It was dusk, and he’d almost finished refilling the grave when he went back to the kitchen to get the last two bags of lime to spread around the top of the pit in order to deter any wild animals.
Inside, the horses were waiting, ready to be saddled, and the solitude and silence of the high mountains was almost oppressive. Even the wind had dropped to a whisper.
He didn’t hear a thing, and he would never have had any warning of the shit that was coming in at over two hundred miles an hour – except for the horses.
Chapter Thirty-nine
THE SOVIETS HAD started it, and the UN and US troops had followed: all the assault helicopters in Afghanistan were fitted with silenced rotors and engines. It meant you didn’t hear them until they were right on top of you.
At least humans didn’t. The muj, however, had realized the horses were different and, long ago, they had learned to read their ponies’ behaviour as if their lives depended on it.
The Saracen, lifting the bags of lime on to his shoulder, heard two of the ponies snicker and turned to look. It had been years since he had seen horses act in that way, but it might as well have been yesterday. Helicopters were coming!
He dropped the bags, grabbed his AK-47 and a backpack containing his passport, money and medical equipment, untied the horses, whacked them on the rump and sent them bolting into the falling night. He knew they would make their way down to the valleys below, where the villagers who found the eight prized mountain ponies – worth the equivalent of one large Hino truck – wouldn’t jeopardize their good fortune by reporting it to anyone.
Two minutes later, three UN choppers, with twenty Australian troops aboard, landed – alerted by a report from a satellite that was using thermal imaging to scan remote areas for the abductees. Ironically, it was the virus and not the fire which had sent up a red flag. Because of the high fever which accompanies smallpox, the analysts interpreting the satellite images looked at the thermal footprint captured a day previously and did not even consider that it could have been generated by three people. More like eight, which was about the size of the group they were hunting. It never occurred to anyone – not the analysts, nor the CIA agents at Alec Station handling the recovery operation, nor anyone else at the agency – that a single man could be in control of three prisoners. Kidnappings didn’t work like that.
Consequently, when the Australian troops scrambled out of the choppers expecting to find a small group of Taliban or a caravan of drug runners, they had planned for at least five potential hostiles and the possibility of crossfire slowed them down considerably. So did the first improvised explosive device.
When two of the privates, following correct procedure, came to a doorway into a house on the edge of the village, they stepped to either side of it and kicked it open, triggering two large landmines attached to the back of it. That explosion severed a wire disguised to look like an old laundry line stretched across the alleyway, detonating a mortar bomb behind them. The two privates had found their crossfire – they never had a chance.
The officer closest to them – a lieutenant by the name of Pete Keating – didn’t bother consulting with his commanding officer, a captain standing several hundred yards away, a man who most of the squad considered if not downright dangerous, at least a fool. Keating ordered everybody back and flung a cordon round the entire village – something they should have done the moment they set down but which the captain hadn’t thought necessary.
‘What are the towel-heads gonna do – try and walk down the mountain?’ he had asked. ‘If they’re in there, we’ll give ’em a chance to surrender. Just yell out, “Hey, fellas – it’s washday and we’ve got the machine,”’ he had said, confirming to his men just what a racist fool he was.
Keating had tried again to convince him to surround the village, was refused and sent the men in cautiously. Now he was trying desperately to pick up the pieces. He dispatched four men to check on the two privates – not that he held out any hope – and the rest he deployed in two sweeping arcs to secure the village finally.
Three hundred yards away, the Saracen was running fast, body-swerving, keeping count of every step – heading for the village well and a steep slope which led to a barely discernible path and, beyond it, the freedom of the mountains.
Had Keating been less decisive and delayed by a minute, the Saracen would have escaped the cordon. But the lieutenant, fine soldier that he was, didn’t hesitate and almost within sight of the path, the Saracen had to throw himself behind the well to avoid four approaching infantrymen.