The Circuit by Shepherd Bob

Author:Shepherd, Bob [Shepherd, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Macmillan Publishers UK
Published: 2008-04-09T04:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER 23

Nic asked me if there was any way we could drive to Khost. Nic is a very proud man and, like me, whatever he’s thinking shows on his face. He would never beg me to make the trip but it was crystal clear from his expression that he was desperate to go.

It was extremely unethical in my view for the PAO to warn us against driving to Khost and then leave Nic with no other option for getting to the embed. To me, it seemed like a stitch-up and I wasn’t going to stand for it.

Luckily, I’d anticipated just this sort of scenario. The PAO seemed a little bastard and I’d got the feeling that if Nic did get the embed there’d be a sting in the tail somewhere. I’d already approached Hamid and our local drivers with the possibility of driving to Khost. To a man, they were all happy to do the trip with us. I’d built up a lot of goodwill during our journey to Kandahar and Helmund. I’m sure hazard pay also played a role; local wages tripled on assignments outside Kabul due to the increased risks.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘We’ll drive. And I’ll get you there safely.’

Nic was over the moon. He spent the rest of the night taking care of administrative details which included compiling a manifest for the PAO detailing the names and titles of who would need to overnight at Camp Solerno. The list included all the westerners in our party: Nic, his cameraman, the engineer and me.

While Nic dealt with the Yanks, Hamid and I pulled together the travel plan and security arrangements; no mean feat considering it was Friday night and we were in a Muslim country (it’s like trying to get something done on a Sunday night in London).

To get to Camp Solerno we’d have to travel through Kabul province, then south through Lowgar province, then south-east towards Gardez, the capital of Paktia province and then finally through Khost province. Weather permitting, I figured the entire trip would take approximately nine and half hours.

Once again, we needed to leave Kabul no later than 3.30 a.m. On this trip especially, it was crucial we have plenty of daylight to spare at the other end as driving through Khost at night was unthinkable. Nine and a half hours was probably a conservative estimate but I needed to err on the side of caution because the variables of the journey were difficult to gauge. Road conditions, for example, were impossible to predict. We’d be travelling on a series of old, poorly maintained roads, not a sleek new highway like the A1 through Kandahar and Helmund. Terrain was another variable; instead of driving past mountains, this time we’d be driving over them; three mountain ranges in total. We also had to consider who was in charge of the areas we’d be traversing. The roads we’d be travelling were not as critical commercially or militarily as the A1 so the coalition tended not to get involved each time a warlord flexed his muscles and closed one down.

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