by Chris Ryan
His head was so painful he thought it might be splitting open, and he felt sick. He touched his ribs down one side of his body, then winced. They were tender and sore. For a moment he couldn’t work out where he was. In his bedroom in Macclesfield? He shook his head. He couldn’t be there because the floor was cold and hard, and as he stretched out his arms around him he couldn’t find a wall, or a light switch, or anything familiar.
Where was he?
Where was he?
And then, with a sudden, sickening flash, he remembered. Aarya. Raheem. The black-robed man with his weapons, standing over him. The cracking pain as he was hit over the head.
Ben pushed himself up into a sitting position. He sat there for a few seconds, blinking and waiting for his eyes to get used to the darkness. But they didn’t. It meant that it really was pitch black in here. Wherever here was.
He stood up and walked blindly with his arms outstretched. Three paces. Four paces. His fingertips touched a wall. It was rough and cold. He walked round the room, following the wall with his hands until finally he came upon what felt like a door. He searched for a handle, but there was none. Taking a couple of steps back, he ran at it, barging with his shoulder; but the door was solid and he simply gave himself another bruise.
Then a thought struck him. ‘Aarya?’ he called, trying to stop the panic from sounding in his voice. ‘Aarya, are you there?’
Nothing. Not a sound. In an idle corner of his brain he wondered if this was a dream. But it was no dream. This was horribly real.
He found the door again. Clenching his fists, he pounded it. ‘Let me out!’ he shouted. ‘Let me out!’ His voice sounded thin and weak. There was no reply.
He pounded again.
And again.
Nothing.
Ben started to panic. His mouth went dry and his blood ran hot in his veins. ‘Let me out! Let me out!’ But no one came.
Time passed. He didn’t know how long he’d been in there. Minutes? Hours? He couldn’t tell if it was day or night. He fell silent and sat with his back to the wall. From one corner of the room he heard a scurrying sound. He didn’t even want to think what that was. Hugging his knees with his arms, he did the only thing he could do: wait.
Ben had started to shiver when he heard voices. They were distant and muffled. He strained his ears to listen to them. Three voices? Perhaps four? He couldn’t quite tell, but he could tell that they were men and that they were arguing.
The voices came closer. It sounded like they were in the adjoining room, and suddenly a small crack of light surrounded the door frame. Ben jumped up and for a moment had to steady himself because the bump on his head was making him dizzy. He realized he was holding his breath, half out of nervousness and half to block out the sound of his own breathing.
There were definitely three of them, he decided. They were speaking a language he didn’t understand. It sounded different to the Urdu he had heard people speaking at school earlier that day.
He listened. And then, unable to listen any longer, he threw himself at the door once again and thumped his fists against the wood. ‘LET ME OUT!’
The men fell silent. There was a sound of footsteps approaching. Suddenly terrified, Ben backed away. His skin tingled as he heard a key clanking in the lock and the door was pushed slowly open.
Light flooded in, making Ben squint as it pierced his aching head. It was a few seconds before he could look directly at the open doorway. A figure stood there. He was dressed in black, with a black turban and a long black beard – one of the men he had seen outside Raheem’s house, he thought. The skin on his face was dark and weather-beaten and his lips were curled into a sneer. One of his eyes was half closed, thanks to a scar that ran across it. He carried a rifle and looked like he was prepared to use it.
Ben mustered the courage to speak. ‘Where’s Aarya?’ he demanded.
The man’s expression didn’t change and Ben realized he hadn’t understood.
‘Where’s Aarya?’ he repeated, slower this time. But as he spoke, the man stepped backwards into the adjoining room. For a moment Ben took that as an invitation to leave his dark prison. As he stepped forward, though, his captor raised his gun sharply. Ben halted and, with a sickening twist in his stomach, watched as the other two men came into view. They weren’t arguing now, he thought to himself. It was as if the one thing they could agree on was that Ben should stay right there.
‘Let me out,’ he whispered yet again. He knew, though, that they wouldn’t. It was no surprise when the door was shut again and the sound of the lock reached his ears. With a sense of hopelessness, Ben crouched back down on the ground with only his sore body and the scurrying of the rodents in the corner for company.
It was the waiting that was the worst. Ben had been in some nasty situations before and it was always the unknown that was scariest of all.
Control your fear, he told himself. Accept it. Master it. Think clearly. It was difficult in that dark, locked room. He took deep breaths. He tried to think of a plan to get out of there. He thought of Ed, sneering at him while he fought the boys outside the school. He had seen it all happen. When everyone realized that Ben and Aarya had disappeared, he would explain what he’d seen. That would lead the adults to Raheem’s house. And then . . . But there was nothing he could do while the door was locked, that much was clear. So he’d have to wait for them to come back.
Ben thought it was about an hour later when they returned, but it could have been less. He heard them outside and once more moved away from the door. This time, however, he didn’t step back into the room. He stood to one side of the entrance and prepared to pounce.
The door opened. Light spilled in, casting an unnaturally long shadow on the floor of the room. A moment of silence. Then a figure stepped through the doorway.
Ben launched himself at him. His sore ribs hurt as he smashed against the body of his unknown captor. They scuffled in the dark, but it was no good. Instantly he found himself pinned down on the cold floor by two men, with a third standing over him and pointing a gun directly at his head. The gunman gave a harsh-sounding instruction and Ben was yanked roughly to his feet. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or even more scared when they pushed him into the adjoining room.
Before he knew it, his hands had been tied and one of the men was wrapping a dirty strip of cloth round his head and between his lips; the gag dug sharply into the corners of his mouth. He was then pulled – one man to each arm – through another door and up a flight of stone stairs, at the top of which was a room that looked very similar to the one in Aarya’s house where they had eaten. Ben didn’t get the chance to examine it very closely, however, because they kept him moving: through a dark hallway and out into the front courtyard of what he now realized was Raheem’s house.
The sky was dark. Everything was dark. There were other figures in the courtyard, but their faces were in shadow. He tried to shout out, but because he was gagged the only sound he made was a weak groan.
The front gates ahead were open. Beyond them, Ben could see a vehicle with its lights on. He was dragged towards it. One of his captors – the man with the scarred eye – opened the back door and pushed him inside before jumping up into the back of the vehicle itself.
There wasn’t much room. The floor was taken up by the object they had seen being loaded up earlier. Ben didn’t pay it much attention: he was too busy looking at the girl who sat alongside it. Her face was bruised and her eyes filled with terror. Although she was not gagged, her hands had been tied behind her back like his. She was shaking with fear.
‘Aarya!’ Ben tried to say her name, but it was just a noise because of the gag. He heard the door shut; seconds later the Land Rover started to move.
‘Ben!’ she hissed back. ‘We must escape. They are . . .’ She became breathless. ‘They are terrorists, Ben. We must escape.’
Ben couldn’t speak. But had he been able to, he knew what he would have said: We can’t escape. We can’t escap
e because there is a man aiming a rifle at us. We can’t escape because the truck is moving too quickly now. We’re being taken away at gunpoint and we don’t even know why . . .
Chapter Six
The truck drove through the darkness. As time passed, the temperature dropped. Ben, who was wearing just a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, started to shiver from the cold.
They had been going for an hour, maybe more. Of the three people in the back, nobody had spoken. Ben and Aarya sat side by side. Opposite them was their guard. He looked to Ben like he was holding his weapon expertly, not pointing straight at them, but down and to one side, ready to swing it into action if need be. Now and then he caught Ben’s eye, but Ben read nothing in his face except flat, flinty determination.
The road was bad and the truck shook as it went. It made Ben’s sore body hurt even more. As they drove, he tried to work out what was going on. All they’d been trying to do was get Aarya’s books back. She had seemed nervous about doing even that, but surely this was nothing to do with a schoolyard fight, no matter who it was with. No; something else was going on here. Something more sinister.
He thought back to the moments before they were captured. They’d seen the armed men and had hidden, then watched from their hiding place as the package now at their feet was loaded into the truck. There was something secretive about it. They hadn’t wanted it to be seen. Maybe that was it – maybe Ben and Aarya were being abducted because they had seen it. He glanced down. The object at his feet didn’t look like much. Just a cylindrical suitcase, a bit scuffed and beaten up. Surely not enough to risk kidnapping two people for . . .
The truck came to a halt. The two men in the front climbed out; Ben and Aarya’s guard did the same and the three men spoke briefly at the back of the truck before each drinking from a bottle of water. Ben’s mouth was impossibly dry. He shuffled to the back of the truck and got their attention by pointing at the water bottle.
The three men looked uncertainly at each other, but then one of them nodded. He approached Ben and removed the gag from around his mouth and handed him the bottle. Ben drank deeply and felt his body absorbing the water as it slipped down his parched throat. After he had taken several gulps he turned in order to pass it to Aarya; as he did so, however, it was snatched back from him.
‘She’s thirsty too!’ he said, his voice croaky. But the men obviously weren’t interested. Before he knew it they were off again, trundling into the darkness.
‘We need to keep them talking,’ Ben said in a low voice, not at all sure whether their captors spoke English. ‘Can you translate?’
Aarya nodded, her eyes wide. Just then, however, their guard raised his gun and jabbed Ben in the ribs. He winced with pain as the man spoke.
‘He says, be quiet,’ Aarya said. ‘He says, if we talk he will shoot us.’ Her lower lip started to tremble.
Ben jutted his jaw out in the man’s direction, but he kept quiet just as he’d been told to. There was, he knew, no point annoying a guy with a gun.
They continued in tense, nervous silence.
Another hour passed. Two hours. Gradually Ben became aware of the night fading away and a steely grey light illuminating the countryside around them. Ben always felt weird when he hadn’t slept all night; time didn’t seem to have much meaning and it surprised him when he worked out it could only be Tuesday morning, barely forty-eight hours since he had landed in Islamabad. The terrain on either side of the poor road was rocky and unwelcoming; and in the distance he saw mountains, majestic and craggy. The one thing he didn’t see, he thought glumly, were any other vehicles. The whole area looked deserted, and all the more threatening for that. Suddenly, as he looked through the window, he found himself having to clamp his eyes shut. The sun had peeked up over the mountain range and was now shining fiercely into his face. A new day had come to Pakistan.
Still they drove, in silence and discomfort. Every now and then, Ben tried to say something; but he was always cut short by a vicious glare from the guard, or another poke in the ribs from the rifle if he was unlucky. The road started to slope upwards. They were travelling, Ben realized, into the hills.
His stomach burned with hunger and it crossed his mind that they hadn’t eaten for twenty-four hours. At least he’d had some water. Aarya hadn’t, and she looked the worse for it. Her eyelids were drooping, and even though she was clearly trying to stay awake, exhaustion was painted on her face. He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile; Aarya smiled half-heartedly back.
The cloth that bound Ben’s wrists rubbed his skin. His every thought was about how they could escape; but held at gunpoint with their hands tied, he knew there was very little he could do . . .
Two hundred miles away, a Hercules C-130 had landed at Camp Bastion, the British military base in Helmand Province. It had touched down in darkness. The pilots had worn night-vision goggles, but the passengers had had to make do with the pitch black. By the time Bel disembarked, however, daylight was arriving and already the early-morning sun was warm.
Camp Bastion bustled with activity. Helicopters arrived and left; trucks carried supplies all over this massive base – food, water, ammunition. All the essentials of war. A man was waiting for her. He wore military uniform and had a friendly face with bright blue eyes and blond hair. His skin was tanned from the Afghan sun and he held out his hand as Bel approached. ‘Dr Kelland?’ he shouted over the noise of the airfield. ‘Welcome to Bastion. I’m Major James Strickland. I’ll be your liaison officer while you’re here.’
Bel smiled. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
‘I’ll show you to your quarters,’ Major Strickland said. ‘And then I’ll explain to you how things get done in this neck of the woods.’
Bel’s quarters were in a low concrete dormitory which she was to share with seven female intelligence officers when she wasn’t out on the ground with the locals. It was basic – a low bed with a locker to one side for her things – but clean. Once she had stowed her things away, she followed Major Strickland to a briefing room. It was still very early, but she felt pleased that the room was air-conditioned: it was already very hot outside.
The room was simple. A whiteboard at one end and a load of chairs facing it. A bit like a school room, Bel thought. In front of the whiteboard was a map of the area on a stand. ‘Helmand Province,’ Major Strickland said. ‘Camp Bastion is here.’ He pointed to a position roughly in the centre of the province. ‘We’ve arranged for your first visit to be to a small settlement here, between Sangin and Kajaki.’ His finger moved to an area north-east of Bastion.
‘How will I get there?’ Bel asked. ‘By car?’
Strickland smiled, as if it was a silly question. ‘No, Dr Kelland. Not by car. Any journeys in this region by ground need to be undertaken in heavily armoured vehicles. Helmand Province is littered with landmines. The enemy have also covered the areas with IEDs – improvised explosive devices. Ground travel in Afghanistan is incredibly dangerous. You’ll be transported by Chinook helicopter to a British Army forward operating base in the area. It’s called FOB Jackson. You’ll stay there for two nights. It’s hardly luxurious, I’m afraid.’
‘I didn’t come here for luxury,’ Bel said.
‘Good. The villagers will come to you for shuras. That’s their word for a meeting. We have four shuras arranged for you over the next two days. If everything goes according to plan, we can arrange others for you in different parts of the province.’
Bel nodded. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘When do we go?’
‘In about an hour,’ the soldier told her. ‘A Chinook will be ready for you, assuming it’s not needed for an emergency.’
‘Like what?’
‘Medical evacuation,’ Strickland said briskly. ‘We have soldiers engaging the Taliban all over the province. Those Chinooks are an important asset out here, Dr Kelland. I’m afraid you’re not the only person who wants to make use of them. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a few things to attend to.’
‘Of
course,’ Bel murmured. She followed the major out of the room and into the heat of the Afghanistan day, a small part of her mind wondering what on earth she was about to do.
If they wanted us dead, Ben thought to himself as the Land Rover plodded on, they’d have killed us already. There’s got to be another reason why we’re here. It wasn’t much of a thought to hang onto, but it was something. It made Ben feel a little bit bolder. He turned to Aarya. ‘We’re going to be OK,’ he said with all the confidence he could muster. When he received another poke in the ribs from the rifle, he stopped himself from wincing and gave the man a stubborn look. For some reason, that made him feel a bit better.
The journey continued. It didn’t take long for the heat to become immense. Sweat poured from Ben’s body and he longed for another mouthful of water. Nobody offered him one. He tried to forget about his sandpaper-dry throat and concentrate on what he could do to get them out of this. But he didn’t know where they were; they had no food or water; and their captors were armed. Flight seemed impossible.
It was mid-morning when they stopped. From the window of the truck Ben had watched as they climbed steadily higher into the mountains before taking a small road that started heading downhill. Now they had stopped by what looked like a very ancient low wall. A boundary. It stretched off into the distance and on either side the terrain remained rocky and unwelcoming.
‘Why are we stopping?’ Ben demanded. He didn’t expect a response and he didn’t get one. The back doors were opened and he was ordered off the truck with a flick of the guard’s rifle. It was hotter outside the truck than in, and he felt faint with hunger and dehydration. From a bag, one of his captors pulled a large, flat piece of bread. He tore it into several parts while one of the others undid Ben’s hands. He was given a piece of bread but, as before, Aarya was ignored. An obstinate look crossed Ben’s face. Turning, he tore off a small piece of bread and held it to her mouth.
