We flew into Kamdesh a little after five. The town was a feat of engineering, built into the mountainside in terraces so that one home was constructed almost on top of another. Steep roads and alleyways carved through the clusters of buildings.
I joined Feo in the cockpit as he circled, searching for a place to land. Beneath us, people emerged from their homes and looked up at the aircraft. Some of the men carried rifles, others were armed with machine guns. A few were shouting instructions and pointing up at us.
“They don’t look friendly,” I observed.
“A thousand friends are few, one enemy is too many,” Feo replied. “It’s a Russian proverb that teaches people to be cautious. Like them, I hope.”
I hoped they were just being cautious too.
“Down there,” I suggested, spotting a shoulder of land that protruded to the north of the village near a track that led out of town.
Feo nodded and said something in Russian. I looked back to see Dinara smiling.
“He said he hates backseat pilots,” she revealed.
“She’s lying,” Feo objected with a broad grin. “I would never say such a thing about my boss.”
I buckled myself in as he swung us round and began his descent. A crosswind coming up the valley buffeted the chopper, but Feo compensated expertly and we were soon on a snow-covered patch of ground.
Outside, a group of armed men were coming along the track.
The yelling started the moment Dinara opened the cabin door. She swung it back and was greeted by a barrage of anger delivered in Kamviri. I unclipped myself and hurried back to join her. She jumped down and replied in Pashto. It wasn’t the local dialect, but most of the men there understood her.
They moved forward, close now, their guns pointed at us, their voices still loud and angry.
Dinara spoke again and Feo climbed out of the chopper. He held an SR-2 Veresk submachine gun and had an MP-443 Grach pistol in a holster slung under his arm. The size of the man, coupled with the hardware he was toting, only served to fuel the crowd’s hostility.
Dinara carried on talking. Slowly the angry shouts morphed into low grumbles.
“Their village was attacked three nights ago,” she revealed. “A unit of Russian mercenaries. They killed three people and wounded another twelve. They think we’re part of the same unit.”
She turned and spoke some more. A young man who couldn’t have been more than twenty yelled at the others and, a few moments later, they dispersed and headed back toward town.
“I told them we’re friends of the pilot, the man the Russians were looking for,” Dinara explained.
The young Nuristani man stepped forward and slung his AK-47 over his shoulder.
“Hello,” he said. “You speak English?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“My name is Vosuruk,” the young man said. “After my grandfather. He was an important man here.”
“Nice to meet you, Vosuruk. You can call me Jack.”
“Welcome, Jack. Come with me, please. There is someone who can help you.”
Chapter 47
I knew from experience that when you weren’t facing them across a battlefield, the Afghan people were warm and welcoming, and Vosuruk was no exception.
“Did you come from America?” he asked as he led us along the track that ran into the village.
I nodded.
“We came from Russia,” Dinara replied.
“The Russians killed my uncle,” he remarked. “But that was long ago.”
“I’m sorry,” Dinara said.
“What for? We fight with honor. We die with honor. And my uncle killed many Russians before he died. So maybe I also should say sorry.”
Feo laughed. “Smart kid.”
Vosuruk smiled in reply. He was about a foot shorter than me and wiry, but I could sense strength in the way he moved. The mountains punished weakness, so the people who lived here had to be tough.
“I want to go to Moscow one day. And America. I want to see cities where there are more people than there are stars in the sky.”
He turned right onto a narrower track that lay between two rows of houses. “This way,” he beckoned.
We followed and I admired the simple but resilient architecture and construction methods used to build homes in such a difficult environment. Square, functional, built with a mix of brick and concrete, much of which had been clad and whitewashed, there were still enough distinctive flourishes to distinguish one house from another. A blue ceramic plaque of Koranic text hung beside one door. Another had red-painted window frames. A third featured a wall that was covered in an abstract artwork formed of brightly colored cubes. No matter the conditions, wherever I’ve been in the world, people always seek beautiful ways to express their individuality.
“Have you seen a Ford F-350?” Vosuruk asked. “It is a pick-up truck.”
“It’s a good truck,” I replied.
“It is another dream. One day I buy one from America and bring it home. I see it in a magazine and I feel in love.”
“Where did you learn English?” Feo asked. He towered over the slight Afghan.
“From my teacher. We’re going to see him now,” Vosuruk replied. “He’s English. Proper English. Not American or Russian. Original English teacher.”
I wondered what could have led an English person to this remote mountain village. There were worse places to live, but it wasn’t somewhere I’d imagine was rich in opportunity for the foreign settler.
Vosuruk took us to the house on the corner at the far end of the alleyway. I looked south down a narrow road toward the bottom of the village and saw evidence of recent battle. There were blast craters and bullet holes in the thick walls of nearby houses, scorch marks on the white paint.
“The men who came here did that,” Vosuruk explained.
He knocked on the door of the house on the corner and a moment later a woman’s voice responded in Kamviri.
“She says to come in,” Vosuruk said. He opened the heavy, weatherworn door.
We stepped inside a small room that was full of shoes, boots and coats in two sizes. Vosuruk took us through an interior door into a large open-plan space that consisted of a living area decorated with richly colored cushions and throws. A kitchen was built around a large hearth and a stone chimney hung above it and stretched up to the steep ceiling. A couple of screens partitioned a sleeping area by the large window overlooking the valley.
A slim, brown-haired woman stood near the screen.
“These people say they’re here to help the American pilot,” our guide said.
“Thank you, Vosuruk,” the woman replied, and the young man nodded and withdrew.
“Who are you?” the woman asked. She sounded Californian.
“Jack Morgan,” I replied. “I run Private. It’s a detective agency. These are my colleagues, Dinara Orlova and Feodor Arapov.”
The woman studied us but said nothing.
“What do you want with him?” a voice asked from behind the screen. The man spoke with an English accent.
I heard a soft groan and someone shuffling around, then a tall, athletic man appeared from behind the screen, placing his hand on the woman’s shoulder. He wore a vest, and there was a bandage over his right shoulder. He looked pale, and I guessed from the nature of the dressing and the flecks of blood seeping through the bandage that he’d been shot.
“We’re here to take him home,” I replied. “We’re working for his family. Vosuruk said you’d be able to help us.”
“The paramilitaries who came here and shot the place up were well equipped and sophisticated,” the man said. “The kind of people who might come back to try a softer approach. How do we know you’re not working with them?”
His accent suggested he was British.