‘How?’

  ‘I told you – my vehicle’s in a ditch on the northern edge of the village. I can get it here in ten or fifteen minutes, but we need to bundle him in and get out of the village as soon as I do that.’ He closed his eyes for a moment. Breathed deeply to stop a wave of pain and nausea emanating from his wound.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Caitlin asked.

  Danny ignored her. ‘I need to get moving,’ he said.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘We can’t fuck around,’ Danny said.

  ‘I can’t just leave without telling the others,’ Caitlin said. ‘If I’m AWOL for more than an hour, they’ll call it in.’

  ‘What are you going to tell them?’

  ‘I’m following up a lead. Woman to woman. Some shit like that. Leave it to me.’

  Danny nodded. ‘What gear do you have back at your digs?’

  ‘Mostly medical,’ Caitlin said.

  ‘Any more grenades? Ammo?’

  ‘I’ll get what I can.’

  ‘Do it now and quickly,’ Danny said. He looked back over his shoulder at the Imam who was crouched down and retching. ‘I’ll keep him under control. When you get back, we’ll swap and I’ll get the vehicle. Then we’ll go find this Al-Zafawi. See what he’s got to say for himself.’

  Caitlin nodded. Seconds later she was gone.

  CHAPTER 16

  The morning had passed slowly in Camp Shorabak. Once they’d kennelled the dog, Holroyd had taken individual statements from Tony and Dexter in neat handwriting using a fountain pen and a leather-bound notebook. The debrief had happened in the privacy of a sweltering Portakabin set aside for their use. It was empty apart from a table and four chairs. A couple of minutes after they’d arrived, Holroyd’s number two, Jacko McGuigan, had brought them their rucksacks – but not, Tony noted, their personal weapons – which he propped up in one corner before inclining his head obsequiously to Holroyd as he laid their ops vests over them. The vests had been emptied out.

  Holroyd obviously wanted to keep Tony and Dexter on side. His overly friendly manner had been transparent. When he’d finished taking their statements, he’d gone out of his way to act like their best mate.

  ‘Look lads,’ he’d said. ‘You know I’ve got to confine you to camp. Not that you’d exactly want to go sightseeing anyway.’ He laughed at his own joke, while Tony and Dexter smiled politely. ‘Seriously, I don’t want to put you on total lockdown. Like I told you, move around the camp by all means, visit your dog if you need to – just stay inside the perimeter. My advice is that you keep away from the ANA boys. You’ll eat and sleep in this Portakabin. I’ll have someone bring you some ration packs and water. I’m hoping to get us out of here and back to the UK tomorrow evening at the latest.’

  ‘Roger that,’ Tony had said.

  Dexter had maintained a surly silence while Holroyd was present. ‘I’m staying here,’ he said as soon as the RMP man had left. ‘Everyone on the base will know about Cole by now. And they’ll know about Baron going for that ANA guy. I don’t want to be the centre of attention.’

  Tony nodded his agreement. They remained in the Portakabin, away from the general population of the base, with a thick silence between them. Neither of them felt any need to discuss what they’d done that morning and their argument outside the dog enclosure still hung in the air. Dexter took a rubber ball with teeth marks from his rucksack, propped the pack against one wall, sat with his back to it and bounced the ball repetitively against the opposite wall. Minute after minute, hour after hour, the thud-thud of the ball was the only noise in the Portakabin. He continued throwing it when McGuigan arrived and dumped some ration packs on the table. When Tony returned after going for a piss he was still at it.

  ‘You going for an Olympic gold in bouncy ball?’ he said.

  Dexter gave him a foul look. Tony shrugged and didn’t say anything else. He slumped on a chair in the opposite corner and feigned sleep.

  Thud-thud.

  Thud-thud.

  Tony inhaled slowly. Kept his calm. He was going to need it.

  At 13.30 hours, the thud of the ball suddenly stopped.

  ‘I’m going to check on Baron,’ Dexter said. He stood up and stomped out of the room.

  Tony stood up the moment the Portakabin door closed. Headed for his rucksack that was still propped up in one corner. It was neatly packed and he found what he was looking for in less than ten seconds: a small foil packet of tranquillisers. Diazepam. Ten milligrams. Two would do it, he reckoned. He pricked them out and put the remaining tablets back in his rucksack.

  The ration packs that McGuigan had supplied were in a box on the table. Tony rummaged through them. There were two foil packs of chicken curry. Tony took one of them and stashed it in his rucksack. He opened the second one and pressed the two tablets of diazepam into the cold, sludgy curry. He left it on the table, then took another MRE at random, ripped it open and got it down his neck. He left the empty packet next to the full chicken curry and took his seat again.

  Dexter returned after half an hour. His face was a thundercloud. ‘It’s too fucking hot for him in that kennel.’

  ‘Take it easy,’ Tony said. ‘This time tomorrow, we’ll all be back home.’ He pointed at the MRE on the table. ‘I opened the chicken curry by mistake,’ he said. ‘All yours.’

  ‘I don’t see why I can’t just bring him back here.’

  ‘Because right now, the smart move is to do what Holroyd says.’ Tony sniffed. ‘Get some scoff down you. And do me a favour, mate. Give it a rest with the ball. It’s like the frickin’ Chinese water torture in here.’

  Dexter gave him another dark look, but didn’t reply. He grabbed the foil-packed chicken curry and started squeezing it into his mouth. A minute later, he chucked the empty wrapper on to the table and returned to his position by the wall, leaning against his rucksack. He started up with the rubber ball again.

  But not for long. Ten minutes later he was asleep.

  Once Caitlin had left, Danny returned to the Imam, pulled him to his feet and dragged him to the rear entrance. While it was easier to keep the Imam hidden inside, there was only a single exit point. If anyone came looking for the old boy, Danny had only one escape route. Outside, of course, there was a danger of being seen, but his escape options were less limited. So he forced the Imam towards the exit.

  But something stopped him before he hit the exterior. He remembered how the Imam had handed over the firearm to the two young men just minutes earlier. If this guy was a friend of Al-Zafawi, did that mean he was sitting on more weaponry?

  ‘Wait,’ he told the Imam.

  The old man’s eyes darted towards the exit.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Where is what?’ the breathless Imam managed to say.

  ‘Al-Zafawi’s cache. His weapons. You just handed over a handgun to one of his goons. I’m thinking there’s more like that hidden here.’

  ‘You are wrong,’ the Imam said. ‘There is nothing.’

  But as he spoke, his eyes flickered towards the raised area against the southern wall of the prayer room. Danny bustled the Imam towards it, threw him on to the wooden platform and examined it a little more closely. He immediately saw that there was a trapdoor, about a metre square, with a lock flush to the wooden platform. Danny kicked the Imam towards it.

  ‘Get it open,’ he said.

  At first the Imam shook his head, but then he caught sight of the look on Danny’s face and it was enough. With trembling hands, he removed a key on a cord round his neck and fumbled the lock open. Danny pulled the trapdoor up and looked into the space below the platform.

  ‘Bingo,’ he muttered.

  It was an arsenal. Three AK-47s lay side by side. Two rocket launchers, and a stash of RPGs. A couple of helmets with fourth generation night sights – equivalent to the one Tony had shown them back at Kandahar. There were boxes of C-4 plastic explosive. There were remote detonators. It was a terrorist’s wish list. And now it was Danny’s.

  He closed the trapdoor. The gear wasn’t going anywhere. He turned to the Imam. ‘Get outside,’ he said. Pulling him to his feet, he forced the old man to the exit. They needed to hide while they waited for Caitlin to return.

  After the dim interior of the prayer room, the exterior brightness hurt Danny’s eyes. He squinted as he dragged the old man across the rubble-strewn building site at the back of the mosque towards a pile of old breeze blocks through which a few hardy weeds were trying to grow. The Imam struggled surprisingly forcefully. Danny kept a firm grip on him with his good arm, bundling him to the far side of the blocks. He cried out, earning himself a blow to the pit of his stomach. Danny forced him down on to his front, then kneeled on his back so it was difficult for him to fill his lungs with air and shout any more. And in case he was tempted to try it, he pressed his weapon into the back of his prisoner’s head. ‘If you try to alert anyone,’ Danny whispered, ‘I’ll kill you first, then I’ll kill them.’

  The Imam kept quiet.

  It wasn’t true that Danny had everything he needed. The Imam’s directions were vague, and in any case he and Caitlin couldn’t just walk up to Al-Zafawi’s cave and ask for a friendly chat. A strategy was forming in Danny’s mind, to which the old man was central.

  Danny’s wound felt wet – he didn’t know if it was sweat or if it had started to weep. It certainly hurt. He did what he could to put that from his mind. Instead he concentrated on keeping the Imam silent. He was able to keep surveillance on the area to the back of the mosque through some gaps in the pile of breeze blocks. He also listened hard for the sound of anyone approaching.

  Every few minutes, the Imam would wriggle in a futile attempt to push Danny off. He was persistent if nothing else. But Danny kept his full weight on the old man. The Imam wasn’t going anywhere.

  Danny heard footsteps after half an hour. Looking through the blocks, he saw a figure in blue robes and headdress. He recognised Caitlin by her purposeful gait. He gave a low whistle. Caitlin stopped and looked round. Danny held his weapon up above the pile. Recognising it, Caitlin came to join him.

  ‘Catching some rays, mate?’ she said as she removed a heavy rucksack from where it was secreted underneath her robes and crouched down.

  ‘Anyone follow you?’

  ‘Not that I could see. I doubled back a couple of times.’

  ‘Keep him quiet. I found us some toys.’

  It took Danny three journeys to fetch the rocket launchers, RPGs, NV helmets, C-4 and detonators from the cache. Caitlin looked surprised to start with. When Danny had finished piling up the gear behind the rubble mound, she was grinning. ‘I’m guessing you stumbled on one of the Red Unit’s caches.’

  ‘I’m guessing I did,’ Danny said. ‘I’m going to get the vehicle. We need to load it up as soon as I get here.’

  ‘ETA?’

  ‘Fifteen minutes.’

  Caitlin took his position kneeling on the Imam’s back. The old man made a sudden struggle and pathetic attempt to shout out, but fell silent again when Caitlin rapped him on the back of the skull with her own handgun. ‘Jeez, he doesn’t get the message, this one.’ She looked back at Danny. ‘The only road comes in from the south-east,’ she said. ‘You’ll be conspicuous if you use it.’

  ‘I’ll stay off-road,’ Danny said. He pointed off to the north-west. ‘From that direction.’

  Danny emerged from the rubble, his handgun secreted under his robes. He walked with purpose, knowing that nothing was more likely to make him appear conspicuous than being hesitant. He cut across the deserted building site, along the side of the mosque, past the dwelling where they’d hidden out for the morning and emerged at the top of the main street.

  There were only a few locals out in the heat of the middle of the day. None of them seemed to be paying Danny any attention as he crossed the street and veered to the north, past a few derelict houses where a couple of meagre goats were scratching around looking for food. The ditch where he’d left the Hilux was approximately a hundred metres to his north-east, across an expanse of parched, scrubby ground. Danny could just see it: a dip in the ground, slightly obscured by the shimmering of heat off the hard-baked earth. The intervening ground afforded no cover. If anybody was watching from the direction of the village, they’d see him. His only option was speed and, for that, the women’s robes he was wearing were a hindrance. He hid behind the walls of one of the derelict buildings and removed them. Knowing that they might come in useful later, he slung them over his right shoulder while he fixed his assault rifle across his chest. He scanned the area back towards the village to check nobody had eyes on it. His only company was the goats, so he made a run for it.

  Danny could tell his strength was down. The sprint across open ground was unusually difficult and running caused a jolting pain in his left shoulder. Every few paces he looked back to check he wasn’t observed – there was no sign of anyone – but it was only when he reached the ditch and was looking down at the secreted vehicle that he realised he had a problem.

  Two problems, in fact.

  A couple of kids in dirty robes, boys, no more than ten years of age, standing in the ditch, looking at Danny’s Hilux as if they’d found hidden treasure. They looked up at Danny – heavily armed, dirty, stinking and threatening – as though he was the devil himself.

  Danny stared at them, silently cursing.

  The very fact that these kids had seen him meant that he was compromised.

  He pulled his handgun. Aimed it at one of the kids. The boy froze. His mate shrank back against the far side of the ditch.

  Danny had a split second to make the call. Did he take the kids out and get rid of the immediate problem? The retort of two rounds from the pistol – which would easily be heard back in the village – would make matters worse for him. And the last thing he wanted was a trail of dead bodies.

  Or was it just that he didn’t want to kill two kids in cold blood?

  He jumped down into the ditch. The kids flinched. Danny flung his robes into the open back of the Hilux and strode round to the driver’s side. In the side mirror he saw the kids scampering back along the ditch. He swore under his breath – it was unthinkable that they wouldn’t tell an adult they’d just seen a white-skinned soldier climbing into a hidden car. He had to leave immediately. Turning the engine over, he knocked the Hilux into gear and accelerated. The terrain moved at an upward incline, out of the ditch and on to the flat desert plain surrounding the village. Even at a relatively modest speed, the tyres kicked up a cloud of dust as Danny sped anticlockwise around the northern perimeter of Panjika. From his left window he could see, above the rooftops, the two-storey tower at the back of the mosque that marked Caitlin’s position. The speedometer hovered around twenty mph. At this rate it would take a good two minutes to get to Caitlin. The temptation was to floor the vehicle, but that would make more noise and potentially attract more attention. So he kept a steady speed.

  Time check: 14.25 hours. He cursed. He’d been more than fifteen minutes. The Hilux jolted over the uneven ground as he swung it round the edge of the village. Fifty metres up ahead he saw the derelict vehicle they’d used as an OP. Beyond that, the back of the mosque. He tried to pick out Caitlin and the Imam, but they were both hidden. As he continued to head to the rear of the mosque, he looked along its side towards the top of the main street. He saw four figures. Two children. Two men. Distance: 150 metres. One of the children was pointing in his direction.

  He swore again and pressed the accelerator. The tyres kicked up even more dust. He reached the back of the mosque in approximately fifteen seconds. Caitlin and the Imam were exactly where he’d left them, only now Caitlin was standing up and pulling the Imam to his feet. The old man’s arms were flailing wildly and he looked like he was shouting out. Danny came to a halt ten metres from their position and left the engine running as he jumped out. He grabbed the headdress from the back of the Hilux and ran towards them.

  ‘Could you make any more frickin’ noise?’ Caitlin said as Danny approached.

  ‘We’re blown. Two kids found the vehicle. I just saw them talking to two adults at the top of the main street.’

  ‘Jeez, and you couldn’t do something to keep them quiet?’

  ‘Just get him in the fucking car,’ Danny said, covering the wriggling Imam’s head with the headdress so that he couldn’t be easily identified. He thrust the old man towards Caitlin and started loading up armfuls of the stolen weaponry into the back of the Hilux. ‘You take the wheel,’ he barked. ‘Head north to put anyone watching off the scent.’

  ‘There’s an ANA forward operating base directly north,’ Caitlin said. ‘Five klicks.’

  ‘We’ll change bearing when we’re out of sight of the village. I’m going to get in the back to supply covering fire. Move!’

  Caitlin didn’t argue. As Danny continued to load up the hardware, she dragged the Imam towards the vehicle and bundled him into the passenger seat before slamming the door closed and slinging her rucksack into the back. While she got behind the wheel, Danny loaded up the last batch of hardware, jumped into the back of the Hilux, unslung his assault rifle and crouched in the firing position, using the raised sides of the vehicle as cover.

  ‘Go!’ he shouted. ‘Go!’

  Caitlin floored it, turning the vehicle in a full circle to head back the way Danny had arrived. Danny half closed his eyes to stop the cloud of dust compromising his vision, but he remained firmly in the firing position, aiming out of the right-hand side of the Hilux so that his weapon would be pointing across the ground that led to the top of the main street when it came into view.

  Which it did in five seconds. And a second after that, they were under fire.

  There was no sign of the kids. But the two adult figures were still there and they were closer. Thirty metres, maximum. The instant he saw them at that proximity, Danny recognised them as the two young men he’d seen speaking to the Imam. One of them was holding up the pistol, presumably the same one the Imam had given them. He fired it.