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.
There 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.
‘What if the army sees us?’ he asked. ‘Won’t they attack?’
Amir sneered. ‘They will only attack if they see us carrying weapons. That is their weakness. And they are too scared to patrol when it is dark. That is why we travel at night. Now, you will stop asking me questions.’
Even if Ben had wanted to, there was little chance left. It was well after midnight, he estimated, when the truck came to a stop. ‘What is it?’ he demanded, before looking out of the window. He blinked. Peering into the darkness, he realized that the surrounding desert was no longer the featureless plain he had grown used to. Suddenly, only metres away from the Land Rover, there were trees. Lots of them, and a field of something growing.
‘From here,’ Amir announced, ‘we go by foot. The green zone is not fit for vehicles. Get out.’
Ben did as he was told. Outside, he saw Aarya being thrown to the ground. He ran over and helped her up. She gave him a tired smile.
‘What’s the green zone?’ he whispered. ‘Amir said that’s where we are.’
Aarya looked around. ‘I think it is what they call the area surrounding the edge of the river bank. In the summer, the river is very low, but the area around it is fertile. Crops grow there, and it is where many people live.’ She gave him a solemn look. ‘I have heard people say that, in Afghanistan, it is also where there is lots of fighting.’
A whole host of questions flooded Ben’s mind, but at that moment they were surrounded by their captors. ‘Walk,’ Amir told them. He was still holding his gun, but now he had something else strapped to his body: the suitcase bomb, which he carried on his back. It looked cumbersome and rather heavy – the veins on Amir’s neck stood out from the strain of carrying it – but portable nevertheless. The very sight of it made Ben shudder.
They walked in single file – two of the terrorists in front of Ben and Aarya, the rest of them bringing up the rear. ‘Keep close to me,’ Ben whispered as they walked. ‘Maybe we can—’
‘
Silence!
’
The ground was treacherous. Both Ben and Aarya stumbled as their feet became trapped in unseen holes; the soil underfoot became marshy and wet, then hard and dry as they walked alongside a high field of some crop Ben didn’t recognize. All around it was silent – just the footsteps of their little party disturbing the night and once, chillingly, the howl of a dog echoing through the air. They’d been walking for a good fifteen minutes when they came to an area thick with compound walls, much like the ones where they had stayed on the previous two nights. There was one big difference, however: these walls bore the scars of battle. Holes of all different sizes had been blasted into them: small ones where, Ben assumed, rifle fire had sprayed against them; and larger ones, where heavier artillery had battered the compounds.
Amazingly, though, the walls were still standing and it was towards one of them that Ben and Aarya were led. There was a low wooden door in the middle of it; their captors opened it, then pushed them through. A dog howled again, closer this time – and Ben realized that it was in this very compound. Suddenly it came scampering up to them – a thin, poor-looking thing that sniffed around their feet as though they were the first human contact it had had for months. It soon scuttled away though, tail between its legs and whimpering, as a huge explosion rocked the sky, shaking the ground beneath them.
Amir removed the suitcase bomb from his back, propping it against the inside wall like it was just a hitchhiker’s rucksack. Then he turned and looked around the compound. A group of men – nine or ten of them – were waiting for him. They were all dressed in Afghan robes and they approached the new arrivals with smiles. There was much embracing and a good deal of chattering that Ben couldn’t understand, but that didn’t matter. His attention was firmly fixed on something else.
It was difficult to make it out in the darkness, and he had to squint. There was no mistaking what it was, however: a vast array of weaponry, much of it propped up against the far wall of the compound in the same way that Amir had propped up the suitcase bomb. It was an impressive arsenal: rocket launchers, rifles, a big hunk of metal that looked to Ben’s untutored eye like a machine gun. And then there were boxes, piled high, which he supposed were full of ammo.
Ben and Aarya exchanged a glance. ‘I don’t reckon they use that sort of gear to shoot birds,’ he breathed.
Aarya shook her head, then they looked back over at the others. Their captors’ chatter had become more animated and they stood around the bomb, pointing at it like it was some precious artefact. Ben then heard Amir’s voice above the others, and the men all turned to look across at them. It was clear that he and Aarya were now the subject of conversation.
Ben stepped nervously back, but that only took him deeper into the compound. Suddenly Amir barked a short order, and the two of them were immediately surrounded. Ben’s instinct told him to run, but he knew there was no getting away and it was only moments before he felt strong hands on him as they were yet again manhandled into a dark room on the edge of the compound, where the door was locked.
Once more they were left alone.
Very alone.
And very, very scared.