Authors: Chris Ryan
The Kill Zone (39 page)
It had, indeed, been long. At dawn Salim, Mahmood and two others had loaded their things into a Land Rover and headed out of Islamabad and into the country beyond. It hadn’t taken long for the heat to start punishing them, and Salim sweated profusely in that moving oven, which jolted his body around on a road that displayed an increasing level of disrepair as their journey wore on. When his companions shared water from a plastic bottle, he would have liked some too, but they declined to pass him any. It was important, Mahmood told him, that he learn how to endure certain hardships. This was the beginning of his training.
Aamir had warned him that it wouldn’t be easy, and Salim was eager to do well. He nodded, closed his mouth and weathered the heat.
The scenery around him changed. First the busy outskirts of the city melted away, then came the countryside and finally, after many hours of travelling, the mountains up ahead. The sight of them gave Salim a thrill, because he knew that was where they were headed.
They spent that night in the foothills, camping under the stars by an open fire that Salim himself had built, hoping to impress the others. And the following day they had continued their journey, up the winding roads that led deep into the mountains, then down confusing networks of paths that were barely suitable for their vehicle, until that evening they came to a little village. It consisted of a few simple dwellings whose walls were constructed of mud baked hard in the fierce sun. A thin dog roamed outside, and a couple of men in robes appeared in doorways. Salim could see no women, and certainly no children.
‘Is this the place?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Mahmood nodded. ‘This is the place.’
‘Where do I go?’
They led him to one of the huts. It was dark inside, and it didn’t smell too good. Unlike the bed in which he’d slept in Islamabad, the mattress here was dusty and stained, with no sheets. There was nothing else in there.
‘Sleep here tonight,’ Mahmood told him. ‘At dawn, someone is coming to see you.’
‘Who?’ Salim asked.
But Mahmood had just smiled. ‘You will see, my friend,’ he said. ‘Sleep well. Tomorrow is an important day.’
But Salim didn’t sleep. He lay on that filthy mattress, wearing nothing but his jeans in the heat, listening to the sounds outside: men talking in low voices; animals snuffling. Occasionally there was the noise of an aircraft overhead. He remembered reading that the Americans patrolled this area with drones and occasionally launched attacks on Taliban and Al Qaeda bases. In the corner of his mind it occurred to him that as he was in one of those places now, perhaps he should be scared.
But he wasn’t scared. He was excited. Excited to be part of something. Excited by the challenges to come.
It was just before dawn that he heard the sound of a vehicle arriving. Voices outside. Salim sat up on his mattress, excited like a child. More voices. And then a light creeping under the thin wooden door to his hut.
The door opened, and a figure stood there. In his hand was an electric lantern, which lit up the hut but meant that Salim could see only the newcomer’s silhouette. For a moment he felt scared of the sinister figure. But then he reminded himself why he was here. That he had been looking forward to this moment. He stood up and took a step forward.
‘My name is Salim,’ he said.
The figure stepped inside. ‘Salim Jamali?’ he asked in a thin, slightly reedy voice as he put the lantern on the ground in the middle of the room. Salim could see him better now, could make out his black beard flecked with grey, his dark brown eyes. It was not, he had to admit, a friendly face.
‘Yes,’ he replied.
‘From London?’
‘That’s right.’
The newcomer nodded. ‘I am pleased to see you here,’ he said, and Salim felt a sense of relief. ‘Come closer.’
Salim approached his new friend, his eyes bright.
He didn’t see the knife, so he had no way of knowing that the blade was five inches long and with cruel hooks jutting back towards the handle. As it punctured his skin and slid with ease into his belly, he didn’t fully realise what was happening. It felt rather as if he had been punched in the stomach, and because he couldn’t understand why this man would do that, he gave him a perplexed look.
The real pain only kicked in as the man slid the blade upwards, butchering the centre of his torso with one easy slice. Salim tried to cry out, but there was no breath in his lungs; he tried to struggle, but the strength in his arms deserted him. As his attacker removed the blade, the jagged edge started to bring with it his minced internal organs. One of the hooks caught on the underside of his ribcage, and the man was obliged to free it with a particularly robust yank.
But by that time, Salim Jamali’s life was ebbing fast. He collapsed to the floor, his fingers weakly splayed round the guts that had spilled out of his fresh wound. As he looked up, he could just make out the figure of the man standing over him. He was still holding up the knife. A gobbet of Salim’s internal flesh hung from one of the hooks, and the blade was covered in blood that dripped down on to the man’s hand.
And it was that hand, in the final moments of Salim’s life, that he focused upon. Even as the dim light grew dimmer and the awful pain started to dissolve into an overwhelming tiredness, he realised that there was something strange about it.
Something different.
He tried to speak again, but all that came was a mouthful of blood, foaming over his lips and down his chin.
The man wasn’t looking at him; he was gazing at the bloodied knife, turning it round in his hand. And as the hand turned, Salim saw what was different. The fingers. He counted them precisely, like a child counting sheep at bedtime. One. Two. Three. Four.
His eyes closed. His hands fell to his side. Blood continued to ooze from the gaping wound in his stomach. But by now Salim Jamali was dead.
Farzad Haq wiped his knife on the corpse’s jeans, then stepped over it towards the mattress. There was a small holdall here, and he started rummaging around in it. He found nothing of any real interest – just a few clothes – and it didn’t take more than a few seconds for him to locate what he was really after: the return section of the young man’s ticket and a UK passport, its thick red binding shiny and new.
Haq flicked through the passport, pausing only to look briefly at the photograph, which seemed to highlight Jamali’s cleft lip. Then, without a second look at his victim’s bleeding body, he stepped outside.
The men were waiting for him near the hut around a small fire, on which they had set an old kettle. In the half-light of the dawn the flames flickered around the metal. One of the men – about the same age as Salim Jamali – approached him. ‘My name is Mahmood,’ he said.
Haq handed him the passport. ‘You know what to do?’
Mahmood nodded and walked away with the document. Haq sat quietly by the fire.
Forty-five minutes later, Mahmood returned. He handed over the passport and Haq flicked through it, checking the details.
The name: Salim Jamali.
Nationality: British Citizen.
The biometric data: all intact.
There were just two differences. The date of birth had been subtly changed and the photograph on the final page showed not the young man who was even now being embraced by the arms of God. It showed the features of his murderer, Farzad Haq, a man who knew he was high up on the so-called Terrorist Screening Database no-fly list, but who now had everything he needed to enter the UK.
Habib Khan’s plane followed the dawn as it headed west over the African continent.
Beneath him, Ethiopia came and went, then Sudan. They passed over Chad, where the extended dawn became morning, then over Niger and Mali before losing height over the featureless desert of Mauritania and coming in to land on the coast of Western Sahara. It was 10.30 hrs local time when they hit the tarmac and as the aircraft decelerated on the runway and Khan looked out of the window, he could hardly believe that they had crossed an entire continent, so similar was this abandoned airstrip to the one from which they’d departed eight hours earlier.
The state of Western Sahara was not so lawless as Somalia, of course, but it was still a disputed state and vast swathes of this desert land were devoid of anything approaching order or authority. It meant that crossing its border and landing without interference were straightforward.
The aircraft came to a halt near a small, sandstone-coloured domed building, twice the height of a man and four times as wide. Parked outside the structure was a very old truck, in the back of which sat two men. Their skin was much darker than that of the Somalis, their faces less emaciated – plump, almost. Like the East Africans, these two wore heavy clothing despite the furnace-like heat, but the clothes were more colourful – tie-dyed shirts and bright trousers. They were both smoking cigarettes. Only when the plane doors opened and Khan stepped out did they even acknowledge its existence, but once they did, they worked with sudden and surprising efficiency, jumping down and, without even being asked, carefully carrying the flight case down from the aircraft and into the back of the truck.
Khan didn’t say a word to the pilot, nor to the two men, as he stepped up to the passenger seat of the truck. One of the two men retook his position out back; the other took the steering wheel; and within minutes of having landed, Habib Khan was leaving the airstrip and travelling down a long straight road surrounded by clay-coloured desert sands that shimmered in the heat.
He was relieved when, after half an hour of silent, sweltering travel, he saw the blue of the ocean sparkling in the distance. The driver smelled of sweat and dirt, and made an unpleasant companion. The road led them into a small settlement – nothing more than four or five huts and a rickety pier that protruded about fifty metres out to sea.
And at the end of the pier was a boat.
By any standards of the wealthy it wasn’t a particularly impressive-looking vessel. The best that could be said of it was that it was seaworthy. But that didn’t stop it from being an object of considerable interest to the small crowd – mostly children, but also a few adults – who had congregated at the shore end of the pier to gawp at it. They were paying the boat so much attention that two of the crew had seen fit to stand guard – well armed – at the far end of the pier to deter any opportunists. They were wise to have done so. As Khan stepped through the crowd, flanked by his two companions – one of whom was carrying the flight case – he sensed undercurrents. Even the children were restless. The sooner he loaded the device on to the boat, the better. He walked swiftly down the pier.
The armed guards were expecting him, of course. They stood aside as Khan and his companions approached the boat to be met by the skipper. He was a lanky man, with greased-back red hair and freckles on his white skin. He nodded at the man carrying the flight case and allowed him to step on board.
‘Down below,’ he instructed. ‘They’ll show you where to put it.’
The man disappeared and the skipper looked towards Khan.
‘You won’t be late?’ Khan enquired. ‘You understand that your payment depends on my package arriving on time?’
‘Don’t worry about it, my friend.’ The man had a pronounced Irish accent. ‘The weather conditions are fine and this little baby’s a lot faster than she looks. We’ll hit land early, if anything. O’Callaghan’s boys will be waiting for us, you can be sure of that.’ He looked pointedly towards the crowd on the shore. ‘If it’s all the same with you, though, we’ll be making a move. We don’t want the natives getting ugly, now do we?’
‘Indeed not,’ Khan replied mildly. ‘But before you go, a word of advice.’
‘Go ahead. I always listen to advice, even if I don’t always take it.’
‘You would be wise,’ Khan said in a flat voice, ‘to take
this
advice. I understand that you and your men might be inquisitive types. But do not let that inquisitive nature get the better of you. This is not O’Callaghan’s regular commodity. It would be extremely foolish for you to open that case, or to tinker with it in any way.’
this
advice. I understand that you and your men might be inquisitive types. But do not let that inquisitive nature get the better of you. This is not O’Callaghan’s regular commodity. It would be extremely foolish for you to open that case, or to tinker with it in any way.’
The skipper gave him a sharp look. ‘Care to tell me what we’re transporting?’
‘No,’ Khan said. ‘I do not. But I trust you will heed my warning and reflect on the fact that you are being well paid for this small voyage.’ He looked over his shoulder at the crowd. ‘It would be a good idea if you left now,’ he said. ‘You can never tell what is just around the corner in these parts of the world.’
And without another word Khan turned and walked back down the pier. By the time he hit the shore the boat was slipping away, and the crowd had already lost interest.
It took three hours for Khan’s companions to take him from the village with the pier to the city of Dakhla. Three long, hot hours across arid and featureless terrain that rolled out as far as he could see. More than once, the driver had to stop and pour bottled water into the engine’s steaming radiator. ‘You are sure the vehicle will get us there?’ Khan asked when it happened for the second time, unable to hide the anxiety he felt. The man just grunted and continued to pour the water.
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