The team dismounted from the protective metal casing of the Black Hawk onto the stony earth. Almost immediately the chopper rose into the sky.
‘Where’s it going now?’ Ben shouted. ‘To get my mum?’
‘Don’t count on it,’ Ricki replied. ‘It’ll go wherever it’s told. Those things are in short supply in Helmand. There’s always a call for them somewhere.’ He looked into the distance towards the town. ‘We walk in single file. Ben, you stay at the back and try to follow in our footsteps.’
‘Why?’
‘Landmines,’ Ricki said.
Ben frowned, then nodded.
As the chopper disappeared, silence surrounded them. Silence, and darkness. Ben felt horribly vulnerable as he followed the unit through the desert sands, trying not to think too hard about where he was putting his feet. Half of him didn’t want to reach the town of Angoor; half of him couldn’t wait to get out of the desert and away from the threat of landmines.
They walked in silence for at least half an hour before the boundary wall of the town approached. Even in the darkness, Ben could tell that it was made from the same material as the walls of the compounds he had been in: some sort of mud and straw mixture, baked hard by the sun. It looked very old. The unit skirted around the wall until they came to an opening — a rough arch, unguarded. They slipped inside.
The outskirts of the town were almost deserted. The SAS team wove their way between the walls of compounds that made up this part of town. Occasionally an Afghan national would appear at the end of one of these side streets; without exception, they would melt immediately into the darkness, looks of suspicion on their faces.
‘Ever get the feeling,’ Ricki muttered once this had happened for the third time, ‘that you’re not really wanted?’
‘You can say that again,’ Toby replied. Ben just stayed silent.
Angoor was not a big town, and so it wasn’t long before the compounds in the outskirts were replaced with single-storey buildings that looked like they were made of concrete. The streets which they lined were wider, but still stony and rubble-strewn. There had clearly been fighting here in the not-too-distant past: many of the buildings were peppered with bullet holes and a few had even been destroyed. Some of the buildings had metal shutters closed down over them — shops, Ben assumed, but closed now it was dark. There were piles of rubber tyres dotted around, and big sheets of rusty corrugated iron propped up against buildings for no apparent reason. A smell of diesel permeated the air. This wasn’t a nice place.
There were more people here too, mostly men who eyed them darkly as they passed. A few of them had mobile phones held to their ears. Ben was taken aback to see them, but there were enough phones around for him to realize they were commonplace. To his surprise, there were a number of vehicles lining the street: beaten-up trucks here and there, but more frequently motorcycles. ‘It’s how the enemy like to get around,’ Ricki told him quietly. Ben just nodded.
Their weapons might have been hidden, but they clearly weren’t fooling everybody. The further they walked, the more attention they attracted. Groups of men congregated in the evening darkness and gazed at them with unfriendly stares as they passed. More than once, Ben saw rifles slung across their backs, though thankfully nothing as heavy-duty as the M16s the SAS team were carrying under their robes. Behind them, he heard the low hum of a motorbike. Somebody was following them, and they weren’t making much attempt to be subtle about it. The unit just carried on, grim-faced and alert. They seemed to know what they were looking for, and they weren’t going to be put off by the unfriendly, dangerous atmosphere.
A street corner. And standing there, smoking a cigarette and eyeing them uncertainly, was a man in uniform. The unit stopped.
‘Stick close to us, Ben,’ Ricki said.
‘What’s happening?’ Ben breathed.
‘You see the guy on the corner?’
Ben nodded.
‘Afghan national police. Some of them are fine. Some of them I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw them. But if there’s any buzz on the street about something going down, these guys will know.’
‘If you don’t trust him,’ Ben objected, ‘how do you know he’s going to tell you the truth?’
Ricki just raised an eyebrow. ‘Trick of the trade,’ he said mysteriously, then led the unit across the road to the Afghan policeman.
The policeman had the butt of his rifle on the ground and was leaning against it. He continued to smoke his cigarette as the unit approached, finally breathing out a lungful of smoke into Ricki’s face as the SAS man stood in front of him. He went to take another drag, but Ricki grabbed the cigarette from between his fingers and threw it to the floor.
‘Bad for your health, my friend,’ he said. ‘You should give up.’
The policeman’s eyes widened. He straightened up a little.
‘Another thing that’s bad for your health,’ Ricki continued, ‘is not doing what we ask.’ As he spoke, he raised his dishdash slightly to reveal the end of his M16. ‘You speak English?’
The policeman didn’t reply, but he nodded warily.
‘We’re looking for someone,’ Ricki said. ‘Ben here’s going to tell you what he looks like, and you’re going to tell me if he’s been seen. Do you understand?’
The policeman shrugged. Ricki turned to Ben. ‘All right, Ben,’ he murmured. ‘Let’s hear it.’
‘Tall and thin,’ Ben said. ‘One of his eyes is white and he has scars on one side of his face. He was wearing white robes. And’ — he said this last bit defiantly — ‘he’s probably got a young girl with him.’
‘Ringing any bells?’ Ricki demanded.
The policeman narrowed his eyes. ‘Perhaps, yes,’ he said. They were the first words he had spoken. ‘Perhaps, no.’
Ricki sniffed. He raised his dishdash once again and for a tense moment, Ben thought he was going to draw his weapon. The policeman obviously thought the same thing too. He took a nervous step backwards.
But Ricki didn’t touch his M16. Instead, from a pouch in his ops waistcoat, he drew out a handful of crumpled notes. He peeled off three of them and waved them under the policeman’s nose. Instantly the man’s expression changed from one of suspicion to one of greed. He tried to grab the notes, but Ricki pulled his hand away. ‘Information first,’ he said. ‘Money second.’
The policeman sniffed and his eyes flicked left and right, checking to see who was watching him. Ben looked over his shoulder. There were people in the street, but for the moment nobody seemed to be scoping them out, and the motorbike that had been trailing them was out of sight.
‘I know the man,’ the policeman said quietly. ‘He arrived this evening. He had the girl with him.’
Ben felt a surge of excitement. He had the girl with him.
‘Where are they now?’
The policeman gave another lazy shrug and eyed Ricki meaningfully. The SAS handed over a couple of notes. ‘The house where they are staying, it is not far from here.’
‘Show us.’
The man shook his head and a smile came across his face. He lifted one finger and shook it.
‘Show us where it is, you’ll get more money.’
But the policeman continued to shake his finger. ‘It is too dangerous for me,’ he said. ‘But I will tell you where to go.’
The SAS team looked at each other. Something seemed to pass between them, some kind of unspoken agreement. Ricki turned back to the policeman.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Start talking. We’re all ears.’
Aarya was paralysed with terror.
She didn’t know what was worse: the waiting, or the prospect of what was to come. She found herself shivering as she curled up into an exhausted little ball in the corner of that dark room; when the door opened, she trembled even more.