The Network - Jason Elliot [151]
I push my foot to the floor and hear the transmission kick into lower gear. There’s a roar from the engine as the full power of the cylinders burns its way to the wheels, and we feel the front of the G lift as if it’s struggling to take off. We must be doing sixty miles an hour but it feels like we’re driving through treacle. Five or six seconds pass. It feels like a year.
I don’t know if the RPG is ever fired. I aim the G for the rear of the pickup, where it’s lightest and will do the least damage to us, and the impact, when it comes, is surprisingly mild. As we spin to a halt beyond it, everything is still happening in slow motion. H dives and rolls from the passenger door and I follow him automatically, just as we’ve trained for. We fire over the bonnet of the G, and I distinctly feel a round pass by my ear with a watery thud. Our enemies, now that we have passed behind them, are unprotected. An injured man staggers into view and falls backwards as I fire. Another shape falls, as if in a clownish dance. H darts from the cover of the car and signals me to do the same to the left, and we advance in turn towards our enemies’ final hiding places. In the folds of rock about twenty yards away I see a flicker of motion, and fire at it. The hammer of the AK falls on an empty chamber, so I throw it aside and pull the Browning from my hip. Sweat blurs my vision and I cannot be sure where the movement has come from. I fire three rounds from the Browning until it too falls silent as the magazine empties. There is nothing but rock. I turn my head momentarily as I hear a double tap from H’s weapon, and then a strange stillness descends.
On H’s hand signal we withdraw back to the G.
A plume of steam is rising from somewhere under the bonnet. The windscreen is opaque and the bodywork is perforated with bullet holes. The engine’s still running but it’s faltering now and making a high-pitched wheezing sound like a man with a bullet in his lungs. H’s shirt is stained with blood where a round has nicked the muscles between his neck and shoulder, but he hasn’t noticed it.
We cover about two miles driving on the rims of the wheels, and then the engine finally dies. H and I remove the weapons and the gold, and from the back the others pull Aref’s body and lay it on the ground. Then we soak the hand-stitched leather seats with diesel as if in a demonic funeral rite, and push the G from the track, pointing it down a slope, where it tumbles and eventually cartwheels onto a boulder-filled arena far below us.
‘It was a bit ugly, anyway,’ says H.
‘Would have cost a fortune to service.’
‘Especially the way you drive.’
The sun spreads its liquid gold over the landscape. We carry Aref’s body in a pattu up a nearby hillside to where a cluster of poplars is swaying, and bury it in a shallow grave, over which the other men kneel and pray.
Afterwards, the Afghan guard from the fort comes up to me.
‘I’m going,’ he says. ‘Back to my village.’
I take several of the gold sovereigns from the belt and give them to him. He looks at them, pockets them and says nothing. Then he embraces us in turn and walks away.
Manny is in poor shape. The blast at the fort has blinded and deafened him, though I can’t tell for how long. We agree to walk to where the map indicates a tiny village, and follow an animal track that leads up towards the neighbouring valley. For nearly two hours we trudge in silence. H and I take turns to support Manny, who walks with difficulty.
Then we descend towards the village beyond, as if into a tranquil and unconnected world where violence is unknown. The silent houses are surrounded by a patchwork of green fields