Everywhere was covered in a blanket of fresh snow and Will felt as if they were the only people for miles around in that spectacular winter landscape. As if to shatter the illusion, Ismail spoke.
'The Taliban are very strong in this region,' he said, quietly. 'It feels like there is nobody around, but there are many villages around here, cut off by the snow. When the Taliban were thrown from power, they took refuge in places like this. They are not afraid to kill the villagers to get what they want, so now they run these places with the same reign of terror as they ran all of Afghanistan only a few years ago. I myself have seen them hang the body of a father in front of his children. I pray my own son does not have to witness such a thing.'
He stared out of the window into the landscape beyond, leaving the unit to imagine that grizzly scene. Will found it turned his stomach, but something deep inside him refused to be entirely horrified by what Ismail had described. At least parents were supposed to die before their children. He looked over at Anderson, who was staring thoughtfully at the floor. Was he thinking about his own kids? Will wondered. Was he wondering if he would be eating Christmas lunch with them in just over a week's time? Despite the snow all around, Christmas seemed a million miles away in this benighted country.
And with the thought of Christmas, the image of Laura and Anna, his family, lying dead on the floor of that department store so many thousands of miles away, flashed into his head. In a brief surge that lasted only a few seconds, he relived all the pain that had been with him ever since. Somewhere, he thought to himself, out in the bleak, uninviting landscape around him, was the key to his revenge. He found himself gritting his teeth, almost looking forward to the business ahead.
'Road block.' Drew said the words calmly, but Will instantly shook off his reverie as the truck came to a halt. On either side of them was a hilly mound with low bushes covered in snow. He leaned over and looked through the windscreen. Sure enough, a couple of hundred metres down the road, they saw a large vehicle parked to one side. Two men were standing in the middle of the road just next to it. From this distance it was impossible to see if they were armed, but Will felt sure they would be.
'ISAF?' he asked, tersely.
'I think it is unlikely,' Ismail replied. 'There are too few of them and I am not aware of any NATO bases in this region.'
'It's an ambush,' Anderson said, quietly. 'Look. Footprints.'
He pointed up into the hillock along one side of the road, a scant fifteen metres away. Just as Anderson had said, there was a trail of prints in the snow leading up to a little line of bushes, small enough to go unnoticed, but large enough to hide a man. Will looked to see if he could find anyone there. At first, he saw nothing; but as he squinted his eyes, something moved. It was only a tiny movement, but enough to shake a little shower of snow from one of the bushes on to the ground beneath. He looked more carefully. Sure enough, he could make out the outline of a man's head. He even thought he could see the black metal of a gun barrel pointing out through the bush.
'There's someone there,' he announced.
'Both sides,' Kennedy said. 'I've clocked one on our right too. Looks like someone's preparing for a surprise party — and I bet they've forgotten to bring any cake.'
They needed to move quickly and decisively. 'Drive up,' Will said, calmly. 'When they come to the window, nail them.' He looked at Anderson. 'We'll de-bus as soon as that happens. Fragmentation grenades at the ambushers, then take them out.'
Ismail started breathing heavily. 'You're going to kill them?'
'Not if they kill us first,' Will stated, flatly.
'But what if — ?'
'Shut up, Ismail,' he ordered. 'They haven't set up this ambush for fun. They have the advantage and if we don't take the fight to them, we'll be corpses on the side of the road within a minute.'
Ismail fell silent.
'Their main target's going to be our vehicle, so we need to get the hell out of here. When I say the word, me and Anderson are going to jump out the back and hit the ambushers with grenades. When we do that, jump out and take cover at the side of the road. We'll take it from there.
Can you do that, Ismail?'
The frightened Afghan nodded mutely.
In the front, Drew and Kennedy had taken the Sigs from their holsters and laid them on their laps. Will readied his weapon, while Anderson fished two fragmentation grenades from his rucksack and handed one over.
'Let's try and finish this with the same number of holes in our bodies as when we started,' Kennedy drawled.
No one laughed.
'Go!'Will told Drew.
The truck moved slowly forwards. Ismail's heavy breathing became more panicked as they approached the roadblock, but Will tried to put that sound from his mind as he concentrated on the matter in hand. His awareness had become crystalline and precise; a strange sense of calm had descended over him. The calm before the storm.
The roadblock was ten metres away now and the truck slowed down while the two men approached the front windows, one on either side. Will shifted to the back of the truck, ready to jump out as soon as he heard the crack of the weapons, but he managed to steal a glance at the two of them. There was no way these men were soldiers: they were walking with a louche, arrogant gait and one of them had his weapon — an AK-47 — resting over his right shoulder. They wore warm, heavy Afghan clothing, and their bearded faces were locked in an unpleasant sneer. One of them, as he approached, seemed to look over to where the ambushers were hidden; he nodded, imperceptibly.
The man who had approached the driver's window tapped on the glass, indicating to Drew that he should wind it down.
This was it. In a matter of seconds it would be over.
Drew and Kennedy wound down their windows. Immediately the man on Drew's side started to speak, his voice an incomprehensible babble of harsh, guttural Pashto.
He didn't get the chance to say much.
Almost as one, Drew and Kennedy raised their guns, pointed them directly at the faces of the two men, and fired. Will heard them thump to the ground. 'Now!' he hissed and instantly he and Anderson opened the back doors of the truck and jumped out. They pulled the pins from their fragmentation grenades and hurled them in the direction of the two ambushers, before jumping to the low bushes at the side of the road to get some natural cover. Ismail followed, scampering away from the truck with his arms held protectively over his head and Will was aware of Drew and Kennedy de-bussing too.
He and Anderson engaged their rifles and pointed them in the direction of their targets. The grenades exploded with a deafening crack and seconds later the two men staggered from the bushes where they were hiding. Even from a distance, Will could see that his man was horrifically wounded from the shrapnel in his face. He mercilessly aimed the Diemaco at the guy's head and fired a single shot. The ambusher fell backwards into the bushes, blood from his head spraying over the virgin snow.
Will heard the crack of Anderson's rifle and turned just in time to see the second ambusher collapse to the ground.
And then, all around them was silence. The sort of silence you only experience when there are dead people about.
Silence or not, they needed to check that their targets were indeed dead — leaving a wounded hostile behind you was a sure way to end up with a bullet in the back.
Will strode towards the man he'd nailed. As he did so, he heard two bangs as Drew and Kennedy administered head shots from their pistols to the fallen enemy.
It was the third bang that they didn't expect.
Will felt the shock of a high-calibre bullet whiz past him. It slammed into the open door at the back of the truck, instantly destroying the metal as though somebody had crumpled a piece of paper in their hand.