Yet again, Ben felt a bit stupid. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s just—’
‘You haven’t got anything to be sorry for,’ Ricki interrupted him. ‘There aren’t many people who would do what you’ve done today.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘And it’s not over yet, Ben.’
Half an hour passed.
With every second, Ben half expected to hear the sickening boom of a landmine.
Forty-five minutes. Silence in the truck: just the noise of the wheels crunching over the sandy, stony earth. They started to climb, up and over undulating hills. Ricki pointed through the windscreen. ‘Not far now,’ he said. ‘The British base is at the top of the dam. We’re travelling up towards it—’
He was interrupted. The truck came to a sudden, juddering halt.
Ben didn’t know whether he saw it first, or heard it; whether the red flash and sudden spray of metal burst into his senses before the deep boom of the explosion. All he knew was that one moment the truck ahead was there, and the next it wasn’t. He heard shrapnel raining down on top of his own vehicle; the windscreen shattered as something thumped against it. ‘
Get down!
’ Ricki shouted, and Ben quickly lay on the back seat, covering his head with his arms.
Suddenly the noise of the shrapnel on the roof stopped and they were surrounded by a thick, awful silence. Ben pushed himself up again just as a smell hit his nose. It was acrid and unpleasant. The smell of burning, of explosives. And of something else too. When he was younger, he had caught his hair in a candle. A few strands had fizzled and burned and the odour was horrible. It was that odour that he could smell now.
The SAS men were cursing under their breath. Ben looked through the window in shocked silence, but Ricki and Matt were already out of the truck. They ran towards the flaming shell of their mates’ vehicle, holding their arms up to their faces to protect them from the heat of the fire. He watched, wide-eyed, as they ran around the inferno, shouting at each other and looking for a way into that devastated hunk of metal.
Looking for signs of life.
But it was clear, after a minute of searching, that there were no survivors.
Ben felt sick. He started to scramble out of the truck, to see what he could do to help, but at that moment Ricki and Matt started returning, so he took his place and waited for them to climb back into the vehicle. Their faces, glowing from the fire of the wreckage up ahead, were bleak as they took their seats.
‘They’re gone,’ Ricki said. His face was dark and angry, his voice quiet. ‘Nothing we can do.’ Suddenly, out of the blue, he slammed his fist against the dashboard. The whole truck shook with his anger. Ben didn’t know what to say.
Ricki turned to him, his eyes flashing. When he spoke, he sounded even more businesslike, more professional, and it was clear to Ben that he was hiding other emotions: shock, sorrow, anger. ‘We have to keep going,’ he said. ‘We can’t stop just because we’re two men down.’
‘Right,’ Ben replied, his voice thick with emotion.
‘We can’t leave you here, Ben,’ Ricki continued. ‘You’re going to have to stick with us. But you know the dangers. We won’t now be following in Toby and Jack’s tracks. If we hit a mine . . .’ The three of them looked out at the wreckage of the vehicle up ahead.
‘I know,’ Ben said quietly. There was a bitter taste in his mouth and his skin tingled with nerves.
Ricki nodded curtly, then turned to Matt. ‘All right, mate,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’
Matt nudged the truck into motion. They slowly drove around the wreckage, avoiding the hunks of metal that now littered the desert floor. As they passed the burning vehicle, Ben couldn’t help twisting his head to look at it. There was no sign of the dead SAS men and he tried not to think about what state their bodies must be in now . . .
The wreckage slipped into the background. Matt accelerated – as there was nobody to follow, there was no need to travel slowly. The truck bumped and juddered up the hill as Ben felt a weird combination of numbness and fear: disbelief at what had just happened, and terror that history might be about to repeat itself. It seemed like madness, what they were doing. But they had no choice. He knew that.
Over the brow of the hill and up another one. In the distance he thought he saw lights.
‘What’s that?’ he asked. His voice sounded very tense.
‘British base,’ Ricki replied. ‘It’s where we’re headed.’
Ben couldn’t tell how far away it was. Half a mile? A mile? As they sped up and down the undulating hills, the lights dipped out of sight and then reappeared. They didn’t seem to be getting closer at anything like the rate Ben would have wished. Nightmarish thoughts turned over in his mind. They were about to hit a mine. This vehicle was about to be shredded like the one they had just passed. They weren’t going to make it . . .
You can’t think like that, Ben
, a little voice in his head told him.
Keep thinking those thoughts and you’ll go mad . . .
And so he tried to put all thoughts of landmines and burning vehicles from his mind, to concentrate on the only thing that was important: Amir and the bomb. Had he passed this way? Were they gaining on him? Were they, as the truck thundered bravely through the desert, any closer to stopping this bomb?
Ben had to believe they were. He set his jaw, faced fully forward and steeled himself for the struggle to come.
Chapter Twenty-two
Amir drove through the darkness.
The suitcase bomb was uncomfortable and weighed heavily on his back; the extra weight of the girl slowed the motorbike down. More than once, he considered throwing her from the bike and shooting her there in the desert. But he decided against it. He had brought her this far, and she could still be of use.
His rifle was slung to his side and he drove two-handed, his arms stopping the exhausted girl from slumping off the bike. He drove without his headlamp as that would act like a beacon to his enemies far and wide. Instead he relied on the light of the moon, so bright that it caused lumps of rock to cast shadows on the ground. Only when he came to the hills near the dam did the lack of artificial light become a problem as the upward slopes were in shadow. It didn’t slow him down, though. It
couldn’t
slow him down. He
had
to get to the dam tonight. His companions had fallen by the wayside: it was now up to Amir to complete their mission alone. And as the enemy were on to him, it had to be done tonight.
As he travelled, he found himself cursing under his breath. When he had seen that foolish boy outside the house, he had wanted to explode with anger. Why was
he
there? How could he have found them? And now, thanks to the girl’s loose mouth, the boy knew where they were going, and why.
He did what he could to channel his anger, to turn it into something else. Into determination. Not that he wasn’t determined before. No matter what happened, he
was
going to carry out his operation, and he was going to do it tonight.
They were at the brow of a hill now. The girl had started to slump. He pulled the motorbike to a stop. ‘Sit up,’ he barked.
The girl hauled herself up straight and Amir prepared to drive off again. But something stopped him. Something behind them.
An explosion.
He couldn’t turn round quickly, not with the bomb on his back. ‘Get off the motorbike,’ he told the girl. She dismounted, then collapsed on the ground while Amir laid the still-purring bike on its side and looked back in the direction of the explosion.
It wasn’t far away. Five hundred metres, maybe a little more. Amir saw a red glow. Flames flickering. He could even see, thanks to the light of the moon, a thick plume of smoke drifting up into the air. He squinted in order to see better. It was difficult from this distance, but he thought perhaps there were figures, silhouetted against the flames, running around the source of the explosion.
Amir smiled. It was clear to him what had happened: a vehicle had driven over the unseen pressure plate of a landmine. He was looking at the aftermath. He knew there were very few vehicles that would protect their occupants from a blast like that, which meant casualties. Deaths, probably. His smile became a smirk. Perhaps the boy was one of them. It was little more than he deserved.
He didn’t allow himself to dwell on that attractive thought. If he was being followed, he needed to use his pursuers’ delay to his best advantage. He pulled up the bike. ‘Get back on,’ he told the girl. She looked at him. Her eyes had rolled up in their sockets and he wondered if she’d even heard him. There was no time for threats, though. Holding the bike with one hand, he grabbed her hair and pulled her to her feet. She got the message and weakly climbed back onto the bike.
Within seconds, they were off again.
The motorbike bumped and growled over the hills. Amir had only been driving for another ten minutes when he came once more to a halt.
The view was spectacular. Far below him, the moon was reflected on the still waters of the Helmand River. On the far side of the river was the dark outline of a steep cliff, much like the one on top of which they now stood. To his right he saw the silhouetted outline of the dam. It was a massive structure, only a few hundred metres from where they were now standing. Impressive.
It wouldn’t remain so for long, he told himself.
He needed to get closer. As close as possible. The bomb would be powerful enough to destroy the dam from a distance, but the less he left to chance, the better.
Amir dismounted, then pulled Aarya from the bike. The terrain ahead was too rough for a vehicle, so they had to advance on foot. He would have liked to hide the bike, but there was no cover here so he did the only thing he could, switching off the engine and leaving it there on its side.
There were mines here. He knew that well enough. If he stepped on one, he would die. So be it – he cared nothing for his own life. But he cared deeply for the success of his endeavour and so he turned to the girl.
‘Walk,’ he told her. ‘You will go first, I will follow. My gun will be pointed at you all the time. You will go where I say. If you try to run, I will shoot you immediately. Do you understand what I am telling you?’
The girl nodded. ‘I understand,’ she said. Amir noted with satisfaction that her face was racked with terror. Fear, he knew, was a powerful incentive. It had served him well in the past, and it would do so again.
He pointed along the cliff. ‘That way,’ he said. ‘Move. Now!’
They made slow progress. More than once, the girl stumbled and fell, her foot catching in one of the narrow indentations that covered the top of this cliff. Each time she hit the ground, Amir would pull her up by the hair and tell her to keep walking. And as she walked, he took care to follow her footsteps precisely with his own.
In the distance, a noise. They stopped. Moments later, a fluorescent light exploded above the dam like a firework, lighting up the surrounding area.
‘Down!’ Amir instructed. He knew what the light was: a lume sent up by the British base at the top of the dam. He sneered at the thought. It pleased him that the invading soldiers would be destroyed along with the dam. He caught up with the girl, who had not obeyed his instruction, and pushed on her thin, frail shoulders: it took no effort to force her to collapse. They remained crouched on the ground as the light faded away; then Amir stood again, tugged the girl up to her feet and they continued their slow, careful, stumbling walk.
The gradient of the cliff led downwards. They were close to the dam, now – no more than a hundred metres – and in the distance Amir thought he could hear the crashing sound of water. Ahead of them was a thin, V-shaped ravine, a crack in the cliff about as deep as Amir was high, but getting deeper the further it went towards the river. It bore left, down towards the edge of the cliff – a treacherous, narrow path, but wide enough for two people to clamber down. Just. It would serve two purposes: get them close to the dam, and give them cover from any lookout posts at the hated British base.
The going was treacherous. The floor of this small ravine was strewn with boulders and loose earth that caused them to slip as they carried on down towards the edge of the cliff. For Amir, it was doubly difficult: the suitcase bomb on his back grew heavier with each passing step. He felt sweat dripping down his face and veins bulging in his neck as he followed the girl. She too moved with great difficulty. Each time she stumbled and fell, however, she quickly scrambled back up to her feet, clearly terrified of Amir’s reaction. That, at least, was good.
They had been hobbling down the ravine for several dark minutes when she fell and cried out. ‘My foot!’ she screamed. ‘My foot!’ Amir could tell it was a cry of real pain. He caught up with her. The girl’s face was anguished, and her foot was twisted out from her body at an angle.
‘Get up,’ he hissed.
She tried, her whole body shaking. But the moment she put pressure on that twisted foot, she cried out again and collapsed to the ground once more.
‘I . . . I think I have broken something.’ Tears spilled from her eyes.