Metamorphosis (2 page)

“Better to die
than live a coward,” the warlord said, looking down at Rai’s still
form, then translating it for his men. Liam watched them nod in
approval as their leader looked back at him. “Their motto is
obviously more than just words.” He raised an eyebrow. “I suppose
it doesn’t apply to officers?”

Liam had been
given no chance to answer the insult, as a rifle butt had crashed
into the back of his head before he could begin to frame a
response.

Fifteen months
later, he stared at the door, still not sure if he was meant to
lead soldiers but dead certain that something fundamental had
changed about his current situation. He hadn’t seen anyone for over
a day now. He would have been thrilled to get a solid night’s sleep
for the first time in over a year, but he found himself waking
every three hours, to find that no-one had bothered to come in and
kick him awake.
I wonder if I’ll have to re-learn how to sleep
more than two hours at a time,
he mused as he walked over to
the door.

He stood
before the door for a moment, wondering how he could get it open
while he was still in shackles.
Better listen first
, he
thought.
If a guard is out there, I wouldn’t want to startle him
into shooting me.
He stepped forward and leaned his shoulder
against the door so he could place his ear against it.  As his
ear touched the rough wood, the door swung out into the next room,
spilling him onto the floor with a dull clatter of hand-forged
chains.

He rolled to
his feet, looking around the empty room. The only furnishings were
a table and chairs, smooth wood worn by countless decades of use.
In the center of the table, a piece of paper was pinned to the
surface by a kukri.
Sergeant Rai’s blade,
thought Liam as he
reached out and pulled the heavy weapon free. He pulled the paper
off the tip; it contained a simple message in English.

You’re
worthless. Go home.

Nothing I
haven’t thought already,
he half-joked to himself. Liam looked
at the two other doors in the room. One showed bright light seeping
in underneath.
The sun,
he thought.
Haven’t seen the sun
in more than a year.
He was surprised by a sudden reluctance to
approach the door. After so long in captivity, he had become
accustomed to the brutal comforts of routine. He had withdrawn into
a protective shell where the world couldn’t reach him. He took a
deep breath.

Change loomed
beyond that door.

Thomas…

He took a
moment to straighten his uniform, filthy and torn though it was.
His boots were still intact but his laces had been taken away on
the day of his capture. He walked to the door and pushed it open.
He closed his eyes, raising a hand to shield them from the
unaccustomed brightness, his chains clinking with soft, reassuring
familiarity. Gradually, his eyes adjusted to a point where he could
open them again, though he kept his hand up to reduce the glare. It
was cold.

So many
people.

He seemed to
be standing across the street from a market. A row of houses,
perhaps two hundred feet long, had open fronts and a few even
sported awnings to shield the shopkeepers and their goods from the
elements. An open ditch ran along the side of the road, crossed at
intervals with makeshift bridges of timber and metal sheeting.

Some of them
were selling food.

Liam was
suddenly aware that he hadn’t eaten since lunch yesterday.
Forget it, mate. You have no bloody money and you don’t even
know their language. Just find a way to contact a NATO unit.
He
scanned the shop fronts, oblivious to the looks he drew from the
pedestrians as they flowed past.

“Planning to
mix it up, are you?” The voice came from his right and Liam looked
over to find a man in his mid twenties smiling at him. He wore
traditional local garb, but of better quality than most of the
people walking through the market.

“Mix it up?”
Liam said, bewildered by the phrase but relieved to find someone
who spoke English. “I wasn’t feeling particularly belligerent at
the moment.”

“Well that’s
good to hear.” The young man nodded down at Liam’s right hand. “You
might find us a little more peaceful if you put that giant blade
away.”

Liam was
surprised to see that he still held Rai’s kukri. He shoved it into
his belt with a rueful grin. “Do you know where I might get my
hands on a phone?” He nodded over at the market. “I was hoping to
find one over there, but I don’t have any money on me so I may have
to promise payment when my people pick me up.”

The man
grinned. “I can help you there,” he said. “We have a phone at my
house.” With a gesture he indicated the direction and they both
moved off down the street. He gave Liam an appraising glance.
“You’re the Tommie they took from the big helicopter last year?”
When Liam nodded, he went on. “Looks like Kourash doesn’t feed his
prisoners very well. You’ll join me for some food?”

Liam knew he
should be more suspicious but a year in isolation had a way of
changing how you reacted to people. He felt a strange exhilaration
to be talking to anyone and, though he knew he might be walking
into another trap, he couldn’t tear himself away from human contact
just yet. He also knew that to accept the first offer would
disappoint this man. Fortunately, his unit heavily stressed the
learning of local custom. “I shouldn’t impose,” he said
smiling.

The young man
waved a dismissive hand. “It would be no imposition, I assure you.”
His expression showed that he approved; Liam was obviously in need
of some decent food, but he was still making an effort to behave
like a civilized man.

“You’re very
generous,” Liam responded, hoping he wasn’t talking himself out of
food. “But I’m sure you are a busy man.”  

“Not so busy
that I can’t spare food for a new friend,” the young man flashed a
friendly grin. “You’ve had fifteen months of the worst sort of
hospitality. I wouldn’t want you to think ill of my people. I
insist; you should come for chai at least.”

“I would be
honored.” Liam turned to face the man properly. “Liam Kennedy,” he
said, extending his hand.

“MirBacha,”
the young man responded, shaking Liam’s hand to the accompaniment
of soft rattling. “Let’s go over to the market and have a
blacksmith take those chains off.”

He led the way
to a stall where a bull of a man with a sooty salt-and-pepper beard
and pakol hat crouched over a small brick forge. A young boy sat in
the doorway behind him, hand-pedaling a bike wheel to drive a
bellows. The smith pulled out a glowing strip of metal from the
forge, pounding out the shape of a knife blade on a small square
anvil at his feet.

As it became
apparent that MirBacha was coming to see him, he shoved the blade
back into the forge, greeting the young man with a smile and a nod,
one hand touching over his heart. MirBacha responded in kind before
explaining with a few sentences in Pashto, along with a general
wave, indicating Liam’s chains. His exchange complete, he turned
back to the young officer. “He says he will take them off in
exchange for the chains themselves. You don’t have any emotional
attachment to them, do you?”

Do I?
thought Liam.
The one good thing about the last fifteen months
has been freedom from decisions. Not having to constantly make
life-or-death choices that may or may not be to the liking of men
with far more experience than I have.
He shrugged.
It’s time
to stop hiding from my responsibilities.
 “He’s welcome to
them.”

As the chains
fell away, Liam’s arms began to rise of their own accord;
accustomed to compensating for the extra weight, they now had to be
recalibrated. MirBacha watched with amusement as Liam took his
first unfettered steps in front of the small shop, his face
reflecting a wonder he had not anticipated.

“Come, first I
will see that you have a proper meal, then, when you feel more like
yourself, you can call your people.” MirBacha led the way back
across the market and into a side street.

 “Your
accent sounds American.”
Perhaps he lived there for a
time.

“Not quite
American,” he shrugged. “My father was a relatively wealthy man, so
he sent me to study at King’s College in Halifax. I spent a year
there, just making sure I had a solid grip on the language, then
five more to get my Engineering degree.”

That didn’t
sound right. “Wouldn’t that have given you a British accent?
Halifax is somewhere near Leeds unless I miss my guess.”

MirBacha
sighed in mock exasperation. “You English,” he said with the air of
a man educating a slow child. “Quite possibly the only people on
Earth who don’t know anything about your former colonial days.” He
indicated another turn and they set off again.

He came to a
heavy gate set into a nine-foot-high stone wall and gestured Liam
inside. As MirBacha was closing the gate, Liam saw a young girl,
perhaps ten years old, looking at him from the doorway of the
house. “My sister,” MirBacha said, as she disappeared into the
home. “She’s the only reason I’m helping you.” He came to stand
beside Liam. “NATO soldiers came here two years ago, built a school
and told us it would be safe for our children.” His face darkened.
“Then they left.” He looked over at Liam, watching his response as
he talked. “
Political winds back home,
they told us. Their
whole contingent suddenly pulled out of Afghanistan in a matter of
days.”

She must be
close to the same age as Thomas.
Liam had no way of knowing
where his son would have been sent after Kate died. He hoped Thomas
would have been sent to his aunt on the Channel Islands but he had
a sinking feeling that he had been placed with Kate’s brother
because he was more convenient, and he lived in Britain – in a
run-down council home. Kate’s death was the one piece of news that
his captors had told him about.

Kourash had
told him personally and Liam felt certain that he had not done it
to wound him. They had learned of her passing through an
interpreter who served with the British. They had been trying to
find out whether he was worth a ransom when they learned of the
news. He had walked in alone and crouched in front of Liam.
“Captain,” he paused for a moment, his face grave. “Your wife has
died in an accident.”

Liam suddenly
felt he had lost his tie to reality. He had spent months in
captivity, wondering what Kate might be doing, how she might be
coping with a small child and a missing husband. She had been his
anchor, the one surety that he did, in fact, have a life beyond his
current confinement. He could feel his mind slipping away but it
grasped for a handhold. “Thomas?” The sound startled him. He hadn’t
spoken for a long time and he was mildly surprised to learn that he
could still use his voice.

Kourash
nodded. “He was sent to relatives.” He stood. “My condolences,
Captain. Like most Afghans, I am no stranger to personal loss. I
wish it on no man.”  He went out through the door and it was
the last time Liam saw him. Two months later, he found himself
walking the street a free man.

MirBacha waved
Liam inside, retrieving him from his past. “The weather’s about to
change,” he said as they walked through the door. The interior was
well furnished. Comfortable cushions surrounded a beautiful silk
rug and Liam stepped out of his boots at the door, amused by the
convenience of having no shoe-laces. They sat as the young girl
brought out a tablecloth, spreading it across the rug between them
before disappearing into the back.

“Two weeks
after the troops left,” he continued as the girl returned with a
copper basin, “a gunman shot up the school. My sister took a bullet
in the leg.” His gaze was distant, remembering, angry. Liam washed
his hands in the basin and watched as the young girl’s approach
brought her brother back to the present. He washed his hands and
returned to his narrative.

“If a British
unit hadn’t been patrolling the border road, she would have lost
her leg. Their medics were very busy that day.” He frowned again,
choosing his next words. “We were grateful for the help; five young
girls were helped that day…”

Liam was aware
of a light patter of rain that had begun to fall as his host spoke.
He broke into the narrative. “But that help wouldn’t have been
necessary if our NATO ally had remained?”

“Exactly. You
come here and extol the virtues of your political system but how
often does it prevent you from finishing what you started? How many
missions have you been pulled from? How often have you been
promised new equipment only to be told that it wasn’t in the
budget?” He shook his head. “You can’t drop democracy in our laps
and expect it to be an overnight success. Especially with an
example like that.”

Liam, normally
unemotional, occasionally found himself caught unawares and
unprepared by strong feelings. His host’s story had crept in under
his guard and he suddenly realized how shallow and selfish his own
choices had been. He had been trying to prove himself by joining
the regiment. It was considered the best-of-the-best and he felt
that success in leading men of the SAS would help him to overcome
his own self-doubts.

How foolish
would that sound to a young girl, lying in a dusty schoolyard with
her life’s blood seeping into the dirt? How meaningless it would
sound to her brother, the friendly young man who had welcomed him
into his home.

How
contemptible it sounded in Liam’s own mind. So what reason did he
have, now, for remaining in the military?

The young girl
returned, filling two glasses with tea before returning to the next
room. Her brother followed, sensing his guest’s discomfort and
giving him a moment to compose himself. He returned, carrying a
heavy tray loaded with several dishes while his little sister
carried a smaller tray of naan. Once the food was deposited in the
middle of the tablecloth, MirBacha sat on the cushions. “Please,
help yourself,” he said, waving at the choices.