Battleground

by Chris Ryan

  Ben felt angry. ‘Do you know where they live?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘On the outskirts of the village. Away from other people.’

  ‘Come on, then.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’re going to get your bag back.’

  Aarya shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, turning and starting to walk away.

  ‘It does matter,’ Ben called after her. As he spoke, he saw Ed, watching him from a distance, that unpleasant sneer still on his face.

  ‘Hey, Aarya,’ Ben shouted. ‘I thought you told me earlier today that you weren’t going to be bullied.’

  That got her attention. She spun round and there was a fire in her eyes. ‘I won’t,’ she stated fiercely.

  ‘Well, in that case,’ Ben said, walking up to her and trying to pretend that his stomach didn’t still hurt from the punch, ‘let’s go and get your books back.’

  Aarya led Ben to the outskirts of the village. It was different here. Quieter. Less bustling. Ben supposed that most people were sheltering from the midday heat.

  ‘My mother will be expecting me at home,’ Aarya said.

  ‘We won’t be long,’ Ben told her. ‘Come on, Aarya. If you don’t stand up to these people, they’ll only keep on doing it.’ Aarya looked down, and with a flash of insight Ben sensed that this had been going on for a long time.

  They turned a corner and found themselves at one end of a long street. There were a handful of beaten-up old vans parked on either side, and a thin dog sat in the middle of the road, its tongue lolling from the side of its mouth. Along each side of the road were wooden shacks, all of them closed up with rolling metal shutters and big locks. At the end of the street was a high, sand-coloured wall with an iron gate; and beyond that Ben could just make out the top of a house.

  Aarya pointed down the road. ‘Raheem lives there,’ she said.

  ‘Raheem?’ Ben asked. ‘Is he the one that took your bag? The one with the big nose?’

  She giggled, despite herself. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The one with the big nose.’

  Ben looked at the building. It was imposing, somehow. ‘You think he’s at home now?’

  ‘It is midday. Most people are.’ And then, looking around nervously: ‘We should be.’

  He chewed on his lower lip. ‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘Let’s just go and knock on the door. He won’t want his parents to find out what he did, will he?’

  Aarya snorted. ‘His parents are worse than him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  The girl scowled. ‘There are rumours, that is all.’

  ‘What kind of rumours?’

  ‘People visit them. People who are not from here. Just passing through.’ She seemed reluctant to speak.

  ‘They’re allowed to have visitors, aren’t they?’

  But Aarya avoided his question. ‘I think we should go home,’ she muttered. ‘I do not want anything to do with this family.’

  ‘No,’ Ben insisted. ‘Come on – it’ll be all right. What’s the worst they can do?’ He winked at her. ‘Anyway, I’m supposed to be seeing the sights, aren’t I?’

  He strode forward. Aarya followed a few paces behind.

  As they approached, the dog that had been sitting in the middle of the road scampered away, as though the approach of humans was something to fear. It seemed to Ben that it took a long time to walk the length of the road. His shirt stuck to his back from the sweat and the sun pounded on his head.

  They were perhaps twenty metres from the gate when they stopped. A vehicle had suddenly appeared, pulling up outside Raheem’s house after having turned into the road from the opposite end. Ben didn’t know what it was that made him want to hide. Perhaps Aarya’s nervousness had put him on edge; perhaps it was the vehicle itself. It was ordinary enough in its way – just a beige-coloured Land Rover – but it stuck out in this town where most of the vehicles were rusty and dented. It also stood out because there was a man hanging from the side, wearing black robes and with a rifle strapped across his back.

  More by instinct than anything else, Ben pulled Aarya by the wrist and dragged her towards the cover of one of the vans by the side of the road. Once they were out of sight, they peered round the vehicle and watched.

  ‘What is it?’ Aarya whispered.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ben said. ‘Let’s just say I’ve just got a bit of a thing about men with guns. A few bad experiences in the past.’

  Aarya nodded emphatically and they went back to watching.

  The Land Rover stopped to one side of Raheem’s gate and the man jumped down. Immediately two others spilled out. They were identically dressed and both carried weapons. One of them barked an instruction and the other two began looking around. The robed man Ben had seen first started walking down the road towards them, looking left and right as if checking that there was no one foolish enough to be out in the midday sun.

  As if checking that there was no one out on the streets to see them.

  Ben and Aarya ducked back out of sight. Ben sensed that his new friend was trembling. He wanted to whisper to her that it was going to be all right, but he didn’t want to make a sound so they crouched in silence behind the beaten-up truck.

  Ten seconds passed.

  Twenty seconds.

  And then, quite clearly, Ben heard footsteps. The armed man was still walking their way. He was now very close.

  Ben’s muscles tensed. The footsteps grew louder. From their hiding place behind the van, he saw a shadow approach down the middle of the road.

  And then the sound of footsteps stopped.

  He was holding his breath. They both were. Sweat dribbled down the side of Ben’s face. If the armed man took another couple of steps forward, he would see them. Ben didn’t quite know why, but something told him that really wouldn’t be a good thing.

  Time stood still. Across the road, Ben saw the dog that he had noticed earlier. It was sniffing against one of the stalls and he prayed it wouldn’t notice them and give their location away. He realized that every muscle in his body was preparing to run, if it should come to that.

  It didn’t. To Ben’s relief the shadow disappeared and he heard the footsteps disappearing back towards the Land Rover. Both he and Aarya breathed a deep sigh of relief. Ben wiped the sweat from his forehead and then, gingerly, peered round the corner of the van again. ‘Don’t!’ Aarya whispered. But Ben ignored her, and soon she too was looking down the road.

  The man was standing back by the Land Rover, but the other two had disappeared. The back doors of the vehicle had been opened and so had the gate to Raheem’s house, leading Ben to suppose that the other two armed men had gone inside.

  They watched and waited.

  Movement at the gate. The black-robed men had reappeared, and with them was another man. ‘Raheem’s father,’ Aarya whispered. ‘But what is that they are carrying?’

  Ben didn’t know. Whatever it was, though, they were handling it with great care. It took two of them to carry what looked, from this distance, like a dark, cylinder-shaped case. They seemed to carry it with ease, but Ben thought he could make out a look of extreme concentration on the face of Raheem’s father and the armed man who helped him lift it.

  The object was placed in the back of the Land Rover, then the doors were firmly shut. Raheem’s father was speaking to the three armed men, but they didn’t seem remotely interested in what he had to say. A few banknotes changed hands before the armed men turned and made their way back to the doors of the Land Rover.

  ‘They’re going,’ Ben whispered.

  And it was just as he spoke that he felt someone tapping on his shoulder.

  He spun round and, with a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach, saw a face with thick eyebrows, dark eyes and a large, hooked nose.

  ‘Raheem,’ Ben whispered.

  Raheem didn’t reply. At least, not to Ben. Instead he shouted at the top of his voice in the direction of his father and the armed men
. Ben didn’t understand what he said, and he certainly didn’t want to find out. He turned to Aarya and once more grabbed her by the wrist.

  ‘Run!’ he shouted.

  Aarya didn’t need telling twice.

  ‘He shouted out that we were spying!’ she exclaimed as the two of them sidestepped Raheem and started hurtling back up that deserted street. But as they ran, Ben felt Aarya lagging behind. She wasn’t as fast as him and couldn’t keep up. He looked back over his shoulder and saw not only that Raheem was chasing them, but also that he was closing on Aarya. Even worse than that, one of the armed men was running in their direction.

  He heard Aarya shout. Raheem had caught her, and now she was struggling with all her strength to get out of his grasp. Ben stopped, turned and ran back towards her. Raheem gave him a nasty sneer and spat some words at him that Ben couldn’t understand. Ben launched himself towards him; Raheem let go of Aarya and suddenly the two boys were grappling with each other. Raheem’s grip was strong and Ben had to use all his strength against him. The two of them fell to the ground and continued wrestling in the dusty road.

  On the edge of his vision Ben was aware of Aarya. He heard her voice. ‘They’re coming, Ben. They’re coming!’ He tried to break free of Raheem, but the boy was too strong and he found himself pinned down.

  And then, standing over them both, they saw a dark, black-robed figure. His rifle was no longer strapped across his back; it was in his fist and pointing in their direction. The man shouted an instruction and Raheem immediately let go. Ben wanted to run, but he knew he couldn’t. He had the business end of a gun pointing straight at him.

  From somewhere he heard the dog bark twice; closer to hand, he heard Aarya sobbing with fear.

  The man approached, an angry glare on his face. He was right above Ben now, and the gun was only inches away.

  It happened in a single movement. The man twirled the rifle in his hands so that the butt was now facing Ben, and with a short, sharp jerk he cracked it hard over Ben’s head.

  A fierce pain burned through him; then a wave of nausea; then a weird kind of numbness. Ben tried to push himself to his feet, but he only got halfway up before blackness engulfed him and he passed out, falling heavily back down onto the road as he did so.

  Chapter Five

  The plane had been in the air for seven hours and now it was dark outside.

  The SAS unit – Ricki, Toby, Matt and Jack – sat together. Ricki and Matt listened to music on their iPods; Toby and Jack were sleeping. The military transport was full of soldiers being ferried out to Afghanistan. Ricki noticed that many of them avoided looking at the stretcher beds that lined one side of the cabin. Each one had heavy straps and a drip stand, and he wondered idly how many of them would be filled with wounded men when the plane made its return journey.

  Ricki pulled his earphones out of his ears. He wasn’t really listening to the music, and anyway he could feel the aircraft losing height. They would be landing in Afghanistan very soon. He nudged Toby, who was sitting next to him. ‘The bird’s losing height,’ he said.

  As he spoke, a voice came over the loudspeaker. It was the captain. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he announced, ‘we are about to begin our descent into Kandahar. In accordance with current regulations, we will be switching off all the lights in the cabin and outside the plane. Please take this opportunity to put on your helmets and body armour. We will be landing in approximately fifteen minutes.’

  Ricki pulled his helmet and body armour – or plate hangers, as the guys normally called them – from under his seat. He never knew quite what good they would do if the plane was hit by a ground-to-air missile, or even if they came under attack from small arms fire, but he put them on anyway and the rest of his unit did the same. Five minutes later, the lights were switched off. They were in total blackness, with only the high-pitched hum of the plane’s engines for company. Nobody in the cabin spoke.

  They must have continued their descent for another ten minutes, although time had very little meaning in that thick darkness. It was a relief when the plane juddered as the wheels touched down.

  The lights flickered on. Toby turned to Ricki. ‘Good to be back?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Ricki said with a grimace. ‘Great.’

  Twenty minutes later they had disembarked. Kandahar Airbase was enormous, and home to more than 2,000 members of the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF. Most of them were American, although there were soldiers from many other countries there. The unit headed straight towards the PX – a kind of American shopping mall – to get some food and a cup of coffee. Once they were transported from here to Helmand Province, luxuries of that kind would be in short supply. In fact, luxuries of any kind would be in short supply.

  In a large coffee shop, they sat at a table by themselves, well away from the regular army boys. They talked quietly so that they wouldn’t be overheard. At the table next to them, Ricki noticed, there was a woman sitting alone. Unlike almost everyone else they had seen since they landed, she was wearing civvies. She traced her forefinger around the rim of her cup and looked like she was deep in thought. She didn’t look particularly happy.

  ‘Cheer up, love,’ Ricki said. ‘It might never happen.’

  She looked up and blinked at him. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I said, cheer up, it might . . . Oh, never mind.’

  The woman smiled politely, then went back to staring at her cup of coffee.

  ‘This your first time out here?’ Ricki asked.

  The woman looked up again. ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’ And to Ricki’s mind it was. You could always tell a rookie. For him and his mates, who were used to spending time in all the most dangerous parts of the world, it was easy to forget how scary somewhere like this was to a first-timer. ‘You want my advice?’ he said.

  The woman didn’t nod, but he gave it anyway.

  ‘Keep your mind on the job in hand. Don’t think about home. You’ll be back there soon enough.’

  The woman smiled. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘I was just thinking about my son, that’s all.’

  Ricki nodded. ‘I’ve got a kid and all. But he’ll be all right. Probably forgotten all about me already. What’s your boy’s name?’

  ‘Ben,’ the woman said. ‘His name’s Ben. And you’re right. He’ll be fine.’ She swigged a final mouthful of her coffee, then stood up. ‘I’d better be off,’ she said with a smile. ‘Nice to meet you.’

  Ricki inclined his head. ‘Nice to meet you too,’ he said, before turning his attention back to his three SAS mates and the cup of coffee that was sitting on the table in front of him.

  Carl looked at Aarya’s father, Saleem, in horror.

  ‘What do you mean, they’ve disappeared?’ he said.

  They stood in the main room of the small house that doubled as both the charity’s office in Kampur and Carl’s own living quarters.

  Saleem’s hands were clasped together. He looked terribly worried. ‘They have not come home,’ he said anxiously. ‘They left for school this morning. When they did not return at lunchtime my wife thought that Aarya would be showing Ben the sights. But look.’ He stepped back, opened the front door and pointed outside. ‘It is dark. Aarya has never failed to return before dark. It is unlike her. She would be back in time to pray. I am telling you – they have disappeared.’

  Panic rose in Carl’s chest. This had never happened to him before. His volunteers had always been perfectly safe. It crossed his mind that this would be terrible for the charity’s reputation; but then he felt guilty that his initial thoughts were not with the young people. ‘What can we do?’ he asked. Back in England, of course, their first move would be to call the police. But there were no police in this village in the south-western corner of Pakistan.

  ‘I have told my friends,’ Saleem replied. ‘They will tell their friends. Soon the whole village will know that Ben and Aarya are missing. By morning, God willing,
they will be found.’

  Carl nodded. ‘I will tell everybody I know,’ he said. ‘The English teachers must be informed immediately. We will search all night, if necessary. Saleem, my friend, we will find them. I promise you we will.’

  But he couldn’t help an unspoken thought rising in his mind. What if we don’t find them? What then?

  Aarya sat on a chair, her hands bound behind her back. Three men stood in front of her and her cheek stung where one of them had hit her. The same men that she and Ben had seen outside Raheem’s house? Aarya couldn’t tell – her vision was blurred because of the tears that filled her eyes – but she thought they might be.

  A man spoke. His eyes were dark and one of them was half closed on account of a vicious scar running across it. ‘Why,’ he demanded in the Afghan language of Pashtun, ‘were you spying on us?’

  It was an effort for Aarya to speak through her sobs. ‘We were not spying.’

  The man raised his hand as though about to hit her again.

  ‘We were not spying! We only came to get back my books.’

  The man looked unconvinced. ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Aarya breathed. ‘You put something in the truck. That is all.’

  Now it was the turn of another of the three men to speak. ‘They have seen too much. Our mission cannot be compromised. We must silence them.’

  But the first man held up one hand. ‘Who is the boy?’ he demanded.

  ‘His name is Ben. He is from England. He was only coming to help me—’

  The man’s attention had wandered. ‘British,’ he said thoughtfully. His dark eyes had narrowed. ‘Perhaps these two can be of use to us.’

  A thick silence filled the room, broken only by Aarya’s sobbing.

  And then, a decision: ‘They come with us. I have a plan for them. We leave under cover of dark.’

  With that instruction, the three men filed out, ignoring Aarya’s desperate request to please – please – let her and Ben go back home.

  It was dark. So dark that, at first, Ben wasn’t sure if he had actually opened his eyes.