‘Now!’ he hissed. ‘Run!’
The two of them sprinted together away from the convoy and into the blackness of the desert night.
Ben didn’t stop to take in the scenery. He just wanted to put as much distance between them and the trucks as possible. Aarya was slower than him, but he kept to her pace, vaguely aware of shouting behind them. Ahead of them, in the distance, he could see a faint glow: the compound, he assumed. They kept running towards it, even though it seemed like a very long way off.
Bang!
He heard the gunshot almost at the same time that he felt it: a ringing sound that filled the air, and then a sickening whoosh as the round zoomed past his head. Two more cracks of gunfire followed it in quick succession, nauseatingly loud and uncomfortably close. One of them went over his head; the other kicked up a cloud of dust as it hit the road to his side. ‘They are shooting at us!’ Aarya wept. ‘They are shooting at us!’
‘Yeah,’ Ben hissed, still running at full pelt. ‘I kind of noticed.’ And with that, they both hit the dirt and started scrambling to the side of the road like demented crabs. Ben looked around desperately for some kind of cover — a rock, a ditch, anything. But all he could see in the light of the moon was a vast expanse of nothingness; all he could hear was the sound of angry voices, and of footsteps sprinting towards them.
The voices were louder now. ‘They are coming!’ Aarya gasped. ‘Ben! They are coming!’
Hands. Big, rough, calloused hands all over them, pulling them to their feet. Ben felt a blow to his stomach, so painful that it even masked the distress he felt that their escape attempt had failed. He doubled over, just as he heard Aarya being slapped hard across the face. A fist grabbed his hair and, still gasping from the punch, he was dragged towards the trucks and bruisingly thrown back into the hard metal shell of that moving prison. A distraught Aarya joined him, and then Amir. His ugly face was curled into an expression of absolute loathing, and as he retook his seat he poked the butt of his gun into Ben’s belly.
‘You are lucky,’ he hissed. ‘If you had been shot we would leave you bleeding by the roadside. If I see you move again, that is what I will do.’
One look at his captor’s eye told Ben that Amir meant it.
The trucks rolled on, and so did the night. Amir was like a warrior owl, never closing his eyes, never moving his gun. At Ben’s side, Aarya nodded from exhaustion, but Ben was determined to stay awake. Or maybe he was just too scared to fall asleep.
Towards morning, the temperature fell and he found himself shivering. His limbs became numb and weak. If Amir was cold, he didn’t show it, nor did he give Ben any sign of sympathy — not that Ben was expecting it. He was hungry and his mouth was dry with thirst: he really didn’t think he could cope with being in this vehicle much longer.
‘Are we going to stop soon?’ he asked. His voice surprised him — it was thin and rasping.
Amir sniffed and looked like he was deciding whether or not to reply. He shrugged. ‘Before sunrise,’ he said. ‘We have people expecting us in a nearby village. They will give us shelter while we wait once more for the cover of night.’ He sneered — an expression that suited his face. ‘These people are our friends. We have friends all over the country. They help us in our struggle against the hated Americans and British. You should not try any foolishness — they will not be forgiving if you try to escape.’
Ben tried to moisten his lips with his tongue. ‘Are you going to leave us there?’
Amir spat to one side. ‘Of course we will not leave you there. We have taken you for a purpose.’ He grinned — a singularly nasty expression. ‘You should be glad that you are useful. If not, you would be dead.’
‘What’s so useful about us?’ Ben demanded. ‘What can we do that you can’t?’
‘Nothing!’ Amir announced. ‘It is not what you can do, but who you are that is important.’
‘But you just kidnapped us at random. I don’t understand.’
‘Of course you do not understand. You are just a stupid child.’ Amir’s lips curled again. ‘You are both stupid children. Stupid, because you think you can escape from us. And stupid because you know nothing of how our war is fought. Nothing.’
‘Then why not enlighten me?’
For a moment Amir was quiet. Ben shrugged, as though it made no difference to him whether his captor carried on talking or not. Amir, though, could clearly not resist. ‘Where we are going,’ he said, ‘there are many foreign troops. But they are not true fighters. Not true fighters at all. If they think there are’ — Amir searched for an unfamiliar word — ‘if they think there are civilians with us, then they will not attack us with their aeroplanes and their bombs. And if they think one of the civilians is British…’
Amir’s smile grew broader than Ben had yet seen it. Triumphant, as though he had just made the winning move in a game of chess. Ben looked at him in horror, then over at Aarya. Her head was still nodding, and there was nothing to suggest that she had heard anything Amir had said. One small part of Ben wished the same could be said of him too. He felt sick as the full implication of what Amir had just said sank in. He didn’t know where they were going or what they were about to do, but what he did know was this: he and Aarya were travelling in a convoy with a group of terrorists in charge of a nuclear suitcase bomb, and they were being used as human shields. And as long as they were being held at gunpoint by the fanatical terrorist in front of them, there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.
Chapter Nine
Tuesday became Wednesday. Ben didn’t know whether to be relieved or frightened when the convoy came to a halt again. His body was bruised from the juddering journey; he was weak with hunger and dry with thirst. Aarya looked even worse.
Amir ordered them off the truck and they stepped weakly down, finding themselves once more on the outside of a compound. Ben could tell that day was not far off, but the grey light of morning had yet to break through the darkness as the silent, shadowy, dark-robed figures dragged them roughly into the compound itself.
If they hadn’t been driving all night, Ben would have wondered if they’d moved at all since their last stopover. As far as he could tell, the place was almost identical. The only exception was the fire in the middle of the courtyard, which was now just a pile of glowing, smoking embers.
‘Stop!’
It was Amir talking. Ben and Aarya waited while the men around them discussed something.
‘What are they saying?’ Ben whispered.
Aarya’s voice was weak. ‘They are talking about where to keep us,’ she said, then listened again carefully. ‘Somewhere empty, where there is nothing we can—’
Ben never got to hear the rest of the sentence, because Aarya never finished it. Instead she flinched, holding her hands to her ears. A booming sound exploded. It was far away, but not that far away, and it seemed to shake through Ben’s body. And then, suddenly, the sky in the distance became illuminated with a bright light that lingered for perhaps twenty seconds before fading away.
And then, louder this time, another boom.
It was too much for Aarya. She started screaming. ‘What is it? What is that noise?’ And then she reverted to her own language, crying with stress and panic.
Their captors had no time for it. One of them strode over to where Aarya was standing, before raising one of his hands ready to beat her on the head. A sudden anger filled Ben. He stepped forward and grabbed the man’s wrist, just as he was trying to hit Aarya.