And then it happens. The first thing we feel is the compression, as if our ears are being sucked into our heads. Then we hear the blast, which shakes the ground so strongly the force is transmitted to the steering wheel like a blow against the wheels. A deep rolling booming sound, followed almost instantaneously by several more, sweeps over and through us. The gunfire is silenced.
‘Hope someone’s taking pictures up there,’ says H, bracing himself against the roof and grimacing as the G yaws dangerously to one side. My thoughts seem to be taking shape in slow motion, and his comment makes no sense to me until I realise he’s talking about satellites. Then it occurs to me that we are actually still alive. Against the odds, we have completed the mission, and the missiles will never be used. I recall the Baroness’s words, I want you to succeed, and suddenly I want to laugh because we really have succeeded. Whoever was planning a catastrophe using the Stingers will now have to come up with a very different plan, and whoever was planning to let it happen will have to wait for a very different catastrophe.
The wheels are holding like glue onto the rocky slope, but our pace is agonisingly slow. Then there’s a bright flash a few yards ahead and an explosion that scatters a violent cloud of rock and shrapnel against us. Bits fly up from the front of the car, but we’re still moving.
H clambers with astonishing agility into the back, rests his AK on the rim of the rear door and fires towards the ridgeline above us where the RPG has come from. The sound of the shots is deafening and the interior is thick with cordite smoke. But the ravine is beginning to open up now and the slope is reducing so I take the gearbox out of low range and accelerate.
As we crash forward, I’m aware of a kind of moaning sound behind me. It’s Momen, chanting prayers. There are warning lights blinking on the dashboard but I can’t look at them. The ground begins to flatten out and with a final bounce we hit the dirt road. I turn towards the head of the valley. H scrambles into the seat behind me.
‘Let’s get some distance behind us,’ he says.
We race up the valley, savouring the sweetness of our escape. After half a mile the slopes steepen on both sides as we draw closer to its head. Then, just as we’re beginning to feel like we’re finally beyond the reach of our enemies, a black shape plunges across the track a hundred yards ahead of us, blocking the way. I recognise the pickup from earlier outside the fort and wonder for a moment whether it’s just an unpleasant coincidence that we’ve now run into each other. Perhaps they’re lost. But the truck’s bonnet pitches sharply downwards. The driver is braking hard, because that’s exactly where he wants to be: directly in front of us.
‘Jesus Christ,’ yells H. ‘Ambush front!’
‘I can’t turn.’ The slopes are too steep. ‘Can’t stop either.’
We see two men jump from the cab of the pickup and run into cover. Two others position themselves behind the bonnet. One has an AK and the other readies an RPG. The AK doesn’t worry me too much. We hear the crack and thump of rounds smashing into the G head on, but it’ll put up with a few more. What worries me is the RPG. If I stop or reverse, we’ll be sitting ducks.
H realises this too, and turns to me. ‘Give it all you’ve got.’
I don’t know what the minimum arming distance for an RPG round is. When a round is fired from the launcher, it won’t explode if it hits a target that’s too close because it doesn’t have time to arm itself. It will simply bounce off, leaving a trail of smoke from the propellant. But I don’t know what that distance is. I think it’s thirty feet, but it might be five. It seems a pity to be killed having come so close to escaping, but there’s nothing more to do. I can only hope that seeing us hurtling towards him will make our enemy think twice about lingering in our path.
I push my foot to the floor and hear the transmission kick into lower gear. There’s a roar from the engine as the full power of the cylinders burns its way to the wheels, and we feel the front of the G lift as if it’s struggling to take off. We must be doing sixty miles an hour but it feels like we’re driving through treacle. Five or six seconds pass. It feels like a year.
I don’t know if the RPG is ever fired. I aim the G for the rear of the pickup, where it’s lightest and will do the least damage to us, and the impact, when it comes, is surprisingly mild. As we spin to a halt beyond it, everything is still happening in slow motion. H dives and rolls from the passenger door and I follow him automatically, just as we’ve trained for. We fire over the bonnet of the G, and I distinctly feel a round pass by my ear with a watery thud. Our enemies, now that we have passed behind them, are unprotected. An injured man staggers into view and falls backwards as I fire. Another shape falls, as if in a clownish dance. H darts from the cover of the car and signals me to do the same to the left, and we advance in turn towards our enemies’ final hiding places. In the folds of rock about twenty yards away I see a flicker of motion, and fire at it. The hammer of the AK falls on an empty chamber, so I throw it aside and pull the Browning from my hip. Sweat blurs my vision and I cannot be sure where the movement has come from. I fire three rounds from the Browning until it too falls silent as the magazine empties. There is nothing but rock. I turn my head momentarily as I hear a double tap from H’s weapon, and then a strange stillness descends.
On H’s hand signal we withdraw back to the G.
A plume of steam is rising from somewhere under the bonnet. The windscreen is opaque and the bodywork is perforated with bullet holes. The engine’s still running but it’s faltering now and making a high-pitched wheezing sound like a man with a bullet in his lungs. H’s shirt is stained with blood where a round has nicked the muscles between his neck and shoulder, but he hasn’t noticed it.
We cover about two miles driving on the rims of the wheels, and then the engine finally dies. H and I remove the weapons and the gold, and from the back the others pull Aref’s body and lay it on the ground. Then we soak the hand-stitched leather seats with diesel as if in a demonic funeral rite, and push the G from the track, pointing it down a slope, where it tumbles and eventually cartwheels onto a boulder-filled arena far below us.
‘It was a bit ugly, anyway,’ says H.
‘Would have cost a fortune to service.’
‘Especially the way you drive.’
The sun spreads its liquid gold over the landscape. We carry Aref’s body in a pattu up a nearby hillside to where a cluster of poplars is swaying, and bury it in a shallow grave, over which the other men kneel and pray.
Afterwards, the Afghan guard from the fort comes up to me.
‘I’m going,’ he says. ‘Back to my village.’
I take several of the gold sovereigns from the belt and give them to him. He looks at them, pockets them and says nothing. Then he embraces us in turn and walks away.
Manny is in poor shape. The blast at the fort has blinded and deafened him, though I can’t tell for how long. We agree to walk to where the map indicates a tiny village, and follow an animal track that leads up towards the neighbouring valley. For nearly two hours we trudge in silence. H and I take turns to support Manny, who walks with difficulty.
Then we descend towards the village beyond, as if into a tranquil and unconnected world where violence is unknown. The silent houses are surrounded by a patchwork of green fields in gently differing shades. An old man, working in the irrigation ditches that run between them, leaves his work and walks up to us as we approach, guiding us without asking for any explanation to the tiny settlement, beside which a glittering stream is flowing.
I press a gold sovereign into the hand of the old man.
‘For your help,’ I say. Then I give him another. ‘For your silence.’
‘Aqelmand ra eshara kafee ast,’ he croaks. A sign is sufficient to a wise man.
‘Give it to the poor, then.’