The lights grew larger. Carter sat stock-still beside the hollow, dread leaking like acid into his guts. He felt his breath trap in his throat, his muscles stiffening with fear as the lights approached. Carter couldn’t be sure, but he estimated that they were no more than fifteen metres from his sheltering place now. They were getting closer.
Shit.
They’ve spotted my tracks.
Adrenaline flooded through Carter’s body. His heart was beating so fast he thought it might explode inside his chest. He rested his index finger lightly around the M4 trigger and readied himself for the imminent possibility of a firefight. Carter had no intention of letting himself get caught by the Taliban. Better to go down fighting. Take down as many of the bastards as possible before someone cut him down.
The lights seemed very close now. Less than ten metres, perhaps. Hard to believe they hadn’t seen him yet. Another step or two, and they were certain to catch sight of him in the glare of their torch lights.
Carter tensed his finger on the trigger.
A moment passed. The voices sounded impossibly loud and close in the cold stillness of the night.
Carter prepared to die.
Then, suddenly, the lights became smaller again. The agitated voices grew fainter as the patrol carried on past the hollow and headed back up the mountain slope. Carter continued watching the lights as they shrank to the size of dots. A few moments later, they vanished from sight behind the treeline, and the voices were swiftly lost to the blackness.
Carter exhaled.
They’ve given up the search, he thought.
They’re going back home.
Thank fuck for that.
He slackened his trigger finger.
He remained crouching for a few minutes, pricking his ears, until he was certain that the patrol had moved out of sight. Then he skulked back to the hollow and curled up like an animal. He was still wired from the shot of adrenaline to his system. He closed his eyes, but sleep was impossible.
The night dragged on.
Carter stayed alert, listening for any more patrols, but the area remained quiet except for the soft mutter of the breeze hitting the side of the mountain. He tucked into a ready-to-eat meal of cold pasta and meatballs from his ration pack, gobbled down a bar of chocolate and helped himself to another mouthful of water. Carter hadn’t eaten a proper cooked meal in days, not since he’d left Chile, but that didn’t bother him. His body was almost immune to deprivation from the years of hard training in the Regiment. At home he often went for days at a time without eating anything. He felt like he could survive for weeks on nothing more than coffee, water and a little fruit.
A while later, he was conscious of the faintest lightening of the sky. Then came the predawn chorus of the forest, the screaming of animals and insects. Nature’s alarm clock. Better than any app on a phone. Soon the pale blue fingers of sunlight were spreading across the horizon.
Carter sipped water, wished it was strong coffee, and unfolded the laminated map. He checked the route ahead of him and tried to work out where Vann was headed.
The Tajik is going to meet us at the roadhead, Hakimi had said back at the compound. Him, and the rest of his guys.
Tomorrow. First light.
As in, today.
Carter studied the border region directly north of his general position. A winding river formed a natural barrier between the two countries. To the north of the border, a secondary road ran along a narrow embankment sandwiched between the river and the vast mountain range further north. The only road in sight, as far as Carter could tell. Nothing above it or below. No nearby settlements.
The roadhead.
That’s where Vann will be going.
In the pearl-grey dawn light he found the track easily enough. Carter simply walked away from the cliff edge at a ninety-degree angle and carried on past the trees and rocks until he hit the trail. He found the last positive sign he’d spotted the night before a few paces further back. The golden rule of tracking: only believe in what you see in front of you. Only move forward when you’ve found positive sign. Ignore that rule, make it up for yourself, and you were sure to get misplaced.
Carter stopped for a moment to check his watch, his breath misting in front of his mouth in the cool dawn air. Five o’clock in the morning. Carter reckoned he was three hours from the roadhead. With Vann somewhere ahead of him, accompanied by an Afghan warlord and several millions of pounds’ worth of heroin.
Time to get moving.
*
He moved on at a steady pace down the track, looking for more positive sign, staying alert to the constant danger of running into an IED or a booby trap. As he neared the crossing point, Carter knew there was a chance his mission might be futile. Vann might well have moved clear of the roadhead by the time Carter made it across the border. There would be no way of finding him then.
I can’t do anything about that.
All I can do is follow Vann’s route and hope the trail hasn’t gone cold.
And if you manage to find Vann? Carter asked himself.
What then?
I don’t know.
He had tried not to think that far ahead during his long walk north. But now his thoughts drifted to the problem of isolating Vann. That was going to be tricky. The guy had an Afghan warlord and two of his henchmen for company. All of them were armed. Vann wouldn’t give up without a fight.
Even if Carter managed to overpower Vann and eliminate the Afghans, his problems weren’t over. Once he’d secured Vann he would have to put a call in to the Company. Give them the lowdown on his vanishing act. The smuggling operation with Hakimi. The five hundred kilos of high-quality heroin. Carter could already predict their response.
Silence him.
Permanently.
It made no sense for either Six or the Company to want Vann taken alive. They would be desperate to avoid the scandal of a decorated ex-SAS soldier being put on trial for running smack in Afghanistan. In the ruthless logic of the foreign intelligence services, killing Vann was a small price to pay to avoid deep political embarrassment in London and Washington.
This mission is no longer a hard arrest.
This is a find-and-kill op.
I’m going to have to slot Vann. Double-tap the guy who taught me everything.
Unless he kills me first.
He shoved that bleak thought to the darkest recesses of his mind as he trudged on.
An hour later, shortly before eight o’clock in the morning, he crossed the last ridgeline before the border with Tajikistan. Carter picked his way down a rock-strewn slope until he came to a halt beside a copse a short distance from the crest. Then he scanned the terrain below.
The border.
The trail ran on for three hundred metres from the mountain down to the bank of a meandering river, no more than fifty metres wide at its narrowest point. South of the river was Afghan soil. North was Tajikistan. A secondary road ran along the southern bank. A hundred metres to the west, at Carter’s eleven o’clock, a small military outpost had been built on an area of raised ground on the Afghan side of the river. The Taliban’s trademark white flag hung from a pole in front of the largest building, fluttering in the gentle morning breeze.
The border looked desolate. Belts of dry ground straddled both banks. Carter had expected to see a few locals down by the river, but there wasn’t a soul in sight. He saw several crumbling hovels on the far side of the river, the rusted hulk of a pickup truck. Further north the ground inclined steeply up from the bank towards a chain of low mountains dotted with trees and shrubs. At the base of the nearest mountain, a dirt road ran roughly parallel to the river.
The roadhead.
Carter felt his pulse quicken with anticipation. I’m getting closer now.
He took a gulp of water and observed the ground for a while. Watching for patrolling soldiers on either side of the river. Borders were typically hotbeds of military activity. But this area looked dead quiet. No soldiers, no traffic.
The ideal crossing point for smugglers.
He scanned the areas to the left and right of the Taliban outpost, looking for a way across the river. He spotted a dry stream bed at his two o’clock, five hundred metres to the east, stretching from the base of the mountain to the bank of the river.
The bed was steep-sided, Carter noticed. The product of centuries of soil erosion. Deep enough to hide an adult-sized figure from view of the guards at the outpost.
That’s my route across the border.
And I’ll bet Vann took the mule train the same way.
Carter took off his North Face jacket, removed his belt pouch and stuffed both items into the rucksack. Then he emptied his trouser pockets and chucked the rest of his gear into the waterproof bag: his satphone, the Russian gun knife, the tactical torch. He didn’t know the depth of the river, but from where he was standing it looked fairly shallow. Waist height, perhaps. The mules had made it across, so it couldn’t be too deep. Carter would get soaking wet, which would be a fucking ball ache. But he couldn’t see any other concealed route across the border.
Once he had secured his kit, he set off down the mountainside. By now the sun had risen above the peaks and he felt a warm breath of air on his face as he made his descent. He didn’t feel tired, in spite of his lack of sleep and the gruelling trek north. He’d marched far greater distances during Test Week on Selection. He was still in peak physical condition. Had muscles that looked as if they had been sculpted from a block of marble, an ex-girlfriend had told him.
After two hundred metres he reached a grassy area close to the bottom of the slope. Here the mountain trail suddenly ended. He veered off to the right, moving at a semi-jogging pace, roughly following the course of the river until he reached the dried-out gully a hundred metres due south of the crossing point.
Carter worked his way down the side of the narrow channel and started walking towards the river. He stuck close to the right side of the gully, remaining in the shadows so he wouldn’t be seen from the outpost. He dropped to a crouch as he reached a shallower section of the gully midway along, then straightened his back again as the stream bed deepened twenty metres further on.
Among the rocks and sticks scattered across the bed floor he picked out more mule deposits, further proof that Vann had passed through this place not long before with the mules.
I’m still on his tail, Carter thought.
I’ve still got a chance of catching him.
He manoeuvred down the stream bed for another hundred metres and paused briefly at the point where it opened up to a straight section of the river. Carter picked up a couple of sticks and tossed them into the water to estimate the current. He watched them drift downstream, then slid carefully down the bank, past a loose tumble of rocks, before he stopped again at the water’s edge. He raised his M4 rifle above his head as he started wading across the silvery grey river.
The water was colder than he’d expected. More like a European river than a South American jungle stream. Carter edged forward, watching his footing for slippery rocks on the riverbed. He aimed for an exit point fifty metres downstream, not fighting the current, using the weight of his waterproof rucksack to let the river ease him gently along. The river quickly deepened. Soon the water had risen up to his chest, chilling his core. Carter plodded determinedly on. One foot after another. At last he made it to the opposite bank. He reached out, grabbed hold of a low-hanging branch and hauled himself out of the icy water.
He moved quickly up from the bank, shivering in his soaking wet clothes as he made for the dead ground of another dried-out gully to the north. He trudged along the stream bed for several minutes before he drew to a halt at a deeper section in the gully, a hundred metres up from the bank. Then he climbed out of his sodden cargoes and socks, replacing them with the fresh pairs he’d packed in his daysack. He laced his belt through the loops, removed the satphone, gun knife and map from the daysack and slipped them into his side pockets.
Then Carter took his M4, ejected the chambered round, eased out the clip from the mag feed and broke the rifle down into its components. He shoved the parts and the magazine into his daysack and made sure his holstered Grach was concealed beneath his shirt. From now on he would have to rely on the pistol to dig him out of trouble. He couldn’t stroll around Tajikistan with an assault rifle. Not unless he was planning on spending time in a prison cell.
Carter strapped on his daysack and carried on north again, making his way up the gully towards the roadhead a kilometre away. He felt a slight sense of relief as the fear of capture or execution at the hands of the Taliban lifted from his weary shoulders.
I’m out of Afghanistan.
Thank fuck for that.
Now I’ve just got to deal with Vann.
After eight hundred metres he reached the point where the northern gully met the embankment rising up to the dirt road. Carter scaled the bank, calf muscles burning as he navigated the incline. He stopped at the roadside, catching his breath while he orientated himself.
The road was deserted. You could probably stand at the side of it, catch sight of a car at seven o’clock in the morning and not see another one for the next twelve hours. It was that kind of place.
The road itself looked worn down to the nub. Constructed back in the days of the Soviet Union, Carter imagined, and not repaired since. Maybe the Chinese would come along with a wad of cash in due course. Belt and Road handouts. Infrastructure and security, in exchange for surveillance-society authoritarianism.
The new way of the world.
He looked round once more but didn’t see anything unusual. Nothing to suggest which way Vann and his associates had travelled.
Left or right? he thought.
This way, or that?
Heads or tails?
He chose left. A calculated guess. West was the general onward direction of travel for the heroin Vann had smuggled up from Afghanistan. The smack route ran from Central Asia to Europe, through Russia. Travelling east made no sense. Whoever was buying the gear from Vann wouldn’t want to venture further from home than necessary. West seemed the likelier bet. Towards the capital at Dushanbe, and the border with Uzbekistan.
Carter walked along the road for fifty metres, scanning the ground.
Nothing.
He moved on again. Looking for more shit, or a piece of rubbish. Anything that might have been left behind by the mule train during the transfer of the drugs from animal to vehicle. He carried on for another hundred paces and got the same result.
After four hundred metres, Carter started to think that maybe he should turn around and try his luck to the east instead. Then he caught sight of something at the side of the road. Ten paces in front of him.
A cigarette butt, next to a pile of stones.
The only piece of litter in sight.
He marched over to the tab. Bent down and picked it up by the filter tip. The cigarette was still warm, with an inch of unsmoked tobacco. It hadn’t been crushed, and Carter saw no marks or disturbance on the dusty ground. Which implied that someone had flicked it out of a car window. A person on foot would have likely extinguished the cigarette under their heel. Therefore a driver or passenger. Heading west, Carter determined, because the tab had been ditched on the right side of the road.
Could be nothing, he thought. Could be a passing truck.
Or it could be something.
He moved on again.
After another eight hundred metres the track veered off at a ninety-degree angle from the river before snaking through a long and narrow valley. Which Carter knew from the map shuttled north for twenty-five kilometres before merging with a main metalled road. To the left, a slender gully ran alongside the secondary road on lower ground. Carter hurried along at a fast walk, following the road as it hooked round the mountainside and then opened up into the valley leading north.
Then he saw the bikes.
Four of them.
Parked on an oval-shaped patch of dirt at the edge of a steep embankment.
Two Yamahas, a couple of old Suzukis.
No sign of the owners.
Carter dropped a hand to his holstered Grach and approached cautiously.
It didn’t look like a suitable location for an ambush. Too exposed, no natural cover or dead ground. He paused beside one of the motorcycles. Inspected it. The keys were still jammed in the ignition. The kickstand was down.
Two metres away, half a dozen spent bullet casings glinted under the harsh rays of the sun.
Carter paced over to the edge of the embankment, cold dread sinking its claws into his bowels. The ground fell away sharply towards a clutter of stones and dwarf shrubs along the valley floor below. A drop of maybe four or five metres. Closer to the riverbank he spotted the shell of an abandoned farmhouse, a pair of run-down shacks. The withered trunk of a dying tree.
Carter dropped his gaze.
Looked directly below the embankment.
And saw the bodies.