As the country which linked east and west, China with India and Persia, the European north with the Asian south, carrying the Silk Road which stretched, a year’s full march, all the way from Peking to Rome, everything had come to, or through Afghanistan.
In the most recent, the Islamic, period, the Afghans had forged the strongest bonds. The Khans of Paghman were descendants, in direct line, from the Prophet Mohammed. And the cloak of the Prophet reposed in Kandahar itself. When the first king of Afghanistan was crowned, it was a member of the Prophetic Family, Sabir Shah, who crowned him. There were many other links, and young Durany eagerly soaked up the tales as the grizzled elders and tribal story-tellers recounted them. Their duty was to make sure that the lore was not forgotten, and that their listeners, even those youngsters who were yawning late into the night, were word-perfect in the history and the legends.
It was at this focal point of history, some miles north-west of Musa Qala – Moses’s Fort – in the foothills and within striking distance of Kandahar and Noor’s father at Kajakai, that the nomads and The Eagle’s band fixed their base camp.
There were trees here, and water, as well as forage for the animals. The latter would have to be fattened up a little before being offered at the city’s cattle market. The Kochis, like the guerrillas, never showed themselves in their full strength in ‘foreign’ territory, always keeping their goods, and their young men under control in their own camp.
First to Kandahar, The Eagle thought, to collect information, and then there might be some hope of rescuing old Sharifi, who must be living, under guard, somewhere near the Kajakai Dam, sixty miles away.
2 Kandahar in disguise
The Oasis of Panjtan,
Kandahar Province
MID-SEPTEMBER
Adam, with Noor, Karima and ten men, set off, disguised as nomads, with a Kochi family as cover, for Kandahar.
Nobody tried to stop them as they followed the camel-track running beside the great asphalted motorway, part of the Asian highway from Herat, and they entered the dusty city without incident.
The nomads made their way to the cattle market, while Adam, Noor, and Qasim, with Karima, walked around the town, leaving the remainder of their force, split into two smaller groups, to collect information.
The battles of Kandahar had razed vast areas of the best buildings in Afghanistan’s second city. Public buildings had been rocketed, parks were full of the homeless, crippled men and women were everywhere. During the day, however, no Russian or Red Afghan dared to show his face here, except for the occasional patrol, which swept in and then out again, nobody quite sure why. Were the Russians in occupation or not? It was difficult to tell.
As the four sat at a table in the street outside the Lalazar Café, a swarm of motorcycle-troops with machine-guns in their sidecars swept past. Adam looked enquiringly at the café’s owner. He shrugged. ‘Shoravis, communists. They have a general who wants to look at Kandahar himself, but he daren’t come alone.’
More guards, armoured personnel-carriers filled with troops, went past. Adam noticed that the two files of men in them were facing inwards, unable to reach their weapons if attacked: and in the wrong position for firing.
‘Why are they sitting like that?’ he asked the Pashtun café man.
‘It’s an unwritten agreement. They mean to say that they are here to inspect, not to fight. They won’t fire first: and, of course, we’d not attack them if they sit like people in a bus.’ He grinned. ‘We’ll get them later, though, when the next fight starts.’
When the first modern Afghan King, Ahmad Shah, had buried his colossal treasure near Kandahar, the whole area of southwest Afghanistan, formerly the garden of Asia, had been desolate for five centuries. Genghiz Khan the Mongol conqueror, destroying the irrigation system, had seen to that. Three immense, snow-fed rivers, the Arghandab, Turnak and Arghistan, roaring down from the great mountains in the north-east, had been diverted and used to irrigate immense tracts of fertile land.
Adam Durany, sitting on a hill between three deserts, which had once been rich farmland, focused his field-glasses on the immense white concrete mass which was the Kajakai Dam. Somewhere around there Sirdar Akbar, hydropower engineer, was a prisoner.
The guerrillas were camped in an oasis, under good tree-cover, less than a mile from Kajakai. To their south was the great highway to Iran. In the opposite direction, it cut across the Helmand valley area to cross the Pakistan border, no more than a hundred miles to the south-east.
The second massive dam, the Arghandab, also lay to the south-east, upstream of the river from which it took its name. Twenty miles south was Kandahar, whose citizens had not long ago driven off the Soviet Army’s 40th Army, supported by no less than 240 massive helicopter gunships and the Mig-25, missile-armed ‘Foxbat’ warplanes.
The Eagle panned his glasses to left and right. The Russians had a well-devised defence system here to protect the dam from the air and keep ground attackers out. Anti-aircraft guns, mobile S-20s, were standing on the perimeter, ready to be wheeled into action. Adam could see guards standing ready at the batteries of surface-to-air rockets, whose crews, no doubt on call, lived in a series of wooden huts dispersed around the main buildings. The approaches were guarded by two dozen camouflage-painted tanks, old and new.
But the many rocky outcrops, covered in trees and bushes, with old goat-tracks still visible, showed Adam that there were still ways to get into Kajakai. He would, in the meantime, send Noor’s father a message.
‘Your Excellency has made a serious mistake,’ said The Eagle; ‘and I have come here, at very great risk, to see what we can do about it.’
Akbar sighed. He had been a minister, an ambassador, too, a member of the Afghan Cabinet. Whisked about in a Cadillac, marched along ranks of men to inspect troops, given ovations at the United Nations Assembly in New York. The Eagle was thirty years younger than he, and he’d sat Adam on his knee as a child, fed him with lime-drops, forbidden by his parents in case the green colour meant that they were laced with arsenic. But, of course, he was not a soldier …
‘Are you sure that we are safe here? It seems rather exposed, and the guard is sitting in the café, just down there.’ The old man pointed to the dusty road below the tree-covered hill where they were sitting.
‘I sent you a message to start taking walks, always to the same place, and to do it every day at daybreak. As I thought, the guard came to the top of the hill for a week, and then he let you go the last part on your own. He’s a communist, and he’s lazy. Seeing you saying your prayers embarrasses him. So he stops at the teahouse for a smoke. Besides, I’ve put a young girl in there. She is decently hidden in the kitchen, but she’s allowed to talk to him over the pots and pans, and he’s been smitten for days. That’s how we knew you were still a prisoner, and hadn’t just gone over to the Russians.’ The Eagle tapped his binoculars. ‘And I’ve got picquets posted to watch. If he looks like coming up here, they’ll fire from three directions. Then his little red feet will go tip-a-tap, Excellency.’
Akbar pondered this for a moment. The guard was always boasting …
‘He told me that he had one of those new rifles. The kind that fire high-velocity bullets. They pass right through a man, destroying tissue so that it can’t be mended, even with an operation. If they hit bone, the force is so great that you die of shock.’
‘And I have two men who can put a bullet through his earhole before he can raise his supergun.’
The Eagle crouched among the bushes. ‘That’s enough about security, except that they have you carefully guarded and we’re going to have a job getting you out of here.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I must talk fast. First, Noor is well. She is with us, not far from here.’
Akbar Sharifi looked as if he was going to faint, and started to say something.
‘Never mind talking: listen. You let the Russians get the gold and we had to blow up one lot of it, on the Oxus. We’ve come here for the rest.’
&nb
sp; ‘Rest? They’ve taken it all.’ Akbar spoke listlessly. ‘They followed me and found it. Then they took it, all. Please, tell me about Noor? Can I see her?’
‘She’s fine, you can see her soon, when we get you out of here. Where have they taken the gold?’
‘To the airport. I’ve heard they are transporting it on the Caspian Sea Monsters.’
‘Caspian what?’
‘Sea Monsters. They are giant surface-skimmers, huge hovercraft built on the Caspian Sea by the Russians. Something entirely new. Carrying almost a thousand men or a huge weight of materials, they can cover over land or sea a thousand kilometres or more. They go over minefields, under radar: they are the latest weapon. The Russian officers in this area have been boasting that they’ll win the next war with them. I suppose the treasure is being sent to the USSR.’
Adam’s thoughts went back to the treasure.
‘Why did you not inform the Resistance that you had found the gold, and arrange with them to get it out?’
‘My dear brother, I’m stuck out here. I can’t trust anyone. Who are the Resistance, and how would I get to them?’
‘And so?’
‘And so I sent my man Samir to Peshawar, in Pakistan, to see Prince Jamal. I know his father, the King of Narabia. I asked them to buy the gold and put the money in Switzerland. My plan was to find the Muhjahidin somehow and tell them how to get the money. I had no time to think further. I had to act.’
Adam nodded. ‘Then what happened?’
‘I have heard nothing from Samir. And the Russians, following me, found the gold. They took it.’ He sighed.
‘And they still let you walk about, didn’t arrest you?’
‘Short walks. After all, I can’t do much harm to them. I’m not likely to find any more gold. And they need my engineering skills.’
A branch began to creak in the tree overhead. ‘One of my men is tugging a string tied to that,’ said The Eagle: ‘so it is probably your guard coming up the hill from the café. Go down and meet him. I’ll stay here for a bit and then slip away. Don’t worry, we’ll get you out.’
3 Council of War
The Oasis
MID-SEPTEMBER
At the oasis, the guerrillas held a council of war. The gold, as the Sirdar had told Adam, was gone, to Kandahar airport. ‘And then, naturally, it would go to Moscow – where else?’ said Azambai. Stop the shipment, try to capture it, release the old man: those were the problems. Those and one other. The Kochis had reported from Kandahar that the Russians and the Afghan Fifteenth Infantry Division were likely to attack the city soon. The Resistance in Kandahar sent messages, welcoming The Eagle’s force, but warning that there might be an air attack at any moment.
‘We can’t do much for the city with at most a hundred fighting men – and that is if the Kochis stay with us and don’t wander off to trade in Pakistan,’ said Qasim. ‘I say it’s go for the gold first, and try to rescue the Sirdar afterwards.’
‘Can’t we do both?’ Noor wanted to know.
‘Let’s hear what the scouts have to say about the strength of the enemy defending the skimmers,’ suggested Adam.
Qasim produced a piece of paper covered with pencilled figures. ‘I’ve been working it out. Did you realize that if the treasure is the size we think it is, what it will weigh? How could we possibly capture it, store it, and move it to Pakistan, with a hundred men and no transport?’
‘May I make a suggestion, sir?’ Cadet Arif stood up and held himself at attention.
‘Go on, Arif,’ said Adam.
‘We need more men, more arms, transport and probably more information. Kandahar will probably be attacked soon, perhaps at any moment. I suggest that we help in its defence, and then, if successful, get the Kandaharis to help us with the gold problem.’
‘That’s all very well,’ said Azambai. ‘But that would mean, first, that the skimmers might get away before we could stop them. Second, that the Kandaharis could get to hear of the gold, and that – make no mistake – would cause real problems. Gold does funny things to people.’
They all looked at the cadet.
‘Yes, captain seb. But, first, we could send patrols to assess the likelihood of the skimmers leaving soon. Patrols,’ he recited the formula as if from the book, ‘have the purpose of ascertaining the enemy’s position, strength and intentions …’
‘That’s enough, lad: I’m glad you know what a patrol is for.’ Azambai was abrupt. ‘But what about the security aspect? The Kandaharis might take the gold from us.’
‘Permission to answer, sir! Everything is risky. We must take the risk.’
Adam presiding, a vote was taken. Arif’s suggestion was adopted.
It was about twenty miles to the airport, and the captain was wondering how to lead his reconnaissance patrol there without transport, and thinking that only a gift from heaven would solve his problem, when a man came running into his brushwood shelter, under the trees in the oasis, shouting, ‘Alert! Commander sir: there’s dust!’
Dust. Approaching vehicles. Adam held up his hand.
‘Mlater: fighting men! These are your orders. Pass the word to let them enter the oasis, don’t fire on the first truck if there are more than one – cut any convoy in two.’
The man ran off, rifle at the ready.
Yes, it was dust all right. Zelikov came scrambling through the bushes and said, ‘Roussi truck.’
‘How many, Zelikov?’ The Russian cocked his head to listen. ‘Sounds like five. Maybe six.’
That could mean a couple of hundred men. All around, from behind rocks and trees, Azambai could hear the bolts of rifles click in readiness for firing.
Adam wriggled his way up to Azambai. ‘They’re heading straight for us, from the direction of Grishk, downriver on the Helmand.’
Azambai grinned, and snapped a plastic magazine into his new Kalakov AK-74. ‘Well, Adam Jan, it’s your Paghman river, so maybe it will help you win.’ He knew that the mighty Helmand, dammed at Kajakai, rose in the glaciers of the Paghman mountains at 12,500 feet, and crossed the whole country to peter out in the far marshes of Seistan, 625 miles from its source.
The throb of the noisy Russian engines was louder. Not a blade of grass moved as the convoy of six trucks, rugged, cross-country ones, swept into the oasis, along the cattle-track which led to the watering-place beside which Adam, Azambai, Zelikov and Qasim waited, peering through a thin screen of scrub.
The lead truck stopped so close to him that Adam could smell its engine oil. He looked at the symbol on the Ural’s radiator. A red triangle, enclosing a circle and head of wheat. Afghan Democratic Army. A young man, dressed in combat grey, jumped down from the cab. He had a lieutenant’s insignia and was in full battle-array, even to the steel helmet. Around his neck, oddly, was a small green scarf.
Adam nodded to the others. They covered him as he jumped, pulled the man down and dragged him back into the bushes, the point of a glittering Afghan stabbing dagger held against his jugular vein.
The lieutenant gasped, gagged, managed to say, in a strangled voice, ‘Muhjahid – freedom fighter.’ He struggled free, dusted himself down and came to attention, his thumbs in line with his trouser seams.
‘Beg permission to report, sir! Senior Lieutenant Tura of the Fifteenth Infantry Division, Army of Afghanistan, with six Russian Ural trucks and one hundred and eighty men, thirty-six of them sergeants and the rest privates, all in good order, at the General’s orders for liberation, sir!’
The gift from heaven!
Azambai held out his hand. ‘Well done, my boy! I’m not a general – I am Captain Yusuf Azambai. This is our commander, Kara Kush, from Paghman.’
Tura saluted. ‘At the service of the commander. These green scarves are our current combat recognition sign. But we’re still the Afghan Army!’
Adam took his hand. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant. Get your trucks camouflaged. How did you know we were here, and are the Russians after you?’
Tura gave the
order to a senior sergeant, who saluted and went off at the trot.
‘My father-in-law, Neknam Khan, is a Resistance leader in Kandahar. He sent a message to me in our commissariat truck. We are on manoeuvres, preparing for the attack on Kandahar, sir! No Russians will be after us for eight hours or so, commander.’ Tura saluted again, and stood at ease.
‘We’re certainly short of men, Tura Khan,’ Adam said; ‘and maybe you’re just what we need, though the Russians always attack with really overwhelming forces: that’s their philosophy.’
The Afghan defectors were armed to the teeth. They had three of the new Soviet automatic AGS-17 grenade-launchers, devastating weapons which had been used to terrible effect against guerrilla formations. Their trucks contained modern, minimum-recoil automatic rifles, plenty of ammunition, and even a number of shoulder-fired rocket-launchers and rockets.
Now Azambai had his men and transport for his reconnaissance. A thought struck him.
‘Tura Khan: what do your written orders say?’
‘Beg to report, sir! I have them here, in Russian, Dari and Pashtu. They permit us to operate on manoeuvres, within a seventy-mile radius of Kandahar City.’
‘Could you go to the airport without arousing suspicion – where these new Soviet surface-skimmer things are located?’
‘Certainly. We have been there many times.’
That was it.
‘Tura,’ Adam said, ‘how is it that a man of your rank, only a lieutenant, is commanding what amounts to a battalion?’
‘Desertions, sir: the whole army is falling to pieces. Our original paltan, regiment, hardly exists now.’
‘Why didn’t you defect before?’
‘Neknam Khan was arranging for our relatives, kept hostage in Hajikhel Camp, to be rescued first.’
‘Where are they now?’