Free Assassin (John Stratton) by Duncan Falconer Page A

in them or the crate. They had paperwork listing spare parts for a generator, but it had not been needed. His escorts, all handpicked Taliban, had assumed the identity of security guards from a known convoy company that specialised in protecting vehicles along the Kabul–Bagram road. The Taliban commander was a well-known convoy commander from that company. The police didn’t give his men a second look once they recognised him.
    It was late afternoon when Mahuba’s small convoy rolled into the town of Bagram along the central road leading to the main checkpoint into the vast US air base that sprawled less than a kilometre to the east.
    Bagram Town was a tightly compact and busy place. Most of the buildings were single-storey and constructed from a combination of mud bricks and concrete blocks. The main thoroughfare was a focus of local industry, lined with filthy shacks and lean-tos providing all types of vehicle tuning, tyre repairs, welding and other sundry services. Market stalls sold sad-looking local produce, clothes and footwear. They passed stripped vehicle carcases, left where they’d broken down. Many were Russian, from the days when the Soviets dominated Afghanistan. The air was filled with the smoke from countless cooking fires, inside and outside of the dwellings.
    The lead Hilux turned off the main thoroughfare and headed along a sandy road past several muddy, garbage-riddenbackstreets. The US base’s impenetrable perimeter could occasionally be seen from the road. A grey-brown wall of earth and razor wire. The houses each side of the road had been built close together, but as the convoy drove away from the centre they grew further apart. Half a kilometre from the town the lead vehicle came to a stop outside a large walled compound, around thirty metres wide at the front, with a set of rusting, wrought-iron gates in the middle.
    The driver sounded his horn. A couple of armed Afghans sauntered into view through the gate. They unbolted it and pulled open both sides. The pick-ups drove in and the men closed and locked the gates behind them. They eased between a handful of dirty houses, scattering goats and chickens out of their way, to the back of the compound and the grandest building in comparison, about twice the size of the others. They stopped outside it and Mahuba climbed out, carrying a laptop bag and stretched his aching body while he looked around. A dozen bearded fighters were spread about, all carrying AK-47 assault rifles over their shoulders. They were a mixture of ages. Teenagers to men old enough to have seen the end of the Russian–Afghan war over two decades before. Clothes on washing lines outside the other smaller homes bore evidence of women and children living in them.
    Mahuba wasn’t pleased with the location. He’d asked for, and had been expecting, complete isolation. But he’d had little control over the execution of the planning in that respect. Particularly inside Afghanistan. It had been left upto third parties who weren’t privy to all the details of the operation. There was no point in complaining. It would have to do. He wasn’t about to start shopping around for a better house at this stage.
    The guards watched him with mixed curiosity. They knew he was a Pakistani. They could tell he had breeding. Riches or rank. As to what he was doing in Bagram, they didn’t have a clue. But then, they were never privy to information on anything of strategic value. Their lot in life was simply to obey. Without question. They had been ordered to protect the compound with their lives. And that is what they would do. None of them cared that they were eight hundred metres from one of the largest US military bases in Afghanistan. Ten thousand American troops. They believed the Americans would eventually be defeated and would leave their country, like every other invader had over the last few hundred years. The Afghans were in no hurry. Life was all about eating, resting, praying and fighting.