Free Battleground by Chris Ryan

that he had said too much. The triumph dissolved from his face and he reverted to a scowl. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘you will be quiet. Unless you want this day to be your last.’
    They had been driving for about three hot, uncomfortable hours when the vehicle came to a sudden halt. ‘Do not move,’ Amir instructed. ‘Or it will end badly for you.’
    They watched him open the door and get out. Sunlight streamed in. It made Ben squint, and by the time he had regained his vision, he felt himself being pulled roughly out of the truck by someone he didn’t recognize. He was thrown onto the dry, stony ground while Aarya was also dragged out. ‘Ow!’ he shouted, but nobody paid any attention. They just manhandled Aarya down too.
    Ben looked around. They had arrived at a small settlement – little more than two mud-walled compounds on either side of a wide dirt track. In the distance, Ben saw they were almost surrounded by high, craggy mountains. Outside one of the compounds there was a tree with green leaves – they appeared almost fluorescent against the deep blue sky and the beige, sandy earth. Ben wondered for a moment how a tree could survive in such inhospitable surroundings. Each compound had a rickety wooden gate and the one nearest to Ben was open. Men in traditional dress were standing outside. Ben searched for Amir, but couldn’t find him.
    They were hauled to their feet by armed men, then dragged through the gate and into the compound. Ben tried to work out the geography of the place. There was a main central courtyard with a stone well in the middle. Around the courtyard was a series of rooms, each with a wooden door. He couldn’t tell what was beyond the doors, but he assumed that this was where people lived, because around him he saw the signs of habitation: clothes drying in the sun, the remnants of a fire, even a little patch of land where vegetables were being grown. Some elderly men sat in the shade of a wall. Their beards were grey and their faces as brown and grooved as a walnut. They watched Ben and Aarya with curiosity, though they did nothing to stop the rough way they were being treated.
    Before Ben could take anything else in, he and Aarya were led to one of these wooden doors. They were flung inside the room and the door was closed behind them. A scratching sound told Ben that it was being locked.
    ‘We have to do something,’ he hissed.
    Aarya’s tears had stopped, but now she had a shell-shocked stare and looked like she was a million miles away. She didn’t reply.
    ‘Aarya, come on – we have to do something.’
    ‘Do something? What can we do?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ Ben replied. ‘Escape, I guess. Warn someone what’s going on. I don’t know what they’re going to do with that suitcase bomb, but let’s face it, I don’t think they’re saving it up for Bonfire Night.’
    ‘For what?’
    ‘Never mind.’
    Ben turned his attention to the room. It looked lived in. Against the far wall there was a low bed with an old mosquito net hanging over it. An oil lamp lay on the sandy, dusty floor and there were clothes in piles around the bed. The only light came from a gap in the wall far too small for anyone to climb through. Ben peered through it. All he saw was an expanse of featureless desert, bleak and unwelcoming, with a wobbly haze of heat rising from the ground. He felt panic surfacing once more, and did what he could to suppress it. There was no time for that. They had to do what they could to get out of here.
    ‘Aarya,’ he whispered. ‘We need to search this place. Find anything we can to help us.’
    Aarya looked at him as if he was mad. ‘We can’t get out of here,’ she said waspishly.
    Ben barely heard her. He was already rummaging through the piles of clothes looking for something – anything – that they could use. He found a battery-operated torch, but it didn’t work, and opening it up he saw that the batteries had long since started leaking a foul brown