“This is it, guys. Bin your roaches, button your filthy shirts and wear your most respectable smiles. We’re only here for the views. We’re tourists, the first this year.”
With a hard turn, Dan drove the battered old Bedford bus off the main road and stopped beneath an austere, solitary gate in the desolate Hindu Kush foothills. He was exhausted. The drive from Peshawar had taken longer than expected. He knew the road; they had already passed here on the way from Kabul. But the Bedford hadn’t really pulled today. The engine had responded sluggishly to his demands, even though they carried no more weight than usual. He wanted a break from driving.
Not yet.
Beyond the gate, the landscape, shorn largely of vegetation, stony, dusty, with patches of tough grasses, spread beneath a monochromat
