Rob Langdon - The Seventh Circle: A Former Australian Soldiers Extraordinary Story of Surviving Seven Years In Afghanistans Most Notorious Prison

First published in 2017

Reprinted in 2017

Copyright Rob Langdon 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

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ISBN 978 1 76029 640 7

eISBN 978 1 76063 951 8

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Cover design: Deborah Parry Graphics

Front cover photograph: Patrick Robert / Corbis

Where friends or colleagues remain operational, Ive used their initials in order to protect their identities. Other names have been changed to protect the guilty. You know who you are.

Heres how close I was to getting away.

Minutes. Maybe five, maybe three, stood between me and getting on the plane. I had got to Kabul International Airport and walked through check-in without luggage or any possessions other than the clothes on my back and the packages of American dollars in my pockets. I was cleared through customs and several security gates in the clean, newly built terminal. My flight on Afghanistans national carrier, Safi Airways, to Dubai was on time, and I made it through the departure lounge where I showed my boarding pass and waited with the other passengers for the minibus to take us to the plane sitting on the tarmac. All that was left was a quick shuttle to the steps of the jet and I was home free.

Just a few hundred seconds. As long as a cupful of water takes to boil. How many times, over the next seven years, could I shut my eyes and count out those seconds? How many prison kettles of water would that add up to? In what kind of a blink could they pass, compared with the black hole that would chew the next seven years out of my life? If I thought about that too much, I could drive myself mad.

I kept my head down, not looking at the other passengers, just willing the minibus to come and take us to the plane. After the chaos of the previous twenty-four hours, I was more strung-out with fatigue than panicky or scared. I was composed but tired, thinking only one thought: Lets go. I wore my Blundstones and a checked shirt and jeans that Id picked up earlier in the day from my mate Frank, whose place Id dropped into during the height of the mayhem. Frank, a Canadian freelance security contractor Id worked with for years in Afghanistan and Iraq, and I had talked about which airport I should go to. One option was the airfield at Bagram, the military base where I could get onto an American military aircraft. Bagram had its advantages, being under American control, and as a security contractor working for an American company, I had come and gone freely from Bagram over the previous twelve months with identification that gave me the equivalent rank to a captain. Frank made a plan to get me there. But I was wary of Bagram. The drive was too far for comfort, and the security would be intense. Any of numerous checkpoints could pull me up. My preference was for Kabul International, the civilian airport. I had bought the Safi Airways ticket for Dubai the previous day, before all hell broke loose. A day ago, I had expected to be flying out of Afghanistan for the last time on my way to starting a new adventure in Africa. It might as well have been a lifetime ago. In twenty-four hours, everything had changed.

Bagram or Kabul International? US military or Afghan civilian? In the end, I did what I always did when faced with a fifty-fifty decision. I pulled my trusty Australian fifty-cent coin out of my pocket and tossed it.

Heads. Kabul International.

Frank wished me luck as I left his place in a taxi. I got to the airport without incident. Like a lot of major infrastructure in the city, Kabul International was fitted out with the latest computerised equipment, but the locals didnt know how to use or maintain half of it. It looked nice, but everywhere you looked were half-finished offices, rubbish blowing around, and computers still in their boxes. The grand opening for international civilian flights, just a few weeks earlier, was the first step in the airports decline to wrack and ruin.

The security arrangements were tight, though. A British company called Global Risk Management, which employed several people I knew in the tight-knit world of private security contractors, had been teaching the Afghans how to do airport security, and they were efficient. I was inspected, scanned and searched at two gates after passport control. I went down a set of stairs to the departure lounge, and as I was waiting for the call to board, my phone rang. The screen said it was Anton, one of the managers at work.

Its all good, Anton said. Just wait there, youll be fine.

I trusted Anton, in as much as I could trust anyone whod done the things Id seen him involved with. Actually, I didnt really know how much I could trust him. I was working that out as I went along.

Soon enough I had an answer. Another call came in. It was Elena, who worked as an administrator at Four Horsemen, the American company I had worked for in the year since Id been in Afghanistan. Elena was the wife of Petar, the operations manager and leader of a group of Macedonians who held senior positions in Four Horsemens Kabul office. Elena was really good at her job and wed had a cordial professional relationship during my year in Afghanistan. I treat people as I find them, but the Macedonians didnt like other men talking to their women, and my friendliness with Elena had never gone down very well with her husband and his mates.

Rob, I have to warn you, Elena said.

My heart rate went up a little. Whats going on?

My husband has given the NDS passport photos of you, details about you, everything they need to identify you. Theyre coming for you now. You need to get out of the airport.

Fuck. Had I been sold out? The NDS, or National Directorate of Security, Afghanistans secret police, had close connections to Commander Haussedin, the local war lord who I believed was the main source of all of my, and our companys, problems. If Petar had sold me out to Haussedin, the next few minutes could be the difference literally between life and death. I considered my options. I couldnt go back out of the airport the way Id come in: on the streets, I would never escape. I couldnt get to Bagram now that the alert was out. And my Safi Airways flight was only minutes from boarding. My way out of here was in that plane.

Over the next seven years, I thought about Elenas call. As I gathered more information, I eventually came to reconsider what had happened. Maybe I wasnt really seconds from getting away. Maybe it was all a set-up. Maybe that minibus would have just waited on the tarmac for however long it took for the cops to come and grab me. Maybe, as I wished for those few seconds to tick over, my fate had already been sealed by forces beyond my knowledge or control. In a strange way, that consoled me. Better to be angry at betrayal than wringing your hands over bad luck and a couple of minutes.