Carter threaded his belt through his trouser loops, took the satphone from Sharza, shouldered his daysack and started after Vann as he scrabbled up the track. They passed the tight bend in the trail as it curled past the mass of rock twenty metres ahead. The kill zone. Then followed the path as it zagged sharply to the right. The ascent quickly became brutal. Their pace slowed to a plod. Vann led the way, moving along at the head of the column. Sharza trudged along a few paces behind, occasionally glancing back nervously at Carter, as if looking for reassurance. Mansur took up the position as the tail-end Charlie, to guard against any Taliban patrols who might have picked up their trail further down the slope.
As they trudged along the upslope Carter tried to make sense of the whole situation. He guessed they were being taken to the rebel hideout. A mountainside refuge. The Taliban offensive had probably forced Vann and his Afghan colleagues to relocate further to the north. Hence the move to a new camp, and the precautions they had taken with the signs along the trail.
This whole area is crawling with Taliban.
But there was a problem with that scenario, Carter reflected. If Vann and the rebel forces were in serious trouble, why hadn’t he tried to reach out to his handler at Langley to call for support, or immediate extraction? Instead Vann had ditched his satphone. His only link to the outside world.
Another thing troubled him. The early warning system. Vann had told him that he’d rigged up the light bulb to alert him to any approaching hostiles. But a regular landmine or trap would have worked just as well. The sound of the blast would have been heard for several kilometres across the valley, with the added advantage of decimating the enemy patrol.
So why use a light bulb?
Carter didn’t know. The whole thing made his fucking head hurt.
The track steepened again as it looped round a clump of cedar trees. After fifty metres they moved clear of the treeline and hit a plateau, snooker table-flat and roughly the size of a football pitch. A hundred metres away, on the far side of the plateau, a trio of mud-brick buildings had been erected in a natural cul-de-sac at the base of a broad escarpment leading up to another ridgeline.
Camouflage nets covered the flat-roofed structures. Presumably to conceal them from drones or aircraft passing overhead. There was a separate tented area to the side of the compound, Carter noted. Beneath the strung-out camo nets six mules were tethered to a wooden hitching post, weighed down with a variety of panniers, saddlebags and leather rifle scabbards.
‘This way, Geordie,’ Vann said. ‘Come on, lad.’
He led Carter and Sharza towards the compound in the middle of the plateau, fifty metres away. They drew to a halt in front of the largest of the three structures. Then Vann turned to Carter and said, ‘Wait here. I won’t be long.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘I need to explain this situation to Hakimi.’
‘Hakimi?’ Carter repeated as he recalled the name of the National Alliance’s new leader. ‘He’s here?’
Vann nodded and said, ‘He’ll want to speak with you, I imagine. But it’s better if the fella hears it from me first.’ He dropped his voice to a murmur. ‘Between you and me, the guy is a wee bit paranoid. He doesn’t like surprises. If he sees your mug, he’ll shit a brick.’ He grinned broadly. ‘Although let’s face it, most women would react the same way.’
‘Piss off.’ Carter smiled, then relaxed his face. ‘Fine. We’ll wait.’
‘Good man.’
Vann disappeared through the entrance, closing the timber door behind him. Carter looked round, observing the compound. Fighters with shoulder-slung AK-47s were coming and going from the other buildings, loading heavy-duty sacks onto the mules.
‘Looks like we got here just in time,’ Sharza remarked. ‘Your friends are preparing to leave.’
Carter nodded but didn’t reply. He was gazing up at the cliff-face above.
Why would Vann set up shop in this place? Carter asked himself. We’re in a cul-de-sac. No way out.
An enemy force, attacking in strength, could keep Vann and his rebel mates rammed into this area, with nowhere to go.
Further away, he noticed a low-ceilinged cave set into the base of the cliff-face, close to a copse of pine trees. There was a circle of blackened earth near the mouth of the cave. As if someone had recently lit a cooking fire. Forty-five-gallon drums lined the walls on both sides of the scarred earth. Amid the gloom Carter spotted a pair of shovels, several large wooden stirring paddles, bundles of firewood.
An industrial-sized cooking vat.
‘Do you recognise any of this lot?’ he asked Sharza, indicating the guys marching over to the mules.
‘Sorry, brother,’ Sharza said in a whisper. ‘I’ve never seen these men before. I don’t know where they are from.’ He hesitated. ‘But something is not right here. I can feel it.’
Eight minutes later, the door groaned open again. Vann strode back out and cleared his throat.
‘Right. I’ve spoken to the big fella. He wants to have a word with you. Both of you,’ he added, tipping his head at Sharza. ‘Follow me. You can leave your stuff here, Geordie.’
Carter unshouldered his rucksack and dumped it beside the exterior wall. Then he followed Vann and Sharza through the doorway, into a squalid room measuring roughly eight metres by eight. A thick odour of sweat and cigarette smoke filled Carter’s nostrils as he stepped inside. And something else, too. Something bitter and chemical.
Ammonia.
There was a hive of activity in the room. A pair of rebel fighters knelt on a beaten rug beside a pair of scales, processing tar-coloured bricks wrapped in cellophane. One guy weighed the bricks, while the other packed them into waterproof sacks, ready for two more guys to carry outside to the waiting mules. The floor was littered with plastic moulds filled with some sort of dark brown resin. Carter saw cut lengths of rubber tubing, white sacks of industrial chemicals, piles of dirty blankets. A whole factory of stuff.
A queasy feeling seeped like acid into his guts. Carter stopped in his tracks and looked at Vann in horror.
‘Fuck me, Dave,’ he said in an undertone. ‘Don’t tell me you’re in the drug business now.’
Vann met his gaze steadily. ‘It’s not what it looks like.’
‘Bollocks,’ Carter growled. A hot wave of anger swept through his veins. ‘I’ve busted plenty of sites like this before, mate. That’s black tar,’ he added, waving a hand at the plastic-wrapped bricks. ‘You’re processing heroin, for fuck’s sake.’
Vann’s expression tautened. ‘Wind your neck in, Geordie. I can explain everything, I promise.’
Carter looked numbly at him. He felt as if someone had just punched him square in the face. A million questions bounced around inside his head.
‘Have you lost your fucking mind? They’ll arrest you for this back home. You’re looking at twenty years behind bars.’
‘Save it,’ Vann hissed. ‘Come on. Hakimi is waiting.’
He marched across the room, towards an opening at the far end. Carter followed him, his head spinning madly. Half a dozen belt-fed PKM Russian machine guns rested on their bipods on the floor near to the rear wall. The Russian equivalent of the GPMG. Chambered for 7.62 x 54 mm R. A cartridge first produced back when Russia still had a tsar. Each weapon had a green metal-cased ammo box fixed to the underside of the receiver. Twelve more boxes of ammo were stacked against the wall.
They’re not taking any chances, Carter thought. Which made sense. Vann and his accomplices were running a heroin lab. Right under the noses of the Taliban. They wouldn’t want to be caught cold if things went noisy.
Vann ushered them into a smaller room off to one side of the compound. A middle-aged guy with the build of a retired weightlifter sat behind a large desk. The man had a dead-eyed look, flocked grey hair, pockmarked cheeks and a knot of scar tissue on his chin. He was dressed like a guerrilla fighter, with a wood-pattern camo jacket over an olive-green T-shirt.
There was a half-finished bottle of cheap vodka on the table in front of him, a pair of disposable cups, a set of walkie-talkies, a pack of cigarettes. An AK-47 leaned against the wall.
Carter had seen the man’s face before. Back in Chile. At the British embassy.
The briefing. Nine million years ago.
Jabar Hakimi, the leader of the National Alliance, looked up as the three men swept into the room. His eyes narrowed into a calculating stare as he studied Carter and Sharza. Something about his features reminded Carter of a hawk.
‘You are a friend of David, I understand,’ he said, addressing Carter in a harshly accented voice.
Not a question, but a statement.
‘That’s right,’ Carter responded tersely.
‘And you, my friend?’ Hakimi skated his gaze across to Sharza. ‘Where are you from?’
‘Shahr-e-Bozorg,’ the interpreter said.
Hakimi proceeded to ask him a string of questions. He spoke in English, for the benefit of his British accomplice, Carter assumed. He grilled Sharza on his tribal affiliation, his leader. His kinfolk. The people he had worked for in the past. He seemed particularly interested in Sharza’s years as an interpreter for the British army. Carter heard a note of strain in the guy’s voice as he answered each question. Sharza was bricking it.
‘Tell me,’ Hakimi said as his flat eyes slid back to Carter. ‘Who else knows that you are here? Answer me truthfully,’ he added. ‘I have a talent for smelling lies.’
Carter decided not to risk bluffing it. He knew Vann would instantly pick up on any bullshit. He said, ‘There are two people at the CIA who know about the operation. Another person at MI6. Three in total. The ones I know about. Probably more.’
‘You can’t be sure?’
‘I’m a soldier,’ Carter said. ‘The suits don’t tell me any more than they need to. If there are other people involved, I wouldn’t know about them. That’s the way it is.’
‘He’s telling the truth,’ Vann put in. ‘I’ve been in the same boat plenty of times myself.’
‘What orders did your people give you?’ Hakimi asked.
‘I was sent here to locate and extract Dave,’ Carter said. ‘That’s all they told me.’
‘They didn’t say anything about heroin? Nothing about our smuggling operation?’
‘No.’
‘Were you followed here?’
‘No.’
‘You are certain? No Taliban?’
‘Geordie is from the Regiment,’ Vann interjected. ‘He’s a good operator. One of the best. If he had someone on his tail, he’d soon know about it.’
Hakimi looked at the Ulsterman with raised eyebrows. ‘You seem very confident in your friend’s abilities.’
‘I trained him,’ Vann said. ‘I took this lad on Selection. Taught him almost everything he knows. You won’t find a better soldier. Or a more loyal one,’ he added.
Hakimi’s expression shifted. The eyes narrowed again, the head angled in thought. His fingers steepled on the table.
Carter stood still and said nothing. He’d dealt with guys like this before while he’d been embedded with the local SF. Gangsters. Men who took advantage of the chaos of Afghanistan to enrich themselves. They had no loyalty except to money, and no scruples about killing anyone who defied them. In many ways they were just as ruthless as the Mexican cartels or the Russian mafia.
Six and the CIA had dropped a bollock putting their faith in this bloke, Carter thought. That was for bloody sure.
‘You know what this place is, yes?’ Hakimi asked.
‘I’m not fucking blind,’ Carter said.
Hakimi gave him a thin smile. ‘It would be wise to treat me with more respect. It would be in your best interests.’
A cold silence fell over the room. Then Vann stepped forward and said hastily, ‘Take no notice of him. Geordie is just wound up, that’s all. He’ll get over it.’
‘Do you think we can trust him?’
Hakimi directed the question at Vann but stared at Carter with a tightened expression. Carter felt a sudden prick of anxiety in his guts. He didn’t like where this conversation was going. Didn’t like it at all.
Vann said, ‘Geordie is on the level. He won’t spill his guts. You’ve got my word on that. We’re both ex-Para Reg. That still counts for something, where we come from.’
The rebel leader stared at him for a long beat. Carter remained quiet, his stomach doing somersaults. Then Hakimi shrugged and poured himself a slug of vodka.
‘It’s up to you to take the risk with your man,’ he said to Vann. ‘If you are prepared to vouch for him, that is good enough for me. But I don’t want him to go anywhere . . . not until we have finished our business here.’ He smiled. ‘As a precaution, you understand.’
Carter felt his stomach unclench slightly.
‘What about him?’ he interrupted, nodding at Sharza.
‘Your friend is free to go,’ Hakimi said. ‘Him I have no use for.’
The warlord tipped the booze down his throat, stood up and glanced at Vann. A look passed fleetingly between the two men.
They filed out of the smaller room and crossed the main space. The drug-processing site. Hakimi led the interpreter outside, into the piercing glare of the afternoon sun. Carter followed them through the doorway and clamped a hand around the interpreter’s bicep before the latter turned to leave.
‘Go and find your nephew,’ he said. ‘The one in Bazarak. I’ll see you back at your friend’s place . . . the house we stayed at last night. Meet me there twenty-four hours from now. As soon as I’m done, we’ll head for the border with your nephew.’
Sharza nodded. ‘I will. Thank you, brother.’
‘Go, mate. Get moving.’
He smiled softly, then turned on his heel, giving his back to Carter.
As he started across the plateau Carter caught a blur of movement off to his side. He skimmed his gaze across to his left. Then he saw Hakimi reaching for something tucked into the waistband of his trousers. Something dark and bulky.
A pistol.
A cold tingling spread through Carter’s chest.
He opened his mouth to shout a warning.
Then Hakimi drew the pistol level with Sharza and shot him in the back of the head.