"I couldn’t expect my guys to take a large risk with their lives if I wasn’t prepared to lead by example and do so myself. Maybe I had learnt something at RMC after all. I took a deep breath and walked through the large security door that marked the entrance to the prison, alone and unarmed. I was now completely out of view of my support crew and armed only with my own audacity. This may sound unpalatable to all the blue haired angries, but Afghans are a bunch of bastards. It’s not entirely their fault though. They have been brutally bastardised by a variety of other cultures throughout their entire history. If there is one thing that they recognise and respect though, even temporarily, it’s a bigger bastard. As, I walked through the corridor, I felt a mix of nervous trepidation but also sheer excitement. This was completely loose and would require more front than Myer. No cuff too tough as they say.

Kabul had changed a hell of a lot in the short time since I’d last been there. An unofficial war had been declared by the Afghan Government against western private security companies. The central government had cited all manner of reasons for their crackdown but it all came down to greed and fleecing as many western dollars as possible. The goal posts were continually shifting and individual licences were now required for just about every piece of individual equipment – vehicles, radios, weapons – and there was a booming economy forming with bribes required to release detained employees and equipment. A couple of Afghan security companies had recently started up, one even owned by the Afghan President’s family, and unsurprisingly security teams from all their competitors were regularly getting stopped and detained. Earlier I was informed that one of my guys, Jit a Nepalese Gurkha, had been detained and was being held in the Afghan prison at Police District 5 (PD5). We had only one chance to recover him before he went into the central prison system. Once at the central prison at Pul-e-Charkhi, the task to free him would become infinitely harder and he would likely be left to languish like so many other security contractors before him.

Although we had loaded up with guys and weapons and driven straight to PD5, the ANP guards were unperturbed by our presence. The only way our guy was getting released was by going in and talking to the Police Commander in person. Only one of us was allowed in, completely unarmed and it had to be me. The ANP had the balance of power here and it would be hard to seize it back. I walked back to the car, took off my vest and placed my weapon inside and told the guys the plan. “If I’m not back in 15 minutes, come in and get me”, I said. All I had on my person was a dodgey ID card and a mobile phone which I immediately used to dial an open line to Sierra, a Scottish teammate, so we at least had some form of direct comms. Maybe I could scream into it as they stuffed me into an orange jumpsuit. I stuffed the phone into my pocket, submitted to a quick pat-down search, and walked in. The point of no return."