From somewhere he heard the dog bark twice; closer to hand, he heard Aarya sobbing with fear.
The man approached, an angry glare on his face. He was right above Ben now, and the gun was only inches away.
It happened in a single movement. The man twirled the rifle in his hands so that the butt was now facing Ben, and with a short, sharp jerk he cracked it hard over Ben’s head.
A fierce pain burned through him; then a wave of nausea; then a weird kind of numbness. Ben tried to push himself to his feet, but he only got halfway up before blackness engulfed him and he passed out, falling heavily back down onto the road as he did so.
Chapter Five
The plane had been in the air for seven hours and now it was dark outside.
The SAS unit – Ricki, Toby, Matt and Jack – sat together. Ricki and Matt listened to music on their iPods; Toby and Jack were sleeping. The military transport was full of soldiers being ferried out to Afghanistan. Ricki noticed that many of them avoided looking at the stretcher beds that lined one side of the cabin. Each one had heavy straps and a drip stand, and he wondered idly how many of them would be filled with wounded men when the plane made its return journey.
Ricki pulled his earphones out of his ears. He wasn’t really listening to the music, and anyway he could feel the aircraft losing height. They would be landing in Afghanistan very soon. He nudged Toby, who was sitting next to him. ‘The bird’s losing height,’ he said.
As he spoke, a voice came over the loudspeaker. It was the captain. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he announced, ‘we are about to begin our descent into Kandahar. In accordance with current regulations, we will be switching off all the lights in the cabin and outside the plane. Please take this opportunity to put on your helmets and body armour. We will be landing in approximately fifteen minutes.’
Ricki pulled his helmet and body armour – or plate hangers, as the guys normally called them – from under his seat. He never knew quite what good they would do if the plane was hit by a ground-to-air missile, or even if they came under attack from small arms fire, but he put them on anyway and the rest of his unit did the same. Five minutes later, the lights were switched off. They were in total blackness, with only the high-pitched hum of the plane’s engines for company. Nobody in the cabin spoke.
They must have continued their descent for another ten minutes, although time had very little meaning in that thick darkness. It was a relief when the plane juddered as the wheels touched down.
The lights flickered on. Toby turned to Ricki. ‘Good to be back?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ Ricki said with a grimace. ‘Great.’
Twenty minutes later they had disembarked. Kandahar Airbase was enormous, and home to more than 2,000 members of the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF. Most of them were American, although there were soldiers from many other countries there. The unit headed straight towards the PX – a kind of American shopping mall – to get some food and a cup of coffee. Once they were transported from here to Helmand Province, luxuries of that kind would be in short supply. In fact, luxuries of any kind would be in short supply.
In a large coffee shop, they sat at a table by themselves, well away from the regular army boys. They talked quietly so that they wouldn’t be overheard. At the table next to them, Ricki noticed, there was a woman sitting alone. Unlike almost everyone else they had seen since they landed, she was wearing civvies. She traced her forefinger around the rim of her cup and looked like she was deep in thought. She didn’t look particularly happy.
‘Cheer up, love,’ Ricki said. ‘It might never happen.’
She looked up and blinked at him. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘I said, cheer up, it might . . . Oh, never mind.’
The woman smiled politely, then went back to staring at her cup of coffee.
‘This your first time out here?’ Ricki asked.
The woman looked up again. ‘How can you tell?’
‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’ And to Ricki’s mind it was. You could always tell a rookie. For him and his mates, who were used to spending time in all the most dangerous parts of the world, it was easy to forget how scary somewhere like this was to a first-timer. ‘You want my advice?’ he said.
The woman didn’t nod, but he gave it anyway.
‘Keep your mind on the job in hand. Don’t think about home. You’ll be back there soon enough.’
The woman smiled. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘I was just thinking about my son, that’s all.’
Ricki nodded. ‘I’ve got a kid and all. But he’ll be all right. Probably forgotten all about me already. What’s your boy’s name?’
‘Ben,’ the woman said. ‘His name’s Ben. And you’re right. He’ll be fine.’ She swigged a final mouthful of her coffee, then stood up. ‘I’d better be off,’ she said with a smile. ‘Nice to meet you.’
Ricki inclined his head. ‘Nice to meet you too,’ he said, before turning his attention back to his three SAS mates and the cup of coffee that was sitting on the table in front of him.
Carl looked at Aarya’s father, Saleem, in horror.
‘What do you mean, they’ve disappeared?’ he said.
They stood in the main room of the small house that doubled as both the charity’s office in Kampur and Carl’s own living quarters.
Saleem’s hands were clasped together. He looked terribly worried. ‘They have not come home,’ he said anxiously. ‘They left for school this morning. When they did not return at lunchtime my wife thought that Aarya would be showing Ben the sights. But look.’ He stepped back, opened the front door and pointed outside. ‘It is dark. Aarya has
never
failed to return before dark. It is unlike her. She would be back in time to pray. I am telling you – they have disappeared.’
Panic rose in Carl’s chest. This had never happened to him before. His volunteers had always been perfectly safe. It crossed his mind that this would be terrible for the charity’s reputation; but then he felt guilty that his initial thoughts were not with the young people. ‘What can we do?’ he asked. Back in England, of course, their first move would be to call the police. But there were no police in this village in the south-western corner of Pakistan.
‘I have told my friends,’ Saleem replied. ‘They will tell their friends. Soon the whole village will know that Ben and Aarya are missing. By morning, God willing, they will be found.’
Carl nodded. ‘I will tell everybody I know,’ he said. ‘The English teachers must be informed immediately. We will search all night, if necessary. Saleem, my friend, we will find them. I promise you we will.’
But he couldn’t help an unspoken thought rising in his mind.
What if we don’t find them? What then?
Aarya sat on a chair, her hands bound behind her back. Three men stood in front of her and her cheek stung where one of them had hit her. The same men that she and Ben had seen outside Raheem’s house? Aarya couldn’t tell – her vision was blurred because of the tears that filled her eyes – but she thought they might be.
A man spoke. His eyes were dark and one of them was half closed on account of a vicious scar running across it. ‘Why,’ he demanded in the Afghan language of Pashtun, ‘were you spying on us?’
It was an effort for Aarya to speak through her sobs. ‘We were not spying.’
The man raised his hand as though about to hit her again.
‘
We were not spying! We only came to get back my books.
’
The man looked unconvinced. ‘What did you see?’
‘Nothing,’ Aarya breathed. ‘You put something in the truck. That is all.’
Now it was the turn of another of the three men to speak. ‘They have seen too much. Our mission cannot be compromised. We must silence them.’
But the first man held up one hand. ‘Who is the boy?’ he demanded.
‘His name is Ben. He is from England. He was only coming to help me—’
The man’s attention had wandered. ‘British,’ he said thoughtfully. His dark eyes had narrowed. ‘Perhaps these two can be of use to us.’
A thick silence filled the room, broken only by Aarya’s sobbing.
And then, a decision: ‘They come with us. I have a plan for them. We leave under cover of dark.’
With that instruction, the three men filed out, ignoring Aarya’s desperate request to please –
please
– let her and Ben go back home.
It was dark. So dark that, at first, Ben wasn’t sure if he had actually opened his eyes.
His head was so painful he thought it might be splitting open, and he felt sick. He touched his ribs down one side of his body, then winced. They were tender and sore. For a moment he couldn’t work out where he was. In his bedroom in Macclesfield? He shook his head. He couldn’t be there because the floor was cold and hard, and as he stretched out his arms around him he couldn’t find a wall, or a light switch, or anything familiar.
Where was he?
Where was he?
And then, with a sudden, sickening flash, he remembered. Aarya. Raheem. The black-robed man with his weapons, standing over him. The cracking pain as he was hit over the head.
Ben pushed himself up into a sitting position. He sat there for a few seconds, blinking and waiting for his eyes to get used to the darkness. But they didn’t. It meant that it really was pitch black in here. Wherever here was.
He stood up and walked blindly with his arms outstretched. Three paces. Four paces. His fingertips touched a wall. It was rough and cold. He walked round the room, following the wall with his hands until finally he came upon what felt like a door. He searched for a handle, but there was none. Taking a couple of steps back, he ran at it, barging with his shoulder; but the door was solid and he simply gave himself another bruise.
Then a thought struck him. ‘Aarya?’ he called, trying to stop the panic from sounding in his voice. ‘Aarya, are you there?’
Nothing. Not a sound. In an idle corner of his brain he wondered if this was a dream. But it was no dream. This was horribly real.
He found the door again. Clenching his fists, he pounded it. ‘Let me out!’ he shouted. ‘
Let me out!
’ His voice sounded thin and weak. There was no reply.
He pounded again.
And again.
Nothing.
Ben started to panic. His mouth went dry and his blood ran hot in his veins. ‘
Let me out! Let me out!
’ But no one came.
Time passed. He didn’t know how long he’d been in there. Minutes? Hours? He couldn’t tell if it was day or night. He fell silent and sat with his back to the wall. From one corner of the room he heard a scurrying sound. He didn’t even want to
think
what that was. Hugging his knees with his arms, he did the only thing he could do: wait.
Ben had started to shiver when he heard voices. They were distant and muffled. He strained his ears to listen to them. Three voices? Perhaps four? He couldn’t quite tell, but he
could
tell that they were men and that they were arguing.
The voices came closer. It sounded like they were in the adjoining room, and suddenly a small crack of light surrounded the door frame. Ben jumped up and for a moment had to steady himself because the bump on his head was making him dizzy. He realized he was holding his breath, half out of nervousness and half to block out the sound of his own breathing.
There were definitely three of them, he decided. They were speaking a language he didn’t understand. It sounded different to the Urdu he had heard people speaking at school earlier that day.
He listened. And then, unable to listen any longer, he threw himself at the door once again and thumped his fists against the wood. ‘
LET ME OUT!
’
The men fell silent. There was a sound of footsteps approaching. Suddenly terrified, Ben backed away. His skin tingled as he heard a key clanking in the lock and the door was pushed slowly open.
Light flooded in, making Ben squint as it pierced his aching head. It was a few seconds before he could look directly at the open doorway. A figure stood there. He was dressed in black, with a black turban and a long black beard – one of the men he had seen outside Raheem’s house, he thought. The skin on his face was dark and weather-beaten and his lips were curled into a sneer. One of his eyes was half closed, thanks to a scar that ran across it. He carried a rifle and looked like he was prepared to use it.
Ben mustered the courage to speak. ‘Where’s Aarya?’ he demanded.
The man’s expression didn’t change and Ben realized he hadn’t understood.
‘
Where’s Aarya?
’ he repeated, slower this time. But as he spoke, the man stepped backwards into the adjoining room. For a moment Ben took that as an invitation to leave his dark prison. As he stepped forward, though, his captor raised his gun sharply. Ben halted and, with a sickening twist in his stomach, watched as the other two men came into view. They weren’t arguing now, he thought to himself. It was as if the one thing they could agree on was that Ben should stay right there.