In an ideal world, one wouldn’t travel at night in southern Afghanistan. In an ideal world, all roads would be smoothly tarmacked. In an ideal world, Mac would get eight hours sleep a night and three square meals a day…
Only it wasn’t an ideal world. Far from it.
Beautiful, yes. The sky was like a fold of black velvet, the moon a disc of molten metal casting its light on the desert all around them. Sand and rock painted silver, chequered black with shadows… uninhabitable and uninhabited. There were no trees, no bushes, just a rutted track stretching ahead of them and trailing out behind. Five vehicles traversing the Registan Desert, a flat plateau also known as the Desert of Death. From time to time, the track vanished in the sand, resulting in a stop and a conflab between the drivers who knew the route, while Beroj Khaliq – a dark-eyed and handsome twenty-five-year-old – squinted at the stars, humming tunelessly until Logan pointed them in a new direction.
Mac wondered if Beroj ever stopped humming, and felt glad he wasn’t in the same vehicle as the kid.
They’d left Lashkar Gah at lunchtime, taking the road south that led through Garmser and Najibullahkhan Kalay. Three Hiluxes, an ancient Russian GAZ-66 heavy technical with a ZU-23-2 automatic cannon mounted on the back, Logan’s Surf, and twenty-four men and one woman, speeding through the poppy plantations as fast as the road conditions would allow. Field workers and villagers stared as they roared by – and no doubt passed on what they’d seen to Jamali’s informants in the area. They needed to stay one step ahead, so they barely stopped – only once for late afternoon prayers, and Logan didn’t allow that until they had branched away from the river valley and were out in the empty desert. Some of the militiamen had muttered ominously about it, staring darkly at the westerners when they did stop, but Beroj had put them in their place with a volley of harsh words. It was clear that, despite his youth, he was completely in charge and would brook no insolence from his soldiers.
‘I’m aiming for eleven hours,’ said Logan. ‘I’ll be happy if we reach the edge of Bahram Chah by midnight.’
‘And then what?’ said Baz from the back of the Surf.
Mac had begged her to stay behind in Lash, but she’d put on her Kevlar body armour with PRESS stamped on the back and front, and climbed into the vehicle, saying, ‘This is my job, buster, and I don’t need your permission to come along.’ Mac had backed off – there was no point in having a row over it, because she was right.
Logan cleared his throat. ‘Hopefully, by then Beroj will have heard from Khaliq’s contact in Bahram Chah. It’s a small place, but we have to view it as entirely hostile. We need to know where Bakker is so we can go in cleanly, extract him, then get out again fast. On-the-ground information is critical.’
‘And if we don’t get that information?’ said Mac.
‘We’ll get it,’ said Logan.
With the moon almost full, and low in the sky, they were able to drive without using headlights, and when the track they were on completely disappeared, they sped forward across the stony ground in an arrow formation, with the Surf at the apex. It was a bone-juddering experience and Logan insisted that everyone in the vehicle kept their seatbelts on. Just in case.
Ginger and Mac were in the back, with Baz between them. The two men each had a set of binoculars, and they constantly scanned the horizon for distant vehicles – it was certain that their presence would have been noted travelling south. There was also the risk of running into opium smugglers heading for the border with Pakistan or to sell their goods in Bahram Chah’s notorious opium bazaar. Tirich was driving, with Logan next to him. Tirich concentrated on finding a straight line that avoided rocks and boulders, while Logan watched the horizon and tracked their progress on the map on his laptop. Every now and then he conferred with Beroj using a Motorola handheld radio.
‘Take us down that wadi, just over there,’ he said to Tirich, pointing in a more easterly direction. ‘It’ll give us good cover for the next fifteen klicks or so.’
The base of the wadi was more rock-strewn than the open desert had been, and narrower, so they were back to driving single file. To Mac, progress seemed slow, and he wondered if they really would reach their destination by midnight. The weapons and jerrycans of fuel rattled in the back, and it was hard to keep watch through the binoculars as they constantly banged and bumped against the top of his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose. Though it wasn’t deep, there were plenty of shadowy crevices in the sides of the wadi – perfect places from which to launch an ambush. Even though he knew Jamali’s men wouldn’t have had time to get in position and wouldn’t have known that they would drive down this particular dried-up water course, he couldn’t help but feel twitchy about what lay in the unseen pools of darkness on either side of them.
A sudden flurry of Pashto chatter over the radios made Mac drop his binoculars into his lap. Tirich brought the Surf to an abrupt halt.
‘What’s happening?’
‘Shhhhh…’ said Logan, holding the Motorola closer to his ear to catch what was being said.
Baz spun in her seat to look behind. ‘Oh crap!’
Mac looked round. The vehicles behind them were also stopped and the reason was easily apparent. One of the Hiluxes was tilted at an awkward angle – the driver hadn’t spotted a dark-coloured rock in its path and had hit it. The nearside front wheel was buckled and twisted.
‘Goddammit!’ said Logan, opening his door and climbing out.
Mac watched as men spewed out of vehicles to assess the damage and discuss the chances of rectifying it.
‘Set up a security cordon,’ he said to Ginger as they both got out too.
Ginger went across to Beroj, but Mac could see that Khaliq’s son was already instructing his men to form a perimeter. The militiaman in charge of the ZU was swinging it round in readiness for anything, and Mac and Ginger went across for a closer look.
‘That GAZ-66 truck’s probably older than you are,’ said Mac.
‘And ageing better by the looks of things,’ said Ginger, laughing.
The GAZ-66s had an epic reputation for reliability, while the ZU on the back of it was a twin-barrelled monster with a two-mile range and a cyclic rate of 400 rpm.
‘Gun’s pretty damn impressive though,’ he added.
Mac nodded. ‘Just shows what the governor thinks of Logan, that he’ll hand over the big boys’ toys.’
They joined Baz and Logan at the stricken Hilux. One of the militiamen was lying on his back, examining the underside of the vehicle with a torch. He shuffled out and sat up, reporting to Logan and the driver.
Baz sighed. ‘He says the axle is bent.’
‘We won’t get that fixed in a hurry,’ said Mac, ‘if at all.’
Thankfully nobody was hurt in the incident, and the decision was quickly taken to split the men and equipment between the other vehicles. Within half an hour, the two remaining Hiluxes, the GAZ-66 and the Surf were off again, cramped inside with extra bodies, lower on their suspension, the ride even bumpier than before.
It was long gone midnight and there were still miles of desert ahead of them before they reached the small border town where Bakker was apparently being held. The flat desert had given way to rocky hills and it took time to find the track that would take them through to the dry river valley that finally led to Bahram Chah. They drove in silence and the night seemed never-ending. But finally, the radio crackled into life once more. Logan spoke in Pashto for a minute, then issued some instructions to Tirich.
‘That’s it,’ he said, turning back to Mac and Ginger with a grin. ‘We’ve got what we need and we’re meeting our local liaison in Khoni Bibi in fifteen minutes.’ He checked his watch. ‘Put your foot down, Tirich, and we’ll make it.’