It was almost dawn by the time they rolled out of Sar Banader.
‘We need to head out fast,’ said Logan. ‘Melmestia might have saved your hide while you were a guest in Obaid’s house, but Jamali’s militia will be waiting for us somewhere out on the road.’ He made sure each of them was armed as he rearranged the convoy, putting one of the governor’s Hiluxes as lead vehicle, followed by the technical, with the Surf third in line and the other Hilux bringing up the rear. Obaid waved them off, presumably with a huge sigh of relief, and considerably better off than he had been before his daughter had discovered Mac in the goat pen.
Mac sat in the back of the Surf with Baz, suddenly overcome by the extreme exhaustion which follows days of living on adrenalin. He tried desperately to keep his eyes open – they weren’t out of danger yet. He wouldn’t feel absolutely safe until they were back in Lash. They were driving as fast as the road conditions allowed – the sooner they got out of this part of Helmand, the better.
‘Tell me about it,’ said Baz, resting her head against his good shoulder.
Mac wasn’t sure he was ready to talk about everything that had happened yet, but it was one way of staying awake.
‘I killed a goat and ate its liver,’ he said.
‘Ugh!’
‘I walked miles underground through a dried-up karez system.’
‘What can you tell us about Jamali?’ said Logan. He wanted intelligence, not war stories, which was fair enough.
‘I met him,’ said Mac. ‘He organised a ransom video.’
‘We saw it, mate,’ said Ginger.
‘So you got my message?’
‘Um, no?’ Ginger turned round in his seat to stare at Mac.
‘Morse code, with my fingers.’
Logan smacked the heel of his hand against the steering wheel. ‘I wondered for a second, but the quality of the video was crap. Some ancient VHS that had been recorded over hundreds of times.’
A barrage of fire out of nowhere snapped them into hyper-alertness. Baz gasped and ducked down, scrabbling for the pistol she’d put on the floor by her feet. Logan started shouting instructions over his radio to the other vehicles. They all accelerated, as windows were opened and weapons were primed. Mac braced himself between the door and the edge of the seat, resting his elbows on the sill of the open window to steady the AK he had pressed into his shoulder.
‘Up on the ridge over there,’ said Ginger, pointing to where a low hillside banked at the edge of the road ahead.
The vehicle leading the convoy was the target as it entered the killing ground.
‘It must be Jamali’s men,’ said Mac. ‘They want to collect what they came for.’ He watched in horror as the Hilux took an RPG hit and skidded off the track into a deep ditch. It teetered on the brink, one man returning fire, before rolling over onto its side. The driver must have been taken out. Bullets rained down on it and flames suddenly flared from the engine as another grenade detonated.
‘Goddammit,’ said Baz, as Mac pushed her head back down to keep her out of harm’s way. She bobbed up again, taking potshots out of the window with her pistol.
‘Two guys, two positions, as far as I can see,’ said Ginger.
The technical with the machine gun let rip and Logan gunned the engine to take advantage of the cover it was giving them. He sped through the killing ground, while Ginger leaned out of the passenger window, spraying AK rounds up the hill. Casings flew out of the weapon, a couple of them hitting Logan on the arm and cheek.
‘Hot brass,’ he spat. ‘Cut it out.’
‘Better than a bullet,’ shouted Ginger over the racket, as he carried on firing.
They were clear of the killing ground in ten seconds. The technical had pulled over and continued to fire to their rear, and the second Hilux swept up behind them. Logan carried on half a kilometre up the road, then stopped.
‘Fucking amateurs,’ he said, as he waited for the Hilux and the technical to stop beside them. ‘Pretty sure our guys have wiped them all out now.’
He climbed out of the Surf to have a conflab with the captain of the governor’s men.
‘You okay?’ said Mac, as Baz stretched her back after being crouched down low on the seat.
‘Sure.’
But some of the men in the second Hilux hadn’t been so lucky. Ginger and Mac grabbed the trauma pack from the back of their vehicle and went across to where two injured men were being given rudimentary medical attention by their colleagues.
‘He’s gone,’ muttered Mac in Ginger’s ear as they came close enough to see that one of the men was bleeding out from a wound that had nicked his femoral artery.
The other man had a fighting chance. He’d taken a bullet to the right side of his torso, near the bottom of his ribs. It was a sucking chest wound, damaging his lung, and bloody froth was being expelled from the entry and exit wounds. Ginger grabbed a couple of shell dressings and, stripping off their waterproof wrappers, he applied the wrappers to the wounds to create airtight seals. Then he placed the dressing pads over the plastic and secured it all tightly to the man’s torso using surgical tape.
Mac set up a drip for the guy and administered a morphine shot.
‘Should be okay, if we can get him back to the Italian hospital pronto.’
Logan came over to them.
‘Here’s the plan. The technical’s going to go back and collect the bodies. That’s non-negotiable, so I’ve told them to take the other Hilux for cover.’
Ginger looked at the man he’d just finished bandaging. His colleague with the leg wound was already dead, and one of the militiamen was solemnly wrapping a bloodstained keffiyeh around the dead man’s head.
‘This guy needs to get to hospital fast.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Logan. ‘He can come with us. We won’t wait for the bodies. That was Jamali’s best attempt to take us out, and I don’t reckon we’ll see any more trouble up the road.’
‘Fair dos,’ said Mac. ‘You’re probably right.’
He and Ginger carried the wounded man to the Surf and stashed the trauma pack. Baz was taking photos – although it might have seemed distasteful to shoot pictures of a man as his life ebbed away, Mac knew it was important for her to document everything that happened.
‘Rolling out,’ yelled Logan to the captain, as he started the engine.
The car doors slammed, and they were back on the road.
‘Let’s hope we can get this guy back in time to save his life,’ said Mac.
‘Insha’Allah,’ said Baz, ‘Insha’Allah.’