women had.
As they picked their way along the designated route, which circled the camp at a radius of half a klick, give or take the odd hundred meters to detour around impassable rock falls or clusters, they talked about what they wanted, and about their frustrations, punctuated by cursing as they stumbled, turned their ankles, and gashed and grazed themselves on terrain that seemed to mock their very presence.
“If we’re going to do anything other than rot out here and wait for a bunch of men to come and try to smack us down, then we need to take some kind of action soon,” Suri moaned as she sat on a rock and massaged an ankle. Even though they both wore stout walking boots and had their ankles bound for support and padding, they were still limping at the end of each night’s patrol.
Yasmin was small and compact. Her father used to worry that she might be physically weak, but she was nimble and wiry. Suri, on the other hand, was tall and slim in a way that Yasmin had seen English writers describe as “willowy”—almost as though she had grown too tall for her own strength. Yasmin doubted that her companion could survive in the wild for long. She herself was finding it hard, but Yasmin would bet on herself for the long haul once she had adjusted.
“I know why you want to act,” she said with meaning, “and I want to, as well. But the question is what kind of action? It has to be something that counts. We’re small in number, so we could be easily overwhelmed. We need to make an impact that will rally others to our cause and put us on the international stage.”
Suri snorted. “Maybe we should pretend we’re peasant girls and get ourselves shot in the head.” She shook her head. “Sorry. I’m just tired, cold and pissed off.”
“We all are.” Yasmin grinned. “But we do have one major advantage. The NCA will know by now what I took. Even if they write me off personally and get another research scientist, they know what I’m running around with, and that’ll scare the living crap out of them. They’re not going to risk charging in and shooting without asking, just in case one of their trigger-happy boys has an accident.”
“Well, yes,” Suri said slowly. “Of course we can use it as a bargaining tool, and of course it gives us some protection. The problem is, if we just sit on our asses with it, they have no demands to meet.”
Yasmin sighed. “It would be good if we could agree on what the demands are and actually move this forward.”
Suri laughed. “You sound like you’ve spent too long working for the government. ‘Move this forward...’”
Yasmin punched her friend in the shoulder. “Get your lazy ass up and let’s get going. The last thing we want is to be caught standing around like a pair of idiots.”
Suri dragged herself to her feet, swearing softly as she put pressure on her aching ankle, and followed in Yasmin’s wake.
* * *
IFTIKHAR AND AYUB had not been expecting to hit the payload when they had taken this sortie. Their ten-man militant cell was twenty klicks to the west, deep in the foothills of the peaks that separated Pakistan from Afghanistan and Iran. The range was long and—if not impassable—accessible only to those who had spent years learning its contours. Their group was part of a supply chain that took food and ordnance from one country to another, feeding the needs of rebel factions on each side. Their pipeline was partially supplied by sympathetic Pakistani military men, mostly in quartermasters sections, who were discontented with the Westernization of their country and wanted the government to become more Islamist. This gave the rebels on both sides of the divide access to new Chinese and American hardware, rather than the aging Russian guns and South American copies of Russian weaponry they had been forced to rely on in the past few decades.
It also meant that the rebels running this pipeline kept their ears to the ground about any developments in weapons transportation, new shipments that were to arrive in Pakistan and any potentially new hardware leaks.
Inevitably, despite the blanket of security that Major Malik had attempted to cast over the disappearance of Shazana Yasmin and General Sandila’s subsequent discovery of the missing fissionable material, rumors had surfaced that could not be dispelled. Some of these had reached the Islamist groups and rebels in the foothills, and they had added the small physicist and any potential package she may be carrying to their checklist. It was known that the PWLA was hiding out in the region. The women were already on the checklist, as their very existence was an affront to the ideals and morals of the Islamists. Yet they were a low priority since they presented no real threat.
Now, with the knowledge that Yasmin was likely to be carrying nuclear material, the PWLA had moved up the list from an irritant to a group of interest.
For the past week, Iftikhar and Ayub’s cell had been running missions across the plateaus and ravines of the range, trying to locate the PWLA camp. If they could pinpoint their target before any of the other rebels or Taliban units in the region, then they would hold the whip hand.
Word of Yasmin’s supposed capture by the PWLA was whispered, and her location sought. Iftikhar and Ayub had, so they thought, drawn the short straw in having to take the sortie that carried them farthest from their base camp. Now, they felt differently.
They had become aware of the two women as they scuttled across an outcrop of jagged rock that overhung a narrow pathway cut into a hill. The rock formed a kind of roof that seemed to peter out into thin air before achieving a covering arc, and looked far too fragile to take the weight of a man. In truth, it had stood this way for centuries, and the thick strata at the base end gave it a tensile strength that its appearance belied. Iftikhar had lain flat across it when he heard the rattle of loosened rock along the trail followed by unholy cursing in a high, female voice. Holding his breath, gesturing at Ayub to stay back, he had lain still and listened to the exchange between the two women. He couldn’t believe their luck. At the end of a cold, hard and seemingly pointless mission, they had lucked into a situation that would put their cell in a prime position and boost their own standing among their compatriots.
Now they had to play this right. Iftikhar clung flat to the rock as the two women passed beneath him. He waited as they continued down the narrow passage for a few hundred meters, then he crawled back to the ridge where Ayub lay waiting. Iftikhar could see from Ayub’s face that he, too, had been listening. Without speaking, the two men communicated that they should follow the women at a distance in the hope that they would lead them to the PWLA camp.
Silently, the two men set off in pursuit of their prey. The women were obviously inexperienced, and their clumsy attempts at keeping their progress quiet were almost laughable. Certainly, if the two rebels had made any noise of their own, it would have been masked by the sound the two women were generating as they blundered forward.
It soon became apparent that the women were on a regular patrol, and if nothing else, the circumscribed route would give the two rebels a fixed area in which to search for and track down the PWLA camp...if the women did not lead them directly there.
After several hours of stuttering progress, the two rebels found that the women were novices when it came to covering their own tracks and being aware of their surroundings. On several occasions, the two rebels came within a few meters of the women, who didn’t register their presence.
If all the women in the PWLA were like this, then it would be simple for a task force to raid their camp and wipe them out, taking the scientist and her cargo. The men exchanged predatory grins as they followed the two women to the edge of their camp.
As the sun rose, Iftikhar and Ayub withdrew. They were on a plateau above the small valley where the PWLA had pitched camp, and they would be exposed in the light of dawn. They had counted the tents, and based on the number of women who had started to emerge, they estimated the maximum number of PWLA members in camp. When they were at a safe distance, they began to realize the import of what they had stumbled on.
“They are stupid, my friend,” Ayub murmured. “Do they really think they have any chance of success, with such a small number?”
“They’ll count on the backing of the West,” Iftikhar replied, spitting to emphasize