Carter plunged down the side of the mountain, picking his way along the footpath as it narrowed again. He was determined to close the gap with the mule train. But he also needed to put some serious distance between himself and the Taliban reinforcements converging on the other side of the ridgeline. A short distance further down he passed another freshly deposited lump of mule shit and his chest swelled with confidence. The beasts would leave a steady trail from here to the RV in Tajikistan. Nothing Vann could do about that. Nature in action. The droppings would make it much more difficult for Vann to shake off his pursuer. Even if Carter lost his way, he could stop and scan the ground for new piles of shit. Then resume the chase again.
As he descended towards the valley, his mind worked feverishly, calculating times and distances. Nightfall at this time of the year kicked in at seven thirty. Approximately four hours from now. At which point the temperature would rapidly plummet. High up on the mountains, exposed to the elements, it would be even worse. Carter would be freezing cold, tired and stumbling around in the darkness. Keeping up the pursuit was going to be difficult.
That was problem number one. But there was a second problem. Carter was stalking a Regiment veteran, a guy with decades of Here-ford know-how ingrained into him. There was every chance that Vann might try to set up a snap ambush or plant another booby trap somewhere along the path. Nothing too elaborate. Nothing that would take a lot of time to construct. Could be something as basic as a tripwire. Take a pair of sticks, drive them into the ground at an angle to form a ‘Y’ and rest a fragmentation grenade on top. Ease the safety pin nearly out, thread a piece of cord through it and string it across the track at ankle height. The slightest contact would result in the tautened wire yanking the pin out of the grenade, fragging the target.
He thought, I’ll have to move cautiously. Move too fast, and I could easily miss the telltale signs of a trap.
There was an even bigger problem, Carter knew. But he didn’t want to think about that right now. He was like a boxer deep in the ninth round with his opponent, cut and disorientated, not allowing himself to think any further ahead than his next punch.
Deal with the thing right in front of you. Worry about the other stuff later.
He was working on the basis that Vann wouldn’t deviate from the main footpath. The mules had five hundred kilos of heroin loaded on their backs. A massively heavy load. Vann wouldn’t be able to increase his pace, and he couldn’t risk going off-piste. Therefore he would have to stick to the main track, following the route across the ridgelines to the north. The most direct route to the roadhead on the other side of the border.
The slope became gentler as Carter neared the vale. He pushed on towards the wooded area a kilometre to the north of the mountain, picking out more signs left by the mule train along the way. An upturned rock struck by a mule’s hoof, the slightly damp underside facing upward. A snapped twig. The lighter side of a leaf on a branch pointing up, caused by someone brushing carelessly against it. All of which confirmed his suspicion that Vann wouldn’t stray from the footpath.
He checked his G-Shock again.
Four o’clock. Two hours since the firefight.
By now, the reinforcements would have arrived at the compound. They would be combing the plateau methodically, trying to figure out how the defenders had managed to slip away. Eventually, one of them would locate the trail in the pine grove. A matter of time, Carter decided.
Most of the Taliban fighters were rural guys. They had grown up in areas similar to this one, knew the lie of the land. They would instinctively grasp that there had to be a route up to the ridgeline.
Soon enough, they would start tracking him.
If they weren’t doing so already.
He reached the woodland an hour later and continued slowly through the tangled undergrowth.
It would take the mule train another six hours to reach the frontier, Carter estimated. Maybe longer, given the steep nature of the terrain. Which meant Vann would have to stop for the night, if only to give the mules a chance to rest. He’d set up a lying-up point somewhere south of the border. Get off the track and put a dog-leg in. Standard Regiment tactics when you had to establish an LUP in hostile territory. Peel off to the left or right, carry on walking for two hundred metres at a ninety-degree angle from the track, then walk back on yourself for another two hundred metres until you found a suitable spot to bed down. Vann would tether the mules and post a sentry to watch over the approach. If anybody was following, he’d see them moving down the trail, taking them right past his line of sight. Then he could launch a counter ambush, catching the enemy by surprise.
That’s what I would do, if I was in his boots, Carter thought.
We might have taken very different paths in our lives, but we were both taught to soldier the same way.
An hour later, Carter emerged from the dense sprawl of forest. He started up the track towards the next feature, feeling the effort in his legs, his lungs. The air began to thin as he climbed higher up the mountains, and soon Carter was struggling for breath. His skull throbbed. He felt his body beginning to flag.
The stress of the firefight, the frantic escape from the compound, the pursuit across the valley. Vann’s betrayal.
The day from hell.
As he hit the next ridgeline, Carter paused to take a pull from one of the water bottles in his daysack. He took a few sips, then stashed the bottle away again. Water discipline. One of the most important rules you learned early on in the SAS. Preserve your water for as long as possible. Take no more than you needed, because you never knew when you would next find a fresh supply. The summer announcements at train stations telling people to guzzle litres of water to stay hydrated had it wrong, in Carter’s opinion. Experience had taught him that the human body could survive on precious little fluid.
He closed his mind to the tiredness in his limbs and set off again. Cleared the ridgeline and scrabbled down the track towards the next feature on the map. By his estimation he had covered about twenty kilometres. Which put him about ten kilometres from the border.
The sun was beginning to sink below the horizon now, burnishing the black masses of the distant peaks.
Thirty minutes from now, I’ll be in darkness.
Then my task is going to get a lot bloody harder.
As he carried on, a question prodded at the back of his mind. One that had been bugging him for the past several hours. Something Hakimi had said to Vann back at the compound.
I knew it was a mistake to remove that landmine.
Which implied that Vann had deliberately replaced the mine at some point with the early warning system. A decision that made absolutely no sense. Especially when you had the enemy breathing down your neck. This whole area is crawling with Taliban right now.
Taking away the landmine went against all the standard operating procedures they had been taught in the Regiment. Yet Vann had gone ahead and done it anyway. Why?
Carter shook his head.
It doesn’t matter, he thought. Not anymore.
Vann dropped me in the shit back at the compound. Left me to take on a bunch of Taliban while he bolted with the drug stash. I’ll never forgive the bastard for that.
In the first frantic minutes after Carter had bolted from the plateau, he’d considered the possibility that Vann had been taken hostage by Hakimi. Perhaps the warlord had put a gun to his head. Forced him to abandon his position and take to the hills. Maybe Vann hadn’t willingly left his old mate behind. But then Carter had remembered reaching out to Vann on the walkie-talkie. His slightly breathless voice replying to Carter’s question.
Everything’s fine.
Vann hadn’t sounded like someone talking under duress. At that moment, he had been rushing up the hidden trail with the pack mules. Leaving Carter behind to face the enemy. An action that betrayed the whole ethos of the Regiment.
Whatever bond that had once existed between them had been shattered. Vann left me for dead, Carter reflected bitterly. He’s a drug dealer and a bullshitter.
He’ll pay for this. I’ll make fucking sure of it.
Darkness soon began to encroach on the landscape. After a while, Carter struggled to see the ground clearly in front of him. There was some ambient light from the moon, but not much. Not enough to detect signs on the ground, or tripwires, or any evidence that Vann had veered off-track to set up a snap ambush. Carter thought about reaching for the torch in his backpack, then shook his head. No. Not worth the risk. The light would advertise his position to anyone nearby.
Carter grew increasingly tired. His eyelids felt as if they had weights sewn into them. His muscles were as heavy as cement. He had a decision to make. Keep moving through the dark and risk getting killed in the process. Or bed down somewhere for the night. Hope that the trail didn’t go cold.
And pray that the Taliban didn’t locate him.
Pros and cons.
A gamble, whichever way you looked at it, with no sure answer. Like betting on red or black.
He decided to keep going.
I can’t afford to fall any further behind the mule train.
Several minutes later, Carter felt a faint breath of wind against his cheek. The breeze quickly strengthened, whipping across the track, rustling the dead leaves underfoot and whispering through the branches of the trees. He was walking blind now, stumbling along through the grainy darkness. The wind picked up, knifing against his face, thrusting through his hair. He took another three paces forward—
Then stopped.
In front of him the ground simply ended. Beyond it was a large black shadow. Carter stared at it for a cold beat. Puzzled. He wondered if Vann had placed some kind of obstacle along the track. Or perhaps it was the opening to a cave complex. Carter pricked his ears, but he couldn’t hear anything above the noise of the wind hitting the mountain.
He shucked off his rucksack and rooted around inside, feeling for the tactical field torch. He had to chance it. No choice. No other way round the shadow.
Carter popped the protective cap off the end of the torch and thumbed the switch, flicking the torch onto its lowest setting. He shone the beam over the shadow, straining his eyes and leaning forward to take a closer look at whatever was blocking the route.
Carter’s heart skipped a beat.
There was nothing in front of him.
Just absolute blackness.
A void.
He dipped the beam lower, spotlighting the ground nearer to his feet, and realised with horror that he had come to the very edge of a cliff. A 2,000-metre drop to the bottom of the valley. Somewhere along the way he had wandered off the track. Another couple of paces and he would have stumbled off the cliff. Certain death.
He clicked off the torch, slapped the cap back on so its light wouldn’t be seen if he accidentally turned it on again. Stuffed it into his cargo pocket. He waited until his eyes had adjusted to the immense blackness once more, then slowly backtracked away from the cliff edge and started looking for a place to lay up for the night.
Carter was snookered. His own fault. He’d been pushing it too hard. Tracking a target was almost impossible in the middle of the night. There was no way he’d be able to find the trail again, not in the darkness, not without waving a torch beam all over the place.
I’ll have to bed down, he realised. Take shelter and wait until first light before picking up the trail again.
Unless I want to end up looking like a fucking pancake.
After twenty paces he stopped beside the base of a gnarled pine tree with a hollow shaped like a lancet window. Carter took another sip of water. He grazed on a chocolate bar from one of his ration packs, stowed the wrapper in his bag, slipped on his North Face jacket, winter gloves and woollen hat. Then he curled up beside the tree, wedging himself tight against the hollow to shelter himself against the knife-like wind. His rifle resting at his side.
His biggest fear was being discovered by the Taliban. Carter tried to reassure himself that they were unlikely to stumble upon his position. If they had pursued him north of the compound, they would be moving by torchlight, slowing their pace to a crawl. He doubted they would risk veering off the main track, not at night. As long as he stayed silent and didn’t use his torch, he would be safe enough.
A gamble, maybe.
But less risky than blundering about in the dark.
Carter didn’t dare use the illumination function on his watch, but he estimated that an hour had passed since last light. Eight thirty or thereabouts. Which meant the mule train had been on the move for more than eight hours. The beasts would be knackered. The smart money was on Vann stopping for the night. The guy would have probably established an LUP nine or ten kilometres short of the border, not long before nightfall. Wait until an hour before dawn, then resume the journey north to the roadhead.
He hoped.
There was always the risk that Vann might push on through the night, Carter knew. But the mules would still leave a trail of droppings in their wake. Nothing Vann could do about that. Carter was confident he could pick up their track again sooner or later.
I won’t lose him, Carter vowed to himself. No way. He’s not going to get away with this.
His eyelids were very heavy now. His brain was fogged with tiredness. His whole body craved rest. At last, several minutes later, Carter closed his eyes and fell asleep.
*
He awoke with a start.
Carter snapped his eyes open, his mind jolting out of its daze. It was still very dark. He had no idea how long he’d been asleep, but it couldn’t have been for very long. The wind had reduced to a soft murmur. Stars pinpricked the black sky.
He heard something nearby.
Voices.
Several of them.
The tiredness fell from him like a sheet. Adrenaline surged through his veins, juicing his blood. Carter was instantly alert.
He reached for his M4 and crawled out from the lancet-shaped hollow, careful not to make a noise. He crept round to the side of the pine tree, crouched and listened.
The voices were growing louder.
Somewhere off to the right he saw a loose cluster of lights flitting in and out of sight through the gaps in the treeline.
Torches.
Shit.
The voices became more easily distinguishable, carrying clearly across the frosted night air. The figures were talking in hushed tones, whispering excitedly to one another. Carter couldn’t make out their conversation, but it didn’t sound like they were speaking English.
They had to be Taliban. The reinforcements. Vann wouldn’t have risked using torches. An amateur mistake. Anyone using an artificial light source would be flagging their position to every other fucker in the area. Might as well paint a big target on your back.
The beams cut like searchlights through the blackness as the Taliban fighters drew nearer. Carter counted eight torch lights in total. From the sound of their voices they couldn’t be far away. Twenty metres or so. Which was good news, in a way, because it meant that Carter hadn’t wandered far off the main track. But also very bad news. Because in a few moments the Taliban would be dangerously close to his position.
Carter tensed his hand around the M4’s polymer grip. He stilled his breath and remained motionless as the lights drew nearer. They swelled, and for an instant the voices became so clear-cut that it seemed to Carter as if they were almost on top of him. Two of them were having what sounded like a heated argument. Points of view were being exchanged. Tempers were frayed. They were clearly in disagreement over something. How much longer to continue the search, maybe.
Nobody wanted to be on a mountain on a dark cold night in the spring. Morale would start to slump the longer they went on without locating their prey. Thoughts would quickly turn from revenge to more prosaic needs. A warm bed, a brew, a slap-up meal.
There was a long pause, and then the beams shrank as the patrol crept further down the track. Carter inwardly relaxed. The threat had passed. The Taliban were moving on with their search.
I’m in the clear.
Then the lights started coming back towards him.