The First Order

by Jeff Abbott

  Seaforth said, “Gentlemen. Several years ago, two young American humanitarian workers were kidnapped near Kandahar. Danny Capra, the son of longtime relief workers who’d served all over the world, and Zalmay Quereshi, an American whose parents emigrated from Afghanistan after King Zahir was deposed in 1973. Both were twenty-three years of age. Zalmay Quereshi was fluent in Dari, Pashto, and Arabic and worked for charitable organizations as a translator. Capra and Quereshi were college friends. No ransom demands were made to the government or their families”—here Allen saw Seaforth glance at the passenger—“and our sources could not determine which tribal group had taken them. A few weeks later, a video was sent to the American embassy, showing the two prisoners and a few men in balaclavas. Only Capra spoke on the video; Quereshi was gagged and blindfolded.”

  Allen glanced at the passenger. He sat, listening, staring at the floor of the helicopter.

  “The group who had taken them called themselves the Brothers of the Mountain, a group that we had not heard of before, and haven’t heard much about since. The speaker briefly demanded that all Allied forces leave Afghanistan. Danny Capra gave a short statement echoing that demand. Then his throat was cut”—Seaforth’s tone lowered—“and he was pushed to the floor, out of camera range, and decapitated. The executioner momentarily raised Capra’s head, but with its face turned away from the camera. Quereshi’s throat was then cut and he was shoved out of camera range. Their bodies were never recovered.”

  The squad was quiet.

  Seaforth glanced back at the passenger, whose face betrayed no emotion. “This is Sam.” Sam nodded again at the men. “He brought us new information last night as to the location where the two men were held. First break in the case ever.”

  “How do you break a case like this?” Allen asked. He didn’t expect an answer.

  At this, Sam, the silent man with the boyish face, looked up at Allen and met his gaze. “With a Böker Applegate-Fairbairn combat knife.”

  One of the younger soldiers made a kind of half-laugh, half-cough that he smothered in the sudden silence. They had seen civilians try to impress soldiers with their toughness, and fail. Sam said his words in a tone that did not try to impress. He had answered the question. Allen, though, gave him a slight smile.

  Seaforth said, “The NSA picked up phone chatter in Pakistan, mentioning both the Brothers of the Mountain and this location. We’re going to a long-abandoned village in the Hindu Kush. For a number of reasons of state and national security, this excursion is classified, and you will not talk about it.” His gaze met each of theirs. “That’s why we’re flying on a helicopter marked as belonging to a humanitarian agency. That’s why the records will still show you all were off duty today. You were chosen because you’re a top squad, and your leader vouched for you all that you could keep your mouths shut until the time comes, hopefully very soon, when this can be spoken of. Gentlemen, we need to bring these two Americans home.” Again he glanced over at Sam. “I can’t give you orders, but that is what I need you to do, and that is what I respectfully ask of you.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll do,” Allen said. “And we’ll keep our mouths shut.”

  The squad seemed to gather themselves as one, with sudden purpose and focus. So this wasn’t combat tourism. This was important work now.

  “So this is to recover the victims’ bodies, if possible?” Allen asked. He wondered why the recovery of long-dead prisoners had to be top secret. This would be big news back in America.

  “This is to take an initial look. Find evidence to confirm the story. If we find the bodies we’ll bring them back today. I had the appropriate forensic gear loaded on the copter. If not we’ll bring another team tomorrow. Your job, gentlemen, is to secure the village and to protect this young man while he gathers the evidence we need to find these Americans.”

  Allen glanced again at Sam. He seemed awfully young to be an intelligence agency field operative—Allen thought of such people as older, in their forties, a bit world-weary and grizzled—but in a world of suicide bombers and cyberhackers and ever-younger and more vicious drug lords, perhaps the agency needed a kid like Sam, a peer to the new, younger, bolder breed of criminal. He was lean and spare, but Sam had an intensity about him that made Allen think he’d be good in a fight. He wondered what kind of hellhole this kid had gone into to find the execution locale. Prying information from hostile Afghans or Pakistanis was a difficult and delicate job. But this kid had done it. Allen’s respect for him, and curiosity about him, inched upward. He wondered what happened to the man who had faced Sam’s blade. This Sam looked like he might flick the knife over a throat and not blink.

  The helicopter roared over a mountain pass. A teenage boy looked up from the shade of overhanging rock, where he’d been reading the book his uncle brought him back from Pakistan. He’d come up to the pass to get away from the nagging of his grandfather. It was a beautiful, clear day and he loved the quiet, which had been broken only by the groan of the wind and the sound of the approaching helicopter. He raised the binoculars he wore and read the markings. A relief agency from Morocco. He wondered who they were coming to help. Then he watched its descent, lowered the binoculars, and hurried down the trail toward his own village. His uncle had given strict orders that he be told of any strangers or visitors heading toward the village of ghosts. He stopped only to reposition the AMD-65 rifle he wore on his shoulder. It had once belonged to an Afghan policeman his uncle had killed. The boy eased the weapon to the center of his back so he could run faster.

  The helicopter pilots took no chances; they descended toward the village in a “yank and bank,” a stomach-churning, nose-high descent to minimize the risk of taking a shoulder-fired missile. The helicopter corkscrewed downward and Sam fought not to vomit.

  The MI-8T settled on a flat clearing above the village and the squad disembarked, dividing into two teams. Allen told Seaforth and Sam to stay aboard the copter with the pilots until they had done a recon and secured the area. The soldiers were armed with M4 carbines, one man on each team lugging an Mk 19 grenade launcher.

  There were outposts like this scattered throughout the Hindu Kush, built on the steep slopes, the roofs of one stone structure serving as the terrace of the next one up. Sometimes such settlements were used seasonally, depending on how high up the mountains they were. The soul of a village was its people, and people had long left this place. Maybe no one cared about it anymore. Or, Allen thought sourly, maybe it was cursed, blighted. Which would take some real doing, in this country of unending grief.

  The squad worked methodically through the deserted village, down the stairstep pile of buildings, the mountain air cold and sharp against their skin. Allen couldn’t help wondering if they’d find headless corpses in one of the rooms. But they didn’t.

  After the sweep, Allen returned and gestured Sam and Seaforth out of the copter. “Sleepy Hollow is both hollow and sleepy,” he said. “No one’s here, and it doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in a long while. Where to?”

  Sam said, “I just want to walk through all of it first. Then if there’s a room with red-painted walls—”

  “We found that,” Allen said. “Follow me.”

  They traipsed through the village, which had at most fifteen buildings, with one steep road down the mountain snaking through them, some falling in disrepair, others holding as firm as the mountains themselves. Sam breathed in the air extra hard, as though he could catch a scent, breathe in a memory.

  “Why is this place abandoned? Do we know?” Allen asked.

  “Well, war, generally,” Seaforth said. “But there was also an accusation made long ago against the village that they had allowed Soviet prisoners to escape, to buy their freedom, during the war with the Russians. More likely the Russians forced their cooperation under threat of death. Regardless, the nearby villages and the rebel forces did not take any news of collaboration kindly.”

  “So they killed the whole village? Even if the vill
age had no choice?” Allen asked.

  Seaforth shrugged. “Yes, they did. This is a bad place; you can feel it.”

  “It was used as a way station in smuggling,” Sam said. “Opium.”

  “Well, there’s no drugs here now,” Allen said. He pointed at one of the bigger intact buildings. “The room with the red wall is there.”

  In the front room in the building, one wall was painted red. The red of blood, the red of fear and terror. Old, abandoned brackets were mounted on the ceiling.

  “That’s where they put the lights for the cameras,” Sam said quietly to Seaforth. And for the first time, Allen heard the kid’s voice shake. He reached out and touched the kid’s shoulder. He did it before he thought about it. Sam looked back at the soldier with gratitude and nodded, and the steel came back into his gaze. And he went to work.

  Sam went to the wall. Allen followed, stepping onto a thick plastic sheet that covered the floor, anchored into place by four heavy hooks in each corner. Allen wondered why someone had laid a carpet of plastic down over the dirt. Why did dirt need to be protected?

  Bullet holes marred the red wall; Sam, aloud, counted four.

  “I thought you said they cut their throats,” Allen said.

  Sam knelt in front of the bullet holes and he opened his rigid Pelican backpack. He pulled out a camera and photographed the wall. Allen glanced down into the backpack: a camera, a ruler, a heavy knife, an assortment of brown paper bags and envelopes, a marker pen, a laptop with a jumble of cords, and what looked like a medical kit. Sam dug out the bullets from the wall with a tool that looked like a tweezer and, to Allen’s surprise, he put each bullet into a plain coin envelope. He wrote with the marker on each.

  Then he stood and paced off the steps from the wall. He stopped and looked at his phone’s screen. Over the kid’s shoulder, Allen could see the execution video playing: another young man, blindfolded, a knife at his throat, a few men standing behind him.

  In front of a red wall, with four bullet holes in it. The shooting had happened before the execution.

  Allen glanced at Seaforth but the older man just watched the kid. He got up again, looked at the room. As if calculating, putting people in it who were no longer there, watching shadows, watching ghosts.

  He went into the back room. Concrete had been poured on the floor, and there were three sets of chains leading from the center of the room, shackles at the end.

  “Three prisoners?” Seaforth said.

  “Accomodations for three. Doesn’t mean there were three.” Sam took photos from every angle. Then he walked the perimeter of the walls and knelt by a stone on the far side. He ran fingers along the stone and then he gasped and stopped. He took a picture.

  Allen and Seaforth stepped closer and Allen saw initials scratched into the stone: DWC. ZAQ.

  “Are those initials…,” Seaforth began.

  “Yes. Danny’s and Zalmay’s.” For a moment he leaned against the wall, as if exhausted. They had tried to leave a trace of themselves here. A sign. He took pictures of the initials, forcing his hands to be steady.

  “Sir?” one of the soldiers said, coming into the room. “We just found something, in another building. You better come see.”

  “American soldiers, at least ten of them,” the boy’s uncle said. A team of his men were close behind him as they peered down into the village.

  “So not a relief agency,” one of the men said. “Unless they are checking it out to set up camp?”

  “Not how they operate,” the uncle said.

  “Why are they here?” the boy asked. “Pretending to be something they’re not?”

  No one answered him, and this stung. He thought it a fair question. And after a few minutes his uncle moved forward, the men following, fanning out as they had practiced in case they ever needed to reclaim the village of ghosts.

  It was a hole in one building’s floor, covered with a thick, worn wooden door. The door had been made flush with the floor and Sam saw strands of cloth caught in its hinges. A carpet that had covered the door had been pulled to the side.

  “I pulled the carpet,” the soldier said. “It just seemed odd, that everything else in the room was gone…but that the carpet was still here.”

  “Check for booby traps,” Seaforth said. “I want to open that door.”

  The soldiers did, with care, and found no telltale signs of wires or triggers along the door’s edge. Allen waited for Sam to go outside but he didn’t move from his position. In fact, he knelt to pull the door open, waiting for a nod from the men checking it for traps.

  The door creaked open. Stairs led down into darkness. Allen flashed lights into the pit. It was a room, a large one.

  They went down the stairs. Sam ran his flashlight along the shelves and froze. On the shelf lay what looked like strips of skin.

  Sam picked up one of the strips. It looked like Caucasian skin, gummed with blood. It was horrifyingly realistic. He studied it.

  “What is that?” Allen asked.

  “I think it’s latex,” Sam said. He put it in one of his brown envelopes, sealed it, and marked it with a pen. On the table lay a scattering of what looked like hair, and the hacked remains of a wig of dark hair.

  “Wigs are generally forbidden in Islam,” Seaforth said.

  “Yes,” Sam said. “If made of human hair, or if the purpose of wearing one is disguise or deceit.” He put the strands in a brown envelope and marked it with the pen.

  He put the flashlight up to the top shelf. Heads, molded out of plastic, a half dozen of them, empty of wigs. Sightless eyes stared back at Sam and Allen. They were not crude models, but carefully sculpted to look realistic in proportion and with a range of skin colors. Sam felt cold. The heads were of very high quality, the type that might be used in Hollywood special effects. They had been carefully crafted. One had a false neck with a narrow tube underneath it, dried a dark red inside the plastic.

  “What is this place?” Allen quietly asked. “How did a guy in the middle of nowhere have stuff like this?”

  “It’s a theater,” Sam said. Below was a box, with a return address in Pakistan scrawled on a label. The name on the address was Mirjan Shah. He pulled the box toward him. It held recordable DVDs and their cases. The DVDs were still on a spool. Sam photographed the box and the address.

  “Can someone look at these and see if they’re blank or recorded?” Sam asked. One of the soldiers took the box back toward the copter, where a laptop awaited. Sam ran a finger along the shelf. Dust and dirt.

  “A laptop,” Seaforth said. He pointed to a table. Sam picked up the laptop, an old Windows model. The hard drive had been removed from its bay. Nothing to be recovered. Sam slipped the laptop into the backpack.

  A soldier who’d been stationed outside entered the building. His face was pale under his helmet. “At the back of the village is a shed, and beyond it are mounds. Marked. I think they’re graves. Two of them.”

  And at the word two, Allen saw something break in Sam’s face.

  The mounds, barely evident except to an eye looking for graves, lay fifty yards behind the village. They had been marked with a simple wood stake, weathered and worn.

  Sam wondered if he was standing on his brother’s grave. All the hope bled out of him. What if there was another reason Danny’s picture had been in that prison file in a forgotten corner of the Brazilian jungle? What if he had never been in Brazil? But only here, buried in this alien, lonely quiet?

  Allen brought two shovels from the copter. He ordered his squad to keep a perimeter up; this was still a very dangerous place to be, and they wanted no surprises.

  “Sam, let me,” Seaforth said, reaching for one of the shovels.

  “No,” Sam said. “I’ll do it.” Then Allen and Sam rolled up their sleeves and dug.

  The graves were shallow and Sam carefully removed the soil. A musty scent rose from the graves, despite the dry, cold air. Allen braced himself for a stench but it wasn’t ripe; it was more like
the smell of rich dirt.

  Under the final layer of dirt lay a cocoon of cloth, spanning the close-together graves. Dried blood marred the canvas.

  Sam and Allen lifted the canvas and eased it onto the ground. “Let’s unroll it…,” Seaforth said.

  They did, slowly. Two bodies lay inside, mummified by the arid mountain, with the waxy decay of adipocere present on the faces. They looked misshapen, nightmares of death. The faces were not recognizable.

  “They both have their heads,” Sam said. “Those aren’t the clothes my bro…” He took a steadying breath, turning his face into the cool mountain breeze. “Those aren’t the clothes that Danny Capra was wearing in the video.” His voice was steady again. He knelt by his trusty Pelican and put on latex gloves.

  “You’re right,” Seaforth said. “They’re not. Is one…”

  “I think this one is Zalmay,” Sam said. The clothes appeared to be the same as those Zalmay wore in the video. The throat, even decayed, bore the mark of a slash.

  The other corpse was also dressed. Sam eased open the shirt the corpse wore and cut away the bottom of it. He inspected a care label and then placed it into another evidence envelope and marked it. Then he took the scalpel and prodded at the corpse’s stomach, where he’d pulled the shirt away.

  Seaforth watched. “Bullet holes, maybe?”

  Sam gave no answer. He cut an inch away from the hole; Allen tried not to gag. Sam dug out a bullet. He put it in another coin envelope.

  “Here. Shot to death. And that looks like a knife wound in the shoulder.”

  “Maybe they were wounded when they were captured,” Allen said.