Ben found himself gasping as a weird mixture of grief and panic raced through him. He jumped down from the boulders and started searching the area, looking for some sign of his friend, or indeed his enemy. Amir had been well ahead of them, the suitcase bomb strapped to his back. The very fact that Ben had not been blown to smithereens meant the bomb had to be intact. Unable to see Amir anywhere, he deduced that the terrorist had escaped with his treasured weapon.
Ben stopped. He felt himself being ripped apart with indecision. He wanted to stay and look for Aarya, but he didn’t know where to look. He wanted to chase Amir, but he didn’t know where he had gone or what he could do even if he found him. Clutching his head in his hands, he tried to clear his brain. To decide on the right thing to do.
More than anything, he realized, he needed help. But how could he find help, stuck here on a blasted hillside in the middle of the Afghan desert, unable to speak the language and with the sun beating down like a brutal weapon?
Another boom in the distance. The whole area was a battleground, riddled with enemies being hunted by the British Army.
The army.
Suddenly Ben saw things more clearly in his mind’s eye. That’s what he needed to do. Find some soldiers. Tell them what was happening. Amir. The bomb. Everything. They would be able to find him. And what if he had Aarya with him? Then they’d find her too. She had to be still alive. Ben refused to believe anything different, despite the bleak evidence to the contrary.
Now that he had decided what to do, he didn’t hesitate. He just started to run, ignoring the agonizing pains down his back as he hurried down the hill, retracing his steps into the green zone.
‘AARYA! GET OUT OF THERE! GET OUT—’
Aarya heard Ben’s voice, but only just above the roar of the jet engines overhead. She didn’t need any urging to get out of that cave, though. Having stumbled, she pushed herself to her feet and ran faster than she had ever run before.
When the bomb hit, she assumed she was going to die. A silent prayer flashed though her head as her ears were deafened by that unbelievable noise. The impact threw her off her feet, forward into the air. She thought about her mother and father as she hit the ground, a crumpled mess of limbs. She imagined them weeping. As she opened her eyes and saw nothing but a sandy-coloured fog all around her, she wondered for a split second if this was what paradise looked like.
But then she realized how much she was hurting. There was no pain in paradise. She knew that was true. Aarya pushed herself up to her feet and continued to run, just as the rubble started to rain down on her. She put her hands over her head and staggered blindly into the mist.
Out of nowhere, a face. One dark eye, one the colour of milk. A body. Very close. Within grasping distance.
Aarya’s heart jumped into her mouth. He looked like a spirit, and an evil one at that. ‘Amir!’ she whispered.
Amir didn’t reply. He just grabbed her and started to pull her away from the caves, moving quickly despite the package on his back. She opened her mouth to scream, but immediately it was filled with thick, unpleasant dust and all she could do was spit and retch.
Still Amir pulled her. He seemed impervious to the rubble that was raining down on them. Impervious, almost, to pain. A small stone struck Aarya’s face. She felt blood. It dripped into her eyes and blinded her. Amir continued to pull, refusing to stop when she stumbled and just dragging her through the dirt until her feet could catch up again.
The rubble storm stopped. The fog cleared. Looking over her shoulder, Aarya searched for Ben; but they had moved round the hillside now, and she could see nothing. Just the edges of the devastation.
‘The men in the cave!’ she whispered. ‘We need to help them.’
But Amir just gave her a dead-eyed look. ‘They cannot be helped,’ he stated. He narrowed his eyes, as though he was judging Aarya in some way, like a doctor. Then he pulled a bottle of water from inside his robes and handed it to her. Aarya put the bottle to her lips and drank the warm water gratefully. She felt like she could have drunk for ever, but after a few seconds Amir pulled the bottle from her lips, allowed himself a little water, then put it away.
‘They cannot be helped.’ He repeated his earlier statement. ‘You are lucky not to have joined them. If you are not silent, you will. I will keep you alive only so long as you are useful to me.’ To emphasize his point, he grabbed Aarya by the throat and squeezed hard, so hard that she made a weak, croaking sound.
With that, he tugged her even more firmly and dragged her further away from the bombsite. Where to, she did not know.
Ben stumbled as he ran. He was so parched he felt like his body was made of sand, so weak he knew he could collapse at any moment. He needed water, but he saw nothing except dryness all around, shimmering in the heat.
He fell, knocking his shins against a rock, but there was no energy left in him to cry out. In his muddled brain something nagged at him. What was it Amir had said, an age ago when they were driving through the night? There may be landmines in the road ahead… An image filled his mind. He was in the Congo. A mine had exploded. There were body parts everywhere.
It could happen to him, he knew, as he pushed on through the heat. But what could he do? To stay here now, in the sweltering afternoon sun when he was so dehydrated, would be to sign his own death certificate.
‘I need to find the British Army,’ he whispered faintly to himself. ‘I need to find them…’
His head was pounding now. Ben raised his hands above it — a vain attempt to shelter himself from the sun’s rays. Stopping to catch his breath, he looked ahead. The green zone was there, but with the heat haze he couldn’t tell how close it was. All he could do was continue towards it, and hope he reached some sort of civilization before the heat defeated him.
A tree. With the sun so high in the sky, it barely cast a shadow. Ben staggered past it, then squinted. A field in the distance. He scanned the greenery, looking for people. But he saw nobody. Why would he? Who would be working in this intense, intolerable heat?
A ditch. A thin trickle of muddy water oozed along the bottom of it. It was smelly and unappetizing, but to Ben it looked as tempting as a fountain full of the clearest, freshest water. He stopped and stared. For a moment, he considered drinking it. He even found himself bending down, his hands cupped, ready to take a draught. But then, at the last minute, sense kicked in. The water wasn’t fresh. It was foul. He had to look elsewhere.
Ben drew himself up to his full height. But the very process of doing that made him giddy and nauseous. He took a step. The giddiness increased.
And then, although he tried to stop it, Ben felt himself tumbling into the ditch. He was vaguely aware of the muddy water soaking his clothes before he lost consciousness.
Chapter Fifteen
Bel had spent two days at FOB Jackson now. Two hot, sticky, traumatizing days and she wished she could be anywhere but there. After yesterday’s rocket attack, she felt like she was afraid of her own shadow. And while the soldiers around her had taken the hostilities in their stride, she could sense that some of them had still been rattled by that short, sharp contact.
She had spent most of her time trying to keep cool and drinking as much water as she could. This was drawn from the well in the centre of the compound, then sterilized using little white tablets. The water itself was warm with a rather unpleasant aftertaste on account of those tablets, but she gulped it down nevertheless. She realized that she had forgotten to remind Ben to drink plenty of water back in Pakistan and she chided herself for the oversight. But it was OK, she consoled herself. Ben was a sensible boy. He knew how to look after himself.