John tuned into Ferhad’s conversation. Was he helping them or betraying them? He couldn’t follow what they were saying but observed the body language, trying to get a feel for what was going on. Ferhad was laughing, and the man on his side seemed relaxed, his left hand on the roof of the car, the shotgun in his right pointing at the ground. His beard hid the lower part of his face, but his eyes looked happy. He slapped Ferhad on the shoulder and stepped back, nodding at the man in front of the car who stepped aside. Ferhad waved out the window and pulled away slowly.
Nothing was said for five-hundred meters until Steve exclaimed, “Fuck me! I need to change my underwear.”
John realized he had been holding his breath and exhaled, the tension flowing out of him with his breath.
Mansur was saying something to Ferhad, and Ferhad burst into laughter. Mansur turned to look at Steve,
“I told him about your underwear.”
“Thanks, mate. You’re a true friend.”
“He said, don’t worry, these people all know him.”
“Hmmm, I hope so.”
John heard buzzing again, and he fished his phone out of his pocket and looked at the screen. Nothing. Frowning, he turned to Steve,
“Did your phone buzz?”
“I don’t know, mate. I didn’t notice.”
“Check it. I heard buzzing.”
Steve retrieved his phone and looked at the screen. He grinned.
“It’s Mia. She’s okay.”
56
“There’s another message.” Steve excitedly scrolled down. “She says she’ll wait for us in front of the park opposite the stadium tonight.” He puffed out air in relief and looked at John. It was the happiest John had seen him since he first arrived in Dubai.
“See, Steve, I told you things would work out.” John leaned forward. “Mansur, ask him if he knows where the stadium is in Idlib. We have to go there.”
Mansur spoke to Ferhad, asked a few questions, then turned back to John.
“He does. The Al-Baladi Stadium. He said everyone knows it. Before the war, they used to play football there.”
Ferhad continued talking with Mansur, interjecting with a question now and then before Mansur turned in his seat to look at John. His face was troubled.
“What?”
“He says Hemin told him why we are here. He thinks it’s... how do you say... noble? But he says we won’t be able to get there. It’s impossible.”
“Why not?”
“That area is controlled by Hay’at Tahrir al-Shams. The enemy. There’s heavy fighting around there between the government and them. He says we can’t cross over. He says even if we could, they will probably kill us.”
“Well, we sort of knew that, anyway.”
Mansur nodded, his eyes moving from John to Steve and back again.
“So, what do we do?”
John glanced at Steve, whose face was set in a worried frown.
“Ask him how far it is from Manbij to Idlib.”
Mansur asked, then replied, “Around one hundred and fifty kilometers.”
“Hmmm, okay, let me think about it. There will be a way. There always is.” John looked at his watch and settled back in his seat. “We have a lot of time yet before we need to worry about it.”
“How can you be so relaxed?” Steve asked.
John looked over and studied Steve’s worried face.
“I’m not relaxed at all, but if I sit here worrying, I won’t come up with a solution. At least we are in the country and heading in the right direction. Two days ago, we couldn’t have imagined this.” He gestured around the car. “So, let’s just keep moving forward and take it one step at a time.”
“Mr. John is right.” Mansur agreed. “Inshallah, we will find a way.”
Steve nodded reluctantly. “So, what do I tell her?”
John thought for a moment. “Tell her to hang on. There’s no point in her waiting for us at the stadium when we don’t know yet when and how we’ll get there. Say we are on our way and will let her know later when and where to meet.”
“Okay.” Steve started typing a message into his phone.
“Mansur?”
Mansur turned in his seat. “Yes.”
“Ask him if he can take us any closer than Manbij?”
Mansur and Ferhad spoke for a while, Ferhad shaking his head and looking more and more uncomfortable.
Mansur turned back to face them.
“He says okay, he can maybe take us to Arima. It’s another fifteen kilometers, but he said it would be risky. More checkpoints, maybe fighting.”
“Okay.” John stared at the back of Mansur’s seat, thinking of what to do next. “Tell him okay and ask him if he can wait for us, maybe a day or so. We’ll double his fare. What do you think, Mansur?”
“I don’t think he’ll mind. From what he’s told me, he doesn’t have much business.”
John nodded and waited for Mansur to translate.
“He says he will wait for one day. If we are not back by then, he will leave.”
“Good, thanks.” John turned his head to look out the window as Ferhad guided the car along the road that bypassed the town. From a distance, the town looked unremarkable, the outskirts dusty and rubbish-strewn.
“We’ll have to put the bags in the back to make room for them,” John spoke aloud, as he thought.
Steve looked away from his window. “But what about the checkpoints? She won’t have any papers.”
“I was thinking about that. Let’s remember where the checkpoints are. On the way back, we’ll stop before each one, and she’ll have to climb into the trunk until we are through the checkpoint.” He turned to look at Steve and grimaced. “I know it sounds horrible, but I think it’s the safest way. We just have to hope they don’t check the trunk.” He shrugged. “If as our friend here says, they all know him, we should be able to get through safely.”
“I hope so.”
So do I. John went back to gazing out the window.
57
Hemin switched off the engine and climbed out of his pickup. He could hear children playing, and his face lit up in a smile. Stepping through the front gate, he called out, “Dilnaz, Parwen.”
He heard a squeal of delight, and two little girls came piling out the front door. He squatted down with his arms open, and they ran into his arms. He gave them both a squeeze, setting them off into a round of giggles, then looked up to see his wife, Rosna, standing in the doorway, drying her hands on a dishcloth. Hemin ruffled the two girls’ hair and stood. He winked at Rosna as the girls ran back inside.
“How did it go?” Rosna asked.
“Good.” Hemin smiled. “Easy.”
His phone buzzed, and he reached behind him to pull it out of his rear pocket. He glanced at the screen and raised a finger.
“I’ll be in in a minute.”
He waited for Rosna to turn around and head back inside, then tapped at the screen.
“Yes, boss.”
“Did they get across okay?”
“Yes. It all went smoothly.”
“Good.”
Hemin waited for Mehmet to continue. He walked over to the gate and leaned his elbows on the top. The street was still quiet, the low rays of the morning sun throwing long shadows across the road.
The men should be well on their way by now. He heard the girls behind him and turned to see them run out the front door again, giggling and laughing. They wrapped their arms around his legs and clung tight as their mother came out and tried to shoo them away. Hemin smiled and pried their arms loose, waving them back inside. If the men had found Ferhad, he would look after them. Hemin hoped they succeeded. No-one deserved to have a family member stuck in a war zone.
He heard Mehmet clear his throat. “Did they say where they were going?”
Hemin frowned. “Yes. Idlib.”
“Idlib? Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Hemin ran his fingers through his hair. He was uneasy. He had done a l
ot of work for Mehmet in the past, lucrative work, most of it on the wrong side of the law. He had to. He had no formal education; his family had been poor, and he had grown up the hard way. There was little work now, trade between the two countries affected badly by the war, and he needed to make ends meet. He had two daughters to look after, and if that meant working for people like Mehmet, that’s what he had to do, but he didn’t necessarily like or trust the man.
“And there were just the three of them?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“Boss?” The phone line had already gone dead.
Hemin stared at the phone screen. What was Mehmet up to?
58
Mia knelt in the dirt, the stones digging into her kneecaps, but she daren’t move. She kept her head down, her hijab pulled forward to hide her face, just an anonymous black-clad figure crouched in the street.
She tried to understand the raised voices around her, but they spoke too fast. There were four or five voices; she thought one was Naeem’s but wasn’t sure.
Despite everything she had gone through since she had arrived in Syria, she had never felt as low as she did now. From the joy of hearing that Uncle Steve was about to save her to groveling in the street as the fighters stood around her, arguing. There was no hope now. She had managed to send the last message, but Abu Mujahid spotted the phone as she tried to slip it back inside the folds of her abaya.
Her ribs ached from where he had kicked her, and the sweet taste of blood was on her tongue. She probed her teeth with her tongue and winced as pain shot through her head from a loose incisor. The right side of her face throbbed, and she could barely see out of her right eye as it closed up. A tear trickled down her left cheek, and she sniffed. The argument grew louder, two voices, in particular, screaming at each other in rapid-fire Arabic. She heard a click, then felt something cold and hard press against the back of her head. This was it… the end. She took a deep breath as panic welled within her. Maybe it was better this way. The suffering would end... but Malak.... her life had barely started. Mia’s lip quivered, and she closed her left eye, took another deep breath, and retreated inward. The shouting grew fainter. Her lips began to move in silent prayer.
Bismillah ar-raḥmān ar-raḥīm, in the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. If you really do exist, now is the time to prove it. You can take me, I am ready, all I ask is that you look after Malak, my beautiful angel. Please protect her, keep her safe from harm, so she can lead a full, joyful life away from all this suffering.
59
Exiting Al-Malikiyah was trouble-free, passing through the checkpoint on the west of the town easier than coming in. The guards were more interested in who was coming in than going out.
The road continued west, following the line of the Turkish border through more fields and patches of stony, uncultivable desert before joining the M4 near the town of Qamishli.
Until then, the only signs of war had been the checkpoints, but as they headed further west, there were more signs of military activity. Along one stretch of road, a convoy of armored vehicles was parked, the soldiers sitting beside their vehicles, brewing coffee, and watching idly as they passed. John noticed the red, white, and blue of the Russian flag flying on some of the vehicles. In the opposite direction, pickups and sedans passed, laden high with personal belongings, furniture, bags as people fled the fighting in the west, heading for a more peaceful area closer to the Turkish border.
At one point, an almighty roar filled the air as two fighter planes screamed past overhead so low, the vibration from their engines rocked the car. It was unclear whose air force they belonged to, and when Mansur questioned Ferhad, he shrugged, explaining it was hard to keep track of who was flying overhead, Turkey, Syria, Russia, or even America.
Ferhad explained that for people like him, the people in power were all the same, all interested in control and lining their pockets. No-one had the best interests of the populace in mind.
They made slow but steady progress, the road mostly straight and uninteresting. John struggled to keep awake as kilometer after kilometer of sand and dust passed by on each side. Occasionally, they had to detour where the road had been bombed, and large craters blocked their passage. They stopped several times to stretch their legs, pee, and remove layers of clothing, the temperature rising as the sun climbed across the sky. John shared a packet of biscuits while Ferhad smoked and chatted with Mansur. The time passed slowly in an unending blur of sandy brown and grey.
Approaching Ain Issa in the middle of the afternoon, Ferhad warned of another checkpoint, and they made themselves ready. Despite checkpoints so far being mainly a formality, John’s heartbeat increased again. He took a series of slow, deep breaths to bring it back under control—five seconds in, five seconds out, six breaths a minute. He emptied his mind of what might happen and focused on his breathing. It worked, and as they joined the queue for the checkpoint, he felt calmer than he had all morning. He glanced across at Steve, who didn’t seem to be doing so well, his face creased in a nervous frown. Mansur, however, seemed outwardly relaxed.
As before, they edged slowly forward, and John took the time to observe the checkpoint. A large armored truck faced them on the right-hand side of the road, a yellow flag, with what looked to be a map of Eastern Syria in white in the middle, flew from an aerial on the vehicle. John reached forward and tapped Mansur on the shoulder.
“Ask him who these people are. The flag is different from the other checkpoints.”
Mansur translated, then replied, “They are the Syrian Democratic Force. Their headquarters are in this town. He said, don’t worry. They are also Kurdish.”
“Okay, should be alright then.” John leaned back in his seat and looked at Steve. “Bloody confusing here.”
Three men in camouflage clothing lounged on the top of the armored vehicle, automatic weapons cradled on their laps. Ostensibly, they looked relaxed, but their eyes scanned every vehicle as it approached.
John switched his attention to the left side of the road, where a dusty Humvee was parked at right angles to the road. Mounted on top and pointed in their direction was a large machine gun behind an armored shield. A man with a red and white checked shemagh wrapped around his face sat behind it, his finger inside the trigger guard.
John gulped and brought his attention back to his breathing—five seconds in, five seconds out.
Ferhad drove slowly forward and stopped, calling out a greeting to the men approaching him on the driver’s side. There were two men on his side and three men on the passenger side, all armed with versions of the Kalashnikov, faces hidden behind shemaghs or balaclavas.
One of the soldiers barked a series of terse questions at Ferhad while the other men looked inside the car, weapons at the ready. They were tense, jumpy, not relaxed like the checkpoints they had been through so far.
The man questioning Ferhad raised his voice, and Ferhad shook his head, gesticulating with his hands.
“Mansur, what’s happening?” John asked from the corner of his mouth, his eyes still on the men on his side, a smile fixed on his face.
Before Mansur could answer, the man on John’s side stepped forward and pointed his weapon at John’s face, shouting something in Arabic. John’s heart skipped a beat. Another man stepped forward and pulled open the door, gripped John’s vest by the shoulder and pulled him out of the vehicle. John stumbled, trying to regain his footing, his hands held high in the air. Bile rose in his throat as his system went into panic mode. What the fuck was happening? He was pushed to his knees, while the other soldier kept his weapon trained on John’s head. From the corner of his eye, he could see the same thing happening to Mansur, and a moment later, Ferhad and Steve were pushed to the ground beside him. Their backpacks were thrown to the ground, and the men stood back, weapons trained on them. John could hear Steve breathing fast and heavy. Ferhad remonstrated in rapid Arabic, only to receive a shouted response from the leader of the guards. He sank
back into silence.
John’s mind went into overdrive. Had they been betrayed? Was it Mehmet or even Hemin? Was his life going to end here, in the dirt on the side of the road in Syria?
He turned his head slowly to look at Steve and caught his eye. He tried to look confident and gave him a nod of encouragement, but he daren’t ask Mansur anything after they shouted at Ferhad.
John noticed a movement in his peripheral vision and slowly turned his head to look at the armored truck. The men on top were alert now, their weapons raised, but from behind the vehicle, a man approached. He was tall and like the rest of the men, dressed in camouflage clothing, his only weapon, a handgun in a holster on his waist. His face was unmasked, and his close-cropped beard was flecked with grey. He carried himself with confidence, and John assumed he was their officer. Two of the men stepped to one side, giving him room as he stood in front of them and studied them.
John guessed his age to be in his late forties, although his weather-beaten skin and dark-circled eyes could have been misleading. He studied them one by one, then issued a quiet command. A soldier slung his weapon over his shoulder and knelt down in front of their backpacks. John felt a bead of sweat on his temples, and again, he attempted to bring his attention back to his breathing, but it wasn’t working. The soldier unzipped Steve’s bag and looked through the camera equipment, pulling out each lens and examining it before putting it back. He pulled out the camera, thumbed it on, and scrolled through the photos Steve had taken earlier that morning in Zuhajrijja. He then checked all the side pockets before zipping the bag up again. Moving to John’s bag, he went through it, pulling out the notebook, and John cursed, wishing he had at least written something suitable inside to make it look more genuine. The man leafed through the blank pages, then tossed the book back inside. He pulled out the laptop, turned it over, examining it, opened it up, closed it again, then put it back. He checked all the side pockets, then zipped the bag back up before standing up and nodding to his commander.
Payback - John Hayes Series 06 (2020) Page 14
