The Network - Jason Elliot [128]
I can’t take much more of this. If he hits me again I know I’ll be in too much pain to function. I can run, but another Talib who’s been sitting in the cab of the Toyota has got out now, and has an AK in his hands, half-raised into a firing position just to let everybody know this is their business and nobody else’s. I’ll have to shoot him first, while my vision is still good and my hand steady. But if I do, my options are not too good. I can run through this maze of streets, but I won’t escape for long. If I’m not killed, I’ll be found soon enough and the entire op will be ruined. I may or may not have time to conceal the flash disk somewhere, but I’ll then have to find a way to transmit its location to H or someone I can trust.
I can’t bear the prospect of all this. If I own up to being a foreigner he’ll stop hitting me, but I’ll be taken prisoner and searched and my map and weapon will incriminate me. God knows what will happen to me if I end up in a Taliban prison. Every scenario spells disaster.
I’m lying in the road now, propping myself up with one arm, looking him in the face, deciding that if his hand goes up again, I’ll roll to my left and shoot the one with the AK who’s leaning against the door of the pickup. He won’t be expecting it. For the moment he’s just enjoying the sight of his friend beating the hell out of an unlucky passer-by. Then, unless he acquiesces very quickly and very politely, I’ll shoot the one with the cable.
He walks towards me with a menacing swagger. Slowly, as if nursing my ribs, I move my hand under my shalwar to the holster, and find the grip of the Browning. Safety off, finger to the trigger.
‘What have you got to say for yourself now, you Panjshiri son of a whore?’ he says, or something very like it.
In a movement calculated to cause further terror, he winds an extra turn of cable over the hand that holds it, and runs his other hand along its length, as if preparing it for its next journey. But it never comes. At the moment he’s about to hit me again and, though he doesn’t know it, to be shot twice through the chest, there’s a high-pitched squeal of brakes from a few feet behind him, where a car has pulled up alongside the Toyota. At the sight of it I experience a strange sense of recognition. It takes me a few seconds before I realise why, but I get there in the end. It’s the BBC Land Rover on its way home, and behind the windscreen I can clearly see the female passenger, leaning across from her seat and honking the horn to get everybody’s attention.
She gets out, strides up to the Talib with the cable and with a minimum of ceremony introduces herself as the BBC corres-pondent and asks what the hell is going on. She has no idea it’s me, but sees only an apparently defenceless man lying in the street and a big Talib looming over him with an electric cable in his hand. She’s blathering fearlessly at him and the effect is so dramatic I’m transfixed by the spectacle. At the sight of this obviously mad, shrill foreign woman, the murderous warrior turns into a sullen schoolboy who looks as if he’s just been caught by the headmistress behind the bike sheds. He skulks with his partner back to the cab of the pickup without even looking at me, and as I stagger to the pavement the pickup roars angrily away.
Then, summoning her interpreter, she marches over to me. I avoid meeting her eye.
‘Bastards,’ she mutters in English. ‘What have they done to you?’
I’m still gripping my sides in pain.
‘Khub ast,’ I growl. ‘It’s alright.’
I try to keep my face turned from her towards the shadow. But as she looks at me, her expression turns from one of concern to curiosity.