The Surf was rocked by the shockwave from a huge explosion. A burst of flames and soot-black smoke spewed skyward, and before Baz had regained her equilibrium the ratter-tat-tat of automatic gunfire sounded up ahead.
Logan threw himself out of the vehicle.
‘You drive,’ he yelled, running around to the passenger side and yanking open Baz’s door. ‘They’re going to need our firepower.’
Baz leapt out and ran around to the driver’s seat. She revved the engine, swerved the Surf out of the line of the convoy and drove as fast as she dared up to where the two Hiluxes and the technical were roaring off ahead of them. As she fell in behind the technical, Logan gave a thumbs-up to the guy manning the Dushka. He responded with a two-fingered salute.
Baz concentrated on driving as fast as she could, with enough precision to keep them behind the protective cover of the vehicles ahead. Logan opened the passenger window, braced his legs in the footwell and leaned out, holding the AK in the firing position. The column of black smoke ahead was larger now and as they rounded a bend in the road, Baz could see orange flames licking up through the base of the column. The source was a stricken oil tanker that had jackknifed across both lanes, the back end of it now a roiling inferno. Two men lay in the road close by, but Baz couldn’t tell if it was the explosion that had knocked them down or gunshot wounds. Two other men were crouching in the lee of the cab, taking fire from somewhere ahead of the tanker.
The Hiluxes and the technical fanned out to create a row some twenty feet back from the tanker. Men streamed out, firing, the Dushka providing cover for them as they ran towards a rocky outcrop on the left-hand side of the road. Whoever had taken out the tanker was still shooting – as far as Baz could tell, incoming fire was hailing down on them from at least three separate positions. She could see why they’d chosen this particular spot for an attack – the rocky bluffs had narrowed the road into a gully, which had now been turned into a kill zone.
‘Get round the back of the car,’ shouted Logan, firing from behind the cover of the front wheel and the engine block.
Baz jumped out on her side, crouched low and scurried to the rear end of the Surf. Logan came back on his side, and they squatted, panting, out of the line of fire for now.
‘Who is it?’ said Baz, taking the lens cap off her camera.
Logan shrugged. ‘Could be the Taliban wanting to disrupt oil supplies. Could be robbers wanting to jack the tanker. Or the settling of a tribal score.’
‘You’re kidding? They take things that far?’
‘And further,’ muttered Logan, breaking cover at the side of the vehicle to let off a round in the direction of the top of the bluff.
Baz stood up and edged her head above the line of the Surf’s roof – she needed to get a series of shots of the burning tanker and the firefight that surrounded it.
‘Fucking get down,’ spat Logan. ‘Or d’you want the top of your head blown off?’
As he said it, a round whistled past Baz’s ear, and she dropped like a stone. She’d got some pictures, but her heart felt like it would explode as adrenalin flooded through her. Her hands were shaking too much for her to review the images she’d taken – that could wait until later. For now, she just wished it was over.
Logan carried on firing intermittently, and as Baz’s heart rate returned to normal she lifted her camera above the roofline of the Surf to fire off some more shots using the motor drive. God knows what they’d show – but that was how you got an award-winning shot.
‘Shit. The guy on the Dushka. He’s down.’
Baz peered cautiously around the side of the Surf. The young man who’d given them a confident salute just minutes ago was slumped over the rim of the technical, blood gushing from a stomach wound that, given their situation, would almost certainly be fatal. The priority now was to win the firefight, and as she watched, the nearest of Aaban’s men dropped his AK and sprang onto the back of the utility vehicle. He unceremoniously shoved his compadre to one side and took control of the Dushka, showering round after furious round across the hillside. Baz helped Logan replenish his magazines from the spare rounds in the back of the Surf, and he kept up the pressure on the attackers.
The return fire was slowing and then stopped.
Aaban, who’d been firing from the cover of a jagged boulder halfway up the slope, shouted something and held an arm up in the air.
There was a minute’s silence as the men waited. Nothing happened and the silence stretched into two minutes. One of the men who’d been behind the tanker shouted something to Aaban, then stepped out from his cover.
He drew no fire.
The attackers were either dead or had fled.
Aaban’s men let out a cheer of relief and quickly ran to give attention to a couple of wounded men. Baz broke cover to take pictures of the aftermath, as Logan jogged over to Aaban for a conflab. A couple of the gunmen were directed to climb the bluff to check for stragglers, but the word quickly came back that there were three dead men, and they’d heard the sound of a vehicle receding in the distance, its dust cloud visible through binoculars as it headed into the wilds of the desert.
They were safe. For now.
Baz went across to the two men who had been firing from behind the tanker. They had moved well away from their vehicle now, and were bent over the bodies of the two shot men lying in the road. The tanker fire was still burning with a fierce intensity and the surrounding air was scorched and fume-laden. As Baz got closer, she saw that one of the stricken men was struggling for breath. They were trying to help him, but then a long wail from the older man told her that they hadn’t succeeded.
‘My son, my son,’ he cried in Pashto. The rest of his words were a jumble of distress that Baz couldn’t understand.
The younger man clutched the victim’s body to his chest, tears streaming down his face. Baz guessed he must have been the dead man’s brother.
She squatted down in front of him. ‘Who did this to you?’ she said, speaking in Pashto.
The kid looked up at her, his startling blue-green eyes shimmering. He glanced down at the dead man and swept black hair back from his forehead. The man had the same turquoise eyes, now staring emptily at the sky.
‘Do you know?’ said Baz.
He nodded. ‘I know. It was Turyalai Khan. He was here. He shot Said.’
‘He’s from another tribe?’
He looked at her with disgust. ‘Tribe? No. He owns three tankers. He wants to take our business from us.’
Baz could hardly fathom it. If this was the way business rivals behaved to each other, what hope was there for peace at any level? But the fact that people had to run these sorts of risks daily to operate a business or make a living needed to be documented. Taking photographs of such distress to turn it into a news story seemed horribly intrusive, but how else would the world know what was happening here, in this country where God came to cry? Baz blinked back her own tears and continued snapping until she felt Logan’s arm around her shoulder, and he led her away.
‘Come on, let’s get going.’
Baz looked around. The convoy was in disarray, the road was blocked by the tanker, and Aaban seemed to be involved in several high-volume arguments with different drivers.
‘What do you mean?’ she said.
‘We’ll hit the road. We can get round the tanker, but most of the convoy can’t. They’re arguing over whether to try to move it, or whether to turn back towards Ghazni.’
‘You mean continue to Kandahar on our own?’
‘It’s just over an hour’s drive away. Maybe less, because we’ll be able to move faster.’
‘But it won’t be safe. What if those attackers are still out there?’
Logan cracked a grin and brandished his AK. ‘Come on, babe, lightning doesn’t strike twice. We’re no threat to their trucking operations – we’ll be fine.’
‘Insha’Allah,’ said Baz under her breath.