The truck driver was given the all clear. He climbed back into his rig that was large by Middle Eastern standards, but was like a toy compared to its American equivalent. As the guard waved him on, he pulled across the border and rumbled away, leaving the station clear.
Chloe reached out to put a hand on Wade’s arm. “Lie back,” she urged. “Close your eyes and act sick.”
Playacting went against the grain. It might be worth it to prevent a confrontation that could get the women hurt, however. Besides, it was hard to resist the appeal in her eyes. He slumped down lower in the seat and closed his eyes.
Kemal pulled forward. Wade heard the border guard speak from a position near the driver’s side window. A rustling sound indicated that their identification papers were being handed over. During the pause while they were scrutinized, Wade noticed the calls of birds. Somewhere a donkey brayed then fell silent again.
“Out,” the guard commanded. “Out of the vehicle.”
“Wait,” Freshta began.
“Do not speak. Out. The women will remove their coverings.”
Wade heard the swift intake of Chloe’s breath. No one in the station wagon moved or spoke. The magnitude of this disaster seemed to hold them in its grip, as though it had taken away their ability to react.
He put a hand to his side, then began to sit up. “Kemal,” he began, searching for the words in Pashtu that would alert the driver to be ready to make a move.
Abruptly Chloe swung toward her door and shoved it open. She erupted from the vehicle in a flurry of blue fabric. Screaming like a madwoman, she flew at the guard. With her face inches from his, she railed at him, calling him a defiler of women who sought to breach the sanctity of the veil for his own lewd and immoral purposes. Advancing on him, she demanded to know how he would feel if the women of his own family should be subjected to so shameful a necessity.
The guard blustered and waved his arms, but backed away the whole time. He was obviously demoralized, as if he’d never seen a woman in a temper before, never had one dare take him to task.
Chloe stalked him, talking faster, louder, waving her arms so her burqa flapped as if she would take flight. It looked as if she meant to chase the man back into his own guardhouse. Wade felt a warning tingle run down his spine. She was getting too far away from the station wagon and too near the guard. The man’s face was turning red, and his frown growing blacker.
With his pistol gripped tight in his hand, Wade spoke in an urgent undertone to the woman called Freshta. “Call her back,” he instructed. “Do it now. Tell her that I need her.”
“It will be as well,” the young woman answered in concern. Lifting her voice, she did as he’d suggested.
Chloe glanced back at them, then turned again to the guard. With a final gesture of angry contempt, she snatched their papers from his hand, then turned her back and strode toward them. Flinging herself in at the open door of the station wagon, she slammed it shut. Even as the sound echoed off the stone walls around them, she touched Kemal’s shoulder. “Go,” she said. “Drive away. Now!”
The driver said something incomprehensible, though the way he gripped the weapon he held in his lap spoke volumes.
“He says the guards will begin to fire at any moment,” Freshta translated.
Chloe put her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “They won’t if we go now. We have the initiative. Tell him. Please.”
She was right, Wade saw. Their window of opportunity was getting narrower every second, however. Already, the guard was walking toward them again.
As Freshta spoke to the driver in a fast undertone, he began to wag his turbaned head.
Wade had had enough. In hard, but low command, he said, “Drive!”
The driver recognized the tone, if not the meaning. He flung down the pistol and jerked the station wagon into gear. They untracked with a screech of rubber.
Regardless, the Tajik had the presence of mind not to turn the departure into an escape. After that first jerk, he pulled away like a man on a family outing.
They seemed to move too slowly, in fact. The contrast between the instinct for speed and the actual turning of the wheels made it feel as if they were crawling. Wade strained for the sound of a shout, a shot, anything that would indicate an alarm. At the same time, he fought the urge to pull Chloe down beside him so she wouldn’t make quite such a good target.
Freshta began to turn in her seat. “Don’t look back,” Wade warned. “Act as though we have a perfect right to leave.”
“Just so,” she said with a judicious nod, and faced forward again.
Chloe was staring at him. He risked a glance, half-afraid of what he might see.
“You’re giving the orders now?” she asked, her voice quiet.
“All I wanted was to get you out of there, pronto, before that goon recovered from the shock of seeing a woman turn into a witch in front of his eyes. You won, hands down. No use pressing your luck.”
“I thought…” She stopped.
“What?”
“That you might be afraid I’d be hurt.”
She was trying to see past the screen that concealed his features. Well, good luck to her. “I guess you could say that.”
“Then I should thank you.”
He was stunned into a long silence, during which they drove ever farther into Pakistan. “That’s it?” he asked finally. “You’re not mad because I horned in on your rescue operation?”
“You gave the orders that were required. You backed me up when I needed it. I’m grateful.”
He laughed and gave a slow shake of his head.
“What’s so funny?”
If she could be that forthcoming, then so could he. “Not funny, but amazing. What you did back there was one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen. I’ve known combat veterans who’d have thought twice about charging an armed guard with only words for weapons.”
She looked down at her hands. “I was just so mad that I…that it went all over me. The idea that he would take away the burqas the instant they might cause a problem, or that he could prevent us from leaving a place where staying is a daily penance, just made me crazy.”
“Whatever the reason, you did it. You got us out.”
She met his gaze there in the moving station wagon as the Hazaristan border fell away behind them, met and held it without instantly looking away as she usually did. The color of her eyes was a deep aquamarine-blue, he discovered, and almost crystalline in their clarity. She saw him, saw through him, as no one else ever had or would, or so it seemed. Deep inside him, something stirred as if in ancient recognition. And he wanted her as he’d never wanted anything or any woman in his whole life, wanted her with a pure longing that transcended physical desire to become soul-shattering necessity. He stared at her transfixed, aware that here and now, when he was most profoundly glad to be a man, he was dressed like a damn skirt-bound woman.
“I was terrified,” Chloe said, her voice scarcely above a whisper.
It was then that he noticed the fine tremors that shivered along the folds of cloth covering her. Brave beyond words while she needed to be, she was paying the price now that the danger was over.
He reached out and touched the shape of her arm under her burqa, following it to the elbow and along her forearm until he could grasp her hand. With a tentative, inviting movement, he tugged her toward him.
Her gaze became valley-deep and edged with pain. Seeing it, he knew beyond a doubt that she meant to leave him. Still, he didn’t look away. And after a second, she moved to his side, fitting herself against him while being careful of his knife wound. She relaxed by degrees, letting him hold her while they wound down out of the rift of the Azad Pass. He’d thought she might cry, but she did not. Together, they lay back, their eyes wide as they stared at the road ahead of them.
The station wagon had covered no more than fifteen miles when white, smokelike steam began to seep from under the hood, streaming back with the speed of their travel. It s
melled of hot metal as it swirled in at the windows, and its pungency stung their eyes. Chloe sat up, and Wade followed suit. Kemal slowed, staring anxiously ahead as if in search of a place wide enough to pull off the road. Before one appeared, the engine died.
The Tajik steered onto the narrow shoulder as they rolled to a stop. He sat for a moment with disgust printed on his face. Then he slammed the heel of his hand against the steering wheel. Opening the door, he got out and stalked to the hood. He popped it loose, then flung it upward on its hinges.
Steam boiled out in a dirty cloud. The driver jumped back with an exclamation followed by a string of obvious invective. Freshta gave a nervous laugh, then bit her lip. With a worried glance over her shoulder in Wade’s direction, she said, “You must know something of American machines. Is this one on fire, do you think?”
“Running hot again,” Wade answered. “I’d say the head’s probably cracked.”
“A serious matter then?”
“Can’t drive with it, if that’s what you mean. The engine will have to be replaced.”
Freshta looked at Chloe, apparently for enlightenment. As the concept was translated, she said, “I fear this will be difficult, since a similar vehicle that has been smashed must be found. It will take time, much time.”
That made sense. Not too many automobile parts stores or even wrecking yards in this neck of the woods. “Looks like we’re stuck.”
The verdict was pretty much complete as Kemal returned to lean in the open door with his hands braced on either side. With fatalism in his face, he spoke to Freshta, and she sighed as she translated verbatim, “She does not go.”
“Mind if I take a look?” Wade opened his door and unfolded himself to his full height.
Kemal turned and put his back to the brace between the doors while he took a cigarette from his pocket and lit it with a kitchen match.
Taking that for permission, Wade took a step toward the front of the vehicle. The damn burqa tangled around his ankles, and he stopped, ripped the thing off and slam-dunked it into the back seat. Then he walked with his own free and natural stride to where the wagon’s hood yawned open.
The head was cracked, all right. The valves had seized up as well. From the heat still rising off the engine, he wouldn’t be surprised if the whole, blessed thing wasn’t half-melted.
They were on foot.
One of the other doors opened and closed. Chloe moved from behind the screen of the hood, coming to stand beside him. “Well, what do you think?”
He gave her a crooked smile. “She’s most definitely not going to go.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“Right. Where’s all the GPS monitoring and cell phone wizardry when you really need them?”
“Put those out of your head,” she said. “Try to think as if we’d gone back in time a couple of decades.”
“Or more,” he agreed, nodding toward where a man led a donkey burdened with a rolled rug, two clay water jars, and three bright-eyed youngsters under six years old along the opposite side of the road. “So what do we do now?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“It’s your party.”
“It wasn’t supposed to end this way,” she said in brooding irritation. “Besides, I know nothing of this area.”
“Well,” he drawled, glancing around him in the fading light that was drenched in sunset colors, “we might flag down a passing camel. Or maybe you could show an ankle so we could hitch a ride—that’s if you can pick out a driver who isn’t a psycho with a grudge against Americans.”
“This isn’t funny!”
“Who’s joking?” It was a serious business in all truth, though he was painfully aware of an odd euphoria running like wine in his veins. He wasn’t sure if he was light-headed still from loss of blood, exhilarated at being out of Hazaristan, or if it had something to do with the woman beside him. Whatever the cause, he liked the feeling.
“There are four of us. We’ll have to wait for a truck at least.”
“Or we can start walking. But if we’re going to strike out on foot, it’s time to lose the burqa.”
“Not that again!”
He wasn’t going to be deterred, not this time. “You aren’t on Hazaristan soil anymore, and no one is looking. Take it off.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“We had a bargain.”
She gave a long-suffering sigh before she said, “Pakistanis aren’t a lot more progressive about women and their bodies than the Hazaris. Besides, half the men passing on this road are either Hazara or Afghans, as is Kemal.”
“What’s that got to do with it?” Wade thought he knew, but was in no mood to be helpful.
“You might want to think twice about setting up a situation where you have to defend my honor.”
She did have a point, as much as he hated to admit it. Before he had to capitulate, however, Freshta made her way around the station wagon’s hood to stop beside them.
“Kemal and I have been talking,” she said without preamble.
“That right?” Wade glanced to where the driver had moved into view. The Tajik’s features were grim behind his beard, which might or might not mean anything. “And?”
“We see no reason for the two of us to go forward when we will only have to retrace our steps again.”
“Freshta, no,” Chloe protested.
“Hear me out, please,” the Afghan girl said, her gaze earnest through the mesh of her burqa. “This is no easy decision.”
“If it’s what I think…”
“Please,” Freshta said again, then went on as Chloe fell silent. “The way to Peshawar is clear. You have no need of a guide. It will be easier for only two people to find someone to take them, as well, so we four would likely have to split up into separate vehicles. We will leave you here, then, Kemal and I, while the two of you go on together.”
It made sense to Wade. As he shot a look at Kemal, the driver gave him a nod as though to say the plan suited him, too.
Chloe didn’t appear to see it. With her gaze on Freshta, she asked, “You would leave me to care for a wounded man?”
“He isn’t so bad, I think. You must trust that he can manage this short journey.”
The Hazari girl was on to him, Wade thought, though he wasn’t sure how he’d slipped up.
“And what of being caught alone with him?”
“You are in Pakistan where such things may be frowned on but not punished by death,” Freshta said evenly. “Soon you will be in the United States where they don’t matter at all.”
“What if Ahmad learns of our leaving and follows us?”
“You must trust your American to protect you.”
Chloe’s expression showed little confidence, but she didn’t pursue it. Instead she asked, “And what of your mission?”
“That I will entrust to you.” As Freshta spoke, she lifted the skirt of her burqa and took a small flat package from the sash that was wrapped around her waist. She held it in her hands for a second, then extended it as if completing a ceremony.
Chloe made no move to accept it. She gave him a brief glance, Wade saw, as if she doubted the wisdom of allowing him to see the transfer. That sharpened his interest so he looked more closely. The package seemed about the size and shape of a video, but could be anything, even a nice, neat bundle of explosives. If it was dangerous, however, Kemal didn’t seem worried. The driver stared down the road as if bored with women’s chatter.
“Take it, Chloe. You must.”
“I can’t,” she said. “I have no idea who I should give it to, or how to find them.”
“I could tell you what has been done in the past, but it no longer matters,” Freshta said quietly. “It will be much better if you take it to the States with you. There you may find a respected journalist who cares enough to make it the sensation that it deserves.”
“Oh, but I didn’t intend…”
“I know. I am aware of your dedication, your many good deeds
and great heart. We have spoken of you among us, Ayla and I, and also Willa who is mother to your dead stepsister’s husband. We have thought long and well, and this is what we decided between us. This mission was never mine, Chloe. It was always to be yours.”
“No.”
“Yes. Attend me, my sister in our cause.”
“But if I go now, I may never be allowed to return.”
“So be it. Some things are meant in this life, and perhaps it was kismet that brought you to my country, to suffer with its women so that you might do this thing now. No, truly,” she said in haste as Chloe tried to speak. “If you return to Hazaristan you will die. You are too different to escape notice for long. Someone, somewhere, will betray you for favor, money or hope of paradise, and that will be the end. If women like me wish to risk our lives, this is as it should be. This is our land, the country of our birth and our hearts, and we have no wish to leave it for another. But it is not your country, our Chloe. You belong to America. Go there where women are free, and do what you may to help us be free also.”
Chloe lifted her head. With what sounded like tears clogging her voice, she said simply, “If it pleases you, sister of my heart.”
It was then that Kemal gave a grunt of impatience and pushed away from the stalled vehicle. His attention was not on the women, however, but fixed on the road ahead where a truck, indistinct in the growing dimness except for the twin beams of its headlights, came toward them on its way up the pass. Striding out onto the pavement directly in its path, the Tajik held up his hand like a traffic cop in a silent movie.
For long seconds, there was no sound except the whine of the diesel engine. Then came the hiss and squeal of air brakes. The truck was stopping.
With an imperious wave in Freshta’s direction, Kemal called out to her.
Wade Page 12
