Will stared at him and felt the stirrings of a grudging respect. But respect or no respect, he had to cover himself and his unit.
He nodded in the direction they needed to go.
'Walk,' he told Ismail, curtly. 'Now.'
EIGHT
Once they had RV'd back at the truck, Drew took the wheel, Kennedy sitting beside him. Ismail was bundled roughly into the back by Will and Anderson.
'You sure this is the right guy?' Anderson asked, once they were all inside.
Ismail looked anxiously at Will, knowing that his safety was hanging on the words of the man he had so clearly just pissed off.
Will stared coldly back at him. 'Yeah,' he said, finally. 'I'm sure.'
'Looks like a fucking Fundie Jundie to me,' Kennedy muttered from the front.
'Shut up, Kennedy,' Will snapped. 'Ignore him,' he told Ismail. 'For now, at least.'
Having perfectly memorised the route Sami had taken into Kandahar, Drew retraced it as the others sat silently in the back. Anderson and Kennedy eyed Ismail with distrust; Ismail, in turn, looked as though he was wondering what the hell he had got himself into, stuck in a vehicle with these dangerous men.
Will was certainly angry with the frightened Afghan, but he couldn't quite pinpoint why. The guy was only being careful, after all. Maybe he just didn't like the fact that Ismail had pulled the wool over his eyes. In situations like this, you want to be control and for a few moments back there, Will hadn't been. It had given him a bad feeling.
Once they reached the outskirts of the city, Will spoke. 'OK, Ismail,' he said. 'You'd better start talking. Where are we going and how long will it take us to get there?'
Ismail's eyes flickered anxiously to each of the SAS men in turn before he answered. 'The village where the woman you are searching for is being held is a day's drive from here. The main road south will take you most of the way, but the snow will have blocked off the smaller road that leads to the village itself. You will have to make your way there on foot.'
'Lovely,' Kennedy murmured. 'A walk through the snow in the dark. Maybe we can attack the Taliban with snowballs.'
'I'll fucking attack you if you don't shut it,' Anderson growled, 'and not with snowballs.'
'I'd rather engage the Taliban under cover of night anyway,' Will said. He wasn't worried by the sniping between them — it often happened when adrenaline was running high. As long as they could rely on each other in battle, that was what counted.
He turned back to Ismail. 'Are you sure you'll be able to lead us there?'
'Positive,' Ismail said, confidently. 'It is the village where I was born. That is the reason I know what is going on there.'
'What's the main road south like?' Anderson asked.
Ismail raised an eyebrow. 'Like all roads in Afghanistan,' he said, simply. 'It is very dangerous. There will not be many cars, not in this weather. But we may encounter roadblocks. Some of them will be military, others will have been set up by bandits who will want to take all the money we have. And if we don't give it to them, they will try to take it by force.'
The SAS men maintained a grim silence. Will knew exactly what they were thinking.
11.35. They had been driving for perhaps half an hour and the last remnants of the urban sprawl of Kandahar had finally dissolved into nothing, when Will instructed Drew to pull over. 'What is wrong?' Ismail asked.
'Nothing's wrong,' Will told him. 'We need to get our weapons ready. If we come across trouble, we don't want to be scrabbling around looking for guns.'
'But I thought you had your gun,' he said. 'You pointed it at me.' He sounded so concerned about this, that the others could not resist a smile.
'We've brought some back-up,' Will told him, opening the compartment in the floor of the truck to reveal the weapons cache. Ismail's eyes widened slightly as the Diemacos came out and he fell silent — though from that moment on, Will kept noticing that Ismail would glance anxiously at the guns from time to time. Each time he did so, Anderson looked at him with a certain distaste.
'You do not like me, I think,' Ismail said.
Anderson looked away.
'You do not trust me, perhaps.'
'You're an informant,' Anderson growled. 'You're doublecrossing someone. I just hope it isn't us.'
Ismail smiled a patient smile. 'I think perhaps you do not know how life is in Afghanistan.'
'Bollocks to that,' Anderson replied, vigorously. 'I spent six months this year in the Stan and three months the year before that. I've had every Taliban fucker in this godforsaken country throw everything they've got at me and I've lost count of the number of mates who've had their brains blown out of the back of their heads. So don't tell me I don't know anything about Afghanistan, my friend.'
An uncomfortable silence followed Anderson's outburst — a silence only broken when Ismail spoke. His voice was measured, reasonable.
'I did not mean,' he said, calmly, 'that you know nothing of Afghanistan as a theatre of war. Your ability in that field is beyond question and I thank you for the sacrifices you have made on my country's behalf. I meant that perhaps you do not know what life is like for we ordinary citizens. I despise the Taliban as much as you — they killed my parents, after all. But I would not be running the risk I run simply out of revenge. We are a poor country and many people struggle even to buy food. I do what I do so that I am able to feed my young son — your British government pays me enough for the information to make it worthwhile. Tell me, my friend, do you have children?'
Anderson nodded, curtly.
'And is there anything you would not do to put food in their mouths?'
Ismail's direct question was not met with an answer. Instead, Anderson redirected his gaze out of the window. The young Afghan did not press the issue, but it was clear to all of them that he had given Anderson something to think about.
The snow started to fall more thickly, dancing in the beams of the headlights and flying towards the car like a million tiny bullets. Drew was forced to reduce his speed to little more than a crawl as he peered through the windscreen, his face screwed up in concentration as he negotiated his way through the blizzard. The area south of Kandahar was not mountainous, like other parts of Afghanistan; but there was a steady upwards incline as they drove up out of the geographical bowl in which the city was situated. It was difficult to see clearly through the blizzard, but when Will did manage to get a view of the landscape, he saw it was a gently undulating terrain. There were a few trees, but they were sparse. More striking were the remnants of Afghanistan's past battles that lay abandoned by the side of the road. He counted the hulking shells of Russian T-55 tanks, anything of any use already stripped out of them. There were burned out armoured cars, discarded oil drums — the debris of a country that had been at war for as long as it could remember.
Every now and then they felt the wheels spin ineffectually on the icy road and towards mid-afternoon, despite Drew's skill behind the wheel, they felt themselves skidding towards the side of the road. They jolted around inside the truck as Drew calmly drove into the skid and brought the vehicle to a halt. It was clear that the going was getting tough, so they attached the snow chains that Sami had provided. They drove off again and the chains crunched noisily under them, but the truck held the road much better. As the afternoon wore on, the snow stopped falling and they were able to see around them a bit more clearly. When they stopped to replenish the truck with diesel from one of the tanks that Sami had supplied, the others stood guard around the vehicle, pointing their guns up into the hills, which they all knew from experience of this treacherous country could be hiding unknown dangers.