Fearless ; The Smoke Child Read online

  The two men left the tea shop together and walked out into the open road. Lockhart left the owner a generous tip; he had stayed far longer than two glasses of mint tea warranted.

  Quetta was not a big place, and fairly soon they were outside the house that Ajmal’s Grandfather had lived in many years ago. Lockhart saw for himself the tiny window that Ajmal had described. Inside, the house had been lovingly restored, and a first floor and staircase had been reinstated. The walls were whitewashed and newly plastered, and there was a smart new kitchen.

  After resisting the smell of the sajji lamb all afternoon, Lockhart had purchased some on the way home, and the two new friends sat and ate together in Ajmal’s house.

  “We should rest now,” Ajmal eventually decided. “Tomorrow will be an early start for us both.”

  He showed Lockhart to his room, which was simply furnished but pleasant enough. It had a small window in the corner, and it wasn’t until Lockhart was in bed that he realized that it was the window that Ajmal’s grandfather had pointed to a thousand times in the picture above the sofa in Alum Rock. The window he had seen Ajmal’s grandmother through. The window that Ajmal’s family had traveled all the way to Quetta to find.

  Lockhart smiled and felt happy for his host. He felt sure that Ajmal’s Grandfather would be proud to see him in the old family house, bringing prosperity to people in the town that he had kept in his heart for so long.

  Charlie Lockhart watched the stars through the window as he drifted off to sleep, ready for an early start on the road to Chaman in the morning.

  Chapter Six

  Mandhi Sar, Afghanistan, Midday, November 2009.

  “This is what you get if you mess with us. And for a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself.” - Radiohead, Karma Police.

  Charlie Lockhart was seconds away from death. The truck in front of him was smoldering, and in his mirrors he could see two more vehicles on fire. It amazed him how quickly things could switch from mundane to pure terror.

  There were four men outlined on the horizon to his right, about fifty meters away. Three of them had fired their grenades. The remaining silhouette had lifted his launcher to his shoulder and was aiming straight at Lockhart’s truck.

  Lockhart thought back to his decision in the tea shop. He had chosen to be here today, and he couldn’t blame anyone else for it. He thought about the billions of people shuffling about the earth at that exact moment. Nothing would really change if he was gone.

  Until this point, Lockhart’s day had gone fairly well. Ajmal had woken him up at dawn as the first light began to glow in the tiny window. They had met with the convoy, and Lockhart had been given the truck he would drive into Afghanistan. It was not what he had been expecting. Every inch had been customized; arches swung across the trailer, and the cab was adorned with shining mirrors and Islamic slogans. Only the dust muted its brightly colored paintwork. Ajmal had chosen a truck with tinted windows for him so he would not be easily recognized as a foreigner.

  The front of the cab was already dusted over, and one of the regular drivers had written something into the grime. When Lockhart asked Ajmal what it meant, he explained that it was the Arabic phrase meaning “without fear”.

  “They just think it’s strange that you would come on this trip for an adventure,” Ajmal explained. “They think you’re Fearless.”

  “They think I’m an idiot,” suggested Lockhart.

  “Yep, they think you’re an idiot,” agreed Ajmal with a laugh. “Come on, Fearless man, are you ready to roll?”

  The air conditioning in the cab was feeble, but they had left a crate of cold water on the passenger seat for him. Three of the trucks in the convoy were crammed full of bottled water; it was a precious commodity for an army that couldn’t stomach the local supply. Locals in Afghanistan drank from wells contaminated with e:coli with no ill effects. But the US Army spent over one hundred million dollars each year on bottled water alone. Ajmal figured they wouldn’t miss a few crates for his drivers.

  Ajmal told Lockhart that he could open the windows whenever he wanted, but he got the impression that it wouldn’t be a good idea. After the drivers had said their prayers and their goodbyes, the convoy rumbled out of Quetta along the Chaman Road. Nobody waved them off.

  The edges of Afghanistan and Pakistan smudged into one another. By the middle of the morning, the convoy stopped at Chaman, the last town before crossing the border. The dusty trucks parked up in the town’s schoolyard, all judders and hisses and sighs until the last engine fell silent.

  At the weekend, Afghan FC used the schoolyard to play football matches in the Pakistan Premier League. Lockhart imagined the crowds and the noise and the passion, the crunching tackles and the plaintiff yells: But today the place was empty. No footballers and no schoolchildren. A couple of dogs wondered about, looking for mischief.

  After twenty minutes of stretching their legs and gossiping, the drivers climbed back into their cabs and started their engines like a badly tuned diesel orchestra. One or two pointed to the hand-scratched Fearless sign on the front of Lockhart's cab and laughed as they passed.

  There was a bang on the window. It was Ajmal, his hands shielding his eyes from the sun as he squinted to see through the mirrored glass. Lockhart wound it down.

  “Hey, Fearless!” Ajmal greeted him.

  It struck Lockhart that in the last twenty-four hours; he hadn’t told Ajmal his real name, and Ajmal hadn’t asked. It didn’t matter. It was safer to be anonymous.

  “The front truck won’t start, and I don’t want it holding us up once we get over the border,” Ajmal scanned the horizon as he spoke. “So, he’s holding back. You’ll be rolling out second, ok?”

  Lockhart nodded as he started up his engine. The dust was kicking everywhere, and the noise made it difficult to talk without shouting. Ajmal let go his grip of the wing mirror and jumped backwards from the footplate. He was as sprightly as a mountain goat.

  He raised both fists to the air as he landed in the dust, still facing Lockhart.

  “Fearless!” he yelled to Lockhart, as though it was a battle cry. Lockhart laughed. There were probably guys in the convoy with worse nicknames, he guessed. He wound up his window to keep out the dust and kicked the truck into gear, rumbling out of the schoolyard and over the border.

  There was a symbolic archway between the town of Chaman and Spin Boldak in Afghanistan. Driving under the arch meant passing over the border. As the trucks passed under the arch, Lockhart could see very little else to signify that the convoy had passed into another country.

  NATO had erected surveillance cameras along the border partly because the road was an important supply line for the Americans at Kandahar, and partly because it was an important route for the Taliban.

  Other than the archway and the cameras, the convoy flowed from one country to another with minimal ceremony. Most of the vehicles were brightly colored, and the Pakistanis in Chaman turned to look at them as they passed. Two miles later, Afghans in Spin Boldak did the same. But as Ajmal had predicted, the trucks encountered no problems as they passed along the way.

  It was two hours later, deeper into Afghanistan when it happened. They had just driven through Mandi Sar, the last town marked along the road before Kandahar. Many of the drivers were already scanning the horizon for a first glimpse of the massive Airfield.

  Lockhart heard the first explosion in front of him, followed soon after by two behind, some way further back. He could see smoke in both of his mirrors. As he looked to his right, he saw the attackers. Eight men, four spotters, four shooters and four long tubular grenade launchers. They aimed the final Rocket-Propelled Grenade right at his truck. He braced for impact, as if scrunching up his face and clenching his shoulders higher would somehow compensate for him being smashed into by an RPG.

  Time slowed down. Lockhart thought about the scratched Arabic name in the dust which caked the front of his truck. Fearless, the Western adventurer, driving a truck into the dangero
us desert because he had nothing better to do. The new name had stuck quickly among his fellow drivers. Right now though, he wasn’t living up to the name. He was scared as hell.

  The first grenade had hit the cab of the leading truck, and there was no chance to save the driver. Lockhart had listened to Ajmal’s instructions and had kept a distance between him and the truck in front, so he could maneuver around the burning vehicle, and he put his foot down as he tried to get past it. Keeping moving was the only chance of saving himself and the convoy behind him.

  He focused on the road ahead, trying to squeeze around the burning truck while staying on the road. He knew that there would probably be IEDs either side of the ambush. They would shoot the front truck, and the back truck, and fence in the sides with improvised explosive devices, so that the trucks would be at their mercy. Standard procedure. So, Lockhart sacrificed a small amount of speed for precision. He wasn’t hanging around.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw the flash of the weapon discharging and ducked down in the cab as he rammed the accelerator. He heard an almighty thud as the RPG smashed into the side of his truck, and dust unsettled and flew around his cab. And then there was nothing. For whatever reason, the grenade hadn’t gone off. It must have been Lockhart’s luckiest day.

  As he settled back into the seat, a man with an AK47 stepped out in front of the truck, aiming the barrel of his gun straight at the windshield.

  There are times to submit to the river of fate, thought Lockhart, and there are times to make your own luck.

  He pushed harder on the gas, acting on instinct, and aimed for the man who was trying to shoot him. A single round escaped from the AK47 and smashed the truck’s wing mirror clean off. Then the gunman hit the front of the truck and disappeared under the wheels with a thump. Lockhart heard a thud as the back axle passed over him.

  He assumed that none of the convoy would stop for the gunman, considering they were trying to escape from the attack. They might not even see him in the dust that was kicking up as they all sped up. There wouldn’t be much left of him by the time they had all made their escape. Road kill.

  Charlie Lockhart was now leading the way, the fearless idiotic Westerner out in front. He knew it was a straight road to the Airbase from here on. No stopping. In the isolation of the cab, he realized that he was shaking. He had just run a man down in cold blood. He was angry at the fact that three drivers had just been killed. Angry that the gunman had wanted to kill him too. In a primal moment of revenge, he had felt satisfied by the sickening sound of the gunman being crushed under his truck.

  Overwhelming emotion burst through him; elation at survival, guilt for leaving the dead drivers behind; shock at the stark reality of his own peril. Then suddenly, and just for a moment, he shook and sobbed like a boy. It felt good. After a few seconds he wiped a couple of tears from his eyes with a salty thumb. The momentary collapse had convinced him he was still human, and now he could get back to business.

  He stared at the long straight road expanding before him, which felt more dangerous now, and he felt more exposed at the front of the line. Now he was focused on survival, not adventure. Welcome to Helmand Province.

  Chapter Seven

  The Road to Kandahar. November 2009.

  “Faces look ugly, when you’re alone.”

  – The Doors, When You’re Strange

  An hour later, Lockhart was consumed by the desert. The fine particles of sand had made their way into every part of the cab. His dark hair felt thick and matted and looked almost gray with the dust. His skin felt dry and hardened and his lips cracked. The air con had lasted well, but even so the footwell was strewn with empty bottles of mineral water.

  The convoy had been driving for hours and he had consumed liters of water, but in the heat and dust he hadn’t wanted to pee. Which was just as well, because a comfort break on a convoy like this would have been a stupid idea. And peeing into a bottle that he’d only just drunk out of seemed wrong to him, no matter where he was. The Englishman hung onto the idea that manners were important, even when nobody was looking.

  Still the convoy trundled on - thirty vehicles, minus the three trucks that had perished in the rocket attack. The dust they kicked up must have been visible from outer space. In the distance, the wind swirled and eddied and created mini tornadoes with the sand. Ahead there was nothing; just the flat beige landscape stretched on for miles with no discernable change.

  Occasionally, adobe dwellings would rise out of the floor apologetically, their mud walls and roofs perfectly camouflaged until Lockhart was almost next to them. Nobody came out to see them with flags or flowers. The dust cloud advertised the convoy hours before the trucks arrived, and when your world has turned to war, it pays not to be too curious.

  With nothing to see and three vehicles already destroyed, Lockhart began to rely on something halfway between intuition and paranoia. Since the attack, he had been more cautious as he led the others along the road to Kandahar. He stopped for any bump in the road, any disturbed earth, discoloration, mound, box, dead goat or shit heap. Stopped. Considered. Looked for trip wires. Scouted for dodgy looking farmers who might plan to detonate something by remote control. But always eventually he drove on. As he had to.

  As he made slow progress across the desert, Lockhart remembered walking along the Camino de Santiago, a one-thousand-kilometer pilgrimage route across northern Spain. That journey had been slow and troublesome too.

  His problems had started as he climbed over the mountains into the Najara valley, and the first drops of rain had begun to fall. He was miles from civilization. He had pulled on his poncho and soldiered on through unforgiving torrents, darting between lemon trees and almond trees and olive trees. None of them offered him much shelter.

  Within minutes, clay paths had become fast-flowing streams between plump red Rioja grape vines, and everything smelled of freshly disturbed earth. Despite the poncho, Lockhart had been soaked, and the wet fabric of his clothes began to cut into him as he marched on. His feet got the worst of it, and by the time he reached the shelter of the Refugio at Torres del Rio huge blood blisters covered both of his soles.

  He had dumped his rucksack and hobbled out to find a bar. Luckily the only place he could find had an open fire, which was well stoked and already blazing, and he sat down to dry off.

  He must have looked a sorry sight, because the barman brought him over a hot drink and some Morcilla de Burgos, to save him hobbling to the bar. The old guy had not been so quick on his feet himself, and Lockhart had appreciated the kindness.

  The barman wore a cockle shell on a rough twine around his neck, and behind the bar there was a picture of him carrying a rucksack, beaming in front of the twin towers of the Cathedral at Santiago. Evidently, he understood the pilgrim’s pain.

  “Ultreya” the barman mumbled as he handed the warm dish to the wet traveler. Lockhart looked at the barman blankly as he tasted the warm blood tapas. It was just what he needed.

  “Ultreya,” the man repeated slowly and deliberately, pointing at Lockhart’s bloody feet. Lockhart wasn’t sure whether he was pausing for effect or struggling to put his thoughts into broken English.

  “It means that you must go on to the end, one foot in front of the other. Be stubborn and go one step at a time. To make one step is easy, and if you keep making small steps, you will surely reach your final destination. Ultreya!”

  Back in his dusty cab in the middle of the desert, Charlie Lockhart smiled. He remembered the wet clothes, the warm fire and the simple pleasure of listening to that ancient wisdom. His right foot pushed a bit harder on the gas, and the low gear whined at a slightly higher pitch.

  And so, the empty water bottles piled up, the dust rose, and the trucks rumbled on towards Kandahar Airfield. Ultreya, thought Lockhart, and he knew that he would reach his destination.

  Chapter Eight

  KLA AM NewsTalk Studios, Downtown Los Angeles

  “There's a radio tower, it's egging you on
.

  Back to the place where you never belonged.

  Where the people thrive on their own contempt.

  Whatever meaning is long gone spent.”

  - REM, Low Desert.

  There was dirt underneath Rachel White’s fingernail. She noticed as it hovered above the red plastic fader on her mixing console. The dirt pissed her off. It hadn’t been there when she started the show, but now it was.

  Six minutes and fourteen seconds to go.

  She pushed the fader about half an inch off its backstop, and immediately the atmosphere in the studio changed. The music which had been blaring out of the two speakers hanging from the ceiling cut out automatically, but the treble continued to rattle out of the various pairs of headphones laid out for guests.

  The tiny red square just above the fader started to glow in the gloomy room, as did several red “On Air” boxes on the walls inside and outside the studio. The background to the computer screen in front of her changed to red. The countdown showed three seconds before she had to talk again.

  These were the things that her studio guests noticed in their excitement when they arrived to go on air; the flashy shiny things. The eight flat-screens facing the presenter, the glowing red lights and the heavy muted atmosphere. Rachel had seen the flashy shiny things a million times. What she noticed these days was the smell of burning circuit boards kicking out of the back of a hundred of pieces of kit, the lack of natural light, and most of all the fact that dirt collected in every groove and corner of her mixing console.

  She didn’t like the way the grime slowly transferred onto her skin during the show. Three hours of talking to late night callers was grime enough.

  The cleaners were too shit-scared to go anywhere near the broadcasting equipment in case they turned it on and accidentally ended up talking to a million listeners. Or in case they made the music stop. Or in case they made the whole thing blow up. Or because they were just fucking lazy. Whatever the reason, the upshot was that the place was unclean and slightly oppressive, in Rachel White’s opinion.