Stephen Leather - True Colours

‘And if I do not return?’

‘Then you have my word that she will be taken to my country and we will find a good American family to give her a home.’ He paused. ‘The drop of money to your village headman will take place at noon tomorrow and you would be well advised to be out of the area and on your way to the border by nightfall, because word will already be spreading about the price we’ve put on your head.’

Khan nodded. ‘I shall leave before the sun goes down,’ he said.

‘There’s one other thing,’ said Joshua. He held out what looked like a regular 5.45 round for Khan’s AK-74. ‘This is an HOTB — a Hostiles Ordnance Tracking Beacon,’ he said. ‘We use them to track and intercept enemy supplies — we just need to insert one of these into a shipment and then we can ambush it somewhere along the line, at a time and place of our choosing. I need you to have this with you at all times. We’ll have an AWAC in the air over the area where you’re heading. The HOTB sends out a constant pulse which the AWAC can track. When it stops pulsing, we’ll know that you’ve reached the money house and the point where the signal stops will give us the precise coordinates. There are two ways to stop it. You can fire it in your rifle; put it in your magazine, pull the trigger and it’ll seem like a misfire — there’s a.22 cap in the base which will go off and destroy the inner workings. A misfire will be perfectly plausible, most Taliban ammunition is made in Peshawar and it’s notoriously unreliable. But you can also silence it by crushing it between a couple of rocks.’

‘So when it is silenced, you’ll launch the attack?’

‘I’m not sure about the timing. But by killing the signal we will know the exact location of the house. When you silence the HOTB we’ll send in surveillance drones to check out the area and we’ll then deal with the target.’

‘A drone, perhaps?’ said Khan.

Joshua shrugged. ‘Given the sensitivity of relations with Pakistan, the attack is likely to be by special forces on the ground, and probably British ones at that, rather than by bombs or missiles. The attack, if it does come, will probably be at night and you would be wise not to be in the immediate vicinity of the building at the time.’

Khan was dropped off close to his village later that night and woke Lailuna well before dawn. They slipped out of the still-sleeping village and made their way to the dead drop. Khan told her only that she was going to meet an American woman who would look after her for him, and when he came back, they would be going on the long journey together that he had promised her. As he heard the noise of the approaching American armoured vehicle, driving without lights, he hugged Lailuna, but he was dry eyed and showing a confidence he did not feel as he entrusted her to a young blond woman in army fatigues. While her comrades formed a defensive perimeter around them, she greeted Khan, ruffled Lailuna’s hair and gave her a candy bar.

Khan stood watching as they drove away, Lailuna’s pale face and uncertain smile peering out at him until she disappeared from sight. He returned to his village and at once went to the house of the village headman, a grey-bearded elder with a face ravaged by smallpox scars. ‘I know the Americans are bringing money to the village at noon today,’ Khan said. ‘If the Taliban hear of it — and we both know they will — they will take all of it. But here is what I suggest. You will give me half the money the Americans bring, which I will deliver to the Taliban, but I — and you, when you are asked, as you surely will be — will tell them that it is the whole of the money that was given to you. You will hide the rest and when you judge it is safe, you will use it to ease the burdens of our friends and families and bring a little prosperity to our village. After today, you will not see me again for a long time, if ever. The faranji — the British — have put a price on my head and I must cross the border to escape them.’

The headman took Khan’s hands in his, thanked him and said, ‘May you travel safely.’

‘And may you not be tired,’ Khan said, returning the traditional greeting.

Exactly at noon that day, there was the clatter of helicopter rotors overhead as a Blackhawk swooped in, bristling with guns and missiles, and hovered above the heart of the village, churning up a storm of dust and leaves. A few minutes later the American military convoy rumbled into the village.

While troops fanned out around them, M16s at the ready, two soldiers, each carrying a sack, ran into the headman’s house. Moments later, they emerged empty handed, they and the troops jumped back into the vehicles and the convoy moved off, with the Blackhawk still flying top cover above it.

Khan had already summoned Ghulam from the neighbouring village and they made their way to the headman’s house as soon as the convoy had disappeared. For the benefit of any watching villagers, Khan unslung his AK-74 and covered the headman as he appeared at the door. There were still two sacks in the middle of the room, but Khan noted with satisfaction that they were now considerably less bulky than when they had been delivered. The headman made token protests, raising his voice in lamentations as Khan and Ghulam strode away, each with a sack over their shoulder. None of the other villagers tried to intercept them; they knew better than to cross the Taliban.

With Ghulam at his side, Khan made his way out of the village and took the narrow, twisting paths through the mountains. After sunset that night, they reached the safe house, one of several that Fahad constantly moved between. It could have been any farmer or goatherd’s house, had it not been for the satellite dish hidden among a copse of larch and pine trees a hundred yards away. Greeted with a faint smile by Fahad and a scowl from Piruz, Khan produced the money at once and told his story. ‘The British have put a price on my head,’ he said, ‘for the deaths of their soldiers.’

‘I had already heard so,’ Fahad said, nodding towards the satellite phone that lay on the table.

‘With your permission,’ Khan said, ‘I will cross the border and live among our brothers in the tribal lands until the faranji find other things to occupy their minds.’

‘Granted,’ Fahad said. ‘When will you leave?’

‘Tonight. The lure of the reward may be too much for some poor farmer to resist. Shall I deliver these dollars to the money house across the border, where it will be safe from the faranji ? Ghulam will go with me for added protection.’

Fahad thought for a long moment before he replied. ‘Perhaps that would be wise,’ he said. ‘You can relieve my men who are guarding it and send them back to rejoin the fight here, but I will send Piruz and another fighter with you, for poor farmers are not the only ones who may find such sums of money hard to resist.’

Khan inclined his head. ‘As you wish.’

The four men left within the hour, travelling light with just their weapons and ammunition, a water bottle and a pouch at their waist containing rations of rice, almonds and raisins. Even in the summer season, the wind knifing through them as they climbed higher into the mountains was bitterly cold and there were ice and drifts of winter snow in the north-facing gullies.

They passed a chai house at the side of the trail, and the smell of cedar logs and the glow of light from inside were as enticing as the thought of hot food, but travellers might already have brought news of the price on Khan’s head even to this lonely place and the risk of betrayal and capture was too great, so they moved on into the darkness.

Dawn broke well before they reached the summit of the pass, but this little-used route lay well south of the Khyber Pass and they encountered only one group of travellers, merchants or smugglers herding their plodding donkeys, weighed down with bulky sacks.