Authors: Chris Ryan
Drew and Kennedy wound down their windows.
Immediately the man on Drew's side started to speak, his
voice an incomprehensible babble of harsh, guttural Pashto.
He didn't get the chance to say much.
Almost as one, Drew and Kennedy raised their guns,
pointed them directly at the faces of the two men, and
fired. Will heard them thump to the ground. 'Now!' he
hissed and instantly he and Anderson opened the back doors
of the truck and jumped out. They pulled the pins from
their fragmentation grenades and hurled them in the direction
of the two ambushers, before jumping to the low
bushes at the side of the road to get some natural cover.
Ismail followed, scampering away from the truck with his
arms held protectively over his head and Will was aware of
Drew and Kennedy de-bussing too.
He and Anderson engaged their rifles and pointed them
in the direction of their targets. The grenades exploded with
a deafening crack and seconds later the two men staggered
from the bushes where they were hiding. Even from a
distance, Will could see that his man was horrifically
wounded from the shrapnel in his face. He mercilessly aimed
the Diemaco at the guy's head and fired a single shot. The
ambusher fell backwards into the bushes, blood from his
head spraying over the virgin snow.
Will heard the crack of Anderson's rifle and turned just
in time to see the second ambusher collapse to the ground.
And then, all around them was silence. The sort of silence
you only experience when there are dead people about.
Silence or not, they needed to check that their targets
were indeed dead - leaving a wounded hostile behind you
was a sure way to end up with a bullet in the back.
Will strode towards the man he'd nailed. As he did so,
he heard two bangs as Drew and Kennedy administered
head shots from their pistols to the fallen enemy.
It was the third bang that they didn't expect.
Will felt the shock of a high-calibre bullet whiz past him.
It slammed into the open door at the back of the truck,
instantly destroying the metal as though somebody had
crumpled a piece of paper in their hand.
'Hit the ground!'Will yelled and the five of them dived
into the thick, powdery snow.
'Where is he?' he heard Anderson yell and Will scoured
the hillside to see where this surprise enemy fire was coming
from.
Suddenly, from his right, there came a barrage of muffled
fire. It was Kennedy. He let off five silent shots from his
suppressed Diemaco and somewhere up the hill there was
a yell of pain. A figure tumbled forwards from behind a
mound of snow.
One final shot from Kennedy was all it took to dispatch
him.
Silence again.
Will was breathing heavily, hardly noticing the chill of
the snow. They lay there for a good minute, carefully scanning
the hillside as they searched for any more hidden
ambushes.
Nothing.
'Get back to the truck!' Will called. They pushed themselves
up and stepped backwards to the vehicle, firing the occasional
shot to give them cover. From the corner of his eye, Will was
aware of the corpse collapsed by the passenger door. His head
had been completely shot open, the warm blood still oozing
from his shattered skull melting the snow around him. Good,
Will thought to himself. That was one ambusher they didn't
have to worry about. They'd have to leave the guys that Will
and Anderson had nailed. There could be other ambushers up
there and they couldn't risk examining the bodies. They just
had to get out of there as quickly as possible.
He was just by the truck, a couple of metres from Drew,
when he heard a voice. From behind the ambushers' vehicle
another Afghan had appeared. His hands were stretched in
the air in a gesture of surrender and he walked nervously
towards them.
Instinctively, Drew had raised his firearm and had it aimed
firmly at the surrendering enemy. The Afghan stopped and
a tense silence descended. Drew looked over at Will, his
eyes questioning.
He was waiting for an order and Will only had a split
second in which to give it.
He looked at the Afghan. Then he looked back at Drew
and nodded.
Instantly, Drew pulled the trigger. The Afghan crumpled
to the ground. 'Get in the truck, everyone,' Will instructed.
They all took their places - all except Ismail, who insisted
on sitting on the floor of the vehicle. 'Are they gone?' he
whimpered.
'Stay down!' Will told him in a tone of voice that he
knew would do nothing for Ismail's state of mind - but he
didn't have time to mollycoddle anyone now. The door on
his side of the truck had been all but destroyed. He pulled
the other one shut as Drew moved the vehicle away. They
would just have to drive with the back blown open.
As the truck speeded up, he pointed his rifle out the
back; passing the ambushers' vehicle, he aimed precisely and
then shot into two of the tyres. They blasted into a mass
of shredded rubber. Will felt a surge of grim satisfaction -
if any of those bastards were nearby, they wouldn't be
following very easily, if at all.
Ismail was hyperventilating now, looking up at Will and
Anderson with a strange mixture of awe and fear. Will felt
a surge of momentary sympathy - they might be used to
situations like this, but Ismail sure as hell wasn't.
'You can get up now,' he told the shivering Afghan.
Ismail pushed himself up almost reluctantly and took a
seat on one of the benches along the side of the truck. His
eyes darted around from man to man, then widened when
Kennedy looked at them over his shoulder: his face was
spattered with the blood of the man he had shot at close
range.
'You all right?' Kennedy grunted.
Ismail nodded.
'You did well,' Will told him.
'I did nothing,' Ismail replied. 'I am not—' he struggled
to find the right word, '- I am not suitable for this kind of
situation.'
'Well you'd better get used to it,' Will told him, bluntly,
'because chances are it's going to get harder than that.'
He stared at Ismail, who did his best to stare back. But
after a while the Afghan lowered his gaze back down to
the floor.
No one said anything and the truck trundled on down
the icy road.
*
A dusty red light from a small fire illuminated the hut, but
only just. Seated in a wooden chair by the fire was a tall,
bearded man. His face was scarred, from the lower lip up
to his cheek, and no hair grew where the ancient wound
had marked his face.
Two other bearded men stood a little distance away from
him. One of them spoke. 'We should just kill her now,
Jamal,' he said. 'It is clear that the woman will not tell us
what we want to know.'
Jamal stroked his scarred lip with a long, slender finger. He
remembered the day the wound had been inflicted. His slight
sneer flickered across his damaged lips as he recalled the face
of the man who did it. 'I do not agree,' he said, quietly.
'What more can we do?'
Jamal's eyes narrowed. 'Many things,'he whispered. He gazed
silently into the fire, as though contemplating the embers.
'Is it so important, Jamal?' the other man asked. 'Is it so
important that we find this brother of hers? It is becoming
a struggle to keep her alive. It would be much easier if we
killed her now.'
'Important?' Jamal asked. 'Yes, it is important.' He looked
at each of the men in turn. 'The Taliban are the true students
of the Koran. We
will
be returned to power in Afghanistan.
God will see to it. But what will people think when they
discover that this man who betrayed us at the highest level
has been allowed to go free? What will that do to our
authority?'
'But he may not even be in this country.'
At this, Jamal looked angry. 'Do you not think that we
have influence that extends further than Afghanistan? Do
you not think that we have people willing to do God's
work in America, the Great Satan? Do you not think that
we have brothers in Washington and London and all over
the West? Believe me, if that woman knows where he is,
she will tell me, and in the name of Allah I will have him
hunted down and killed.' He looked meaningfully at the
two of them. 'Or perhaps the name of Allah is not as important
to you as it is to me.'
The two men shifted uneasily. 'Of course it is, Jamal,' one
of them replied. 'But is it necessary for so many of us to
guard her day and night? She is too weak even to stand
up, let alone try to escape.'
Jamal continued to stroke his scar. 'It is very necessary,'
he stated. 'We are not the only people who wish to learn
the whereabouts of Faisal Ahmed, of that you may be sure.
It is not a matter of
if
they try and rescue her; it is a matter
of
when.'
'But who would be so foolish? We are heavily armed,
and with all this snow -'
'It is not our weapons or the snow that will bring us
victory,' Jamal insisted. 'We fight in the name of Allah. To
die in his name will be glorious. Who in this room does
not crave
shihada
, martyrdom?'
Jamal's face shone as a silence fell on the room and the
irrefutable truth of his statement sunk in.
'I suggest you go back to your positions,' he said, after a
while. '
Allahu Akbar
.'
The two men bowed slightly. '
Allahu Akbar
,' they said,
before turning to leave.
*
'We need to stop here.'
Will checked his watch: 18.30 hours. Ismail had not spoken
in the two hours since the ambush and even the SAS men
had been quiet. They all sensed, Will knew, that they had
been lucky. The people in this part of the world were well
armed and life was cheap. If the hidden ambusher had been
a bit more precise with his shooting, there would have been
some British corpses lying back there in the snow with
their Afghan attackers.
Will stared out of the window. It was twilight and the
landscape looked no different to him than any they had
passed for ages. 'You sure?' he asked Ismail.
'Positive,' their informant nodded. 'The village is about
two kilometres east of here.'
'OK,'Will called to Drew. 'We need to find somewhere
to stow the vehicle.'
Finding a suitable place was difficult - the region did not
offer any natural cover and in the end they were forced
simply to leave the truck by the side of the road. As Drew
turned the engine off, Will was struck once again by the
ominous silence all around.
'We should scran up before we go,' Kennedy said. They
all delved into their rucksacks and pulled out army rations:
silver-foil packs containing high-energy food. Will threw
one over to Ismail, who tore it open suspiciously and picked
without enthusiasm at the beef and dumplings inside.
'Eat it up,' Will told him. 'It's fucking freezing out there
- you need the energy.' He squeezed the cold food from
his own ration pack into his mouth. Beans, he realised as
it went down, though these things all tasted pretty much
the same. Hardly gourmet stuff, but it was welcome and it
wasn't exactly as if Will was used to dining in the finest
restaurants. Sami had supplied some bottled water in the
truck, which they drank from. They wouldn't be taking it
with them, though - it was unnecessary weight and with
the snow all around they'd be fine.
When they had finished eating, they started getting their
clothes ready. The Afghan garments that Sami had given
them were discarded, to be replaced by Goretex jackets over
which were pulled their thick, all-in-one snowsuits. Will
handed a spare snowsuit from his pack to Ismail, who seemed
uncomfortable with it, but pulled it on nevertheless - now
that the engine of the truck had stopped running the
temperature inside was rapidly dropping thanks to the fact
that the back door had been obliterated in the ambush.
Over their snowsuits they attached military vests covered
with pouches in which they stowed grenades and ammunition
- all of them ignored Ismail's frightened, wide-eyed
stare at the extent of their firepower. Once they were dressed,
it was almost fully dark outside. Will pulled a GPS unit from
his pack and recorded their current location; the others did
the same. Then he stowed it away and addressed his men.
'Two kilometres,' he said. 'In this weather, we should be
able to cover that in an hour.' He glanced at Ismail. 'Maybe
an hour and a half. It's 19.25 now. We'll have good night
cover when we hit them.'
'Do we have any idea where the target is being held?'
Anderson asked Ismail.
Ismail shook his head. 'I do not know,' he admitted. 'But
it is not a big place and from what I understand they are
guarding her heavily.'
'OK,' Will continued. 'We'll be heading east into the
village. When we get there, we'll pair off: me and Anderson,
Drew and Kennedy. Ismail, once you've led us there, you
stay where we put you and we'll pick you up on our way
out. If we get separated, RV back at the truck. And listen
to me carefully, everyone: I don't care what happens or how
many ragheads you have to nail, she comes out alive.'
There was a serious kind of silence from the men before
Will spoke again.
'All right,' he told them. 'Let's go.'
They slung their weapons over their shoulders and debussed
in silence.
The snow was thick - a good couple of feet, which made
the going slow; but a bright moon lit the way, casting
shadows on the white ground. It meant that for now they
did not need their night-vision goggles. The snowsuits and
the exercise kept them warm, Ismail was less of a hindrance
than Will thought he would be and it was not long before
they saw lights in the distance. Minutes later they were in
range of the village.
Ahead of them - thirty metres, Will estimated - they saw
a low concrete building. A bright light shone from the roof
out into the snow. Will jabbed his finger to the left to indicate
to everyone that they should head in that direction to
avoid being floodlit, but as he did so, the light failed. The
unit were left temporarily blinded as their night vision
adjusted to the sudden darkness.