Tom Callaghan - An Autumn Hunting

Aliyev nodded but didn’t look completely convinced.

‘The old pakhan hated Uzbeks worse than poison. And Kazakhs, Tadjiks, Chinese and Russians, now I come to think of it. So he refused to have Uzbek partners. Me? I believe there’s more money to be made out of peace than out of war. I negotiated an agreement with the big men in Tashkent. We leave each other’s markets alone, nobody dies and everyone goes to the bank.’

I nodded my understanding: there’s nothing profitable in killing each other when there’s a whole world out there ready to be plundered, bled dry.

Then Aliyev almost caught me out, with one of the unexpected changes of subject in which he was clearly expert.

‘You’re an ex-cop, kicked out of the force, wanted on charges. Why would Tynaliev let you within a hundred kilometres of any scheme he was setting up?’

I knew I only had a few seconds to answer, or everything was going tits-up. I pretended to look puzzled, gave Aliyev my best innocent look.

‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’

‘Enlighten me.’

‘Tynaliev was going to need protection, right? From you, from whoever he was involved with if things went wrong. So he put about the story I’d been fired, told the security forces to work with me as if I were undercover. That way, his arse was covered if I put a foot wrong. And there was one other reason he chose me.’

I paused, pointed to my cigarettes. Aliyev shook his head.

‘The minister might have beaten the shit out of suspects down in Sverdlovsky basement, given a few dentists some extra work, had doctors sew a few stitches. And he probably killed my old boss with his bare hands, revenge for organising the murder of his daughter Yekaterina. But he’s never had to kill someone who was about to kill him. Look them in the eye, pull the trigger first, watch the hope and the life go out of their face. And I have. There’s a world of difference in using your fists and boots on some poor sod tied to a chair in a cellar, and looking down the barrel of a Makarov.’

Aliyev didn’t look entirely convinced, but shrugged and gestured to me to keep going.

‘So you were best of friends, comrades together in the crusade to get rich? So why did you shoot him?’

I knew my life hinged on the answer. And fortunately, I was granted a little time to think of a convincing lie.

Because that was when the hand grenade exploded in the house above us.

The entire room shook, as if the building itself was being swept away by an avalanche. The harsh overhead lights flickered for a couple of seconds, and then we were swamped with total blackness until the emergency batteries kicked in a moment later. One of the men cried out, his voice driven by terror rather than surprise. The air was thick with dust, acrid and dry in my throat, and I could feel my eyes beginning to sting.

Like most Kyrgyz, I’ve felt the after-shock of the earthquakes that hit our country every so often, escaping from the intolerable pressures hiding deep below the mountains. But knowing this tremor was man-made, deliberate, made it feel malevolent, its sole purpose to terrify and then obliterate.

Shouts of confusion and fear bounced off the concrete walls, until Aliyev gestured to his men to remain silent. Whoever was standing above us had clearly come prepared; I could hear pickaxes biting into the packed earth concealing the cellar. The noise changed as steel rang upon the steel of the trapdoor entrance. The heavy bolts on the underside of the door would hold for a long time, but that wasn’t what concerned me. A high-speed drill could gnaw its way through the metal in minutes, creating holes through which gas could be pumped, either to force us to surrender, or to kill us. Knockout gas, maybe the sort that killed so many children during the school siege in Beslan, an agonising death, hands tearing at your throat, struggling not to breathe, failing, choking, dying.

Along with his men, Aliyev was staring up at the trapdoor, its outlines obscured by the clouds of dust and dirt raining down from the ceiling. I seized the moment to pocket my phone, make my way towards the back of the cellar and the bedrooms. I knew there would be an escape route; you don’t survive long in the world of the Circle of Brothers without preparing for every eventuality. A hand on my shoulder spun me round: Aliyev.

‘Come with me, Inspector.’

I let him lead the way, into the furthest of the rooms. A metal-framed bunk bed stood against the far wall, and I watched as Aliyev pulled it towards himself. A low and narrow hole broke through the concrete, barely wide enough for either of us to squirm through on our bellies. A rancid stink of damp earth and rotten wood belched out at us, but Aliyev jerked his thumb towards the hole.

‘Get going, we haven’t much time,’ he whispered, dropping to his hands and knees.

‘What about the others?’

I knew they would be standing away from the trapdoor, waiting for it to swing open, for a tornado of bullets to spray the room.

‘If there’s no one here when whoever it is breaks through, they’ll know we’ve escaped. This way, just you and me, we have an advantage, and maybe even a chance.’

He jerked his head back at the main room, shrugged.

‘Expendable. Cannon fodder. I can get a hundred of their sort tomorrow.’

He must have seen the expression of disgust on my face, gave a smile that never reached his eyes.

‘If you want to change places with any of them, Inspector, and go down fighting… No? I thought not.’

Aliyev pushed me towards the hole in the wall and I clambered through. He followed me, using a length of rope to pull the bunk beds back into place, switching on a torch he’d kept inside the entrance for when a day like this would happen. Then he kicked at a piece of wood supporting part of the ceiling, and I watched as a fall of earth blocked the entrance. No one would be joining us in our escape.

I took the torch from his outstretched hand, directed the weak beam of light down into the blackness. Tree roots emerged from the earth walls and ceiling, like misshapen hands waiting to clutch at us as we crawled past. I felt a familiar panic rise up in my throat, threatening to drown me: I’ve always thought the most terrible thing in the world would be to be buried alive.

I half-cried out as something scuttled over my feet. Unbidden, impossible to ignore, I thought of vipers, rats, scorpions, all the creatures that lie hidden in the dark and the shadows, waiting to strike, to bite and tear, then to feed. Including humans.

I forced myself to control my breathing, to not think about the weight of earth pressing down upon us. The roof of the tunnel seemed to get lower, until I could feel stones and clods of earth scraping against my back. I was still on my hands and knees, my muscles protesting against the unfamiliar strain.

‘How much further?’ I whispered, as if a loud voice would cause the roof to collapse and bury us.

‘Maybe another ten minutes until we reach the treeline,’ Aliyev said, his voice subdued, gasping between each word. I wondered if he shared my phobias, if the stink of damp earth and vegetation reminded him of death and oblivion as well.

I pushed those thoughts away, tried to focus on our immediate future. I had no way of knowing where the tunnel would emerge, if we were crawling towards capture or something as final as a bullet in the head. I ignored the scrapes and cuts my hands were accumulating, forced myself on, counting down from a thousand, willing myself to keep going.

It wasn’t as if I had a choice.

I sensed rather than felt the roof begin to rise above us, even as the tunnel became an upward crawl. My face was slick with sweat, not all of it from the effort of crawling. I’d had more than enough of being trapped in dark enclosed spaces with the weight of the world above, waiting for the roof to cave in and bury me alive.