The Debt Collectors War

Chapter 22

They drove quickly through the night. The local team seemed to know the road, and seemed to expect it to be safe. They were behaving that way, anyway. They seemed relaxed, alert but not anticipating trouble, so Ellie decided to trust their judgment, and made herself relax too.

An ambush was unlikely, she supposed. Not this close to the wall, this early in the mission, and not when they were heading off in a random direction which shouldn’t have been obvious to a casual observer as they set out. An ambush now meant an intel leak inside the company, and that would be a catastrophically bad thing. An ambush would be the least of their problems, if they actually had an intel leak, but Ellie didn’t think they did. There was no reason to think they did.

Everything was fine.

They drove fast. The drivers had imaging visors on, and so could travel as fast at night, without lights, as they could in daylight. The road was rough, though. That was the only nuisance about going fast. As Ellie suspected, it hadn’t been repaired in a long time, and the winters here would have snow and ice which destroyed road surfaces quickly. The road was rough, and they were being bumped around a lot. Ellie held on to the hand-grip over her head, and behind her, Sameh had her knee against the back of Ellie’s seat, bracing herself. The driver did his best to avoid the potholes.

After half an hour, they reached a roadside layby in another valley, above another river. Another SUV was waiting, a local one, older and battered looking, with an American man standing beside it.

Ellie got out, and looked around. It was quiet and cold, like in the mountains in Afghanistan. She looked around carefully, warily, glancing at a tablet in her hand to check the feed from the thermal imager mounted on her submachine gun.

Everything seemed quiet.

Everything would seem quiet, she though suspiciously, if they were about to be ambushed. But if they were, then everything would seem overly quiet, far too quiet. Now, it seemed like there was the right amount of noise. There were still birds in the trees, and animals rustling in the scrub, and the man waiting for them wasn’t standing as if he was about to try and duck for cover.

It didn’t feel like there would be trouble, and there were drones somewhere above them, anyway, still watching, still on guard. Ellie had her comm earpiece in, and it was working. She could hear chatter in the background.

She was safe. Someone would warn her if the drones saw anything. She lowered her submachine gun, and walked over the American.

“Are you our guide?” she said.

He nodded. “Joe.”

She thought about that, then said, “Seriously?”

“For this. On anyone’s records. And in my bank. Yeah, it’s Joe.”

“Joe Smith?”

He grinned. “Joe Brown. But pretty much the same thing.”

“I’m Ellie,” Ellie said. “That’s Sameh. Don’t startle her or piss her off, and she won’t kill you.”

Joe looked at Sameh, and nodded, and seemed to take the warning completely seriously. That said a lot about his instincts, and therefore his usefulness as a guide. Ellie felt a little better about him. She hadn’t liked having to trust a guide who someone else had chosen.

Joe looked at Sameh, and then said something in hajji. The hello and god-bless they all said to each other, with the really polite bit about extending her hospitality, as well.

Sameh thought for a moment, and then said the right things back.

Ellie watched, and thought too. She was wondering why Joe had done that, and what it meant, and what he was trying to tell her, too. She decided it was better to ask, rather than waste time wondering.

“You speak hajji?” she said.

“Pashto,” Joe said. “And a little Arabic.”

Ellie looked at him, slightly irritated he’d been so specific. He was going to spoil her careful pretence of dislike and ignorance. She pretended to know less about hajjis than she actually did, and to dislike them more, because it was an old, nasty habit everyone seemed to pick up in wars. Just like the operators here probably complained about the stupidity of debtors, and private security teams in Shanghai would sneer at the superficiality of their clients. It was a habit, something everyone did, but once someone pointed it out, then it was obviously a pretence because you couldn’t do a job like this in places like they did and actually loathe the locals.

“So hajji?” Ellie said, after a moment, not quite willing to give up her pretence just yet. Even though she obviously spoke enough Arabic to know that Joe had been speaking it, too.

Joe thought about that. Then he grinned. “Afghan hajji and the other hajji too,” he said.

Then he looked at Sameh.

His point was pretty clear. Of course Ellie knew the difference, and of course she spoke a little as well, when Sameh’s name was so obviously from the MidEast. Ellie sighed. One of these days she ought to talk to Sameh about calling herself Sarah or something at work. Then Ellie could keep being as nasty and ignorant as she wished without smartasses correcting her.