by Damien Lewis
‘What have we got on the menu today, then, boss?’ Mat asked. ‘I hear there might be a gripping mass surrender.’
‘Yes, some six hundred AQT have agreed to surrender to General Dostum’s forces, somewhere to the east of Mazar. We’ve been asked along simply to “observe” today’s surrender. So once again, we’ve got no role, really. I reckon it’s just our US buddies taking pity on us and inviting us along for the ride.’
By mid-morning, the two SBS teams were in their Land-Rovers following a US 5th SOF Humvee out of Mazar. The SBS soldiers trundled along the baking tarmac in their gleaming white vehicles, with their faces wrapped in shamags and wearing battered jeans and T-shirts – so that no casual observer would be quite certain who the British soldiers really were. They headed out into the desert towards the east of the city, on the main Mazar–Kunduz road. They made for a fortified mound that housed a vehicle checkpoint manned by NA soldiers. From the top of the mound, they would have a clear view of the surrender taking place about a mile or so to the east of them.
They had been ordered that on no account should they allow themselves to be seen by the surrendering enemy. General Dostum feared that the sight of British and American forces might inflame the situation and jeopardise the surrender deal. To the east there was a sea of tiny, indistinct figures shimmering in the distant heat haze. Mat broke out his binoculars to take a closer look. Under high magnification he could just make out what was going on. It looked like a scene from some period action movie, with a crowd of berobed and beturbaned AQT on one side of the desert, and a bunch of Northern Alliance soldiers in a motley collection of uniforms on the other. They appeared to be in the middle of some kind of stand-off, with the six hundred heavily armed AQT refusing to give up their weapons. Like anyone else of any import, General Dostum was away at Kunduz, and perhaps that accounted in part for the enemy’s reluctance to surrender. Perhaps they wanted the General on hand to personally vouch for the terms under which they would be laying down their arms.
The tense negotiations dragged on for hours. Finally, Mat observed the first weapons being handed over. But the Northern Alliance soldiers were making little or no attempt to search the AQT fighters. According to Captain Lancer, that was the nature of the deal struck between the enemy and General Dostum – that there would be no degrading body searches of the AQT fighters. In the Afghan tradition of warfare, you were supposed to surrender with dignity, and with a respect that was reciprocated by the victors. As an honourable Muslim it was taken as given that you would have handed over all your weapons, which meant that no search was required. It all struck Mat as being more than a little suspect, but who was he to criticise such ancient traditions?
From the fortified mound on which they were standing a road ran some three miles south to Mazar airport. At first, the six hundred AQT were scheduled to go to the airport after their surrender, as hundreds of prisoners were incarcerated there already. But US warplanes had now started operating from out of the airport. Not surprisingly, the US military didn’t want any more enemy prisoners to be held in such close proximity to their air operations. As a result, the prisoners were loaded on to trucks and diverted to the only other large structure capable of holding so many captives – the ancient, mud-walled fortress at Qala-i-Janghi, about eight miles to the west of Mazar city.
The first truck to rumble past the checkpoint where Mat and the other lads were standing was piled high with surrendered weapons: AK47s, rocket launchers and heavy machine guns. Shortly after that, the first truckload of prisoners drove past the checkpoint en route to Qala-i-Janghi. As it did so, Mat, Sam, Jamie, Tom and the other SBS lads hid their faces from the enemy captives’ gaze.
After several hours of suffocating travel in the baking heat of an ancient Soviet truck, Ali and his brothers finally arrived at a location they immediately recognised, Qala-i-Janghi – the ‘Fort of War’. Until a few days earlier, this ancient, mud-walled fortress had been one of the Taliban’s key bases, which was how the brothers knew the place so well. But now, General Dostum’s forces had seized control. During the journey there had been much animated discussion among the sixty brothers crammed on to the back of the truck – and it was clear to Ali that his was not the only group of foreign Taliban who had no intention of surrendering.
Ali knew that Qala-i-Janghi was used as a major arms store, and was kept permanently stuffed full of weaponry. It seemed inconceivable to him that General Dostum’s men could have already removed all the arms that were stored there. In which case, being incarcerated there might just serve Ali and his brothers very well. If they could only get their hands on those weapons and the ammo dumps, then the much hoped for counter-attack would have every chance of succeeding beyond their wildest dreams. Insh’Allah, they could equip a whole army for jihad with the hardware stored in that fort.
As the brothers were unloaded from the truck, Ali noted how lightly they were being guarded. The Northern Alliance fools seemed to have learned little from the events at Balkh and elsewhere – where the brothers’ so-called ‘surrender’ had turned into a bloodbath for the enemy. Well, the whores would be made to pay for it with their lives. At their surrender earlier in the day, the brothers had been made to give up their main weapons – their RPGs, AK47s and their heavy and light machine guns. But scores of them had secreted smaller weapons under their traditional Afghan robes. All they had to do now was fight their way into one of the weapons stores. Then the glorious uprising would be underway, and, if Allah so willed it, unstoppable.
Ali glanced around him, checking out the fort’s defences and the number of guards. As he did so he caught sight of a group of foreigners chatting with some of the Northern Alliance soldiers. They were dressed in jeans, T-shirts and baseball caps, and Ali knew that they had to be either Europeans or Americans. At last he had sight of the people that he had come here to kill. He felt his blood thrill at the very thought of it. Before now, the hated kafir had always appeared as the pilots of distant aircraft screaming through the skies, cowards dropping steel and high explosives from the safety of 10,000 feet. Until now they had always been out of reach and untouchable.
Ali watched as three of the men separated themselves from the group and wandered over to where he and the brothers were waiting in line to be processed into the fort. They were carrying a large video camera, microphones and a tripod, so they had to be news journalists. They were members of the despised kafir media, Ali reflected, the propaganda machine of the Great Satan. All of the kafir media were biased and evil, because they ignored the murder of innocent Afghan women and children by US warplanes, focusing instead on their so-called victories. Just as they ignored the suffering in Palestine, because the kafir media was controlled by the stinking Jews. Ali hated the kafir journalists almost as much as he hated the kafir soldiers.
‘Hi. Mind if we have a word with you guys?’ the sandy-haired man at the front of the group asked one of the brothers. ‘Just roll the camera, Brad, and let’s see what we get,’ he added, speaking over his shoulder. His accent was clearly American, and Ali just stared over at him without saying a word, hatred burning in his eyes.
‘You mind if we have a word? OK? No? Yes? Well, I guess that’s a “no”?’ the journalist continued. ‘Hey, maybe he doesn’t have any English,’ he said, turning to his cameraman, who just shrugged his shoulders. ‘Hey, you know, you speak any English? I just wanna know why you’re here and why you surrendered? I guess he’s got no English. Hey, Brad, I guess we may need to get the translator over here, eh?’
‘I speak English,’ Ali spat out. ‘And we have NOT surrendered. We have not surrendered to the kafir dogs and we will never be surrendering.’
‘Hey, well, y’know, it looks to me pretty much like a surrender,’ the journalist countered. ‘And I guess that’s what the Northern Alliance guys think too, or you wouldn’t be here, now would you? Anyways, where’re you from?’
‘When the time comes, insh’Allah, you will be the first American pig to di
e,’ Ali snarled, deliberately speaking in Arabic so the journalist wouldn’t understand him. ‘Remember this kafir dog’s face, brothers, and remember it well.’
‘Hey, you’re defeated, disarmed and being held prisoner, buddy: looks pretty much like surrender to me,’ the journalist said, walking away. While he couldn’t understand Ali’s words, the sentiment was crystal clear. ‘But, whatever. Go figure.’
‘Brothers, we have waited so long to get the chance to fight the kafir,’ Ali continued, turning his back on the journalist. ‘Sooner or later, we knew that chance would come. Now, by the grace of Allah, we are being granted that chance. Brothers, by the grace of The One who makes the sun shine, the wind blow and the oceans roar, may we now be worthy to the call of the jihad.’
Within the hour, Ali and his fellow brothers were processed into the fort, along with hundreds of other prisoners. Before being taken down into the fort’s basement – where the majority of the prisoners were being held – Ali and his brothers suffered the indignity of having their hands bound. But none of them objected. They were waiting for the right moment to take the initiative and attack those holding them captive. They would only do so when the time was right – when some of the kafir American or British dogs were close enough at hand for the killing.
9
ULTIMATE BETRAYAL
THE MORNING AFTER the surrender of the six hundred enemy fighters, Mat, Jamie, Captain Lancer and the fourth member of their team, Stevie ‘Ruff’ Pouncer, headed out of Mazar on what was basically a bodyguarding mission. Mat knew Ruff as a tough, uncompromising soldier. His alternative nickname was ‘the Animal’ and he had a reputation for being a killing machine when the shit went down. While Ruff wasn’t exactly the world’s greatest conversationalist or philosopher, Mat always appreciated his presence in a potential combat situation.
Not that he felt they were going to get much action on today’s mission. A US Navy admiral was scheduled to visit a local Afghan hospital around lunchtime. The hospital building had been damaged during the fighting, and as part of the ongoing hearts-and-minds activity in the Mazar region the US had offered to rebuild the facility. The Admiral’s visit was the first step in that process – to assess what help the US could best provide. Captain Lancer’s four-man QRF team were tasked with checking out the security in the area prior to the Admiral’s visit.
They left Mazar city and drove out into the open desert, passing by an ancient mud-walled fortress. Its sloping ramparts rose some sixty feet above the desert, and were topped off by a massive, crenellated wall some ten feet high. Squat towers dominated each of the six corners of the fort, which were laid out in a rough hexagonal shape, and it had to be at least five hundred yards from end to end. It resembled a giant sandcastle, straight out of the Arabian Nights. But while it looked like something from the history books it was obviously still very much in use: a couple of Toyota pickups were parked up at the gates, and a dozen or so Afghan troops were wandering along the walls.
‘Holy fuck,’ Mat exclaimed. ‘What the bollocks is that?’
‘That, mate, is Qala-i-Janghi,’ Jamie replied. ‘Means “Fort of War”. Like something out of Lawrence of Arabia, ain’t it? That’s where Dostum has his HQ now.’
‘Awesome place,’ Mat exclaimed, shaking his head in amazement. ‘Awesome place. Ain’t that where the prisoners from yesterday are being held?’
‘You got it, mate, that’s the place,’ Jamie confirmed. ‘Never been in there – but inside it’s supposed to be a maze of compounds and bunkers and underground passageways.’
‘Sounds like something out of Lara Croft,’ Mat said. ‘Best place to put the fookers, anyways. Looks like they won’t be breaking out of there in a hurry.’
‘I reckon,’ Jamie replied. ‘So, spill the beans, mate. What d’you get up to in the Naka Valley, then?’
‘Not much. Like I said, ace quad-bike drivers, us,’ Mat grunted. ‘I got the verbal shit kicked out of me by an Afghan elder cos I wasn’t dressed smart enough to be paying a visit to his village; we were compromised by a wrinkled old goatherd, but we never realised it; and the US top brass refused to believe our intel reports cos they thought we were a bunch of nutters.’
‘That good, was it, mate?’
‘Yep. That and the fact that the US intel’s “mother of all terrorist training camps” turned out to be a school; their “unarmed combat training sessions” turned out to be school PE lessons; and their “terrorist recruitment rally” turned out to be the village funeral. So we called off the air strikes, gave the kiddies some sweets, had tea with the village elders, blew a few ammo dumps and came home.’
‘Doesn’t sound like we missed much then, mate.’
‘You know what, mate, in a way it was a cracking op,’ Mat replied, all serious for a moment. ‘Us lot stopped a load of innocent Afghan women and children from getting malleted by the US Air Force. Wasn’t what we went there intending to do, but what plan ever survives contact with the enemy?’
There were a few seconds silence while Jamie reflected on what Mat had just been saying.
‘Tell you what, mate, I’d rather’ve been on that op than this one, any day. At least it sounds like you did something. Over here, what are we? I mean, what are we? Special forces or a bunch of glorified bodyguards? Shakyboats, or tour guides for the US and Afghan top brass?’
‘That bad, is it, mate?’
‘It’s worse,’ Jamie snorted in reply.
Once they had arrived at the destination village, they set up fire positions wherever they could find a bit of shade, and waited for the top brass to show. Captain Lancer then accompanied the US Admiral on his walkabout of the village and the ruined hospital, while Mat, Jamie and Ruff tried not to look too bored. By lunchtime the visit was over, and the SBS lads were going out of their minds with the tedium of it all. When they’d left Poole for deployment to Afghanistan, some three weeks earlier, the last thing they’d expected to end up doing was acting as armed escorts to the US officer class. That sort of work did not require the unique skills of special forces soldiering.
They were glad to get in the vehicle and get on the move again. At least there would be a bit of a breeze on the drive back to Mazar. But they hadn’t been on the road for more than ten minutes when their Land-Rover slowed to a stop. Looking over the cabin roof Mat could see that there was a roadblock made of burning tyres up ahead, with a couple of very agitated-looking Afghan policemen waving all vehicles to a halt. The Land-Rover pulled off the tarmac and drove up to the front of the queue of stationary pickups and battered cars.
‘What the fuck’s that?’ Mat asked, as they came to a stop at the roadblock. He’d caught the distant noise of what sounded like gunfire. ‘That’s shooting, ain’t it, mate?’
‘You’re not wrong,’ Jamie said. Both of them were on their feet now, listening intently to the noise up ahead of them. ‘Sounds like a bevy of AKs – going at it hammer and tongs.’
As Captain Lancer went forward to speak with the two Afghan policemen, Mat and Jamie kept a close eye on him. There was an air of panic and confusion about the roadblock, and Mat doubted whether the Afghan policemen knew much more than they did about what was going on up ahead of them. Every now and then, among the distant crackle of small-arms fire, they could hear the heavier crump of larger weaponry, which sounded like RPGs and mortar rounds going off.
‘Sounds like a bit of a bloody rumble,’ Mat remarked, hopefully.
‘Yeah, about two miles distant, I’d say,’ Jamie replied. ‘Back up on the road to Mazar – the route we’re supposed to be taking.’
‘That’s all good then, mate,’ said Mat, with satisfaction. ‘Let’s get back on the bloody road, cos there’s no way we’re missing out on this one.’
‘Lads, something pretty major’s kicked off up at Qala-i-Janghi fort,’ Captain Lancer announced, as he strode back to the Land-Rover. ‘The police are going to let us through, but keep an eye out as it’s very confused out there. Before we go, I’m
just going to see if I can raise Boxer Base.’
The Captain put a call through to headquarters on the Land-Rover’s radio, but it turned out that the 5th SOF officer on duty at Boxer Base seemed to know little more about the firefight than they did. He had confused reports coming in of US personnel missing in action (MIA) at the fort. Some sort of rescue mission was being mooted, but the officer couldn’t say exactly who the MIAs were, or who had captured them. The one thing the officer was sure of was that he wanted Captain Lancer and his QRF force back at Boxer Base as soon as possible.
Some twenty minutes after making that radio call, the SBS Land-Rover pulled into Boxer Base compound. Captain Lancer and his men now knew that there was one hell of a shit fight going down at Qala-i-Janghi. On the drive past the ancient fortress they’d seen scores of Northern Alliance troops on the outside firing in, with a barrage of fire coming back at them from the fort’s occupiers. There was little doubt in the minds of the SBS soldiers what had taken place: the enemy prisoners had launched an uprising. As Mat had pointed out, none of the AQT prisoners had been properly searched, so they could easily have used hidden weapons to start an armed revolt. Captain Lancer headed off into Boxer Base to have a word with his opposite number from the US 5th SOF.
‘Any of you lot know what the fuck’s going on?’ Tom asked, as he and Sam came ambling over to the Land-Rovers.
‘Dunno exactly, mate, but it’s kicking off big time over at the old fort,’ Mat replied. ‘Reckon the shit’s hit the fan with the prisoners.’
‘That’s what it looked like to us, anyways,’ Jamie added. ‘What’s the score from your end?’
‘Don’t know a fuckin’ lot,’ Tom said. ‘Just what we’ve been told by the 5th SOF boys – which is to get our shit together cos there may be some US boys in the fort that need rescuin’.’
