At Hell's Gate

by Mark Abernethy

  I greeted them and thanked them for showing up, and then gave them the broad brush-strokes story. I kept it short and said we weren’t doing the original gig – instead we were escorting the client home to England and I wanted Rich to do the security detail with MG, and maybe me.

  Doug and Timmo had been brought on for specialities, and I still might need those. But they – along with Steph – would not be needed in England. They stared at me blankly, none of them particularly thrilled: Timmo wanted his first private gig, Doug had been looking forward to doing a retrieval of cell tower systems hardware, and Rich? There was good reason he lived in the Emirates, not England.

  ‘For now,’ I said, ‘we have some French mercenaries looking for us and we’re going to sit tight. And that means, in the room.’

  I let myself out and paused in the hallway. Hiding in a hotel was a short-term safety solution, after which it became a deathtrap.

  13

  There was a window at the end of our hallway, and I stood at it, looking over Kabul as I made the call to AAA Freight. I went straight through to the CEO and made my point directly. ‘I need a charter today,’ I told him.

  ‘I have you down for late next week,’ he said. ‘You’re pencilled for Thursday–Friday – I’ve got you in the Falcon.’

  ‘It’s fluid,’ I said. ‘We need a lift into London.’

  He tut-tutted and said, ‘Right now all my assets are in the air, and I’m booked up for the weekend.’

  ‘No backloads through this part of the world?’

  ‘Sorry, Mike,’ he said. ‘Can put you on stand-by?’

  ‘Let me know,’ I snapped, and ripped the phone away from my face. A black Toyota Land Cruiser had just pulled up on the other side of the street, and three men were getting out. From their movements I knew they were carrying. The driver stayed put, and as the men walked around the car to get to the Maple Leaf Inn, the bald driver put down his window and yelled something to a goon in a red shirt. I knew that driver’s chrome-dome, and his face – or what was left of it.

  Shit! I’d expected maybe a half-day of grace before the crap started. I hadn’t even retrieved the firearms MG had acquired and the cars hadn’t been hidden – they were sitting in the courtyard, waiting for someone with US dollars to start asking questions. I stuck my head in the door of my room, and asked Steph and MG to step out.

  ‘The guns are in the back of the white Patrol,’ said MG, anticipating the question. ‘I’ll go down the back wall with Rich, get the guns, and deal with these bastards.’

  The back wall was the two-storey drop from our room windows, into the courtyard. But I didn’t want them shimmying down a wall to some waiting goons. ‘Let’s wait till we know they’re coming up the stairs, and once they’re inside you go, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ said MG, and we got Rich out of his room, explained the plan. I wanted everyone else in the rooms. Steph would keep her SIG, and keep guard on Gregory.

  I moved down the far end of the hallway, where the stairwell came out on the landing. I looked back and Steph was waiting in the half-opened door. French voices echoed up from the reception area, and I could hear the staff playing dumb and not doing a very good job. These locals had put up with so much crap in this damned country, and I really didn’t expect them to hold out for our sakes. The French goons started in on bad English, spoken in a French accent, to an Afghani hotel worker, who – if he was the owner – might actually have been Pakistani. If not for the danger of it, the scene would have been comical, and I was heartened to find that it’s not only English speakers who raise their voices when someone can’t understand them. I was hearing it quite clearly now. The people behind the desk were pretending not to know who owned the Nissan Patrols parked in the courtyard, and the Frenchies didn’t believe them. Eventually, the French voices went back to speaking French and from the conversation I gathered that the goons were booking a room to give themselves the right to enter the hotel. Two minutes later they were in the wooden stairwell and moving up. They had one landing and hallway to have a look along before trying our floor and I could see their shadows and hear their footfalls, even though I couldn’t see them.

  I must have held my breath for a minute or so, and then the footfalls were back in the stairwell and they were coming up. I knew there was more than one of them, but I couldn’t say for sure there were three. It was too late: as they came around the bend in the stairwell, I leaned back from the railing and gave a thumbs-up to Steph, who turned and set MG and Rich on their way.

  I scooted down the hallway as fast and silently as I could, intent on my own plan to draw the gunmen away from our rooms. I don’t mind hand-to-hand, but three armed men against five people – with one handgun between them? That was a turkey shoot and I wanted to draw the attention onto one person – me – and lure them away.

  At the end of the hallway where I’d stood looking out the window, I slid the security bolt, lifted the sash window frame, and threw my leg over the sill. My heart banged in my chest as the crew-cut heads bobbed up the stairwell, at the level of the hallway floor. They paused: then Red Shirt stuck his head up, looked to his right and then to his left, and in doing so locked eyes with mine. Then some Gallic nonsense burbled out of his mouth and his silenced handgun came up and around, and he was moving towards me down the hallway and aiming up, his crew right behind him. I grabbed onto the downpipe on the outside and slid. I couldn’t get a proper grip on the pipe – it was too close to the wall – so I slid down too fast and lost my grip, sailing onto the dirt below and turning my ankle as I hit the ground. Rolling onto my back, gasping with the pain, I looked back at the opened window on the second floor, waiting for the Frenchies to arrive. Trying to stand up – not taking my eyes off that window – I caught action from my right, and the security guard who’d ushered us into the courtyard was running across the road at someone behind me. I turned and saw Chrome-Dome in front of his Land Cruiser, hands in the air now and dropping a 9mm pistol as the security man closed in with his M4.

  I looked back up at the window, where Timmo looked down on me.

  ‘All sorted?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, boss,’ he said, an M4 in his hands. ‘Sorted.’

  14

  So, try this: you have four Europeans, handcuffed in your Kabul hotel room, while you wait for a charter flight out of the country. The Taliban want you, a terrorist ‘foundation’ wants you, and the government thinks you’re tendering to build their agricultural college buildings. And the police would want you if for one second the flow of US dollars stopped and the hotel workers picked up the phone and made the call. Whoever said timing was everything didn’t know the half of it.

  The Frenchies and their two associates were bound at the ankles and wrists (behind the back) and we had duct-taped their mouths and put pillowcases over their heads. There’d been no rough stuff, no torture. My crew was focused on getting out of the city and doing so before elements such as the Taliban came a’knocking. I didn’t want to try our luck through the commercial airlines, because I was unsure of who would be waiting for us there. I didn’t want to stay at this hotel, and I had no plan for the Frenchies except that I wasn’t going to let them go until we were wheels-up.

  ‘You could try Amos,’ said MG, on the subject of the lift out of here. ‘He might be around – he owes me a couple.’

  ‘What’s he flying?’ I asked. Amos was a long-time contractor to foreign governments who needed people and equipment freighted around the Middle East and Asia Minor.

  ‘The 727, I think,’ said MG. ‘Never saw him with nothing else.’

  ‘Can you call him?’ I said.

  MG nodded and ducked out of the room. I stood and looked down on the courtyard. I felt trapped and nervous, and in need of an escape hatch. It was now just before 4 pm local time and this was the zone in which hotels sent their guest lists to the state security people. I didn’t want to be in this hot
el overnight – the only reason we were still there was that I’d made it worth everyone’s while to stay quiet, offering lots of money to reward brave security guards and loyal reception managers.

  MG stuck his head in the door, phone against his ear, and crooked his finger my way.

  I joined the Texan in the hallway. ‘Amos is in Baku,’ said MG in a raspy whisper. ‘He can be here in two and half hours, but the England flight will be into Bristol.’

  ‘Bristol?’

  ‘Apparently you have to buy slots, and he can’t get them at the London airports at such short notice.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘How much?’

  ‘He’ll do it for forty-five thousand US,’ said MG. ‘Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, and when MG had confirmed, I put out my hand. MG gave me the phone.

  ‘Hi, Amos, Mike here,’ I said. ‘Price is fine, Bristol is fine – thanks for doing this at short notice.’

  ‘I am owing the MG the favour,’ said Amos in a singsong Indian accent.

  ‘I’ll have my laptop with me at the airport, can I pay you online?’

  ‘Yes, because the MG vouched for you.’

  ‘I need to clear seven people onto that aircraft – how are you connected at Kabul International?’

  ‘I am texting MG the number of my agent, Raj,’ said Amos. ‘You call him in twenty minutes, after I can talk to him. He will deal with that.’

  ‘Okay, Amos,’ I said, a bit wary. ‘I’ll see you at the freight section around 6.30 tonight?’

  ‘I have an 1800 landing slot and 1845 take-off,’ he said, and then said he had to go.

  I stared at the phone. Decisions, turning points, people’s lives in my hands. I handed back the phone.

  ‘Well?’ said MG.

  I breathed in deeply through my nostrils. ‘Fuck – I wish I had a choice or a bargaining chip.’

  ‘I stand by you on the call,’ said MG, slow but determined. ‘You don’t make this decision alone. Steph’s in too.’

  I looked at my offsider, saw the high cheekbones and the pale eyes that never wavered. The first time I got drunk with this man I could have sworn I saw death dancing in those eyes. But I trusted him with my life, and he trusted me too.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ I said. ‘We stagger the departures, one at a time, in cabs to the airport.’

  ‘Leave the Frenchies here,’ said MG.

  ‘The cars and the firearms?’

  MG said, ‘Leave the cars here.’

  ‘And those M4s?’ I said.

  ‘I know a couple of security dudes who’d love those new weapons,’ said MG, allowing a rare smile. ‘Might buy us more time.’

  I nodded. We had a plan.

  15

  I sent out the troops in a ten-minute stagger, letting them stroll down the stairs, smile at the desk staff and walk out into the late afternoon to catch a cab to the airport. By the time Timmo, Rich and Doug had left, I ducked into my room and saw Steph and MG looking at something on his smartphone. It was suddenly very obvious.

  ‘When did you two become an item?’ I said to MG, big smile on my face.

  MG blushed and Steph punched him on the arm. ‘I told you he’d notice,’ she said, grabbing him around the neck and giving him a kiss on the cheek. ‘There, it’s official.’

  ‘Well done,’ said Gregory, a rare smile from a scared man.

  ‘Okay, happy trails,’ I said. ‘Steph, you’re next. And don’t let those others start talking to one another.’

  As she stood, MG’s phone buzzed. He took it, said, ‘Hi Raj,’ and listened and nodded.

  When he finished the call, he looked at me. ‘Raj says to come through the freight depot, there’s an official in there to stamp our passports. The plane stops outside the freight section and refuels for twenty minutes.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  ‘And buddy?’ he said. ‘Raj says to have the money ready.’

  I nodded, and said goodbye to Steph. ‘I’ll text the others – you go straight to the freight depot.’

  When she’d gone I asked MG and Gregory, ‘What’s the going rate for seven outbound stamps in Kabul?’

  ‘Thousand US?’ said Gregory.

  ‘Sounds right,’ said MG, lighting a smoke.

  I looked in my under-garment bag and saw that my cash reserves were down to slightly more than US$5000. I pulled out a thousand, put the wad in one pocket, and took out another thousand, put it in my other pocket. There are some auctions you can’t lose.

  I brought up the rear of the staggered armada, riding with Gregory in an old Toyota Camry station wagon taxi. I carried what I came into this country with: a backpack, a wheelie cabin bag and a lot of cash in my pockets. I felt deflated.

  At the freight depot we were met at the security doors by Raj, an organised and clean-cut thirty-year-old who in Sydney would have been an advertising guy and in LA a television producer. In Kabul, the freight and logistics guys had a lot of power and status. I’m talking a crimson silk shirt and an expensive set of suit pants.

  He ushered us through the security screens and explosive beepers and we walked with him down a long fluorescent-lit hallway, which opened into an enormous dispatch bay connected to bonded warehouses. There was a kiosk on one side of the hangar doors, with the Afghan government crest over the window, and a lounge waiting area beside it, where a Pakistani TV show was blaring. My crew lay around in various states, checking smartphones, slurping coffee and chewing tactical nutrition bars.

  Raj stopped me. ‘So, seven people, yes?’

  I turned my back to the customs kiosk and pulled out a thousand US dollars.

  He took it and made a face as he counted. ‘No, no,’ he started, and as I reached for my other pocket, he counted off $700, kept it and handed back $300.

  ‘It’s all good,’ he said with a smile. ‘Amos special rate.’

  We lined up and Raj roused the official behind his desk to get on with it, and we got our passports stamped. I looked around for the source of the coffee and a shriek and whoosh sounded from across the runway. I turned to see a grimy, white, unmarked Boeing 727 bounce and squeal, throwing up a cloud of tyre smoke and settling into an otherwise panic-free landing.

  ‘Amos,’ said Raj, smiling and pointing.

  I nodded but I couldn’t raise a smile.

  The 727 taxied to a man with blinking red paddles, about 100 metres from where we waited. I looked at my watch: just on 6.11 pm. The dusk was about to settle but there was still some natural light. As the refuelling truck drove out to meet the plane, Raj stood beside me. ‘I have been on the radio with Amos,’ he said calmly. ‘From his cockpit he can see into the passenger terminal and the security and police are in there, herding around the travellers.’

  I turned to him slowly. ‘I see.’

  ‘Yes, we see,’ said Raj.

  ‘Looking for someone?’ I asked.

  ‘It looks that way to Amos,’ said Raj. ‘He is suggesting we load the plane with a ULD, perhaps with you being inside it?’

  I tried to remember that acronym, and it suddenly became clear. ‘What, an airline container?’

  ‘Only until you’re on board,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t travel that way.’

  I looked at him, wondering if he was taking the piss. But he was serious. Behind him I could see an array of aluminium airline freight containers.

  I shook my head. ‘How much, Raj?’

  ‘Well, you can’t buy it, but I’ll rent it to you . . .’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  I pulled out the other wad of US$1000, slapped it into his palm and closed his hand around it. ‘Let’s go, Raj.’

  Raj yelled at a bunch of warehouse workers, and a forklift-loader fired up. I told the team that we’d be getting onto that plane in a container, but we wouldn’t be
travelling in it. Not a glimmer from them – no reaction. The container – basically an aluminium box with a contoured roof so it could slide into an aircraft fuselage – was planted in front of us. Raj opened the door on the front of it and herded us in. A ruckus broke out somewhere in the building. It looked like the Afghani security types were entering the freight depot.

  ‘Who’s that?’ said Steph.

  ‘Not your friends,’ said Raj, pushing her by the waist. ‘Please don’t move around. Stay very still.’

  I couldn’t believe it had come to this, but we squeezed in and Raj shut the door.

  ‘This was necessary?’ whispered Steph, once everything had gone black.

  ‘The security forces are searching the passenger terminal,’ I said into the dark as the container was heaved off the ground and we started moving. ‘We can’t be found here and we can’t be seen walking across the tarmac.’

  ‘I vote we get on the plane any way we can,’ said Gregory’s voice.

  ‘Amen, brother,’ said MG in the inky blackness.

  The journey slowed and we were touching down and being slid. Someone fiddled with the sides and corners of the container – locking it down, I guess – and then there was the whining sound of hydraulics and I realised the PEMCO freight door in the left side of the aircraft was coming down. It made one last squeal, and the locking pins shot into place, and then the doors of the container were opened. We were inside the 727, which was lit up by the internal working floodlights. We stepped out and a friendly young Indian man greeted us. We were looking at two sets of three seats, side by side, located directly behind the cockpit bulkhead. Six seats, seven people.