Hassan nodded in agreement, noticing the spade against the wall of the hut. ‘It doesn’t matter. Soon we’ll be gone. Dig them up.’
‘One more thing, boss.’
‘What is it, Juma? We can’t waste time.’
‘The white man, boss …’
‘Yes?’
‘It was the father of Miss Miranda. The man who came to the lodge.’
Hassan smiled. ‘Don’t look so worried, Juma. I’m pleased you didn’t kill him before. I want him to live with the pain of his daughter’s death. We will send her back to her father a piece at a time.
Now, to work!’
Bin Zayid lit a cigarette while Juma dug. He was elated Jed Banks was in the game. In his wildest, sweetest fantasy of how this adventure would unfold he saw his brother’s killer in tears as he realised that his actions in Afghanistan had been directly responsible for the death of his only child. Miranda deserved to die. It had been her information, he was sure, that had led the Americans to his brother.
There was only one shovel, but the coffins were not buried deep and Juma worked furiously.
Hassan checked his watch. Both of them should still be unconscious, although if his calculations were correct Miranda would be coming to within the hour. That was fine by him. He wanted her awake when they arrived in Mozambique so he could use her. He was on the edge now, a freelance soldier in a war without boundaries. He would probably never return to his life of spoiled leisure, but he was free to indulge new passions, new vices above and beyond the laws of men. He had allowed himself to experience real intimacy with Miranda and then found out she had been spying on him, using him.
His weakness had cost his brother his life. Hassan would seek retribution in the same way that Iqbal would have. He remembered his brother’s stories about how he had tortured Russian prisoners for information during the fighting in Chechnya. Hassan had been shocked, but also surprised to find himself fascinated and excited. Iqbal had spoken of the experience in the same way that a boastful man recounts his sexual conquests.
As he imagined the degradations he would submit Miranda to he found himself becoming physically aroused. In his mind’s eye he saw the final flash of the knife and felt her body spasm one last time.
‘Faster, Juma,’ he said, checking his watch again.
The plan, at least his part in it, was going more or less according to schedule. He was annoyed that Banks had made the connection between him and the attack on Calvert’s aircraft so quickly, but he had left the booby-trapped grenade in the hut in case of just such an eventuality. As far as he knew, the man still believed his daughter had been killed by a lion. Hassan smiled to himself. The father’s pain would be even greater when he learned that she had been alive and within his reach, possibly even under his very feet, and he had failed to save her.
Once Juma had finished they would load the coffins into the Land Rover and then drive to the airstrip. With Miranda and the general on board they would take off for a remote airfield in Mozambique, on the edge of Lake Cahora Bassa, where they would be met by two locally born members of the organisation to which Hassan now belonged. They would video General Calvert and Miranda, proving they were alive, and send the tape to an Arab-language satellite television station, along with a demand for the American Government to release all the remaining Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners still held at Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba. Hassan realised that the parading of Calvert, as a well-known public figure, would generate media coverage for the cause, but that the Americans would not free anyone in order to save him. He was an ex-soldier, and the Americans would probably accept his death and try to glorify him as a martyr to their cause. Miranda, however, was a pretty young woman. After they had beheaded Calvert and released the tape of his execution, they would release a video of Miranda, alive and crying. Public opinion in America and elsewhere in the world might just turn at the prospect of a young woman being dismembered on television or the internet. But, even if the Americans did release some or all of the prisoners, Hassan had no intention of letting Miranda live.
Hassan had originally planned to weather the storm and continue to hide behind the fiction that he was still in Zanzibar. However, he realised that somehow the Americans, including Miranda’s father, had linked him to the attack much sooner than he expected. So what? he mused. He was committed to the fight now and he would continue his jihad until he died. Africa was a big continent and he had cash enough in his pack to last a couple of years at least. He had withdrawn a hundred thousand US dollars from one of the family accounts before leaving Stone Town.
‘Finished, boss,’ Juma said. The back of his fatigue shirt was black with sweat and his face was streaked with dirt.
When she heard the digging start, Miranda scratched harder, ignoring the pain and the blood on her fingertips.
After her tears had subsided she had resumed her blind search of the interior of the coffin. Inside the casket, about halfway along on the right-hand side, was a metal orb around the size of a tennis ball. On top was a smaller metal cylinder. It was fastened to the wall of the box with a band of thin, flexible metal, which felt as though it had been nailed to the wood. Her first thought was that the nails would make a weapon of some sort if she could remove them. As her fingers moved higher, to the top of the ball, she felt a metal handle, a small device of some kind on top and a ring that jangled when her fingers brushed it. She gasped. Forget the nails, she had seen enough action movies to realise she was sharing the box with a hand grenade.
Miranda snatched her hands away in panic. She took a breath and forced herself to think calmly.
She touched it again, gently, in case her actions somehow set it off. Attached to the pin was a length of cord, which she carefully followed. At the end of the string was a loop attached to a hook that had been screwed into the lid of the coffin.
A booby trap. She knew enough about grenades to know that when you pulled the pin a lever flew off and the thing detonated a few seconds later. Exactly how long it would take, though, she had no idea. She supposed the fuse could be altered, so that the grenade exploded sooner. Miranda guessed that Hassan had rigged the simple activation device of string and hook so that in the event that she was rescued, whoever opened the coffin first would accidentally pull the pin from the grenade and kill both her and her rescuer. She shook her head in disgust at his deviousness. If, however, Hassan got to her first – and she assumed he wanted her alive for a little while longer for some purpose – he could easily disarm the trap by lifting the lid a few centimetres and unhooking the string before it became taut.
Miranda unhooked the cord herself and set to work trying to loosen the grenade from the band holding it to the coffin wall. Screw him. One way or another he was going to be on the receiving end of his own cleverness. The risk was that if she pulled the pin on the grenade and threw it at him then she, too, would be blown up instantly. However, she realised that if Hassan got to her before anyone else it would only be a matter of time before he killed her anyway. Better to die on her own terms than allow him to torture or abuse her. Her calmness surprised her.
She lay still for a second then realised that she could not waste any more time. She wobbled the grenade backwards and forwards, using its bulk and weight to loosen the nails that held it secure. She hooked her fingers into the edges of the banding, wincing as the jagged-edged sheet metal sliced the skin underneath her fingernails. The digging noises were getting louder now and her whole body shuddered in fright when the blade of the shovel clanged on the lid above her.
Gambling that the noise of the digging would muffle her work, she pulled again on the grenade, as hard as she could, and felt one, then the other nail on one side of the band pop loose. She bent back the metal strip and the grenade dropped with a thud on the floor of the coffin beside her. Miranda screwed her eyes shut, fearing the thing would go off. It just lay there, though, cold and hard beside her forearm. She reached across her torso, awkwardly because of her bound hands, grabbed it and deposited it between her legs. The shovel grated back and forth across the lid now and she heard muffled voices.
Miranda realised that if it was Hassan, the first thing he would do after opening the lid would be to unhook the booby trap. She fumbled with the grenade and, after several attempts, managed to untie the string from the pin.
Suddenly she was jolted. As the coffin was lifted her head flicked forwards and banged painfully on the lid. The grenade rolled along the floor between her legs, but she trapped it under her calves before it reached the other end of the box. Carefully, so as not to make a sound, she tied the free end of the string to the metal band, which was still fixed to the wall of the casket. She slipped the loop of the cord back onto the hook in the lid.
Hassan moved to the edge of the shallow grave and grabbed the carry handles at the head of the coffin. ‘One, two, three! She’s a heavy bitch.’
Juma lifted the foot of the coffin and, between them, they raised the box out of the ground and dropped it on the edge of the grave.
‘Shall I disarm the grenade, boss?’ Juma asked.
‘We haven’t time now. We can do that once we get them into the aircraft. Hurry, let’s get her into the Land Rover.’
The two men lifted the coffin again and, backs bowed with the weight, carried it to the open tailgate of the four-by-four. ‘Right, let’s get the VIP,’ Hassan said.
Miranda strained to hear their brief exchanges. Juma had always given her the creeps. She was surprised that Hassan mentioned another person. A VIP? She had the grenade tucked between her thighs now, her hands down over her crotch. When he eventually opened the lid it would take him only a second to notice that his trap had been disarmed. She would have to strike immediately.
At first, as Miranda thought in the coffin about the chain of events that had led to this, she had cried. Afterwards, as she worked on unfastening the device he had set to kill her, she became angry at what he had done to her and mad at herself for falling for him. Miranda wondered if he intended to use her for propaganda or ransom purposes. Also, she thought of her father. Was Hassan gunning for him as well? She tried to put herself in Hassan’s shoes, to imagine how she would feel if he had used her to get information that eventually led to the death of her dad or mom. She had been so eager to follow in Chris Wallis’s footsteps and to succeed as an ‘asset’ that she hadn’t thought through all the possible consequences of her decision and the tasks she had carried out. Now she just felt stupid and afraid.
There was a scraping noise next to her and something bumped against the box. A vehicle engine started and she felt the vibrations of the motor through her back and bottom. She rocked from side to side as the vehicle started to move along a bumpy track.
If there was another person in the same predicament as she, a second prisoner in a coffin, then his or her casket would probably be rigged to explode as well. She needed to find a way to warn any potential rescuer, in the event that she was killed in her bid to thwart Hassan and Juma. She felt for the metal banding again and slid out one of the nails that held it in place.
After a while – she couldn’t tell how long – the vehicle turned off the track onto smoother ground.
It came to a halt.
‘Open the aircraft up. I’ll check on the pair of them. I don’t want them waking up in midflight,’ she heard Hassan say.
They must be at an airstrip. Inside her coffin Miranda reached between her legs and picked up the grenade. She tugged a little on the pin, testing its resistance. As her hands were tied she worried that she would be unable to pull it all the way out. Again she recalled an old war movie and slowly moved her hands to her mouth.
Hassan took his Leatherman from its belt pouch and flipped out a screwdriver blade. He crouched over the casket and undid the screws fastening the lid of Miranda’s coffin, then hooked his fingers under the lip of the cover. Gently, he raised it a few centimetres.
Miranda had pulled the oxygen mask from her face. She smelled the sweet, dry night air. Even though it was dark outside she still had to blink a couple of times to get used to the comparative brightness cast by the moon and stars. A hand moved under the lid, feeling for the string. She felt the free end of the cord brush her torso as he unhitched it. Miranda tensed and, clutching the grenade, pressed her knuckles against the lid.
She heard Juma say, ‘Ready here, boss.’ His voice sounded muffled. Perhaps he was inside the aeroplane.
‘OK. I’ll just check on the girl,’ Hassan replied.
This was it. She pressed her hands against the coffin lid, and when she felt Hassan start to lift it, she shoved up as hard and as fast as she could. She glimpsed the moment of shock on his face and heard him yelp as the edge of the wood slammed into his nose. Then he was gone, tumbling back over the edge of the pick-up’s tray, to the ground.
Miranda sat bolt upright and looked either side of her. She blinked again and saw Juma, wideeyed, inside an aircraft – bin Zayid’s plane. Of Hassan, there was no sign, although she had heard him cry out. She raised the grenade to her mouth again, bit down on the pin with her teeth and yanked the device away from her. She swung her bound hands to the right, then back to the left, letting go of the grenade at the end of the movement, sending it straight through the open door of the Cessna.
Hassan dragged himself to his feet. He moved to the back of the four-by-four, his face clouded with confusion and shock at the sight of her sitting up in the coffin staring at him.
‘Grenade!’ Juma yelled.
Miranda had no idea how long it would take for the bomb to go off. She lay back down inside the coffin and prayed it would be soon.
Hassan, blood pouring from his broken nose, started to turn to escape the blast. Juma was too far back inside the aircraft to get out in time. He groped blindly around the floor of the aircraft looking for the grenade. It was within his reach, only a few centimetres from his face, when the blast hit him.