Ben and Aarya ducked back out of sight. Ben sensed that his new friend was trembling. He wanted to whisper to her that it was going to be all right, but he didn’t want to make a sound so they crouched in silence behind the beaten-up truck.
Ten seconds passed.
Twenty seconds.
And then, quite clearly, Ben heard footsteps. The armed man was still walking their way. He was now very close.
Ben’s muscles tensed. The footsteps grew louder. From their hiding place behind the van, he saw a shadow approach down the middle of the road.
And then the sound of footsteps stopped.
He was holding his breath. They both were. Sweat dribbled down the side of Ben’s face. If the armed man took another couple of steps forward, he would see them. Ben didn’t quite know why, but something told him that really wouldn’t be a good thing.
Time stood still. Across the road, Ben saw the dog that he had noticed earlier. It was sniffing against one of the stalls and he prayed it wouldn’t notice them and give their location away. He realized that every muscle in his body was preparing to run, if it should come to that.
It didn’t. To Ben’s relief the shadow disappeared and he heard the footsteps disappearing back towards the Land Rover. Both he and Aarya breathed a deep sigh of relief. Ben wiped the sweat from his forehead and then, gingerly, peered round the corner of the van again. ‘Don’t!’ Aarya whispered. But Ben ignored her, and soon she too was looking down the road.
The man was standing back by the Land Rover, but the other two had disappeared. The back doors of the vehicle had been opened and so had the gate to Raheem’s house, leading Ben to suppose that the other two armed men had gone inside.
They watched and waited.
Movement at the gate. The black-robed men had reappeared, and with them was another man. ‘Raheem’s father,’ Aarya whispered. ‘But what is that they are carrying?’
Ben didn’t know. Whatever it was, though, they were handling it with great care. It took two of them to carry what looked, from this distance, like a dark, cylinder-shaped case. They seemed to carry it with ease, but Ben thought he could make out a look of extreme concentration on the face of Raheem’s father and the armed man who helped him lift it.
The object was placed in the back of the Land Rover, then the doors were firmly shut. Raheem’s father was speaking to the three armed men, but they didn’t seem remotely interested in what he had to say. A few banknotes changed hands before the armed men turned and made their way back to the doors of the Land Rover.
‘They’re going,’ Ben whispered.
And it was just as he spoke that he felt someone tapping on his shoulder.
He spun round and, with a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach, saw a face with thick eyebrows, dark eyes and a large, hooked nose.
‘Raheem,’ Ben whispered.
Raheem didn’t reply. At least, not to Ben. Instead he shouted at the top of his voice in the direction of his father and the armed men. Ben didn’t understand what he said, and he certainly didn’t want to find out. He turned to Aarya and once more grabbed her by the wrist.
‘Run!’ he shouted.
Aarya didn’t need telling twice.
‘He shouted out that we were spying!’ she exclaimed as the two of them sidestepped Raheem and started hurtling back up that deserted street. But as they ran, Ben felt Aarya lagging behind. She wasn’t as fast as him and couldn’t keep up. He looked back over his shoulder and saw not only that Raheem was chasing them, but also that he was closing on Aarya. Even worse than that, one of the armed men was running in their direction.
He heard Aarya shout. Raheem had caught her, and now she was struggling with all her strength to get out of his grasp. Ben stopped, turned and ran back towards her. Raheem gave him a nasty sneer and spat some words at him that Ben couldn’t understand. Ben launched himself towards him; Raheem let go of Aarya and suddenly the two boys were grappling with each other. Raheem’s grip was strong and Ben had to use all his strength against him. The two of them fell to the ground and continued wrestling in the dusty road.
On the edge of his vision Ben was aware of Aarya. He heard her voice. ‘They’re coming, Ben. They’re coming!’ He tried to break free of Raheem, but the boy was too strong and he found himself pinned down.
And then, standing over them both, they saw a dark, black-robed figure. His rifle was no longer strapped across his back; it was in his fist and pointing in their direction. The man shouted an instruction and Raheem immediately let go. Ben wanted to run, but he knew he couldn’t. He had the business end of a gun pointing straight at him.
From somewhere he heard the dog bark twice; closer to hand, he heard Aarya sobbing with fear.
The man approached, an angry glare on his face. He was right above Ben now, and the gun was only inches away.
It happened in a single movement. The man twirled the rifle in his hands so that the butt was now facing Ben, and with a short, sharp jerk he cracked it hard over Ben’s head.
A fierce pain burned through him; then a wave of nausea; then a weird kind of numbness. Ben tried to push himself to his feet, but he only got halfway up before blackness engulfed him and he passed out, falling heavily back down onto the road as he did so.
Chapter Five
The plane had been in the air for seven hours and now it was dark outside.
The SAS unit — Ricki, Toby, Matt and Jack — sat together. Ricki and Matt listened to music on their iPods; Toby and Jack were sleeping. The military transport was full of soldiers being ferried out to Afghanistan. Ricki noticed that many of them avoided looking at the stretcher beds that lined one side of the cabin. Each one had heavy straps and a drip stand, and he wondered idly how many of them would be filled with wounded men when the plane made its return journey.
Ricki pulled his earphones out of his ears. He wasn’t really listening to the music, and anyway he could feel the aircraft losing height. They would be landing in Afghanistan very soon. He nudged Toby, who was sitting next to him. ‘The bird’s losing height,’ he said.
As he spoke, a voice came over the loudspeaker. It was the captain. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he announced, ‘we are about to begin our descent into Kandahar. In accordance with current regulations, we will be switching off all the lights in the cabin and outside the plane. Please take this opportunity to put on your helmets and body armour. We will be landing in approximately fifteen minutes.’
Ricki pulled his helmet and body armour — or plate hangers, as the guys normally called them — from under his seat. He never knew quite what good they would do if the plane was hit by a ground-to-air missile, or even if they came under attack from small arms fire, but he put them on anyway and the rest of his unit did the same. Five minutes later, the lights were switched off. They were in total blackness, with only the high-pitched hum of the plane’s engines for company. Nobody in the cabin spoke.
They must have continued their descent for another ten minutes, although time had very little meaning in that thick darkness. It was a relief when the plane juddered as the wheels touched down.
The lights flickered on. Toby turned to Ricki. ‘Good to be back?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ Ricki said with a grimace. ‘Great.’
Twenty minutes later they had disembarked. Kandahar Airbase was enormous, and home to more than 2,000 members of the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF. Most of them were American, although there were soldiers from many other countries there. The unit headed straight towards the PX — a kind of American shopping mall — to get some food and a cup of coffee. Once they were transported from here to Helmand Province, luxuries of that kind would be in short supply. In fact, luxuries of any kind would be in short supply.