Time check. 00.55 hours. The others had been dealing with Target Blue for nearly five minutes and there had been no word. What the hell was taking so long?

  The woman started squirming again. Danny bent over and once more pressed his weapon into the side of her head. She fell still.

  ‘Update,’ Danny said into his comms.

  ‘Hold your position,’ Tony said.

  Was it Danny’s imagination, or did he sound more on edge?

  ‘What’s your status?’

  ‘I said, hold your position.’

  Danny glanced towards the door. It was a couple of inches ajar and a thin slice of light fell into the room. He felt his skin going clammy. A sixth sense, that something wasn’t right.

  He looked back towards the prisoners. Face down on the bed, they were sobbing silently, their bodies limp with terror. They weren’t going anywhere.

  Holstering his Sig, Danny raised his assault rifle. Stock firmly into his shoulder. Barrel towards the door.

  He advanced. When he reached the door itself, he hooked it open with his right foot. Listened hard.

  No sound.

  He stepped out into the courtyard, swinging immediately left and scanning the area.

  Everything was just as before. The tree. The welding gear. The bicycles against the wall. The only difference was that the door in the bisecting wall was now fully shut.

  ‘What’s your status?’ Danny repeated into the comms.

  Silence.

  ‘Repeat: what’s your status?’ He took a few steps towards the closed door, his weapon pointing directly at it, his eyes scanning up and from side to side.

  Silence.

  Danny’s mouth was dry. Sweat beaded on his face and down his neck. He had a call to make: stay with the prisoners, or advance on the target and find out what the hell was going on in the northern half of the compound.

  Whatever it was, it didn’t feel good.

  He breathed deeply. Then he moved towards the door.

  Danny was halfway across the courtyard when his earpiece burst into life. Tony’s voice. Urgent. Aggressive. ‘Exit by the south side and proceed to the pickup point. Repeat, exit by the south side.’

  Danny felt his eyes narrowing. ‘Confirm Target Blue is down,’ he said.

  ‘Do what I tell you, Black. Exit by the south side and proceed to the pickup point. That’s a fucking order!’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Danny hissed back. ‘Confirm your movements. Is Target Blue down?’

  A different voice over the earpiece. Dexter. ‘I shot him in the fucking head, Black. Normally does the trick. Just do what you’re told, will you? We think there’s explosives between you and us. We’re exiting by the west door. Leave the compound and get to the pickup point . . .’

  Danny remained immobile, weapon still engaged, eyes still scanning. Explosives between here and the northern edge of the compound. He didn’t buy it. Why would Target Blue booby-trap his own gaff? His every instinct told him to advance. To find out what was going on behind that door. He even took a step forward . . .

  But then he stopped. If the rest of the unit were right, he’d be an idiot to ignore them.

  He turned a hundred and eighty degrees. Strode to the south side of the compound and the door that would lead him back outside, into the outskirts of the village of Gareshk. To his right, he could hear the whimpering of the woman and her three kids. It didn’t matter now. Their father was a corpse and the unit was extracting. They’d done what they came to do.

  Outside the compound, with his back to it, Danny took a moment to get his bearings. The pickup point was south-west of their position, two klicks distance. He knew he was currently facing directly south. An irrigation ditch was approximately twenty metres ahead of him and, beyond that, poppy fields as far as he could see. Their intended route was to follow the irrigation ditch west for a klick, before turning south towards the pickup point. Danny cut across at a diagonal towards it, moving at a steady jog. He was acutely aware of the sound of his footfall, and his heavy breathing.

  When he hit the irrigation ditch, he altered his trajectory so that he was moving along its north side. But then he stopped.

  ‘This is bullshit,’ he muttered.

  The situation wasn’t right. They shouldn’t be splitting up. He should be waiting for his unit mates.

  He turned and looked back towards the compound.

  The north-western door from which the others were supposed to be leaving was 150 metres away, maybe a little more. A poppy field covered the intervening ground. There was no sign of the rest of his unit.

  He spoke into his comms. ‘State your location.’

  No reply.

  He raised his weapon. Aimed directly towards the compound. ‘Talk to me, guys. What the hell’s happening?’

  Silence.

  ‘I’m moving . . .’

  Danny didn’t get the chance to finish. As he was speaking, he felt the unmistakable rush of air displacement as a round whizzed past his right shoulder.

  Almost by instinct, he fell to one knee in the firing position. Even as he scanned the ground up ahead for the shooter, his mind was analysing what had just happened. The round had been fired from a suppressed weapon. Otherwise he’d have heard the retort of the rifle that fired it. He found himself picturing the night sight Dexter had found in Target Red’s compound. The helmet and encrypted radio Tony had shown them back at base. Whoever had just taken a shot at him was well equipped. Danny couldn’t even get him in his sights.

  He scanned left. Right. ‘Contact,’ he hissed into his comms. ‘I’m drawing f—’

  The second round was as quiet as the first.

  And this time it was on target.

  The round slammed into Danny’s left shoulder. It felt, at first, like a punch. He lost control of the weapon as he slammed backwards on to the ground. Only then did the pain kick in: a biting, cold agony spreading from the entry wound. Warm, sticky blood pulsed from the wound in time with the beating of his heart. It saturated his front.

  He tried to breathe. It was difficult: as though his lungs couldn’t inflate sufficiently. He realised he was gasping. His eyes were rolling. He was light-headed . . .

  Danny pressed his right hand against the bleeding entry wound. Direct pressure: he wanted to howl with the pain. But he kept quiet and managed to roll over on to his front. The irrigation ditch was five metres away. It was the only cover he had. He couldn’t risk getting to his feet. He had to crawl there.

  But he was weak. He realised his body was going into shock, which was potentially more dangerous than the bullet wound. His pack and weapon weighed him down. Five metres felt like five miles. He crawled, painfully slowly, a cold sweat breaking out over his body, the whole world seeming to spin.

  A voice in his headset. Danny couldn’t tell who it was. Tony? Dexter? Cole? ‘Where are you, Black? State your location . . .’ Danny couldn’t reply. All his energy was focused on getting to the irrigation ditch, out of the line of fire. When he finally reached its edge, he rolled over the lip of the ditch and landed at the bottom with a heavy thump that seemed, momentarily, to make the blood pump more thickly from both the entry and exit wound. He tried to suck in a lungful of air, but it felt like there was no room in his chest cavity to inhale sufficient oxygen.

  He tried to speak into the comms. ‘Taken a round . . . losing blood . . . shock . . .’

  He used his good arm to unholster his Sig, which he pointed towards the top of the irrigation ditch. His hand was shaking badly. His eyes were rolling.

  ‘Cover . . .’ He wasn’t sure whether he’d actually formulated the word, so he tried again. ‘Cover . . . irrigation ditch.’

  His gun hand dropped. He tried to raise it again. The weapon felt as heavy as a boulder.

  The green haze of his NV was growing cloudy. Blotches appeared in front of his eyes. Don’t close them, he told himself. Stay awake . . . do not close your eyes . . . But he couldn’t help it. It was as if he had no control. And in any case, maybe it would be good to sleep. Maybe the pain would go away. He let his eyelids fall . . .

  Footsteps. He forced his eyes open again. He became half aware of a figure standing over the edge of the irrigation ditch, but he couldn’t make out the face. He tried to lift his weapon again, but there was simply no strength left in him.

  This is it, he thought. This is the moment I die.

  The world went black.

  Seconds later – or maybe it was minutes, or hours – he slipped back into consciousness.

  He was still lying on his back, but was no longer wearing his NV headset. He was half aware that his clothes had been ripped open to gain access to the entry wound. A figure was bending over him, applying pressure to the wound. He could smell sweat and dirt but his sight was still blurred. He was aware of the pain, but it didn’t bother him. In some corner of his mind, he knew he’d been given a morphine shot. The person giving him medical aid was talking. A male voice. But Danny was too weak and too woozy to understand who it was, or what he was saying.

  He felt someone removing his tactical gloves. He didn’t understand why.

  He blacked out again.

  Noise.

  A regular, pulsing pattern. Danny thought he was dreaming at first, but then realised that the sound of twin rotary blades was quite real. Even on the edge of consciousness, Danny recognised the sound of a Chinook in action.

  He tried to force his eyes open.

  Lights.

  Bright, stabbing beams. Even the morphine couldn’t stop him instinctively clamping his eye shut. Even then, the light was visible through his lids.

  Shouting.

  Male voices. Many of them. Danny tried to force himself to listen to what they were saying. He couldn’t make it out. Either his brain wasn’t functioning, or they weren’t speaking English. The latter, he decided.

  Wind.

  Not natural wind. Not on this hot, humid Afghan night. This was the downdraft of the Chinook, and it was getting stronger. Danny realised he was moving. No longer was he lying on the hard ground. He was swaying slightly. He was on a stretcher, being casevac’d into the Chinook.

  As the casualty evacuation personnel jogged on to the tailgate to move up into the belly of the Chinook, the stretcher tipped up at a slight angle. Dizziness overcame Danny. Once again, he lost consciousness.

  When he regained it, he could tell that he was airborne. There was an oxygen mask clamped to his face. A drip in his right arm. Somebody was shouting instructions, so urgently that he could hear it over the deafening noise of the Chinook. The pain had returned. It was all encompassing and he found himself shivering.

  Even worse than the pain, however, was the storm in his mind.

  What had happened?

  Why had he been alone?

  Who had shot him?

  Where was the rest of the unit?

  Despite everything, he tried to push himself up on his elbows, but that made the pain so bad he almost vomited.

  Danny groaned. A figure leaned over him. Danny felt the unmistakable prick of a needle in his right arm. He half wanted to shout out: don’t fucking sedate me! But then, a blissful feeling of almost-euphoria seeped through his body as more morphine hit his bloodstream.

  The shivering stopped.

  The storm in his mind abated.

  His breathing regulated.

  He slept.

  CHAPTER 9

  For Doctor Hussein Karim, a good day was when he only lost one man on the operating table. On a bad day, he could lose three or four.

  Today had been a bad day. A vehicle containing eight members of the Afghan National Army had hit an IED returning to their forward operating base near Musa Qala. Two men had been killed outright. A further five had been airlifted to the hospital here at Camp Shorabak military base for emergency surgery. Of these, two died on the chopper, three under the knife. They had been moved to the mortuary. The attendants had been obliged to shuffle corpses around to make room for them. There was a backlog.

  Yes. Today had been a very bad day. Doctor Karim had been on his feet for more than twenty-four hours before collapsing into bed. So when a soldier woke him from a disturbed sleep at 01.20 hours to say that another casualty evacuation would be landing in approximately ten minutes, he was so exhausted that he found it hard to stir. But then the soldier said a single word that got the doctor moving: ‘British’.

  It was all back to front, of course, but if a foreign soldier needed medical care, the pressure was increased. Nobody cared about another dead Afghan soldier, he thought bitterly. But a dead British soldier? That would make international headlines, and the politicians would look bad. The doctor’s superiors would consider this unacceptable and he would know about it. In seconds, Doctor Karim was splashing water on his face, issuing instructions in Pashto and pulling on his clothes. ‘Is the theatre free?’

  ‘They’re scrubbing it down now.’

  ‘Do we know what the injury is?’

  ‘A bullet wound to the left shoulder.’

  ‘Do we have a blood group?’

  ‘The disc around his neck says O positive.’

  ‘Go to theatre. Tell the nurse to have bloods ready. I’m on my way.’

  The soldier turned and ran. Doctor Karim put his shoes on and followed, jogging out of his quarters in Accommodation Block A towards the medical centre.

  Even now, in the small hours of the morning, Camp Shorabak was buzzing with activity. Nothing like it had been ten years ago, when the camp was named Bastion and it was home to the occupying British force. Doctor Karim had been a medical assistant in those days, and had learned his trade on the job. He had no true qualifications, but he’d removed more shrapnel, and amputated more limbs, than he could even count. Come to him with the flu, he wouldn’t be able to help you, but in the field of military medicine he was an expert.

  ‘Something happening, doctor?’

  Doctor Karim was hurrying down the alleyway between Accommodation Blocks A and B when a figure lurking in an entrance called out the question in English. He stopped to see who it was. The figure stepped a little closer. Doctor Karim recognised him. He was a member of the British military, but he had a bit more weight to him than most soldiers, as well as a neatly trimmed goatee beard flecked with grey. Doctor Karim had noticed that, whenever British military personnel were in camp, they avoided this man. Their suspicion had rubbed off on the doctor. ‘Excuse me,’ he said in his best English. ‘I cannot stop.’

  He ran past the British man and across the open ground that separated the accommodation blocks from the medical centre. A stationary Afghan National Police vehicle stood halfway between the two, its lights flashing and seven or eight ANP guys hanging around it. None of them paid him any attention. A medic rushed off his feet was nothing new at Camp Shorabak.

  Once, this fifty-bed medical unit had been a crisp, white, state-of-the-art facility. As well equipped as any hospital in Britain or America, they used to say. Now it was looking tired. Paint was peeling. Equipment was showing its age. There was a lack of specialised staff. As Doctor Karim swept aside a mosquito net to gain access to the trauma unit, there were already six tired-looking medical staff in green overalls in the reception area, along with two casualties attached to drips and machines monitoring their vital signs. The casualties shouldn’t really have been there, but there was nowhere else for them.

  In an adjoining room, the doctor approached a ceramic sink stained with watermarks and started scrubbing up. As he was rubbing antibacterial gel on to his hands and arms, he heard the distinctive sound of a Chinook passing overhead and he knew that must be his patient arriving. He finished cleaning himself up and grabbed some green overalls, mask and hat before striding back through the reception room and out towards the operating theatre.

  Three theatre nurses were waiting for him – two male, one female – and a male anaesthetist, all masked and overalled.

  ‘Bullet wound,’ the doctor announced in Pashto. ‘Left shoulder. Arrival any minute now. Do we have bloods?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the female nurse.

  The doctor approached the operating table and took a moment to check that all his instruments were there. He felt he barely had time to do that before the commotion out in the corridor became apparent. Thirty seconds later, the casualty was being wheeled in by two ANA soldiers, with a third holding a drip up and an Afghan army medic striding alongside.

  There were no formalities. The anaesthetist immediately asked the army medic what pain relief the casualty had received, and went about his business while Dr Karim took a closer look. The casualty was a big man with a grim face and dark hair. A day or two’s stubble. He was still wearing body armour and a fully laden ops vest. His clothes had been torn away around the wound, which had been stuffed full of haemostatic dressing to stem the bleeding. Dr Karim’s eyes were drawn to the patient’s tactical gloves. They were drenched with blood. He frowned momentarily. So far as he could tell, there was no reason for that. The wound was on the patient’s shoulder.

  ‘Cut away the body armour,’ he said as he turned to his instruments and selected some long, pointed tweezers with which to remove the dressing. ‘Okay?’ he asked the anaesthetist.

  The anaesthetist nodded.

  Dr Karim got to work.

  Train, advise, assist.

  This was the mantra of NATO’s current mission to Afghanistan. The mantra of Western doctors who were there to support and educate the Afghan medical teams. Of the specialist units giving tactical advice to the Afghan National Army and Police. There were NATO personnel dotted all around Helmand Province and Afghanistan in general.

  Training. Advising. Assisting.

  And spying.

  Some were spying on the Afghans. Some were spying on their own people: on British military personnel.