Fifteen

‘How far away?’ Vann asked urgently.

Hakimi said, ‘My men saw them coming down the road from the south. One kilometre, he thinks.’

Vann drew in a sharp breath and said, ‘It won’t take them long to find the track. They’ll start making their way up here any minute now.’

‘How many vehicles?’ asked Carter.

‘My men saw two dust clouds,’ Hakimi replied. ‘Two vehicles. Could be anything up to nine or ten men.’

‘Taliban?’

‘Has to be,’ Vann said. ‘I’d bet my right bollock on it. No one else is active around here.’

Carter hurriedly thought back to the trail, calculating the time it had taken to climb the slope. The hard slog up the zigzagging footpath. He figured they had about forty minutes before the Taliban rocked up.

Vann turned to Hakimi and said, ‘Tell your men to get into their positions. We’ll set up the kill zone. Same place we’ve used for the training drills in the past. Geordie,’ he added, nodding at Carter. ‘With me.’

He swiped a pair of walkie-talkies from the desk and charged out of the room ahead of Carter. Hakimi and the two other Afghans hurried after them, the warlord bellowing orders at the other fighters in the main room. In an instant, everyone sprang into action. Like employees responding to an unscheduled fire alarm. Pencil, Greybeard, Mansur, Hakimi and the two fighters who had been weighing and packing the heroin bricks rushed over to the six Russian PKM machine guns resting on the floor at the back wall. They grabbed one weapon each, clasping them by the wooden carry handles, then rushed out of the building.

As they emerged onto the plateau, Vann began shouting orders at the Afghan fighters, pointing towards a pair of large rocky outcrops two hundred metres further down the slope.

‘Get them guns in place,’ he thundered, gesturing towards the outcrops. ‘Hurry.’

Hakimi hastily relayed the commands to his men. Greybeard, Pencil and a third guy with a brown pancake hat scrambled across the plateau, carrying their PKMs. Hakimi, Mansur and a long-haired fighter wearing a yellow scarf sprinted after them. All six guys started descending the footpath while Vann beckoned Carter to join him at the edge of the plateau.

‘See them outcrops?’ Vann asked.

He pointed to the two mounds of rock two hundred metres downstream from the plateau. They were set at a distance of a hundred metres from one another, Carter noted. One to the left of their position, the other to the right. Both outcrops had vantage points overlooking the bend in the trail further south. The tennis court-sized area of flat ground Carter had been approaching when he’d stepped on the early warning system.

He nodded. ‘I see them.’

Vann said, ‘This is what we’re going to do. You take the fire team on the outcrop on the left flank. I’ll lead the guys on the right. We’ll wait for the enemy to come up onto the level ground. This is the only route up or down the mountain, so they’ll definitely come that way. Once we’ve got line of sight on all the targets, you’ll let rip on our side and our guys will open up from the other flank. We’ll get a crossfire going, so there won’t be any dead ground for the fuckers to hide in. Between us, we’ll turn that area into a killing zone. Got it?’

Carter said, ‘How many rounds have we got? For the PKMs?’

‘Two spare belts per weapon, plus one box on each gun.’

A standard box for the PKM contained a hundred rounds of 7.62 x 54 mm R, Carter knew. Which gave them three hundred bullets per weapon. Two thousand rounds in total, when you factored in the AK-47s and the two M4s Carter and Vann were packing. Plenty of firepower. More than enough to deal with a group of half a dozen Taliban fighters.

‘Here.’ Vann thrust out a hand and gave him one of the walkie-talkies. Made by a company Carter had never heard of before. One of the cheaper brands, he assumed. ‘They’re both preset to the same frequency. As soon as you’re ready to open fire, get on the radio and tell us, so we can coordinate the attack. We want to hit them at the same time.’

‘Roger that,’ Carter said.

Vann pointed to the flat ground below. ‘Make sure you wait until they’re all in sight. There’s no cover down there, so they won’t have anywhere to hide once the rounds start flying. Do this properly and we’ll go through them like a dose of salts.’ He grinned. ‘It’ll be just like the old times, boy.’

Almost, Carter thought to himself.

Except Vann wasn’t transporting bricks of black tar back then.

‘Start taking the boxes down,’ Vann said. ‘I’ll join you in a minute.’

Carter hurried back over to the compound. He dropped to a knee beside his rucksack and hastily dug out the four spare magazines of 5.56 mm for the M4. He shoved the mags into his side and rear trouser pockets, clipped the walkie-talkie to his belt and ran back into the building. He scooped up two green-cased boxes of ammo for the PKMs from the stack on the far wall, grabbing them by the canvas handles, then ran back outside.

Twenty metres away, he spied Vann and Hakimi beside one of the smaller buildings. Deep in conversation. Vann appeared to be doing most of the talking. Carter wondered what they were discussing. The plan for the smuggling route, maybe. Logistics. They had been forced to ramp up their departure from the compound. All of a sudden, their carefully laid plans had gone to shit.

Carter set off down the dirt track at a quick trot. He’d considered reaching out to Langley for help, but instantly ruled it out. The Company wouldn’t be able to come to their rescue. It would take hours for them to send a drone over from the base in Qatar. By which time the firefight would be long over. Besides, Carter reasoned, sticking a few Hellfires into the enemy would almost certainly blow the op. The Chinese were extremely active in Afghanistan now. So were the Pakistani security forces. Both of them would be monitoring activity around the country. A US drone strike in the remote mountains to the north-east would definitely get their attention.

We’re going to have to tackle this the old-fashioned way, he thought.

With bullets and aggression.

After descending for two hundred metres, he reached the two large mounds of boulder-sized rocks situated to the east and west of the slope. Both outcrops overlooked the footpath two hundred metres below. Further downslope, he could see the thick woodland stretched across the ground nearer to the valley floor. In the distance, a kilometre away, Carter spotted the gravel road, the abandoned village beyond.

Carter tacked to the left, making for the fire team clustered around the outcrop to the east. Two of the guys on his fire team, Pencil and Greybeard, dashed past him as they raced back up the path to the plateau to retrieve more ammo boxes for the PKMs. The third guy on his team, the man with the pancake hat, had already dropped to a prone firing stance beside one of the boulders.

Carter deposited the boxes of 7.62 belt beside Pancake. He unclipped the walkie-talkie from his belt and switched it on, checking the batteries. Several minutes later, Pencil and Greybeard came running back down the trail, carrying two more boxes of ammo for the PKMs. They dropped down beside their machine guns and took up their firing points along the outcrop, peering through the rear-mounted iron sights at the bend in the track two hundred metres below.

Carter took up a standing position behind a flat-topped rock. He placed the walkie-talkie on top of the boulder and glanced across to the west, at the outcrop on the right flank, a hundred metres away. He saw Mansur and the guy in the yellow scarf scarpering back up the trail. To retrieve the last ammo boxes from the compound, he guessed. From his vantage point he couldn’t see Vann or Hakimi, but that didn’t worry him. They would be hidden behind the clump of boulders.

Carter hefted up his M4 rifle, his right hand clamped around the trigger mechanism, his left wrapped around the foregrip. Then he trained his sights on the trail below.

He had an unobstructed view of the killing zone. The patch of flat ground. He recognised the situation from his trek up the slope an hour ago. He saw the point where he’d stepped on the plywood trap, twenty metres downstream from the sharp bend in the trail. He swept his eyes across the ground, visually tracing the path as it curved round the wall of weather-beaten rock before it disappeared behind another wooded area thirty metres beyond the trail-bend. Further south, ten metres from the trap, the trail dropped off towards the treeline on the lower slope.

As he scanned the trail-bend, Carter immediately realised why Vann had chosen to split the defenders into two separate fire teams. A jumble of pine trees and mounds of rock at the edge of the footpath created a natural area of dead ground immediately below their respective positions. Any enemies who took cover to the right of the footpath would be out of sight of the shooters directly above them. Both groups therefore needed to establish a crossfire, with each team clearing the patch of dead ground on the other side of the trail.

Minutes ticked by. Carter continued to observe the flat ground leading towards the trail-bend, eyes alert for the slightest movement.

A few minutes later, in the slender gaps between the trees downstream from the kill zone, he glimpsed a loose line of figures making their way up the mountain. Four hundred metres away. Too far to pick out any distinguishing features. At least four of them. They disappeared from view as the path twisted through another area of dense forest.

He glanced at his G-Shock. One fifty in the afternoon. Almost two hours since Carter had started up the mountain. An hour since the warlord had nailed Sharza in the back of the head. Half an hour since Pencil and Greybeard had rushed into the compound to sound the alarm.

Another ten minutes or so until the first targets swept into view downslope from the trail-bend, Carter estimated.

He reached for the walkie-talkie and thumbed the push-to-talk button.

‘Is everything OK at your end?’ he asked Vann over the radio. ‘Do you read?’

There was a long pause. Then a voice crackled out of the speaker. ‘Everything’s fine here,’ Vann replied flatly. ‘Any sign of them targets yet?’

Vann sounded slightly out of breath, Carter thought. Tension, perhaps. Nerves and adrenaline. Even the most experienced operators could suffer from it in the stressful moments before a firefight.

Carter said, ‘They’re on the way up. Should be coming into view of the kill zone in the next several minutes.’

‘Roger that. Keep watching them, mate,’ Vann said. ‘Eyes peeled. We’ll wait for your cue to get the ball rolling.’

He clicked off.

Carter set down the walkie-talkie.

Resumed his observation of the trail.

At two o’clock the targets briefly came into view again. A hundred metres downslope from the kill zone.

He glanced over at the three prone Afghans with the PKMs and said, softly, ‘Targets are gonna be in our line of sight any minute now. Get your weapons ready but wait for me to open fire. No one starts shooting until I give the signal. Got it?’

Pencil, Pancake and Greybeard muttered their acknowledgement. He heard a chorus of metallic clacks as they tugged back the charging levers on the right side of their machine gun receivers.

Ready to open fire.

Carter assumed they were capable soldiers, at least by local standards. These guys were the pick of Hakimi’s fighters. They would have been drilled on the ranges in basic shooting, weapon handling and assault drills. By Vann, or someone else from the Regiment.

Carter pulled back the handle on the side of his M4, then shunted it forward again, chambering the first round. He flipped the fire selector to semi-automatic, clicked off the safety. Tightened his left hand around the vertical foregrip.

Then he waited.

Three more minutes passed.

Carter kept his sights pinned to the point where the trail ran sharply down towards the treeline on lower ground. Any moment now, the first target would sweep into view. He rehearsed the next few minutes in his head. As soon as he had line of sight on the first target Carter would get back on the radio and alert Vann, letting him know that he was about to engage. Once all the targets had entered the kill zone, Carter would line up his sights with the rearmost fighter.

That gunshot would be the signal for the other guys on both fire teams to let rip. Vann and his guys would put down a torrent of gunfire on the enemy from their fire points around the western outcrop, while Carter’s group engaged from the east. Between the two M4s and the six PKMs, they would create a lethal killing field. Their combined arcs of fire would deny the enemy areas of dead ground or cover to shelter behind.

Trapped in the narrow area of the trail-bend, the Taliban fighters would be cut to pieces before they could escape. The defenders wouldn’t need to expend more than one box of ammo per PKM, leaving them with plenty of spare rounds to tackle any potential reinforcements.

But Carter wasn’t thinking ahead to a second wave, or what might happen once they had routed the Taliban. He was laser-focused on surviving the next few minutes. Concentrate on the problem in front of you. Deal with the biggest obstacle first, then worry about the other stuff later.

The Regiment ethos.

Thirty seconds later, a target appeared on the trail.

Carter instinctively tensed.

He trained the rail-mounted sights on the figure below. At first he saw only the guy’s head as he climbed the steep gradient leading up to the kill zone. Then the rest of his body popped into view as he reached the area of flat ground close to the U-shaped bend in the track.

The guy was Taliban. That much was immediately apparent. He wore a camo jacket, army boots, khaki trousers and ballistic helmet, and he carried an M4 rifle, practically identical to the weapon Carter was gripping. Part of the vast hoard of kit acquired by the Taliban after the frantic evacuation from Kabul. Spoils of war. From a distance, the guy could almost pass for an American infantryman.

Carter grabbed the walkie-talkie and spoke quietly into the microphone. ‘I’ve got line of sight on the first target. As soon as the whole group reaches the kill zone, we’ll open up. I’ll get the ball rolling and take down the fucker to the rear. Do you read that?’

Carter listened. Silence.

He frowned at the unit.

Tried again.

‘Enemies in sight, repeat enemies in sight. Do you copy? Anyone?’

He waited for a response. None came.

He tried Vann one final time, got the same dead-air response, then chucked the piece-of-shit unit aside. There was no time left to fuck about trying to fix the radio. He had to simply hope that his fire team wouldn’t open up until Carter had loosed off the first shot. Fire too early, and the fighters at the back of the patrol would have a chance to retreat before they had entered into the kill zone.

The next two fighters in the line were now in sight on the trail. A thickly bearded guy in a black turban, and a third guy wearing a red skullcap. Both were packing AK-47s. They were moving in single file along the footpath, at regularly spaced intervals. A distance of two or three metres between Camo and Turban, and about the same between Turban and Skullcap. They made their way purposefully up the slope. A deliberate pace. Slower than a brisk walk, so they didn’t knacker themselves out, but faster than a gentle stroll in the countryside. They weren’t bothering to scan the ground in front of them and displayed none of the caution or fieldcraft of elite operators.

Camo, the lead fighter, had advanced ten metres along the flat part of the trail now. He was five or six metres away from the bend.

Carter raked his gaze back to the point where the flat ground angled down to the treeline. In the next beat, a fourth guy dressed in all black and a pair of sandals popped into sight. Two seconds later, Carter saw a fifth target. A stocky bloke with a khaki baseball cap over a mop of dark hair. The same three-metre gap between them.

Further along the path, Camo had reached the bend. In another twenty metres he would be out of sight again as the track veered up steeply to the right.

Two seconds later, a sixth figure appeared on the trail, sporting a crimson-red waistcoat over his loose-fitting clothes. Carter concentrated hard on the southern end of the track. Watching for any more targets behind Waistcoat. The gap between Waistcoat and the end of the path widened.

Three metres.

Then four.

Twenty metres further ahead, Camo had almost cleared the bend.

Carter continued observing the approach for another long beat. The gap grew wider. Five metres, then six. Still no one else appeared. At the seven-metre mark the gap was long enough for Carter to know that Waistcoat had to be the last guy in the formation. The tail-end Charlie.

Carter’s throat constricted with tension. His mouth was very dry, as it always was in the moments before a contact.

Six fighters in the kill zone.

He peered down the M4 sights.

Lined up the reticule with the rearmost target.

Waistcoat.

‘About to make my shot,’ Carter told the Afghans in his group in an undertone. ‘Start putting down rounds on the front five targets as soon as I’ve dropped the fucker to the rear.’

His index finger feathered the trigger. He was confident that the Taliban fighters wouldn’t spot his profile among the rocks above. He had nothing shiny on him, nothing that would reflect the sun’s glare and potentially give away his position.

Carter eased out a breath.

Then he squeezed the trigger.