They had different plans for that weapon. Very different plans.
So it was that he had strapped the suitcase bomb to his back and was preparing to leave the compound when the stunning blast of the first artillery shell threw him to the ground, knocking the wind out of him and causing a shower of rubble and shrapnel to fall painfully onto his body. He gasped as a big hunk of metal, twisted and contorted into a lethal weapon, landed inches from his head.
A second shell thumped into the ground. From somewhere in the compound he heard the sound of screaming. Amir pushed himself up with difficulty — the suitcase bomb was weighing him down — and looked towards the other side of the compound.
He counted three dead men, and one more who looked like he wouldn’t last more than a minute or two. The man’s arm had been blown off and was lying on the ground, metres away, while blood gushed from the open wound. The screams — bloodcurdling and fierce — came from his strangled throat. They were growing weaker, though.
Amir had only been on his feet for seconds when the remainder of the shells hit, throwing him back to the ground once more. Suddenly the compound was full of smoke — Amir coughed and choked, unable to see his hands in front of him. For a moment, he hugged the ground. In the back of his mind he was aware that the screaming had stopped, and he knew what that meant.
He pushed himself to his feet again. The smoke was settling, but Amir still coughed and spluttered. The whole compound was littered with dismembered bodies now. He didn’t stop to identify them and he’d have had trouble doing so anyway: the faces of the dead were burned away and mashed up by shrapnel. There were, however, three other men standing. Their faces were bleeding; one of them had a wound to his arm. But their eyes were bright and they looked to Amir for instructions.
‘The soldiers will be coming!’ he barked. ‘We must get the weapon away from them. We must leave this area.’
The three men nodded. They immediately headed for the compound gate.
‘Wait!’ Amir shouted.
The others stopped and turned. Amir looked meaningfully at a locked door towards the back of the compound. ‘The children,’ he said.
There was a brief pause before one of the men — bigger than the others, with a fresh wound across the side of his face and a bandolier of ammo across his back — stepped forward. His name was Anuar, and Amir always suspected he fought not for the cause, but because he liked it.
‘If the soldiers come,’ he said, ‘they will find them. And if they find them, they will learn about the weapon.’ He sniffed, then looked Amir straight in the eye. ‘Leave it to me,’ he continued. ‘This is my task to fulfil. I will kill them now.’
Chapter Twelve
‘No!’
Amir’s voice was firm. It made Anuar stop in his tracks. ‘What is wrong?’ the man with the wounded face demanded. ‘Do not tell me you have suddenly gone weak, Amir.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Amir spat. ‘They are no use to us dead. We need to take them with us.’
‘But they will slow us down,’ Anuar said. ‘We cannot risk it.’
Amir narrowed his eyes, then stepped forward and grabbed Anuar by the throat. ‘You will take your orders from me. Is that understood?’
Anuar’s lip curled, but he nodded. ‘Yes,’ he hissed. ‘It is understood.’
‘Good. I am leaving now. I can move more quickly by myself. You take the children. Meet me in the caves behind Sangin. We will be able to hide there while things quieten down. Then we will continue our journey.’
Anuar nodded, a surly look on his face. He turned and headed towards the place where the children were imprisoned while Amir, the suitcase bomb still strapped to his back, moved swiftly across the compound. He needed to get out of here, quickly, before the British soldiers arrived.
Ben and Aarya didn’t know what had been causing the explosions, but they knew it was something big. Each time the shells hit, the ground shook and they were showered with dust from the cracks that were appearing on the ceiling. Aarya had screamed, but the sound was minute compared to the noise of the explosions. Ben’s ears hurt so much he had to touch them to check they weren’t bleeding. His whole body was trembling from the shock of the impact.
And then the silence. In some ways it was worse than the noise.
‘What was that?’ Aarya breathed.
‘I don’t know,’ Ben replied. ‘Whatever it was, I’m glad we weren’t right underneath it.’
It struck him that the force of the blasts might have weakened the door. He ran over to it and gave it a sturdy kick. Nothing. He was about to try again when, suddenly, it opened.
Three men entered. One of them had a bleeding wound on the side of his face and a bandolier of ammo; all of them had stern, unfriendly expressions. No one spoke. Two of them grabbed Ben, while the man with the bleeding face took Aarya. A rough piece of cloth that stank badly was wrapped around Ben’s mouth and tightly tied at the back and his hands were tied again. Aarya received the same treatment before they were hustled from the room and out into the central courtyard of the compound.
Ben couldn’t believe the destruction. Or the death. Bodies lay all around on the ground, disjointed and disfigured. Blood was everywhere, and for a moment Ben thought he was going to be sick. To his horror, he saw the dog that had approached him when they arrived sniffing at the dead bodies, and even licking the blood from one of the faces. Ben shuddered.
Their captors, however, didn’t give them any more chance to take in the sights. They were clearly in a great hurry, and before they knew it Ben and Aarya were dragged out of the compound.
They found themselves on a rough pathway, high compound walls on either side. There was no sight of anyone else. That figures, Ben thought to himself. I reckon I’d have got the hell out of here too. The three men didn’t hang around. With their guns pointing, they forced Ben and Aarya to the left, then continued through a maze of compound walls. They went quickly and were, Ben sensed, running from something. Or someone.
Maybe he should shout — alert people to their presence. If there were British troops in the area, surely the sound of an English voice would make them come running. But one look at the man with the bleeding face soon put him off that idea. The terrorist had something about him. An aura. Ben believed he would fire that rifle given half the chance — and he didn’t look like the kind of guy to waste his ammo on a warning shot.
They ran along tree lines, through fields and in ditches — anywhere that gave them cover. The sun beat on Ben’s head like a hammer and sweat trickled down the nape of his neck. There was no let-up. If either of them stumbled — and they often did — they were just pulled roughly back up again; if they slowed, a rifle was poked into their guts. Ben’s chest burned with exhaustion; he could only imagine how Aarya felt.
Suddenly the greenery stopped. Ben found himself looking out over a bleak desert landscape. Ahead of them were hills, rising sharply into the near-distance. They were sandy, craggy and forbidding. Ben and Aarya were forced to run towards them.
They didn’t climb the first hill they reached, but instead skimmed round the foot of it so that they were no longer in view of the green zone. Only then did the men allow them to reduce their furious pace, and not by much. They started to climb. Ben had to help Aarya, who was stumbling more than he was. From somewhere in the far distance he heard the booming sound of artillery, but none of it was directed towards them.