  A mome
nt later, Salan’s vehicle followed it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  We struggled up the path, shivering in the cold. We were climbing in shadow, the sun still too low in the sky to light this side of the mountain. The track picked its way through narrow clefts in the rock and across screes so sharp they slashed the worn leather of my boots like knives. All the time, the river tumbled over its rock-strewn course below us, shrinking in size as we neared its source.

  At each brow or bend we paused to scan the track ahead, but Salan’s men remained out of sight. The path grew steeper and we half-scrambled and half-climbed, clawing at the rock with our hands. My breath came in gasps. There was no oxygen to be squeezed from the air.

  My head pounded and my vision blurred. Even the weeks at eight thousand feet in the Jebel Akhdar and Konarlan had been no preparation for this. We were now at twice the altitude, close to sixteen thousand feet, and still climbing.

  As we neared the summit, the wind shrieked around us and stung our cheeks with shards of ice. Our hands were white and numb. Our eyes blinded by tears, we crawled on our hands and knees the last few yards, the wind so strong we couldn’t stand against it.

  We took what shelter we could find among a cluster of boulders. To our right we could see the well-marked track leading down towards the border with Pakistan no more than five miles away. Beyond it the mountains rose sheer and forbidding to over twenty thousand feet, in a ridge stretching several miles to the north-east.

  Ahead of me I could see the remainder of the track. There was no trace of movement. It was deserted.

  I stared in disbelief. Salan had had no more than a few minutes’ start on us and had no reason to believe he was being pursued. Even allowing for the puncture, he could not have got so far ahead.

  I scanned the mountainsides. To our left was a narrower line, a grey thread marking the little-used path over the watershed towards the next valley, still in Afghanistan. As I stared, I picked out three black figures moving down the track, well over a mile away. One of them carried a cylinder across his shoulders.