picked up the fat-bellied, old-fashioned kerosene lamp. He threw it against the door and it smashed. Kerosene poured down the timber. He picked up the candle, lighting the kerosene. Flames ran across the floor, up the mattress, over the wood. The mattress popped and spat, and in seconds the sheets were ablaze.
Grabbing the spare container of kerosene, he gestured for Nara to join him by the far window.
– Climb onto the roof.
The roof was lined with tin, supported by a timber frame. Nara knew it would burn. She said:
– The roof?
Leo nodded.
– We better hope someone saves us before it collapses.
Their attackers were no longer trying to break the door down, confused by the fire. As Nara pulled herself onto the roof, Leo collected his opium pipe. Perched on the window ledge, he threw the second container into the middle of the fire. The plastic quickly melted. Climbing up onto the roof, feeling a sudden rush of heat, he glanced back to see the mattress consumed with flames, billowing black smoke.
On the roof, he surveyed the substantial smoke trail rising into the night sky. A patrol might come in time. Nara was crouching in the corner of the roof furthest from the fire. Leo sat beside her. He now owned nothing in the world apart from the clothes he was wearing, the bundle of unfinished, inarticulate letters to his daughters and the opium pipe in his pocket. Legs crossed, he watched as the flames broke through a patch of roof. They did not have long. For the first time that night he behaved as any normal man might and put an arm around his injured student.
Kabul Province Surobi District Barqi-Sarobi Dam 50 Kilometres East of Kabul
Picking from a fistful of sugar-coated almonds, Fahad Mohammad sat near the crest of a hill overlooking the Kabul River. A bright moon hung over the gorge, but even without its light he could navigate down the slopes that dropped sharply to the river. Cradled in between the hills, like a giant concrete mouth, was the Sarobi Dam. It providing a significant portion of the capital’s electricity, and its strategic importance to the occupation could not be underestimated. The access road had been fortified with checkpoints and barbed-wire barriers. Two tanks were stationed at the top of the dam, one facing north, one south – guns angled high as if they feared that the mountains would rise up and smash the precious structure. Impressive as these defences might seem to Soviet planners they were of little concern to Fahad. No attack by the mujahedin was ever going to travel up the road. He liked to tell his men: The Soviets worry about controlling roads. This is not a country of roads. Let them keep our roads. We will keep the rest of Afghanistan.
There were perhaps fifty soldiers in total protecting the facility, a mix of Afghan army recruits commanded by the occupiers. The notion that this was a coalition of equals was insultng – the Afghans were under orders, subservient, slaves in their own country and an abomination in Fahad’s eyes. Though the troop numbers were significant, their cautious deployment underscored their belief that mines scattered across the gorge would prevent any attack.
As Fahad chewed on the last of his almonds, he could see one of the mines, a bulbous shape not more than ten metres away. A person might mistake it for a rock, for these mines were not dug in by a specialist team but dropped by enemy planes, scattered from the sky. Specially designed wings spun them through the air to slow their descent, grotesquely copying nature’s design of a seedpod, to land softly. They were the most innocuous looking of weapons. Children mistook them as toys since the colour of the plastic case varied according to where they were dropped, whether the reds or yellows of the mountain soil, or the greens of vegetated areas. Though they could be seen by a vigilant naked eye they were almost invisible to metal detectors, containing only a thin aluminium detonator. Fahad estimated there were several thousand spotted through these hills, none of them intended to kill. An examination revealed that they did not have enough explosives to guarantee death. They were designed to maim. An injured mujahedin was far more valuable to the occupation than a dead man. A wounded soldier could result in an entire operation being called off as the survivors carried him home. The dead presented no such problem: they were left where they lay.
Fahad returned to his team.
– Allahu Akbar.
It rippled through the group, and once there was silence Fahad led the descent down the gorge. His team consisted of four other men including his younger brother, Samir – a young man with delicate feminine features. In contrast, Fahad was much taller and leaner. Standing still he appeared awkward. But in motion his body was elegant and nimble, one of the fastest soldiers on foot, able to trek across vast distances without a break, taking only mouthfuls of water from rivers he passed along the way. Fahad loved his three brothers, including Samir, but he held grave reservations about his abilities as a soldier.
Samir was in charge of the explosives, deciding for this mission to use kama, a stable mix that wouldn’t detonate by accident. It could only be set off by a charge from the inside. It could be dropped, or knocked, the carrier could fall over and stumble without killing the group. Samir spent much of his free time fashioning new kind of bombs, toying with different detonators, experimenting with timers, testing the destructive impact of packing nails around the explosives or ball-bearings, which were much harder to obtain. He had no appetite for hand-to- hand combat and he was no leader. Yet his bomb-making skills were invaluable. Even more advantageous, he had no scars to give away his trade, no fingers missing, no eye full of shrapnel. Perhaps deceived by his soft face, Soviet soldiers never suspected him and he was able to pass through checkpoints with ease whereas Fahad was always stopped and searched, as if it were possible to read in his expression the fury and destructiveness of his intentions. For this mission Fahad had wanted to leave him at home. Samir argued that he was the most experienced with the explosives and he was needed at the dam in order to make the charges, to adapt to the circumstances. After much disagreement, Fahad had given in. He still felt uneasy about the decision, a niggling feeling in his gut that wouldn’t go away.
Once the descent was completed, they would begin their approach a kilometre downstream from the dam, out of sight of the guard patrols. There was no way to defuse the mines but Fahad had cleared a path during the day, marking a safe route for them to follow in the dark. They moved slowly, in single file, unable to use torchlight, guided by the footsteps carefully dug into the ground as markers. As the ground slid under each step they were forced to stop and find their balance, unable to reach out and steady themselves for fear of grabbing a mine. It took almost an hour to reach the bottom of the gorge.
Moonlight caught the Kabul River as it broke over rocks. The enemy had taken many precautions against a possible attack only to ignore the river itself. Their thinking was conventional: their orthodoxy would be their undoing. Fahad stepped into the river, stifling a desire to exclaim out loud at the cold. He could hear the sharp intake of breath as his men entered the water behind him. They had no specialist clothing. They’d abandoned the customary loose-fitting shirts, instead wearing American-style T-shirts that didn’t drag in the fast-flowing water. They wouldn’t survive long in these temperatures if their heads or necks became wet. They needed to keep their upper torso dry by navigating through the shallows. Stealth was their only chance of survival, rigging the explosives to detonate and then retreating.
The aim of the operation wasn’t to bring the dam crashing down. Though it would be a glorious sight, it would be an impossible task, even with Samir’s expertise. They were attempting to damage the tunnels underneath it, to cause enough structural instability to shut the facility for repairs. It would cripple operations in Kabul. The Soviet regime would have to concentrate its efforts on energy security, keeping its resources close to the capital, while the resistance could gather strength. It would be a great psychological victory: striking at the heart of the occupation’s source of power the same day as Fahad’s older brother, Dost Mohammad, murdered an entire class of trainee secret-police officers.
As they navigated the final twist of the river, the dam was directly up ahead. The control room could be seen clearly, the men in charge standing at the windows. The river was at its most powerful here, contained within the narrowest area, the speed of flow controlled by the level of discharge from the dam. At the flick of a button the control room could dump water, enough to flood the riverbed, sweeping the team downstream. Several spotlights
