THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER (10 page)

'You folks drive the Predator?' The pilot was on manual but found time to talk. He wanted conversation: the UAVs were in their coffins behind the bulkhead, with the Ground Control Station and the trailers on which the satellite dishes were housed. Perhaps he thought that a young man with distorting spectacles, tousled hair and short trousers didn't look like any pilot that he, a military man, had ever known. Or perhaps he thought the young woman in her short skirt didn't seem like any sensor operator he'd ever met.

'What we do, as with all Agency business, is rated as classified,'

Marty said.

'Just asking - don't mean to put my nose where it's not meant to be.'

Lizzy-Jo said, 'He's the pilot for what we've got, MQ-ls. I sit beside him and do the fancy stuff - telling the truth, there should be two of me but the guy who's supposed to be—'

'Lizzy-Jo, that's classified,' Marty snapped.

She ignored him. '—supposed to be alongside me is down at Bagram with amoebic dysentery. We have to make do.'

The pilot was almost old enough to be Marty's father. 'Where have you flown, son?'

Marty said that he had flown at Nellis, Nevada, for his training, and out of Bagram, and he looked defiantly at the pilot. At Nellis there had been veteran pilots, and at Bagram from the USAF, and they'd all been spare with words but had not hidden their contempt at his age and appearance. Flying for them was a killing game when the Hellfires were on the pods under a Predator's wings. For Marty, flying was as intellectual a task as working the machines in a kids'

arcade. He scowled and waited for the sarcastic retort from the pilot about his inexperience. He didn't get it.

'Perhaps ya'll know all this - in which case you'll say so. Feel the turbulence? That's standard here. We have big winds over the dunes, forty knots or fifty. What I heard, Predator doesn't like winds.'

'It can cope,' Marty said.

'Can't even take off if cross-winds exceed fifteen knots,' Lizzy-Jo said. 'And it's pretty difficult to get decent imagery on screen if it's rough up high.'

'The winds are bad, and then there's the heat over the sand. When you're up we find there's a density-altitude barrier, it's what the heat does. Even if there had been no sandstorm when we were trying to get that Navy pilot at the downed Hornet, the helicopter people were not keen on flying. What I'm saying is, it's difficult territory for aviation. It takes understanding. Nothing moves, nothing lives, you could call it a death trap. It's one hell of an unfriendly place down there, it's—'

The pilot broke off. He was holding his stick tight. The co-pilot came behind Lizzy-Jo and told her to vacate the seat. He replaced her, strapped himself in, and reached across to lock his hands over the pilot's, helping him hold the stick and fight a wind powerful enough to throw the big transporter off line. The pilot didn't loosen his grip on the stick but gestured to his left with his head.

Lizzy-Jo tugged at Marty's arm and pointed port side of the cockpit window.

The darkness below them was broken by a spasm of light. The first light they had seen since the sun had dropped. Not a prick of light in the Rub' al Khali until the brilliance that the aircraft now banked towards. The light was like an inland sea and around it was a wall of blackness, then nothing. Coming closer, the lights broke their solid formation and Marty recognized runway lights, road lights, compound and perimeter lights and buildings' lights.

'God,' Marty said. 'Is that it?'

'That's it,' Lizzy-Jo said. 'That's our new home. How long you sticking around for?'

The pilot grimaced. 'About a half-minute after your offloading is completed, I'll be powered up.'

They went down. The wind shook them. The pilot was good and feathered them on to the runway. They taxied, but the pilot didn't cut the engines when he'd braked. Far at the back they heard the metal scrape of the tail being opened.

The pilot sipped from his water bottle, then smiled at them. 'Take my word, this is hell on earth. I hope what you're going to do is worth the effort.'

Marty said, 'Any mission we are sent on is worth the effort—'

Lizzy-Jo cut in, 'We don't know what the mission is, but I expect someone will tell us when it's convenient for them.'

They went back into the fuselage and gathered up their gear. Two bags for her, one bag and his framed print for Marty. He was subdued. Everything the pilot had said about wind turbulence and heat played in his mind. He was sort of nervous.

They walked down the tail and George Khoo already had the maintenance team at work. They carried their bags to the side and dropped them, but Marty held his picture under his arm. The coffins were rolled down the tail on their trailers.

The pilot was as good as his word. In a half-minute after the last of the gear had been offloaded, the engines were revving to full power.

They walked towards the dirt at the end of the runway, where within a half-hour George had started to supervise the erection of a tent camp.

They were off the track when, without warning, the pickup swerved to the left. The lamb screamed and a goat fell into Caleb's stomach, then kicked with hobbled hoofs to be clear of him. Ahead there was a single low building - no village, no huts, no compound walls.

Caleb crawled to the pickup's tail and jumped. On side-lights, the pickup left. The moon's glow fell on the building. There was a sliver of brightness at one window and another under the door.

Caleb clenched his fist and hammered on the wooden planks. He called out his old name, the one the Chechen had given him.

A bolt was drawn back, scraped clear of its socket. The door whined open.

Caleb went in. On an earth floor at the centre of the room a hurricane lamp threw out a dull light and the stink of kerosene.

Beside it there were three plates with meat and rice on them and on one a half-eaten apple. Beyond the lamp's light, in shadow, stood a pile of olive green wood packing-cases but he could not read the writing stencilled on them. There were crumpled blankets, discarded cigarette packets, boots caked in old dirt and . . . From the deeper shadows, a shaft of light fell on a rifle barrel, aimed at his chest. As he slowly, and very carefully, raised his arms, the barrel tip of a weapon was pressed hard into the back of his neck. Then he heard breathing close to him and smelt the breath behind him. Away from the rifle there was a scurrying movement and then the lamp was lifted. A man held a hand grenade, the pin gone from it, in one hand and the other held the lamp.

In Arabic, Caleb said, 'If you drop the grenade or throw it at me everyone in the room is killed, me and you - you should put the pin back.'

He heard a little giggle of nervous laughter from the side, where the rifle was. The man put down the lamp, then fumbled in a trouser pocket and replaced the hand grenade's pin. Caleb saw the face of the man, old, tired and thin . . . The weapon stayed against his neck, but Caleb's right arm was wrenched down. He felt the cloth strip taken from the plastic bracelet. The light was lifted. His arm was released and the weapon dropped from his neck.

Each in his own way, the three men gazed at him. One slipped a pistol into the belt of his trousers. One stacked the rifle against the wall. The elder one grimaced and dropped the grenade into a coat pocket. Then they were eating, but still they watched him - not with awe or fascination, not with wonderment. Their glances were of rank interest and they seemed to strip him bare to the skin. It was as if each weighed his appearance against the value given him. It was, he understood, the first contact with the outer layers of his family. They gave Caleb their names, but spoke indistinctly because they were all eating as if food was scarce. He thought the elder one who had had the hand grenade called himself Hosni; the one with the rifle was Fahd. The man who had held the pistol against his neck and who had examined his wrist said his name was Tommy. They wolfed the food until the plates were clear, then wiped the plates and sucked their fingers for the last of the rice and sauce. Caleb sat at the side in the shadow, leaning against the stacked crates, and his stomach growled.

He could have given his own name, or any name, but did not.

Caleb asked, 'Where do we go?'

Tommy cleared his throat and spat with venom at the floor. Fahd laughed shrilly, as if in fear. The elder, Hosni, said, without expression, 'We will be in God's hands. We are going into the Sands.'

He was shaken.

Caleb had not slept well. The coughing, snoring and wheezing had prevented it.

Fahd stood over him, pulling at his shoulder.

It was still dark inside the room, but the light outside pierced the window where the plywood cover did not fit.

At the moment he was woken, Caleb had been in a restless dream world that nudged him to the limit of his memory, took him to the chasm, but would not let him step over into the void.

Hosni stretched and Caleb heard his joints creak. Tommy sat on his blanket and, without purpose, ran his fingers through his cropped hair as if that were his waking ritual.

They went outside for prayers. Fahd took the line for them and sank to his knees. The others followed. The first low sunlight caught the tips of the wadi's low boundary hills, and far beyond them was the Holy City, Makkah. He had said in the first training camp -

near to Jalalabad,
'La ilaha ilia Allah, Muhammadiin rasoola Allah.'
In old language, from back before the memory's void, he had known he said: 'There is no true god but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God.' He had said, facing the shooting range and the obstacle course, that he believed the Holy Qur'an to be the literal word of God, revealed by him, believed that the Day of Judgement was true and would come as God promised, accepted Islam as his religion, would not worship anything or anyone except God. He said the prayers taught him, and watched the others. Beyond his dream, where his memory did not go, there was no God. Hosni prayed quietly, as if it were a time to gather personal dignity. Fahd rocked forwards and backwards and his face contorted as if man's inability to match the demands of his God made an agony for him. Around Caleb were the whispers, mumbles and cries of devotion. He thought Fahd was the zealot, and marked it in his mind. There had been zealots in the trenches, and they were dead. There had been more zealots in the cages, and they were driven to insanity. Did Caleb believe the words he spoke soundlessly? He could not have answered. The prayers finished as the sun caught their faces.

He sat in the dirt against the mud wall and watched corridors of ants come to him, crawl over his ankle and pass on.

He was told they would move in an hour, was told transport would come.

The dream returned. Staring into the sunlight, his eyes were closed.

The dream was clear . . . the wedding. A veranda of wood planks in front of a small villa with white rendering on the walls, a garden with flowers, dried-grass lawns with chairs and rugs scattered among shrub bushes. Sharp in his mind. The bride was Farooq's cousin. The bridegroom was Amin's second cousin. Caleb was the Outsider. A feast. A celebration. Welcomed because he was the friend of Farooq and the friend of Amin, shown the hospitality that was true and warm. A feeling of liberation because he had made a great journey - but his memory no longer accepted where he had come from, from what he had been freed. He had been watched by a man sitting on a bench back from the veranda, among the shrub bushes, and who was dressed in a black turban, a long-tailed black shirt and loose black trousers. Guests came to the man and spoke quietly into his ear, and all who came near him ducked their heads in respect, but the man's one eye was fastened on Caleb.

He was only aware of the attention focused on him there, at the wedding party. He did not know that that attention had lighted on him when the message had come from far away to the town of Landi Khotal that Farooq and Amin were bringing their friend to this distant corner of the North-west Frontier of Pakistan. Could not know that, from the hour of his arrival, he had been observed, followed, tracked and noted. Neither could he have known that the interest he created in the days leading up to the wedding was sufficient for a message to be sent across the border into Afghanistan.

What was learned of him, and relayed in the message, had been enough for the man with the eyepatch and the chrome claw to have travelled to witness him at first hand at the celebration. A hawk's eye was on him, and he was in ignorance of it.

Once, when the bridegroom carried a tray of glasses filled with apricot juice to the man, the claw had hooked his elbow and pulled him lower. A question had been asked, the claw pointing at Caleb, and the bridegroom had answered it. Two Iambs had been killed for the feast, and a kid. Only the remnants turned on the spit over the fire of cut wood, but the scent of the meat drifted in the smoke to Caleb's nose - and the man watched him. As the dusk came, younger men drifted away and while Caleb struggled to be understood by the relatives from the village of Amin and Farooq, there were shots beyond the garden. The man came towards him. Farooq whispered in Caleb's ear that the man was from Chechnya, a hero of the war with the Russians, but Caleb knew nothing of any war. The man was at his side and reached down. The claw caught Caleb's arm and lifted him. No smile, no greeting, no warmth. Farooq had tried to follow, as if anxious about his friend, but had been waved away. The man from Chechnya led him to the fence that marked the extremity of the cultivated garden. Four men were there, with rifles. They fired.

The targets were a lentils can at the base of a dried-out thorn tree, and further back one that had held cooking oil wedged between stones, then far beyond, a fuel drum. Some bullets shook the targets, some caused little dust spurts near to them and the whine of ricochets. The man and Caleb could not speak, had no common language, but another came to Caleb's side and, with a guttural accent, translated the hero's words and Caleb's answers.

'Do you shoot?'

'I have never tried and no one ever showed me.'