Andy McNab - Crossfire

We turned in their wake. TV Hill was now ahead. We were heading south.

I kept eyes on target. The plume of dust that billowed behind it was maybe a hundred and fifty further ahead. A gang of kids cleaning cars had to jump out of the way as we slewed across the gravel.

The orange-and-white hung another left.

'That's it, matey!'

Our car slowed. He still faced forward, but gave me a sideways glance.

'Dodgy bastard!' I jammed another ten his way and he chuckled as we picked up speed.

We followed the Mazda through the residential area, sometimes fifty behind, sometimes more. A main drag was coming up in the distance, but I could see a tailback stretching almost all the way to us. I ripped off my Bergen and grabbed the map.

TV Hill was now about a K ahead. I could clearly see the antennae farms on the two peaks. The main had to be Salang Wat. A left would take us back to the city centre. A right would take us north-west – out of the city and off the edge of the world.

We crept towards the main. The target was now about four vehicles in front.

The driver was chatting away now as if I was his long-lost brother. He smiled and sniffed the air. I could tell he was dying to ask the aftershave question.

Fuck it. I dug in the Bergen, eyes never off the target, got hold of the Marmite jar and opened it. I held it out so he could have a smell. He winced. It was official: Afghans definitely didn't like the stuff.

We rolled forward a couple of vehicle lengths. My face was covered with sweat, and that made the smell even worse. I could finally see the smouldering remains of a car bomb and the carnage it had created in the open-air market.

Italian armoured vehicles formed a partial roadblock, their.50 cals pointing every which way. Soldiers took cover in doorways while traffic cops in drunken-sailor hats shouted and pointed at the approaching traffic.

Body parts were scattered among the shattered metal and glass that surrounded the crater. Fire engines sprayed white foam as the larger pieces of the dead were retrieved and the injured were helped towards any available vehicle. The two Merc ambulances couldn't cope.

The market seemed to stretch all the way to the bottom of TV Hill. There it morphed into a shanty that reached most of the way to the summit. Somewhere in the sea of mud and corrugated iron lived Magreb, Mrs Magreb, and their four little boys.

The troops were diverting traffic to the right, out of town. The tailback had formed because everybody wanted to go left.

The area had been cordoned off big-time. Hundreds of shoppers and stall-holders were being herded away from the city side of the market.

The Yes Man's mobile kicked off again just as I saw our target raise his to his ear. I let it vibrate.

The street was wide and long, with a concrete central divide. Both sides were lined with what might one day be two-storey shops. Steel reinforcing rods stuck out of the first storey, like there was some Greek-style building tax dodge going on. Dead animals hung outside one, waiting to be skinned. Sparkling alloy wheels were piled outside another. The next down sold chip rolls.

Two helicopters circled our side of TV Hill. Police and military with white lollipops swarmed everywhere, marshalling the traffic like airport ground controllers.

The Mazda was only three ahead, but with so many orange-and-whites in the queue we blended in fine.

I checked the map again. Once we'd passed the hill, the diversion had to start heading south soon or we'd be up in the mountains.

We came to a spot where armoured vehicles had shifted the concrete blocks that divided the lanes. A cop in a drunken-sailor hat fed himself a chip roll with one hand and directed the traffic with the other. Sure enough, we headed south. We'd soon be in Khushal Mena, Basma's part of town.

It cost me another ten dollars. I tried five, but it seemed to make something go wrong with the throttle cable. At least he'd learnt one word of English. As I gave him the money he beamed. 'Matey! Matey!'

More armoured vehicles and Italians loomed. Their.50 cals kept the slow-moving wagon train channelled on the southbound road. A handpainted sign pointed to the former king's palace.

The mobile kicked off once more and this time I opened it up.

'Never cut me off again! What's happening?'

'I'm following a possible.' I didn't need to tell him where I was. He had the phone tagged.

'Who is he? What is he?'

'Don't know, but looking local.'

I could see farmland through the gaps between the bombed-out buildings. The rusting wreck of a Russian armoured personnel carrier lay stranded in a field. Wizened old men shepherded brown woolly sheep against the distant backdrop of snow-capped mountains.

'Where is he going?'

'Don't know. That's why I'm following him. Soon as I do, you will too.'

The traffic was picking up speed. On cue, Matey developed accelerator problems. I threw him another ten. Only fight the battles you can win.

It wasn't long before I was seeing what was left of the palace on the southern extreme of the city. It looked like Dresden after Bomber Harris had done his stuff. There was no way of telling which lot of liberators could take the credit: the Russians, the Taliban or the B52s.

Further down the road we had the makings of a military convention. Troops sat tightly inside their armoured vehicles and Humvees, body-armoured up, all the party gear pointing out at the traffic.

I could see why. About a K away on the plain to my right lay what had to be ISAFville: row upon row of 200-metre-long tented accommodation, vehicle compounds, HESCOs, razor wire, satellite dishes, the full Monty. They probably battened down their area like this every time a bomb went off.

The target was now just two ahead but the traffic had spread out as we finally headed back towards town. I knew where we were the moment we passed the Russian embassy. I wondered if I'd see the Jock carrying bodies out to the bins, still clearing up after last night.

We were soon at the river and the diversion lifted. It took a twenty this time to keep him moving. He must have sensed the end was in sight.

We stayed behind the Mazda as it approached the market, finishing up only about five hundred metres from where we'd started. The crowd was still being held back and had turned hostile. The Italians eyed them warily from behind their sunglasses.

The Mazda stopped. I squeezed the bony shoulder. 'Stop here, matey.'

Eyes on the Mazda, I grabbed my Bergen and shoved him one last ten. He could probably afford to drive straight home and begin his retirement.

I watched the target get out and skirt the crowd. It wasn't difficult: his cowpat was still a mile above the rest. He wasn't fucking around. He knew where he was going.

I followed, head down, eyes up, locking on to the back of his hat.

We reached a large car park among the cluster of flat-roofed, baked-mud dwellings that spread on up the hill.

He put his hands into his waistcoat pockets. He was searching for something. Keys…

Fuck.

He opened the driver's door of a battered black flatbed.

I spun round and broke into a run. Matey was still trying to turn round. I jumped in front of his bonnet, brandishing a twenty. His grin was bigger than ever.

As I jumped in, the black pickup had reached the last stretch of tarmac before the hill. Both of us soon hit the dirt road and started snaking through the shanty town.

We climbed steeply, past small, square, flat-roofed shacks. The cab lurched across ruts and potholes. The other wagon kicked up a dustcloud a couple of hundred metres ahead. The city was soon below us.

As we got higher, a few brick and concrete houses jutted out of the hillside. Boys played football with bare feet. Women sat in groups on terraces carved out of the slope. Every hundred metres or so, we hit a hairpin. The cab was just inches from a sheer drop down into the valley. The road must have been built as access to the antennae farms, and these families had piggybacked off it. There was no planning permission needed. It looked like they'd just scraped out a terrace with picks and shovels and used the spoil to build with.