by Tom Young
The sun hurt Gold’s eyes as she stepped down the ramp and onto the ground. She’d left her shades in a pouch on her MOLLE gear, one more little thing to look a bit less formidable. Also, she wanted to make eye contact when she spoke with the villagers.
At the back of the Cougar, she took a deep breath and scanned her surroundings. No one in sight. Just more chickens. Another cat, sleeping on a doorstep. She began walking toward the house with the flag.
Gold tried to move as casually as possible. Too fast a pace might have appeared aggressive. Too slow might have seemed like stealth.
This could be a trap, she knew all too well. Back in 2009, she’d served at a base in Khost where CIA spooks planned to meet with a hot contact. A Jordanian doctor claimed to have access to al-Qaeda’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Gold wasn’t in on the meeting; the Jordanian spoke Arabic, not Pashto, and so her services had not been required.
She was walking to the chow hall when the doctor detonated himself. Gold knew what had happened the instant the blast wave took her breath away. The suicide bombing killed seven agency people. For her, not being needed on that day meant not needing to die.
Now she wondered if her next step might bring an explosion or the crack of a tracer. The wind felt good against the back of her neck; the day was bright but cool. Her head had cleared from the IED blast earlier, and she felt focused on her mission. Not bad for a last moment, she considered, as long as the end came quickly.
It did not come at all. She reached the door, glanced back at the MRAPs, and knocked. “Salaam,” she said.
Shuffling sounds came from inside. Whispers in Pashto. Gold could not make out the words. She listened hard for anything metallic—rifle safeties, fire mode selectors, or grenade pins—but she heard none of that. Finally a female voice said, “Assalamu alaikum. But why do you defile our village with these machines?”
“Only to talk, my sister,” Gold said. “I believe we have a common enemy.”
“You are not my sister. And we all have enemies.”
“Then let us discuss them,” Gold said.
Inside the house, a long silence. Gold breathed just a little easier. If a burst of automatic weapons fire was going to come through that door, it would have happened by now. She thought she heard whispers within. A vast chasm of culture and religion stretched between her and the women inside; Gold wondered what common reference points she could call on if the conversation continued.
She thought of only one: The taproot of every faith, the core of every philosophy, was human suffering. Maybe the women here had seen so much of it, they’d want to try something different to stop it.
“My sister,” Gold said, “I am still here. If you wish to talk, I would like to meet you. If you wish me to go, I will leave you in peace.”
After several seconds, the door unbolted, swung open. A woman in a blue burka stood at the entrance. Gold could see only her eyes. They were black, surrounded by creased skin. In the room behind her stood two other women dressed the same way.
“Thank you,” Gold said. “Peace be upon you. May two of my colleagues enter? They bring a small gift.”
The woman at the door peered outside at the MRAPs.
“No men may enter.”
“They are two women,” Gold said.
The Afghan woman looked at Gold in apparent surprise. “They may come inside,” she said.
Gold motioned with her arm, and in a few seconds Ann and Lyndsey came from the back of the Cougar. Lyndsey carried the sugar. Suddenly Gold had second thoughts about the gift. Would it seem patronizing? Too late now.
When Gold and the Lionesses entered the home, Gold said, “We have sugar for your tea.”
“That is generous,” the woman at the door said. “Times are hard. We have not had that luxury in a while.” From her tone, she didn’t seem especially impressed, but neither did she seem insulted.
“May we be seated?” Gold asked.
“You may.”
Gold gestured to Ann and Lyndsey, and all three sat cross-legged on jute rugs spread across the stone floor. What little light entered the room came from glass mounted at an angle in an irregular-shaped window. Daylight showed at the top edge of the ill-fitting sash. In the ceiling, Gold saw rafters cut from birch trunks, bark still peeling, thatch of grass and brush stuffed between them. A fire burned in a corner hearth.
The woman who’d been doing the talking sat and removed her head covering. Her gray hair was tied tightly, and her lined face was dark and leathery, a record of a difficult life. The other two women kept their faces hidden.
“Why have you come to us?” the elderly woman said.
“Children have been taken for soldiers,” Gold said. “Refugees from the shaken earth have been killed merely for accepting help. I am told that even among the Talibs, some do not approve.”
“I know of these things, but they are the business of men.”
“Indeed,” Gold said. She paused, considered whether to press further. Well, she had come this far. “Perhaps it is the business of a Mullah Durrani. Do you know him?”
The woman looked down at the rug on which she sat. In the colors of its jute strands, Gold saw the pattern of a mosque, dome and minarets.
“We shall have tea,” she said, “with your gift of sugar.” The woman gave orders to the other two. They dipped water from a pail and placed a kettle over the fire.
When steam rose from the kettle, the women added green tea leaves. After the tea had brewed, they poured it into clay cups and added sugar.
“Hamdillah,” Gold said. Literally, Praise be to Allah, but often used as a thank-you.
The two women who gave out the cups never uttered a word. Daughters, perhaps. Only the older woman spoke, and she never offered her name. She sipped her tea silently. Finally she said, “I am one of Mullah Durrani’s wives. My husband has retired from jihad and all public matters.”
Despite the burning hearth, Gold shivered. She hadn’t expected to get this close to Taliban leadership. One of the daughters rose to add dry sticks to the fire. The flames sizzled into the twigs, flared yellow to orange.
Gold watched the fire for a moment, then asked, “Does your husband know of Black Crescent?”
“I am certain he does. He keeps informed in his retirement.”
“Do you believe he would speak with us?”
The woman stared straight at Gold. “Never,” she said. “He will not hold counsel with infidels.”
Two steps forward and one step back, Gold thought. If this never went further, she’d accomplish little.
“I would like to talk with my colleagues in English,” Gold said. “They do not understand your language well. We do not mean to be rude.”
“You may speak among yourselves,” the woman said.
Gold briefed Ann and Lyndsey on the conversation so far. Like Gold, they had expected to meet a distant cousin of Durrani’s at best. A lucky break to find a wife. But if she wouldn’t help, then so what?
“I have an idea,” Ann said. “Appeal to the maternal instinct.”
“Maybe so,” Gold said. That approach had worked when she talked to the women at the refugee camp attacked by Black Crescent. Perhaps it would work here, too.
“What mother wants her child taken from her?” Ann said.
Gold sipped her tea while she gathered her thoughts. The tea was not too sweet; the Afghan women apparently intended to make that bag last a while. Steam rose from the liquid, and it burned going down.
“My sister,” she said in Pashto, “I know your husband has waged jihad. I know your family has produced warriors. But do you not want something more than war for your children? At least until they are old enough to fight as men?”
The wind strengthened outside. A gust shifted some of the thatch overhead and made the birch poles creak. Gold wondered if this was a freak event or some seasonal wind. She’d heard of a dry northwesterly called the Bad-i-Sad-O-Bist-Roz, but she couldn’t recall if it came this time of yea
r. Parson would know.
“We do not carry sons for nine months only to see them disappear,” the older woman said. “Jihad is blessed by God, but for fighters old enough to wear the beards of Muslim men.”
“Then will your husband speak with us?” Gold asked. “When the Talibs came to power, they punished pederasts. Your husband can still protect Afghan children, despite our differences.”
“How could he help you, if he so wished?”
“Perhaps he or his contacts know something of Black Crescent, where its leader hides.”
That was pushing it, Gold knew. But now she’d laid it out, exactly what she wanted. Either she would get it or not. If not, better to find out now.
“Call on me in two days,” the woman said. “I will have an answer by then.”
“That is all I can ask,” Gold said. She placed her right hand over her heart. “Hamdillah.”
“Assalamu alaikum.”
Gold rose to leave. The two Lionesses stood up with her. When she opened the door, the wind nearly tore it from her hands. The gust filled the room behind her. She looked back at Ann and Lyndsey and saw ashes swirl from the hearth. Banked embers glowed and crackled. Gold sensed she had set new forces into motion, on courses yet unclear.
* * *
Rashid lit a Marlboro. Parson started to tell him he knew better than to smoke that close to a downed aircraft. But the fuel tanks hadn’t ruptured, and Parson figured the poor guy needed a cigarette. Rashid pulled the filter from his lips and exhaled. The wind whipped the smoke away instantly. He hunkered beside his crew chief in the fighting position they’d built up with rocks in front of the helicopter. Both of them stared down into the draw and across the valley, where the dog kept looking. The Malinois lapped at its water dish, then looked up again.
Nothing down there that Parson could see. Maybe the dog had spotted or sniffed some animal it didn’t like. A wolf or something.
Parson had experienced his own encounter with Afghan wolves. A starving pack had stalked him and Sophia as they trekked through the snow after the shoot-down of their C-130. When the wolves had finally attacked, the first one hit Parson like a linebacker, all teeth and muscle, hard enough to knock him off his feet. He’d used his rifle, his pistol, even his knife to fight those damned things off. Sophia killed a couple of them, too.
And now he found himself forced down in Afghanistan again. The air itself felt heavy, more like currents of water than gusts of wind. He forced himself to concentrate, to think about the tactical situation. Parson wondered if he lived his life like a timberline spruce in his native Colorado, clinging to existence at the ragged edge, holding on to alpine soil that just barely kept it alive. Such a tree survived one day at a time, through adaptation and perseverance. Parson knew he had to do the same.
“I’ll build a little defilade for us,” Conway said. The Gulf War vet began piling stones and slabs of shale in a semicircle near the Mi-17’s broken tail boom. “Too bad not to have sandbags,” he said.
“How do you think we should set up?” Parson asked.
“If we put the M4 back here with me, and the crew chief’s weapon up front, we’ll have an interlocking field of fire.”
“Sounds like you’ve done this before,” Parson said.
“A little bit. Are those the only two rifles we have?”
“Yeah. But maybe we won’t need them. Task Force is sending helos out to us. The question is can they get to us in this wind.”
“Can’t we just hump it down to a flat spot in the valley?” Conway asked. “Maybe the choppers would have an easier time landing down there.”
“They would,” Parson said. “I’ve been thinking about that. But I’d rather not leave a defensible spot to go traipsing over ground with no cover.”
“Hmm.” Conway placed his hands on his hips, looked at the terrain below him and above him. “Me neither,” he said.
Reyes stepped from inside the helicopter and surveyed the preparations going on around the aircraft. Dried blood stuck to his hands; he’d worked without latex gloves. Parson had heard pararescue guys talk about what they called “dirt medicine.” In a combat zone, you had bigger problems than germs. If your patient bled to death through a clean wound, you hadn’t done him much good.
“Sir, you’re setting up like you think we’ll be here awhile,” Reyes said.
“I hope not,” Parson said. “I just don’t know if a chopper can get to us right now.”
“How’s everybody doing in there?” Conway asked.
“Your partner’s leg is broken, but it’s not a compound fracture,” Reyes said. “Could have been worse. And I have Sharif’s bleeding under control.”
“Rashid will be glad to hear that,” Parson said.
“I don’t want to use a tourniquet unless I have to,” Reyes said, “because then he could lose the leg.”
“Good thinking,” Parson said. The last thing Afghanistan needed was one more amputee. The carpenters who carved crude prosthetics represented the only growth industry in the country, except maybe the poppy growers. And it took a lot of time and money to get an aircrew member trained. You couldn’t keep losing them at this rate.
Work would settle his mind, Parson decided. He removed his survival vest, but kept on his body armor. He pushed his flight suit sleeves up above his elbows and helped Conway pile rocks. The two men created a low wall of stone, with a notch left open for a rifle barrel, much like the rock berm Rashid and the crew chief had built near the front of the aircraft. Reyes, still busy with his patients, gave his M4 to Conway.
Parson picked up his survival vest and took his radio from its pouch. He’d kept the PRC-90 on ever since his initial satphone call, hoping to hear the rescue choppers announce their approach. But so far, he’d heard only hiss.
He placed the radio atop the stone wall, and beside it he put other tools in case he needed them quickly. They included a signaling mirror and a flare launcher roughly the shape of a thick pen. The little pen-gun launcher didn’t look like much, but it could throw a gyrojet flare so high that rescue pilots wouldn’t miss it.
“Gentlemen,” Parson said, “collect your gear so you can grab it quick. If the helos do get to us, we don’t want to screw around.”
Reyes positioned his medical ruck in the door frame of the Mi-17. He unrolled a Skedco litter—a sheet of hard green plastic with black nylon straps, ready to move the two injured men since neither could walk. Rashid and his crew chief had already stowed their helmets in bags beside the chopper’s nose. Parson dropped his own bag near his survival gear and kneeled on the ground behind the rock wall.
Every gust blew harder. One flung grit into Parson’s face, stung his cheeks and eyes. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, pulled his sunglasses from a zippered pocket, and put them on. Maybe the shades would provide at least a little protection. He wished he’d brought a jacket; it was a little cooler at this elevation. The wind died to near calm, then threw dust again.
So the gust increment would be a bitch today, Parson realized. High winds were always a pain. But you could deal with up to thirty knots pretty easily as long as it blew steady. However, ten gusting to thirty beat the daylights out of you. He guesstimated current winds at ten knots gusting to, hell, forty. And it wasn’t even noon yet. The winds would pick up during the afternoon. Afghanistan seemed to want to show Parson its worst weather in every season.
A distant rhythm rose with the gusts, nearly imperceptible at first. Parson realized he’d listened to it for several seconds before it registered: the sound of helicopters. The howl of wind and slap of rotors intertwined in a counterbeat until the chopper noise dominated.
The same rhythm, with an electronic hum, emitted from Parson’s radio: a chopper pilot pressing a transmit switch but not yet talking. Gathering his thoughts, apparently, in a language not his first.
“Golay,” the pilot said finally. Afghan accent. “Lightning flight. We are two-ship Mi-35.”
That would work. The Mi-35 cabins had en
ough room to evac Parson and all of Rashid’s crew and passengers.
“Lightning, Golay One-Eight,” Parson said. “I hear your aircraft. Do you have my position?”
Another vibrating pause on the radio. Then, “Affirmative. Do you visual?”
“Negative, Lightning,” Parson said. “I’ll advise when I see you. The LZ is cold, but hostiles might be nearby.”
“Copy.”
The Mi-35s grew louder. They appeared against a ridge in the distance, farther away than he’d expected, small as hornets. The pair of helicopters throbbed into the valley. Parson keyed his radio.
“Lightning,” he called, “Golay has you in sight. We’re about three miles off your two o’clock. I’ll pop a flare.”
Parson twisted the orange flare cartridge into the launcher’s chamber. With his thumb, he pulled down the spring-loaded trigger handle, held it above his head, looked away from it. He released the trigger and felt the firing pin snap against the cartridge. The flare spat like a bottle rocket and smoked an arc high over the stone ledge, but the wind flattened its trajectory. Parson put down the launcher and picked up his radio again.
“Lightning,” he transmitted, “you get a visual on that flare?”
“Negative, Golay.”
“Okay, come right about ten degrees. I’ll pop another one.”
He carried bigger flares in his survival vest, but he preferred not to use them in this wind. They’d spew sparks that could fly anywhere and start a fire. Parson cursed under his breath and loaded another round.
With the launcher held above his head, he thumbed the trigger and let it snap forward. The flare rocketed straight up, but again its velocity gave in to the wind. The dot of light sailed down the mountainside toward the valley floor. Parson made another radio call.
“Lightning, Golay One-Eight,” he said. “You pick up that one?”
“Negative, Golay.”
Parson tossed the launcher onto the ground beside his helmet bag, pressed his talk button again: “All right, Lightning,” he said, “I’ll try a signal mirror.”
He held the mirror between his thumb and middle finger. The glass was about the size of a playing card, only thicker. Parson aimed through the sighting port in the middle, angled the mirror until he centered the sun’s fireball on the first helicopter.
