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Authors: Chris Ryan

Battleground (10 page)

BOOK: Battleground
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‘Yeah,’ Ben said. ‘I think you can say that again.’
Looking through the hole in the wall, Ben could see the moon rising and the sky brilliant with stars.
‘What do you think they are doing?’ Aarya said.
Ben shrugged in the darkness. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But look . . . that bomb . . . it’s got to be something big. Some kind of terrorist thing. We’ve
got
to warn someone.’
They fell silent again. Somehow, locked in that room, their chances of escaping seemed pretty remote – plan or no plan.
They heard voices outside. Ben pressed his ear to the wall, desperately trying to get some sense of what they were saying. But to him, the language was gobble-degook. He couldn’t even make out the individual sounds, apart from one word that they kept repeating, and that made no sense to him: ‘
Kahaki
.’
‘“
Kahaki
”.’ He repeated the word to himself a couple of times. ‘What does that mean, Aarya?’
Aarya shook her head. ‘I do not know,’ she replied. ‘I do not recognize it. Perhaps it is a name, or perhaps a place . . .’
Ben wanted to bang his hand against the wall with frustration. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘You listen. Can you hear what they’re saying?’
She put her ear to the wall. ‘Not well,’ she replied. ‘I think maybe they are preparing to leave.’
Ben felt his stomach twisting. It was bad enough in this strange, dark room; but the alternative was worse. And it came soon enough. There was a scratching sound as someone unlocked the door and then pushed it open. A figure stood in the doorway, one of their abductors, silhouetted against a crackling fire in the middle of the compound. He gave a harsh instruction, which Aarya translated. ‘He says we should follow him.’ Her voice trembled.
The figure turned and walked into the centre of the compound. Ben took Aarya’s hand and led her outside. The only light was from the fire, and he was aware of a number of dark figures milling around the outskirts of the compound, watching them. From behind, someone approached. ‘Get back into the truck,’ a voice said, and Ben recognized it as Amir’s. Somehow, he just knew that the terrorist would have a gun pointing in his direction.
They stumbled out of the compound to where the trucks were waiting for them, huge and sinister in the darkness. The engines were running, but Ben noticed that the headlamps were not switched on. They were about to make a journey in the dark without being seen. The door of the rear truck was wide open, and Amir pushed them towards it. Ben entered first, purposefully making sure that Aarya could sit nearest the door. Amir took his seat opposite them, resuming his guard-like vigilance with his gun pointed in their direction.
‘Where are we going?’ Ben demanded.
‘Silence,’ Amir replied. The door was shut, and moments later the vehicle started to move.
It was very dark in the truck, but it didn’t take long for Ben’s vision to adjust. He could see Amir’s white eye, wide awake, flicking from Ben to Aarya, then back to Ben again. The stony earth crunched underneath them. Ben pictured the view he had seen from their prison. Featureless. Nothingness. Stuck out in the desert by themselves they’d be in just as much danger as they were now. If they were going to escape, they had to do so while they were near the compounds. The inhabitants might not be friendly, but at least they could try and break in, maybe steal food and water. At least they’d have options. Pretty slim options, but options all the same.
He glanced over at Aarya. She was clearly waiting for that glance. Waiting for the sign they had arranged; the sign that signalled their attempt to get out of here.
Ben coughed.
He sensed her holding her breath.
He coughed for a second time.
His hand was in his pocket. He grabbed a fistful of the dust he had collected from the compound floor.
And then he coughed for a third and final time.
Aarya didn’t hesitate. She grabbed the barrel of Amir’s gun and pushed it upwards. The terrorist shouted, and Ben half expected to hear the sound of a bullet ricocheting off the inside of the vehicle. The sound didn’t come, though. He pulled his hand from his pocket and hurled the dust straight into Amir’s face. Their captor choked loudly; he dropped his weapon and put two hands up to his stinging eyes. Aarya moved quickly to the door of the truck and opened it while Ben pulled the fuel-soaked rag from his pocket and lit it with the cigarette lighter. A flame rose slowly up the rag and he threw it onto Amir’s lap. It wouldn’t be hot enough to hurt him, but when he got his vision back it would make him panic and buy them a few precious extra seconds.
By now, Aarya had the door open. Ben threw himself towards it, grabbed her hand and they both jumped from the moving vehicle.
‘
Now!
’ he hissed. ‘
Run!
’
The two of them sprinted together away from the convoy and into the blackness of the desert night.
Ben didn’t stop to take in the scenery. He just wanted to put as much distance between them and the trucks as possible. Aarya was slower than him, but he kept to her pace, vaguely aware of shouting behind them. Ahead of them, in the distance, he could see a faint glow: the compound, he assumed. They kept running towards it, even though it seemed like a very long way off.
Bang!
He heard the gunshot almost at the same time that he felt it: a ringing sound that filled the air, and then a sickening whoosh as the round zoomed past his head. Two more cracks of gunfire followed it in quick succession, nauseatingly loud and uncomfortably close. One of them went over his head; the other kicked up a cloud of dust as it hit the road to his side. ‘They are shooting at us!’ Aarya wept. ‘
They are shooting at us!
’
‘Yeah,’ Ben hissed, still running at full pelt. ‘I kind of noticed.’ And with that, they both hit the dirt and started scrambling to the side of the road like demented crabs. Ben looked around desperately for some kind of cover – a rock, a ditch, anything. But all he could see in the light of the moon was a vast expanse of nothingness; all he could hear was the sound of angry voices, and of footsteps sprinting towards them.
The voices were louder now. ‘They are coming!’ Aarya gasped. ‘
Ben! They are coming!
’
Hands. Big, rough, calloused hands all over them, pulling them to their feet. Ben felt a blow to his stomach, so painful that it even masked the distress he felt that their escape attempt had failed. He doubled over, just as he heard Aarya being slapped hard across the face. A fist grabbed his hair and, still gasping from the punch, he was dragged towards the trucks and bruisingly thrown back into the hard metal shell of that moving prison. A distraught Aarya joined him, and then Amir. His ugly face was curled into an expression of absolute loathing, and as he retook his seat he poked the butt of his gun into Ben’s belly.
‘You are lucky,’ he hissed. ‘If you had been shot we would leave you bleeding by the roadside. If I see you move again, that is what I will do.’
One look at his captor’s eye told Ben that Amir meant it.
The trucks rolled on, and so did the night. Amir was like a warrior owl, never closing his eyes, never moving his gun. At Ben’s side, Aarya nodded from exhaustion, but Ben was determined to stay awake. Or maybe he was just too scared to fall asleep.
Towards morning, the temperature fell and he found himself shivering. His limbs became numb and weak. If Amir was cold, he didn’t show it, nor did he give Ben any sign of sympathy – not that Ben was expecting it. He was hungry and his mouth was dry with thirst: he really didn’t think he could cope with being in this vehicle much longer.
‘Are we going to stop soon?’ he asked. His voice surprised him – it was thin and rasping.
Amir sniffed and looked like he was deciding whether or not to reply. He shrugged. ‘Before sunrise,’ he said. ‘We have people expecting us in a nearby village. They will give us shelter while we wait once more for the cover of night.’ He sneered – an expression that suited his face. ‘These people are our friends. We have friends all over the country. They help us in our struggle against the hated Americans and British. You should not try any foolishness – they will not be forgiving if you try to escape.’
Ben tried to moisten his lips with his tongue. ‘Are you going to leave us there?’
Amir spat to one side. ‘Of course we will not leave you there. We have taken you for a purpose.’ He grinned – a singularly nasty expression. ‘You should be glad that you are useful. If not, you would be dead.’
‘What’s so useful about us?’ Ben demanded. ‘What can we do that you can’t?’
‘Nothing!’ Amir announced. ‘It is not what you can do, but who you are that is important.’
‘But you just kidnapped us at random. I don’t understand.’
‘Of course you do not understand. You are just a stupid child.’ Amir’s lips curled again. ‘You are both stupid children. Stupid, because you think you can escape from us. And stupid because you know nothing of how our war is fought.
Nothing
.’
‘Then why not enlighten me?’
For a moment Amir was quiet. Ben shrugged, as though it made no difference to him whether his captor carried on talking or not. Amir, though, could clearly not resist. ‘Where we are going,’ he said, ‘there are many foreign troops. But they are not true fighters. Not true fighters at all. If they think there are’ – Amir searched for an unfamiliar word – ‘if they think there are
civilians
with us, then they will not attack us with their aeroplanes and their bombs. And if they think one of the civilians is British . . .’
Amir’s smile grew broader than Ben had yet seen it. Triumphant, as though he had just made the winning move in a game of chess. Ben looked at him in horror, then over at Aarya. Her head was still nodding, and there was nothing to suggest that she had heard anything Amir had said. One small part of Ben wished the same could be said of him too. He felt sick as the full implication of what Amir had just said sank in. He didn’t know where they were going or what they were about to do, but what he did know was this: he and Aarya were travelling in a convoy with a group of terrorists in charge of a nuclear suitcase bomb, and they were being used as human shields. And as long as they were being held at gunpoint by the fanatical terrorist in front of them, there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.
Chapter Nine
 
Tuesday became Wednesday. Ben didn’t know whether to be relieved or frightened when the convoy came to a halt again. His body was bruised from the juddering journey; he was weak with hunger and dry with thirst. Aarya looked even worse.
Amir ordered them off the truck and they stepped weakly down, finding themselves once more on the outside of a compound. Ben could tell that day was not far off, but the grey light of morning had yet to break through the darkness as the silent, shadowy, dark-robed figures dragged them roughly into the compound itself.
If they hadn’t been driving all night, Ben would have wondered if they’d moved at all since their last stopover. As far as he could tell, the place was almost identical. The only exception was the fire in the middle of the courtyard, which was now just a pile of glowing, smoking embers.
‘Stop!’
It was Amir talking. Ben and Aarya waited while the men around them discussed something.
‘What are they saying?’ Ben whispered.
Aarya’s voice was weak. ‘They are talking about where to keep us,’ she said, then listened again carefully. ‘Somewhere empty, where there is nothing we can—’
Ben never got to hear the rest of the sentence, because Aarya never finished it. Instead she flinched, holding her hands to her ears. A booming sound exploded. It was far away, but not
that
far away, and it seemed to shake through Ben’s body. And then, suddenly, the sky in the distance became illuminated with a bright light that lingered for perhaps twenty seconds before fading away.
And then, louder this time, another boom.
It was too much for Aarya. She started screaming. ‘
What is it? What is that noise?
’ And then she reverted to her own language, crying with stress and panic.
Their captors had no time for it. One of them strode over to where Aarya was standing, before raising one of his hands ready to beat her on the head. A sudden anger filled Ben. He stepped forward and grabbed the man’s wrist, just as he was trying to hit Aarya.
‘No!’ he shouted. ‘Leave her alone.’
The man turned. His eyes were wide and angry. It didn’t take much for him to escape Ben’s grip and he looked for all the world like he was about to launch himself at both of them. Ben stood in front of Aarya, who was now sobbing hysterically, and stuck out his chin.
‘Amir!’ he demanded. ‘Where’s Amir?’
Amir’s face emerged from the gloom.
‘If they touch her,’ Ben shouted, ‘if they hurt her in any way, I’ll spend every second trying to escape. Have you got that? The only way you’ll be able to stop me is by shooting me. And what will happen to your precious human shield then?’ He was full of anger, and he stood there in front of Aarya as a line of faces stared flatly at him.
BOOK: Battleground
6.21Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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