Frederick Forsyth - The Afghan

When it was over, there were a few gruff farewells, and the party left, locking the cell door behind them. Twenty minutes later, the soldiers were back, mystified but incurious. The poet Tennyson had got it right: Theirs not to reason why.

They checked the familiar figure of their prize prisoner, and waited for the dawn.

The morning sun was tipping the pinnacles of the Cascades when the AC-130 drifted down to its home base at McChord. The base commander had been told this was a CIA shipment, a last consignment for their new research facility up in the forests of the wilderness. Even with his rank, he needed to know no more, so he asked no more. The paperwork was in order, and the Chinook stood by. In flight, the Afghan had come round. The roof panel was open, and the air inside the hull of the Hercules fully pressurized and fresh. The escort smiled encouragingly, and offered food and drink. The prisoner settled for soda through a straw.

To the escort’s surprise, the prisoner had a few phrases in English, clearly gleaned over five years’ listening in Guantanamo. He asked the time only twice in the journey, and once bowed his face as far as it would go and murmured his prayers. Otherwise, he said nothing.

Just before touchdown, the roof panel was replaced, and the waiting forklift driver had not the slightest suspicion he was not lifting an ordinary load of freight from the rear ramp of the Hercules across to the Chinook. Again, the ramp doors closed. The small, battery-powered pilot light inside the crate remained on, but invisible from outside, just as all sounds were inaudible. But the prisoner was, as his escort would later report to Marek Gumienny, like a pussycat. No trouble at all, sir. Given that it was mid-February, they were lucky with the weather. The skies were clear but freezing cold. At the helipad outside the cabin, the great twin-rotored Chinook landed and opened its rear doors. But the crate stayed inside. It was easier to disembark the two passengers straight from the crate to the snow.

Both men shivered as the rear wall of the crate came off. The snatch team from Guantanamo had flown with the Hercules and up front in the Chinook. They were waiting for the last formality.

The prisoner’s hands and feet were shackled before the restraining straps were removed. Then he was bidden to rise and shuffled down the ramp into the snow. The resident staff, all ten of them, stood round in a semicircle, guns pointing. With an escort so heavy they could hardly get through the doors, the Taliban commander was walked across the helipad, through the cabin and into his own quarters. As the door closed, shutting out the bitter air, he stopped shivering. Six guards stood round him in his large cell as the manacles were finally removed. Shuffling backward, they left the cell, and the steel door slammed shut. He looked round. It was a better cell, but it was still a cell. He recalled the courtroom. The colonel had told him he would return to Afghanistan. They had lied again.

IT WAS midmorning, and the sun was blazing down on the Cuban landscape, when another Hercules rolled in to land. This also was equipped for long-distance flying, but, unlike the Talon, it was not armed to the teeth, and did not belong to Special Forces. It came from MATS, the Air Force transport division. It was to carry one single passenger across the globe. The cell door swung open. “Prisoner Khan, stand up. Face the wall. Adopt the position.”

The belt went round the midriff; chains fell from it to the ankle cuffs, and another set to the wrists, held together in front of the waist. The position permitted a shuffling walk, no more.

There was a short walk to the end of the block with six armed guards. The high-security truck had steps at the back, a mesh screen between the prisoners and the driver, and black windows.

When he was ordered out at the airfield, the prisoner blinked in the harsh sunlight.

He shook his shaggy head and looked bewildered. As his eyes became accustomed to the glare, he gazed round and saw the waiting Hercules, and a group of American officers staring at him. One of them advanced and beckoned. Meekly, he followed across the scorching tarmac. Shackled though he was, six armed grunts surrounded him all the way. He turned to have one last look at the place that had held him for five miserable years. Then he shuffled up into the hull of the aircraft.

In a room one flight below the operations deck of the control tower, two men stood and watched him.

“There goes your man,” said Marek Gumienny.

“If they ever find out who he really is,” replied Steve Hill, “may Allah have mercy on him.”

IT WAS A LONG and wearisome flight. There were no in-flight refueling facilities, which are expensive. This Hercules was just a prison ship, doing a favor for the Afghan government, which ought to have picked up their man in Cuba but had no aircraft for the job.

They flew via American bases in the Azores and Ramstein, Germany, and it was late afternoon of the following day that the AC-130 dropped toward the great air base of Bagram at the southern edge of the bleak Shomali Plain. The flight crew had changed twice, but the escort squad had stayed the course, reading, playing cards, catnapping, as the four sets of whirling blades outside the portholes drove them east, ever east. The prisoner remained shackled. He, too, slept as best he could.

As the Hercules taxied onto the apron beside the huge hangars that dominate the American zone within Bagram base, the reception group was waiting. The U.S. provost major heading the escort party was gratified to see the Afghans were taking no chances. Apart from the prison van, there were twenty Afghan Special Forces soldiers, headed by the unit commander. Brigadier Yusef. The major trotted down the ramp to clear the paperwork before handing over his charge. This took a few seconds. Then he nodded to his colleagues. They unchained the Afghan from the fuselage rib and led him shuffling out into a freezing Afghan winter.

The troops enveloped him, dragged him to the prison van and threw him inside. The door slammed shut. The U.S. major decided he absolutely would not want to change places. He threw up a salute to the brigadier, who responded. “You take good care of him, sir.” said the American. “That is one very hard man.”

“Do not worry, Major,” said the Afghan officer. “He is going to Pul-i-Charki jail for the rest of his days.”

Minutes later, the prison van drove off, followed by the truck with the Afghan SF soldiers. They took the road south to Kabul. It was not until complete darkness that the van and the truck became separated in what would later be officially described as an unfortunate accident. The van proceeded alone. Pul-i-Charki is a fearsome, brooding block of a place to the east of Kabul, near the gorge at the eastern end of the Kabul plain. Under the Soviet occupation, it was controlled by the KHAD secret police, and constantly rang with the screams of the tortured.

During the civil war. several tens of thousands never left alive. Conditions had improved since the creation of the new, elected Republic of Afghanistan, but its stone battlements, corridors and dungeons still seem to echo with the shrieks of its ghosts. Fortunately, the prison van never made it. Ten miles after losing the military escort, a pickup truck came out of a side road and took up station behind the van. When the truck flashed its lights, the van driver pulled over at the prereconnoitered flat area off the road and behind a clump of stunted trees. There, the “escape” took place. The prisoner had been uncuffed as soon as the van left the last security check at Bagram’s perimeter. Even as the van rolled, he had changed into the warm, gray, woolen shalwar kameez and boots provided. Just before the pullover, he had wound round his head the feared black turban of the Talib. Brigadier Yusef who had descended from the cabin of the truck to be taken on board by the pickup, now took charge. There were four bodies in the open back of the utility.