Crossfire

by Andy McNab

  The potholes were the size of bomb craters, but that didn't stop the local drivers going for it at motorway speeds. Instead of a central reservation, there were just one-foot-high concrete bollards.

  We came to a run of shops and stalls, mixed with mud houses and stark concrete apartment blocks. One sold bananas, the next oranges. The one after that seemed to have cornered the market in second-hand plimsolls. Old boys sat in the shade beside them gobbing off into mobiles.

  I had five bars of signal, and a text from my new mates at TDCA welcoming me to Afghanistan. I tapped the keypad as kids kicked a football on a dusty make-do pitch with rocks for goals. A family had set up home in the bombed-out remains of a one-storey building. The roof was a moth-eaten tarpaulin.

  Everything and everyone was covered with dust. I could already feel a layer of grime on the back of my neck, and that was just from the air-conditioning.

  There were four or five rings, and then I heard a familiar voice.

  45

  'I'm in the city, heading for the hotel. Any more emails?'

  'Yes. We have a problem. They want the money in position by Saturday morning. If not, he dies.'

  'Chances are he's history anyway, right?'

  'Correct.'

  'I'll read it when I get to the hotel.'

  I closed down the cell and leant forward again. 'This your wagon, maybe?'

  He smiled proudly and nodded like a madman.

  'Nice.'

  He nudged us past a dozen pushbikes taking up half the road. The traffic was bumper to bumper. I saw plenty of 4x4s and orange-and-white taxis, but everything else seemed to be a Corolla.

  High walls, razor wire and floodlights sectioned off the buildings in this neighbourhood. They probably housed NGOs, big companies and government bodies, and were guarded inside by the entire male populations of the Philippines and Nepal.

  Outside almost every one of them was a plywood guardhouse. Local guys in serge sat on plastic chairs in the shade, their body armour so thin it was more like a stab vest. Each had an AK across his thighs, a brass teapot and a glass at his feet. Nothing much seemed to be going on. They just sat and stroked their beards.

  I tapped the baby seat. 'How many children you got, mate?'

  'Four! All boys, Mr Nick!'

  'You've been busy.'

  He turned and gave me the world's biggest grin. 'Maybe!'

  The escort nodded along, too, as Magreb explained what we were waffling about.

  We crawled past rack upon rack of bootleg DVDs, mostly Bollywood by the look of it. A poster in the shop window behind them showed a beautiful woman with perfect teeth dancing around in blindingly coloured clothes as the guy with the beard watched on admiringly. The fucker was stalking me.

  We reached a roundabout. Traffic in all directions was at a standstill. Four guys in a different style of grey serge pointed at vehicles and shouted, then kicked the ones that didn't obey. They wore oversized Russian-style white peaked caps they'd had to place on the backs of their heads so they could see. They looked like drunken sailors. A couple wore face masks, as if they were directing traffic in Tokyo.

  Magreb made a tutting noise. 'A bomb in a car. The man killed himself, Mr Nick, maybe.'

  The escort thought he'd better demonstrate. His arms went up in the air. 'Boom!' He pointed along the exit immediately to our right.

  I watched one of the peaked caps land a kick on the side panel of an orange-and-white. Magreb tutted again.

  'You work at the hotel?'

  'I work in kitchen, Mr Nick. I am chef. They need someone go to airport, and I speak English. My English OK for you, Mr Nick?'

  I gripped his shoulder and gave it a bit of a manly shake. 'Maybe, Magreb. Maybe. Thanks for picking me up, mate.'

  Cars tried to worm their way into any gap. Magreb somehow worked the people-carrier forward. The traffic cops' brand-new green-and-white Toyota 4x4 was parked in the middle of the roundabout. A sign on the back announced in English that it was a present from the people of Germany.

  An old man selling SIM cards took advantage of the jam and walked between the vehicles, his merchandise hung from a board held high on a pole, like a glockenspiel.

  I tapped the escort. 'Give him a shout.'

  Magreb translated. The window creaked down and the guard called him over.

  The old guy wore about three coats and a cowpat hat. His eyes brightened at the prospect of a sale. Every card that hung from the board in a cellophane wrapper showed a footballer that even I could recognize. I pushed my arm between Magreb and the escort.

  'How much?'

  Magreb translated. 'Ten dollars each, maybe.'

  My hand dived into my jeans.

  The old boy's head almost filled the open window.

  I spread my fingers. 'Give me five.'

  He grinned like I'd made his year and handed over a set of Thierry Henrys. Perhaps he'd celebrate with a fourth coat.

  Transaction done, the Hiace was moving again. I rummaged in my Bergen and pulled out the mobile I'd bought at Heathrow. The Yes Man didn't have to know everything I needed to do. And I certainly didn't want him tracking me on the Firm's mobile once I'd got my hands on Dom. I'd give him just enough information to make him happy and keep him letting me use his resources. It wasn't op sec and it wasn't bullshit. It was self-preservation. I didn't know what he had planned for me once I'd handed Dom over. If I handed him over.

  As I loaded one of the Thierrys, a two-ship Humvee convoy barged its way to the detonation site. Both wagons had .50 cals on top and the American drivers were taking no prisoners. Faces shrouded by dust masks and goggles, they shouted, gesticulated, leant on their horns. It had no effect. In the end the Humvees decided just to bump cars out of the way with their bull bars. The gunners up top in the turrets swung their .50 cals in wide arcs. How to make friends and influence people, Washington-style.

  'Kate, it's Nick. Top of the morning to you.' Well, it was Dublin. I got a sort of laugh from her as she tried to pretend no one had ever said that before.

  I asked if she could have a little rummage in Moira's office for me and see if she could find where Basma Al-Sulaiman had her safe-house.

  'I'm so sorry, Nick. It's a women's refuge. Part of the deal was that Dominik wouldn't divulge any details.'

  Shit.

  'But I have a mobile number.'

  'Kate, you're a star. What are the colours of your national flag?'

  She hesitated. Either she didn't know the Polish flag or it was just a stupid question. 'Red and white.'

  'That's the colour of the flowers I'll send you, then. Has my number come up?'

  I got lots of giggles and a thank-you before she gave the answer I wanted. 'Yes.'

  'Great – can you text me the number? I'll get those flowers to you as soon as I can. I won't tell Moira if you don't.'

  I closed down as Magreb eased in behind the second Humvee. The .50 cal gunner didn't like that. He swung the barrel and waved at us to back off.

  Magreb pulled a face that said, in any language, Yeah, right. I liked this boy more by the minute.

  We made some progress and passed a huge mosque shrouded in scaffolding. An army of plasterers was filling in strike marks and shell holes.

  Just round the corner a fortress was disguised as the Serena Hotel.

  46

  Whoever had designed the place had made it almost impregnable to ground attack by anything except a Challenger or a Warrior, and with not a HESCO or roll of razor wire in sight.

  The two main gates must each have been about twelve feet square, and built of thick steel bars in close grids. Marble columns at either side supported a thick stone canopy; whatever else it was meant to do, it provided shade. The guards underneath were impressive, too. They wore the same kit as my escort, as you'd expect in a place with a $35 million price tag. He gave them a wave.

  I'd read all the stuff about it online at Heathrow. It had gone up last year over the ruins of the old Kabul Hotel, which had
been bombed and shot to shit for years. Going by the pictures and blurb on the website, it was the safest and most luxurious place in the whole of the city, probably in the whole of Afghanistan. Unless, of course, you were bunkered in with ISAF.

  The gates opened inwards and we drove into a stone-slabbed courtyard. It was lined with a pair of white Toyota Landcruisers with UN markings and three American GMC suburbans with blacked-out windows and enough antennae to double as NASA mobile control centres. The drivers leant against their bonnets in the new grey spotty camouflage, thigh holsters and wraparound shades and watched us rattle past.

  Magreb stopped under a huge stone and marble portico. A doorman dressed in the local turban-type get-up rushed out and opened my door. His London equivalent would have been decked out as a Beefeater.

  I shoved them both a twenty-dollar bill and the escort discovered a little English. 'Thank you.'

  It was probably more than they earned all day, and it showed.

  Two young bellhops ran out looking in vain for bags. I pointed at my Bergen and shrugged. They tried to take it from me, but I held on. I shook hands with the security guy and he wandered back to his mates at the main gate.

  It was Magreb's turn for a handshake. 'Do you want to drive me while I'm here, mate? Maybe buy a new baby seat for son number four?'

  The handshake got more rigorous. This was a good day for him, and of course he liked me. I was nice to him. 'But I work, Mr Nick . . . I cook nice food for you, maybe.'

  'No problem. When do you finish?'

  He looked at his watch as if it was going to tell him. 'Seven . . . seven.'

  'Good, write down your number and I'll call you at seven, OK?'

  He jumped back into his seat and found a pen.

  Job done, I headed for the metal detector immediately to one side of the entrance. My new mate with the turban ushered me straight towards the tall glass doors. We might have been in a war zone, but it felt a million miles from Basra. There were no mortar rounds or rockets raining down, no armoured track vehicles, no helmets, no body armour jutting under my mate Gunga Din's robes. The only reminder was a printed sign telling me no firearms were allowed inside.

  The lobby could have belonged to a five-star hotel in Paris or New York. There were marble floors, glass walls and gold finishing to all the surfaces. Local carpets and dark wood added to the palatial impression. The only thing out of place was the reggae music coming over the speaker system. Either they'd got their lobby and party disks mixed up, or there'd been a cock-up in the mailroom at the hotel chain HQ and a Caribbean pool party in Jamaica was trying to dance right now to traditional Afghan folk songs.

  Thirty-five million dollars for a hotel in Kabul made good business sense. The oil companies had their guys exploring the north of the country to see what could be sucked out of the ground up there. When their top brass jetted in for a visit, they could hardly be put up in a downtown flophouse. There always had to be wartime melting pots for the so-called great and good. There was a Serena lookalike in every war zone, maybe not as luxurious as this one but they existed all the same.

  I started checking in. In this part of the world they don't trust plastic; it's folding money all the way – and preferably green, with presidents on.

  I thanked reception profusely for organizing my lift and handed over fifteen hundred US for the first five nights I'd booked.

  As I signed the register, seven or eight guys swaggered past, all in BDUs with razor-sharp creases and desert boots straight from the quartermaster. Each carried a laptop bag over his shoulder, and a small fancy box in his hand. The pink ribbon they were tied with looked bizarre next to the thigh pistols. I took it that the sign outside was for the bad guys only.

  They headed for the reception desk flashing credit-card-sized IDs on their armbands, just in case we hadn't realized they were American officers.

  47

  I headed upstairs. The hotel was only three storeys, with rooms on the first and second floors. I'd asked for one on the first. In theory it would be harder to hit with an RPG from the outside because of the perimeter wall. With luck, anyone taking a pot shot would only zap the top floor.

  My room was huge. Plush carpets, lots of dark wood, all the gear. There was even a little office area and a torch in case the emergency generator didn't kick in when they lost power. The air-con hummed above me as I looked through the sealed, double-glazed windows. Maybe I was wrong about RPGs. The perimeter wall was being heightened to give a little more protection from direct fire.

  Down in the compound, the neatly pressed Yanks had just placed their pink-ribboned boxes into their three-ship GMC convoy. They lifted out M4s, a shorter-barrelled version of the M16 with a collapsible butt, and loaded them up before climbing into the wagons.

  I left them to it. First things first. I powered up the laptop and connected to the room's ADSL.

  I had no idea how the secure comms worked on one of the Firm's machines, but there was encryption and decryption at each end, and that was all I needed to know. Normal email addresses were used. I was on AOL, paid for by direct debit from my ACA bank account at the Royal Bank of Scotland. I'd be sending to a Hotmail account belonging to the Yes Man. Echelon wouldn't be able to intercept: it would be a load of old mush bouncing around in cyberspace until the Yes Man opened up his own computer and retrieved it.

  The mailbox was full of emails about jobs I was planning and had already done for the publisher. Their emails would keep arriving all the time I was away. There was also a healthy amount of spam. In fact, it looked so normal I was amazed the Firm hadn't downloaded some porn on to it.

  The hidden bit of the hard drive prompted me for my password. I keyed in my eight-digit army number and it took me straight online.

  There was one email with an attachment waiting. It was from the Yes Man.

  Dom's reply this morning to the email Siobhan had sent from the kitchen wasn't good news. The language was controlled, but you could tell he was sweating.

  The sofas are blue – remember it took us a

  month of shopping to find just the right shade?

  Darling, they have told me that if the money

  isn't ready by Saturday, they will kill me. Please

  make sure all the funds from Patrick or whoever

  come in by electronic transfer – no checks

  – so the money is ready to move. I will give you

  details of how and where as soon as you tell

  me you're ready. I love you. Dx

  Siobhan's email, in contrast, was all over the place. I imagined her sitting at the island sobbing into her alcohol.

  I WILL HAVE THE MONEY . . . patricks nearly

  got everything sorted . . . i will have the money

  darling . . . please tell them to hold on I have it,

  it will be ready for them anywhere anytime . . .

  please tell them not to harm you, i will have

  their money. When you reply, wherever you are,

  we'll have good news – I promise. I love you.

  Please tell me what happened to John's black

  BMW last winter. Please show me you are still

  alive. I love you . . .

  I reread them both. There was something wrong with Dom's. The proof-of-life statements showed he was alive around the time they were sent, but it didn't feel like Dom was sending them.

  He was a clever lad with a degree in English literature. Under duress he might spell the odd word wrong, but he wouldn't have spelt 'cheque' like an American. In fact, I knew he didn't. I'd seen the proof in Pete's files. So had I got an American at the end of these emails? Could be; there were enough of them in-country.