Mac had no idea how long he was running for. It felt like forever, but in his weakened physical state, it couldn’t have been long. He didn’t dare stop. He hardly dared look back. Gunfire had erupted from the compound as he ploughed through the poppy field, but the night was dark enough to shield him. His captors were firing randomly and, though he heard bullets whistling past him, none of them hit their target.
After a few minutes, the shooting stopped. Mac dropped his pace to a jog. As he pushed between the waist-high plants, he realised he would be leaving an easily followed trail of destruction through the field. It had given him cover when he needed it, but now he had to move forward without leaving a trace. He heard more engines revving in the distance – they were coming after him in multiple vehicles, and that meant he couldn’t use the road.
He crossed a second field of poppies much more slowly, slipping between the stems without breaking them.
An arc of light spread across the sea of purple and white flowers to one side of him and he dropped to the ground. A Toyota technical with hunting lights attached to its light bar was careening through the first field and gaining ground.
Fuck!
He crawled forward on his belly, gasping as his broken collarbone had to bear weight. But as he moved, the poppies swayed and shimmered above him, and he realised whoever was in the technical would be able to see his progress as their lights caught the movement. He lay still and listened as the vehicle came closer and closer. He was lying right in its path, but there was nothing he could do without giving himself away.
Should he stand up, hands raised, and turn himself in? At least they wouldn’t run him over then – they needed him alive to be able to collect the million-dollar ransom. But it was only a fleeting thought. He wasn’t going to give up that easily. He would take his chances.
The wheels thundered past him, clipping poppy plants that were just inches from his head. The men in the Toyota were shouting loudly – the driver had his window open so he could talk to the man standing on the truck bed, directing the lights and, Mac saw as the vehicle charged by, manning a machine gun. It went on another fifty metres or so, then took a sharp ninety-degree turn, crushing a wide swathe of flowering plants as it ploughed along the edge of the field. The driver clearly didn’t care how much of the valuable crop he damaged. Mac supposed it was nothing compared to the prospect of losing the ransom.
He breathed a short-lived sigh of relief. He was by no means out of danger, but at least he hadn’t been turned to pulp under the Toyota’s wheels. He allowed himself a couple of seconds to gather his thoughts, but he couldn’t afford to stay where he was. It was only a matter of time before they would come sweeping back and he didn’t want to be like a startled deer in their beam of light.
He was several hundred metres from the compound now, which meant he was the same distance from the road. Without the position of the sun, he didn’t know which way was north or south, east or west. He hardly knew which direction he should head in, apart from the logic of going north. If he could locate the Helmand River, he could stay close to its bank. But they had driven for hours from Lashkar Gah – he was hardly going to be able to walk all the way back.
The situation seemed hopeless.
He started crawling again. He needed to get out of the poppy field and find somewhere to hide until they gave up hunting him for the night. The sound of the technical had receded into the distance, so he raised himself up on his knees just high enough to peer over the tops of the poppy flowers. He was near the edge of the field, and there seemed to be a break of a few feet between this field and the next one. An irrigation canal? He crept forward, all the time listening for his captors’ return.
It only took a couple of minutes to discover he had been right. A narrow cement canal ran between the poppy fields, a ruler-straight line in both directions as far as he could see in the darkness. The irony that it had probably been constructed by a Well Diggers project didn’t escape him. But it explained the Toyota’s change in direction – if there were any bridges over the channel, they would be footbridges, so it formed a barrier the vehicle couldn’t cross.
The roar of the engine became louder again and he could hear the men, still shouting. The hunting light of the technical came into view, sweeping an area a couple of hundred metres from his current location. They were coming in his direction. He slipped into the water, taking care not to make a splash. Not that they would hear it if he did, but he couldn’t risk the light catching the disturbance of the canal’s glassy surface if he sent out a large ripple. Cool water rushed into his boots and soaked through his trousers in an instant. It felt like a balm to his swollen knee, but that wasn’t his reason for doing it. He waded into the middle. The water wasn’t deep, coming to halfway up his thighs in the centre, and the base of the canal was flat. Wading through water took more energy than walking on land but there was virtually no current, and it was at least deep enough to mean that even standing upright, his head didn’t come above the top of the flower heads.
As far as he could surmise, the course of the canal ran parallel to the road. At some point, he’d have to choose a direction of travel, but right now, he needed to evade recapture and the Toyota was getting closer. He tucked the Makarov into a small hollow on the canal bank and sank down into a squatting position, so only his head was above the water. It meant he couldn’t see where the vehicle was, but as the sound of its engine became louder, he started to see glints of light between the poppy stems. The beam was swinging back and forth across the field.
Mac breathed in and out slowly as the light grew brighter. With each swing of the arc, a strip of the canal surface was illuminated, and it was coming nearer with each pass. It was going to take split-second timing. If he went under too soon, he might need to come up again for air before the light had gone. Too late, and the bloke on the back would see ripples on the surface of the water.
The timing would be guesswork, and he had to make a bloody good guess. His life depended on it.
The light wheeled across the water towards him. He took a huge gulp of air, then sank gently to the bottom of the channel. He reckoned he would need to stay under for at least a minute to be safe, for the light to have moved on sufficiently for his resurfacing to go unnoticed.
The cool water enveloped his head, making all his muscles contract with the shock of it. He had to fight against his natural buoyancy to stay under. He felt around the bottom of the channel with his hands, but there was nothing to catch hold of. His body, lungs inflated with air, wanted to drift upwards. He could breathe out to counter this, but that would mean a trail of bubbles breaking the surface tension of the water. As he fought an unseen battle against the natural urge to surface, his lungs started to burn, craving more oxygen to fuel the fight.
As the light swept across his section of the canal, he closed his eyes against its glare.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi…
Just a little longer. His chest was on fire, his muscles screaming, but he had to keep control. He couldn’t burst out of the water, gulping for air. His emergence had to be just as controlled as his submersion.
The light passed, but still he held himself down. He wanted as much distance as possible between him and the Toyota before he resurfaced.
And then what?
Finally, it seemed completely dark. He slowly raised his face, nose and mouth breaking the surface first, sucking in much-needed air. He pushed towards the side of the channel, leaning against the sloping concrete, breathing softly until his muscles relaxed and the tightness in his chest released. The Toyota was long gone, engine noise receding in the distance, the sweep of the light cutting a swathe much further down the canal now.
He was alone, somewhere in the heart of Helmand’s opium tract – a hostile environment where he didn’t speak the language and where the paleness of his skin made him both contemptible and valuable. He was weak. He had no food or fresh water, but he had Pistol Boy’s Makarov. He retrieved it from where he’d stashed it and checked the chamber. Three rounds left. The odds were stacked against him, but he started to walk along the canal. He needed to put as much distance between himself and Jamali’s compound as he could before first light.
Only then could he afford to rest, if he could find some cover, and take stock.
On either side of him, the poppy flowers swayed in the breeze, as beautiful as they were deadly.