Sixteen

Carter’s M4 barked.

A gout of orange flame sparked out of the muzzle. The shot whipcracked across the warm air, shattering the peace of the valley. In the next fraction of a second the 5.56 mm bullet thumped into Waistcoat, plugging him in the head.

The other five Taliban fighters automatically froze and looked at one another. Wondering what the fuck had just happened to their comrade. Shock, mixed in with terrible panic and confusion. Two seconds ago they had been walking up the hillside. Now one of their mates was lying on the dirt with a canoe for a head.

Then everything went noisy.

The three Afghans to the left and right of Carter simultaneously opened up with their PKMs. Carter heard the familiar duh-duh-duh as the machine guns unleashed a murderous stream of 7.62 bullets at the trail-bend, backgrounded by the wind-chime chink of spent casings tumbling out of ejectors. Two hundred metres away, bright green tracer rounds splashed into the area around the targets before they ricocheted off the ground, shooting into the sky like bottle rockets.

Then came the heavy stuff. Sturdy rounds dating back to the Tsarist empire, discharged from brutally efficient Russian weapon systems, thumping into the compacted earth and throwing up geysers of incinerated dirt. The first rounds ripped into the frontmost target. The guy in the American military get-up. Carter saw him go down in a bloodied heap at the side of the footpath. Another five-round burst smacked into Turban. The second fighter in the column. He spasmed wildly, as if someone had just bumped him with a cattle prod. Then his bullet-riddled body went slack, and he dropped to the dirt a couple of paces behind the lead target, his rifle clattering to the ground beside him.

Half a second later, the other three fighters scattered.

They had a choice to make. The same one facing any soldiers caught in an ambush. Advance, or retreat. Move forward aggressively or fall back. Fight or flight.

Literally a life-and-death decision.

Baseball and Sandals chose to fight.

Carter saw them simultaneously bringing up their AK-47s. The muzzles flashed as they emptied rounds at the outcrops above them. A terrible idea, from a tactical viewpoint. They were in the open, on exposed ground, shooting at an enemy they couldn’t see, protected by a screen of large rocks. They were shooting blindly, not bothering to aim at individual targets. Pissing bullets at the general area of the defenders and hoping for the best. Carter heard the smack of a round slapping into a rock several metres to his right. Another struck the slope somewhere below their position.

The PKMs thundered again.

The three Afghans on the machine guns beside Carter were firing in bursts of between five and ten rounds. They were feeding a serious amount of lead into the killing ground down the slope. Rounds chopped into Baseball and Sandals, puncturing flesh. Their mangled bodies fell to the dirt, like a pair of puppets after the strings had been cut.

As the guys on his fire team let rip, Carter realised that no tracer rounds had been streaming down from the western outcrop. Vann’s position. He couldn’t hear any gunfire coming from that side either. He didn’t know why. Possibly one of the guys on Vann’s team had been wounded or killed. A stray round from one of the Taliban fighters.

No time to worry about that right now.

Carter slinked his gaze back to the trail.

Ten metres behind the two dead fighters, Skullcap darted to the right, getting off the trail to seek cover. Flight winning over fight.

A rational response. Skullcap had seen the other five guys in his patrol getting torn to pieces by the PKMs. He wouldn’t want to suffer the same fate.

Rounds chewed up the ground a few paces behind him as Carter’s fire team rattled off another trio of bursts on the fleeing Taliban fighter. A torrent of rounds hammered into the earth, missing Skullcap by inches. A moment later the fighter threw himself forward, disappearing from sight as he reached the dead ground beneath the outcrop.

Carter gritted his teeth in frustration. His fire team had no line of sight on the fighter. Skullcap was concealed behind the clutter of trees and rocks directly below their firing position. Carter looked across to his right flank, waiting to see if anyone on Vann’s team had a fix on the target yet, but their position was still quiet. Carter began to fear the worst.

He snapped his attention back to the trail-bend and raked his eyes over the ground immediately to the east of his position. A hundred metres downwind from the outcrop, Carter found what he was looking for: a loose mass of boulders strewn like rubble down the mountainside, next to the trunk of a fallen tree.

‘Stop firing,’ he shouted at the three guys working the PKMs. They were blasting away senselessly at the dead bodies on the footpath. ‘I said hold your fucking fire!’

A moment later the PKMs stopped barking. The Afghans looked at him with quizzical expressions.

‘Wait here,’ Carter said. ‘I’m going to cut round and drop the fucker. If you see the target pop into view again, kill him.’

Then he pushed away from the rocks.

Carter broke left, working his way around and down the gradient towards the cluster of massive rocks located midway down the slope. From there he would have a clear view of the dead ground further up the path.

By now he was sweating hard. His ears were ringing, his mouth was so dry it felt as if he’d been chewing on bales of sawdust. Carter almost lost his footing on a bed of loose shale, regained his balance and vaulted over the fallen tree before he drew level with the boulders. He dropped to a kneeling firing stance, steadied his breathing. Brought up his rifle.

A hundred metres due west, Skullcap had tucked himself close to a scattered heap of rocks, ferns and shrubs at the edge of the footpath. He had his back to the trail, staying low to hide his profile from the fire team two hundred metres above.

Carter took aim. Fired.

The bullet smashed into Skullcap’s leg. He slumped backwards, writhing on the ground and screaming in agony as he clawed at his rag-order thigh. Carter squeezed off another single shot. The second round did the trick. The bullseye shot. It thumped into the target’s forehead, uncorking the back of his head like a champagne bottle and painting the surrounding rocks with bright red blood and brain matter. The guy stopped screaming.

Six targets down.

Job done.

Carter retraced his steps back up the tree-studded gradient towards the eastern outcrop. Adrenaline still coursing through his veins. The snap ambush had lasted no more than twenty seconds, but it felt much longer. Any relief he might have felt at clobbering the enemy was instantly submerged beneath a wave of gnawing unease. The group on the right flank, Vann’s team, had stayed out of the fight.

Something was badly wrong. He knew it.

As he reached his fire team, Carter engaged the safety on his M4 and cupped his hand to his mouth.

‘Are you OK? Dave? Anyone?’

His voice echoed across the mountainside. No answer.

Carter paced quickly over to Vann’s position. His heart was beating faster now. The knot of unease in his guts tightened as he swept round the edge of the outcrop.

Then he stopped dead.

He expected to find someone bleeding out. Blood all over the fucking place, field dressings, spent rounds, discarded kit.

Instead he saw nothing.

No machine guns, no Afghans.

No spent casings or bloodstains.

No Vann.

Just a patch of rocks and dirt.

Carter looked swiftly round. He scanned the path weaving up towards the plateau, shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun.

He wondered if they had started back up the path towards the compound, but he couldn’t see anyone on the trail. Carter called out and pricked his ears, waiting for a response.

None came.

So maybe they were already back at the plateau. Carrying the wounded back to the compound for treatment. Except that there was no blood around the outcrop, no evidence of a maimed fighter at all. The absence of any casings was even weirder. None of the guys on Vann’s fire team had discharged a round during the ambush. Why not?

Carter jogged towards the footpath. Over on the left flank Pencil, Pancake and Greybeard sprang to their feet and looked expectantly at Carter. As if waiting for a cue.

‘Stay where you are,’ Carter ordered them. He pointed down towards the gravel road. ‘Watch that fucking roadhead. Anyone else shows up, let me know.’

He bounded back up the slope, his heart pounding savagely. He reached the plateau in another quick stride and sprinted towards the compound. As he drew nearer his eyes were drawn to the tented area to the side of the buildings. Then he stopped again.

Something like a knife sank into his bowels.

The mules were gone.

All six of them.

He knew then what had happened, what Vann had done to him, but he had to be sure. He raced over to the buildings, rushing past Sharza’s corpse before he crashed through the worn timber door. The main room was empty. So was the side office. The stacks of heroin bricks were gone. Everything else had been left behind in their mad rush to escape.

Vann and the warlord had ditched him.

Carter bolted outside again, heart thrumming madly in his chest. He checked the two smaller buildings and then the cave, running around like a headless chicken. Desperately searching for any clue that Vann might have left behind.

He left the cave and swept his eyes over the plateau. He remembered seeing Mansur and Yellow Scarf running back up the trail half an hour ago. He thought back to Vann’s slightly out-of-breath voice on the radio, and the knife in his stomach sank a little deeper. The bastards had been on the move for the past thirty minutes, Carter realised with a surge of bitter frustration and anger. They had bugged out of the area a few minutes after he had taken up his position to the east.

He fought back against the rage thumping between his temples and turned his mind to the problem of locating their escape route. Something Vann had told him had lodged in his brain. Something about the footpath winding down from the hideout.

This is the only route up or down the mountain.

Vann had obviously been feeding him bullshit.

So where the fuck had they gone? Carter asked himself.

He ruled out the possibility that they had retreated back down the mountain. That would take them away from the Tajik border, straight into the path of the incoming Taliban patrols. Therefore they must have fled north from the compound, heading for the meeting with the Tajik. Their contact in the smack trade. No other reason for taking the mule train with them.

Carter gazed at the vertiginous cliff-face stretching up from the far side of the plateau towards the peak. He strained his eyes, searching for any way of going up or down. Nothing. It looked impregnable.

Another dead end.

He scurried back down the trail to the eastern outcrop and ran straight over to Greybeard and the two other Afghans. They were still huddled behind the boulders, observing the roadhead. As Carter hurried over, Greybeard looked towards him and creased his features in puzzlement. Carter grabbed the man by his jacket, taking him by surprise.

‘Where are they?’ Carter demanded.

Greybeard reeled back and held up his hands, eyes bulged in terror. He muttered something incoherent, in a language Carter didn’t understand. Carter thrust a hand in the direction of the outcrop to the west.

‘Your leader has pissed off. So has my mate. They’re not at the compound. So where the fuck have they gone?’

Pancake and Pencil had both spun away from the rocks. They glanced briefly at one another, a silent understanding passing between them. Then they abruptly jettisoned their machine guns and scuttled down the gradient, towards the bend in the track, running past the dead bodies slumped across the ground. Making for the distant roadhead. They had obviously understood Carter and decided to get clear of the mountain before any more Taliban fighters showed up.

Carter ignored them and shook the grey-bearded man.

‘Tell me,’ he growled.

The Afghan must have seen the cold fury blazing in the SAS man’s eyes, because he pointed a trembling finger towards the mountain. The sheer rockface.

‘But where?’ Carter demanded angrily. ‘Where are they? How the fuck would they have gone up there?’

Greybeard shrugged and babbled on again in his mother tongue. Carter shoved the guy aside and dashed back up the rough trail towards the plateau. He glanced back, spotted the Afghan galloping down the slope as he hurried after his two fleeing mates.

Carter swung round and started across the level ground. He beat a path towards the rockface and started examining the ground more carefully this time. Then his eyes landed on something at the edge of the copse, eight or nine metres to the left of the cave mouth.

A fresh pile of mule shit.

He jog-trotted across the plateau and followed the trail of shit for thirty metres as it led deeper into the grove of pine trees. Then Carter hit the jackpot. Amid the gloom he spotted a narrow footpath concealed by the surrounding vegetation.

Vann’s getaway route.

Carter spun round and sprinted over to the compound to fetch his rucksack. He transferred the four spare M4 clips from his side pockets to the bag, along with the satphone. Then he threaded his arms through the straps, scooped up his rifle and hustled back over to the trail sneaking through the copse. He was in a mad hurry, partly because he’d allowed Vann to slip away. But also because of the ambush. The noise of the firefight would have alerted every Taliban patrol in the area, Carter knew. Reinforcements would be on their way. Within a short time the mountain would be infested with enemy fighters. Like flies on shit.

Carter knew what he had to do. Get moving, fast. Put as much distance between myself and the Taliban as possible.

Before I end up all over the news.

He swept past the mule droppings and picked up the trail a short distance inside the pine grove. The path ran on for a hundred metres through the woodland, twisting this way and that, before it curved steeply to the right and disappeared through a narrow crevice partially hidden between a couple of boulders the size of wrecking balls.

A secret passage.

Carter paused briefly in front of the crevice and lifted his gaze to the rockface above. From a distance, at ground level, he couldn’t see the outline of the trail. None at all. It simply blended into the wall of sheer rock. A trick of the naked eye. Impossible to spot from a distance. The trail itself looked incredibly steep and narrow. No more than a metre across. An old goatherd’s trail, possibly. Or a merchant track once used for transporting goods along the ancient trading routes. Wide enough for a person.

Or a mule.

He stepped through the opening and started climbing the trail as it meandered up the mountainside.

There was a precipitous drop from the edge of the path to the ground below, and Carter had to watch his footing as he continued his ascent. The ground here was barren, denuded of trees and shrubs. Nothing but boulders and scree.

After a while the track twisted round to the right. Soon Carter had lost sight of the plateau as the path zigzagged up towards the ridgeline.

He knew then with absolute certainty that Vann and Hakimi had taken off in this direction. The track would lead up towards the feature before passing down the other side and continuing north.

Towards Tajikistan.

Carter ploughed on, moving as fast as his legs could carry him. Trying to close the distance on his quarry. He guessed the ridgeline had to be something like three thousand metres high. Not a serious challenge. Not when you had spent weeks on SAS Selection climbing the Brecon Beacons with a heavy Bergen strapped to your back. Later on, after he’d earned the right to wear the beige beret, Carter had trained as an Alpine guide, learning about all aspects of mountain warfare and navigation.

Vann had done that same course years before. Both men had served in Mountain Troop in the same squadron in the Regiment. Both men had been posted as embeds.

In many ways, their careers had mirrored one another, Carter reflected.

Now I’m hunting the bastard.

The slope abruptly steepened again, and Carter sensed he was getting closer to the ridgeline. Fifteen minutes later, the path broadened and the wind suddenly picked up as he hit the ridgeline. From here Carter could see the valleys stretched out far below, veiled in a faint grey haze. Not a village in sight in any direction he cared to look.

The middle of fucking nowhere, he thought.

If I run into trouble out here, I’m done for.

He carried on for twenty metres until he reached the edge of the ridgeline. Then he looked down the far side of the mountain. The ground sloped away dramatically towards the floor of a wide valley roughly two thousand metres below. In the distance, another kilometre or so beyond the base of the mountain, the track disappeared into a heavily wooded area.

A moment later, Carter spotted the mule train, making its way north along the path leading to the forest. A distance of about three kilometres from his position. He counted six mules, accompanied by four ant-sized figures. Vann and Hakimi, plus the two other fighters from their fire group. Mansur and Yellow Scarf.

By now the smugglers had almost reached the treeline. Carter looked on as the mule train moved out of sight beyond the fringe of pine trees. Then he looked up.

Much further to the north, on the other side of the valley, the land rose up again in a series of ridgelines before fading away towards the horizon. That ground would provide the mule train with a safe passage all the way to Tajikistan, Carter realised.

He glanced quickly at his watch as he started down the other side of the mountain. Three o’clock in the afternoon. An hour since the firefight. He calculated that Vann had a fifty-minute head start on him.

There’s a courier route to Tajikistan, Vann had told him back at the compound.

The roadhead, Carter thought. On the Tajikistani side of the border. Forty kilometres to the north.

That’s where they’ll be heading.

He was about to set off again when he glimpsed something to the south. Plumes of dust rising from the valley. Four of them. Coming from the direction of the plateau and the roadhead.

Reinforcements.

The second wave.

Heading straight for the mountain.

Shit.

Carter knew he couldn’t head back now. Not an option. The Taliban would be charging up the mountain soon enough. A bigger force this time, no doubt. Anything up to twenty fighters. They would be sweeping forward aggressively, eager to avenge their six dead mates. Carter had his M4 assault rifle, five clips of ammo and the holstered Russian pistol. Against a much larger enemy formation, he wouldn’t stand a chance.

There’s only one thing for it, he decided.

Push on.

Keep hunting Vann.

And hope the Taliban don’t catch up with me.