~~~~~
Herat
The dark skinned Afghan rolled reluctantly to one side and then span himself round, naked, to sit on the edge of the girl’s bed.
“Why you stop?” she wailed to him.
He glared at her wordlessly, and reached across to grab his coat. He had a small pad and pen in one of its pockets which he retrieved quickly. “Suck this,” he muttered leaning slightly to one side so that his glistening wet penis flopped toward her.
The fifteen year-old scrambled obediently around and he felt himself stiffening at the touch of her small hands and moist warm lips.
“Wasim!” he yelled. “Wasim! Get in here!”
On the notepad he scrawled Greere’s message. He hated the infidels. Hated them with all his heart and soul. But they paid. Paid very well. In a land that had too little wealth, easy money was difficult to find.
“WASIM!” he roared.
The door to the small room burst open and a small boy appeared. His hair was disheveled and his eyes were bleary from disturbed sleep. The child paused for a second, shocked and unsure about seeing the nakedness in front of him.
Code-name Joker brandished the small sheet of paper and two twenty Afghani notes toward the boy. “Get this to Bin Imraan within the hour,” he instructed. “You keep one,” he waved the money. “The other is for the next boy. Do
not
betray me or you
know
what will happen to you.”
The child nodded grimly as he rubbed his tiny fists at the sleep in his eyes – he didn’t want to be beaten again, or worse – and rushed forward, grabbed the papers and scampered out, slamming the door closed behind him.
Joker grabbed two handfuls of hair, yanked upward, and then threw the young girl back onto the bed. She stared up at him, eyes full of fear. “Open your legs,” he snarled at her.
~~~~~
I turn the car’s lights off and crawl through a small hamlet of dilapidated houses which are scattered randomly along both sides of the dirt-track road. There are a couple of dozen structures and, even at this speed, in a few short seconds we are nearly out of the other side.
“Get us off the main road,” says Jack. His voice sounds strained. I suspect he’s feeling more pain now our adrenalin levels are dropping. “Try behind those abandoned buildings.”
He means a clutter of tumbledown brickwork on the left of us, so I guide us off the roadway.
“There’s a good spot,” says Jack, easing himself forward between the front seats to point.
A narrow gap, barely wide enough for the battered Toyota, leads between collapsed walls and I steer us carefully into it. The car is hidden from view from the main road and, if glimpsed, would appear as if it’s just another piece of familiar discarded wreckage. Around here the crumpled panels, broken windows and bullet holes only help it to blend in.
I kill the engine.
To the front we have a clear view into the flat expanse of wasteland laying to the South.
“Watch for helicopters,” he says.
~~~~~
His bodyguard brought the 4x4 crunching to a halt. “Where are they?” the big man muttered.
The first glimmer of dawn whispered its promise of a new day across the eastern horizon and lit up plumes of dust, rising like dusty pennants, at various points on the surrounding roads. The plumes marked his men’s vehicles as they searched for the fleeing thieves.
Gulyar’s phone buzzed angrily in his pocket and he fished it out. The call was from one of the men left guarding his main house in Herat. “What is it?” Bin Imraan barked angrily, his brow furrows deepening as he listened to the message. “Give me that number again,” he said. “Slowly.”
He punched the string of coordinates into the expensive vehicle’s dashboard satnav system.
“Got them,” he said, smiling wickedly.
~~~~~
A cavalcade of vehicles bundle down the main street kicking up clouds of dust. As they burst out of the village, heading south, I can see pickups, four-by-fours, and even a couple of small trucks. All of them are loaded with heavily armed men. We watch as they slowly spread out into a line about half a klick away from us. There they stop.
“Shit,” says Jack grimly. “We’re fucked. They know about the Extraction Point.”
“How?” I ask in disbelief. “How could they know?”
He sighs deeply and shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he mutters.
“Maybe they’re just regrouping?” I offer. “Maybe they’ll head off again in a while?”
Jack says nothing. I look round at him and his expression is one of ashen sadness. Defeated. I am more shocked by this than the arrival of the gangsters with their trucks and guns. Jack has been my rock, my guide, my ally, my safe-haven. To see him like this – suffering, in pain, beaten – tears at my heart and soul.
“Wait here,” I say.
I will not let us be defeated.
Not now.
I slip quietly out of the car and round to the Toyota’s bullet-riddled boot.
~~~~~
Jack eased up the flaps of his bloodstained shirt. He hurt all over but his chest was worst. Grimacing he gingerly peeled the shirt over his head. Nick had passed a bag, full of fresh local clothes, into the car and told him to get changed before heading off.
The hushed sound of rapidly approaching footsteps drew his attention. Nick was coming back.
“There’s another car back there,” Nick hissed, clambering into the back with him and starting to help him with the fresh shirt. “Let’s get your shit together and collect what we can from here.”
Nick buzzed around, stuffing their battledress and bloodstained clothes into the empty clothing bag.
“How’s another car going to help?” Jack asked. “We’d be better here. At least we have weapons.”
“Do you have any more of that C4 and another timer?” asked Nick.
He nodded.
“Rig the car,” said Nick scooting backwards out of the door.
~~~~~
I drop the bag full of old clothes into the boot, and use the car’s jerry can to liberally douse the contents with petrol. When the car goes up I want to make doubly sure that there’s plenty of fire afterwards. Then I grab my pack, which stands waiting next to me, and pull out the Chadri we bought back in Delaram.
As I drape the huge linen cloth over my head, I can’t help but think about when, as a child, I used to use an old sheet to pretend to be a ghost. This Chadri would have been brilliant for it. It even covers my backpack.
I return round to the back door of the car and note Jack’s eyes widening as he sees me. “They’re looking for two men,” I rumble and see a flickering spark of renewed optimism drift across his face.
“How long on the fuse?” he asks.
“Depends how long it’ll take us to get the other car started,” I reply.
He shrugs, “Thirty-seconds?” he offers.
I grin behind my linen shroud. “You’d better allow half an hour then,” I say, prompting a frosty glare from him, but he complies, and sets the digital timer to thirty minutes. “Let’s go,” I offer him my hand and help him out.
~~~~~
“Do you see anything?” Gulyar bin Imraan growled impatiently into his bulky two-way radio handset. They had been sitting here, in the middle of nowhere for almost an hour.
Various squawking negative responses bleated from the device’s speaker.
In his wing mirror, a thin line of dust ran down toward a tired old black sedan trundling slowly away to the north of the clutter of the nearby village.
“Perhaps they changed their plans?” his bodyguard muttered from alongside him.
“Perhaps,” agreed Gulyar. “Abdul,” he keyed the radio again. “Check that black sedan.”
~~~~~
I navigate the barely roadworthy old, black, saloon car slowly back toward Herat. Every part of me wants to press down hard on the accelerator, but I fight the urge and, besides, I’m not convinced that the car can go much more quickly. Its owners hadn’t been particularly security conscious about it. It had been unlocked and, as it happened, left with a key in its ignition.
Jack’s momentary look of relief at not having to unleash his illustrious lock-picking skills was quickly replaced by one of pure terror when I opened the boot and pointed him toward it.
“I’m not fucking going in there,” he’d muttered from behind his Dupatta scarf.
“Get
in
,” I’d insisted with a gentle shove.
I glance, pointlessly, over my shoulder at the mess of rubbish splayed over the backseats. He’s curled up behind there, in the boot, grumbling to himself.
“Nick, let me out of here,” his voice whispers through the comms device into my ear. “If they think there’s a woman driving it will attract attention.”
I shake my head as I stare out through the fine mesh face piece of the Chadri. “Not as much attention as seeing the sight of you, covered in blood? What’s the
damn
problem?”
“I don’t like small spaces,” he confesses disconsolately.
~~~~~
In the oppressive darkness, Jack fought hard to control his breathing. The sedan had a substantial trunk space but he’d had to curl up and could barely move around. Every bump in the road jarred his ribs painfully.
He’d have nightmares about this, he just knew it.
“Are you still there?” he whispered into the gloom.
“Sssshh...,” hissed Nick’s voice in his ear. “We’ve got trouble.”
“What is it?”
“Roadblock...”
Jack felt the car slowing to a halt.
Shit.
~~~~~
I watch as two, turbaned men saunter toward the car with rifles held angled across their bodies. Their rusty pickup straddles the road in front of me. I ease one hand under the Chadri and find the hilt of my Browning, which lies ready on my lap.
I keep my face forward.
They look like they’re on their own.
The two men walk up to the closed front windows, one on either side, and leer inside. I can sense them studying me, trying to see behind my veil, scowling angrily at the rare sight of what appears to be a woman driving, and clearly they’re not being won over by my apparently bulky physique. Then they slowly move to the back windows and repeat their inspection. I watch them carefully in the car’s wing mirrors. It’s not a viable option to attempt shooting both of them, at the same time, from here.
They move round to the boot.
Fuck.
“Two men,” I whisper quietly. “Take them both if you can.”
~~~~~
Jack scowled to himself.
If you can...?
He heard the latch of the boot lid click in front of him.
~~~~~
The two men are standing behind the car. I watch as the boot lid swings up in the rear view mirror, obscuring them from view. There are two swift coughing noises, and then the boot lid swings back down again.
The men have vanished.
“
If I can...,
” says Jack sardonically in my ear. “And this from the person that nearly blew my ear off in Budapest...”
I drive gently away around the pickup truck. Two bodies lie sprawled across the roadway behind us.
“Thanks for shutting the boot,” I mutter. “Very good of you.”
“I’m getting comfy in here,” he remarks. “There’s not enough room for three.”
“Fair point,” I say. “Especially as you could be there for a while...”
~~~~~
It had been several minutes.
Too many minutes.
“ABDUL?” Gulyar yelled into the radio. “COME IN. ABDUL?”
Nothing but static.
“Let’s go!” he roared, and his bodyguard gunned the 4x4’s engine, spinning it around and pointing it back toward the distant village.
All around him, his army of vehicles lurched into motion and began to carve similar circles.
A brief flash of light and muffled boom rolled across the wasteland.
“What the...!” yelled his driver.
A cloud of acrid smoke, sand and dust blossomed at the front edge of the village. In its heart Gulyar could see flames flickering brightly, despite the morning sunlight, and as they raced toward the scene, Bin Imraan knew that somehow the thieves had outsmarted him. Some battles were worth pursuing and some were not. This one, with its well equipped quarry, mysterious messages, and already significant losses of manpower and munitions, belonged in the latter category.
He was tired of it.
He preferred it when his enemies couldn’t fight back. His business had too much to lose and too little to gain by continuing this wild goose chase.
“Take us back to Herat,” he snarled and lifted the radio. “One car go and check out the explosion, another find Abdul. The rest of you return to the city before our beloved security forces arrive. This hunt is over.”
~~~~~
We are well south of Herat when I pull the car off the road onto a strip of conveniently secluded verge.
“What’s happening?” Jack’s voice mumbles in my ear. He doesn’t sound too good.
“Hang on,” I say as I scramble round the outside of the car to help him gingerly out of the boot. “Haven’t seen anyone following us,” I explain. “No-one. I think we’ve lost them.”
He nods weakly and I guide him round and help him to lie down across the backseats.
“Where to?” I ask, pulling the Chadri off over my head, and flinging it forwards onto the passenger seat.
He shakes his head. “Not sure,” he replies.
I know we’ve both been thinking about the same thing. “Do you think our EMT signal was intercepted and deciphered?”
He shakes his head. “Unlikely,” he says. “The base encryption is too complex for local gangsters to crack on their own. Someone tipped them off as to where we were headed.”
I feel sick in the pit of my stomach. The only people who knew where we were going were supposed to be our allies. It doesn’t make sense that they should betray us, but I can’t argue against Jack’s resigned logic. Either Ace or Deuce must have fed our location to the locals.
“So what now?” I ask.
He slumps down on the seat and, more than ever, I’m conscious that he’s in need of proper medical assistance. “Not sure,” he mutters, “but we can’t use the EMT.”
He means we can’t contact our handlers.