‘Hell, yeah,’ said Jaffar and he headed off. Sid went with him. Raj sat down and lay on his back, staring up through the tree canopy. The sky above was a clear blue with not a cloud to be seen. Birds were singing, and the occasional insect buzzed by. He was dog tired and within seconds he was asleep.

  CHAPTER 41

  Van der Sandt raised his rifle to his shoulder as he approached the clearing. There was always a chance that the remaining jihadists had stayed put. The only tracks he had seen belonged to the two men he’d killed, which meant the others had either gone in a different direction or not moved. He moved slowly as his eyes swept the clearing. It was a couple of hundred metres across at its widest point, an area that was too rocky for trees to ever get hold. There were a few dozen bushes that had managed to get a foothold between the rocks but they were too small to provide any cover. It took him only a few seconds to confirm that there was no one hiding in the clearing, but that didn’t mean they weren’t seeking cover among the trees around it. He skirted the south of the clearing, keeping his gun at the ready, placing his feet carefully to keep any noise to a minimum.

  There was a fluttering of wings above his head and he caught a flash of blue out of the corner of his eye. It was a Steller’s jay, one of the most common birds in the forest, and he had been hearing its wek-wek-wek call for the past few minutes.

  He had traversed all of the southern perimeter and half the eastern side when he came across the tracks. He smiled to himself when he saw the marks in the dirt. Five men. So they were sticking together as a team. One of the men was wearing boots with a distinctive tread. When the men had been in the house, none of them had boots on, so they must have been taken from Nick. Another of the men had clearly been injured; his feet were scuffing the ground and he was being supported as he walked. And another was taking small steps accompanied by a round hole, which could only have come from a branch being used as a walking stick. Two of the men weren’t wearing shoes or sandals but seemed to have bound their feet with cloth. So, five men, two of them injured, one badly, all heading east. He frowned. Why east? The ground was sloping to the east so it would be easier for the injured men. But it was taking them in the wrong direction. He cradled his gun in his arms as he studied the footprints and tried to put himself in the mind of his quarry. There was nothing to the east, just hundreds of kilometres of forest. And they wouldn’t know the geography of the area. Had they chosen the direction at random, assuming that they would eventually reach a road or even a town? If that was the case, they were wrong. He frowned, then tucked his weapon under his arm and took a drink from his water bottle.

  Maybe they were heading down the slope because that was the best chance of finding water. Or maybe they wanted to move away from a direct route between the house and the clearing, figuring that he would be coming for them on foot. Van der Sandt screwed the top back on his water bottle and put it in its holster on his belt. It didn’t matter why they had chosen the route they’d taken. All that mattered was that he was on their trail. He started walking, following the tracks the men had left. They hadn’t made any effort to conceal their progress, but Van der Sandt was a good enough tracker that it wouldn’t have made any difference if they had.

  CHAPTER 42

  There were six of them in the back of the Mastiff, sweating from the heat as it bumped along the pot-holed road. The Mastiff was capable of ninety kilometres an hour, but it was going much slower – the road had been mined in the past so the two-man crew were driving on full alert. The six-wheeled Mastiff was festooned with armour plates and equipped with a 7.62 mm general purpose machine gun and a 40 mm grenade launcher. The dual air conditioners did their best to keep the temperature down, but Raj was still sweating. He was on patrol with B Company, 40 Commando, on his second tour of Afghanistan. They were based at Patrol Base One in the Nahri Saraj district of Helmand Province, in the south of the strife-torn country. The group had been tasked with training the local police in the village of Char Kutsa. The police had already undergone training at the base but the top brass had decided that they would benefit from extra training on their home turf.

  Raj had been in the country for a month, and morale had fallen since his first tour, mainly because the troops knew that the fight had been lost and that they would be abandoning the country sooner rather than later. What they were doing was the equivalent of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic and everyone knew it. The Afghans they were instructing knew it too, and went through the training half-heartedly at best.

  Raj had his SA80 assault rifle between his legs. Bob ‘Bugsy’ Malone, who was sitting next to him, had one of the new Sharpshooter rifles that had just been issued to 40 Commando. The new weapons were in short supply and were jealously guarded by those who had them. They fired a 7.62 mm round and were accurate up to eight hundred metres, perfect for longer-range firefights, which is how the enemy in Afghanistan tended to work. The Afghans weren’t great at fighting up close and personal; they preferred remotely operated IEDs or to fire from a distance behind cover. Raj wasn’t a fan of the new gun; the heavier round meant that it did more damage, but Raj was able to carry three of his Nato 5.56 rounds for every one that Bugsy had in his packs.

  The only other member of the team with a Sharpshooter was their sergeant, Pete Kershaw, a big Geordie with a shaved head and a scar on his cheek that he’d picked up in Iraq ten years earlier. He claimed it was the result of fighting a Taliban warrior hand-to-hand, but Raj had heard from another medic that he’d tripped during a game of badminton and fallen against an ammo box. Kershaw had been transferred to Raj’s unit after the previous sergeant had been struck down with appendicitis and he had hit the ground running. He’d made it clear from the start that he didn’t like Raj, but as Raj was a surgeon lieutenant there wasn’t much he could do to show his disapproval other than to throw him the odd scornful look. Raj did know that Kershaw had been bad-mouthing him around the base, saying that doctors were no use in combat and should never be allowed out on patrol. Truth be told, it wasn’t a point of view that Raj could argue with. When it came to combat, his rank meant nothing. Kershaw had far more experience and the times they had come under fire, Raj had allowed the sergeant to call the shots.

  The rest of the unit were carrying SA80s except for the youngest member, Mike Cross, a Liverpudlian with an almost childlike sense of humour, who had been issued with a combat shotgun. Cross was sitting next to Raj, and he too was sweating profusely.

  They had been sitting in the Mastiff for the best part of forty minutes, and the further they had got from the base the slower they went. The Mastiff was covered with slat armour, a rigid slatted metal grid that was effective against RPG attacks, and the vehicle itself was sturdy enough to shrug off small arms fire and Kalashnikov rounds. It was also well protected against IEDs, but a large enough bomb planted under the road could overturn it, so the driving crew were keeping their eyes peeled.

  ‘Approaching the police station now, Sarge,’ shouted the driver, a stocky Scot called Alistair Turner who at some point in his military career had acquired the nickname Kevin because of his fondness for bacon.

  The Mastiff came to a halt and Kershaw opened the rear door. ‘Right, everyone out,’ he said.

  The men piled out of the vehicle. The sky was clear of clouds and the sun was close to its zenith. The police station had been built by an American construction company. It contained an office, an armoury, and half a dozen cells, most of which were usually occupied by Afghan cops napping between shifts. It had a flat roof with a communications mast and a satellite dish, and Raj had been told that the American Government had paid the contractors just over five million dollars for the work. It looked to Raj as if a team of half-competent builders could have thrown it up in about a week. Around it were old mud houses and new ones built from concrete breeze blocks. Women in full burkas shepherded their children inside while old men in dishdasha robes stood and stared at the soldiers with undisguised hostility.

  The captain in charge of the Char Kutsa police was in his early thirties, dark-skinned and bearded. He was serious about his job and applied himself well, but his men were a motley crew, ill-disciplined and with a tendency to slope off for a sneaky cigarette given half the chance. There were eight of them and the captain was trying to get them lined up and at attention in front of their two black Ford Ranger pick-up trucks, also provided by the US Government. The men carried Hungarian-made AMD-65 Kalashnikov copies and had Russian-made 9 mm Makarov pistols in holsters on their hips. They were reasonable shots on the range but despite several weeks of training they were still a danger to themselves when taking on moving targets that could fire back. They had run numerous exercises at the camp, but the Marines had never felt confident enough to let the Afghans use live ammunition. It didn’t matter how many hours the cops spent practising, when confronted with a live target the Afghans reverted to ‘pray and spray’ and were more concerned about their own safety than taking out the hostiles. They had rehearsed clearing rooms and again their discipline was so bad that more often than not they’d end up shooting one of their own.

  The captain came over, grinning. He was the only cop who could speak any English, and his language skills were rudimentary at best. Pretty much all communication was through the unit’s interpreter, a former schoolteacher called Ahmad. Ahmad’s school had been destroyed in a drone strike that had been aimed at a high-ranking Taliban fighter. Luckily there had been no children in the school at the time of the attack, but whereas there had been funds available to build the police station, no money had been found to rebuild the school. Ahmad had a wife and four children to feed so had asked for and been given a job with the British forces as an interpreter. The interpreters were regarded as prime targets by the jihadists who saw them as traitors to Islam.

  Ahmad translated for the captain. The men were ready and eager to start their training. The plan was to carry out a few house-to-house searches and later in the day to set up a roadblock on the main highway. ‘Tell him they don’t look ready,’ growled Kershaw. ‘Get them lined up properly and tell them to have their weapons ready for inspection.’

  Strictly speaking it was supposed to be Raj who issued orders, but he was enough of a realist to know that operational matters were best left to the sergeants. Kershaw did at least look at Raj and give him a nod. Raj nodded back.

  ‘We’ve got company, Sarge,’ said Jimmy Belcher, who was manning the machine gun on the roof of the Mastiff. He pointed off to the south. Three sand-coloured pick-up trucks were heading their way. They were flying black, green and red Afghan flags and the men in the back were wearing Afghan Army uniforms. Two of the pick-up trucks had machine guns mounted at the rear.

  Raj had a pair of binoculars on his belt and he used them to check out the vehicles as they sped along the road towards them. They were heading from the direction of an Afghan Army base, but ISIS often attacked under false colours. There were three men in the back of each of the trucks with machine guns, and half a dozen in the back of the third truck, which was bringing up the rear of the convoy. The vehicles looked legitimate and had the Afghan Army insignia on the side. The uniforms also looked right, as did the weapons the men were toting. Then Raj stiffened as he spotted an RPG in the hands of one of the men in the final truck.

  ‘They kosher?’ asked Kershaw.

  ‘I see an RPG,’ said Raj.

  ‘That’s not good.’

  It wasn’t good at all. Rocket-propelled grenades were used against armoured vehicles or fortified defences, neither of which were used by ISIS, so it wasn’t the sort of weaponry carried by a regular Afghan Army patrol. Raj lowered his binoculars and turned towards Ahmad. Ahmad was monitoring Taliban radio frequencies and listening for any talk of ambush or attack. He shook his head. ‘No chatter,’ he said.

  ‘Tell the guys to …’ Raj was cut off by a hail of bullets from the lead truck that thwacked against the protective screen around Belcher. One of the rounds smacked into Belcher’s helmet and knocked him back. A second burst of fire hit the screen again and Belcher was hit in the throat. Blood spurted over his gun as he fell back, arms flailing.

  ‘Take cover and return fire!’ shouted Kershaw, crouching by the rear of the Mastiff. He started shooting at the approaching pick-up trucks.

  Ahmad had ducked down and turned to face the Afghan cops, who were already scattering, most of them heading into the police station.

  ‘Tell the fuckers to return fire!’ shouted Kershaw.

  Raj took up position at the front of the Mastiff, next to Cross. Cross moved to the side to give Raj room, knowing there was little point in firing his shotgun. The three pick-ups had fanned out, with the one in the centre heading straight for them, its machine gun firing full on. Raj took aim at the offside tyre and started firing single shots. Behind him, Ahmad began to shout at the cops. Malone joined Raj at the front of the Mastiff and began firing.

  There was a whooshing sound from one of the trucks, and a puff of grey smoke. ‘RPG!’ shouted Raj. As the missile sped away from the truck, Raj realised it wasn’t heading towards the Mastiff – the police station was the target. He opened his mouth to shout a warning but there was no time. The warhead slammed into the side of the building, close to the door. Two of the Afghans who had been fighting to get inside the station were blown apart, and three others fell to the ground screaming in agony.

  Raj looked back at the approaching vehicles. They were continuing to fan out and bullets from the machine guns were thudding into the Mastiff or whizzing overhead.

  Two of the remaining cops had run around behind their pick-up trucks and were returning fire but they were doing it haphazardly, more concerned about their own safety than hitting the target. One was holding his gun up but keeping his head down below the side of the vehicle as he fired, unable to see where his shots were going. Another of the cops scrambled inside what was left of the police station.

  Fire was starting to come in from the sides now that the pick-up trucks were further apart, and it wouldn’t be long before the jihadists would be able to shoot around the Mastiff.

  Raj switched his aim to the truck on the left. So did Malone. Another Marine joined them – Billy McKee, a red-haired Scotsman on his third tour of Afghanistan. He grinned at Raj. ‘All go, eh Sir?’

  All three Marines continued to fire at the pick-up truck, Raj aiming for the front wheel with three-shot bursts while McKee and Malone aimed single shots at the men in the back. Cross pulled out his Glock and joined in the shooting.

  Raj heard shouting to his left and he turned to see the police captain standing by the shattered wall of the building, screaming as he fired his Kalashnikov from the hip, like the star of some second-rate action movie. In his panic he’d clearly forgotten everything he’d been taught about firing from cover. ‘Ahmad, tell him to get down!’ Raj shouted.

  Ahmad started to yell at the captain but the moment he opened his mouth the officer was cut down in a hail of machine gun fire that practically ripped him in half. He staggered back and fell into the doorway of the station. The three cops who had been injured in the blast had all stopped screaming and their uniforms were glistening with blood.

  Raj fired another short burst at the front tyre of the pick-up on the left. The rubber disintegrated and the pick-up began to veer from side to side.

  ‘Nice one, Sir,’ said McKee.

  The pick-up flipped over and rolled twice before it came to a stop, white smoke pouring from under the bonnet. Two of the men in the back lay still on the ground but when the third got to his feet McKee picked him off with a single shot.

  Raj switched his attention to the pick-up truck on the right, which was now heading directly for the Mastiff. He and McKee both aimed their carbines at the vehicle, but Kershaw beat them to it, firing three-shot bursts at the driver. There was another puff of smoke and a whooshing sound as a second RPG warhead roared through the air. ‘Down!’ shouted Raj and they all ducked. The warhead hit the Mastiff dead centre but the slat armour did its job and it exploded without penetrating the vehicle. The Mastiff shuddered and the noise was deafening, but within seconds the Marines were back up and shooting.

  Two of the Marines had set up behind one of the police trucks and were firing at the truck to their left. They came under heavy return fire from the machine gun mounted in the back and they ducked down. Kershaw fired at the truck’s gunner, taking single shots, and the fourth hit the man in the head, blowing away the top of his skull. As the man fell back he kept a grip on the machine gun and the barrel swung up, the bullets heading skywards. The two Marines behind the police truck were immediately up, firing again.

  Raj and McKee continued shooting at the truck that had fired the RPG. McKee took out one of the men in the rear of the truck, then Malone killed a second. Raj aimed at the front wheels and pulled the trigger but cursed when he realised he was out of ammunition. He ejected the magazine and slapped in a new one. His first burst hit the passenger door but his second hit the target and the tyre exploded. The truck slowed and Raj switched his attention to the passenger side window. The window disintegrated and after the second burst the truck came to a shuddering halt. There were only two ISIS fighters still alive in the back and McKee picked them off with two quick shots.

  The third truck had come to a halt and two fighters jumped down, firing Kalashnikovs. McKee, Malone and Raj ducked as bullets came their way, then bobbed back up and fired off quick shots. Raj caught one of the fighters in the leg and the man fell to the ground. The driver and the front passenger got out and took cover behind their truck, then started firing at Kershaw. The sergeant moved back behind the Mastiff to avoid the bullets. Raj moved to the side to get a better angle but realised he’d immediately exposed himself to the fighter running towards them. The man’s Kalashnikov moved towards Raj but before he could pull the trigger McKee brought him down with two quick shots to the chest. ‘You’re welcome, Sir,’ said McKee.

 

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