Assassin (John Stratton) (22 page)

The sun poked its way into the sky as they reached their first Afghan police checkpoint a kilometre from the outskirts of Kabul. Traffic had come to a standstill. The police waved the cars through one by one while they scrutinised the occupants, relying on instinct and anything suspicious catching their eye. Hetta had pulled the hood of her burkha over her head long before they approached the checkpoint. All that was visible were her piercing, dark eyes.

An officer waved on the car in front of them. He looked at Stratton and Hetta and didn’t hesitate to signal them through, his eyes quickly darting to the car behind. A hundred metres on they drove past stalls lining both sides of the road and joined the early morning traffic into the
bustling city. Stratton was thankful they’d arrived early because the normal daytime traffic in Kabul could be much worse than it was now. He didn’t know the city well, though enough to navigate around the outskirts. There were sections of it that looked quite normal and void of any signs of trouble or military occupation. Few of the houses were more than three storeys. Many were well maintained but they were outnumbered by the dilapidated. The roads were in poor condition, the pavements broken. Sewage ran down every gutter, coming from the buildings.

The traffic got heavier as they approached the Kabul gates, which was normal for that time of the morning. The gates were the rendezvous point for the huge fuel and food convoys that crossed the country. They mustered along the sides of the road, meeting up with their armed security escorts prior to journeys out to the dozens of military camps and outposts throughout eastern and southern Afghanistan.

Stratton and Hetta passed a long line of heavy fuel trucks parked nose to tail. Dozens of Hilux pick-ups were parked in-between the trucks or in groups across from them. Every Hilux seemed to be manned by security guards, each carrying an AK-47 and ammunition. Some carried RPG7s. They saw PKM belt-fed machine guns mounted on the beds. The guards were nearly all bearded, and dressed for the low temperatures that would get even colder on the journeys, especially for those headed into the mountains’ military camps. Truck drivers were checking their engines and tyres, filling fuel tanks, sharing tea or coffee. Garbage was everywhere and the smell of fuel and sewage filled the
air. Despite the millions of gallons of fuel that surrounded them, practically everyone seemed to be smoking.

Horns blared as they joined the creeping traffic moving past the convoys. Bicycles and motorbikes weaved in and out. Sirens sounded as heavily armed police vehicles used them to force through the bustle. They were largely ignored, despite the shouts and gesticulations from officers standing through the sunroofs and leaning out of the cabs.

When they reached the southern part of the city, a police checkpoint indicated that they were leaving the built-up area and heading out into the country. The officers waved them through, anxious to keep the traffic flowing, and Stratton was able to speed up as the road opened. The city was soon out of sight in the rear-view mirror and he settled in for the next leg of the journey. His thoughts went briefly to the night to come. They wouldn’t reach Kandahar before midday the following day and he wondered where they might catch some rest. It wasn’t a good idea to drive at night. Like most places in the world where internal security was unreliable or non-existent, with darkness came the evil ones. Bandits mostly, and sometimes Taliban. Afghan security forces would be few and far between on the road between Kabul and Kandahar, often too frightened to pass along it. And for good reason. They were targeted day and night. A pair of headlights on the road would attract a lot of attention, none of it good.

By late morning they’d reached Ghazni, a hundred and fifty kilometres from Kabul. The traffic slowed again to a crawl through an Afghan Army checkpoint. Stratton and
Hetta watched ahead as they approached it. She was wearing her hood again. The soldier on duty appeared to be halting every vehicle and looking inside it.

Stratton got his passport ready. When it was their turn to stop alongside, the soldier, who was dressed in a new set of khaki fatigues and carrying an AK-47, held out a hand to Stratton. He handed over the document. The soldier glanced through it, looked at the couple and waved them on. Hetta stared ahead. It would be unusual for a woman to be checked if she was with a man.

They drove on through the town and out the other side. When they were clear, Hetta removed her hood and veil which, judging by the way she took it off, she didn’t like wearing. An hour after leaving Ghazni, Stratton found a deserted place to pull over. He needed a stretch and a pee. Hetta went for a walk behind a thicket while he refuelled the pick-up.

They were back on the road quickly. He didn’t want to stop anywhere for too long. Stratton felt hungry and remembered the food they had taken from the nomads. He looked at her. She was looking straight ahead, as usual.

‘I don’t suppose you’d like to play mummy and make me a sandwich,’ he said.

She appeared to take a moment to consider. Then she reached back for the pot that contained the lamb and bread and put it on her lap. She removed the lid, grabbed a handful of meat, unceremoniously dumped it into a sheet of the bread and handed it to him.

‘You were never a short order chef,’ he said, examining
the mess. ‘I’m gradually working you out by a process of elimination. You weren’t a nun, peace worker, or a Junior McDonald’s Happy Face.’

She ignored him and helped herself to some of the food.

‘Where’re you from?’ he asked.

She kept looking ahead, as if she hadn’t heard him.

‘You can tell a lot about a person’s military background by the way they soldier,’ he said. ‘Your background isn’t military, is it?’

She started to glance at him but changed her mind.

‘I can tell by the way you changed your rifle magazine. You didn’t eject it directly to the ground. You pulled it out first before you dropped it. That’s a regular military technique to save damaging the magazine. But you’re obviously not regular military because of the way you shoot. You do a lot of instinctive shooting. Regular military don’t do that.’

‘What if you don’t want to leave the magazine behind?’ she said. It was as though she were reluctant to get into a conversation with him but couldn’t resist defending herself.

‘You mean leaving it behind as evidence? OK. Maybe. But what about all your casings? They’re evidence. You can’t go round picking all of those up after a fight.’

She didn’t respond.

‘And your pistol. Why a Magnum?’ he asked.

‘People stay down when hit,’ she said.

‘A pistol isn’t a primary weapon. For a gangster, maybe. But not for a military specialist out in the middle of nowhere. It’s a secondary weapon, in case your primary
has a malfunction. You need more than eight rounds, though, which is all you have in that monster.’

‘Fourteen,’ she corrected. ‘I have an extended magazine.’

‘Twenty would be even better. Even in a lower calibre.’

A frown began to crease her brow but she remained looking ahead.

‘Another thing that gives you away is the way you hold it. You look through the sights,’ he said. ‘Special forces operatives should be pistol specialists. And a pistol specialist doesn’t use sights.’

‘That’s rubbish,’ she said.

‘You’re right. Not all special forces operators know what they’re doing with a pistol. In fact few of them do.’

‘The weapon is made with sights,’ she said. ‘The manufacturers can’t all be wrong.’

‘Sights are for target practice, not for combat. A kid’s bicycle comes with stabilisers. If you know how to ride a bike you don’t need them.’

She appeared to be growing irritated. He decided to ease off her.

‘Having said all that, the way you engage your targets while under fire, and at close range,’ he said. ‘You can’t teach that. Very impressive. I was only curious about your background. Sorry if that offends.’

Her expression didn’t change.

Stratton decided to shut up.

Within half an hour they’d caught up with the rear end of a civilian truck convoy, mostly fuel trucks and therefore slow. The last vehicle was a Hilux just like theirs but filled
with private Afghan security. For half a mile Stratton contemplated overtaking, but decided against it after seeing the way the rear gunner reacted to any encroachment. It wasn’t worth the risk. The gunners were jittery on this road. If they thought Stratton was any kind of threat, they’d open fire. The convoys were popular targets for the Taliban, and for bandits on occasion, although the criminals rarely took on the larger security companies, preferring the more vulnerable target such as a lone vehicle or one that had broken down.

Stratton settled back a hundred metres behind the convoy and relaxed. There was no great hurry. The land was still barren but hillier than it had been further north. Clouds had covered the clear skies of earlier and it looked like rain. The sun had been on their left side when they started and during the journey had crossed the skies to settle on their right. The large orange ball began to lower onto the distant Chopan Hills. Darkness would soon be upon them.

It was time to look for somewhere to rest for the night. Stratton didn’t fancy the idea of a large town. Not only would their own security be challenged, the contents of the vehicle would be at risk. They had a couple of choices: the first was to pull off the road and find somewhere secluded where they could sleep in the vehicle. Security would remain an issue. One of them would have to be awake at all times in case they had visitors. The other option was to find someone who’d put them up.

The latter option was more attractive.

The world was quite suddenly plunged into near-complete
darkness as the sun disappeared. The land rose up on their left, where it turned into a series of low, overlapping hills. Beyond the second fold Stratton saw a light, like the window of a building, and a track up ahead leaving the main road in that direction. When they arrived at the turn, he took it. The edge of the tarmac ended abruptly and it was a considerable step down onto the dirt track.

‘I thought we could find a hotel for the night,’ he said.

She didn’t respond to his facetiousness and studied the ground ahead instead. The track cut around the side of the first hill and climbed the next one for a couple of hundred metres before it levelled out at the crest. A few mud and stone huts appeared up ahead with smoke issuing from the larger one. They drove past a wooden corral containing a dozen or so goats. A pair of camels sat beneath a tree on the other side of the road.

Stratton pulled the vehicle to a stop a dozen metres from the buildings, more out of caution than anything else. He turned off the lights and the engine, and silence descended.

Country Afghans weren’t unlike country folk the world over, but after decades of misrule by the Russians, the Taliban and now the Western invasion, they’d tempered their natural goodwill with caution. But neither was it unusual for travellers to purchase comfort for the night. As they sat there, the front door of the main building opened and orange light from a kerosene lamp streamed out to divide the darkness.

‘You’re up,’ Stratton said. ‘We need a room for the night.’

Hetta pulled on her veil and climbed out as a man
stepped into view holding the lamp. She walked towards him. It would be unusual for a woman to make such a greeting when she was with a man who would have to be either her husband or brother – but the farmer would understand once she explained that her husband couldn’t speak or hear.

Stratton watched them talk for a moment, the farmer looking congenial, nodding and smiling. A woman came out of the house and became involved in the conversation. She looked more serious but otherwise the meeting appeared to be going fine. Hetta held out her hand to the man, who took what she was offering. He checked the notes and appeared to be more than satisfied with the deal. He tried to hand some of it back. Hetta refused, and returned to the Hilux.

‘He’s welcomed us for the night,’ she said. ‘They have a hut that their son used to live in. They didn’t say, but judging by his expression when he mentioned the son, something bad happened to him. His wife’s going to prepare it for us.’

Stratton climbed out, stretched his aching back, and looked out over the country. The main road they had come along was visible, some headlights still moving along it. Lights shone from several other farmhouses dotted about the low hills on both sides of the road.

A kerosene lamp announced the farmer’s wife stepping from the house. She beckoned Hetta over and together they went around the back of the main building and out of sight. Stratton opened the rear cab door and took out a
blanket, placed it on the driver’s seat and wrapped his carbine and webbing inside it.

Hetta returned holding a kerosene lamp and led Stratton back around the corner, between a couple of mud huts to a smaller one a few steps from the main building. Chickens scattered to let them pass. It was a dilapidated, single-room dwelling, but a coal fire had been lit inside a large cauldron in a corner. A rusty, crooked flue directed the smoke through the roof. The place wasn’t as warm as it looked but it soon would be.

On the floor lay a makeshift straw mattress. The only furniture was a rickety chair that didn’t look strong enough to take the weight of an adult. Stratton placed down the blanket bundle beside the bed. The farmer’s wife appeared at the door carrying a wicker basket. She stepped inside and placed it on the dirt floor beside the cauldron and then left with a short glance at Hetta only.

Hetta followed the woman outside and Stratton walked around the small room, inspecting the walls and ceiling. It was similar to the hut in Helmand he’d stayed in prior to the attack on the hamlets, other than that the roof looked effective in this one. Before long Hetta returned, carrying her own weapons bundled in a blanket, and placed it on the floor at the foot of the bed.

‘You up for dragging our toy in here?’ he asked in a soft voice. It was a question he already had an answer for and hoped she’d agree. He doubted they’d both manage to carry it the distance without dropping it. He thought it would be secure if left on the back of the Hilux.