The steed of life gallops on

Out of control.

My hand no longer holds the reins,

The stirrups are torn away.

Who know where it will stop?

Who cares?

Karkhani is the famous smuggler’s bazaar of the Khyber Pass. It’s run by Afridi Pashtuns and has been since the Raj, the deal here being that the Afridis undertake to keep the pass open and the government undertakes not to interfere with the sale of smuggled goods. It has two sections, one full of fairly ordinary shops selling appliances, electronics, and other homely products to tourists and Pakistanis (what we have instead of Costco, in other words), and a restricted section, closed to foreigners, where they sell guns, opium, heroin, and hashish. I walked right into the restricted section through the checkpoint, the guards didn’t give me a second look, and directly over to Masoud’s shop. I hadn’t seen him in twenty years, but we recognized each other all right; we embraced, and he took me to the little terrace behind the shop where he entertained honored guests or special customers and suppliers. He had about a dozen sons by now and all of them gathered on the terrace and stared at us boldly while we drank tea, and the word spread through the neighborhood, and soon the mud walls around the terrace were lined with faces, all there to gawk at legendary me.

I brought up the subject of Gul Muhammed, and Masoud said he’d heard that he was living in Afghanistan, in hiding, more or less. He’d been active in the war against the Taliban and they’d put a price on his head. But he didn’t know what village he was in. I asked him if he’d ever heard of al-Faran.

He stroked his beard. “Yes, I think so. There are so many groups it’s hard to keep them straight. You would not believe what a good AK fetches now, even a Dara copy; the demand is out of control.”

“It’s the insurgency,” I said.

“Yes, the jihad against the Americans, although in the Russian jihad we had the opposite problem, the Americans and the Saudis were sending so many weapons it was almost impossible to make a living.”

“But as to al-Faran?”

“Yes, if I am not mistaken, this is a group based in Swat, I forget where, one of the groups doing jihad against the idolators in Kashmir. I think I sold them some rockets last year. Why do you want to know?”

“They kidnapped some foreigners. One of them is a relative of mine. I’d like to see if there is anything I can do to get them released.”

“Oh, yes. That was on the news. Of course they used this al-Faran, but everyone knows that that was an ISI operation.”

“Do they?”

“Of course. Al-Faran does not take a shit without ISI telling them where to drop it. It was that rich American they wanted. They will have a huge ransom and then they will use the money to fund a coup.”

“And what about the others?”

He brought the edge of his hand sharply down on the back of his neck. “On videos. This is to show that al-Faran are true mujahideen and not merely pawns of ISI. And they will sell a lot of videos, too, with so many executions. I have some in my shop, if you would care to watch one.”

“Not today, thank you,” I said.

“Then how may I serve Kakay Ghazan?” All business now.

I asked him whether he had any of those Speznatz Stechkins left. He grinned and said he did, and we both talked about the day me and Wazir had brought him a case of twenty-four that our group had won in one of our ambushes.

The Stechkin is basically a machine gun you can put in your pocket, and this batch had been modified for the Soviet special forces to include folding wire stocks and silencers. They’re rare now, and extremely expensive, but Masoud gave me the mujahid discount, and I also bought Makarov 9- mm ammunition for the thing, and five extra magazines.

We took my purchases out to the testing range, which was the roof. They don’t do returns in Karkhani, so you have to make sure the gun works before you leave the shop. I fired the Stechkin on both single-shot and full auto, and it worked fine.

I loaded all the magazines and slung it in its odd wooden holster by a strap around my neck and shoulders, concealing it under my Chinese jacket. I skipped visiting the camp. It was getting late and my bad leg was acting up, complaining about the pounding I was taking from the bike on the bad roads. I went back into Peshawar to the Qissa Khwani Bazaar and had dinner at the Salateen Hotel, which makes the best mutton karhai in the world. I could’ve used a drink, but there wasn’t one on offer, which I took as a bad sign for the future of Peshawar.

When I got back to my bike and paid off the street kids I had hired to watch it, I noticed a brown Toyota hatchback with a bent front bumper parked nearby, and I seemed to recall seeing it before, maybe in Kharkani, maybe earlier on the trip, but I was aching and tired now, and I didn’t think much about it; there are lots of brown Toyotas. Leaning against it were two men. One was a burly guy, a Punjabi by the look of him, wearing a khaki safari shirt and slacks. He had cropped hair, aviator sunglasses, and a neat brush mustache, and I thought soldier. The man he was with was taller and thinner, a Pashtun, in a shalwar kameez and a round white hat. His beard was thick, long, and black, dropping from peculiar knobby cheekbones that stood out like a couple of golf balls in the rough. In Peshawar they don’t wear T-shirts with TALIBAN written on them, but you can tell who they are.

They seemed to be arguing when I strolled up, but they stopped and the two of them stared at me, and I looked at them and gave them a polite nod. I got on the bike and rode off.

About twenty klicks south of the city, on the long grade up to the Kohat Pass, I saw the same brown Toyota again in my rearview mirror, coming up fast on my tail. I slowed a little and pulled to the left to let him pass, Sometimes in a combat situation you see a threat emerging, or rather you feel it’s going to happen without really knowing how you know, your mind has just put together a bunch of unconscious details, and so you don’t go through a door or stick your head up or whatever, and I had that feeling then.

So when the Toyota swerved violently toward me to knock me off the road, I jammed on the brakes and put the bike down and skidded for about forty feet, throwing sparks and tearing the leg off my trousers along with some patches of skin. I saw the hatchback screech to a halt in a cloud of dust and then pull a U-ey and come running back to where I was. It stopped and the passenger door and the two rear doors popped open and three guys got out, the military dude from the bazaar, hefting an AK, and two guys I’d never seen before, short wide men who had the dark skin and flat faces of Tajiks.

I pulled myself away from the motorcycle and got to one knee, my upper body bent over like I was hurting, and I lifted the Stechkin from its holster and thumbed it to full auto, and when they were about two yards from me I knocked the three of them over with one long burst.

I pointed the pistol at the driver and yelled out in Urdu to lift his hands from the wheel and get out of the car. After a brief hesitation he did so, and I made him sit on the ground with his hands behind his head. I looked him over: early twenties, shortish hair, a mustache. I figured him for a Punjabi soldier or cop of some kind. He was shaking slightly, like a bush in a faint breeze. I leaned over and checked out his hands.

I know guys who like this part, but I’ve never cared for it, it’s not combat anymore, and it’s embarrassing, to me at least, to have that kind of power over a human person. On the other hand, there are situations, like this one, where you need information.

I said, “What is this all about, brother? Why did you want to kill me?”

“Oh, God, are you going to shoot me now? Oh, God!”

“No, of course not. You are no threat to me, Naik. Is it naik?”