Battleground

by Chris Ryan

  If they hadn’t been driving all night, Ben would have wondered if they’d moved at all since their last stopover. As far as he could tell, the place was almost identical. The only exception was the fire in the middle of the courtyard, which was now just a pile of glowing, smoking embers.

  ‘Stop!’

  It was Amir talking. Ben and Aarya waited while the men around them discussed something.

  ‘What are they saying?’ Ben whispered.

  Aarya’s voice was weak. ‘They are talking about where to keep us,’ she said, then listened again carefully. ‘Somewhere empty, where there is nothing we can—’

  Ben never got to hear the rest of the sentence, because Aarya never finished it. Instead she flinched, holding her hands to her ears. A booming sound exploded. It was far away, but not that far away, and it seemed to shake through Ben’s body. And then, suddenly, the sky in the distance became illuminated with a bright light that lingered for perhaps twenty seconds before fading away.

  And then, louder this time, another boom.

  It was too much for Aarya. She started screaming. ‘What is it? What is that noise?’ And then she reverted to her own language, crying with stress and panic.

  Their captors had no time for it. One of them strode over to where Aarya was standing, before raising one of his hands ready to beat her on the head. A sudden anger filled Ben. He stepped forward and grabbed the man’s wrist, just as he was trying to hit Aarya.

  ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘Leave her alone.’

  The man turned. His eyes were wide and angry. It didn’t take much for him to escape Ben’s grip and he looked for all the world like he was about to launch himself at both of them. Ben stood in front of Aarya, who was now sobbing hysterically, and stuck out his chin.

  ‘Amir!’ he demanded. ‘Where’s Amir?’

  Amir’s face emerged from the gloom.

  ‘If they touch her,’ Ben shouted, ‘if they hurt her in any way, I’ll spend every second trying to escape. Have you got that? The only way you’ll be able to stop me is by shooting me. And what will happen to your precious human shield then?’ He was full of anger, and he stood there in front of Aarya as a line of faces stared flatly at him.

  There was a tense pause. Then Amir gave an instruction and another man suddenly forced them roughly into a room at the other side of a compound. The familiar noise of a key in the door hit Ben’s ears and before they knew it, they were alone again.

  ‘Ben!’ Aarya sounded angry. ‘What are you doing? These are dangerous people. They will kill you . . .’

  Ben shook his head in the darkness. ‘No,’ he said stubbornly. ‘They won’t kill us. At least, not yet. We’re here for a reason, Aarya. If we come under attack, they’ll stick us up on the roof of their trucks – make it clear they’ve got civilian hostages. They seem to think that’ll stop the army from blowing them up.’

  Aarya paused. ‘But . . .’ she stammered. ‘But that is monstrous.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ben muttered. And then, cryptically, ‘Welcome to my world.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Ben looked away. ‘Let’s just say Amir and his buddies aren’t the first people to try and play dirty when I’m around.’

  Aarya looked confused. ‘I do not understand, Ben. Are you saying these people know who you are?’

  ‘Course not. I’m not exactly in the Afghanistan phone book—’

  ‘Ben! Stop speaking to me in riddles.’ There was a sudden fire in Aarya’s voice as she stepped purposefully towards him.

  He shook his head, cross with himself. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I just seem to have this habit of walking into trouble. This is all my fault – I wish you didn’t have to be involved.’

  Silence. And then, a hand on his shoulder. ‘This is not your fault, Ben. It is theirs, the men outside. You were very brave to stand up to them.’

  Ben didn’t reply. At that very moment the door opened. He couldn’t see who it was, but he could hear the thump as something was thrown in before the door was shut once again. Scrabbling around on the ground, he found a bottle of water. He quickly opened it and handed it to Aarya, who drank deeply before giving it back to Ben. As he gulped down the water, he felt his whole body soaking it up and, like a wilted plant that had just been fed, he was revived.

  ‘What was that noise?’ Aarya asked. ‘The booming noise and the light in the sky?’

  For a moment Ben didn’t answer. He had been asking himself the same question and he didn’t much like the conclusion he’d come to. ‘I reckon,’ he said finally, ‘that the light was some kind of flare. You know, for the army to light things up a bit. Spot people moving around in the dark.’

  ‘And the sound?’

  ‘Weapons,’ Ben said. ‘Artillery. Something like that.’

  ‘At night? When people are sleeping?’

  Ben thinned his lips. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘or not sleeping. I get the impression we’re going to be hearing a bit more of that. Think about it, Aarya. They’ve got a nuclear suitcase bomb. If they’re going to use it, they’re going to use it where they can cause maximum damage. And if they need you and me as a human shield, it means they’re taking us somewhere they expect to come under fire. Some kind of battleground. If those flares are anything to go by, I’d say we’re pretty close.’

  As if to highlight his point, in the distance they heard another muffled thump. Ben sensed Aarya shaking on the ground where she sat.

  ‘I want to go home,’ she said in a small voice.

  ‘Me too,’ Ben replied. ‘Me too.’ And then, because he thought he didn’t sound positive enough, he added, ‘We will.’

  He knew Aarya didn’t really believe him.

  They sat in silence for several minutes.

  ‘Ben?’ Aarya asked finally, her voice calmer than he had heard it for ages.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘If the British Army attack us, they would be less willing to risk a British citizen than a Pakistani girl, wouldn’t they?’

  Ben felt himself tense up. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I think they would. I think it means that you are more use to these terrorists than I am. I think it means they would kill me if they had to.’

  Ben took a deep breath.

  ‘That’s not going to happen, Aarya,’ he said firmly. ‘I promise you that’s not going to happen.’

  But he only said it because he could think of nothing else to say. He watched quietly as his friend, her body trembling, settled down for her morning prayers. He almost felt like praying himself.

  Bel’s first night at FOB Jackson was uncomfortable and noisy. Her quarters were little more than a thin bed covered with a mosquito-net tent, all propped up against a low wall. She had eaten ration packs with the soldiers – a sludgy mess of sausages and beans – then turned in early so that she could be ready for the shura that would happen early the next morning. All night, however, she was kept awake by the light of the flares being sent up into the sky, and by the booming sound of weaponry far and wide. Around midnight she had climbed out of bed and walked around the base. She had met Private Mears, who had explained to her what the noise was. ‘Enemy activity to the north,’ he had said. ‘We’re sending in mortar fire to suppress their movement.’

  ‘Enemy movement?’ Bel asked, alarmed. ‘That, er . . . that doesn’t sound very good.’

  Private Mears winked at her. ‘Welcome to Helmand,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about it. Tonight’s no different from any other. The base is well defended – they’d have to be suicidal to attack us here.’

  Bel took some comfort from Private Mears’s words as she padded back to bed. Some, but not much. As she lay there, she thought about Ben, and smiled. He’d been so keen to accompany her, but this was no place for a person his age. Come to think of it, it was no place for a person of any age. Bel absolutely could not wait to leave here and get back home.

  Dawn arrived. Everyone in the camp who wasn’t on lookout duty rose with the sun. Bel washed her
face using water drawn from a well in the middle of the camp, then went to find Mears. The young private was drinking a cup of tea with a few mates.

  ‘Morning, Dr Kelland,’ he said. ‘You look like you could use a brew.’

  Bel could use a brew, but she didn’t get the chance to say so, because just as she opened her mouth there was a loud noise and something screamed over the top of them.

  ‘Get down!’ Mears yelled. ‘RPG!’ He threw his tea to one side, then wrestled Bel heavily to the ground like a rugby player. All the wind was knocked out of her lungs as the rest of the soldiers hit the dirt as well, their arms covering their heads while, only a few metres away from them, Bel heard something explode in the air, followed by the sound of shrapnel raining onto the ground.

  ‘That was close!’ someone shouted.

  ‘What’s an RPG?’ Bel gasped, her face still pressed into the ground.

  ‘Rocket-propelled grenade,’ Mears stated flatly. ‘Bit of a Taliban favourite.’

  Bel looked up. The soldiers were pushing themselves to their feet, and there was urgent movement all around. ‘Get up!’ Mears instructed, and she felt him pulling her from the ground just as another rocket whistled over them. ‘We need to get you to cover. Now.’

  ‘I thought you said the enemy would have to be suicidal to attack us here,’ Bel shouted.

  Mears gave her a grim look. ‘Yeah,’ he yelled back. ‘Trouble is, some of them are.’ He pulled her by the arm and they ran across the open ground of the base to where a high wall of sandbags had been constructed at right angles to the main compound wall. They threw themselves to the ground and pressed their backs against the sandbags while yet more rockets flew overhead.

  ‘Come on,’ Mears muttered to himself. ‘Come on. Come on!’

  ‘Come on, what?’ Bel demanded.

  ‘The enemy must be close if they can lob RPGs into the compound like that. We need to return fire, quickly.’ He peered over the top of the sandbags, then quickly sat back down again. ‘GPMG gunner climbing up to the compound roof now,’ he reported.

  ‘What’s a GPMG?’

  ‘General Purpose Machine Gun. You might want to cover your ears.’

  Bel did what she was told, but the sudden grinding, thundering noise from the rooftop weapon seemed to go through her all the same, like a hundred tiny explosions in a line. Private Mears barely flinched – Bel supposed that he was just used to the noise.

  The GPMG fire continued in short, sharp bursts, ringing out over the top of the compound. There was shouting all around, and every time Bel thought the firing had stopped, it would start up again.

  ‘Sounds like we’ve suppressed the enemy fire,’ Mears said. He had sweat pouring from his face.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The enemy. They’ve stopped firing. Guess they haven’t got quite the taste for a fight they thought they had.’ Mears was grinning and Bel realized that he was excited by the contact. She wished she could say the same.

  ‘Does that happen a lot?’ she asked, her voice trembling.

  Mears shrugged. ‘Attacks on the base, no. Morning contacts, yes. When it gets hotter, the enemy all go inside to get out of the midday heat. Then things start to kick off again later in the afternoon. But I can tell you one thing.’

  ‘What?’ Bel was out of breath just from the sheer terror of it all.

  ‘After that little display, they won’t be letting the locals into the base this morning. I reckon your shura’s going to have to wait for another day.’ He smiled at her. ‘You might as well make yourself at home, Dr Kelland. Looks like you’re going to be here for a bit longer than you thought. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to clean my rifle. If the enemy are going to be bolshie, I’d feel a lot better knowing everything’s in good working order. Know what I mean?’

  The man from the British Embassy who arrived in Kampur was stiff-backed and stern-faced. Even the teachers looked a bit scared of him. He was accompanied by two others – a man and a woman, who had the bearing of police officers, even if they didn’t have the uniforms. The Embassy man spent a good deal of time with the teachers, explaining the arrangements he had put in place to get them all back home as quickly as possible, as well as consoling Aarya’s distraught parents. It was up to the other two to interview the pupils.

  Ed didn’t like the look of them. They were steely-eyed, no-nonsense types. He could instantly tell that pulling the wool over their eyes wouldn’t be like deceiving his friends, or his teachers. As they all lingered outside a classroom in the village school, waiting to be interviewed one by one, Ed felt the pressure mounting. His mouth was dry; he was sweating badly. Telling them the truth about Ben’s schoolyard antics was out of the question, of course. The lie was too deeply ingrained now. He was just going to have to see it through.

  The door opened. Rebecca, the first to be interviewed, walked timidly out with a slightly wild look in her eyes. The woman appeared, clipboard in hand. ‘Ed Hughes,’ she announced. ‘Ed?’

  All the others looked at him. Ed drew himself up to his full height and walked confidently past them, though his fingernails were dug deeply into the palm of his hand. The woman stepped aside to let him into the classroom, then closed the door and took her place behind the teacher’s desk, alongside the man.

  ‘Sit down, Ed,’ she said, indicating a seat opposite them.

  Ed did what he was told.

  A silence as the two adults looked at him.

  The woman peered over her half-moon glasses at him. ‘We just want to make sure, Ed, that there isn’t anything about Ben Tracey and his exchange partner Aarya that you’ve forgotten to mention.’

  ‘There isn’t,’ Ed replied quickly. Too quickly.

  The adults looked at each other. ‘You seem very sure about that, Ed,’ the man suggested. ‘Been thinking about it a lot, have you?’

  ‘Not really.’ Ed did what he could to withstand the man’s stare. It took some doing.

  ‘Sure about that?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’ Ed’s body temperature was rising and he knew he appeared flustered. It didn’t seem to worry either of them, though: they both looked at him calmly.

  ‘I suppose we don’t need to tell you how serious this is, Ed,’ the woman pressed. ‘If we don’t find Ben and Aarya, you’ll be having interviews with people a lot fiercer than us. Sure you don’t want to tell us anything?’

  ‘I haven’t seen them, all right?’ Ed was half shouting now, and his face had gone very red. Both adults raised a single eyebrow, and suddenly Ed heard himself gabbling. ‘Tracey’s an idiot, OK? He’s probably just hiding somewhere. You shouldn’t waste your time on him.’

  Another silence. ‘Do you really think we’re wasting our time, Ed?’ the woman said. ‘Or is there something personal between you and Ben?’

  Ed looked at the floor. This wasn’t going well and he knew it. ‘No,’ he muttered. ‘Nothing.’ He heard the scratching sound of pen and paper as the two grown-ups each wrote something down. ‘What are you writing?’ he demanded. ‘Look, I don’t know anything, OK? I haven’t seen anything.’

  ‘No, Ed,’ the man replied. ‘It seems to me that you may have mentioned that once or twice before.’ Again, the two of them glanced at each other.

  Ed felt a drop of sweat run down the back of his neck.

  ‘You’ll be leaving Pakistan tonight,’ the woman told him.

  ‘All of us?’

  ‘All of you.’

  Relief crashed over Ed. He didn’t like it here. Back in England he could pretend none of this had ever happened.

  ‘We might want to speak to you again, though. Back home. That would be all right, wouldn’t it, Ed?’ They were looking directly at him now. Piercing.

  Ed shrugged. ‘Whatever,’ he said.

  ‘Good. Well then, I don’t think we need to keep you any longer.’ The man’s words were friendly, but his voice wasn’t. Ed stood up and walked to the door.

  ‘Ed,’ the woman’s voice called softly befor
e he had a chance to open it. He stopped and turned round.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ll know if you’re lying. You do realize that, don’t you?’

  Ed frowned. He gave them a hard look, then dug his fingernails a little more firmly into the palm of his hand. Then he shrugged again, opened the door and walked out.

  They were just trying to put the frighteners on him, he told himself.

  They didn’t suspect anything.

  Even if they did, they had nothing on him. Nothing at all. He just had to keep up the pretence. Do everything he could not to crack. And he knew he could do it. After all, there was no way he was going to let Ben Tracey, of all people, get any help from him . . .

  Chapter Ten

  The day passed slowly and uncomfortably. As light trickled into their new prison, Ben saw that they had indeed been put into a room that contained nothing they could use to their advantage: just a low bed with a thin mattress and very little else. He let Aarya take the bed while he lay on the hard, dusty floor. Sometimes he would fall asleep, only to be woken with a start by the booming of weaponry in the distance, or the occasional muttering of Aarya’s regular prayers. Whenever that happened he would look around, confused and not knowing where he was. But then he’d see Aarya’s terrified face and the locked door and it would all come back to him in a sickening flash.

  Evening arrived and the door opened. It was Amir, his ever-present gun slung by his side. He placed another bottle of water on the floor along with a wooden bowl of food. ‘Eat this,’ he said with a glare at Ben, ‘then prepare to leave. We depart at nightfall.’ Ben noticed that he refused to address Aarya.

  The water was welcome, as was the food – a strange, bland porridge which Ben might have turned up his nose at if he hadn’t been so hungry. As it was, both he and Aarya gobbled it down. And when they had finished, the waiting continued.

  ‘You think they will take us towards where the guns are firing?’ Aarya asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Ben said. ‘I do.’

  It was fully dark when the door was opened again. Nobody needed to tell them what to do. Ben and Aarya walked out, covered as always by men with guns, and were marched from the compound under the watchful eyes of the owners.