Battleground

Chapter Twenty-two

Amir drove through the darkness.

The suitcase bomb was uncomfortable and weighed heavily on his back; the extra weight of the girl slowed the motorbike down. More than once, he considered throwing her from the bike and shooting her there in the desert. But he decided against it. He had brought her this far, and she could still be of use.

His rifle was slung to his side and he drove two-handed, his arms stopping the exhausted girl from slumping off the bike. He drove without his headlamp as that would act like a beacon to his enemies far and wide. Instead he relied on the light of the moon, so bright that it caused lumps of rock to cast shadows on the ground. Only when he came to the hills near the dam did the lack of artificial light become a problem as the upward slopes were in shadow. It didn’t slow him down, though. It couldn’t slow him down. He had to get to the dam tonight. His companions had fallen by the wayside: it was now up to Amir to complete their mission alone. And as the enemy were on to him, it had to be done tonight.

As he travelled, he found himself cursing under his breath. When he had seen that foolish boy outside the house, he had wanted to explode with anger. Why was he there? How could he have found them? And now, thanks to the girl’s loose mouth, the boy knew where they were going, and why.

He did what he could to channel his anger, to turn it into something else. Into determination. Not that he wasn’t determined before. No matter what happened, he was going to carry out his operation, and he was going to do it tonight.

They were at the brow of a hill now. The girl had started to slump. He pulled the motorbike to a stop. ‘Sit up,’ he barked.

The girl hauled herself up straight and Amir prepared to drive off again. But something stopped him. Something behind them.

An explosion.

He couldn’t turn round quickly, not with the bomb on his back. ‘Get off the motorbike,’ he told the girl. She dismounted, then collapsed on the ground while Amir laid the still-purring bike on its side and looked back in the direction of the explosion.

It wasn’t far away. Five hundred metres, maybe a little more. Amir saw a red glow. Flames flickering. He could even see, thanks to the light of the moon, a thick plume of smoke drifting up into the air. He squinted in order to see better. It was difficult from this distance, but he thought perhaps there were figures, silhouetted against the flames, running around the source of the explosion.

Amir smiled. It was clear to him what had happened: a vehicle had driven over the unseen pressure plate of a landmine. He was looking at the aftermath. He knew there were very few vehicles that would protect their occupants from a blast like that, which meant casualties. Deaths, probably. His smile became a smirk. Perhaps the boy was one of them. It was little more than he deserved.

He didn’t allow himself to dwell on that attractive thought. If he was being followed, he needed to use his pursuers’ delay to his best advantage. He pulled up the bike. ‘Get back on,’ he told the girl. She looked at him. Her eyes had rolled up in their sockets and he wondered if she’d even heard him. There was no time for threats, though. Holding the bike with one hand, he grabbed her hair and pulled her to her feet. She got the message and weakly climbed back onto the bike.

Within seconds, they were off again.

The motorbike bumped and growled over the hills. Amir had only been driving for another ten minutes when he came once more to a halt.

The view was spectacular. Far below him, the moon was reflected on the still waters of the Helmand River. On the far side of the river was the dark outline of a steep cliff, much like the one on top of which they now stood. To his right he saw the silhouetted outline of the dam. It was a massive structure, only a few hundred metres from where they were now standing. Impressive.

It wouldn’t remain so for long, he told himself.

He needed to get closer. As close as possible. The bomb would be powerful enough to destroy the dam from a distance, but the less he left to chance, the better.

Amir dismounted, then pulled Aarya from the bike. The terrain ahead was too rough for a vehicle, so they had to advance on foot. He would have liked to hide the bike, but there was no cover here so he did the only thing he could, switching off the engine and leaving it there on its side.

There were mines here. He knew that well enough. If he stepped on one, he would die. So be it — he cared nothing for his own life. But he cared deeply for the success of his endeavour and so he turned to the girl.

‘Walk,’ he told her. ‘You will go first, I will follow. My gun will be pointed at you all the time. You will go where I say. If you try to run, I will shoot you immediately. Do you understand what I am telling you?’

The girl nodded. ‘I understand,’ she said. Amir noted with satisfaction that her face was racked with terror. Fear, he knew, was a powerful incentive. It had served him well in the past, and it would do so again.

He pointed along the cliff. ‘That way,’ he said. ‘Move. Now!’

They made slow progress. More than once, the girl stumbled and fell, her foot catching in one of the narrow indentations that covered the top of this cliff. Each time she hit the ground, Amir would pull her up by the hair and tell her to keep walking. And as she walked, he took care to follow her footsteps precisely with his own.

In the distance, a noise. They stopped. Moments later, a fluorescent light exploded above the dam like a firework, lighting up the surrounding area.

‘Down!’ Amir instructed. He knew what the light was: a lume sent up by the British base at the top of the dam. He sneered at the thought. It pleased him that the invading soldiers would be destroyed along with the dam. He caught up with the girl, who had not obeyed his instruction, and pushed on her thin, frail shoulders: it took no effort to force her to collapse. They remained crouched on the ground as the light faded away; then Amir stood again, tugged the girl up to her feet and they continued their slow, careful, stumbling walk.

The gradient of the cliff led downwards. They were close to the dam, now — no more than a hundred metres — and in the distance Amir thought he could hear the crashing sound of water. Ahead of them was a thin, V-shaped ravine, a crack in the cliff about as deep as Amir was high, but getting deeper the further it went towards the river. It bore left, down towards the edge of the cliff — a treacherous, narrow path, but wide enough for two people to clamber down. Just. It would serve two purposes: get them close to the dam, and give them cover from any lookout posts at the hated British base.

The going was treacherous. The floor of this small ravine was strewn with boulders and loose earth that caused them to slip as they carried on down towards the edge of the cliff. For Amir, it was doubly difficult: the suitcase bomb on his back grew heavier with each passing step. He felt sweat dripping down his face and veins bulging in his neck as he followed the girl. She too moved with great difficulty. Each time she stumbled and fell, however, she quickly scrambled back up to her feet, clearly terrified of Amir’s reaction. That, at least, was good.

They had been hobbling down the ravine for several dark minutes when she fell and cried out. ‘My foot!’ she screamed. ‘My foot!’ Amir could tell it was a cry of real pain. He caught up with her. The girl’s face was anguished, and her foot was twisted out from her body at an angle.

‘Get up,’ he hissed.

She tried, her whole body shaking. But the moment she put pressure on that twisted foot, she cried out again and collapsed to the ground once more.

‘I… I think I have broken something.’ Tears spilled from her eyes.

Amir spat. If this idiot girl was telling the truth, she was now a hindrance and not a help. ‘Stay there,’ he told her. ‘If I hear a single noise, I will shoot you.’

She nodded vigorously. Amir did not mention that he intended to shoot her whether she made a noise or not.

Leaving the girl where she was, Amir continued down the ravine. He did not have to travel far — twenty metres, perhaps — before the river came into view once again. The path ahead of them stopped as it emerged onto the edge of the sheer side of the cliff face. He felt his stomach surge with the view of the sudden drop beneath him. He caught his breath, then looked out once more onto the sight of the moon shimmering on the water.

And to his right, the dam. It was close now. Very close.

He would plant the bomb here.

Amir eased the suitcase bomb from his back and laid it gently on the ground. It was a relief to remove the weight from his body and he allowed himself a moment to appreciate it; and it was as he was rubbing his back that he noticed something. Just to the right of where the ravine opened out onto the cliff face, there was a narrow ledge. The cliff above was overhanging slightly, so it would be impossible to stand on the ledge, and it was not wide enough for him to venture onto on all fours, but it gave him an idea. To leave the bomb here would be to risk it being found. But if he could get it out of reach…

Maybe, he thought to himself, the girl had not entirely outlived her usefulness after all.

Leaving the bomb where it was, he returned up the ravine. The girl was still there, of course, whimpering with pain. He didn’t speak to her; instead, he just pulled her up and carried her back towards the cliff face. Her body was shaking, but of course he ignored that.

‘Stand,’ he instructed.

He lowered the girl from his arms and she propped herself up against the side of the ravine, holding her bad foot up from the ground. ‘Please…’ she whimpered. ‘My foot… the pain…’

Amir ignored her and turned to the bomb. It looked so innocent — just a khaki-coloured package that nobody would look at twice. He bent down and undid one of the straps that bound it together. It revealed a flap, which he raised. He smiled. Beneath the flap was a digital panel; and below it two very ordinary-looking batteries. Each battery was attached to a wire. Amir connected the free ends of each wire to two terminals just below the digital panel. The screen flickered into life: three red numbers.

00.00.00

Amir nodded with satisfaction. He turned a dial and watched the numbers rapidly increase.

0.20.00

Twenty minutes. Enough time for him to get away and do what he needed to; too little time for the bomb to be found. He pressed the dial inwards. It clicked, and immediately the digital display changed.

00.19.59

The countdown had begun. He replaced the flap and tightened the strap over it. Then he looked up at the girl. ‘Turn,’ he told her.

With difficulty, she did so.

Amir picked up the bomb and approached the girl. As he slung the suitcase over her back, she buckled under the weight. He lifted her up again and continued to fix the bomb to her body. Once he had finished, she was almost bent double.

‘What is happening?’ she gasped.

Amir didn’t reply. He just guided her towards the ledge — gently, not because he felt sympathy for her, but because she carried a precious load.

‘Crawl,’ he told her.

She started to gasp even more heavily. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘My foot…’

‘Crawl!’

The girl whimpered again, but this time she did what she was told.

The first two metres of the ledge were narrowest, less than half a metre in depth. She moved slowly, shuffling along the ledge like a caterpillar on a leaf. Her bad foot dangled over the side, but Amir knew there was nothing she could do about that. Only when she stopped did he call out to her again.

‘Further!’

No movement.

‘Further, or I shoot you now!’

The girl continued. When she came to a halt again, she was nearly ten metres away from the ravine. Amir’s eyes shone with triumph. With her broken foot, the weight of the bomb and the thinness of the ledge, there was no way she could turn round. The bomb was well hidden, out of reach. All he had to do now was make sure she couldn’t crawl backwards.

He raised his gun. For a moment he considered shooting her, but he didn’t dare: the force of the bullet could send her over the cliff, and he had no idea what effect the water down below would have on the bomb. Instead, he aimed it at the overhanging cliff.

He fired. Two clear shots rang through the air high above the river — each of them making the girl’s body jump as though it had received an electric shot — and a hailstorm of rubble fell from the cliff. The girl screamed as a piece of debris struck her good leg; several other hunks of rock fell on the ledge behind her, blocking the way back.

Amir considered saying something to her. Letting her know that her death was very near. But in the end, he decided not to waste his breath. Leaving the whimpering, trembling girl on the ledge — immobile with the ticking bomb pressed down on her — he turned and started to make his way up the ravine.

Only minutes to go, he thought to himself. The very thought of it gave him extra energy as he hurried away from the very place where the blast was going to happen. The bike, he told himself. Get to the bike now and you might even be able to live. To watch it happen from a distance before making sure his group claimed responsibility for the explosion and the world knew what they had done — the hammer blow against the invaders. The very thought brought a smile to his face as he scrambled up the ravine, leaving the girl and the bomb far below.