'How many guards do you think we have outside?' he asked.
A pause. 'Don't know,' Drew said, quietly. 'A couple, maybe. They're not going to be expecting much from us, so it'll be light.'
'That's what I thought. Reckon we can take them, if we can get them into the room in the first place?'
'Don't like our chances much,' Kennedy said. 'But I don't fancy hanging around waiting for them to give us the fucking Marie Antoinette treatment.'
'Me neither.'
Will ran through his idea a couple of times — it was straightforward, but they needed to be sure they were fully familiar with it, because if this went wrong, the Taliban outside wouldn't wait until morning to shoot them. They'd do it there and then.
'Bit risky,' Drew observed when he had heard what Will had in mind.
'Fancy waiting till dawn?'
'Not really,' Drew replied, calmly.
When the impromptu briefing was over, they put the plan into action.
Kennedy took Anderson's corpse and, standing in the middle of the room, held it in front of him so that it acted as a shield should the guards get a chance to shoot. In his hand, he clutched the buckle knife. Will and Drew stood on either side of the entrance. When everyone was in position, Will started scratching on the inside of the door, trying to make it sound as if he was tampering with the lock. It was better than making an obvious fuss, he had decided; this way their guards would be more likely to investigate.
Sure enough, after only a moment of worrying away at the door, he heard voices outside, then the noise of a key in the lock. He stepped aside, feeling his blood suddenly pumping heavily through his veins.
If this was going to work, they'd have to move quickly.
A Taliban guard appeared at the door and shone his torch directly into the room. Immediately Kennedy was illuminated. The guard shouted something in Pashto and strode towards them. His gun was in his arms, but it was not raised.
That, Will realised, would be his mistake.
It all happened in seconds. A second guard entered and they made their move. Silently Will and Drew stepped behind the two guards and each wrapped a single strong arm around their necks. Will squeezed as tightly as he could, feeling his biceps bulge against his victim's flesh. With his other hand he grabbed the guard's gun and moved it away so that he couldn't shoot randomly. A strangled sound came from his throat and from that of Drew's man. Kennedy dropped Anderson's body, which fell heavily to the floor, then approached the now captive Taliban. Using the knife, he started stabbing them in the eyes with a kind of frenzy. Each time the knife went in it made a sucking sound and he gave it a little twist. Blood was everywhere and for a few brief seconds Will felt the limbs of his man flailing uncontrollably. He squeezed tighter.
Then, suddenly, his man fell still.
Will let the Taliban guard fall and about twenty seconds later, Drew did the same.
The Taliban guard's torch had dropped to the floor and was shining away from them. It illuminated the shattered remnants of Anderson's head.
'Make sure they're not going to wake up on us,' Will breathed.
'My fucking pleasure,' growled Kennedy.
He bent down to the ground next to the Taliban guard that Will had floored and without hesitation he plunged the knife deep into the neck of the fallen man. With a swift, silent, lethal efficiency, he moved over to the other guard and repeated the operation.
By this time, Drew had picked up the torch and was shining it on the two corpses. Will grabbed their Kalashnikovs and gave them to Drew and Kennedy. For himself, he took the knife, still sticky with the warm blood of the Taliban guards, from Kennedy, then took the key that one of the guards was still gripping. He unstrapped Anderson's belt and put it on himself, then resheathed the knife. He also took his dead comrade's watch: 00.57. They'd been in there for hours. Patting one of the guards down, he found an extra torch.
'Torch off,' he told Drew, who extinguished the light, plunging them back into sudden darkness. They crept out of the room, which now resembled a bloodbath, and locked the door behind them.
The main square of the village was deserted. At some point during their incarceration it had started to snow again and the flakes had begun to cover up the footprints that both they and the Taliban had made. The moon was still high in the sky, brightly illuminating the village. Good thing too, Will thought to himself. Their weapons and packs had been taken and they only had two antique-looking Kalashnikovs between them. Time was of the essence. Someone could come to relieve the guards they had killed at any moment. The instant they realised what had happened, the whole village would be lit up like a Christmas tree and the Taliban would be crawling all over the place. There was no time to locate their own guns — it was more important to find their target and get the hell out of there before it all went tits up for a second time. And if they happened to come across Ismail while they were looking, Will was sure they'd find time to avenge Anderson's death.
Still, he felt naked without a gun. What was more, one shot from an AK-47 would wake the whole place up. He'd feel much more comfortable with a suppressed weapon. On a whim, he looked over to where Anderson had fallen. Remnants of the poor bastard were still there, the snow spattered with brain matter, bits of skull and hair fragments. But Will paid no attention to that: he was just relieved to see that the Taliban, foolishly, had left the man's gun propped up against the wall. He grabbed it, then turned and went back to the others.
'Split up,' he breathed. 'You two search the buildings here; I'll take the north side. RV back here in fifteen minutes.'
Drew and Kennedy nodded and, cat-like, went about their work. Will felt much more comfortable now that he had the Diemaco in his fist and he ran silently up to the north side of the village, doing his best to conceal himself in the shadows that the moon cast on the frozen ground; where that was not possible, he just moved quickly.
Up ahead there was a large, low, concrete building, not unlike the one in which they had just been imprisoned. It seemed different to the small dwelling places that were dotted around and had a military truck parked outside — though a layer of snow over the vehicle suggested it hadn't been moved for at least a couple of days. After all, Will thought to himself, where would anyone drive to from here? The building had several metal doors evenly spaced around it, each firmly locked with heavy iron padlocks. At one end there was what looked like a wooden shack and beyond that the undulating snow stretched off into the darkness.
Will examined the locks. If he had the equipment, he could pick them in a trice, but God only knows where their Taliban captors had stashed their packs. For a brief moment he considered using the Diemaco to shoot the locks off; but even though the suppressed weapon would make little noise, the sound of the bullet against the metal would alert anyone nearby to his presence. No, he was going to have to think of another way in.
He skirted around the back of the building to see if there was any other entrance. Nothing. But as he was there, he heard a noise.
Quickly he turned, his back to the wall, pointing the Diemaco out into the dark, snowy countryside beyond.
Silence.
Perhaps it was an animal. The dog he had heard earlier.
Then again, perhaps not.
He held his breath and kept his eyes peeled.
That sound again. It was coming from somewhere to his left. Will pointed the Diemaco in that direction. He was holding his breath, his finger poised a hair's breadth from the trigger.
He listened carefully. Suddenly the noise came again.
Will blinked. He realised now what it was. It was the sound of someone sobbing. A woman. And it was coming from the wooden hut at the end of the building.