Carla and Habib returned to the prison that evening, to collect Anita as arranged. Zohori walked out, followed by a woman in a Burqa who was struggling to walk.
"That must be Anita," Carla said, as she got out of the car to meet her. As she passed Zohori she quietly informed him that she would call at his home tonight, with payment. He made no response.
Anita was in a poor state, so Carla beckoned Habib to pick them up in the Land Cruiser, and helped Anita to lay down on the back seat.
Carla climbed up front next to Habib.
“We will go back to the hotel for our belongings, Habib. Anita needs to get cleaned up and I have to make arrangements for us to leave the country.”
As Habib leaned forward to start the engine, the butt of an AK47 was rammed through the open window, narrowly missing his head.
A split second later, Carla had grabbed the butt, and pulled it hard towards her with her right hand. She aimed the barrel at the gunman’s chest, released the safety with her left hand, cocked it and pulled the trigger.
The dead man fell back, away from the vehicle, as another yanked open Carla’s door.
Using the momentum of her initial tug on the weapon and its recoil, she followed through and rammed the butt into the face of her attacker. The resulting impact was massive and laid him out in the road, without even a cry of surprise or pain.
“Drive Habib!” Carla screamed as the engine fired up. Habib simultaneously floored the accelerator and let up the clutch, as the four wheels scrabbled over the rock hard, dusty track with increasing speed. Seconds later, further attackers were chasing after the cloud of dust being thrown up by Habib’s vehicle.
High above, a single engine plane circled and watched events as they unfolded.
***
Carla had rightly surmised that Sangar Zohori had double-crossed them. It was possible the attackers were guards in disguise, but more likely, they were his friends, perhaps even the Taliban.
If they were prison guards, there would be contingency plans in case Carla, Habib, and Anita escaped. The chase would result in a roadblock ahead but probably little more, because they would be lazy and confident about capture.
If it were friends of the guard, they would probably be safe if they could outrun them; their resources would be limited.
However, an organized group would be well prepared and fanatical about capturing the three fugitives.
Carla was aware the intention had been to capture, not kill. Although this in itself did not exclude any option, it was more likely the threat was from prison guards or an organized group.
As she recalled the way the trucks had been parked, and which of them belonged to the attackers, it seemed unlikely that they were prison vehicles. All of those pursuing them were open back pickup types, typical of the Taliban for example, as seen in the news reports. Carla’s guts churned at the thought and she began to pant as the fear gripped her.
“Which way Carla?” shouted Habib, who realized that he had to outrun the following trucks.
“Left into the town where Sangar Zohori lives, we might be able to lose them in the narrow streets.”
She had already looked down the side turning they were passing on the right, and there were vehicles blocking it in the distance. She thought she could see across the open fields, another road block where the road turned left into town.
“Stop!” commanded Carla, “let me drive.”
Habib hesitated, it was his Land Cruiser, his pride and joy, no way was she going to drive it, a girl cannot drive better than a man!
“Finger, Habib!” she yelled at him, his feet rammed the pedals to the floor and the vehicle four-wheel drifted to a shuddering halt. Habib leapt out and ran to the passenger side, as the dust cloud enveloped them. He was barely in the seat when Carla accelerated away.
She wondered which way the vehicles blocking the road were facing, and whether they were the pickup type. It would make a tremendous difference to how she executed her moves.
The road was highly compressed, rock hard soil, rutted and pitted, but a road none the less. At each side of it there was a very wide, shallow ditch of soft sand, littered with stones and boulders. The ditch had been formed when excavating soil to create the road. The stones and boulders that remained were unsuitable for the road itself.
There would be no way of bypassing the blockade, using the ditch. To drive into it at speed would certainly flip the Land Cruiser and even at low speed, their passage was blocked by the boulders.
Carla drew small comfort from the fact the pursuers were dropping back; they had no further need to chase because they had closed off the rear and would catch up at the roadblock.
The last time Carla drove a Land Cruiser was when she worked at a large garage. She had driven most types of car, mainly expensive, prestige models, and considered this model a total tank in London traffic. Also, it was the most unsuitable vehicle on the planet for evasive driving, because of its weight, soft suspension, height and being four-wheel drive.
She could see the vehicles across the road now, and a thrill ran through her. Her face lit up under her Burqa, angelic and full of evil mischief. Habib could sense it, even though he was petrified with fear.
The trucks were pickups and had parked facing Carla, with the fronts pointing out at 45 degrees towards the roadsides in a V shape, and a small gap to walk between them.
Carla could not risk any damage to the front of the Land Cruiser so driving into the lightweight rear ends of the trucks was out of the question. There would be no chance of escape if they damaged steering, suspension or radiator.
Escape on foot in such open and desolate country, in that heat, would be impossible.
Carla tried a few tentative maneuvers, in the hope of introducing instability into the direction of the vehicle. Sadly, it behaved impeccably on the rough and unstable surface. A slight wallowing, but it went where it was steered, full credit to the designer, but no help in this situation.
Men positioned themselves behind the vehicles, guns pointing menacingly as Carla approached. The men at the roadblock and those eating Carla’s dust were not surprised when she slowed down. What else could she do?
At 20mph, Carla wagged the Land Cruiser into a 180 degree, four-wheel drift, as she locked the wheels by braking hard. She was about 100 meters away from the roadblock.
Engaging reverse gear and adjusting her rear view mirror, she slipped down low in her seat.
“Get as low as you can and brace yourself, this is going to get rough,” Carla warned.
The Land Cruiser shot backwards its engine screaming painfully, as Carla steered unerringly towards the two tailboards of the roadblock, using the perfectly adjusted rear view mirror.
The men fired a few warning shots that thunked into the bodywork, as they tried to figure out what was happening. Habib cringed at the thought of bullet holes in his paintwork.
Then the men dived for safety, as Carla rammed her way through their vehicles, spinning the two trucks to the sides of the road.
‘Not quite what I wanted,’ thought Carla, ‘the road is open for the others now’.
Carla stopped and executed a hasty three-point turn to continue her journey into town. To her delight, the men at the roadblock had climbed into their vehicles to give chase, but as they turned in the road, they blocked the way for their own team.
Habib was silent with shock. The robust chassis of the Land Cruiser was badly scraped at the rear, but functionally it was unharmed; however, in Habib’s eyes, skin-deep beauty was everything.
Carla pondered on the wisdom of going back to the hotel. This was a well-organized trap, these people were not stupid, and they must know all about me, Habib, and certainly Anita.
“I should approach the hotel on foot, with extreme caution, to see if there is any chance of getting our belongings, Habib.
“Being unable to communicate with Sam right now, we are in deep trouble; I have no money, passports, change of clothes, or a viable escape plan out of the country.”
They parked the battered Land Cruiser in a back street near the hotel with Anita resting on the back seat and mingled with the ebb and flow of people passing the hotel.
“Look Habib, there are men keeping watch on the hotel, near every entrance, and certainly there will be someone in the room lying in wait. We had better get out of here.”
***
The single engine aircraft that had circled high over Carla’s mayhem, touched down on a long, straight, quiet section of the A1 Kabul – Jalalabad highway.
An unaccompanied male climbed out of the cockpit and carefully eased out a battered looking trials motorcycle from a compartment in the fuselage.
He strapped on a small rucksack, donned a dark woolen skullcap and goggles, and kick started the motorbike.
Without the usual blare from the exhaust of a trials bike, the machine had additional silencing, and it purred away as the man accelerated hard towards town. Even the purr and oily clatter of the tight, but cold, engine was lost in wind noise above 30mph.
The plane accelerated along the road and took off before it could be seen by any approaching vehicles. The pilot and the man maintained contact using a Bluetooth earpiece under the woolen skullcap, and mobile phone.
The pilot agreed he would circle and guide the motorcyclist for as long as his fuel lasted, leaving sufficient margin to return safely to the airport from which it was hired.
The motorcycle headed into Ahmad Shah Baba Maina.
***
As they walked back to the Land Cruiser, a tingle of fear ran up Carla’s spine, a familiar sense of danger. She looked back in the direction of the hotel and saw several men running after them as covertly as they could, darting towards cover as they found it. The chase was on again!
“They have seen us Habib, come on, run, back to your car.” Carla yelled.
‘Not again,’ he thought, ‘will this never end?’
With Carla at the wheel once more, they set off down the narrow side street with at least four trucks tailing them.
Carla correctly assumed that the men kept in contact using their mobile phones to coordinate an intercept. They had a good knowledge of the area and normally that would be their ticket to success; but Carla had studied the area thoroughly on the first night at the hotel, so she also knew her way around, superficially at any rate.
The town was divided vertically by an extremely wide tarmacked main street and another running east to west, essentially at the south end. The mixture of modern buildings several stories high and basic, single story mud huts, were arranged back to back, on a grid of extremely narrow, rock hard earth side streets. Their pitted and rutted surfaces were only suitable for foot traffic, bicycles and animals pulling carts. The grid linked into the main streets where they intersected, and there were masses of people, bicycles, carts and vehicles of all kinds moving along it.
Had the narrow streets been free from obstructions, like people, drain holes, large stones, projecting steps at doorways, children playing, animals feeding or resting or other vehicles, carts and bicycles, travel would simply be in a straight line.
Assuming it to be physically possible to turn a vehicle up an intersecting street, it could take several maneuvers to get around the corner. Often there was a wider crossroad every 30 or so houses, forming a large square block.