The Network - Jason Elliot [118]
Mr Raouf gives H and me a tour of the trust’s new facility in Wazir, then drives us to a training area on a hillside in the east of the city, where his men are learning to detect mines. We have lunch in his office, where the shelves are lined with a slightly macabre collection of deactivated anti-personnel mines.
‘In a few days,’ I tell him, ‘I need to drive to a place in the south-west of the country. I need a few reliable men who can help me and who will not talk about what they have done.’
‘Dorost. Right. They will be at your service,’ he says without hesitating. ‘What will you do in this place?’
‘I will make a big explosion.’
A smile spreads slowly over his face, and he strokes his beard as he nods admiringly at us both.
‘I am proud to help you,’ he says. ‘Especially for an explosion.’
To confirm that I will make it worth his while would be to offend him, so I don’t.
‘Your men will be generously rewarded,’ I say.
There’s a knock at the door and one of his staff announces that the men are ready for their afternoon game of soccer, but that they’re short of two men. Mr Raouf looks at us with a questioning twinkle in his eye, and we’re too surprised to refuse. I am lent a pair of boots several sizes too small, and hobble to the pitch outside. It’s a grassless stretch of land that’s as rough and hard as bulldozed rubble. The air is so thin I can’t seem to suck enough of it into my lungs. And since the Afghan body is made out of a substance harder and more durable than ordinary flesh and bone, when our shins and arms make contact with our opponents, H and I agree that it’s as if we’ve been hit with wooden bats.
We haven’t had so much fun for ages.
The mornings are quiet and cool, and on the balcony we soak up the rays of the sun like lizards. There’s little to suggest that the country is a place torn apart by conflict. The occasional rumble of artillery far to the north can be easily mistaken for distant thunder, and the sound of AK-47 fire on the outskirts of the city is indistinguishable from that of a horse trotting on tarmac, carried from afar on an uneven wind.
H busies himself with the equipment we’ll need for the overland journey, with which Mr Raouf has agreed to help us. We also receive a message from London to tell us that the special items we’ve requested are ready to be picked up. The friendly embassy is one of the few that has not been abandoned, and lies in the centre of town. We are given two large black nylon bags, which we take back home and unpack on the floor of a locked bedroom. It feels like Christmas, and we lift out the layers of supplies with the thrill of children who’ve never had presents before.
Uppermost are several maps of Afghanistan printed on silk, of the kind usually issued to special forces. They can be easily concealed without being damaged by crumpling up into a ball, and it doesn’t matter if they get wet because they can still be read and will dry in the open air within a few minutes. There’s a pair of two-way radios with chargers and adaptors for use in vehicles. There’s a modified weapons sight called a Kite which looks like a stubby telescope and will allow us to see in near-total darkness, and a second telephone which like my own switches to satellite frequencies when there’s no cellular signal. There’s a fifty-metre length of black nylon climbing rope, which I idly presume is for H in case he needs to abseil through any embassy windows. There are also two quick-draw plastic holsters and the pair of Brownings that H has been secretly dreaming of, together with several hundred rounds of 9-millimetre ammunition.
‘It’s like an Andy McFuck novel,’ says H with a grin, removing the magazine from one of the pistols and peering along the sights. ‘Not very deniable, though.’
I reach into the bag to see what’s left. In another moulded plastic carrying case there’s a Trimpack military GPS receiver and a metal mounting bracket for use in a vehicle. It’s not new and has seen a few years’ service, though