Ben looked up and down the road. There was nobody, just the two corpses on the ground. Moving as silently as possible, he emerged from the protection of the trucks and started running towards Amir and Aarya. He might even have made it, had Aarya not looked over her shoulder and seen him.
‘Ben!’ she gasped, clearly unable to stop herself.
Ben winced. At the same time, Amir turned round. The minute he saw Ben, an incredulous look crossed his face, followed by a glare of anger. ‘
You!
’ he hissed. Still holding Aarya’s hair, he swung round his rifle and aimed it.
Without hesitation, he fired.
Ben threw himself to the ground, landing heavily on one side and rolling to the edge of the street. He half expected to feel the pain of a bullet wound, but there was nothing. Amir’s round had missed him. He looked up. Aarya and her captor were running: they were still heading towards the motorbike.
Ben pushed himself up, but as he did so Amir turned and fired again, randomly. Ben hit the dirt and watched helplessly as Amir climbed onto the bike with Aarya in front of him. The suitcase bomb was still on his back, obscuring their bodies as Amir kicked down on the starting lever of the bike and the engine purred into motion.
‘No!’ Ben shouted. Scrambling to his feet again, he ran towards the bike, but it was already moving.
Above the sound of the engine, he heard Aarya’s voice. Screaming. Terrified. ‘The dam, Ben!’ she yelled. ‘He’s taking me to the dam!
Tonight!
’
Ben continued to sprint towards the moving motorbike. If he could reach it, and just grab Amir from behind . . . He ran as fast as he could, but it was no good. The motorbike was accelerating, and at the last moment Amir managed to swing his rifle backwards and discharge another round in Ben’s general direction. It whizzed past his cheek, sending him crashing to the ground for protection once more. He looked up helplessly, as Amir, Aarya and the bomb reached the end of the street, before turning a corner and disappearing from sight. ‘Aarya!’ he roared at the top of his voice. ‘Aarya! We’re coming after you!’
His voice echoed into the night as the sound of the motorbike ebbed away.
Ben was gasping for breath now. A surge of sickness hit him as he realized how close he’d come to being shot. Away from the protection of the trucks, he was suddenly aware that the sound of his encounter with Amir would have disturbed anyone in the vicinity. He needed to get back to cover and wait for the SAS men to reappear. Hauling himself to his feet, he ran back to the trucks. He was only halfway there, however, when the unit re-emerged from the house.
‘
Ben! What are you doing?
’ Ricki barked. He sprinted up to where Ben was standing in the middle of the road. His robes, Ben noticed, were spattered with blood and he made no attempt now to hide his M16.
‘Amir!’ Ben shouted. ‘He’s got Aarya and the bomb. He’s taking them to the dam. They’re on a bike and they’re going there tonight!’
Ricki’s stern expression barely changed as he listened to this information. ‘How do you know?’
‘I told you. He’s got Aarya – she shouted it out. We’ve got to follow them.’
As Ben spoke, a strange look passed over Ricki’s face. He raised his M16 and for a moment Ben thought he was pointing it at him. Only when he saw the barrel being pointed over his shoulder, however, did he realize that Ricki’s attention had been held by something else: a group of men at the end of the road. Maybe they had been attracted by the shouting and the noise of gunfire. Whatever, they were armed and looked lairy.
‘Get to the trucks, Ben,’ Ricki said quietly.
‘But—’
‘
Get to the trucks. Now
.’
Ben moved, just as Ricki fell to one knee, his M16 in the firing position. He heard the SAS man’s voice, calling to the rest of the unit. ‘Get the trucks started. Both of them.’
But the unit was already moving. Matt opened the driver’s door of one of the trucks and urged Ben inside; Toby got to work on the other vehicle and Jack joined Ricki in the firing position, ready to head off any potential aggro from the crowd building up at the head of the street.
‘Get in the back, Ben,’ Matt ordered tersely. ‘This could kick off any second.’
Ben did as he was told, his mouth dry with nerves. From the back seat of the truck, he watched as Matt ripped a handful of wires from under the steering column, then started meticulously touching two of them together at a time. After about thirty seconds, he heard the other truck purr into life; moments later Matt found the right combination for hotwiring their truck. The engine coughed, then started turning over.
‘Hold on,’ said Matt. He yanked the gearstick into reverse and swung the truck round in a semicircle so that it was facing Ricki, Toby and the crowd. Toby’s truck sped forward and Jack jumped in while Ricki, still aiming his weapon, stepped backwards until he was next to Ben’s truck. He opened the door and got into the passenger seat, then rolled down the window and aimed his weapon out of it.
‘Go,’ he instructed.
The two trucks sped to the end of the road. A few members of the crowd dispersed, but not all of them. One man held up his rifle: he was just about to aim it in the direction of the moving trucks when Ricki discharged his weapon – a wicked-sounding burst of fire that skimmed over the crowd’s head but did its job. The crowd finally dispersed, and just in time. The two trucks swung round the corner, screeching as they went. Ben felt the two wheels on the passenger’s side lift off the ground and he grabbed the edge of the seat. Ricki, though, was leaning out of the window and facing backwards, ready to discharge his weapon should they attract any incoming fire. Only when the crowd was well out of view did he pull himself back in again.
They were travelling in single file now, and fast. Toby and Jack’s truck was up front, with Ben, Ricki and Matt in the rear truck. Both engines screamed. Matt’s face was a picture of concentration as he negotiated the complicated maze of streets; Ricki leaned back to Ben.
‘
Get ready for a bumpy ride, mate
,’ he shouted.
‘Why?’ Ben demanded. ‘Where are we going?’
Ricki narrowed his eyes. ‘Where do you think?’ he asked. ‘If your man’s carrying out the operation tonight, we need to catch up with him. We’re following him to the Kajaki dam.’
And with that, he faced the front again, clutching his gun and staring steely-eyed through the windscreen.
Chapter Twenty-one
Dr Bel Kelland had never been so scared.
She was surrounded by soldiers – eight of them, forming a protective semicircle around her as she cowered against the back wall of the compound. Their rifles were pointing forwards, but there was no light in the compound for them to see by; just the dusky glow of the still-burning Apache on the other side of the wall.
‘Preserve your ammo!’ one of the soldiers had called. ‘Reduce your rate of fire!’
Private Mears had sidled back to where Bel was crouched. His face was bleeding and he had a harsh look.
‘Why did he say that?’ she asked him. Her voice was hoarse and dry – it sounded like someone else’s.
‘We don’t know when we’re going to get more air support,’ he said. ‘We’re firing towards the entrance of the compound to stop the enemy from trying to enter, but if our rate of fire is too high, we’ll run out of ammo. And trust me, we
don’t
want to do that.’
As if to highlight what Mears had just said, one of the soldiers fired a single shot. It didn’t seem like much to fend off an advancing enemy as it pinged into the Afghan night.
‘They’ve got to send someone soon,’ Bel breathed. She wasn’t sure if Mears heard what she said, because he didn’t reply.
Time passed, punctuated only by the occasional firing of a round, which did nothing for Bel’s shredded nerves. She had no idea what time it was when the sound of rotary blades drifted towards them. Half an hour later? An hour? Measurements like that had no meaning. The moment she heard the chopper, however, she felt a surge of hope.
‘
Apache!
’ Mears shouted. ‘
Apache approaching!
’
The flying machine appeared seemingly from nowhere, the thunder of its engines vibrating in Bel’s ears. For a few seconds it hovered directly over the compound, its searchlights scouring the area like some kind of UFO in the darkness, then it moved on. Outside the front wall of the compound, the Apache dipped its nose slightly. Bel found herself holding her breath.
The chopper started to fire – loud, chugging rounds coming in short, clinical bursts. The Apache turned ninety degrees so it was now facing away from the compound. It continued to pepper the surrounding ground with gunfire, and with each deafening burst, Bel felt just that little bit safer.
But not for long.
The ground-to-air rocket came from very close to the walls of the base. It looked to Bel almost as if it was moving in slow motion. As the rocket soared into the air, she almost couldn’t bear to watch, couldn’t bear a repeat performance, to see a second Apache crash and burn.
‘
No!
’ she gasped, clutching her dirty hair in panic.
It was almost a fluke that the chopper wasn’t downed. The rocket sailed through the rotating blades, emerging unscathed on the other side and exploding in the air. Nuggets of shrapnel rained down on the Apache, which immediately rose higher into the air. It looked wobbly, and Bel heard one of the soldiers shout: ‘The bird’s been hit by shrapnel!’
Bel turned to Mears. ‘Is that bad?’ she breathed.
‘Yeah,’ Mears replied, sweat pouring from his moonlit face. ‘Yeah, you could say that’s bad.’
‘It’s not . . . it’s not going to crash, is it?’
Mears’s face looked unbelievably grim. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’m not a pilot. But I can tell you one thing – they’re not going to risk another rocket strike like that. Not in the dark.’
‘So what’s going to happen?’ Bel’s voice was cracking up now as she tried to hold back tears of terror.
Mears’s reply didn’t give her much comfort.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, returning his gun to the firing position and settling down once more to cover the entrance to the compound. ‘I just don’t know . . .’
‘Do you know where you’re going?’
The two-vehicle SAS unit had left the boundary wall of the town of Angoor and was now trundling through the desert. The trucks they had requisitioned were by no means comfortable: their suspension was shot and the ground underneath them was uneven and stony. It made for a bone-shaking ride.
‘Toby has a GPS unit in his bergen,’ Ricki replied. ‘He’ll be using that to navigate.’ The unit leader didn’t look at Ben as he spoke, but kept his eyes on the road ahead.
They travelled slowly. From the reflection in the rear-view mirror, Ben saw that Matt, who was driving, had a look of intense concentration on his face, examining the road ahead with fierce intensity. Ben remembered Amir, speeding off on his motorbike with Aarya and the bomb. He hadn’t shown any desire to go slowly, and Ben felt sure he wasn’t creeping through the desert now.
‘Shouldn’t we, er . . . shouldn’t we hurry up?’ he asked, a bit diffidently.
Ricki looked over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised. ‘That all depends, Ben,’ he said quietly, ‘on whether you want to make it to the dam in one piece.’
Ben felt himself blushing and he was glad it was dark. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
‘I mean,’ said Ricki, ‘just what I say. Of all the areas around Helmand Province, the bit near the Kajaki dam is the most heavily mined. Normally we’d be even slower, because we’d be sweeping for mines. As it is, we’re driving slowly so that Matt can keep in the tracks of the truck ahead.’
Ben blinked. It was the same strategy that Amir had told him about, and he felt stupid for not recognizing what they were doing. Then the reality of what Toby and Jack were risking struck him. ‘But whose tracks are
they
following?’ he asked.
Ricki faced forward again. ‘No one’s,’ he said grimly.
‘But what if they . . . ?’
He didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t need to. It was perfectly clear what would happen if Toby and Jack hit a landmine.
They trundled on in silence.
It was a clear night. The moon lit those parts of the desert not illuminated by the vehicles’ headlamps and the sky was alight with stars. So much beauty, and so much danger. Ben dragged his eyes away from the canopy overhead and concentrated on their path through the desert, and still he could not get the image of Amir speeding along on his motorbike out of his head. ‘Why don’t we call for a helicopter?’ he asked suddenly.
Ricki smiled. ‘It isn’t as simple as that, Ben,’ he said. ‘It’s not like calling a cab, you know. Choppers are thin on the ground. Even if there’s air support available, it can take an hour to arrive at the best of times, more if they have to scoop up extra personnel. The army has emergency procedures in place for all sorts of scenarios. I’m afraid this isn’t one of them.’