The village had grown into a small town in the past eight years. There were fewer animals in the street, more buildings with signs indicating business was being conducted. Some of them had debris from explosions spread out front. He couldn’t tell if the events causing the destruction were recent. He walked south, staying on the main drag but near the buildings, close to the entrances to alleyways if he needed them. Cars passed but they were sparse. The population walked, rode bikes, or sat atop work animals. The Southern mountains offered a hard life but there were no complaints on the faces of the people he passed. Outside the town food was grown, cows and goats tended, chickens raised. Within the informal boundary of the village food was prepared and sold, masonry was worked, clothing made. There was work for anyone who wanted it and unless an inhabitant was rich or busy shooting at Americans or rebels, the days were busy. Jarvis walked by open doors where men in long beards and women in full burka tended their business. All looked up as he passed, some with malice and others with disinterest. What Jarvis looked for was anyone who reached for a cell phone. Children played in the street, the occasional car swerving around them harmlessly. He turned a corner and to his right was an open bazaar with perhaps a hundred people milling about. There was price negotiating going on, a few disputes, and general camaraderie. There were also a lot of rifles, pistols, and large swords. Jarvis cut to his left and went up a small side street he remembered from the days when they had returned to the village and searched for collaborators to the ambush. He held a mental map of the maze of alleys and cutbacks that would take him to the open square he had raced into trying to find Brin. The walls were closer here and he brushed up against several people who did not yield as they passed. He turned his head frequently, checking that no one who had passed was circling back, showing more interest than necessary. The feel was more hostile than when he’d last been here, but it was subtler. What he felt was not fury, but weariness. They were tired of the years of hostility. Afghanistan was always fighting a war and this was just the latest. Most didn’t care about the Taliban one way or the other, it was just a reality of life. But the war forced them to make choices and even if they chose against the violence, the repression, and the daily death of the Taliban, they did not do it for love of the West. As he wound his way closer to the square, Jarvis knew the line between friend and foe had blurred here.
It took another ten minutes of crossing streets and alleys. Then with a jolt he turned a corner and the scene in front of him matched the picture in his head, only from a different angle. The square he’d raced into, but from across the way. The building he’d chased Brin’s captors into, the second floor where guards had shouted warnings. The square was busier than it had been that day, but the feeling was the same. Commerce and life mingled. A few more balconies had been blasted away but even more new masonry was evident in a dozen spots – walls and doorways repaired, ruined, and repaired again. Jarvis scanned the square for lookouts. There was no US military presence, a few Afghan police in the far corner more than 50 yards away, and again, rifles slung on many shoulders. He looked for the protective spread favored by Taliban militants; one or two children seeming to play but more interested in scanning faces in the crowd. A long-scout as far away as possible and on high ground who could see anyone coming from a distance. And at least two armed soldiers near any entrance to a safe house or hideaway. Jarvis focused on the building where he’d chased Brin into, but aside from being nondescript it seemed to hold no attention for any of the dozens of people in the square. Children from kindergarten to teen played among the men and women doing business and socializing. A few kicked old soccer balls, others chased and played tag. A few held life-size wooden guns and played the Middle East version of cops-and-robbers. There seemed to be a lot of death and disagreements over wounds and whether they were mortal.
He stepped a few feet into the square. There was a handful of Western-looking men among the crowd. UN workers, foreign military or mercenaries. Afghanistan was a mélange. Jarvis did not draw as much attention as he would have in uniform. The new view gave him a better look. Thirty yards to his left, a café spilled out into the square. Half a dozen wooden tables were occupied by men drinking strong tea. Two had rifles that looked well-used. They drank and talked but spent more time looking around the square than at each other. A doorway ten more yards up from them captured their attention as well – one was always looking at it while the other kept an eye on the crowds. Jarvis turned his attention to the other side of the square to his right. All the way across the square but directly opposite the doorway the men found so interesting, a balcony hung off the second story of a building with few people going in and out the ground floor door. Jarvis squinted. A man with sunglasses paced the ten steps of the balcony, a rifle loosely in his hands. Jarvis cupped his hands over his eyes; there was a scope on the rifle. The sniper on the balcony, the two guards watching an entrance; he’d found a lair, though no way to know if it was the one he sought.
Jarvis stayed out of sight of the informal but effective security force and leaned against a wall. None of the guards could see him and he could keep an eye on the entrance until someone familiar entered or exited. The wait wasn’t long. He’d barely worked up a sweat when the door under guard burst open and a small, ugly man emerged. The man shouted at the table of tea drinkers and pointed to the other side of the square. One of the seated men jumped up and grabbed his rifle. Jarvis looked toward the balcony across the way and could see the guard there take up a sniper’s stance. The ugly man waited until the sentry from the café had made it over then he turned and barked another order. A larger, older guard came out with a pistol in his hand and bullets strapped bandolier-like across his chest. He moved confidently, as though he’d seen many gunfights. A few seconds later a tall, thin man emerged, moving slowly and without looking around. As if out for a stroll, he scratched his long beard, patches of gray making him look like an imam. Flowing robes and an ancient but sparkling clean head-dress made him stand out. He did not wait for the guard detail to fall into place; it did so as he moved. There was deference in the demeanor of the men who guarded him and as he stepped into the square, the bustle opened around him.
Jarvis knew the face, the angle of the walk. It was the man the US military had questioned repeatedly about the ambush and attack on the Americans eight years earlier. A clan leader, not exactly a religious icon but politically strong. No connection could be made then, but common knowledge was more credible than evidence. Mahmud Said had survived two decades as the strongman of this patch of Afghanistan and Jarvis was only mildly surprised to see he was still alive. There was a slight limp on Said’s left side. Jarvis watched him cross the busy expanse and walk toward a break on one side of the square. He waited just a moment and then began to follow. His heart beat just a little faster as each step took him closer to the street where his Humvee had been destroyed and a building filled with children had crumbled.
The entourage around Said looked straight ahead; the sniper watched for threats further out. They weren’t looking for a lone soldier. Anti-Taliban government forces, competing clans, businessmen with small armies at their disposal – that’s where danger lay. Said seemed indifferent. The limp hadn’t been there when Jarvis had seen him that one time, being treated deferentially by a military police liaison in front of a mosque filled with ready-to-be-violent followers. Jarvis imagined the scenarios that would have injured Said. None involved tripping over a bunny rabbit as he picked flowers in a field. Violence followed and emanated from Said. Jarvis stayed far enough back that he might lose the group but he was sufficiently sure where they were headed. The second prayer call of the day began shortly and the house of worship where Jarvis had first seen Said was a five-minute walk and only a couple hundred paces from the site of the ambush. Jarvis watched the group pass through an arch out of the square and onto a short walk that turned into an alleyway. He went to his right instead and stepped through a small shop that, like apparently every other bu
ilding, had at least one table with men drinking tea. There was no clear distinction between the front and back of the store/café and Jarvis slipped into the heavily trafficed walkway on the other side. He turned right again and worked his way past men talking quickly and agitatedly, though not at or about him. He was circling around, working his way to the mosque he recollected was a couple hundred yards to his left. The buildings were too close together for him to look up and try to see the minaret. He relied on a mental map as he wound through this part of the village, finally turning left when he passed a woman in full niqob wringing out a large shirt while standing on a step leading to a narrow door. He could hear now the sound of the muezzerin calling the faithful to worship. He followed the sound and the path matched where he had been heading. He turned one last corner and the voice filled the air, echoing in his ears and raising hairs on his neck. Jarvis had heard it hundreds of times, but it still brought forth an emotion that had nothing to do with war, or violence, or hatred. He ignored the feeling and looked at the entrance of the mosque. Said’s guards knelt on rugs outside, guns by their knees. Said prayed inside.
Jarvis’ plan was more of a loose notion of what he wanted to accomplish, less of a sequential series of steps on how to achieve it. He needed time with Said alone. A request for a personal audience wasn’t likely to be well received, though. He watched the guards, who tempted the good will of Allah by regularly raising their heads to scan the streets for threats. Even if he got past the guards, he’d stand out like a wine stain on white carpet. He briefly considered a disguise and almost laughed out loud, the image of him wriggling into a burka leaping to mind. A couple of kids too young to be expected to pray ran by him, kicking a dilapidated soccer ball back and forth. He watched one boy run ten yards ahead as his friend kicked the ball up the street and the kid intersected the ball’s path perfectly. Jarvis thought back to his football days and remembered the advice of the receivers’ coach: go where the ball isn’t – yet. He turned around and retraced his steps.
Five minutes later he entered the square at the spot where he’d started. The sniper was at his station, but more relaxed now, keeping an eye on where Said would return from the mosque. No other guards prowled the café or walkways. Jarvis joined a group of men who were either discussing the political events in Kandahar or creating a grocery list for dinner – his Farsi was limited. He crossed the square and entered a dried goods store next to the building containing the rooms from which Said had emerged. Like all the others, this place of commerce and gathering had more means of ingress and egress than a block of Swiss cheese. Jarvis passed through and out the back to a small walkway running behind the buildings.
Stragglers from the square edged past Jarvis, carrying bags of fruit or bundles of clothes. No one seemed interested in him or the scarred wooden door leading to Said’s lair. That didn’t seem right. He walked past the door, as disinterested as anyone else and continued ten yards to the back entry of a stall selling fabric. He acted the tourist, fingering a heavy wool shawl and watching the alley. One of the men he’d passed, holding some fruit and with the ubiquitous rifle over one shoulder, had stopped in a doorway further down and pulled out a fig. Leaning back to get out of the sun, he bit it in half. The guard had abandoned his post during the prayers to go get a snack.
Unless Jarvis wanted to wait for the man to need a bathroom break or he wanted to take on the sniper, this was his best chance. Two people walked down the alley past the guard, otherwise it was empty. Jarvis waited but as they turned the far corner, two women emerged from the same shop Jarvis had used to enter the alley. He waited for them to leave. The walk was empty. He took a deep breath, grabbed the shawl unnoticed, and started toward the guard.
Noise from the shops floated into the alley but they were alone. The guard looked casually toward Jarvis as he put the rest of the fig into his mouth then turned to look the other way, sensing no danger. Jarvis quickened his step and covered the fifteen feet in seconds. As the man turned forward and looked down into the bag to pull out something else to eat, he felt a mass moving toward him. Instinct propelled him back against the wall and his hands reached for the rifle. Before he could untangle the bag and grab for the gun, Jarvis was on him. With the momentum of his full weight moving at a fast walk, he threw his left elbow into the guard’s face. The nose broke immediately. Jarvis turned his shoulders hard toward the man and punched him in the center of the diaphragm before the pain from the broken cartilage could reach the guard’s brain. It hit him simultaneously – the surprise of the attack, the agony in his face, and the sudden inability to draw a breath. Stunned and confused, his hands went to whatever part of his body they could reach. Jarvis quickly looked up and down the alley for any observers and saw none. He took the guard’s head in both his hands and jerked it backwards, short and hard. The dull sound of the skull against the stone wall was lost in the man’s rattling breath. Jarvis embraced him and slid him down to the ground, unconscious and rasping for air through his mouth.
Hunching over him, Jarvis arranged the gun across the guard’s lap and folded his legs in front. He leaned him back and put the bag with several pieces of fruit remaining atop the gun. The piece of cloth he’d taken from the shop went over the man’s head and shoulders, hanging down on either side. Jarvis arranged the guard’s head so his chin rested on his chest. Slightly obscured by the cloth, he looked like a hard-working sentry who was taking a much-needed siesta. It wouldn’t fool too many people for long, and if another member of Said’s entourage arrived all hell would break loose. Jarvis got up and walked across to the door going into Said’s safe house just as three young men came around the far corner. They were too interested in pushing one another hard back and forth and laughing to worry about Jarvis. He waited until they passed and then put his hand on the warm metal handle. Expecting he would have to pick a lock or smash open the door, he gave a cursory twist. It opened silently and with a slight push he let the light into a small, cluttered room. He stepped in and shut the door quickly, waiting for his eyes to adjust and hoping there wasn’t someone else in a corner of the room training a gun on him. Ten seconds passed and there was no sound of gunfire nor the feeling of metal ripping into his body. He could now make out the surroundings. It was more broom closet than entryway into a secret hideaway of a powerful Taliban clan leader.
The door at the other end of the messy room was closed but loose on its hinges. He could see light coming from the cracks. Jarvis drew his gun and went to the wall beside the door. Peering through a small gap he could see the room beyond. It was a kitchen, simple but clean. Vegetables sat on a wooden table in the center. A stove was to the right. Two pots steamed on gas burners. A late lunch would be ready for Said after his prayers, but the cook was not present. Either she was in a different room or the guards doubled as food preparers. It was the former, proven by the door on the other side of the kitchen swinging open and a young woman wearing far less than a burka coming in carrying the carcass of a recently killed chicken. Despite being little older than eighteen, she swung the chicken onto the table and started hacking at it with the cleaver in her other hand with such precision she could have worked at a Brooklyn butcher shop.
Being that age and that brazen, she could only be a daughter of Said’s. Anyone else would be too deferential, too afraid, to move with such confidence even alone. Jarvis decided there was only one way to find out. He swung open the door and pointed the pistol at her. The cleaver stopped in mid air and her eyes widened but she did not look afraid. Surprise was quickly replaced by anger. She turned her shoulders and Jarvis pictured Tom Brady getting ready to throw the ball downfield, except the pigskin in this case was a large, flat, dangerous knife.
“Stop! No!” Not in Farsi, but universal in its meaning. He repeated the words in her language and audibly cocked the gun. She got angrier but the tension in her throwing arm lessened and she let it fall to her side. She spit out several expletives, two of which he recognized.
Jarvis mov
ed a few steps closer but still out of cleaving range. He motioned with the gun for her to put it down. She complied but didn’t put it out of reach. He used a similar waving motion with the gun to make her back away and stand near the sink. The thought flitted across his mind that if he had a daughter, he hoped she’d act with the same boldness displayed by this girl. He hoped he wouldn’t have to kill her.
“English? Speak any English?”
She almost spit at him when she realized he was an American. Through clenched teeth she said in Farsi something along the lines of not speaking the language favored by marauders, invaders, murderers and pigs. Jarvis’ Arabic was getting better by the minute. He needed her to stay calm and be a good hostage. When Said returned, if the sequence in which the guards left was reversed upon entering the house, he would leave two guards outside and be preceded into the house by the small ugly man while the larger, dangerous bodyguard stayed with his boss until the coast was clear. If they looked out back first, Jarvis was screwed.
Keeping an eye on the girl to make sure she didn’t pick up some vegetables on the counter and hurl them at him, he pushed open the door to the rest of the house and took a quick look. It was not dissimilar to the many others he’d seen, including the one where Brin had been held and almost executed. He closed the door and motioned for the girl to come toward him. She complied but eyed the cleaver as she passed. He tut-tutted her and she kept her hands to her sides. Jarvis pushed the door open again and motioned her through, following closely. Her hair smelled of flowery shampoo – unusual for an Afghan woman who was forced to follow Sharia law which barely permitted soap. In the large room Jarvis could take a closer look at the setup. The front door was twenty feet straight ahead. To his right was a small door next to a larger closet door. He knew it led to a basement. He passed the girl without taking his eyes off her and tried the door handle. It was unlocked. Opening it slowly, he peered down into the darkness. A short staircase and the feeling of a large expanse below. Silent, lightless, unoccupied. He tilted his head toward it but the girl didn’t move. He raised the gun to her again and gave her a grim look. No time for games. She held his stare and moved toward the door. As she passed him, she said clearly and distinctly, with little accent:
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