‘Then be ready to fight,’ says H, ‘and God help you.’
All the men deploy to the turrets except Sher Del, whose experience and help we need. The three of us move to the room where the missiles are piled and haul out the wooden case which contains the 82-millimetre mortar. While H manoeuvres it onto its baseplate in a corner of the courtyard, I drag the ammunition boxes with Sher Del out from the room and open them alongside. There are twelve rounds, which Sher Del shows us how to prime and charge. H adjusts the mortar bipod to its maximum elevation.
‘I’ll need you to spot for me,’ he says. ‘Watch for the fall of shot and call out the range.’ He pats the mortar tube. ‘This ought to keep their heads down.’ He smiles at me and wipes the sweat from his face with his forearm. ‘Don’t fret,’ he says. ‘There’s only fifty blokes out there. There were two hundred of them at Mirbat.’
I feel strangely at peace. The pure and uncomplicated purpose of battle, which tranquillises all thoughts of past or future, settles on me now. It displaces the habitual tyranny of the mind and opens onto a luxurious quietness, which one longs for but never quite attains in ordinary life. Life seems miraculously beautiful and fragile.
The three of us walk to the forward turret and watch the convoy of pickups as it ascends the track. I take the magazine from the Browning and slide two rounds into my hand. Then with the pliers on the Leatherman I pull free the lead slugs in turn and remove half the cordite charge from the casings. I replace the slugs, then return the two rounds to the magazine.
The pickups swing onto the flat ground beneath us. The guard in the opposite turret, tightening his grip on the stock of the PK, looks across to H, who returns a gesture of restraint. The men below us are not expecting a fight, which means they’ve been put at ease by their commander. I’m hoping it’s because they’ve been told we’re unarmed and not in a position to resist. They dismount casually from the trucks, shaking the dust from their clothes and looking up at the walls of the fort like tourists beneath a cathedral. Three or four men with scarves tied Middle-Eastern-style around their faces dismount more cautiously and position themselves defensively behind the cabs of the trucks. There are perhaps some Afghans among them but it is impossible to know. They have all become our enemy now. H is lying on his stomach, watching them through the Kite.
One of the pickups is black. Clusters of RPG rounds are fastened behind the cab like satanic bouquets of flowers. Six or seven men sit in the back, but two have jumped out and are conferring with whoever’s inside. Then the nearside door opens, and a man in a black shalwar emerges with the confident manner of someone in authority. It’s Manny. I feel the pounding of my heart.
‘Is that your friend?’ asks H in a whisper.
‘Yes.’
‘Doesn’t look much like he’s come to save us.’
I don’t reply. To judge from appearances, H is right. It’s hard not to suppose that Manny has brought this overwhelming force to attack us. The next few minutes seem to confirm this worst of scenarios.
Manny takes a loudhailer from the pickup and blows into the mouthpiece. Two men behind him unsling weapons from their shoulders but their posture is still relaxed.
‘You in there, Ant? Hello?’
He walks brazenly to the centre ground in front of the fort, looks up and brings the loudhailer to his mouth again.
‘Open up, Ant,’ he calls. ‘You’ve got something in there that we want. If you don’t come out, we’ll have to come in and get it ourselves. Think we can arrange something that suits everyone?
We’ve all come a long way
.’
It’s the pass phrase I’ve been waiting for. H nods at me then whispers an instruction to Sher Del.
‘Why don’t you come in so we can talk about it?’ I shout.
Manny confers with the man who comes to his side. He’s a bulky-looking fighter with a black scarf tied around his head revealing only his eyes. Ammunition pouches stretch across his chest.
‘Mind if I bring a friend?’ calls Manny.
‘Just the one,’ I reply.
H and I descend to the courtyard, where H positions himself against the wall next to the entrance. I pull on the bolts of the smaller door, open it fully and walk back towards the centre of the courtyard. There’s a clear but narrow view to the flat ground outside, which is momentarily obscured as Manny’s bodyguard steps inside, followed by Manny. The bodyguard looks understandably puzzled and anxious. He sees H, unarmed, behind him, but no one else, because they’re hidden by the walls. The two of them walk towards me. The bodyguard is standing to my left and a couple of paces behind Manny, who gives a nod of reassurance to him, then steps forward.
We embrace in the Afghan manner. As our bodies touch, Manny’s hand brushes my jacket, out of sight of his bodyguard. I feel a slight but distinct pull against the fabric as something small and heavy drops into my pocket.
‘Present for you,’ he says quietly, taking a step back. ‘Ten-second fuse.’
‘Who told you we needed that?’
‘Our little bird in Kabul, who switched your detonators. You were right about him.’
‘You said you’d bring a couple of guards, not six truckfuls.’
‘Couldn’t help that, I’m afraid. They all wanted to join the party. I seem to have scooped up all the bad ones.’ He’s silent for a moment. ‘They’re not planning to let you go, if you surrender.’
‘Somehow I didn’t think so.’
‘You ready for this or do you need me to buy some time?’
‘Ready as we’ll ever be.’
‘Well then. Let’s get it over with. I suppose it’s time to die.’
He calls to his bodyguard in a language I don’t recognise. It must be Chechen. Then he turns around and, walking slowly towards the door, raises his arms out in what looks like a gesture of resignation, so that the others beyond the door can see. It’s safe to say that none of them is expecting what happens next.
I wait until Manny has taken about ten paces and is nearly at the door. Then I pull the Browning from the holster on my hip, aim squarely for the centre of his back and fire twice.
His body tumbles forward and falls face down. Without pausing, I roll to my right, bring up the Browning in a firing stance on Manny’s bodyguard, who’s dropped instinctively into a squat and is raising his weapon to his shoulder. It’s the last thing he ever does. Before I can fire another shot rings out, as H sends a single round into his head. His body slumps like a collapsed puppet. H runs forward like lightning, picks up the bodyguard’s weapon, drags his body away from the doors and calls out to Sher Del as he leaps up the stairway to the tower.
‘
RPG! RPG!
’
He’s predicted, accurately, that for a few seconds after the first shots are fired the men outside will scramble for cover before returning reactive fire. It’s these same seconds I use to slam the door closed, throw the bolts and haul Manny away into cover.
The shock of the rounds has sent his body into a kind of paralysis. I prop him against a wall and tear at the straps of his body armour as he coughs and gasps for air.
‘Feels like you broke all my fucking ribs.’
‘Breathe. I took out all the powder I could.’
He’s about to say something else but at that moment there’s a high-pitched bang which makes us flinch as the shock wave goes through us like a physical blow. Sher Del has fired the first RPG round into a truck below and is taking aim at a second. H is by his side as I run up, and Manny follows behind me, his lungs heaving in pain.
‘
Down!
’ yells H a second before the backblast from the RPG roars over us, and the turret fills with hot smoke. There’s another incredible bang from below. We grab our weapons.
‘Support him,’ shouts H, pointing to the other turret. We can hear the first smack of rounds against the wall as we run across to reach the PK, which is chattering deafeningly.
From the slit we look down to the open space in front of the fort, which a minute ago was so peaceful. It’s a chaos of debris, flames and scattered bodies. The PK is firing bursts into the trucks, from which men are tumbling onto the ground and staggering across the dust.
We know our task, and shoot into the nameless shapes until they are still. Cordite-laden smoke surrounds us. Sher Del fires a third RPG, and a thin grey plume streaks down towards a truck attempting to withdraw, exploding with a bright orange burst against the tailgate. The engines of the other three are screaming and their wheels throwing up dust as they lurch frantically towards the track. Bodies are spilling from the flat ground and finding cover among the crags beyond, from which their return fire now begins, struggling to find its mark.
There’s a loud crack as a burst from below hits the turret and a cloud of disintegrating mud erupts behind the Afghan who’s firing the PK. He leaps sideways and I grab him to stop him falling into the courtyard. He rubs grit and blood from the side of his face and returns to the weapon, muttering thanks to
Mushgil Gusha
, one of the Afghan names for God, before lowering his eye to the sights again and hunting for movement below.
I hear H call to us and run over to him. He points out the pockets of men making their way from our front towards the sides of the fort.
‘Concentrate on them, then spot for me. Vehicles first.’ He pushes the Kite into my chest and runs at a crouch towards the rear turrets, where Aref and Momen have begun firing. Our work becomes more precise as our targets dart between the rocks at a growing distance. Sweat interferes with my aim. From somewhere a round finds the slit and slaps into the wall behind my head.
Now in the courtyard, H is crouching behind the mortar. Manny stands beside him with a mortar round in his hands, waiting for my signal. The three vehicles have emerged from the dead ground about 300 yards away, turning along a track towards the higher ground.
I watch for the fall of shot and see the impact before I hear it. A ragged brown column of dirt flies into the air a hundred yards beyond the vehicles. I see their brake lights flash. I signal to H and see him furiously adjusting the trajectory. Manny drops another round into the tube and the two of them crouch with their ears covered as a burst of flame leaps out. Another geyser of earth flies up ahead of the vehicles, this time on the opposite side. A third round lands directly ahead of them. H can fire for effect now. A fourth lands almost between them, and a fifth forces the lead vehicle from the track. A sixth destroys it. A seventh falls into a cluster of fleeing men. The driver of the final vehicle has figured out the deadly game and veers off at right angles to our fire. We cannot track it, so I signal for H to cease fire. There is so much smoke in the courtyard I can hardly see him.
A yell goes up from Momen, who’s gesturing frantically to the area behind the fort. I run to him. A group of men equipped with RPGs is ascending the slope above him. Manny and H struggle to turn the mortar around and line it up on them, and fire a ranging shot which explodes far above. They’re too close to us for the minimum range of the mortar, so Manny struggles under the tripod to superelevate it until it’s nearly vertical. There’s another deafening explosion as they fire again, and a fountain of rocks bursts from the slope nearby. Another falls beside the attackers, spreading its lethal shrapnel in their midst. I point to another flicker of movement in the rocks, yell out the range and watch another two explosions erupt from the slope. Then the mortar falls silent as the final round is fired, and H and Manny run up to the rear turrets, emerging like wild apparitions from the smoke, filthy and glistening with sweat.
Manny stays behind while H and I run to the front. The PK has stopped firing. The Afghan guard lies beside it with his arm pinned under him. His neck, where a round has passed through it, resembles a bloody rag.
‘Check on him,’ shouts H, pointing to Sher Del in the opposite tower. Sher Del, warrior that he is, looks almost at ease. He looks at me and grins wildly. The left side of his face is drenched in blood but he doesn’t seem to notice. But the lapse in fire from the other turret has allowed a pocket of men beneath the lip of the open ground to reorganise themselves, and I don’t know who hears it first, but I see the telltale plume of smoke simultaneously with H’s cry.
‘
Incoming!
’
The whole fort seems to shudder with the impact as if it’s about to collapse. We hear a clamour of shouts from below and see shapes running towards the doors, which the RPG has blasted from their hinges. H fires quick bursts into the running men, who are making a suicidal bid for the entrance, and together with Sher Del we cut them down in their tracks. Then along the perimeter of the open ground I see bursts of dust blossoming out of the ground where H is firing to discourage a repeat effort. Then he runs up to us.
‘PK’s out of ammo. We can’t let that happen too often. Fuckers aren’t giving up.’ He looks at us and slaps Sher Del heartily on the back. ‘Reckon it’s time to go before they rush us. Warn the others and get them down.’
The idea that we’re about to leave fills me with an unlikely sense of calm. It’s as if he’s suggested that it’s time for us all to go home, and I can’t wait to share the news with the others that it’s time to move. But as I’m running to the far turret, where Manny and Aref are crouching, a puff of smoke catches my eye from high up on the slope beyond the rear of the fort. It shouldn’t be there.