The Network

15

The fort stands on a high narrow spur with a commanding view of the valley below. It is perhaps a hundred years old, and built in the form of a perfect square, the walls linking four circular bastions with defensive slits in their upper sections. A driveable track, cut into the steep approach from the front, links it to the valley floor in a coil of tight switchbacks. Behind the fort and on its flanks the barren slopes of the mountains rise another thousand feet or more. The closest of these rising slopes is at least 300 yards distant. Nearer to, a footpath leads from the side of the fort over the shoulder of the spur and into the next ravine, and a bigger track gives access to the ravine on the other side. They are too steep to be negotiated by vehicle. On the neck of the spur overlooking the fort sits a Soviet BMP like a stranded turtle, abandoned at least a decade ago and stripped even of its wheels. There’s no sign of life from within the fort other than a tiny plume of grey smoke, which drifts silently skyward from the central courtyard. It’s a picture of rural peace.

From a nest of boulders on a ridge above our final lying-up point, H and I have been watching through the Kite sight since dawn. Sher Del is with us, taking turns to peer at the target, and agrees that there’s nothing to indicate we shouldn’t drive there and back again without any surprises.

At 10 a.m., as the sun begins to lose the innocence of early morning and climbs with growing strength into the clear sky above, H looks at his watch and then at me.

‘We shouldn’t wait much longer,’ I say.

‘Then let’s go to work.’

We scramble down into our little camp, where Momen and Aref are nursing a kettle over a small fire. Our captive sits cross-legged on the ground with a scarf still tied over his head and his hands fastened behind his back.

‘Time he went back to find his donkey,’ says H after we have packed up the vehicles and are ready to leave. He cuts the cord on the Talib’s wrists and unties the scarf. We give him a glass of tea and he drinks it in silence with a strangely matter-of-fact expression. Then H gives him enough money for a few days’ food.

‘Now fuck off and get a proper job,’ says H, the gist of which Aref kindly translates. He’ll walk down into the village, get his bearings and begin the long walk back to his headquarters, by which time we’ll be long gone.

We drive to the valley floor and then ascend again, winding up through the dust until, beyond the final bend, the fort looms suddenly above us. The walls are about fifty feet high and broken only by a giant pair of wooden doors, within which a smaller door the size of a man is framed. Aref and Sher Del walk to it, rattle the heavy iron loops and exchange some words with a voice on the far side. The small door opens and a turbanned armed man emerges. After a few minutes he goes back inside and the two main doors swing open. We drive in.

A double storey of dilapidated rooms runs around the wide central courtyard. Above them the turrets are linked by a narrow earthen parapet. It’s strange to think that in London we’ve seen a satellite photograph of this very place. The two guards are local men, who tell us they’ve kept watch over the place for the past month. They both have AKs, and when H asks what other weapons they have they point to a PK light machine gun in one of the turrets and an RPG-7 grenade launcher in a corner of the courtyard, beside which lie several bulbous rounds.

The two guards ask whether, now that we’re here, they can leave. For a small sum we persuade them to stay a little longer.

‘Get one of them on stag up there,’ says H, pointing to one of the turrets. ‘We don’t want to be interrupted. Then get the others to turn the vehicles around and tell them to come and help.’

One of the guards leads us to a door and unlocks the padlock that secures it. Inside it’s about the size of a double garage, and is half-filled with a brooding mound covered in dusty tarpaulins. We pull them off, throwing up a bright slanting wall of dust made suddenly luminous by the sunlight. There’s an assortment of crates and black boxes, which we stand before in silence. I can’t really believe it’s them. Ten million dollars’ worth of missiles, give or take.

‘We could go into business with this lot,’ says H. ‘Come on.’

With the second guard we work in pairs, hauling everything from the room and laying it out in the courtyard like bodies in a morgue. Some of the missiles are in their original plastic weatherproof cases; others are in wooden crates; and some are wrapped up in sacking which we have to cut through. There are a few surprises. Three of the missiles are British-made Blowpipes, and there are half a dozen Soviet surface-to-air missiles. There’s also a Soviet 82-millimetre mortar with several boxes of ammunition.

‘Good piece of kit, that,’ says H, rubbing the stubble on his chin. ‘Seems a shame to blow it up.’

H and I work from opposite ends, photographing the serial numbers and logging the condition of the battery units in our notebooks. One by one our men return them to the room and pile them around a central open space. It takes us more than two hours. Then, as they look on, brushing the dust from their clothes, we unload the explosives from the G.

The layout of the explosives takes the form of a chain of two circuits, linked together. In the unlikely event that the primary circuit fails to detonate, the secondary will fire, detonating the first in the process by the power of the blast. Detcord firing systems with detcord priming are the safest, so we lay a long circular length of the bright orange cable over the pile for a ring main, and tie on six shorter lengths as branch lines leading to the individual charges. The plastic explosive is toxic so we leave the blocks in their paper covering, wrap each one with several turns of detcord and place them among the missiles. One of them will go into the central space that we’ve left open for the purpose. It’s probably not necessary but reassures us. The process reminds me faintly of arranging Christmas lights on a tree.

Then we repeat the same system, using the detonators, which we tape to the six ends of each branch line. Then we make a cut into each block of plastic so as to enclose the detonators in cosy beds of high explosive.

‘They call this the direct insertion method,’ says H.

‘Please don’t make me laugh,’ I say.

‘Case of beer would go down well after this.’

‘I’ll take the juice of a Kandahari pomegranate,’ I say, savouring the thought.

Then, as final back-up, we attach time pencils to the detcord. If the blasting fuse fails, the pencils will fire after thirty minutes. All that remains is to attach the two final detonators, one for each circuit, and the time fuse.

‘Time to get the vehicles out,’ says H, and begins unwinding the reel of fuse.

I start up the G and drive it out of the gates, and the others follow with the pickup. Our engines are running. The two guards clamber into the bed of the pickup and cling a little anxiously to the sides. Then I walk back to H as he lays out the fuse in a long trail around the deserted courtyard.

We calculate the length required by multiplying by sixty and dividing by the burning rate per foot. Twenty minutes of burning time will need forty feet of fuse. We check and double-check its length, make sure it doesn’t overlap, verify the position of the circuits and the plastic, and agree that everything looks ready.

‘Pencils,’ he says. ‘Pull them.’

I remove the safety clips and pull the rings in turn. We look at our watches. Then H holds up the end of the time fuse.

‘Got a light?’ he asks, running his hands absent-mindedly over his pockets. I know he doesn’t need one, because there’s already an igniter attached to the end of the fuse. We look at each other for a moment.

‘I insist,’ I say.

‘Allahu akbar,’ he replies, and pulls the ring. There’s a spluttering sound and the fuse bursts into flame. We resist the urge to run, heave on the gates, run the chain through the iron loops and fasten the padlock.

I’m wondering what to do with the key.

‘Keep it,’ says H. ‘Souvenir.’

I wave to Aref, who gives a thumbs up from the cab of the pickup. We climb into the G and lead the way at a good but restrained pace. Then we follow the track to the valley floor, and turn against the slope along the way we came. H is looking ahead and behind us.

‘Let’s get up to that ridge and stop,’ he says, pointing to the spot from which we made our final recce of the fort. We get there ten minutes later. Keeping the engines running we stop and wait for the explosion.

‘Thirteen minutes,’ I say. The other men get out and, taking their cue from us, look back in the direction of the fort.

‘Fifteen minutes.’

‘Wait for it,’ says H, quietly now.

It’s agony. I want to keep my eyes fixed on the fort, but they stray to the surrounding slopes and the valley beyond and then back again, but the explosion doesn’t come. I look at my watch and back to the fort again.

‘That’s twenty minutes,’ I tell H.

He’s running his tongue around the inside of his mouth. Another minute passes.

‘Might be a kink in the fuse cable. Give it a while. The time pencils will kick in in a few minutes.’

We wait. Half an hour passes. The other men begin to talk in whispers. We take the Kite sight and look over the fort in turn. There’s no sign of life. No one can have tampered with the charges. I ask the guards whether there could have been anyone else hiding inside the fort. They shake their heads.

Forty-five minutes has passed. Then an hour.

‘Misfire,’ says H quietly. ‘Fuck it. Let’s go back.’

It’s a depressing feeling to be returning. None of us is very happy about it. The unexpected delay is acting like a silent poison on our nerves. We know we can’t give up on the task, but it’s as if fate itself has suddenly and personally turned against us. I know I mustn’t give in to this feeling, but as we drive up once again under the looming walls of the fort it seems a wounded place, resentful at our having abandoned it to destruction and planning sullenly to punish us in turn.

I retrieve the key to the padlock, pull out the chain, and we heave the gates open. There’s a long scorch mark on the ground where the time fuse has burned. Gently we pull open the second door onto the missiles. Everything is intact.

Carefully, H unties the primary detonator from the detcord and examines it. He hands it to me. It hasn’t fired. The open rim is scorched where the fuse has burned it. It also has a faint but distinct smell, which it shouldn’t have.

‘Wax,’ I say. ‘Smells like some kind of sealing wax.’

We disconnect the time pencils. They’ve fired as they’re supposed to, but the detonators attached to them are intact, as are all the others. H takes a short length of fuse and fits it into the open end of one of them, lights it and stands back. The fuse burns perfectly, but the detonator remains stubbornly inert.

‘These dets are all fucked,’ says H.

The news is particularly bad because the detonator is arguably the most crucial component of an explosive chain, and our plastic explosive cannot be initiated without one.

‘Sattar,’ I say. ‘In Kabul.’

H nods. ‘Crafty fucker. Must have switched them before we left. We’ve been stitched up.’

For a few moments there is only silence. We look at each other. It’s a long way to have come to be thwarted at the final moment.

‘Right, let’s deal with it. Options.’

The other men are lingering on the far side of the courtyard, looking a bit let down but too polite to ask what the problem is. I wave them over, and we explain the challenge and listen to their suggestions in turn.

‘Fire an RPG into the room,’ suggests one of the men.

‘Bollocks,’ says H. ‘That’s suicide. Who’s going to do that?’

Someone else asks whether a piece of detcord, pushed into an emptied 7.62-millimetre round, could be made to detonate when the round fires.

‘Doubt it,’ I say. ‘But you still have the problem of how to fire the round from a safe distance and make it reliable. There are dets in the Stingers, but we’d have to take them apart first. There are dets in the mortar rounds too, but even if we got them out we’d still have the problem of how to prime them.’

‘What about the 82?’ asks H, meaning the Russian mortar. ‘If we can get it up on a ridge we can drop a round right through the roof of the room. We could drive it up, past where that APC is.’

I translate the idea to the others. Firing an ageing Soviet mortar into the fort from a distance isn’t the most reliable solution. H is silent for a few minutes, and the men break into a heated discussion. Turning away from them, one of the guards puts his hand gently on my forearm to get my attention.

‘Ba motor bala rafte nemishe,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘You can’t drive up there.’

‘We have a motor that can get there,’ I reassure him.

‘No,’ he says, ‘it’s not that. You can’t go up there because of the mines. Mayeen hast.’

‘What kind of mines?’

‘Big Russian ones,’ he says, his hands describing a plate-sized circle. ‘They’re for tanks. From the time of the jihad. I can show you where they are if you want.’

It’s a long shot, but we’re getting accustomed to long shots. Any Soviet anti-tank mine will contain a powerful detonator. If it’s a TM-type mine, which is the most common, it won’t be difficult to remove and attach to our own explosive chain. We agree that we have to try. If the effort fails, we’ll bombard the fort from a distance with the 82, and keep firing until something happens.

Hunting for the mine itself isn’t dangerous. At least at first it isn’t. Anti-tank mines have an actuation pressure of a hundred kilograms or more, so a single man’s weight can’t set one off. The danger comes when you try to move one from its original position. There’s no way of telling whether the mine has been booby-trapped by another, smaller mine laid beneath it, which actuates when the main mine is lifted, setting both off. In some mines there’s even an extra fuse well underneath or on the side, made for an anti-lift device, which will detonate if it’s moved. There’s a charge of several kilograms of TNT in most anti-tank mines, so the prospect of failure is at least unambiguous. The blast will kill us all.

The guards stay in the fort. We work four abreast on our knees, probing the ground at intervals of a few inches while Sher Del acts as a kind of marshaller a few yards ahead of us, keeping us in line. A thin metal rod with a pointed tip is best, but we’re using what we’ve got: one knife, a long bayonet from the guards’ machine gun and the oil dipsticks from the G and the pickup, which are improbably ideal. Glancing across at the others I can’t help feeling it’s a strange symmetry of fate that they are professional mine clearers, and that’s exactly what we’ve ended up doing to save the operation. I’m glad it’s them.

There are several false alarms as the others strike stones, and we stop to probe the ground more closely. Then after about half an hour, which feels like a year, Momen announces quietly that he thinks he’s got something. I kneel beside him and take his bayonet and push it gently forward until it stops. The tip feels as if it’s moving against something smooth. I try from different angles and feel the same response at the correct distances. We’ve found one.

H comes up beside me. He’s sweating.

‘I’ll clear this one,’ I tell him. ‘Get everyone back inside the fort. Is the 82 ready?’ I don’t add the obvious ‘in case this doesn’t go quite the way we’re hoping’.

He looks down at the bayonet in the ground, then at me, and then nods as if he’s forgotten the question. He draws his forearm across his forehead.

‘Leave you to it,’ he says. ‘Try not to drop it on the way back.’

I hate to see him go. I find the perimeter of the mine and discover it’s circular and about a foot across. There don’t seem to be any others next to it or beneath it. It feels like it’s metal. I’m guessing it’s a Soviet TM-type because most of the other kinds have plastic outer housings, which feel different when you scrape against them with a probe. I calculate the centre and carefully begin to remove the earth until a portion of the dusty pressure plate appears.

There are six evenly spaced depressions on the plate. It occurs to me, at this unlikely moment, that they resemble the fingermarks that Italian bakers press into their dough when they’re making focaccia. Then I think how odd it would be to be blown up by this mine in particular after having come all the way to Afghanistan, because it’s not a Soviet mine. It’s a British-made Second World War-era Mark 7.

The body is made of sheet steel with a domed upper surface, and it uses a Number 5 single- or double-impulse fuse. It can be fitted with an anti-lift device, but they’re rare, which is good. The mine’s weight makes it easy to booby-trap, which is bad. It contains twenty pounds of high-explosive TNT, or roughly the equivalent of sixty hand grenades.

I scrape away the soil from the upper part, working slowly down, watching the drops of sweat from my forehead fall onto the plate to create dark stains in the dust. The drops fall as if in slow motion and seem unnaturally large, though I know they’re not. I reveal the circular upper edge of the mine. I want only to know what’s underneath it, as a man wants to know the future, which, although closer to him at every moment than he ever suspects, is impenetrable.

I have a strange feeling as if I’m passing through a door, beyond which time no longer behaves in the usual way. I see the point of the bayonet pushing into the dirt around the mine and my hands tugging at the loosened debris. I see the tiny particles of dust swirl across my skin and tumble down in microscopic spirals of air onto the hairs on the backs of my hands like drowning sailors clinging gratefully to wreckage. I see blood appear under my fingertips, creeping along the curve of my nails as I claw into the rocky soil, only it seems that the blood is a flash flood in high summer driving across a boulder-filled canyon. There is more life compressed into these microscopic worlds than I have ever suspected, and for a few moments I’ve been carried into the full drama of their existence.

I reach under the mine to feel whether there’s anything sinister there and sense the weight of the metallic structure resting patiently on the earth waiting to corrode into its component elements, and all the passions and mysteries that can ever be known seem to have let me into their invisible secrets. They are all there, like a silent film we can’t see or hear, but they’re there all the same.

There’s no second mine or anti-lift device. As I lift the mine and it comes free I hear the sound of my own breath, and the world is back to its ordinary self. I have no idea how much time has passed and look back to the fort, where H is standing on the nearest turret, giving me an on-the-double hand signal like a steam-train driver pulling frantically on his whistle.

I run back and the men greet me like a long-lost friend with pats on my back.

‘It’s like working for the United Nations,’ I say. ‘We drive a German car to an Afghan fort to blow up American missiles with a British mine.’

‘And decide on it by a Chinese parliament,’ says H, using the SAS term for a meeting that involves all ranks. ‘Can you get the det out?’

‘One does rather hope so,’ I say in my best officer’s accent.

There’s a depression on the cover plate like the head of a screw, which I now attempt to loosen with the screwdriver on the Leatherman which Grace gave me. The plate doesn’t budge, so I add a little pressure, and the body of the mine slips along the ground. H sinks to his knees and holds it firm while I try again.

I’m fairly sure that I can’t exert enough force on the plate to set off the mine, but it’s not a pleasant feeling. It would be a shame to have come this far only to blow ourselves up by pushing too hard. I lean over the mine and grip the Leatherman with both hands and turn as hard as I can, while H uses his forearms to push in the opposite direction. I hear a strange growl of exasperation escape my mouth, and I’m almost oblivious now to the consequence of pushing against the plate with all my strength.

Then there’s a sudden metallic cracking noise as the screwdriver snaps. Our heads knock together with such force that my vision darkens for a second, and little sparks seem to be spilling in front of my eyes, prompting me to wonder whether we’ve been killed. Then the light pours in again, and we’re both staring at the top of the mine. The pressure plate is free.

I’ve never known such a roller coaster of emotions. We’re alive, but as I lift the mine fuse free I realise it’s integral to the plate and can’t be separated.

‘I don’t think this is going to work,’ I say.

‘Tell me you’re joking,’ says H quietly.

We can’t spend more time hoping to improvise a solution. It’s six hours since we released the Talib guard, and we must assume that before long he’ll make it back to the post where he originally joined us and report to his commander. We make a brutal calculation. We have already passed our cut-off time.

I feel sick.

‘Then let’s get the mortar on the truck,’ says H grimly.

And just as our hopes fall to their lowest ebb, with a precision that renews and affirms a private notion that all things are inevitably connected a shout goes up from the guard who’s keeping watch in the southern turret. We turn and see him waving frantically, so H and I run up and join him in the curve of the wall, which resembles the conning tower of a submarine, and follow the line of his outstretched arm to the floor of the valley.

‘We’ve got company,’ says H, reaching for the Kite sight in his map pocket. He flips open the covers, rests it on the dusty lip of the wall and brings his eye forward. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he says. ‘I thought you said he was only going to bring his bodyguards.’

‘That’s what he told me.’

‘That’s a lot of bodyguards.’ He hands me the Kite.

‘We might need to revise the plan,’ I agree because not even in the emergency plan that I made with Manny is there a scenario like this one. For a moment I can’t prevent the thought that perhaps Manny has betrayed us, and involuntarily picture myself having to shoot him. Then I hear the voice of the Baronness and the story of Ali and the knight, and the feeling of dread is lifted.

Below us, at the mouth of the valley about a mile away, there are six pickup trucks travelling at speed, throwing up pale clouds of dust in their wakes. There are at least half a dozen armed men in the back of each one. It won’t take them more than fifteen minutes to reach us. I pass the Kite to the guard, who peers intently into the viewfinder then turns back to us.

‘By God,’ he says, ‘those men are no Afghans.’ And a look of relish spreads slowly across his face.

H calls down to the others, who are looking up at us expectantly. ‘I need an ammo count. Everything we’ve got.’ He pats the metal ammunition box that’s fixed to the PK belt-fed machine gun at our feet.

‘Chand hast?’ I ask.

‘Devist,’ answers the guard. There’s two hundred rounds of link in the box. H slaps the guard firmly on the back, points to his own eyes with two fingers and then to the horizon. Then we run to the rear turrets and look over the terrain.

‘No way out there,’ says H. ‘Right track’s mined and the left one’s too steep.’

The track that leads to the neighbouring ravine is far too steep for an ordinary vehicle, but looking at it gives me an idea.

‘We can do it,’ I say. ‘In the G. It’s steep but we can do it. With all the diffs on and in low-range gear. All we have to do is get out of the front and along the side of the fort. They won’t be able to follow us.’

‘Then we need a diversion,’ says H. ‘Let’s get the others set up.’

We speed down the earthen steps that lead to the courtyard, where the men have gathered the weapons and ammunition. Everyone has heard by now of the approaching trucks, and their faces have the solemn look of men who feel the closeness of the unknown.

Our weapons are spread on the ground. There are four high-explosive rounds for the RPG launcher, three AKs, including the one we borrowed from the Talib, and Mr Raouf’s AK-SU, which means each of us has a weapon of some kind, except for H. In the guards’ webbing there are six full magazines, which H divides between the AKs. We also have the Brownings and several magazines’ worth of 9-millimetre rounds.

Spontaneously the men have drawn themselves up in a rough line, which H now travels, assigning each of them a weapon after examining it and telling him where to position himself. Then he asks Aref to translate for him, and steps away from the line.

‘It was not our intention to bring you into a battle,’ he says, looking into the faces in turn. ‘But if the men who are on their way here have evil intentions against us, we must be ready to defeat them. They are not our friends. They are not your countrymen. I hope to avoid fighting them, but if they choose to fight us, they will pay the price.’

‘Allahu akbar,’ says one of the men, quietly but distinctly.

‘There are many of them and few of us. But remember they will not be expecting us to resist them, and the surprise will cost them dearly. We have a strong position of defence. And they know nothing of how many we are, or how determined we are.

‘Be aware of these things. If our enemy reaches the slopes around us they will be able to destroy us. Allow nothing to move above us, and nothing to come through the doors.

‘If we fight hard, we will succeed. Everybody clear?’

There’s a moment’s silence, then one of the guards speaks. ‘We’re Afghans,’ he says evenly. ‘We already know how to fight.’

‘Then be ready to fight,’ says H, ‘and God help you.’

All the men deploy to the turrets except Sher Del, whose experience and help we need. The three of us move to the room where the missiles are piled and haul out the wooden case which contains the 82-millimetre mortar. While H manoeuvres it onto its baseplate in a corner of the courtyard, I drag the ammunition boxes with Sher Del out from the room and open them alongside. There are twelve rounds, which Sher Del shows us how to prime and charge. H adjusts the mortar bipod to its maximum elevation.

‘I’ll need you to spot for me,’ he says. ‘Watch for the fall of shot and call out the range.’ He pats the mortar tube. ‘This ought to keep their heads down.’ He smiles at me and wipes the sweat from his face with his forearm. ‘Don’t fret,’ he says. ‘There’s only fifty blokes out there. There were two hundred of them at Mirbat.’

I feel strangely at peace. The pure and uncomplicated purpose of battle, which tranquillises all thoughts of past or future, settles on me now. It displaces the habitual tyranny of the mind and opens onto a luxurious quietness, which one longs for but never quite attains in ordinary life. Life seems miraculously beautiful and fragile.

The three of us walk to the forward turret and watch the convoy of pickups as it ascends the track. I take the magazine from the Browning and slide two rounds into my hand. Then with the pliers on the Leatherman I pull free the lead slugs in turn and remove half the cordite charge from the casings. I replace the slugs, then return the two rounds to the magazine.

The pickups swing onto the flat ground beneath us. The guard in the opposite turret, tightening his grip on the stock of the PK, looks across to H, who returns a gesture of restraint. The men below us are not expecting a fight, which means they’ve been put at ease by their commander. I’m hoping it’s because they’ve been told we’re unarmed and not in a position to resist. They dismount casually from the trucks, shaking the dust from their clothes and looking up at the walls of the fort like tourists beneath a cathedral. Three or four men with scarves tied Middle-Eastern-style around their faces dismount more cautiously and position themselves defensively behind the cabs of the trucks. There are perhaps some Afghans among them but it is impossible to know. They have all become our enemy now. H is lying on his stomach, watching them through the Kite.

One of the pickups is black. Clusters of RPG rounds are fastened behind the cab like satanic bouquets of flowers. Six or seven men sit in the back, but two have jumped out and are conferring with whoever’s inside. Then the nearside door opens, and a man in a black shalwar emerges with the confident manner of someone in authority. It’s Manny. I feel the pounding of my heart.

‘Is that your friend?’ asks H in a whisper.

‘Yes.’

‘Doesn’t look much like he’s come to save us.’

I don’t reply. To judge from appearances, H is right. It’s hard not to suppose that Manny has brought this overwhelming force to attack us. The next few minutes seem to confirm this worst of scenarios.

Manny takes a loudhailer from the pickup and blows into the mouthpiece. Two men behind him unsling weapons from their shoulders but their posture is still relaxed.

‘You in there, Ant? Hello?’

He walks brazenly to the centre ground in front of the fort, looks up and brings the loudhailer to his mouth again.

‘Open up, Ant,’ he calls. ‘You’ve got something in there that we want. If you don’t come out, we’ll have to come in and get it ourselves. Think we can arrange something that suits everyone? We’ve all come a long way.’

It’s the pass phrase I’ve been waiting for. H nods at me then whispers an instruction to Sher Del.

‘Why don’t you come in so we can talk about it?’ I shout.

Manny confers with the man who comes to his side. He’s a bulky-looking fighter with a black scarf tied around his head revealing only his eyes. Ammunition pouches stretch across his chest.

‘Mind if I bring a friend?’ calls Manny.

‘Just the one,’ I reply.

H and I descend to the courtyard, where H positions himself against the wall next to the entrance. I pull on the bolts of the smaller door, open it fully and walk back towards the centre of the courtyard. There’s a clear but narrow view to the flat ground outside, which is momentarily obscured as Manny’s bodyguard steps inside, followed by Manny. The bodyguard looks understandably puzzled and anxious. He sees H, unarmed, behind him, but no one else, because they’re hidden by the walls. The two of them walk towards me. The bodyguard is standing to my left and a couple of paces behind Manny, who gives a nod of reassurance to him, then steps forward.

We embrace in the Afghan manner. As our bodies touch, Manny’s hand brushes my jacket, out of sight of his bodyguard. I feel a slight but distinct pull against the fabric as something small and heavy drops into my pocket.

‘Present for you,’ he says quietly, taking a step back. ‘Ten-second fuse.’

‘Who told you we needed that?’

‘Our little bird in Kabul, who switched your detonators. You were right about him.’

‘You said you’d bring a couple of guards, not six truckfuls.’

‘Couldn’t help that, I’m afraid. They all wanted to join the party. I seem to have scooped up all the bad ones.’ He’s silent for a moment. ‘They’re not planning to let you go, if you surrender.’

‘Somehow I didn’t think so.’

‘You ready for this or do you need me to buy some time?’

‘Ready as we’ll ever be.’

‘Well then. Let’s get it over with. I suppose it’s time to die.’

He calls to his bodyguard in a language I don’t recognise. It must be Chechen. Then he turns around and, walking slowly towards the door, raises his arms out in what looks like a gesture of resignation, so that the others beyond the door can see. It’s safe to say that none of them is expecting what happens next.

I wait until Manny has taken about ten paces and is nearly at the door. Then I pull the Browning from the holster on my hip, aim squarely for the centre of his back and fire twice.

His body tumbles forward and falls face down. Without pausing, I roll to my right, bring up the Browning in a firing stance on Manny’s bodyguard, who’s dropped instinctively into a squat and is raising his weapon to his shoulder. It’s the last thing he ever does. Before I can fire another shot rings out, as H sends a single round into his head. His body slumps like a collapsed puppet. H runs forward like lightning, picks up the bodyguard’s weapon, drags his body away from the doors and calls out to Sher Del as he leaps up the stairway to the tower.

‘RPG! RPG!’

He’s predicted, accurately, that for a few seconds after the first shots are fired the men outside will scramble for cover before returning reactive fire. It’s these same seconds I use to slam the door closed, throw the bolts and haul Manny away into cover.

The shock of the rounds has sent his body into a kind of paralysis. I prop him against a wall and tear at the straps of his body armour as he coughs and gasps for air.

‘Feels like you broke all my fucking ribs.’

‘Breathe. I took out all the powder I could.’

He’s about to say something else but at that moment there’s a high-pitched bang which makes us flinch as the shock wave goes through us like a physical blow. Sher Del has fired the first RPG round into a truck below and is taking aim at a second. H is by his side as I run up, and Manny follows behind me, his lungs heaving in pain.

‘Down!’ yells H a second before the backblast from the RPG roars over us, and the turret fills with hot smoke. There’s another incredible bang from below. We grab our weapons.

‘Support him,’ shouts H, pointing to the other turret. We can hear the first smack of rounds against the wall as we run across to reach the PK, which is chattering deafeningly.

From the slit we look down to the open space in front of the fort, which a minute ago was so peaceful. It’s a chaos of debris, flames and scattered bodies. The PK is firing bursts into the trucks, from which men are tumbling onto the ground and staggering across the dust.

We know our task, and shoot into the nameless shapes until they are still. Cordite-laden smoke surrounds us. Sher Del fires a third RPG, and a thin grey plume streaks down towards a truck attempting to withdraw, exploding with a bright orange burst against the tailgate. The engines of the other three are screaming and their wheels throwing up dust as they lurch frantically towards the track. Bodies are spilling from the flat ground and finding cover among the crags beyond, from which their return fire now begins, struggling to find its mark.

There’s a loud crack as a burst from below hits the turret and a cloud of disintegrating mud erupts behind the Afghan who’s firing the PK. He leaps sideways and I grab him to stop him falling into the courtyard. He rubs grit and blood from the side of his face and returns to the weapon, muttering thanks to Mushgil Gusha, one of the Afghan names for God, before lowering his eye to the sights again and hunting for movement below.

I hear H call to us and run over to him. He points out the pockets of men making their way from our front towards the sides of the fort.

‘Concentrate on them, then spot for me. Vehicles first.’ He pushes the Kite into my chest and runs at a crouch towards the rear turrets, where Aref and Momen have begun firing. Our work becomes more precise as our targets dart between the rocks at a growing distance. Sweat interferes with my aim. From somewhere a round finds the slit and slaps into the wall behind my head.

Now in the courtyard, H is crouching behind the mortar. Manny stands beside him with a mortar round in his hands, waiting for my signal. The three vehicles have emerged from the dead ground about 300 yards away, turning along a track towards the higher ground.

I watch for the fall of shot and see the impact before I hear it. A ragged brown column of dirt flies into the air a hundred yards beyond the vehicles. I see their brake lights flash. I signal to H and see him furiously adjusting the trajectory. Manny drops another round into the tube and the two of them crouch with their ears covered as a burst of flame leaps out. Another geyser of earth flies up ahead of the vehicles, this time on the opposite side. A third round lands directly ahead of them. H can fire for effect now. A fourth lands almost between them, and a fifth forces the lead vehicle from the track. A sixth destroys it. A seventh falls into a cluster of fleeing men. The driver of the final vehicle has figured out the deadly game and veers off at right angles to our fire. We cannot track it, so I signal for H to cease fire. There is so much smoke in the courtyard I can hardly see him.

A yell goes up from Momen, who’s gesturing frantically to the area behind the fort. I run to him. A group of men equipped with RPGs is ascending the slope above him. Manny and H struggle to turn the mortar around and line it up on them, and fire a ranging shot which explodes far above. They’re too close to us for the minimum range of the mortar, so Manny struggles under the tripod to superelevate it until it’s nearly vertical. There’s another deafening explosion as they fire again, and a fountain of rocks bursts from the slope nearby. Another falls beside the attackers, spreading its lethal shrapnel in their midst. I point to another flicker of movement in the rocks, yell out the range and watch another two explosions erupt from the slope. Then the mortar falls silent as the final round is fired, and H and Manny run up to the rear turrets, emerging like wild apparitions from the smoke, filthy and glistening with sweat.

Manny stays behind while H and I run to the front. The PK has stopped firing. The Afghan guard lies beside it with his arm pinned under him. His neck, where a round has passed through it, resembles a bloody rag.

‘Check on him,’ shouts H, pointing to Sher Del in the opposite tower. Sher Del, warrior that he is, looks almost at ease. He looks at me and grins wildly. The left side of his face is drenched in blood but he doesn’t seem to notice. But the lapse in fire from the other turret has allowed a pocket of men beneath the lip of the open ground to reorganise themselves, and I don’t know who hears it first, but I see the telltale plume of smoke simultaneously with H’s cry.

‘Incoming!’

The whole fort seems to shudder with the impact as if it’s about to collapse. We hear a clamour of shouts from below and see shapes running towards the doors, which the RPG has blasted from their hinges. H fires quick bursts into the running men, who are making a suicidal bid for the entrance, and together with Sher Del we cut them down in their tracks. Then along the perimeter of the open ground I see bursts of dust blossoming out of the ground where H is firing to discourage a repeat effort. Then he runs up to us.

‘PK’s out of ammo. We can’t let that happen too often. Fuckers aren’t giving up.’ He looks at us and slaps Sher Del heartily on the back. ‘Reckon it’s time to go before they rush us. Warn the others and get them down.’

The idea that we’re about to leave fills me with an unlikely sense of calm. It’s as if he’s suggested that it’s time for us all to go home, and I can’t wait to share the news with the others that it’s time to move. But as I’m running to the far turret, where Manny and Aref are crouching, a puff of smoke catches my eye from high up on the slope beyond the rear of the fort. It shouldn’t be there.

I know I’m yelling for them to take cover, but I can’t seem to hear my own voice, and the whole of time seems to be stretching out again as if I can’t get things to happen fast enough. I dive to the ground along the parapet and cover my ears and head with my forearms and distinctly see Manny turn towards me. The whole turret seems to disappear in a burst of smoke and I feel a shower of debris as if I’m suddenly being pecked to death by a flock of crazed birds. When I look up, there’s a gaping space where the turret used to be.

I throw myself off the parapet onto the stairs and run down to the room into which Manny has fallen. The roof has absorbed the force of his fall and he’s struggling to his feet, dazed and gripping his head. Aref has been blown into the courtyard, and either the blast or the fall has killed him outright. His clothes have been partially stripped from his body by the blast, and I involuntarily register how white the skin of his chest seems in comparison to that of his face.

We have to leave. We are being killed and will soon be overrun. I help Manny to the car, then run to the missiles. It seems a lifetime since we were calmly examining them in the sunshine a few hours ago. I’m aware, as if a quiet matter-of-fact voice is telling me so, that it’s cooler and darker in the room. I take the grenade from my pocket. It’s a dark-green egg-shaped Soviet-made RGD-5. I unscrew the fuze, see that’s it’s a UZRGM and wonder if it really is the ten-second version, though it hardly matters now. There’s a strip of black tape still hanging from the detcord, so I use it to bind the detonator end to the cord, then look back into the courtyard to see where everybody is.

The doors to the G are all open. Manny’s already inside. Momen and the other Afghan guard are lifting Aref’s body into the back. Sher Del runs up, hauls the others in and pulls the door closed. A round from beyond the gates somehow finds the windscreen of the G and richochets from the armoured glass with a whizzing sound like a party firework.

I call to H to start the engine and briefly contemplate the stretch of open ground I have to cover in order to reach the G. Then I pull the safety ring on the grenade and release my grip on the fuse handle. It springs onto the ground. I run.

I can’t hear the engine because my ears are ringing so loudly, though it’s the first time I’m aware of it. I slam the door closed and see the rev counter leap as I test the accelerator. Sher Del grabs my shoulder from behind and I turn to him and it’s then I see that his earlobe has been shot away.

‘Besyaar khub jang mikonid!’ he says. A huge grin reaches across his face. ‘You fight really well!’

The empty pickup is in front of us with the brakes off, so that as it emerges it will roll to the edge of the flat ground and draw the enemy’s fire. They won’t know we aren’t in it, at first. And we’re glad we’re not, because as the G surges forward and pushes the pickup onto the open ground we see the rear window of the cab grow cloudy with bullet holes as the rounds tear into it, scattering fragments of its interior into the air.

Then as we gather speed I throw the G to the right, feeling the power of the engine surge as the pickup rolls away from us, and we circle under the foot of the turret, and suddenly it’s as if a team of people are hammering at the doors and windows with all their might. The windows emit a high-pitched crack but the rounds that hit the doors make a deep thud like stone into mud. The spare wheel on the rear door bursts with a violent hiss of air. Then as we climb the slope that leads to the track beyond the rear of the fort, the back window finally shatters and collapses inwards, torn from the frame of the car by repeated impacts. An AK-round thumps into the seat behind me like the blow of a sledgehammer but is stopped by the layers of Kevlar stitched inside.

My hand scrambles for the diff-lock switches as we reach the crest of the shoulder, and as I make the turn the wheels judder against the loose surface of the ground. There’s a succession of loud thuds against the roof, and the skyline lurches up like the view from a fighter plane going into a dive, and our weapons clatter forward onto the dashboard. It’s steeper than I thought, and the G pitches down as if it’s not going to stop, and H braces his hand against the windscreen and curses.

‘La illaha ill’allah,’ cries Sher Del. There is no God but God.

And then it happens. The first thing we feel is the compression, as if our ears are being sucked into our heads. Then we hear the blast, which shakes the ground so strongly the force is transmitted to the steering wheel like a blow against the wheels. A deep rolling booming sound, followed almost instantaneously by several more, sweeps over and through us. The gunfire is silenced.

‘Hope someone’s taking pictures up there,’ says H, bracing himself against the roof and grimacing as the G yaws dangerously to one side. My thoughts seem to be taking shape in slow motion, and his comment makes no sense to me until I realise he’s talking about satellites. Then it occurs to me that we are actually still alive. Against the odds, we have completed the mission, and the missiles will never be used. I recall the Baroness’s words, I want you to succeed, and suddenly I want to laugh because we really have succeeded. Whoever was planning a catastrophe using the Stingers will now have to come up with a very different plan, and whoever was planning to let it happen will have to wait for a very different catastrophe.

The wheels are holding like glue onto the rocky slope, but our pace is agonisingly slow. Then there’s a bright flash a few yards ahead and an explosion that scatters a violent cloud of rock and shrapnel against us. Bits fly up from the front of the car, but we’re still moving.

H clambers with astonishing agility into the back, rests his AK on the rim of the rear door and fires towards the ridgeline above us where the RPG has come from. The sound of the shots is deafening and the interior is thick with cordite smoke. But the ravine is beginning to open up now and the slope is reducing so I take the gearbox out of low range and accelerate.

As we crash forward, I’m aware of a kind of moaning sound behind me. It’s Momen, chanting prayers. There are warning lights blinking on the dashboard but I can’t look at them. The ground begins to flatten out and with a final bounce we hit the dirt road. I turn towards the head of the valley. H scrambles into the seat behind me.

‘Let’s get some distance behind us,’ he says.

We race up the valley, savouring the sweetness of our escape. After half a mile the slopes steepen on both sides as we draw closer to its head. Then, just as we’re beginning to feel like we’re finally beyond the reach of our enemies, a black shape plunges across the track a hundred yards ahead of us, blocking the way. I recognise the pickup from earlier outside the fort and wonder for a moment whether it’s just an unpleasant coincidence that we’ve now run into each other. Perhaps they’re lost. But the truck’s bonnet pitches sharply downwards. The driver is braking hard, because that’s exactly where he wants to be: directly in front of us.

‘Jesus Christ,’ yells H. ‘Ambush front!’

‘I can’t turn.’ The slopes are too steep. ‘Can’t stop either.’

We see two men jump from the cab of the pickup and run into cover. Two others position themselves behind the bonnet. One has an AK and the other readies an RPG. The AK doesn’t worry me too much. We hear the crack and thump of rounds smashing into the G head on, but it’ll put up with a few more. What worries me is the RPG. If I stop or reverse, we’ll be sitting ducks.

H realises this too, and turns to me. ‘Give it all you’ve got.’

I don’t know what the minimum arming distance for an RPG round is. When a round is fired from the launcher, it won’t explode if it hits a target that’s too close because it doesn’t have time to arm itself. It will simply bounce off, leaving a trail of smoke from the propellant. But I don’t know what that distance is. I think it’s thirty feet, but it might be five. It seems a pity to be killed having come so close to escaping, but there’s nothing more to do. I can only hope that seeing us hurtling towards him will make our enemy think twice about lingering in our path.

I push my foot to the floor and hear the transmission kick into lower gear. There’s a roar from the engine as the full power of the cylinders burns its way to the wheels, and we feel the front of the G lift as if it’s struggling to take off. We must be doing sixty miles an hour but it feels like we’re driving through treacle. Five or six seconds pass. It feels like a year.

I don’t know if the RPG is ever fired. I aim the G for the rear of the pickup, where it’s lightest and will do the least damage to us, and the impact, when it comes, is surprisingly mild. As we spin to a halt beyond it, everything is still happening in slow motion. H dives and rolls from the passenger door and I follow him automatically, just as we’ve trained for. We fire over the bonnet of the G, and I distinctly feel a round pass by my ear with a watery thud. Our enemies, now that we have passed behind them, are unprotected. An injured man staggers into view and falls backwards as I fire. Another shape falls, as if in a clownish dance. H darts from the cover of the car and signals me to do the same to the left, and we advance in turn towards our enemies’ final hiding places. In the folds of rock about twenty yards away I see a flicker of motion, and fire at it. The hammer of the AK falls on an empty chamber, so I throw it aside and pull the Browning from my hip. Sweat blurs my vision and I cannot be sure where the movement has come from. I fire three rounds from the Browning until it too falls silent as the magazine empties. There is nothing but rock. I turn my head momentarily as I hear a double tap from H’s weapon, and then a strange stillness descends.

On H’s hand signal we withdraw back to the G.

A plume of steam is rising from somewhere under the bonnet. The windscreen is opaque and the bodywork is perforated with bullet holes. The engine’s still running but it’s faltering now and making a high-pitched wheezing sound like a man with a bullet in his lungs. H’s shirt is stained with blood where a round has nicked the muscles between his neck and shoulder, but he hasn’t noticed it.

We cover about two miles driving on the rims of the wheels, and then the engine finally dies. H and I remove the weapons and the gold, and from the back the others pull Aref’s body and lay it on the ground. Then we soak the hand-stitched leather seats with diesel as if in a demonic funeral rite, and push the G from the track, pointing it down a slope, where it tumbles and eventually cartwheels onto a boulder-filled arena far below us.

‘It was a bit ugly, anyway,’ says H.

‘Would have cost a fortune to service.’

‘Especially the way you drive.’

The sun spreads its liquid gold over the landscape. We carry Aref’s body in a pattu up a nearby hillside to where a cluster of poplars is swaying, and bury it in a shallow grave, over which the other men kneel and pray.

Afterwards, the Afghan guard from the fort comes up to me.

‘I’m going,’ he says. ‘Back to my village.’

I take several of the gold sovereigns from the belt and give them to him. He looks at them, pockets them and says nothing. Then he embraces us in turn and walks away.

Manny is in poor shape. The blast at the fort has blinded and deafened him, though I can’t tell for how long. We agree to walk to where the map indicates a tiny village, and follow an animal track that leads up towards the neighbouring valley. For nearly two hours we trudge in silence. H and I take turns to support Manny, who walks with difficulty.

Then we descend towards the village beyond, as if into a tranquil and unconnected world where violence is unknown. The silent houses are surrounded by a patchwork of green fields in gently differing shades. An old man, working in the irrigation ditches that run between them, leaves his work and walks up to us as we approach, guiding us without asking for any explanation to the tiny settlement, beside which a glittering stream is flowing.

I press a gold sovereign into the hand of the old man.

‘For your help,’ I say. Then I give him another. ‘For your silence.’

‘Aqelmand ra eshara kafee ast,’ he croaks. A sign is sufficient to a wise man.

‘Give it to the poor, then.’

He lights a fire in the courtyard of his simple home and brings us tea as we wash the dust and grime from our bodies beside the stream. He gathers our clothes to wash them, and brings us his own spare garments. I tie a strip of fabric around Manny’s eyes so that they can rest and hope that the damage is not too great.

We move inside, and the old man brings us a platter of rice. I eat a few mouthfuls. Then I feel the onset of fatigue like an advancing unstoppable tide and, leaning back against the wall, close my eyes for a few seconds.

I wonder, when the morning light wakes me, where I am. I sit up in a panic and feel pains flare up all over my body. Someone has thrown a blanket over me, and the others are sleeping in a row next to me. Only H is absent.

I walk outside, shielding my eyes from the sun, which is already high. I realise that my ears are still ringing, but that there’s no other sound. It’s ten o’clock and already warm, and our clothes are dry and swaying gently from a rope stretched across the yard. I open a rickety outer door and walk a little way towards the river, where I catch sight of H. He’s already dressed, but his chest is bare, and he’s splashing water over the wound on his shoulder and pressing on the muscle experimentally. I call to him, quietly.

He turns and looks at me. He says nothing but smiles. Everything in our friendship seems contained in it. An Afghan proverb springs suddenly into my memory, and I hear myself repeating it quietly to myself.

Yak roz didi dost, roze dega didi bradar. One day there is friendship, the next there is brotherhood.

The silence is broken by a single shot. I don’t see where it comes from because I am watching H, whose body suddenly jerks, then wavers at the water’s edge. He looks down slowly at his chest, where a dark stain has suddenly appeared, and looks up again in bewilderment. There’s another shot a few seconds later, and H’s body topples backwards into the water. I open my mouth but no sound comes out.

A momentary paralysis lifts, and I turn in the direction of the shot. A man is standing thirty yards away. His clothes are filthy and torn, and I realise it can only be the fourth man from the black pickup. I can see his face and the look of coldness on it as he swings his weapon towards me and takes aim. There’s a faint click. A scowl crosses his face as he throws the empty magazine to the ground and reaches for another in his webbing.

Then a raging energy enters me and I run across the open ground towards him. I’m already halfway to him as he sends the magazine home and draws back the bolt. I see the muzzle swing up and see his head tilt as he takes aim at me, and I realise I will die, but I’ll die trying.

I hear the shot but feel nothing. Something is happening I don’t understand. Another shot rings out, and then another and another, and the man’s weapon falls from his hands as he tumbles back under the rounds from H’s Browning. The man is dead by the time I reach him.

I look back towards H, who’s standing in the water with his pistol at his side, and for a second I wonder if it’s all been an illusion and he’s fine after all. But as I run back to him he sinks to his knees, and the water flowing behind him is red, as if someone has been pouring wine into it.

I catch him as his body falls sideways and yell to the others, and I carry him to the wall of the house. Sher Del and Momen have run out and tear strips of cloth to press against H’s chest where the blood is gushing as if from a broken tap. I prop him against the wall.

‘Did I get him?’ he asks. He’s trying to smile.

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘Good. I thought there might be one more. Everyone else alright?’

‘They’re fine,’ I say.

His eyes roll up then back again, like the bubbles in a spirit level. He’s dying.

‘Do me a favour? Help me up the hill, can you? I want to look at the view.’

I pick him up. The others stay behind because they know what’s going to happen. I carry him across the stream and through the line of poplars beyond, where the dappled light falls across his face as he tries to keep his head up. He’s struggling to hum a tune, but the sound only comes out as my feet fall against the ground, pushing the air from his lungs in tiny bursts. Then he coughs convulsively, and a trail of blood descends from his lips, and there is nothing I can do now but watch the life flow from him.

‘Here’s a good spot,’ I say. I lower him to the ground and lean him against a slope that allows him to look across the valley, and sit next to him, wiping the tears that are streaming from my eyes. I can’t stop them.

‘It’s nice here,’ he says. His head lolls forward, then corrects itself. ‘I think I might stay a while.’

We sit for a few minutes in silence as the mystery of death draws in. Then, as gently as if he has fallen asleep, his head comes to rest on my shoulder, and I have the distinct sense that something has been released, like a river that has finally reached the sea.

We wash his body in the stream and carry it into the old man’s courtyard. Two women from the village come to wrap him in white cloth. I dig the grave myself, concealing in it the boot which contains the tracker, though I have no idea how long it will give out a signal. The four of us carry him to the grave, Manny walking with one hand on my shoulder as a guide, and we’re watched from below by the old man, a few villagers who have emerged from their houses and some brightly dressed, curious children.

Sher Del and Momen offer prayers over the grave in turn, and as the first handful of dark soil falls onto the whiteness of the fabric, the grief is just too strong and I have to turn my eyes away.

I look up through a blur of tears, and my gaze falls on an eagle soaring high overhead in the centre of the lapis-blue sky. It seems to be circling us, and I watch its silhouette turning effortlessly through the pure clear air until the sound of the men’s prayers brings me back. When I look up again, the eagle is gone.

We agree to stay together, though I give Sher Del and Momen the choice.

‘Together,’ Sher Del says, ‘we will be stronger.’

We’ve still got the silk maps, the pistols, enough gold to sponsor a minor coup, and between us a healthy stock of stories to keep us entertained along the way. If we steer clear of the main tracks and roads we’re unlikely to be seen, and should be able to make our way to Kandahar within a few days and blend into the life of the city. From there we can split up and travel invisibly on public transport back to Kabul.

The old man gives me his own shalwar kameez to wear, and we roll our things into a pattu, which Sher Del throws over his shoulder as we prepare to set off, resembling nothing more than an impoverished team of weary native travellers.

I look up once more and search the air to see if the eagle has returned, but it’s gone now, and the sky is magnificently empty.