They waited until darkness had completely shrouded the hills and valleys surrounding the village. There had been some debate as to how much they could trust the boy’s words, but as Baz pointed out, he’d spilled the information unprompted – just grateful for a promise of safe passage and more money than he’d ever possessed in his life. So in the end, with no other leads in sight, Beroj and Mac had persuaded Logan that they could observe and then swoop if they saw anything that suggested he might be telling the truth.
‘As long as we don’t pick up the wrong freakin’ guy again,’ said Logan.
‘Lightning doesn’t strike twice,’ said Ginger.
Logan let out a bark of laughter. ‘Ha, I can show you the scars.’
But now wasn’t the moment for more of his war stories. Using Logan’s BGAN and laptop, they studied Google Earth images of the marble quarry. It lay almost two kilometres due east of the village, a gravel track winding up the hillside to where a pale, lozenge-shaped scar showed the extent of the blasting area. Close to the ground being worked, there was a large walled compound, which they presumed was used for storing the cutting tools, explosives and slabs of cut marble. A long rectangular building ran along one side of the inner wall, possibly a workshop or storage area. Beyond the compound, further down the hill from the quarry, there was a cluster of smaller buildings. They had no way of knowing from the aerial images what these buildings were – perhaps housing for quarry workers? They could make out a number of vehicles parked outside the main compound, but the image they were looking at wasn’t live, so this detail was irrelevant.
Looking in the direction of the quarry from the FRV, Mac couldn’t see any lights at all, but they didn’t read too much into that. If there were people in the compound or the other buildings, they might have covered the windows to stop any light showing.
There was only one road to the quarry and that led directly out of Bahram Chah. To maintain the element of surprise, they were going to have to approach from the north on foot.
‘So how are we going to get out?’ Ginger had said when Logan proposed this. ‘As soon as we appear, they’ll call down to the village for backup. We don’t know what sort of state Bakker will be in, and we might have to carry him.’
‘He’s right,’ said Mac. ‘We need vehicles as close as possible for the exfil. That gives us two choices – our drivers come in through the village to pick us up, then we have to run the gauntlet of Bahram Chah to get out again, or they come cross country to a point beyond the quarry and we drive straight out through the desert.’
They gamed the various options, debating how many men they would need for the exfil, and thus how many vehicles, and where the remaining vehicles and personnel would wait for them.
It was gone midnight when the GAZ-66 and two of the Hiluxes freewheeled downhill from the FRV in a north-easterly direction, away from the village. The assault group was Mac, Logan, Ginger and Beroj, with six militiamen, two machine-gun teams and the ZU team. Baz, armed with a long lens, had hitched a ride on the GAZ-66, but only after Mac had extracted a promise from her that she would stay back with the support group and not come into the quarry itself.
A dry riverbed ran through a series of shallow valleys, and following this would take them to a point directly north of the quarry. Despite the hilly ground between where they were now driving and the village, they didn’t dare put on their headlights. In a landscape with no artificial light, a single flicker would announce their presence like a flare. So they had to drive slowly and several times they had to stop and get out to move rocks out of the vehicles’ paths.
Logan was in the front Hilux, continually checking their position via GPS, steering them towards the FRV – the far side of the hill out of which the quarry was carved. Once they arrived, he and Beroj worked out a position for the GAZ-66 and the other Hilux, out along the eastern shoulder of the hill. This would be the fire support group or FSG, positioned so they could shoot down on the quarry buildings in case the team needed cover on their way out. It would also be an excellent position for Baz to take long-range images of the raid in operation. They would move into place once the team had completed their observation of the quarry.
Leaving Baz and Beroj with the FSG and drivers in the wadi, Logan, Mac, Ginger and the remaining militiamen now faced a one-kilometre march up the back of the rocky hill to set up an observation post at the crest. The entire surrounding area was barren of any plant growth – just rocks, gravel and sand. If they needed to find cover, it had to be afforded by the lay of the land, behind outcrops of rocks or by lying flat in narrow gullies. Mac hoped upon hope that it wouldn’t come to a pitched battle. They needed to go in silently and cleanly, taking out any guards on the way in to stop them sounding the alert, extract the Dutchman and then beat a hasty retreat.
The hill was steep and they climbed in silence, each one with the butt of their AK tucked into their shoulder, ready to fire at a moment’s notice, change levers set to fire and fingers millimetres from the trigger. Additionally, they each had a sidearm holstered under their arm or tucked in their belt in case of close combat. Without Beroj and his incessant humming, all Mac could hear was the crunch of the rock surface under their feet. He glanced up. As usual the sky was a panoply of stars, the moon still bright, though on the wane. A scuttling on the ground made him look down. It was a scorpion, scurrying out of the way of the tramping boots.
He remembered other missions, other raids – none of them had started out quite like this. But inside, he had the familiar knot of anxiety. What would happen when they reached ground zero? Would his reactions be quick enough for the perceived threats? Would they achieve the mission goal? Would he come out alive? Unscathed? He visualised what was about to happen, playing out scores of options, running the variables, the what-ifs. But he knew it wouldn’t go down exactly as he imagined it, and the one thing that would protect him more than his gun would be his ability to make split-second decisions under pressure. It was always something he’d been pretty good at. But if that skill dried up in a situation like this, he was as good as dead.
Or, even worse, a member of his team would be dead. Quickly, he pushed the memories down. He needed to be here, in the moment, not wallowing in past mistakes.
As they reached the brow of the hill above the quarry, Logan held up a hand to stop them. From now on, absolute silence was essential. They all lay down at the edge, and Mac looked down at the quarry through the night-vision sight he’d attached to the AK’s Pic rail. Logan, stretched out on the sand next to him, was doing the same.
The quarry was like a huge bite out of the hillside, and the main compound sat directly in front of the scarred vertical wall from which the pale marble was hewn. Beyond the mud-brick walls of the compound, about a hundred metres east towards the edge of the quarry, the cluster of smaller buildings revealed themselves to be tumbledown stables, presumably dating to a time when the marble would have been hauled down the hill on donkey carts. The shadows were too deep for Mac to be able to see inside them, but without doors, they weren’t likely candidates for Bakker’s captivity.
He swung his weapon back towards the main compound. The quarry face itself was a vertical drop, meaning they would have to go round one side or the other to reach the building. Skirting the eastern side of the marble works would give them the full support of the ZU. If they came down the other side, they would have the luxury of approaching from the back.
From their current position, Mac couldn’t see the gate. He touched Logan on the shoulder and, using prearranged hand gestures, showed him that he was going to creep along the ridge of the hill until he could get an angled view of the front of the compound. He wanted to see exactly where the gate was, and whether there were any guards stationed outside it.
They remained in position, watching and waiting, for a couple of hours, in which time Mac counted at least five armed men coming in and out of the building to smoke or check vehicles in the courtyard. They all had AK47s or Krinkovs slung over their shoulders, but they generally seemed more interested in their cigarettes than seriously checking the area for intruders. Only once did a pair of them venture out of the gates, walk around the perimeter and check the deserted stables. But more tellingly, one man came out of the main building carrying food and water to a smaller adjacent hut within the compound. Bingo – the kid had been telling the truth.
Mac made his way back to where Logan, Ginger and the other militiamen were waiting. Logan raised questioning eyebrows. Mac held up five fingers, to indicate that he’d seen five men. Then he pointed to the smaller building and gave the pre-agreed sign for Bakker. They dropped back from the OP to the wadi and, in hurried whispers, worked out their final assault plan, deciding on a route in and calculating the arcs of fire from the FSG and how they would remain clear of them. Cold MREs and a snatched hour of sleep was as much of a refresher as they could afford to take.
Finally, two hours before the dawn call to prayer, when the guards would be at their lowest ebb or sleeping, it was H-hour – they were ready to go. Mac’s mouth was dry as a huge rush of adrenalin surged through him. He watched as the FSG and the GAZ-66 moved out first, driving agonisingly slowly to keep the noise to a minimum. Once it reached its agreed position just below the ridgeline, the PKM teams fanned out on either side. Beroj radioed back that they were ready – they could reverse to the brow of the hill to bring the guns to bear on the quarry buildings at a moment’s notice.
Logan acknowledged the message. The rescue team were crouched just below the brow of the hill, where they waited for several minutes to see if there were any signs that the men at the quarry had heard the vehicles.
Satisfied that all was quiet, Logan gave the hand signal to move out. The moon had set but there was no sign yet of the impending dawn, and they were able to take advantage of the absolute dark.
Just as they took their first steps down the hill, Mac heard a car engine starting up.
‘Drop!’ he hissed.
All six of them immediately ducked back down and stared through their optical sights or binoculars. Brake lights and reversing lights flared on a dark-coloured Mercedes saloon, parked at the centre of the compound. It made a three-point turn, ready to go out of the gate, then sat with the engine idling for a few minutes. A flurry of men emerged from the building, stopped for a minute to take leave of each other. Two of them got into the vehicle.
‘Fuck, that’s Jamali,’ Mac whispered in Logan’s ear.
‘You sure?’
‘I met him face to face four days ago. I’m sure.’
It certainly gave added credence to the boy’s intel. Why else would Jamali be visiting a marble quarry in the middle of the night, if not to check on his other million-dollar treasure. Having lost one when Mac escaped, no doubt he was keeping closer tabs on Bakker.
Logan let out a low whistle as he watched the Mercedes pass through the gate and drive down the track back towards Bahram Chah. ‘Three less guns to contend with. Maybe Lady Luck is on our side tonight.’
She’d bloody better be.
Mac stood up and held his AK at the ready.
It was time to retrieve their man.