Half an hour into the flight, the guy with the slicked-back hair got up from his seat and approached Carter.
‘Heads up. We’re about to dim the lights,’ he announced in a flat, nasal Midwestern accent. He jerked a thumb at the guy with the comb-over. ‘Me and my partner are gonna pop a couple of sleeping tablets and catch some shut-eye before we’re on shift.’
Carter nodded and said, ‘How long until we reach Charleston?’
‘Eight hours. We’ll land at around eleven thirty in the morning, local time. It’ll be a quick turnaround before we’re back in the air.’
‘Roger that.’
The Midwesterner pointed with his eyes towards the rear of the cabin. ‘You’re welcome to sleep in the back. There’s a sack of clothes back there. Shirts, cargoes, boots, whatever. Help yourself.’
‘Where’s the laptop?’
‘Back of the cabin. With the rest of the equipment. It’s already connected to the Wi-Fi network. You got any problems with it, let me or Kurt know.’
‘That’ll be fine.’ Carter paused. ‘Listen, can you spare us a pill? I’m too wired to kip.’
The guy hesitated for a beat. Then he dipped a hand into his trouser pocket and pulled out a white prescription pill vial. He unscrewed the cap, tipped an oblong-shaped tablet into the palm of Carter’s hand.
‘Thanks,’ Carter said.
The Midwesterner shrugged. ‘Knock yourself out, friend.’
‘I will, mate. Literally.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Nothing.’
The overhead and sideways lights blinked off, smothering the cabin in darkness. Carter snatched a bottle of water from the fridge in the kitchen area, chucked the sleeping pill into his mouth and chased it down with a glug of chilled liquid. Then he made his way to the rear compartment, lay down on one of the doss bags on the cabin floor and closed his weary eyes.
Sleep came on slowly despite the meds. Questions kept pricking at the base of his skull. The same ones Carter had been asking himself ever since he’d left the British embassy.
Why had Vann gone missing?
What the fuck was he doing in Khordokan?
And why had he decided to get rid of his satphone?
He decided that the most likely explanation was the simplest: Vann and his colleagues in the National Alliance had been compromised in a contact with the enemy. The Taliban, or ISIS-K, or some other group. The guy had somehow managed to escape the firefight and gone to ground to wait for help to arrive. Safer than trying to risk crossing the border, maybe.
But the satphone was harder to explain. Deliberately getting rid of it went against all the SOPs they had been taught at Here-ford. Proudlock had suggested that Vann might have ditched the satphone to deceive his pursuers, but Carter wasn’t so sure. The Taliban lacked the technology to track a signal, and he doubted they would be capable of reading Vann’s messages either. The phones used the latest encryption, Mullins had said. Almost impossible to hack.
So walk through the alternatives. Perhaps the kid had been lying about his story. Maybe he’d got hold of it by some other means. Maybe his relatives belonged to the group holding Vann hostage. Possible, but unlikely. If Vann had been taken prisoner, his captors would have been bragging about their achievement. Or broadcasting a video showing his execution. The lack of noise suggested Vann was still at large.
So why else would Vann ditch his lifeline?
Carter didn’t know. But he felt sure of one thing. David Vann was one of the finest warriors ever to don the beige beret of 22 SAS. A legendary operator, totally committed to the job. He wouldn’t have abandoned his mission, not unless he felt he had no choice.
We’re flying blind here, Mullins had told him.
Too bloody right, thought Carter.
I don’t know why Vann went off the grid. But I know he’s in trouble.
One way or another, I’m going to find him.
A sudden wave of tiredness came over him, settling like fog behind his eyes. The exhaustion of the last twenty-four hours, catching up with him. The fog thickened, his eyelids became heavy, and he fell into a troubled sleep.
*
He awoke six hours later. Two hours before they were due to refuel at Charleston. Carter got up from his doss bag and rooted around the sacks of clothes at the far end of the cabin. In a short while he’d found a pair of civilian cargo trousers, a T-shirt and shirt, all in his size and in muted shades of khaki and beige. Plus a pair of thick grey socks, salmon-coloured hiking boots and a North Face jacket. The jacket had a Velcro patch stitched to the front, with the logo of the aid organisation stuck to it. He took an extra T-shirt, an extra pair of trousers and socks, because you never knew what conditions you were going to face. He didn’t want to have to wear muddy or wet clothing for days on end.
Carter found a waterproof rucksack stuffed with survival equipment. Specifically a one-size doss bag, a portable gas stove with four butane canisters, a set of three cooking pans, four twenty-four-hour civilian ration packs with boil-in-the-bag ready meals, snack bars, desserts and electrolyte drinks. Plus water purification tablets, a blanket, a foam mat, scarf, thick gloves, hat, compass, canteen, torch, solid-fuel hexamine block, emergency first aid kit, penknife and a notebook and pen, both with the NGO’s logo.
Everything that he might legitimately need in the field as an aid worker. All of it was civilian-sourced, US-manufactured. The kind of stuff you could buy in any medium-sized outdoor shop.
Carter checked everything, repacked the rucksack and added two spare bottles of water from the cabin kitchen. He changed into his new civvies and dumped his old clothes in his canvas holdall, along with his Six-issued smartphone. His holdall would remain on the jet, pending his safe return from Afghanistan.
Assuming I make it out of there alive, Carter thought grimly.
He fired up the laptop and brought up the satellite images of north-eastern Afghanistan. He traced the potential routes Vann could have taken, paying particular attention to the locations of nearby villages along the way. Trying to identify areas where Vann might have decided to hide.
Almost immediately Carter realised that he had a problem. The search area was enormous. More than eighteen thousand kilometres squared of terrain. But he was confident he could shrink the area down to something more manageable. Much of the region was still contested territory. Some of the villages would have loyalties to the Taliban or ISIS-K, or a warlord who tried to gain favour with the Taliban by joining forces with them. Probably half the area in question was out of bounds.
But there was another issue. Even if Carter narrowed down the search radius, there were still hundreds of potential hiding spots. Vann could be bottled up in any number of locations. And while Carter was busy looking for him, the Taliban would be out in force in the surrounding area.
It’ll be a bloody miracle if I find him before one of us gets bumped, he thought.
*
Two hours later, they landed at Charleston. There was a second brief stopover outside London at RAF Northolt. Carter drank more coffee and browsed news websites. He scrolled through the usual stories: illegal migrants crossing the Channel on dinghies, slum landlords raking in fortunes, people getting scammed out of their life savings.
One article midway down the newsfeed caught his attention. A report on the growing tensions between China and Taiwan. PLA aircraft were breaching Taiwanese air space, the story claimed. There was a lot of reported activity around the naval bases at Xiamen and Wenzhou. Flotillas were being mobilised. Infantry units and artillery were being assembled in staging areas along the southern and eastern coasts of the mainland. There were the usual bland quotes from defence analysts who couldn’t agree whether the moves were a prelude to a full-blown invasion of the island or a strategic bluff. But something towards the end of the piece pricked Carter’s interest.
A photograph of Bill Ramsey, the ex-CIA director and presidential adviser, with his trademark silvery hair, lantern jaw and silk necktie. The caption described him as the most influential unelected man in America.
Ramsey had been quoted in the article. He was clearly a China hawk. Not a friend of Beijing. He didn’t explicitly mention Taiwan, but the implication was clear enough.
The Chinese Communist Party represents a grave threat to global peace and prosperity, Ramsey said in his characteristically blunt style.
For the Chinese Premier, I have a message: America is no longer prepared to look the other way while the rights of freedom-loving peoples are trampled under the boot of Beijing’s totalitarianism. Anyone who threatens the interests of our allies would be making a terrible mistake. And I promise you this. The days of Chinese tyranny are numbered.
Carter shut down the laptop and slept some more.
Five hours later, Midwestern walked over and announced that they were about to make their final approach to Termez. Carter adjusted the time on his G-Shock and gazed out of the port-side window at the city below. He saw wide gridded streets, Soviet-era housing blocks and gold-domed mosques bordered on one side by a river. Three thousand years of history laid out in front of him.
Carter looked down at the scene and felt a quiver of unease in his guts.
In a few hours, I’ll be crossing the border.
Heading into Afghanistan.
There’s no going back now.