Off Reservation Read online

  ‘Let’s not forget that you shot the suicide bomber,’ Trav reminded Matt with a smile.

  Matt ignored him. ‘Faisal never talked about his dealings with Steph and she simply slipped away into the night, back to the USA, and hasn’t been seen or heard of since.’

  ‘Sounds like we should go over there and hunt this Faisal down, get some answers,’ said Trav.

  Matt picked up his rifle and handed it to Barnsley. He placed his chest rig back on and then took his rifle back. He turned to face Trav.

  ‘I’d love to hunt down Khan again, Trav. But I’d rather have a quiet moment with that bitch Steph, find out if she has any remorse at all.’

  ‘Well, we need not worry about that, gents. Let’s focus on the multi-jurisdictional exercise tomorrow night. There will be a lot of people monitoring this and we need to get it right. I just thought you should know, Matt.’

  ‘Thanks, boss, I appreciate it,’ said Matt.

  ‘I thought you were going to use “behove” then, boss,’ laughed Trav, as the two of them started off towards the briefing area. The rest of the company had now assembled there and were waiting for their commander’s feedback on the rehearsal.

  ‘You alright?’ asked Barnsley.

  ‘Yeah, mate, of course.’ Matt put his hand on his signaller’s shoulder. ‘It’s just disappointing that he’s escaped to be honest. And to be fair, I’d jump at the chance of hunting him down again just for shits and giggles, but I have to let this shit go or it will destroy me in the end. I have a job to do and Faisal is the least of my concerns right now.’

  Matt walked on in silence and let his mind wander back to Afghanistan a few years earlier. He could almost feel Allie’s warm blood soaking across his lap as the life slowly drained from her. He shivered and then blocked out the thought.

  2

  KABUL

  Faisal Khan opened his eyes. He thought he had heard a scream, but now there was only silence. His head throbbed and his vision was cloudy. He appeared to be lying on a bed, but he couldn’t make out his surroundings.

  When his eyesight did return, he was surprised to see that he was no longer wearing the orange prison uniform and instead was dressed in khaki pants and a soft cotton shirt. He tried to sit up, but his hands had been cuffed to the steel bedframe. Lifting his head, he looked around the room. It was barely large enough to contain the metal bed, a chair and an old prayer rug in the corner. There was an iron door at the other end of the bed, and no windows or ventilation other than between the door and its warped frame.

  Faisal had no way of knowing that there were another twenty rooms just like this one running down either side of a long hallway in the longest wing of the compound perimeter. That same hallway opened up into a large rectangular courtyard. There was a deep well in the centre; a fire pit with an A-frame holding an old blackened kettle above the smouldering coals of last night’s fire in one corner; and a hole that the locals used for ablutions in the other. A few dogs walked around the courtyard, ignoring the half-dozen hens pecking in the light brown dust looking for small insects. In true Afghan style, each of the walls of the outer perimeter contained small rooms within rooms, and on the roof were hundreds of kilograms of corn, still in their husks, left to dry in the sun. Two green, rusty metal gates were the only way in and out from the dusty street.

  The compound was indistinguishable from hundreds of others on the edge of Kabul. It was just an average compound in an average suburb – though the business in which its occupants were engaged was anything but average.

  Faisal blinked hard, his focus clear now. His mouth was dry and he licked his chapped lips.

  How long have I been here? he wondered. His last memory was of an explosion outside his cell and then a flash of white light. His head throbbed as he tried to make sense of his surroundings. He’d been moved from a prison to a prison, or so it seemed. But who had moved him?

  The scream came again, from perhaps three rooms away, no more. The noise made Faisal jolt against his restraints. It wasn’t a scream of fear; it was the scream of a man in extreme pain. The scream descended into a gurgling groan, and the sound sent shivers up Faisal’s spine. Then came a voice, talking too low at first for Faisal to make out the words, but then the talking rose to a shout and Faisal realised that the man was speaking English.

  ‘You’re a fucking traitor and I have told you what we do to traitors!’

  The sentence was then repeated by another person in Pashtu.

  The door to Faisal’s cell swung open and two men burst in. Faisal struggled against his restraints, causing the cuffs to dig into his flesh. He didn’t recognise either of the men. One of the men was a monster, dressed in black cargos with a green t-shirt stretched taut over his muscular chest. As he put his hands on his hips, Faisal saw that on his right hand he wore a huge black-and-silver ring. But it was the black scarf wrapped around his head that caught Faisal’s attention: no Afghan would wear that. Faisal had only ever seen a man this big once before, when Australian special forces had woken him from his sleep a few years previously by thrusting a barrel in his mouth. The man on the other side of the weapon that night had been a brute. The encounter had ended with Faisal being tortured and imprisoned.

  ‘Hello, Faisal, it’s good to see that you’re finally awake. I was worried about you.’ It was the smaller of the two men who spoke first, his accent confirming Faisal’s suspicions that they were British.

  ‘Who are you? What’s going on?’

  ‘I’ll ask the questions here, brother. I suggest you just lie there and listen.’ The smaller of the men closed the door behind them while the monster flipped the chair around so that its back was facing Faisal, and straddled it. He placed his head on his forearms, narrowed his eyes and studied Faisal with interest.

  ‘Do you prefer Pashtu, Arabic or English?’ the smaller man asked.

  ‘English is fine,’ replied Faisal.

  ‘Good, English it is then. My name is Hassan al-Britani, and this is Abu Brutali. We rescued you, Faisal.’

  Despite his fear, Faisal couldn’t help but be amused by their names, which had obviously been invented in acknowledgment of their most striking characteristics.

  Hassan took a small key from his pocket and went to work on Faisal’s cuffs. As he undid them, Abu Brutali watched Faisal like a hawk. Faisal kept an eye on Abu, too, for the big man had removed a double-sided dagger from his boot and was now twirling it slowly in his right hand.

  Released from the cuffs, Faisal sat up.

  The British man resumed his questioning. ‘Faisal, it’s true that you trained with the Pakistani ISI, is it not?’

  At the mention of Pakistan’s intelligence agency Faisal sat up a little straighter and puffed out his chest. ‘Yes, that is true.’ A small smile crossed his face.

  ‘And for a while you worked as an adviser to the Tarin Kowt regional commanders. I have heard that as a Taliban intelligence officer you had no peer. Ruthless, it is said.’

  Faisal nodded.‘Yes – until I was kidnapped by the bearded devils.’ Hassan al-Britani made a dismissive noise. ‘Pfft, Australians. What do they know about war?’ He peered at Faisal intently. ‘Are you still looking to fight the infidel, Faisal? Make them pay for what they have done to you and your friends?’

  Faisal screwed up his face.‘I’m not fighting them because they’re infidel; I’m fighting them because they invaded my home.’

  Hassan ignored the qualification. ‘We want you to help us, Faisal. In fact, you will also be helping yourself. You see, we have your son.’

  Faisal felt his heart sink. He hadn’t seen or heard from his son for many years. His old Taliban commander had made it very clear that he would need to distance himself from the boy, who Faisal had fathered to a local villager before her husband died in an American ambush during the early days of the war. Over the years, Faisal had quietly supported the boy and then when he had come of age he told him the truth and swore him to secrecy. ‘Of course you have him.’<
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  ‘We have a task for you. If you are successful, you get your son back and we will be able to deliver a blow to the foreigners that will make them run from the country like scared children.’

  ‘What task?’ Faisal went to stand and Brutali immediately rose from his chair. ‘It’s alright, brother Abu,’ he assured the big man. ‘I’m just checking that my legs still work.’

  Brutali sat again and tapped the knife against the top of the chair.

  Hassan continued, ‘We are buying a weapon from the Russians. We have already paid half the asking price and the other half is due on receipt.’

  ‘What weapon?’

  Brutali threw the knife with full force into the dirt floor between Faisal’s feet. Faisal slowly looked down at it and then smiled up at Brutali.

  ‘You missed,’ he said in Pashtu.

  ‘I never miss,’ Brutali replied in English.

  ‘Excuse him, Faisal, he doesn’t like many people,’ said Hassan.

  Faisal lowered himself back onto the bed. ‘Can you tell me more about this weapon?’

  ‘It’s a miniature tactical nuclear weapon,’ replied Hassan.

  ‘I see.’ Faisal stroked his long beard and thought about that for a moment. He knew something of these devices.

  Hassan continued, ‘When we detonate it inside the foreigners’ base it will kill the lot of them instantly. It can do in one second what ten thousand martyrs would need one hundred years to do.’

  Faisal thought back to his time with ISI. He knew Hassan was exaggerating. The weapon was certainly destructive, but it would only realistically clear about a city block. Several years ago, he had seen a dummy version shown to the Taliban’s most feared family, the Haqqanis, by a couple of freelance Russian gun runners keen to make a sale without their government’s approval. They were smart enough not to travel with the real thing, but too stupid to identify the danger they had put themselves in. Faisal had been in North Waziristan – the Haqqani family’s stronghold – under orders from his Pakistani masters at the time. His brief was simple: to foster cooperation between the Pakistan state and the powerful militant group.

  The Afghans killed the Russians not long after they had finished their sales pitch. No Pashtunwali – the ancient tribal code that assured protection to a visitor, even an enemy – had been offered or promised. The suitcase had been prised from the dead Russian’s grasp and passed from commander to commander as a novelty item, the story attached to it becoming richer in the telling. Faisal himself had taken it apart and reassembled it on a few occasions. It was a copy of a Cold War weapon; the symbolism was not lost on Faisal. He had been surprised at how heavy it was and how easily he could take out the plutonium holders. He had studied the Cold War in depth whilst under training with the ISI and understood what both the USA and the USSR had been trying to achieve strategically with these weapons. Terror.

  ‘Walk with me, Faisal, and I’ll tell you a bit about us and what we want you to do.’ Hassan moved to the door and Faisal followed. He could feel the presence of Brutali right behind him, close enough to stab him with that knife. They stepped out into the hallway.

  ‘We are from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Perhaps you have heard of us?’

  Faisal nodded. Indeed, he had heard of them, and they were not exactly espousing an ideology that he believed in. His struggle was for his homeland and tribal allegiance; their grievance was with all things that contravened their fatwa council’s rulings.

  ‘Yes, I know of your group, Hassan – but I did not realise that you were in my country now.’

  ‘Our country, Faisal.’

  ‘Your accent would suggest that you are a recent arrival, Hassan.’

  The punch in the kidneys delivered by Brutali knocked the sarcasm from Faisal, a reminder that he was a guest with a tenuous future.

  Hassan continued walking, with Faisal holding his injured side. The scream that erupted from the next cell they passed was horrific. Hassan stopped and opened the door, then ushered Faisal into the dimly lit room.

  Inside, Faisal could just make out a man hanging from the ceiling by his wrists. He was white, a Westerner. His eyes were closed over and his face bruised and battered. The torturer had a huge scalpel in his right hand and the man’s testicles in the other. He acknowledged Hassan with a massive toothless smile.

  Hassan leant over to whisper into his guest’s ear. ‘This is a reporter for the enemy, Faisal, sent here to spread lies. His country has already paid the ransom, and he will go home soon. But not before we give him some memories to take with him.’

  He led Faisal from the room and started back down the hallway. Seconds later they heard a loud scream that instantly dissolved into sobbing. Faisal was suspicious. How could a man sustain such an injury and still be conscious? He had seen the Westerners bleed like everyone else; surely they would also pass out with such immense pain. This troubled him.

  Seeming undisturbed by the chilling scene, Hassan returned to the subject raised earlier. ‘The weapon is going to be delivered in Istanbul. I understand that you know the town well, Faisal.’

  ‘Yes, I know it.’ Faisal had visited the Turkish city on three separate occasions to pass on information from the ISI to the Turkish National Intelligence Organisation.

  Hassan explained, ‘We can’t just pop up in Turkey and receive the weapon from our Russian contact without drawing attention to ourselves – nearly all of us have foreign passports and our accents don’t allow us to hide our true identities. We can’t sneak in without creating more than a little suspicion. For us to get into the country we need to go legitimately, through the airport and through their customs. The borders are watched so closely now and a couple of Brits aren’t going to just breeze in’. Hassan turned to Faisal.

  ‘The Russians want to sell it to the Taliban, not ISIS. It seems we are not on Putin’s list of bad guys he wants to support.’ Hassan laughed at his own joke. ‘As I said, travel through Syria is almost impossible now and made all the harder with Western special forces and their warplanes blocking our supply routes, so we couldn’t get it in that way even if we wanted to. In short, we need an Afghan who can blend with the Turks and move undetected – which I believe is your specialty, Faisal?’

  ‘I see. Well, yes, it would be nice to get outside and have a look around after being held in prison for so long.’

  ‘Good. Let’s go get you some food, then, and a change of clothes. You can sleep in the guest room tonight and then we will put you on the bus to Kandahar and beyond in the morning. And, Faisal, remember: it’s your son who will benefit the most from your success.’

  Faisal remembered the screams he had heard earlier. If they truly had tortured that Westerner in such a manner, what would they do to his son? ‘Yes, I understand, Hassan.’

  The men sat on carpets that covered the dirt floor in the main eating area. The large rectangular room had no windows save for the slits where the wooden beams pierced the tops of the walls providing support to the ceiling. These small openings let only a little air in so the room was stuffy with the smell of food and the odour of men who don’t shower. Candles sat in recesses in the wall and flickered light shadows danced across the room. Over their meal of goat and beans, Hassan gave Faisal his instructions. He was not to use a phone until he had crossed the border into Iran. There, he was to go to Zabol to rendezvous with an old tailor who was an expert in smuggling contraband across the Middle East and Europe.

  After they’d finished eating, Hassan gave Faisal an iPhone and detailed instructions on its use. ‘This is how we communicate,’ said Hassan, turning on the device.

  ‘Won’t turning that on alert the infidel?’

  Hassan laughed and so did Abu Brutali, who then rose from the cushion on which he had been sitting to stand upright in one swift movement. The speed and agility of this giant amazed Faisal. The big man walked off towards the prayer room, leaving Faisal and Hassan alone.

  ‘This is a clean SIM card, Faisal. I
t has been activated only a few times and has never made a call. It’s a pinprick of light in a sky of stars; no one knows its significance. See this icon here?’

  ‘Yes.’ Faisal knew what it was; he might have been from Afghanistan, but his training in Pakistan had covered social media and its use. ‘I don’t know what it is though,’ he lied.

  ‘This is Facebook, an amazing tool of the modern era for capitalist kids to stay in touch.’ Hassan laughed. ‘We use it a bit differently, though. We have just the one Facebook account and we all communicate by writing inside the “edit biography” section. This is where. I will send you updates on meeting times and other instructions every day at four pm once you are safely inside Turkey.’ He turned off the phone and handed it to Faisal. ‘You just have to turn on the phone, open the Facebook account and check the edit bio page.’

  ‘That is clever,’ Faisal said.

  ‘We use WhatsApp as well; it’s encrypted now and as long as you don’t use it while here in Afghanistan it will be secure for you in Turkey. There is only one number in the phone and that’s mine. We only have a short window when you can communicate without this phone here giving you up, so check Facebook for the instructions, then use WhatsApp to communicate directly with me. Don’t make any calls on it. If I want you, I will call you. The Russian will also have this number and he will be instructed to call you to arrange the pick up.’

  ‘Understood. And the Russian contact – how do I know to trust him?’

  ‘We have already paid him a lot of money, Faisal, and he is greedy: he wants the rest of the money. Take the case from him and send me a photo of the number inside the lid of the case over WhatsApp. Once we confirm that it’s the right weapon we will transfer the rest of the money to his account and then forward the receipt to you so that you can show him. He has already been briefed.’