Graveyard of Empires, page 7
Nothing now would happen for some hours. The lull before the storm, when a great deal would be happening, from the instant they set boots down in enemy territory. Some of the other men exchanged the occasional shouted comment or joke, the vociferous Cale doing more than his fair share of the yakking. Ben instead spent his time catching up on lost sleep and mentally preparing himself for what was coming. Never, ever had he imagined he’d find himself once more in this situation, heading into a military operation. Especially not one like this, a secret mission that for him contained a personal mission of far greater importance.
At some point, sooner rather than later, he knew he would have to break away from the group and go off in search of Madison. He’d have to pick the right moment to do that, and it might not be easy. The army had long ago stopped putting deserters in front of a firing squad, but nonetheless the UK Special Forces high command most likely wouldn’t take too kindly to one of their hand-picked troopers going AWOL in the middle of a critical operation.
Ben was aware of it, but he didn’t care. His commitment to his friend came first. He leaned back against the curvature of the fuselage, feeling its thrumming vibration against his spine, closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
Chapter 10
Hours, hours, hours.
At last, the endless monotony was broken by the pilot’s announcement that they were approaching Afghan airspace. The plan was to get as deep in over the border as possible without attracting notice, and for that purpose the drop zone had been chosen in a vast, empty region of wilderness. That could have been said of much of Afghan territory. Even so, it was a risky operation. Taliban patrols could appear unexpectedly out of nowhere, with the artillery to blow them out of the sky like a wildfowler taking down a high goose.
By then the task force had donned their parachute suits and helmets and each of them had equipped himself with a C8 carbine, worn vertically on its three-point tactical sling, and ninety rounds of spare ammunition per man in case they met with resistance on the ground. Ben felt perfectly calm and absolutely ready, as though he’d been in training for this just yesterday. Nods, thumbs-up gestures and a few grins and words were exchanged among the others as they ran through a final check of their chute equipment and lined up in single file for the jump. The aircraft’s tailgate yawned open to reveal the night sky and the moonlit landscape 1700 feet below.
A blast of frigid air whistled through the gaping hole. The Humvees were released first, sliding back on their angled ramps and spinning away end over end out of the tailgate, first one then the other. Five thousand kilos of armoured metal hurtling downwards through the night. Moments later, the signal came for the parachutists to follow. Ben was fourth in line. When his turn came to jump, he stepped towards the black abyss and let himself fall into the void without the least hesitation. Then it was the long, long, spiralling descent, followed by the jerk and crackle of the parachute opening. The dark ground came looming rapidly up towards him, closer and closer; then he hit and rolled as he’d done a hundred times before, and he was safely down. Three men on the ground before him, followed by the last four, their dark shapes landing with soft thuds and the canopies of their chutes settling down around them and rippling in the cold wind, the material black for minimum night visibility by any potential enemy.
Ben and the team waited for several long minutes in absolute silence, poised with their weapons at the ready and scanning the ground all around them for anything that moved, until the rumble of the aircraft had completely diminished. In the pale moonlight the seemingly infinite rocky landscape looked like the lunar surface, except for the tall mountains whose snowy upper peaks glittered in the distance.
On Buchanan’s signal, the eight men quickly secured their chutes and then went jogging over the barren terrain to retrieve the dropped Humvees and kit pods. To everyone’s relief, both vehicles had survived the landing intact. It was impossible to hide the drop crates. They would just have to hope that by the time the enemy found them and raised the alarm, the mission would already be accomplished.
Opening up the kit pods they transferred their gear into the vehicles. They’d been thoroughly equipped for the mission. In addition to their personal weapons, the team were provided with Claymore mines and assorted other high-explosive devices, a heavy fifty-calibre anti-materiel sniper rifle for long range shots at enemy armoured divisions, and a Stinger surface-to-air missile launcher in case they came under air attack. The heavy weapons, rockets and grenades would be stored at the Kabul safehouse while they were carrying out their covert operations within the city.
Once the kit was all stowed, the men set about changing into the loose-fitting Afghan clothing they were going to need for the mission. Ben had the same kind of traditional shalwar kameez that he’d worn undercover back in the day, and a long black cloth neck wrap that could double as a head covering. The kameez had an opening through which he could get to his concealed pistol quickly and easily, and a loose pocket in which he could store his cigarettes. He felt pretty much at home in it.
They’d been on the ground less than twenty minutes when the two-vehicle convoy set off across the barren landscape, bumping and lurching over rocks and ruts, four men to each Humvee, a dusty and uncomfortable overland journey of several hours fraught with anxiety that the Taliban could strike at any moment, in large numbers and with extremely powerful weapons.
Humvees were sometimes claimed to be bulletproof. The fact was, as their occupants knew perfectly well, nothing short of genuine tank armour was genuinely able to resist high-velocity small arms fire. If they came under serious attack from a heavily superior force, they were fish in a barrel.
Ben rode in the second vehicle with Cale, Meadows and Dixon at the wheel. Buchanan, Simmons, Mackay and Yates were leading the way. Nobody spoke. Each man settled silently into his own private thoughts. For all their training and experience, the men’s nerves were raw and sharp, like a smell in the air. Riding into war, thousands of miles away from base, with no backup whatsoever and no hope of relief or rescue if things went bad. Ben was wishing he could have maintained contact with Linus Twigg in case they might have heard something from Madison.
The anticipated encounter with enemy patrols never happened. Once, the Humvees came within sight of a fast-moving column of armoured vehicles, a long way off. They killed their lights, rolled to a halt, clutched their weapons and watched tensely as the column continued on by and disappeared into the distance.
A few hours later, sometime before the first rays of dawn at a prearranged location several kilometres to the east of the Kabul city outskirts, they RV’d with Saleem, one of their contacts on the ground. Saleem and his four associates, Fathullah, Ghani, Habib and Mazdak, would have the job of sneaking the task force into the heart of the city, taking advantage of the general chaos to go rolling through the many armed checkpoints. They were posing as Taliban fighters, and they looked the part: lean, mean, hairy and suitably villainous with ammunition bandoliers criss-crossed over their chests and their assorted Russian and American automatic weapons dangling from their shoulders. They had been militia soldiers with the Northern Alliance, a coalition of Mujahideen warrior groups that were sworn opponents of the Taliban. All five men bitterly detested the new regime and were more than eager to lend their support to any effort that might do them some damage. God only knew where the colonel had dug them up from.
Come the dawn, the task force were approaching the first checkpoint. This would be the moment of truth, testing the theory that the Humvees would just blend in with all the other captured American hardware driving around Kabul. Like his four colleagues in the front vehicle, Ben was hunkered down in the back of the second with Cale, Meadows and Dixon, hidden underneath layers of stinking sackcloth while Saleem’s men lounged comfortably up front, feet up on the dash, arms dangling nonchalantly from the windows, weapons propped between their knees. They were driving straight into the dragon’s den and if anything went wrong at this point, the mission would certainly be obliterated before it had even begun. Ben’s carbine was off safety and his finger was hovering close by the trigger. He exchanged glances with Meadows under the sackcloth and saw the gleam of nervous tension in the guy’s eyes.
But any concerns that the Taliban guards would see through the deception – or, possibly even worse, that the ex-Northern Alliance men would cave in to the temptation of opening fire on their hated enemies – were soon dispelled as they went cruising casually through checkpoint after checkpoint, pausing to natter amicably in Pashto with the sentries and share a few jokes before rolling onwards. Meadows made eye contact again with Ben and puffed his cheeks in a sigh of relief.
‘Is okay, can come out now,’ said their driver, who insisted on speaking his limited English with the Special Forces men. Ben and the others emerged from their hiding place and gazed cautiously out of the Humvee’s windows.
Early morning, and the city was beginning to come to life around them, their first proper glimpse of Kabul since the fall of the US occupation. It had been a fairly westernised city while the allied powers were in control, with modern, liberal mores and fashionable clothing much on display. It was immediately apparent those were all gone now, as though erased overnight by the new normality of life. From a lively cosmopolitan melting pot of diplomats, military contractors, journalists, war tourists and thriving local businesses the city had been reduced to a chaotic smoggy morass of four million frightened people living under the boot heel of extremist dictatorship. Where once you would have seen trendy young men and women sitting outside cafés talking brightly over pots of saffron tea, now, in accordance with the new rulers’ hardcore interpretation of Sharia Law, women were hardly to be seen at all outdoors; while all the men now wore the traditional Afghan clothes the regime approved, not a clean-shaven face among them. Even the music was eradicated, the austere void of silence left in its absence filled by the regular several-times-a-day ululating megaphone voices calling the faithful to prayer.
And of course, everywhere you looked were the fierce enforcers of that new regime. Armoured cars and personnel carriers were a ubiquitous presence all through the capital, draped with the black-and-white banner of the Taliban and loaded with fighters sporting the masses of shiny new weaponry the Americans had so obligingly left for them. The Talib comported themselves with the triumphant air of conquering heroes, hostile eyes daring anyone to challenge them. This was their time now. Watching the citizens scurrying through the streets, bowed, downcast as they tried to go about their business as unobtrusively as possible under the steely gaze of their conquerors, Ben could sense the oppressive atmosphere of terror hanging over the city.
‘Here we are, lads,’ Dixon said with a chuckle. ‘How’s it feel being totally alone and surrounded by a hundred thousand fundamentalist crazies who want you nailed to a cross?’
‘Not too much worse than a weekend at my in-laws’ place,’ joked Cale, and Dixon laughed. Then Meadows craned his neck towards the window, peering up as he noticed the thud of a helicopter overhead. Ben could hear it too.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Meadows said, pointing. ‘Look at that.’
Above them, an American Blackhawk helicopter gunship was passing over the rooftops. But that wasn’t what Meadows was pointing at. Clearly visible against the pale morning sky was the silhouette of the limp hanged corpse of a man swaying pendulum-like from the underside of the aircraft on the end of a rope.
Any sense of levity inside the Humvee was suddenly gone as they watched with grim faces. ‘Looks like the bastards caught another one,’ Dixon said.
Meadows nodded, still gazing up at the helicopter. ‘Yep, anyone who spoke out against them, anyone who helped the Americans or any of their allies. They won’t send the poor sods to the gulag. They’ll just hunt them down and exterminate them one by one.’
It was obvious to anyone on the ground, especially to professionals who’d seen a million military choppers in action and flown in them countless times themselves, that the aircraft’s flight was highly erratic. As they watched, the Blackhawk narrowly avoided fouling its rotors on a mobile phone mast, destroying itself and raining destruction onto the streets below.
‘Half these guys can barely count the fingers on their own hand,’ Dixon grumbled, shaking his head in disgust. ‘Let alone fly a sodding helicopter. It’s a wonder they even got it up in the air, the stupid numpties. How the fuck they’ll get it down again is anyone’s guess.’
‘Whoo-hoo,’ said Cale. ‘Wouldn’t you just love to see them crash and burn?’
Ben kept his eye on the helicopter and its grisly trophy until they disappeared from view behind some foreground buildings. Inept pilots or not, it was a stark warning to all who dared defy their new rulers. In olden days they’d have impaled the severed heads of the vanquished on the city gates as an example to all. Now they just paraded their mutilated victims across the skyline like an aerial billboard. Different times, different wars, same barbaric message. Nothing had changed in all these centuries. Nothing ever would.
He checked his weapon once more. Reminding himself what in God’s name could have possessed him to want to return to this damned place.
Meadows muttered, ‘Welcome to hell, boys and girls.’
Chapter 11
Ben’s companions were some of the most experienced combat veterans in the business, and there wasn’t one who wasn’t pretty much inured to the horrors of man’s inhumanity against man. Yet the spectacle of the hanging corpse was a haunting enough image to stay in the mind for a long time afterwards, and it effectively killed most of their conversation as the Humvee cut across the city.
After a convoluted journey they arrived at the safehouse, a semi-derelict apartment building in a narrow, winding and empty backstreet near an industrial zone at the far western edge of Kabul. The building opposite was some kind of warehouse, disused with a lot of broken windows and little chance of anyone inside observing their arrival. Still, for safety’s sake, they donned their false beards and headgear before stepping out into the street. Ben had to take care to ensure that his blond hair was kept well out of sight. A bottle of black dye had often been among the contents of his kit bag, back in the day.
Buchanan pointed at the apartment building and signalled for Ben to come with him. Passing through a creaky iron gate and a patch of desiccated waste ground, they stalked cautiously around the side of the building until they came to the red door they’d been told about. The safehouse apartment was on the third floor. Pistols drawn they crept up a dingy stairwell and along a corridor that smelled as though something had died there recently.
At Buchanan’s soft knock, the apartment door opened; and there stood the man whose real name may or may not have been Lewis Goffin. Whatever Ben’s mental image of an MI5 spook might have been, this guy certainly wasn’t it. And the Anglo-Saxon surname Goffin was a complete misfit as well. He was a plump olive-skinned guy in his mid or late thirties, with Mediterranean features, oily black hair and a thick black beard prematurely streaked with grey. He might have been of Greek or Cypriot origin but in the right attire he’d easily have passed for a native in Iraq, Iran or just about anywhere else in the Middle East. The perfect spy, physically at least. Goffin was wearing a traditional Afghan pakol cap and the same kind of conservative loose-fitting garb as Ben and Buchanan, and it wasn’t hard to understand how he’d managed to stay safely undercover during these last weeks of the Taliban’s rule over Kabul.
Ben wouldn’t have known him but Buchanan, as commander, had been briefed on his description. Buchanan had also been provided with a cryptic security question to which Goffin responded with the correct password. Sometimes the most old-fashioned tricks of the spy trade were the most effective.
Leaving the two men to talk upstairs, Ben returned back down to street level to give the others the all-clear. The rest of the team got out of the Humvees and they started lugging their heavy kit up to the apartment. The larger items were dismantled along with the rest of their weaponry inside discreet black holdalls, but all the same there was the pervasive feeling that they could be observed from afar as they hurriedly brought the equipment inside the building. Once the kit had all been unloaded, Saleem and his men took off in the Humvees. Those would be hidden in a lockup garage at a different location, for future use. Meanwhile, Saleem had provided a pair of dubiously obtained commercial vans, with false plates and business logos lettered in Arabic script, to use as transport within the city.
The two-bedroomed safehouse apartment was small and dank, with a sparsely furnished living room in which the men gathered for a briefing with Goffin. Ben had never much cared for intelligence operatives and maybe he was prejudiced, but right from the start he found it difficult to like the man. Speaking with a plummy Etonian accent and sprawled casually taking up most of the living room’s only sofa, Goffin was loud, opinionated and annoying. He explained that while the task force had been en route, the situation had changed. The sudden emergence of a local informer, a man Goffin called Faazel, who claimed to have knowledge of the whereabouts of Spartan, meant that the mission was now due to start immediately, that same afternoon.
Goffin gave them the address in another district of Kabul where Faazel had agreed to meet and provide his information. For a steep price, of course, but he claimed to have all the necessary funds at his disposal. ‘I’ll be right there with you boys,’ he said with a smile that came across, at least to Ben, as a condescending kind of sneer. ‘All you have to do is get me inside so I can speak with him. Should be a pretty straightforward operation. Any questions?’
Ben had been standing at the back of the room, listening in silence and finding it harder and harder to digest the vagueness of their strategy. As an officer he’d always insisted on knowing every last detail of a situation, as far as possible, before going in. The safety of his men had depended on it. But here they were, expected to function in the dark, at the whim of this supercilious intelligence goon. He had a thousand questions, but deciding to focus on the main one he asked Goffin, ‘Who’s Spartan?’
