Graveyard of Empires, page 27
Ben handed the child to Francine Blanchet, who took her in her arms with surprising strength. ‘Bless you for taking care of her. And I apologise for the manner of my welcome,’ she said with a smile. ‘But one never knows who might coming knocking on one’s door these days. Please, please, come inside, all of you.’
She led them a little way further along the craggy passage and through an inverted V-shaped cleft into a wide, high-ceilinged grotto where more candle lanterns flickered in the darkness. More children were gathered inside the grotto, children everywhere. Ben tried to do a rough head-count, but it was immediately obvious there were far more of them than the forty they’d expected, at least half as many again. Some of the kids swarmed around Safiya as Francine set her down on a blanket; others were hiding in the shadows, the braver or more curious ones coming closer to peer at these strange visitors. They seemed especially fascinated by Madison, possibly the only western woman they’d ever known apart from Mère Blanchet.
‘Welcome to our humble home,’ Francine said. ‘It isn’t quite what we have been used to these many years past, but we are safe here, for the moment, if He so chooses. Now, please, sit with me. Yes, Gulnaz, what is it?’ – speaking kindly to the small girl who was tugging at her sleeve. She bent down and listened as the child whispered in her ear, darting sidelong glances at Madison.
‘She wants to thank you for helping her friend, and she also wishes to know if all western ladies are as beautiful as you are,’ Francine told her.
Madison laughed. ‘Tell her nobody in my country is as lovely as she and all her friends are.’ She stroked the girl’s hair. ‘Gulnaz, that’s a pretty name. What does it mean?’
‘It means as cute as a flower,’ Francine said.
‘I never saw a flower half as cute,’ Madison replied, smiling.
The child whispered again into Francine’s ear. ‘And she also wants to know if you have seen Vida.’
‘Who’s Vida?’
‘Her doll. She’s extremely attached to her, but we lost her when we had to leave our home. Now, child,’ she said, gently urging Gulnaz away. ‘Go back and be with the others. The grown-ups have a lot of talking to do.’
They did, and Ben was happy to let Holt do a lot of it. Francine listened attentively as he explained what had brought him and his group to Afghanistan, and described their efforts to get as many people out of Kabul as possible before the iron curtain had clamped down. He told her how Hassan Baghdadi, their mutual contact in Abu Dhabi, had first alerted their aid organisation to the existence of her orphanage and the troubles that had descended on them. ‘Our condolences for your late brother.’
‘Thank you. He was a wonderful human being. As is dear Hassan, bless his soul. And so, all of you belong to this organisation?’ she asked, looking with some confusion at Madison and Father Bugnolio. ‘And you as well, young man?’ she asked the prince. If she even faintly recognised his famous face in this unlikely setting, she didn’t show it. The truth was, she’d been living out here in the middle of nowhere for so long, sequestered from the rest of the world, that she probably had no knowledge whatsoever of what went on in the elevated social circles of some island nation halfway across the globe.
‘Our group has picked up a few new members along the way,’ Ben said. ‘Myself included. Madison and Father Bugnolio here are refugees from Kabul, along with two more of their friends. We’re a bit of a motley bunch but we’re ready to do whatever we can to help you and the children.’
‘You are extremely welcome,’ she replied. ‘We would certainly be grateful for some food and water. The few provisions we were able to salvage from the mission are completely gone, and the children are badly in need. For my own part, an old woman like me can live virtually on fresh air, but they’re young and growing.’
‘We have vehicles,’ Ben said. ‘We can use them to fetch a lot more water from the river than a child can carry in two buckets. As for food, there’s enough fresh meat walking around down there to keep everyone alive, for a while at least. Beyond that, we’re going to have to figure out a plan to move you all away to safety.’
‘I’m not sure there is such a place any longer,’ she said with a sad smile. ‘Not in Afghanistan.’
‘I was thinking of somewhere else,’ Ben said.
‘To evacuate us all to another country? My dear young friend, you’re talking about the impossible. There are sixty-four children here, aged between seven and thirteen. How on earth can it be done?’
‘We can only try,’ Ben said.
‘Are you in contact with the outside?’ Francine asked. It was a very pertinent question, because as Ben knew perfectly well, the prospect of organising such a large-scale escape over the border without some kind of outside connections was extremely poor.
Holt shook his head. ‘I’m sorry to say we were, but then our sat phone was damaged.’
She nodded. ‘Ah, yes. Modern technology is a wonderful thing, until it stops working. I, too, have a sat phone. That’s how I was able to call dear Hassan and put out the call for help that God has now answered. But one of the girls knocked it by accident and it fell quite hard against a rock, and now it seems to be broken. I have been carrying it around with me in the hopes that it would start working again. To no avail, sadly.’ She reached into the folds of her tunic and took the phone out to show them. ‘Quite dead, you see? Something must be broken inside.’
At the sight of it, Holt went bolt rigid with amazement, his eyebrows flew up and his jaw dropped open. ‘Holy motherfucking shit!’ he burst out.
Some of the kids obviously understood a few words of English; their stunned looks quickly gave way to tittering delight. Both Francine and Father Bugnolio turned on Holt with heavy frowns of disapproval. ‘Please!’ Francine hissed, furious. ‘Such language to use in front of the children! Where do you think you are, in a sewer?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Holt stammered, turning scarlet and pointing at the phone in her hands. ‘It’s just that that’s an Iridium 9555. The same model that we have.’
‘And so?’ she said icily.
Ben remembered Liebowitz saying that if by some miracle they could find a spare motherboard for their Iridium, he might be able to get it up and running again. This might be the miracle they’d been waiting for.
Holt explained, ‘And so it’s possible one of my guys back down the hillside could switch out the parts and put together a working phone.’
Francine shrugged, still not quite ready to forgive him. ‘Well, that sounds promising. Take it, by all means. But let us hear no more of these disgraceful vulgar profanities, if you please.’
It was a quietly excited, if thoroughly chastised and penitent, Chris Holt who soon afterwards accompanied Ben, Wolf and Baldacci back the way they’d come through the cave, leaving Madison, Father Bugnolio and the prince with Francine and the children. ‘This could really save our asses,’ Holt said, clutching the sat phone as they emerged from the cave mouth and started hurrying down the rocky slope. ‘If we can find a way to make it as far west as the Iranian border, there are people I might be able to get to meet us there. Then south and across the Persian Gulf into UAE, and we’d be home and dry.’
‘But how the hell are we supposed to carry them all?’ Wolf said. ‘Forty, we might have been able to manage in the truck. But sixty-four? Plus the rest of us, it comes to well over eighty people to transport.’
Ben had been thinking the same, and there were too many ifs and mights in Holt’s plan for his liking, but he forced himself to stay focused on the immediate situation. ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, Jaden, you and I will drive the Humvee back to the village, take care of the water supply and see about bagging a few of those goats.’
‘Let’s hope you can fire an arrow straight this time,’ Wolf said.
‘Maybe you’d like to try your luck, Robin Hood,’ Ben said.
‘I told you I’m no good with one of tho—’
But Wolf never finished his sentence, because he was cut short by the staccato reports of automatic gunfire that came echoing up the hillside and rolled all around the valley below, sharp and clear in the still air.
Chapter 43
They froze as the sound of gunfire paused for an instant, then crackled back into action, single shots interspersed with short bursts. On such a clear day as this, across open hills and plains, the high-decibel reports of a supersonic assault rifle round could carry an enormous distance. But these were coming from not far off.
‘Jesus Christ, we’re under attack,’ Baldacci yelled, instinctively unslinging his weapon and flicking off the safety.
‘No, it’s not for us,’ Ben said. ‘It’s coming from down by the river.’
‘Who the hell’s doing all that shooting?’ demanded Holt.
Wolf’s face tightened. He groaned. ‘Shit. It’s Hank. I told him about the goats. He’s been prattling on and on about how starving he is. The stupid bloody fool must have gone down there to bag one.’
‘And sent a telegram to anyone within five miles that we’re here,’ Holt growled, livid with anger. ‘I swear, when I get hold of that moron I’ll wring his neck.’
‘What’s done is done,’ Ben said. ‘Let’s keep moving.’
The firing seemed to have stopped, at least for the moment. They continued hurriedly down the hillside and reached the orphanage to find that the Humvee was gone. Moments later they discovered that, sure enough, Hank Schulz had taken it down to the village for his impromptu hunting spree. ‘I couldn’t stop him,’ Nielsen protested to a furious Holt. ‘The guy was out of his mind with hunger. I thought he was gonna shoot me if I got in his way.’
‘Who goes hunting with a full-auto carbine?’ Wolf said, shaking his head in disgust.
‘A fucking meathead, that’s who,’ Baldacci replied. ‘If Chris doesn’t tear the asshole to pieces, I will.’
While they were waiting for Schulz to return, Holt showed Liebowitz Francine Blanchet’s Iridium sat phone. Liebowitz stared at it as though it was a lump of kryptonite. ‘Where the fuck did you get this?’
‘It doesn’t work. But can we use it to fix ours?’
Liebowitz grabbed their own non-functioning phone from his kit and laid the two side by side. They were exactly identical apart from the extra scuff marks on the casing on Francine’s handset where it had been dropped, and the bullet hole that had drilled through theirs and killed it dead. Ben and Wolf watched as Liebowitz whipped out a tiny screwdriver and set to work removing both casings to expose the electronic innards, which he scrutinised carefully, peering from one phone to the other.
‘Well?’ Holt asked impatiently.
Liebowitz looked up at him with a grin. ‘Yup. Looks like the motherboard on their phone is totally intact. No promises, but if I can’t cannibalise all the parts we need and get this sucker working, I’m Tweetie Bird. Might take me a while, though. Without a proper soldering iron I’m gonna have to improvise something.’
‘Take this,’ Wolf said, handing Liebowitz the slim stiletto dagger he carried in his boot. ‘You can heat the blade over a flame. It’s crude, but I fixed a Clansman radio that way once.’
‘I’ll give it a go,’ Liebowitz said.
Holt slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Get it done, buddy.’
It was a few minutes later, when Liebowitz was getting deep into the guts of the dismantled phones, that they heard the rumble of the Humvee rolling up outside. ‘Right,’ Holt said. ‘That sonofabitch is gonna get it in the neck now.’
They marched outside to be greeted by the sight of Schulz, bloodied from his hunt, dragging the carcass of a goat from the back of the vehicle. Another one lay on the load bed, one hoof hanging limp and dripping red over the edge. A blood pool was already forming on the ground and it was clear he’d gone way over the top, shooting the poor creatures almost to bits. His rifle was propped up on the Humvee’s passenger seat. ‘You guys gonna give me a hand, or do I have to do all the work around here?’ he called to them, scowling angrily.
Holt stalked over to Schulz with clenched fists and murder in his eyes. Schulz realised too late what was coming, and the hard punch to his jaw knocked him backwards off his feet.
‘You stupid prick! What’s the matter with you?’ Holt raged at him.
But Schulz was every bit as capable a fighter as Holt and half a decade younger, and he came up again like a steel spring with blood trickling from the corner of his mouth and a black Ka-bar combat knife in his hand. ‘I’ll stick you for that, you motherfucker.’
Wolf moved in to stop things getting ugly, but Ben moved faster. In three steps he was on Schulz, sidestepped the blade that sliced the air towards him, trapped the man’s wrist and twisted the weapon out of his grip and dumped him hard on the ground with his face in the dirt and his arm bent up tight behind his back, half an inch from breaking.
‘Kick him in the nuts,’ Baldacci shouted.
‘There’s been enough damage done for one day,’ Ben said calmly. ‘Don’t you think, Hank?’ He laid on a little extra pressure on the twisted arm. Now it was just a quarter of an inch from breaking.
‘Arrghh. Yes,’ came Schulz’s muffled reply from the dirt.
Ben said, ‘You’re an idiot, Hank. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Let me hear you say so.’
‘I’m an idiot,’ Schulz said.
‘What kind of idiot are you?’
‘A total fucking idiot!’ Baldacci yelled.
‘I’m a total fucking idiot,’ Schulz muttered indistinctly through his mouthful of grit and dust.
‘Are you going to behave yourself from now on?’ Ben asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Good for you,’ Ben said. ‘Because if you ever do anything to compromise the safety of this group again, rest assured I will break you into tiny pieces and leave you for the vultures. Got that?’
‘Got it.’
Ben released him. The humiliated Schulz rose groaning to his feet, rubbing his arm and his bruised jaw. ‘Leave it,’ Ben warned Holt, who looked like he was ready to have another go at Schulz. ‘We have other things to do. First off, let’s form a butchery detail to prepare these goats for cooking. Hank, seeing as you killed them, you can get to work skinning and gutting them. Get a couple of the Pathfinders to help you.’ Turning to Baldacci: ‘Gino, we’ll need to find some dry sticks and more charcoal to build a really hot fire for soldering the phone components. We’re also going to make a pit big enough to roast these goats in. That’s going to produce a lot of smoke and attractive smells for our friends who might be looking for us out there, so I suggest we post an extra two men on high ground to keep their eyes peeled for incoming enemy elements.’
‘And you, what are you going to do?’ Holt asked, plainly displeased at being handed out orders.
Ben looked at him. ‘For starters, Jaden and I will head back down to the village and see if we can’t do a more discreet job of bringing home the bacon. Although it hardly seems to matter now.’
Wolf had clambered up on part of the ruined wall, anxiously scanning the horizon from the wide open plains in the north to the mountains in the south for any sign of movement, and seeing nothing. ‘You think there’s anyone out there who could’ve heard?’ he asked Ben.
‘If they did, we might be seeing them in a few hours,’ Ben replied. ‘No use crying about it. But it means we’ve got a lot to do in that time.’
That was an understatement. Those next few hours were frantically busy as they crammed as much activity as they could into what might, thanks to Schulz’s folly, be a fast-shrinking time window. While Liebowitz struggled to resurrect their sat phone, surrounded by bits of circuitry and the tip of the stiletto blade glowing red hot in the fire, Ben and Wolf took the Humvee back down to the village where they retrieved the bow and arrow from where they’d left it earlier. Getting the hang of it now, Ben quickly and efficiently added four more of the wandering goats to the menu for the many extra mouths they now had to feed. At this rate their fresh meat supply wouldn’t last long, but they’d worry about that later.
Next they refilled every empty twenty-five-litre water jerrycan they had from the clear, sparkling river, and carried their load back up the orphanage to drop off the goat carcasses before they continued up the hill as close as they could get to the foot of the escarpment. Then came the long, weary job of lugging all the water to the cave, where Madison, Father Bugnolio, Francine and the prince, along with sixty eager children, joined in the task of carrying it inside to the grotto.
Still no sign of any movement anywhere on the horizon.
‘Maybe it was a false alarm,’ Wolf said to Ben, as they stood at the foot of the cliff scanning with their binoculars. ‘We’ve got no real reason to suppose there’s anyone out there within hearing range.’
‘I didn’t think you believed in leaving things to chance,’ Ben said.
‘I don’t.’
‘Neither do I. I think either way, it’d be best if we weren’t at the orphanage any longer, if and when someone does turn up.’
‘You mean, relocate the base camp here to the caves?’
Ben nodded, surveying the lie of the land with a well-practised eye. ‘We have a much wider field of observation from up here, and if it comes to making a stand we’re much better defended on the high ground. It’s a strong position tactically. I propose keeping a double watch from now on, four sentries, changing every two hours. The vehicles will have to be concealed as best we can. Some of the Pathfinders are recovered enough now to be put to work building a rock wall and gathering all the bits of dead tree and brush they can find to make a hide. From a hundred yards away, they should be pretty hard to spot.’
‘Roger that,’ Wolf said. ‘Makes sense to me. So are we to assume that Holt’s not in command of this unit any more? You always did rise to the top when things looked set to warm up.’
Ben made no reply to that. ‘Come on. We’ve got more work to do.’
