The Mullah's Storm

by Young, Tom

  Parson approached the tank cautiously, wondering what to do. It might contain something he could use. It might also be booby-trapped. He saw no footprints in the snow, however, so nobody had gone near it recently. Not necessarily the kind of thing you’d booby-trap, anyway. Screw it, he decided.

  He stepped up on the broken track and wiped snow from the lid of a toolbox mounted on the outside of the tank. Beneath the snow, he uncovered a layer of rust that caked on his glove. He raised the lid and found wrenches, a hammer, a screwdriver, nuts, and washers, some of which lay encased in ice at the bottom of the toolbox. He also found a roll of cord, synthetic line much like American 550 parachute cord. Parson put the roll in his coat pocket, hoping the rope wasn’t too rotted.

  He crawled atop the tank, peered through an open hatch. He saw a tattered seat cushion and unfamiliar controls, two tillers like antique farm equipment, all dusted with snow. A metal data plate on the panel carried a serial number and some writing in Cyrillic. Parson recognized none of it except CCCP. A rod of some sort rested at an angle against a seat back. On closer inspection, Parson realized that its white color came not just from powdery snow. The thing was a bone, a femur. Parson saw no other remains, and he guessed animals had scattered the rest.

  He jumped down from the tank, rubbed his hands together to brush away the rust.

  “That was stupid, sir,” Gold said.

  “Probably.”

  They crossed the path, ducked under juniper boughs as Parson led deeper into the forest. The wall of a steep slope stretched in front of him, but the only way to easier walking led to sparser woods where they might be seen. He kept to the sharp grade, stopping every few yards to let Gold and the prisoner catch up. He wanted badly to take off his flak jacket. The extra weight bore down on him and made him feel claustrophobic. But he’d heard too many stories of flak jackets discarded by people now in wheelchairs.

  The snowflakes hardened into sleet, though the overstory of evergreen shielded Parson, Gold, and the mullah from the worst of it. Now that he walked under the trees, only rarely did Parson feel ice stinging his face, but when he did, it burned like birdshot fired from a twelve-gauge. They kneeled under an ancient Himalayan yew, its lowest branches forming a tree well that concealed them entirely. The black trunk glistened, laminated by ice. Gold shivered, and the old man looked at the ground.

  “How’s he doing?” Parson asked.

  “Better than I thought,” Gold said. “He’s been walking these mountains all his life. But he can’t do it all day.”

  “We’ll stop when I find some shelter.”

  “Heaven help us if it’s the wrong village.”

  “I know. What kind of reception do you think we’ll find around here?” Parson asked.

  “Tough to say. There are some hard-core Taliban in this province, but maybe they’ve made some enemies. And what makes things even harder to predict is that allegiances tend to go on sale in Afghanistan.”

  Parson considered whether he should just build a fire outside. He decided that might not get them dry, and it would attract attention. And when it did, he figured, we’d be right back to the coin toss of local loyalties. He felt relatively safe for the moment, though.

  The yew hid them so well that Parson decided to take advantage of it.

  “We can rest here,” he said.

  Parson glassed the mountainside with his binoculars, but he couldn’t see far and he liked it that way. Good cover for now. No sign of another human being. The mist made it hard to tell, but he thought the rise leveled out just above him. He’d grown up in the Rockies and he believed he had a sense of terrain. He remembered a thousand moments alone on a ridge with a .270 and his spotting scope, the gray rocks under his boots, the cold air in his lungs, and the blue sky clear and pure as eternity.

  The contrast with now made him so homesick it moistened his eyes, but the similarities gave him strength. He looked at the mullah. I’m a mountain man, too, hajji. You have no idea who the fuck you’re dealing with.

  Parson watched his breath drift through the air like smoke signals as he exhaled rhythmically. He’d hoped the hiding place might trap a little warmth, but he felt no relief from the cold. He pulled off his gloves, examined his hands. The reddened skin stretched tight across the pads of his fingers, which had no feeling at all. No frostbite yet, but he worried about it. He’d heard stories of people pulling off their gloves and leaving their fingertips inside.

  He put his hands in his coat, under his armpits. They felt like blocks of ice against his body. Parson looked at his gloves now draped across his knee. He considered cutting off the right glove’s index finger to better feel for his pistol’s trigger. No, he thought. If I do that, I’ll lose that finger. He put his gloves back on and looked at Gold and the mullah.

  “You can hitch him to me for a while if you’re tired,” Parson said.

  “I’ll take the pack,” Gold said. She unlocked the cuff on her wrist.

  They crawled from under the yew boughs, white dusting on their knees and shins. The rise turned nearly to a sheer cliff, but when Parson topped it, he found that his instincts were correct. The land smoothed into a clearing grown over in brown grass about knee high, like the broomsedge back home. The grass stems stuck up through the snow like long whiskers. At the far edge of the clearing, Parson saw a building obviously not put up by tribesmen.

  Corrugated metal lined the shack, and its steel door stood open and twisted from the frame, hanging by only the top hinge. A stovepipe rose from the flat roof, edges softened by a coating of snow.

  Parson inspected the structure through binoculars. Built by the Russians, he figured. Maybe a Spetsnaz camp at one time. God, I hope that stove works.

  He pointed to the shack as Gold joined him.

  “Let’s just watch it for a while,” he said.

  Gold whispered one word: “Mines.”

  Good point, Parson thought. Soviet special forces troops almost certainly would have protected some of the approaches by burying land mines, and they’d never been too particular about removing them. Plenty of Afghan kids with missing feet could tell you that. Still, he tallied the odds a little better than just walking up, with zero intel, to the first village he found.

  Parson shivered as he surveyed the old campsite. He pondered whether to use the woodstove if it remained, since the smoke might draw notice. Then he thought, Just use it after dark, dumbass. He figured the cold was affecting his mind if it took him that long to think of the obvious.

  He eyed the tree line around the clearing. Fog obscured the tops of the trees, and Parson imagined their trunks rising forever. The wind had calmed now, and it was so quiet he heard the swish of a pine needle cluster as it fell from above him and impaled itself in a drift.

  In the corner of his eye he saw movement at the far end of the clearing. A low bough sprang back from something that had moved it, releasing a shower of dry, crystalline snowflakes like pulverized glass. Parson drew his handgun and lowered his head, trying to disappear into the sedge. He pulled the mullah flat to the ground. Gold thumbed the safety on her rifle.

  Through the grass stalks, Parson saw a patch of dun-colored fur. It’s over, he thought. Can’t run from insurgents on horseback. I’ll shoot the prisoner like I should have done yesterday, and then I’ll take as many of them with me as I can.

  Then a strange animal stepped into the clearing, alone and riderless. Parson stopped his thoughts of killing and dying, and he tried to think of the word for that thing. Yeah, ibex. Asian mountain goat. Curved horns curled back over the creature’s shoulders, and its black nose emitted twin plumes of mist when it exhaled.

  Good left shoulder shot from here, thought Parson. Could take him down like a mule deer or a Dall sheep. Nah. I wouldn’t hurt that ibex. Besides, the shot would draw attention.

  The animal sniffed the air, then lowered its head and pulled a mouthful of brown grass. Parson regarded it through binoculars. Thicker fur at the base of its neck, a point of i
ce at the end of each hair. It stared in Parson’s direction and munched as if in deep thought, ears twitching. Then it looked away and resumed feeding. The ibex grazed across the clearing and nothing startled it, so Parson felt safe enough to move.

  He unlocked the chain attaching him to the prisoner and handed the cuff to Gold. Then he pulled the radio from his survival vest and gave that to her as well. She frowned like she didn’t understand.

  “We don’t need this radio getting blown up,” Parson whispered. “Stay behind me and try to walk where I walk. If I find a mine, just backtrack and get out of here.”

  Gold shook her head.

  “Yes,” Parson said. He raised his eyebrows: This is not a suggestion, Sergeant.

  Bent at the waist, he crept through the junipers and pines at the clearing’s edge, taking an arcing path toward the shack. The evergreen smell made him think of childhood Christmases. If it’s the last thing I smell, maybe except explosives, that’s all right, he thought. A small mercy.

  Parson stepped around a tangle of razor wire, a tuft of snow gracing each blade. He nicked his thigh in the man-made thicket of thorns, and a spot of blood appeared around the rip in his flight suit. That figured. A little gift from the Russians. Why the fuck did they want this place to start with?

  He glanced behind him and saw Gold and the mullah keeping their distance, well clear of the kill radius of any mine he might detonate. The tree line took him within fifty feet of the shack, and Parson let out a long breath. Made it, he realized. They’d have put mines farther out than this. Nothing left to do now but take a look.

  He pulled his Beretta and cocked it, and he tromped to the door, snow crunching as he made deep bootprints. Parson entered the cabin gun first, sweeping the barrel across the room as he watched for movement. He saw little in the dark shack until his eyes adjusted, and he figured he might as well have kept his pistol holstered. Anybody in here, he thought, would have drilled you before you got two steps inside.

  A cast-iron stove sat in the center of the room, its pipe extending to the ceiling. Steel bunk frames along the walls, sleeping places for eight troops. Only two contained mattresses, and they smelled of mold. Wooden ammunition boxes with Cyrillic lettering lay scattered across the concrete floor. A metal cook pot rested upside down on a table. Another door at the back of the cabin, fully closed. Two steel chairs between the bunks. Everything gone to rust and rot.

  He leaned outside and gestured to Gold with a thumbs-up. When she led the prisoner inside several minutes later, she said, “Looks like a bunch of men have been living here.” She unlocked her end of the chain, closed the cuff around the steel crossbar of the bunk nearest the stove, locking the prisoner to the bed frame. She put down the pack and leaned her rifle against the table. The mullah kneeled on the floor and began to pray, the gag muffling his words.

  Parson wondered about the soldiers who had lived here. If they really were Spetsnaz, they’d have been bright, thoroughly trained, and politically reliable. How had they suffered? Did they make it home? They’d served a misguided government that had done some awful things, but he found it hard to despise them. Yeah, some committed atrocities, but most were like me, he thought, professionals trying to complete a mission.

  The cold war had come before his time, but he remembered his late father’s stories about flying as a navigator and weapons systems officer in F-4s. The Phantoms screaming off the runway at Eielson, twin spikes of flame from the afterburners. Climbing through the thin air to meet the Bear bomber. Rocking the wings and waving to the tail gunner. Okay, Ivan, you’ve made your point. Now turn that thing around before I send you into the Arctic Ocean in pieces. Let’s not do this again real soon. Fly safe, boys.

  His dad once quoted some line from Yeats: “Those that I fight I do not hate.”

  Unlike that motherfucker on the floor.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Parson hoped they could stay in the shack until the weather lifted, but he knew they couldn’t count on it. Might as well make the most of it while we can, he thought. He looked around and found a dull ax. Its handle was splintered along the grain, ending in a sharp wooden point like some nasty prehistoric weapon.

  “Keep a lookout, will you?” Parson said. “I’ll make some kindling and then light a fire when it gets dark.” He placed rags over the single, cracked window.

  Gold lay prone on the floor in the doorway’s shadow, leaving little visible to the outside but the barrel of her rifle. The tip of the barrel danced as she shivered.

  Parson took the ax in his good hand, held it near the head. He swung it into an empty ammunition box, and the slats split with a sharp cracking sound. Thin nails held the slats together, and Parson pulled and twisted the slats apart until the box became a stack of firewood. Any torque on his right wrist produced a stab of pain, so he began holding down the slats with his foot and working them apart with his left hand. He chopped up four other boxes, creating a three-foot pile of kindling. Then he pulled off his gloves and picked at a splinter that had gone through the fabric, deep in the heel of his good hand. Now both hands hurt.

  He opened his pack and saw that all the water bottles were empty. That gave him another problem to solve. He emptied his pack and took it to the door.

  “All clear?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Gold said. “What are you doing?”

  “We’re out of water.”

  Parson stepped outside, scooped the backpack into a drift, filled the pack with snow. Then he hung it from a bunk frame and placed the old cook pot underneath it. The pot contained some kind of residue, but he had no better container. He searched the pockets of his survival vest until he found a small pillbox. He shook out two water-purification tablets, his red fingers fumbling, numbed by the cold. Dropped the tablets into the pot, faint clinks as they landed. Parson thought about putting some of the snow in his mouth, but he knew that could lower his core temperature.

  In another pocket he found waterproof matches, and he wanted very badly to light the stove right now. Wait, he told himself. Don’t get yourself killed with impatience. Think. He could remember nothing, not a fine car, not a beautiful woman, not one thing that had tempted him like those matches and that kindling.

  He pulled at the woodstove’s handle, but the grate would not budge. He turned the handle the other way. Still nothing. He picked up the ax and hammered the flat of the blade against the stove handle, and the grate clanged open. The mullah startled at the sound, then resumed looking out the door as if waiting for salvation.

  Gray ash spilled from the firebox, powder fine as graphite. Some drifted in the air and put Parson in mind of a genie released from a lamp. He didn’t bother to empty the ash pan, and he placed several sticks of kindling in the stove, stacked them at angles to each other for quicker burning. Took out his matches and stared at them for a moment, then set them by his woodpile. Parson decided another task might keep his mind off the cold, so he turned on his radio.

  “Bookshelf, Flash Two-Four Charlie,” he called.

  No answer.

  “Bookshelf, Flash Two-Four Charlie.”

  A British accent answered him: “Flash Two-Four Charlie, Saxon. Go ahead.”

  So the Royal Air Force was on station. Probably took off from Kyrgyzstan or as far away as Oman. Parson imagined the Nimrod jet orbiting in the stratosphere above him, the blizzard that trapped him just a cottony undercast to the RAF crew.

  “Saxon, Flash Two-Four Charlie. Have you been briefed on my status?”

  “Affirmative, mate. Search-and-rescue on alert for you at Bagram and Kandahar. Both aerodromes still fogged in.”

  Parson fought an urge to fling his radio into the wall. He walked in a circle, cursing, then took a deep breath. “Stand by to copy my position,” he said. Parson turned on his GPS and gave them his new coordinates. Then he asked, “Can you advise on position of friendlies in my vicinity?”

  “We can. Stand by for authentication.” Then, after a pause: “Flash Two-Four Charlie
, what’s the sum of the first two digits of your authenticator number?”

  “Five,” Parson called. Do I sound like a fucking raghead to you, Nigel?

  “Copy that. Right, then. You have enemy force movement reported to your west and southwest. There is an ANA unit operating to your east, but they’re not in communication with us.”

  Great, thought Parson. This province is filthy with Taliban, which I already knew. And somewhere in Asia there’s the Afghan National Army without a radio.

  “Flash Two-Four Charlie copies all,” he said. Parson turned off the set, stuffed it back into his survival vest.

  He wondered if he’d ever feel warm and dry again. There was still a little too much daylight for him to start the fire. But once it got dark, even insurgents with night vision would have trouble seeing the smoke, since the goggles would have so little ambient light to amplify. The bad guys could still smell, but he could do nothing about that.

  The gray outside deepened, and night began to gather at the bases of the trees. The darkness seemed to creep up from the ground. Parson took from his survival vest some fire starter of his own making: cotton balls soaked in Vaseline. Never expected to use these, he thought as he placed the oily cotton under the kindling.

  When blackness at last submerged the highest branches, Parson lit a match. The yellow flame flared out like wings, hissing as it consumed the chemicals at the tip. Parson felt the heat on his face. His cold fingers shook, and the flame jittered like an injured firefly as he tossed the match into the stove. The fire leaped into the cotton and embraced it, white strands going black and curling in the orange glow. Runnels of flame illuminated the lettering on one piece of wood, and Parson saw the numerals “7.62” until the fire obliterated them.